The environment thread

[EvilMonkey]

He didn't. I do know for sure.

 

In a broader sense, this is an interesting case. I know more and more people are getting hit for what they do in their personal lives. I have read about female teachers being fired for posing topless, for example.

And maintenance workers being fired because they dare to own a gun.

[NorthSideSox72]

Apparently there's a bit of a ideological civil war going on in the conservationist world

 

 

 

There's also a pretty good profile here of the Nature Conservancy's shift at the national level to working more with industry to mitigate effects than simply buying off parcels of land for preservation.

 

Relatedly, The Nature Conservancy recently reintroduced bison to the Nachusa Grasslands out near Dixon, IL.

 

I've said back here before, I have always been a fan of The Nature Conservancy and the way they go about their business. Far more so than Sierra Club and other non-profits in this space. They don't over-emphasize lobbying. They are focused on making change themselves. Sometimes they buy land, but even when they do, they don't just sit on it - they do conservation that often includes personal use, agricultural use, etc. But they also help implement easements, and partner with lumber companies, etc. They are realists, open-minded and business-savvy, and they get good results that way.

 

I'd suggest they've always been in a mode of doing what is being discussed here. They look at the whole picture, and act accordingly.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

I've said back here before, I have always been a fan of The Nature Conservancy and the way they go about their business. Far more so than Sierra Club and other non-profits in this space. They don't over-emphasize lobbying. They are focused on making change themselves. Sometimes they buy land, but even when they do, they don't just sit on it - they do conservation that often includes personal use, agricultural use, etc. But they also help implement easements, and partner with lumber companies, etc. They are realists, open-minded and business-savvy, and they get good results that way.

 

I'd suggest they've always been in a mode of doing what is being discussed here. They look at the whole picture, and act accordingly.

Want to add to this... in some ways, this parallels the internal rift currently in the GOP nationally. You have the extremists (mostly Tea Partiers in that case) who insist that the only way to do things is absolute. The environmental lobby has, in many areas, had this same problem - and in both cases they constantly shoot themselves in the foot. Then there are the realists, who are better at actually accomplishing anything.

 

[StrangeSox]

I think you need a mix of both TNC and SC-style conservationism. Sierra Club and others like them have achieved important legal and policy victories, including being instrumental in blocking the plans to put some dams in the Grand Canyon and Dinosaur national parks.

[NorthSideSox72]

I think you need a mix of both TNC and SC-style conservationism. Sierra Club and others like them have achieved important legal and policy victories, including being instrumental in blocking the plans to put some dams in the Grand Canyon and Dinosaur national parks.

They have done some good, you're right. But I think they also do some bad.

 

I feel the need to illustrate two examples of what I happen to know some detail about, that TNC is done, as my version of "this is how you do it". One big, one small...

 

1. Back in the early 90's, the owners of the Grey Ranch in SW New Mexico were considering selling. That ranch covers more than 300,000 acres in an area that many consider the most key geographic location in the continental US for ecological diversity. The SW NM and SE AZ corner area (called Malpais Borderlands locally) has more species of mammals, and more endangered species generally, then anywhere else in the lower 48. And the Grey Ranch has the unusual character of covering land from the valley bottoms all the way up to mountain tops. As soon as word got out, the government (wanting to preserve it in some way) and local ranching concerns (wanting to keep it in circulation but also keep out the government) began fighting over it. The Nature Conservancy ignored both, went directly to the ranch owners, and bought the whole thing. Even more novel, after letting it lay unused for a few years while they conducted studies to fully understand the territory, they then engaged the local ranching community. The result: the land is now ranched again (cattle and sheep), but in a sustainable way. The ranchers are caretakers, the land is owned by a local not-for-profit now, and TNC simply consults and does scientific research. Everyone won.

 

2. On the smaller scale, they are good at getting little wins, including one near some property I happen to own in New Mexico (thus why I know these details). A family that owned a ranch which includes a saddle and greenway between two mountain ranges (Mangas and Horse), with one of them being part of the larger Gila complex and all it's ecologically important species. Anyway, again the rancher was considering selling. TNC came to an agreement with the ranch to create a permanent conservation easement along the saddle, covering about 20% of the ranch. No new development is allowed within the easement (a couple existing dirt roads and wells/mills can be maintained as needed), filed with the state. TNC paid, essentially, the degradation value on the property for the existence of the easement, so the ranchers lose nothing. The rest of the land they can do with as they please. Again, everyone wins.

 

[StrangeSox]

Oh I don't disagree. TNC is who gets my annual donation.

[EvilMonkey]

If you oppose nuclear energy, you really don't care about the environment, or so says a bunch of climate scientists.

 

http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/12/15/an-o...nuclear-energy/

[Texsox]

And if I could add the Audubon Society and an island they own near South Padre Island.

 

TNC Bought "shore to shore" a significant chuck of South Padre Island which very solidly ends any development on that end of the island. Honestly, unless a second bridge was build waaaaay up that way it wouldn't have been developed for a hundred years, but it is nice to know there will always be some open land on the island.

[Balta1701]

If you oppose nuclear energy, you really don't care about the environment, or so says a bunch of climate scientists.

 

http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/12/15/an-o...nuclear-energy/

Of course, there's one key thing they buried in there, "advanced nuclear power systems with complete fuel recycling". Complete fuel recycling is currently not done really anywhere, when accomplished its a major step on the path towards weaponizing nuclear material, it would be an additional cost on top of current operation, and it still leaves no answer to what happens with the large stockpiles of waste that the US taxpayer is currently paying to manage.

