The environment thread

[Balta1701]

OK, so she is saying that because of this awful spill underwater, we should drill more on land? I suppose it would be easier to fix a blow-out on land. Except of course that ANWR is actually much more difficult to get equipment to than in the Gulf, since its so remote.

 

But really, come on. Regardless of that reason, she is still saying more drilling is good BECAUSE of this accident. Its assinine.

If you make the assumption that all drilling onshore is safer then that would be a reasonable conclusion. You're obviously right though, drilling beyond the arctic circle has its own set of challenges (we had a small leak from the pipeline up there a couple weeks ago).

[NorthSideSox72]

If you make the assumption that all drilling onshore is safer then that would be a reasonable conclusion. You're obviously right though, drilling beyond the arctic circle has its own set of challenges (we had a small leak from the pipeline up there a couple weeks ago).

I probably overreacted a bit in this case, but I truly despise Palin. More so than Bush, or even Glenn Beck. She personifies everything that has gone horribly awry on the right in the past decade or two - she embraces ignorance, she has no substance, she parrots social conservatism coated in sugary narrative to make bigotry seem somehow helpful, she harps on fiscal responsibility yet led her state in a way that was quite the opposite, and she has shown zero interest in the basic concepts of fact, science, or compromise. She is the perfect example of what has decimated the party I once supported.

 

[Balta1701]

I probably overreacted a bit in this case, but I truly despise Palin. More so than Bush, or even Glenn Beck. She personifies everything that has gone horribly awry on the right in the past decade or two - she embraces ignorance, she has no substance, she parrots social conservatism coated in sugary narrative to make bigotry seem somehow helpful, she harps on fiscal responsibility yet led her state in a way that was quite the opposite, and she has shown zero interest in the basic concepts of fact, science, or compromise. She is the perfect example of what has decimated the party I once supported.

Which is, of course, why she'll be the 2012 nominee.

[NorthSideSox72]

Which is, of course, why she'll be the 2012 nominee.

I doubt that. She'd get some support - if she even runs - but she won't win the nomination. She'd get crushed in the general, and I think the Republican leadership realizes that.

 

[Balta1701]

I doubt that. She'd get some support - if she even runs - but she won't win the nomination. She'd get crushed in the general, and I think the Republican leadership realizes that.

I'll still stay in the "the only thing that stops it is if she decides she'd rather make $10 million a year on the lecture circuit" group.

 

 

 

Back on the subject of the spill, for the northern coastline of the Gulf probably all the way to St. Petersberg, the exact weather system they didn't want to see is forming, a stable high pressure system over the Gulf, but on the other hand, the Florida Keys are happy.

 

For the next few weeks, we're probably likely to see mostly strong clockwise currents pushing the Oil towards the Florida Panhandle at the surface (currents at depth are a different guess). But there is rotation away from the Keys and the Loop Current, which might provide a barrier from oil getting into it.

 

This setup though is bad news if any Hurricanes make it into the Gulf.

[HuskyCaucasian]

@BarackObama- "The time has come for this nation to fully embrace a clean energy future, and I will work with anyone from either party to get this done"

[CrimsonWeltall]

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bps-dismal-safety...ory?id=10763042

 

 

OSHA statistics show BP ran up 760 "egregious, willful" safety violations, while Sunoco and Conoco-Phillips each had eight, Citgo had two and Exxon had one comparable citation.

 

That's good work there, BP.

 

[kapkomet]

@BarackObama- "The time has come for this nation to fully embrace a clean energy future, and I will work with anyone from either party to get this done"

 

 

[lostfan]

Latest Tweet about the Gulf Oil Spill from Scary Sarah:

 

 

 

W. T. F.

 

Even if you believe that drilling for more oil is a good idea - which an argument can be made for - how can you possibly take this idiot and her views seriously? I mean, this is the kind of thing a 12 year old says. What possible twisted logic is she using to say that somehow this spill is justification for more drilling?

 

My God, I don't know if there is a scarier thing in politics right now than the fact that some people actually support this woman.

lol at Xtreme Greenies. The "extremist" position was that carelessly allowing more drilling offshore and in ANWR was dangerous and something really bad might happen like... I don't know... this? It's kind of tacky and overly simplistic for anybody to be claiming to be vindicated as a result of this, but if anybody is vindicated, it's them, not her.

[kapkomet]

Sarah Palin gets twice as much attention from liberals screaming about her then anything else.

 

[lostfan]

I normally go out of my way to avoid acknowledging she exists, personally.

[KipWellsFan]

Which is, of course, why she'll be the 2012 nominee.

 

I strongly doubt the Republicans are going to nominate a facebook pundit. And if she does win Obama will crush her. If not god help us all.

[NorthSideSox72]

Sarah Palin gets twice as much attention from liberals screaming about her then anything else.

 

I admit I fell into that. I try to ignore her, I mostly do, but occasionally she gets to me.

 

I normally go out of my way to avoid acknowledging she exists, personally.

 

I should do that more often.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bps-dismal-safety...ory?id=10763042

 

 

 

 

That's good work there, BP.

I said before, I got dismissed, and I'll say it again. The US gov't is going to do a deep debarment of BP in the near future, in addition to slamming them with a wide array of fines and penalties, and probably removing the liability protections they are shielded by. Its the only way, politically, for Obama to survive this.

