Poll: The oilsands CLIMATE CRIME RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE
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But this isn't the planet we're talking about, it's one little part of northern Alberta that is only inhabited because it has oil. The oilsands are only going to cause local damage. The massive greenhouse gases being emitted all over the world could really destroy all life. I agree with you, but this isn't about profit, it's about gluttony. The people of the industrialised world must understand the whole, seemingly impossible magnitude of the crisis the WHOLE WORLD is in, and live a spartan lifestyle. We must show developing countries we aren't all talk, and can make sacrifices for the world. You make it seem like the oilsands are somehow ruining the whole world. They barely scratch it. I throw you're statement back to you, other people live on this earth too, you can't fuck it up just so you can hold onto modern conveniences.Knight Templar said:
How is asking you not to ruin a enitre area and wipe out animals fucking things up so I can have "modern conveniences"? What are these "modern conveniences" I seek to hold on to? If the problem is so large then why not stop what we can? You're talking in circles.Lonan said:
Me not putting my rubbish in a bin isn't ruining the world, but it is part of what is, so rather than say "it's just a small part", I say "if it is so small, then it houldn't matter if i do the right thing, because collectively, it does matter".
This is why, i live in Alberta as well and it is not a pretty sight when you pass by one of these places. Think of a square kilometer of the earth dug down 50 feet everything on top distroyed, forests, small lakes, land countours, and you begin to get an idea of what is going on.Glefistus said:
I assume you use modern conveniences, by using this website, you are right now. Modern conveniences use electricity which largely comes from coal. It had to be manufactured, which usually involves high temperatures obtained from burning coal. Long, hot showers are a modern convenience as well. The water is cleaned using energy which mostly comes from coal (dams don't make very much electricity compared to coal fired power plants). Water is 800 times as dense as air, and takes a HUGE amount of electricity, mainly from coal to heat. If you drive a car, it took a lot of heat to manufacture, and it uses gasoline, which is refined from oil using energy. Again, this energy usually emits greenhouse gases. That's all I have to say on that, and notice how the only thing involving the oilsands is converting the oil to gasoline. You probably don't even get oilsands oil, in Australia, so you don't need to worry about it. If you want someone to blame for greenhouse gases, I would go with George W. Bush, who actually made things worse for the sake or profit when he tried to get biodiesel. The loss of rainforest far out weighs any benefit to making already very clean fuel even cleaner.Knight Templar said:
I think its be great if Greenpeace could be headed by some multi billion dollar corporation doing Greenpeace's bidding. Then they could get stuff done. Although the oilsands sound horrible (where i live in Australia we've got a coal mine that sounds the same), i don't know if Greenpeace is actually doing any good.
So I can't even try to make the world a better place?Lonan said:
You are very depressing if you think just because you live in the modern world you can't try and make it better.
I live here too, and what most ppl think of "oilsands" is whats shown. the big mines dug into the earth around fort mac. there's other ways of it being done too, which wrecks alot less land. (pads of wells drilled into the ground, with steam injected to stir up the oil a bit so they can suck it up)Lonan said:
i think canada is being targeted a bit more than others (seal hunt, oil sands that i can think of) because of a lack of threat here. imagine if they did it in china. they'd all be shot and you'd never hear of it other than "16 people missing", if you really even heard that(16 ppl were arrested in this, i think.)
Yes you are.Lonan said:
And here we are back at the point I already adressed, you're still talking in circles. Untill you stop we can't continue this.
I assume you're point was that we need to start somewhere. I need to go to bed now, so I don't have time to look back, but my point is that YOU need to start somewhere, lead, hope people will follow, instead of walking into another country's affairs and sitting down like you are a citizen, while living in foreign nation. Consumerism is the root cause of global warming, not the oilsands. The oilsands are one little part of the picture, which you can consume if you want. If you want to reduce your emissions, consume as little as possible. Try to get other people to do the same. That would be far more productive and far more noble than joining the anti-oilsands chorus which is largely gluttonous countries pointing fingers away from themselves. They need to attach a mirror to that finger so they see themselves every single time they point a finger at the oilsands.Knight Templar said:
Your mindset on this situation scares me. Here is why. Say I want to donate my time to a soup kitchen here in my hometown to help the starving homeless here get back on their feet. As I exit my home ready to go someone stops me and yells. "Screw the soup kitchen here in [insert hometown], we need to go open some soup kitchens in Africa. That's where the REAL problem with starvation is." Well, I don't have money to fly to Africa, nor do I have money to open a soup kitchen there. However, I still shouldn't help the homeless here because they just aren't as big of a problem as the starving African children.Lonan said:
You talked about Canada's economy in that last bit. I propose to you, that by your mentality of "It's so small of a percentage we shouldn't care" that we should say "Screw Canada's economy; The United States AND China's economy are bigger than theirs." Basically, we shouldn't help the Canadian economy because it is smaller than other economies.
