Global Warming - 2 German cargo ships pass through 'Arctic Passage'

See, it isn't all bad. Sure, we may have set the wheels in motion for all human life to be wiped from the planet, but think of all the money we can save on shipping in the meantime. :madgrin:

 

See, that mass extinction would fix everything.
.
_H*

 

OH NOES!!!! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!

Happens all the time during the summer solstice, Wait a few more months at will be thick with Ice.

 

Yep, we are all going to die. The issue is whether our offspring (and their offspring, and so on) are going to live. You and I won't be around to see it, but if you care about humanity, it might concern you to see rapid and substantial changes in our environment.

 

well. the problem we have is a ½º C increase down here equates to a 7º C change up there. and it will snowball from there.

estimated methane gas levels currently trapped in the not so frozen tundra across Canada and Russia is more than 150 times THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF GREENHOUSE GAS RELEASED BY MAN SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

gas release has been tracked and is showing a 30-50% increase in volume year to year. we may have already reached our tipping point

now, if we can only figure out a way of trapping and collecting the methane, that would really brighten up T. Boone Picken's day!!

 

Well, believe it or not, there is extensive research activity in the Canadian Arctic to recover natural gas hydrates, or methane clathrate. The government of Japan is investing heavily in Canadian research along those lines

Gas Hydrates - Natural gas hydrate studies in Canada

The methane clathrate is an interesting and unique natural occurrence.

NASA GISS: Research Features: Methane: A Scientific Journey from Obscurity to Climate Super-Stardom

It is thought that if the polar regions, and deep ocean areas, were to suddenly warm up, there could be a literally explosive release of methane from the clathrates. Assuming nothing horrible happens, the deposits will be a very long-term but expensive source of natural gas

 

and i am not saying the sky will be upon us tomorrow. if it does it does. too late to stop that. but we can do things now that might help...

i drive an EV because it reduces carbon...now how much...well we all know, not much. the 10,000 miles i have driven have probably save a few tons from being added. but every little bit helps and that is what i preach and the sooner the better.

went to a wedding a few weeks ago. garden affair and they had this old car sitting out back in the very early stages of restoration. here is my Son already a proponent of bio fuels.

ya, like i said, never to early or too late to get em started in the right direction

 

I understand there area few entrepreneurs that have already purchased property in hopes of developing it, along what may soon become shipping routes. Gawd ... not more McDonalds & Arco stations.

 

There is a much higher chance of an Asteroid, Coronal Mass Ejection, Or maybe a super Volcano that could wipe out human life as we know it.

 

How much higher?

We have no control over any of those 3, but we can slow down the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere if we choose to do so.

 

I don't know what evidence you use to say that. Climate change is real, and it will certainly affect human life adversely. The more we delay, the greater the difficulty in reducing adverse affects.

 

The possibility of a nasty solar or extra solar event could be in 5 mins, 5 years, 500,000 years, etc. The possibility of greenhouse gas effects from non-CFC gasses - the gasses we went to so we could save the ozone layer - are very real and immediate

As far as the methane clathrates I find them to be fascinating complex compounds, an example of how nature proves it is the ultimate engineer

The impact of cooling/warming trends, should not be discounted. Neither should the impact of growing population; that is, a growing population that wants access to the same standard of living that we appear to take for granted in the West

I firmly believe in better efficiency, as everyone benefits in the long run. I also believe in a level playing field, but that is a stickier topic

How arrogant are we to tell other nations, such as India and China, what to do? It's natural for people in those nations to want/desire the same standard of living that we have.

Nations like India and China will attempt to provide their citizens with a much increased standard of living. That comes at the expense of increased consumer consumption. Like it or not, if we add 2 billion more people onto a Western lifestyle, there WILL be dramatic change both locally and globally

Actually, I was thinking more of floating Tim Horton's. The German ship captain ordering for his crew:

"Ya, we want .... how you say? Tirty double-double's skinny, ten double-doubles regular, Casper he want de regular Timmies coffee with 2 of each, and a box of fifty Timbits. Oh, do you take Visa?"

Unfortunately, there is geologic evidence of all the above, which came very close to wiping the slate clean

The asteroid impact in the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago is thought to have been responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs. Or perhaps not. This isn't an exact science, and nobody is 100% certain of anything

We had a fairly "normal" sized CME back in 1859, usually named after the British astronomer who observed it: Richard Carrington. The "high tech" infrastructure of the day, telegraph, was knocked out. Sparks flew off the equipment, the wires glowed red hot. There were even anecdotal reports of rail lines glowing red hot, from the induced geomagnetic current

Normal geomagnetic current can induce current into long pipelines. The Alaska pipeline has odd erosion issues as a result, so do long pipelines in Scandinavian countries and Siberia.

