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Capitalizing on Melting Polar Ice
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sat Oct 15, 2005 07:32 PM
from the 05ers-just-doesn't-have-the-same-ring dept.
from the 05ers-just-doesn't-have-the-same-ring dept.
efuzzyone writes "As an affect of global warming, the polar ice caps seem to be slowly receding, what do you do? The NYT reports it is a gold rush, 'the Arctic is undergoing nothing less than a great rush for virgin territory and natural resources worth hundreds of billions of dollars.' Also, 'polar thaw is also starting to unlock other treasures: lucrative shipping routes, perhaps even the storied Northwest Passage; new cruise ship destinations; and important commercial fisheries.'"
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Yep (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yep (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yep (Score:5, Informative)
-jcr
Parent
Re:Yep (Score:4, Informative)
It's easy to overlook 'facts' when they are in reality fiction.
In reality Clinton's administration negotiated, supported, and he personally eventually signed the Kyoto protocol.
"Former President Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, negotiated the treaty for the United States and had a major role in its final form."
According to Wikipedia:
"On June 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was to be negotiated, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Aware of the Senate's view of the protocol, the Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol for ratification."
The criticism is that Bush doesn't support the Kyoto protocol. If Clinton commanded a congress with a dominant Democrat majority, as Bush commands a Republican majority, the Kyoto protocol would have passed under his administration.
His administration undeniably supported the Kyoto protocol.
It seems very strange for me to hear conservatives, which I'm sure you undeniably are, cry foul at simply criticizing the policy of the Bush administration. The only way you could find these criticisms innately negative, is if you agreed that the policy they criticize is innately negative. Clinton suffered an array of actual 'shots' that had nothing to do with his policy, by 24 hour cable news networks, and independent councils; working full time to dig up information on fabricated crimes he supposedly committed (yet predictably never yielded anything substantial).
Parent
Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
"If Clinton commanded a congress with a dominant Democrat majority, as Bush commands a Republican majority, the Kyoto protocol would have passed under his administration."
Please explain to me this contradiction. Or are you saying that there was 95 Republicans in the Senate and 5 Democrats?
Parent
Republicans Hate the Earth (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst American politician whiner was Bush, who whined "we'll give you something better than Kyoto" when he rejected it. Just another lie from Bush, who has given us nothing but tax rebates on SUVs that did nothing but further break the environment, and even break the American carmakers' future sales, driving them to the brink of bankruptcy.
Just to complete your Bushwacko rhetoric, your "aren't worth the paper they're printed on" was Bush's comment about our Social Security "lockbox" that he looted, referring to the debt he owes us to finance his $3TRILLION annual budget, his $45TRILLION in committed debt. When, in fact, those Social Security debts, backed by US Treasury Bills, are by law the highest priority debt obligation of the US government. Bush is talking about defaulting on America's $TRILLIONS in debt, which would do for our country what he's been doing to the economy and the environment. And you're happily parroting his insane talking points. You really deserve the ecocaust you're courting. But I don't.
Parent
Re:But Europeans are ruining their economies.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Kyoto has controls for both emissions and sinks. One reason Russia embraced it is that Russia does produce quite a lot of carbon fuels (they've got the world's largest reserves), but also has the largest area that can be reforested. They're in the carbon sink business. But the problem with your plan, which they'd favor, is that emphasizing the sink now more than the emissions would pass all that pollutiuon through the atmosphere. Like protecting polluters from liability as long as they clean it up later - or someone cleans it up later. Like exonerating a thief if they give back their loot when they're done using it.
