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Chris and all, well said.
A few years ago, an old colleague of mine who worked for the International
Meteorological Organization in Switzerland gave an address to the Company
of Master Mariners. In response to a question on Global warming he said and
this as close as I remember the quote.
"We really don't have to worry about that because at our current rate we
will poison ourselves long before global warming becomes an issue"
Something to think about.
Peter Stow
Hubbards
In a message dated 25/05/2010 4:25:57 P.M. Atlantic Daylight Time,
c.majka@ns.sympatico.ca writes:
Hi Suzanne,
I believe that the evidence here points in another direction, and hence
the lesson to be taken is rather different.
The Situation
I think its pretty clear that despite their enormous resources, BP and the
US government are simply unable to stop this oil leak. Even if the newest
plans of clogging the leak with mud and concrete succeed (the "top-kill"
strategy, or the so called "junk short" or the so-called "top-hat"), there
have already been five weeks of uninterrupted, spewing oil, phenomenally
damaging and expensive already, to say nothing of the astronomical costs of
years of restoration and remediation, to say nothing of the law suits,
compensation to fisherman, and the enormously tarnished corporate image of BP, and
oil drilling and exploration in general.
The truth is we (meaning all of humanity), despite all our technological
prowess, are really not that clever or that capable when it comes to dealing
with such disasters. All the king's horses and all the king's men have thus
far not been able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
The Lesson
The lesson here is that these mega-energy projects are phenomenally
dangerous. Events like the Exxon Valdez spill, or Three Mile Island, or the
Chernobyl nuclear meltodown, or the Gulf Oil disaster may happen quite
infrequently but when they do (and they inevitably will, since even our best safety
measures and failsafe mechanisms will sometimes fail, as they did this time
when the well-head cutoff mechanisms refused to function) the consequences
are catastrophic.
We need to wean ourselves off both fossil-fuels and energy mega-projects
(for this reason and many others) and seriously commit to renewal,
decentralized measures and projects that allow us to live a much more sustainable
existence. There simply isn't always a "techno-fix" available and if we rely
on the promises of gigantic multinational energy consortiums (who have a
vested interest in such projects) that they have "fail-safe" ways of dealing
with any problem, the biosphere is going to be traumatized again and again,
and its increasingly not in great shape to absorb such environmental
"shock therapy."
Marching to Washington, or throwing the US military into the melee, isn't
going to fix it. We need to deal with nature and our planet with respect and
humility, because careless humanity really has the capacity to cause a
serious breakdown, and like the sorcerer's apprentice, we may not be able to
fix the mess we've made.
Cheers,
Chris
On 25-May-10, at 3:31 PM, Suzanne Townsend wrote:
Could be my usual shoot-from-the-hip approach however I think that siphon
thing was working quite a bit, and they could continue to do that and
improve it and employ many more of the same thing.
If the 2 governments, US & UK, treated this like they did WW II and the
bomb, they could fix it in short order. I don't think anything short of
declaring war will work -- war on the oil at its source (the broken seam/well)
and wherever it went (surely they can figure a way to siphon off
5-mile-by-8-mile-by-300'-thick submerged islands of oil, surely they can deploy troops
to those currently empty-of-helping-hands beaches being destroyed, etc).
How else to cut through the politics, lawyers, and red tape? Oh the lawyers,
imagine, nobody can do a thing without five signed forms. All these ideas
and technology already developed and ready to go (or already there) but no
permission to use them.
Time for BP to lose the rays of its flag like Japan after WW II, have its
assets seized by the UK/US.... time to fight (a good way) for so many
lives...
I'm ready to march on Washington, Ottawa, wherever, or, better yet,
sponsor people who already live in those places and who would not go otherwise to
represent me in my stead (so I don't have to use more oil/gas to get there
myself).
Totally all my own unscientific opinion... for whatever it's worth :!
--Suzanne
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 2:56 PM, David & Alison Webster
<_dwebster@glinx.com_ (mailto:dwebster@glinx.com) > wrote:
Hi Suzanne & All, May 25, 2010
Working at 1.5 km with complications of murky water and methane ice
don't make it easy but I get the impression that the engineers involved
either lack both imagination and know-how or they have been told (quietly) to
not try too hard; from a BP standpoint, compensation to the few who get past
the lawyers may cost less than containment.
This may be incorrect, but dispersing the oil with wetting agents would
(to me) logically increase toxicity by increasing the water/oil contact
surface. So I wonder. Does use of dispersants mean that toxicity is not
increased or does it mean that the problem (as viewed superficially) seems to be
lessened ?
This event may stall or slow deep oil activity.
Yt, Dave Webster, Kentville
----- Original Message -----
From: _Suzanne Townsend_ (mailto:suzanne.townsend@gmail.com)
To: _naturens@chebucto.ns.ca_ (mailto:naturens@chebucto.ns.ca)
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 10:19 AM
Subject: [NatureNS] Birds, Dolphins, etc
Is anyone getting mad enough yet to march on Washington, London, and BP to
get off the red tape and go suck up the mess? I don't even see anything
about it in the paper today. It's like it's not important enough?
_http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=over-300-dead-birds-are-li
kely_
(http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=over-300-dead-birds-are-likely)
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Christopher Majka <_c.majka@ns.sympatico.ca_
(mailto:c.majka@ns.sympatico.ca) > | Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
* Research Associate: Nova Scotia Museum |
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