A small CME event knocked out Hydro Quebec in 1989, and caused damage to other utilities

Who cares? Anyone living on Earth!

As my interest and work has been "hard" infrastructure for most of my career, it's disturbing to realize that nothing has been done to protect our infrastructure from a CME

I realize movies like "Knowing" with Nicholas Cage tend to portray a CME as something that wipes out all life on earth, that probably isn't the likely scenario. Most likely, the magnetosphere protects biological life from a typical CME, but our electronics are fried.

Without electricity, safe running water, a way to grow, harvest, and transport our food, we die from disease and starvation. Not a pretty scenario.

The super volcano, yes there are geological markers for such events. Not only would a super volcano, like the one potentially brewing under Yosemite, cause a Nuclear Winter outcome, but the acid rain resulting from such fallout would also wipe out our food crops.

The heavy ash deposits would also render most of our technology useless. So the end result of starvation, disease, social breakdown, is still pretty bad

Personally, I'm waiting for the Meteor Of Doom, but that is the kind of guy I am. I don't lose sleep over it

As far as environmental effects of man, we will find solutions as we will have no choice. Unless we condemn billions to live a Stone Age existence - and who the hell are WE to do that?? - we have to accept that people living in China, India, Africa, etc, can and SHOULD have access to the same standard of living that we do

That standard of living will come at a price. It's mutually beneficial for everybody to find a solution.

 

the reality is slightly different from the spin

EU Referendum: A triumph for propaganda

and a follow up about journalists regurgitating each others crap and how this was spun to give it an entirely fabricated British spin

EU Referendum: The turd eaters

 

No, having such evidence is quite fortunate. We know that mass extinctions have happened before and will happen again. It's our own stupidity and greed that's the problem. We alone have the intelligence and foresight to do something about many impending disasters, but sadly, we've been duped into thinking next quarter's financial results are more important.

 

Well, consider the Canadian government established the Port Of Churchill, in northern Manitoba, primarily to ship grain to the former USSR

Port of Churchill

The Russians are interested in having direct sea shipments to their port in Murmansk, as there is tremendous advantage (Time, cost, etc) to avoiding shipping routes along the equator.

During the cold war, shipping in the Arctic regions was routine. There were DEW radar stations every 50-100 miles apart, stretching from ALaska across the North West Territories.

Each site had upwards of 2 million US gallons of DFA (Diesel Fuel Arctic) storage, and the only way to replenish the DFA was routine summer shipments by barge. There was a brief 2-4 month window each year during the summer, when it was possible to barge in the fuel and needed heavy equipment

Now with extensive resource extraction in the Canadian Arctic (Diamonds, gold, oil, methane clathrates, etc) there will be more push on to develop more shipping routes. A concern has been raised in that Canadians have pretty much forgotten the existence of the Arctic. There are obvious concerns to soverignty and security

Battle for the Arctic - Doc Zone | CBC-TV

Like a lot of things, ignoring a situation does NOT make it go away

I agree we shouldn't be fixated on the quarterly results. However, our ability to deal with most natural, solar, and extrasolar events is VERY limited. With the exception of man-made problems, which are hard enough to solve, we really do toot our own horn too much in how we imagine we could deal with a solar, or especially an extrasolar event

Eg: until the Cold War, we didn't know about Gamma Ray Pulse events occurring outside our solar system. Detection satellites were designed to look for hidden, unannounced nuclear weapon tests.

Funnily enough, the detectors started picking up frequent gamma ray events. They were all around us, far out into space. So, one more thing to worry about, getting fried by a gamma ray pulse from a nearby star

NOVA Online | Death Star | A Bad Day in the Milky Way

It would be best if we were quickly fried, with as little panic and social collapse as possible. However, if we were condemned to massive starvation and chaos, finding a quick way to end things would be preferable

 

Really? I'm having a very difficult time trying to understand what you're trying to say.....

Do you mean hook up a cable to the space shuttle, Fly it around Mars and in hopes if using that cable to pull earth out of the line of a CME event? You can't stop disasters from happening. Hurricanes will always destroy coastlines, Tornadoes will always rip up the midwest, Lightning will cntinue to cause fires in the mountains from the rockies west, Snow storms will always happen.

When you start thinking we control things out of our hands, Your logic of thinking is very dense.