Kyoto isn't the best, or last, solution to Greenhouse pollution. But it's better than nothing. The US has embraced nothing as our solution. Which is unacceptable, especially as Bush lied about responding to Kyoto with "something better", which he has certainly not. So Kyoto isn't good enough - it gets us all started, and gives us something to learn from. It's a global industrial policy, with our civilization's survival hanging in the balance. We've already squandered a decade ignoring it here, where we can best execute it for maximum benefit, so we have that much more ground to make up. Many scientists warn that the tipping point, beyond which accommodations like Kyoto won't be enough, might pass within a decade. It's certainly far too late to make procrastinating arguments for doing nothing, that merely build our polluting industries. We've got to do something to save ourselves, while we argue about what better we can do with the time that Kyoto has bought. Europe is making us look stupid, though we're doing at least half of the work to do so.
Parent
Re:Kyoto is useless... (Score:4, Informative)
I find humor in the root-level comment, but there is a deeper underlying issue with the Kyoto agreement that doesn't settle well with my view on it.
Sure the U.S. pollutes a great deal; we also use something like 1/6 of all of the world's resources. But to my understanding (and I may be wrong), we put out a lot less pollution than China or India.
I have family that has recently travelled to this part of the world, and they've had a hard time adjusting to the pollution that exists in that part of the world... Smog is everywhere I'm told.
Yeah, the U.S. can do a lot to clean up its own act, but the rest of the world has a long way to go, too.
Now, why should the U.S. foot the bill for the rest of the world?
Parent
It's not a liability, it's an opportunity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately doing so would require both business and political leaders with vision. Something we lack bigtime.
Parent
Re:Kyoto is useless... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, perhaps you knew you were wrong in the first place, but besided to say it anyway? Well, yes you are wrong. The US is by far the worst polluter (OVERALL, not Per Capita) in the world. The difference is that they don't pollute into the heart of their urban areas, so it's not visible to the average citizen. Some statistics to back this up:
Carbon Dioxide Emissions [nationmaster.com]
Energy consumption [ourplanet.com]
The central argument of your whole post is destroyed when you discover that your basic premise is wrong. Everyone in the world agrees that there is man-made global warming. Only in the US has the propaganda been strong enough to still sustain a debate, no matter how senseless. EVEN BUSH finally admitted [bbc.co.uk] that humans are causing global warming. Perhaps you need to admit to yourself that it's possible you could be wrong, and that the attachment to your lifestyle and your nationalism is what makes you so apprehensive of seeing the truth.
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and, (Score:5, Funny)
Nah (Score:5, Informative)
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This is great! (Score:3, Funny)
Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
With all of these benefits who cares about preventing damage to our environment?!</sarcasm>
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Informative)
Especially take note of this chart [junkscience.com]
Parent
Fear mongering by Chrichton (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a little light reading for perspective:
http://info-pollution.com/mc.htm [info-pollution.com]
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050121/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c
etc..
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Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Great. (Score:5, Funny)
Great. Add more pollution to the area. Just what it needs!
And thats not all (Score:3, Interesting)
Pacific islands aren't going anywhere (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention the rising waters flooding pacific islands. Good trade off, cruise destinations in the pacific get flooded, and cruise destinations in the polar region open up.
Ever wonder why many Pacific islands are at sea level? Most are volcanoes eroded to sea level. They become atolls through processes of erosion and a buildup of calcium carbonate that form a ring around the eroded ediface. As sea level rises deposition by coral will equalize with rising sea level. Indeed, flooding by major storms is the *only* mechanism where new material is deposited above sea level at all! This is not new. It has going for the last 12000 years since the end of the last ice age as sea level has risen several meters. So relax, the Pacific islands aren't going anywhere. Why do people discard rational thought when discussing the Kyoto treaty?
Parent
North Polar icecap melt will (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Flooded = gone (Score:5, Insightful)
>
> So relax, the Pacific islands aren't going anywhere.
But anything built on them or growing on them will be going away if/when they get flooded.
The islands may indeed catch up to even something like a 5m rise in sea level, but even if it's in such a ridiculously short time as 100 years, that means (a) they cease to exist as islands for the near future, (b) they're scoured of all terrestrial life, and (c) all buildings and equipment on the islands are destroyed.
In other words, the islands are gone, at least as far as current human use of them is concerned. Witness what 5m of flooding did to New Orleans in just 3 weeks.