 

[Balta1701]

I said before, I got dismissed, and I'll say it again. The US gov't is going to do a deep debarment of BP in the near future, in addition to slamming them with a wide array of fines and penalties, and probably removing the liability protections they are shielded by. Its the only way, politically, for Obama to survive this.

Anything that can be filibustered will be. Obama can do some fines, but we've already seen what happens in Congress when you try to raise the liability cap.

[southsider2k5]

I normally go out of my way to avoid acknowledging she exists, personally.

 

She gets more press from the left than anywhere...

[NorthSideSox72]

Anything that can be filibustered will be. Obama can do some fines, but we've already seen what happens in Congress when you try to raise the liability cap.

If you do some reading on this, you will find that debarment does not require any Congressional action whatsoever. Its an agency call. Fines and penalties can also be done without Congress. The ONLY part I mentioned that requires Congress is the liability restriction, and if you listen to the noise right now, you'll find that has got pretty good bipartisan support.

 

[Balta1701]

She gets more press from the left than anywhere...

I like how Newsmax ran yesterday the major story that they'd gotten her facebook post released to them before it was posted on Facebook.

[Balta1701]

If you do some reading on this, you will find that debarment does not require any Congressional action whatsoever. Its an agency call. Fines and penalties can also be done without Congress. The ONLY part I mentioned that requires Congress is the liability restriction, and if you listen to the noise right now, you'll find that has got pretty good bipartisan support.

The question I have in reply is how much the fines are limited based on the limitations on the books, and that's going to be a matter for the courts to figure out. And BP is already working hard to make sure that every case coming out of this geyser winds up before a favorable judge (having a favorable judge in the Exxon case was a huge, huge, huge advantage to Exxon; for example, it helped them dramatically curtail the amount of stuff they had to disclose by slapping extremely stringent deadlines and requirements on the plaintiffs discovery phase).

[NorthSideSox72]

The question I have in reply is how much the fines are limited based on the limitations on the books, and that's going to be a matter for the courts to figure out. And BP is already working hard to make sure that every case coming out of this geyser winds up before a favorable judge (having a favorable judge in the Exxon case was a huge, huge, huge advantage to Exxon; for example, it helped them dramatically curtail the amount of stuff they had to disclose by slapping extremely stringent deadlines and requirements on the plaintiffs discovery phase).

Well obviously BP is protecting itself, that's normal.

 

As for the limits on fines, I don't know what they are.

 

[Balta1701]

Well obviously BP is protecting itself, that's normal.

 

As for the limits on fines, I don't know what they are.

That's the problem, nobody knows what they are, and the law as it stands is unclear. There's a liability limit of $75 million, but there's the requirement of BP to pay for the cleanup (Which has been a joke so far), and if a court finds that gross negligence was responsible for the spill there's a possible fine of up to $4300 per barrel spilled. But...that only can happen if a court determines gross negligence, and then the fine value is highly dependent on what you calculate the total volume of oil spilled to be, which the court is going to have to litigate also (and we wonder why the CEO of BP would publicly deny the existence of underwater plumes; because if he admits they exist, that dramatically increases his company's liability).

 

If nothing else, it'll be 20 years before BP pays out a strawpenny, just like Exxon, and by that time, it's certainly plausible that the conservative supreme court could just decide, like they did with Exxon, to hack down the fines dramatically.

[BigSqwert]

What would Reagan do about climate change?

[BigSqwert]

A Giant Solar Power Plant on the Moon

 

 

One of These Days, Alice. Bang! Zoom! Straight to the Moon!

Big problems need big solutions, and the Shimizu corporation in Japan certainly can't be blamed for thinking small. It has made plans to provide enough clean energy to all of humanity by turning the moon into a kind of anti-Death Star, a giant solar power station that brings life instead of death. It might sound like complete science-fiction now, but who knows what will be possible in a 100 years (if we make it that far)? Read on for more details on how this would work.

 

 

This Plan Has Robots and Everything!

The general idea is: You build a massive "belt" of solar cells around the Moon's equator (that's about 6,800 miles, or 11,000 kilometers). You convert that electricity to microwaves or lasers that you beam back to Earth from the near-side of the Moon (the side always closest to Earth), and you convert those beams back to electricity at power stations so that it can be fed into the grid.

 

The solar belt would initially be relatively small, but could be grown up to 400 kilometers wide over time. Such a belt could produce more than enough clean energy for all of humanity and then some.

 

 

Keep Your Feet on the Ground (For Now)

The plan involves construction by robots that are assembled in space and then landed on the Moon, the use of as much materials straight from the Moon's ground as possible, and a team of astronauts to support the robots on the surface of the Moon. That's crazy ambitious, but a lot of the things that we take for granted now probably would sound "crazy ambitious" to people from 100 or 200 years ago, so you never know.

 

But let's not count on something like this until the first watts are being beamed back to Earth. In the meantime, we need to find other ways to get off dirty sources of energy. It's good to dream and plan for the far future, but nothing's real but the present.

[ChiSox_Sonix]

A Giant Solar Power Plant on the Moon

 

That sounds very cool, and frankly, doesn't really seem as currently unfeasable (word?) as they make it sound.

[Balta1701]

 

NCAR simulations.