It's called the "Every little bit counts" mentality.
Oh, and screw oil, go green. By green of course I mean nuclear. Generation IV pebble bed reactors with thorium capabilities for the win.
two last things, one that you might find interesting and the other just for fun.
1)
You would be amazed how much CO2 is released every year from idling cars at drive through windows. I believe Stake and Shake has already agreed to close their drive thru window for one hour every day, which is a good first step.
You say "Why bother, it's only 0.2% of the world's emissions, why not focus on something that'll make more difference"?
If every country does this, then nothing would ever get done. I'd rather see a 0.2% reduction than nothing, because it's still a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and is a step in the right direction on the path to seriously reducing environmental damage.
It's not just the emissions - from what I've heard the oilsands have removed large areas of forests and bodies of water - these are all natural "carbon dioxide scrubbers" and removing them exacerbates them problem even if only on a localised scale.
If every country made a small difference in reducing their emissions, by the 0.2% you list as "irrelevant and negligible", then we'd see a global reduction of 39% of the greenhouse gas emissions (this is obviously an incorrect figure as many third-world countries are not large producers of greenhouse gases so there wouldn't be the possibility of reducing the emissions, but I took their 0.2% contribution as a reduction in logging practices and slash-and-burn farming which would help maintain rainforests and scrub land and thus remove CO2 from the atmosphere).
Surely 39% is a very adequate figure in terms of not leaving humanity screwed? And that's merely by countering the negative aspects of areas like the oilsands in each of the 195 countries in the world, and wouldn't be utterly crippling for any countries' economy (well, with trade agreements and tax-breaks so that farming is a viable alternative to logging and so on in third-world countries, and alternative power research and development in the first-world).
Starting small not only gives an achievable aim (Greenpeace would struggle to cut China/America's emissions by 39% by itself) but it quickly adds up if people actually take the initiative and don't just say "but it's such a small amount, why bother?"
To quote a British supermarket chain:
Every Little Helps.
If every country does this, then nothing would ever get done. I'd rather see a 0.2% reduction than nothing, because it's still a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and is a step in the right direction on the path to seriously reducing environmental damage.
It's not just the emissions - from what I've heard the oilsands have removed large areas of forests and bodies of water - these are all natural "carbon dioxide scrubbers" and removing them exacerbates them problem even if only on a localised scale.
If every country made a small difference in reducing their emissions, by the 0.2% you list as "irrelevant and negligible", then we'd see a global reduction of 39% of the greenhouse gas emissions (this is obviously an incorrect figure as many third-world countries are not large producers of greenhouse gases so there wouldn't be the possibility of reducing the emissions, but I took their 0.2% contribution as a reduction in logging practices and slash-and-burn farming which would help maintain rainforests and scrub land and thus remove CO2 from the atmosphere).
Surely 39% is a very adequate figure in terms of not leaving humanity screwed? And that's merely by countering the negative aspects of areas like the oilsands in each of the 195 countries in the world, and wouldn't be utterly crippling for any countries' economy (well, with trade agreements and tax-breaks so that farming is a viable alternative to logging and so on in third-world countries, and alternative power research and development in the first-world).
Starting small not only gives an achievable aim (Greenpeace would struggle to cut China/America's emissions by 39% by itself) but it quickly adds up if people actually take the initiative and don't just say "but it's such a small amount, why bother?"
To quote a British supermarket chain:
Every Little Helps.