> Why do people discard rational thought when discussing the Kyoto treaty?
A fine question indeed.
Parent
Try telling that to the residents of Tuvalu (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
How ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
DONT FEEL RIGHT (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Money : Because killing 6 billion people just to make some more was so worth it, now that it's totally useless because everyones dead and paper has no use when it's already doodled on.
Re:Anyone.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Anyone.. (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the thing, if there's more water, there's more weight on the crust, which will subside a bit. Cutting a long story short and without explaining the ins and outs of crustal isostasy, if your house, water source and farmland is above 75m in elevation, you'll be alright.
Otherwise, to quote Tool's very appropriate song Aenima, learn to swim.
Parent
Re:Anyone.. (Score:4, Informative)
The floating ice won't. It's the ice that's deposited on land (Antarctica, Greenland, Northern Canada, etc.) that will.
-jcr
Parent
Re:Anyone.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice work with the selective quoting, bub.
Very next line:
But the average temperature in Antarctica is -37C, so the ice there is in no danger of melting. In fact in most parts of the continent it never gets above freezing. [howstuffworks.com]
If we raise the average temperature on Earth by 37C, we'll probably all be dead anyway, so the flooding will be kind of irrelevant.
Re:Anyone.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Anyone.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of like that tsunami that hit indonesia a little while back. Tons of devastation, killed over 100,000 people. Wikipedia reports only 1200 deaths from hurricane katrina. Only 2000 US soldiers have died in Iraq. 200,000 Allied soldiers died during the battle of normandy. Americans don't even remember what real devastation is, and some have never ever experienced it. At least not first hand. They hear about it on the news, but it's hard to relate to pictures on a tv screen. Maybe this is why so many people forget how vulnerable we are. Because in the last 50 years, there has been very little in terms of real devastation.
Parent
New cruise ship destinations? (Score:3, Insightful)
How can this be? Bush wasn't even alive. (Score:4, Funny)
This can't be right. George Bush wasn't even born then. How could there possibly have been hurricanes, or any other evil or dangerous thing?
Oh! I see: Halliburton Co., founded 1919. That explains it.
-ccm
Parent
Suddenly Canada becomes desireable! (Score:5, Funny)
Gammar is important too! (Score:4, Informative)
An effect (n) is something that happens as a result of some action.
To effect (v) a change is to cause a change to occur.
A affect (n) is a feeling or emotion you feel.
To affect (v) something is to change it through your actions. To affect something is to effect a change in it.
Being the intelligent people we are, with great precision in our computer languages, let's not ride the wave of many technologists who believe they are too good to condescend to write English properly. Strive to do well in all things.
Sovereignty a huge issue... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, Canada will probably roll over and let the U.S. have it's way on the sovereignty issue as we've done in the past when the U.S. ice breaker Polar Sea transited the Northwest Passage in 1985.
Re:Blame Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Blame Canada (Score:5, Informative)
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Eep (Score:5, Funny)
Primarily, this will open up trades route with Hell, which incidentally is short on handbaskets.
Pretty rocks. (Score:5, Informative)
Still, global warming is not a plus for me. The ski season is getting shorter :-(
Extinct animals or increased human prosperity (Score:3, Insightful)
Humans would have to give up their multi billion dollar coastal mansions and their riverboat gambling. Eskimos would have to get real jobs instead of living off welfare in the middle of nowhere. Antarctic scientists would have to shift to rainforest studies. There wouldn't be any more arctic polar bears.
On the other side, we'd consume much less energy for heating. 1000 less marines would die every year extracting heating oil from terrorists. Russia and Canadia would become inhabitable.
Re:Pirates? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Maybe we should worry about the ice, not profit (Score:3, Informative)
Dumb humans.
Re:Maybe we should worry about the ice, not profit (Score:3, Insightful)
"I can always buy air filters with my money," or something to that effect. It's gosh darn arrogant goatse-holes like that that make the world a harder place to live.