 

IMO it's like saying "If you aren't in favor of coal burning with complete carbon capture and storage you don't care about the environment." Great, but no one is doing that right now for good reasons, its expensive, no one will pay those costs unless governments force them to, and there are downsides that people have only begun dealing with.

[StrangeSox]

This is as good of a thread as any to dump this I guess.

 

Seattle’s unbelievable transportation megaproject fustercluck

short-ish background: Seattle built a big viaduct right along the waterfront back in the 1950's. Imagine Lake Shore Drive but elevated so that it serves to cut off downtown from the waterfront. In 2001, the Nisqually earthquake damaged the viaduct. Various engineering studies have said that the thing should have been shut down no later than 2011, but it's still there. There were three options: replace it more or less the same, build a smaller 4-lane street-level road with other transit and roadway upgrades which would bring the waterfront back into the city, or dig a gigantic tunnel under the city which would still bring the waterfront back but would be very difficult and very very expensive plus would do nothing for mass transit. They went with option 3. The largest tunnel-boring machine in the world is brought in and promptly gets stuck. They've been trying to fix that disaster ever since.

 

In short: There is no plan to resolve the dispute over cost overruns, which are ubiquitous on projects like this; at $4.2 billion, it’s the most expensive transportation project in state history. The tunnel will have no exits — no ingress or egress — throughout the entire downtown core (which makes the support of downtown businesses all the more mystifying). It won’t allow transit, only cars. It will be tolled, highly enough, by the state’s own estimates, to drive nearly half its traffic onto the aforementioned side streets. It will be a precarious engineering feat, the widest deep-bore tunnel in history, digging right between a) Puget Sound and b) the oldest part of Seattle, with vulnerable buildings and God-knows-what buried infrastructure. Also: Pollution. Climate change. It’s the 21st f’ing century. On and on. People said all this and more, in real time, to no avail.

 

[Jenksismyhero]

Government!

[StrangeSox]

Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says

 

A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them.

 

“We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event,” said Douglas J. McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an author of the new research, which was published on Thursday in the journal Science.

 

But there is still time to avert catastrophe, Dr. McCauley and his colleagues also found. Compared with the continents, the oceans are mostly intact, still wild enough to bounce back to ecological health.

 

Fragile ecosystems like mangroves are being replaced by fish farms, which are projected to provide most of the fish we consume within 20 years. Bottom trawlers scraping large nets across the sea floor have already affected 20 million square miles of ocean, turning parts of the continental shelf to rubble. Whales may no longer be widely hunted, the analysis noted, but they are now colliding more often as the number of container ships rises.

 

Mining operations, too, are poised to transform the ocean. Contracts for seabed mining now cover 460,000 square miles underwater, the researchers found, up from zero in 2000. Seabed mining has the potential to tear up unique ecosystems and introduce pollution into the deep sea.

 

The oceans are so vast that their ecosystems may seem impervious to change. But Dr. McClenachan warned that the fossil record shows that global disasters have wrecked the seas before. “Marine species are not immune to extinction on a large scale,” she said.

[StrangeSox]

NASA, NOAA find 2014 is the warmest year on record.

 

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/january/nas...d/#.VLlKlCvF98H

[cabiness42]

NASA, NOAA find 2014 is the warmest year on record.

 

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/january/nas...d/#.VLlKlCvF98H

 

Must have been awfully warm other places because it was pretty damn cold here.

[StrangeSox]

There's a map for that!

 

2014 Temperature Anomaly (deviation from 1951-1980 baseline)

 

 

The US and Canada east of the Rockies were colder than usual, but most of the globe ranged from slightly to much warmer than usual.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

There's also a video from NASA showing the four-year average anomaly through time:

 

 

Edited January 16, 2015 by StrangeSox

[Y2HH]

There's a map for that!

 

2014 Temperature Anomaly (deviation from 1951-1980 baseline)

 

 

The US and Canada east of the Rockies were colder than usual, but most of the globe ranged from slightly to much warmer than usual.

 

Well, they need to fix the US/Canada east of the Rockies.

[Balta1701]

Well, they need to fix the US/Canada east of the Rockies.

We have. We just complained about last year because it was the first "below average" winter this country's had in like 20 years so no one remembered what a "below average" winter was actually like since they're almost all above average now.

[StrangeSox]

Second crude pipeline spill in Montana wreaks havoc on Yellowstone River

[Cknolls]

Second crude pipeline spill in Montana wreaks havoc on Yellowstone River

 

 

Sure is scarier when you report it as 118k gallons instead of 3200 barrels....

[Balta1701]

Sure is scarier when you report it as 118k gallons instead of 3200 barrels....

Tell you what, you drink the water and we'll use the barrels term?

[NorthSideSox72]

Sure is scarier when you report it as 118k gallons instead of 3200 barrels....

Wow. Really?

 

[EvilMonkey]

Once again, the people screaming the loudest about global warming have no problems spewing out millions of tons of pollutants to fly private jets to an exotic destination to feel important. Why are they not online conferencing?

[NorthSideSox72]

Once again, the people screaming the loudest about global warming have no problems spewing out millions of tons of pollutants to fly private jets to an exotic destination to feel important. Why are they not online conferencing?

WHERE'S MY PRIVATE JET?!?!?!

 

[Balta1701]

Once again, the people screaming the loudest about global warming have no problems spewing out millions of tons of pollutants to fly private jets to an exotic destination to feel important. Why are they not online conferencing?

I don't even know what this is aimed at, but I do want to meet the scientists who get to take private jets.