You say that you shouldn't help out at your local soup kitchen because it's people in Africa need more help. That may be the case, but unless you go to Africa, it's all you've got. So I suggest you help out at that soup kitchen instead of saying that people thousands of kilometres from you have it even worse. First of all, the people in Africa are fine, they live like that. People like you are referred to as the "white elephant" because you go over there with you're shining armour and claim to have all the solutions to all of Africa's problems.jboking said:Your mindset on this situation scares me. Here is why. Say I want to donate my time to a soup kitchen here in my hometown to help the starving homeless here get back on their feet. As I exit my home ready to go someone stops me and yells. "Screw the soup kitchen here in [insert hometown], we need to go open some soup kitchens in Africa. That's where the REAL problem with starvation is." Well, I don't have money to fly to Africa, nor do I have money to open a soup kitchen there. However, I still shouldn't help the homeless here because they just aren't as big of a problem as the starving African children.Lonan said:
You talked about Canada's economy in that last bit. I propose to you, that by your mentality of "It's so small of a percentage we shouldn't care" that we should say "Screw Canada's economy; The United States AND China's economy are bigger than theirs." Basically, we shouldn't help the Canadian economy because it is smaller than other economies.
It's called the "Every little bit counts" mentality.
Oh, and screw oil, go green. By green of course I mean nuclear. Generation IV pebble bed reactors with thorium capabilities for the win.
two last things, one that you might find interesting and the other just for fun.
1)2) Oddly enough, the oilsands are not the only thing being attacked by environmentalists right now. The oil industry, for example, has been exposed to protests numerous times by all sorts of different green organizations.You would be amazed how much CO2 is released every year from idling cars at drive through windows. I believe Stake and Shake has already agreed to close their drive thru window for one hour every day, which is a good first step.
You say my mindset scares you. You're mindset terrifies me. You talk about "starting somewhere." The reality is that the western world needs to stop using everything right about now. If people realised how bad it really is they would be panicking and rioting on the streets. The idea of "starting somewhere" is a truly terrifying way of thinking. We need to be ending the whole greenhouse gas emissions thing very soon to avoid disaster, not "start somewhere." Every little bit helps yes, but the transportation sector AS A WHOLE accounts for less greenhouse gas warming potential than cattle flatulence. Remember back when people were saying that you couldn't stop greenhouse gas emissions because you would have to shut down every car, every building, all electricity, and basically shut down the whole global economy? That's still true. There's still a level of risk even if emissions stop now. Species have already gone extinct because of global warming, (first in 1985, in Australia I think, the Golden Spotted Toad) and you want to complain about the greenhouse gas emissions of an operation on another continent. I heard this quote from Calvin and Hobbes "Do what you can, where you are, with what you have."
You seem intent on complaining about something that absolutely will not stop, and will accomplish nothing by doing so. Or you good rally your community to make some real reductions in their energy consumption, which will hopefully catch the attention of more and more people, and will hopefully inspire them to do what you're doing. Or you can say "every little bit helps" and attack the miniscule pollution from one operation on another continent. I guarantee you that any American power plant emits more than the oilsands, a collosal operation employing thousands of people. You are mistaken if you think that it will be easier to get Canada to reduce it's emissions through than the United States. I'm really starting to think we should fuck the whole western world and make a trade union with China.
No, it isn't. Interesting fact: During several eras, the planet's CO2 levels were through the roof. Interestingly enough, life did not become extinct. Rather, it flourished. Oh, and for some reason, it would appear the Antarctic is not, in fact, shrinking. Rather, the polar caps are growing there.Lonan said:
Now, onto 'Hypercanes, Hurricanes, blah, blah'.
Firstly, a hypercane is a theoretical construct of weather modellers. It's a completely hypothetical, and, as far as I can see, idly relies upon several hypotheticals as well.
Secondly, how the fuck can we predict this weather!? We can barely predict the weather a week in advance, and yet, apparantly, because they work for an environmental lobby, meterologists can tell us exactly what will happen if we don't stop our shameful consumerist ways! Hell, the Met office can usually barely predict the temperatures on a day, and yet a bunch of biased, partial meterologists can tell me precisely what the temperatures will be in the future.
Hmmmmm....
I CALL BULLSHIT ON YOUR POST, GOOD SIR.
I thought I'd share a few CO2 graphs. Whilst there have undeniably been large emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere, and often very sudden (like volcanic explosions) life wasn't under the same pressure that it is today - the environment was intact (so there were more "natural CO2 scrubbers" and so forth) and the seas were unpolluted meaning they were very effective at maintaining the balance of CO2. With the rise in acidity of the sea (because of more dissolved CO2) the sea cannot absorb as much either.Rolling Thunder said:
Here's how humans have influenced CO2 rates in the last 100 years or so:
http://bluemarbleclimate.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/hadcrut3-co2.png
The last 1000 years:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/files/uploads/CO2.png
Last 10,000 years:
http://www.greatdreams.com/climate/CO2-10k-2005-IPCC-AR4.jpg
As for the ice caps growing? That is total, utter bullshit.