Re:Your poor research has lead to false facts. (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree the melting and re-freezing of ice caps are cyclical, and that stats always skewed, but you do realize that coastal communities are a lot less mobile than they were the last time the icecaps melted significantly? (And yes, I know that only the melting of one of the icecaps, the Antarctic, can actually affect sea levels). You can't easily abandon all the infrastructure in say New York and rebuild on higher ground, like a small tribe living in simple huts or cabins could.
Just because events are historically cyclical, doesn't mean we're better able to weather them.
Parent
Your poor research has led to pollyannaism. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=1352 [ucsb.edu]
"The research described in this week's article demonstrates that over the last 1.3 million years, sea surface temperatures in the heart of the western tropical Pacific were controlled by the waxing and waning of the atmospheric greenhouse effect. The largest climate mode shift over this time interval, occurring ~950,000 years before the present (the mid-Pleistocene transition), has previously been attributed to changes in the pattern and frequency of ice sheets.
The new research suggests instead that this shift is due to a change in the oscillation frequency of atmospheric carbon dioxide abundances, a hypothesis that can be directly tested by deep drilling on the Antarctic Ice Cap. If proved correct, this theory would suggest that relatively small, naturally occurring fluctuations in greenhouse gases are the master variable that has driven global climate change on time scales of ten thousand to one million years."
This study of plankton cores combined with the recent study of bog hardwoods puts all these "sun output" and "natural cycle" arguments to bed. Good night. Usually it's a large catastrophic event releasing trapped methane from ocean depths that cause it. This time we did it all by our lonesome -- or is that loathsome -- selves.
Parent
Re:No change in sea level (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two other effects to consider however - you alluded to the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica, which would have a much greater effect on sea level if they should melt or even just flow into the ocean faster than they do now. With the polar ice cap gone, the Greenland ice cap would probably move faster and possibly even disintegrate.
The other effect is that once you get above about 4 degrees C, water starts expanding again. So if the entire volume of ocean water becomes warmer on average, you may well get a rise in sea level even without the Greenland or Antarctic ice caps melting (the quibble is whether enough of the water will remain around 4 degrees C where it reaches minimum volume per unit mass - this is going to be difficult to compute because the effect of a melting polar ice cap on ocean currents is hard to predict accurately).
Parent
Re:The first thing I though of.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:help me out here... (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that, the question of causes remains. Volvano activity certainly throws out a lot of C02, around one hundred and thirty to two hundred and thirty million metric tons a year [wikipedia.org]. In comparison the US produces around five billion metric tonnes a year by itself [wikipedia.org] convincingly dwarfing volcanic output. You also point the finger at solar activity, claiming it is ignored - it isn't. As you point out the IPCC includes it in their considerations and found, depending on the model used, that it accounted for effects of sixteen to thirty six percent that of those caused by CO2 and other greenhouse emissions [wikipedia.org]. There are questions as to how well solar activity actually correlates with global temperature [newscientist.com] as well, so it's an open topic.
On the other side of things: Our present understanding of physics is fairly unequivocal that CO2 and other gases can cause warming by trapping heat. Using ice cores and other methods to reconstruct historical CO2 levels we find that CO2 correlates extremely well with global temperature. We also find that CO2 levels have spiked beyond anything in recent history (recent history being the last four hundred thousand years) in just the last 150 years - again correlating extremely well with the recent acceleration in warming. Given the extremely good correlations and the clear reasons to believe in causation (which is to say, physics) it would seem that the burden of proof should fall to those who suggest human CO2 emissions are not having a significant impact on global temperatures.
Are we killing the earth? I doubt it - I expect the earth will simply get warmer and keep on going. The question is: are we making life for ourselves much harder and much more costly, and is that preventable? There is strong evidence that human CO2 emissions are having a significant impact on climate, and that is certainly the cause over which we have the most direct influence. It makes sense to do something about it if we can.
Jedidiah.
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