The amount of sea-ice is increasing, but that doesn't matter too much because it doesn't alter the sea level when it melts and forms. The problem is that the land glaciers are still melting and at rates far worse than originally thought.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070530/
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/images/20071017_timeseries.png
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5768/1754
Sorry, the "it's a natural cycle" thing pisses me off. Yes, fluctuations are natural but not to the extent or rapidity that we are currently seeing. And the blatant misinformation about the polar caps required correcting.
Won't comment on hypercanes, I don't know enough about them, but scientists can predict the global weather for several years in advance looking at the last thousand years of weather change. They can't tell you "It'll rain on Tuesday 18h march 2587" but they can predict the general change in weather pattern (brought about by the shifting of sea currents due to changes in water temperature).
People also fail to realise that we are currently living in one of the greatest extinction periods. 25 species a day are disappearing off the face of the earth, a rate far exceeding anything that has gone before.
How does this link to the op?
Well, as I said in my above post, if everyone reduced CO2 emissions by 0.2% (because starting small is ineffectual) then we cut emissions by 39%. That's WITHOUT targeting things like cars and cows (though with some very nice electric cars, like the EVME, being designed in Australia cutting emissions should become quite easy).
Since a 1 degree rise will screw over the Greenland ice, if we reduce current emissions by 39% it should give us a bit of breathing room (by slowing down the current rate of atmospheric temperature rise) to work out how to reduce them further still, and though we will still suffer the effects of global warming we should level-out at a point while there is still permanent ice at the poles.
Starting small does work if you can convince everyone to start. Saying "it's s start is futile" just means that no-one will ever begin and things get a lot worse.
Antartica not growing? Hmmm...
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0520-08.htm
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25349683-601,00.html
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Environment/Global-Warming/Antarctic-ice-growing-not-shrinking-/articleshow/4418558.cms
Of course, these could well be BS. I just grabbed them off google.
http://www.physorg.com/news174234562.html
Hm. Fifteen million years ago? Why, my good sir, I do believe that backs up my point. This is not REM's End of the World as we know It. It's, at worst, a climatological shift, and, frankly, I fail to see how this will bring about the Armaggedon you predict. Yes, sea levels will rise. So? Humans have survived this, and will survive far, far worse.
Interesting fact - C02 does not dissolve with water very well. Not very well at all. In fact, it's structure means it barely interacts with water at all, so I fail to see how dissolved C02 leads to an increase in oceanic acidity, given the sheer size of the oceans, and the fact C02 is lighter than water (and so will naturally rise above it), coupled with the fact that the two very rarely react together, and the fact the acid they form is a very, very weak one. So, again, I call bullshit.
Everyone reduced C02 emissions by .02%? How the hell do you get this stat?!
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0520-08.htm
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25349683-601,00.html
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Environment/Global-Warming/Antarctic-ice-growing-not-shrinking-/articleshow/4418558.cms
Of course, these could well be BS. I just grabbed them off google.
http://www.physorg.com/news174234562.html
Hm. Fifteen million years ago? Why, my good sir, I do believe that backs up my point. This is not REM's End of the World as we know It. It's, at worst, a climatological shift, and, frankly, I fail to see how this will bring about the Armaggedon you predict. Yes, sea levels will rise. So? Humans have survived this, and will survive far, far worse.
Interesting fact - C02 does not dissolve with water very well. Not very well at all. In fact, it's structure means it barely interacts with water at all, so I fail to see how dissolved C02 leads to an increase in oceanic acidity, given the sheer size of the oceans, and the fact C02 is lighter than water (and so will naturally rise above it), coupled with the fact that the two very rarely react together, and the fact the acid they form is a very, very weak one. So, again, I call bullshit.
Everyone reduced C02 emissions by .02%? How the hell do you get this stat?!
Whatever climate change denial crock you've thought of, this guy has cracked pretty much all of them. If you watch all his videos, you will be enlightened. I'm not going to debate if I can find the counter-argument in one of his videos.Rolling Thunder said:
www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610
*edit*
Don't call me good sir, this isn't the 19th century.