Environmental alert !

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

BP intend to drill in unspoilt arctic wilderness.
After the sad and sorry mess they made in the gulf of Mexico, this compay should not be allowed to drill anywhere else- never mind in such an ecologically sensitive region.
Full story here:-
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/bp-targets-one-of-the-worlds-last-unspoilt-wildernesses-after-deal-2185821.html

I hope that US citizens will lobby their elected reps and prevent another eco diisaster before it's too late.
Edit - its not Alaska, its Russia.
Oh , smeg ! I bet the reds will let 'em in and let them ruin the place.
Ok, so what can the international community do here? Should we not be getting on to the UN or something ? this iis the trouble with multinationals - if we put legislation in place, they simply go to less civilised places and start up there. And it won't just be the Russian who suffer as a result. international legislation and enforcement is needed to bring irresponsible people like BP to heel.

Comments

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

citation badly needed - even if there are dozens - which I doubt, it still means that we need to protect this place from people like BP.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

How do you prove a negative?

g: This is one of the last unspoilt places.
p: No it's not, there are many.
g: Prove that it's not.
p: Huh?

:-)

For the record, BP should keep their dirty paws off of the Arctic, period.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

I'd say there's a citation fetish everywhere. Well, except on Fox of course.

[ccr1138.livejournal.com]

Asking for citations is very often a tactic used to shut the other person up. Nothing more.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

And 95% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

One way of stopping people pulling facts and figures out of thin air ( or even more unhygenic places) is to ask for their original sources.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Lol @ you and your analyses.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

If only you did that to yourself too. ;-)

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

ok, but you look at those areas and compare the Total Square Mileage with the TSM of the places that we have moved into and 'developed' > I dunno about you, but I get the feelingthat we are running out of unspoiled wilderness and ought to mobilise to protect these last few places.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

OTOH, I love civilization and I'm in full support of the Pave The Earth project. :)

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

ooooh, I'll assume you have done same and have the mathematical abilty to comprehend it:) I have an e-mail, I'd love you to review, add links and post :)

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

You should try reading this:

29% of Earth is land mass. Of that 29% humans occupy less than 1% of that area. Of the remaining 28% about 40% is pure wilderness. 14% is true desert and 15% has desert like characteristics. 9% is Antarctica. Most of the remaining 22% are agricultural areas. There may be other areas with a human footprint of some kind but it is insignificant in any relation to global warming.

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_percentage_of_land_on_earth_is_dominated_by_humans#ixzz1BVLvyOaR


So Only 29% of planet earth is dry land. and only 40% of that is pure wilderness. just because nobody lives there does not mean it is in its natural state still. lang areas have been turned into desert by over farming and other human activity besides living on it.

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

I blame "Big biz" Green_man, and as they are so often assisted by Big Brother Government, we need to deal with them both, but as they tend to use government funds.... (Your money!!!) we have to take out government too, unfortunately, Working people whine about the unemployer, not considering that 23% of working people work in the private sector and have to pay for the 77% working for the government, not yet counting the unemployed, sick, disabled, nor the high pension benefits for the last generation of gov employees!

We have "Big gov", but I'm far from surprised, civil servants pay is often better paid than "a job in the real world". nepotism can get you in, and our modern police get to wear masks like hangmen or highwaymen, I question the need of 3/4 th population to control all

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Of course the earth is mostly under water, that's why its so uninhabited - when we look at the land surface and see how much of that is still in a wild state, the story changes.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_percentage_of_land_on_earth_is_dominated_by_humans

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

78% of the land surface of the earth is completely untouched by human beings,

Ok - where did you get that from?

Granted, we are moving away from the 2-20 % you originally cited, but who said anything about 78% is untouched?

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

My problem with "citation needed" is that too many times when one is given; the next comment is "like, I'd believe them" :D

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that most citations are loaded with bias anyway.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Er, not always - notfrom me , anyway.

I mean , if someone comes up with a map showing that we have only covered less than 20 % of the land on his planet under tarmac and concrete, fine - but i don't think that this is the case. Even the green feilds of England and the bleak moorlands of the british Isles may seem ' wild places' - but they used to be woodlands that got altered to what they are today by human intervention.

So, yes, give me a cite please. but, if you want to tell me that the earth is only about 6,000 yrs old, please don't think i am going to accept the Book of Genesis as the last word on the subject.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Don't tell me you accept a book written in the late Bronze age / early iron age age as scientifically accurate, please !

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

You are aware that I don't urge anyone to believe that even if I am a YEC myself? (altho I'm not stuck on the 6000 years thing)

I didn't make the claims, altho having seen as much of the world as I have, I think he is correct, frankly I don't care enough to google it. My comment was strictly aimed at the citation comment. I really didn't mean you specifically since I don't keep track of the people who say it (I don't accept Fox News, Politico, Daily Koz, Heritage, etc etc) I'm sorry if you took it personally.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

You are aware that I don't urge anyone to believe that even if I am a YEC myself? (altho I'm not stuck on the 6000 years thing)
well, actually , I didn't know that at all. honest.

Like you, I don't keep track of everyone and who says what in this community. I simply thought it was a given that nobody here took Genesis seriously on the age of the earth. Obviously, I was wrong on that score.

My point is that I am not going to over ride a cite just because I disagree with it. OTOH, just because some guy says that Obama is a Muslim communist, this does not make it so. if we are going to accept some and reject other sources, then there has to be a reason and it goes across the board.

It appears that you're...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... the one who said it was the last. The article says it is "one of the last," not the last.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, shit. There goes the tundra. :-(.

[ccr1138.livejournal.com]

I prefer drilling on land to deep water; the potential for disaster is far less dire. I wish we would open up ANWR to drilling. If we keep allowing other countries to be the only ones to exploit their oil, we will remain at their mercy economically.

I don't trust BP, either. But look at Exxon's record since the Valdez. This was a needed wake-up call for everyone involved. Perhaps BP will also learn from its mistakes.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

ANWR is a ridiculous place to drill. There's not that much oil there, and the biological diversity that would be destroyed is worth far more.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

I don't have to go there to know the facts. There's these things called encyclopaedia, and websites...

[dwer.livejournal.com]

now that's some irony right there.

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

Behave, they say "ok ok we'll not accept we're doing any damage, but how about we buy some land and call that a "Protected zone", We'll manipulate the environment to save 2 polar bears, 2 shoals of salmon and an albino arctic fox, now can we drill?

and really, Tell me, if you e-mail your congressman, to ask him to do something that will really hurt his portfolio, what's your chances?

[jlc20thmaine.livejournal.com]

They should drill for oil everywhere possible.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Sure, more Marines guarding oil fields.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Now how about the East and West Coast as opposed to just the Gulf, which we Gulf oil states benefit all of jack and shit from?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

The West Coast has lots of oil rigs, I can easily see them when I drive up to Santa Barbara.

[reality-hammer.livejournal.com]

Drill, baby, drill!

Question for environmentalists: have you stopped using fossil fuels? If not, why not?

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Stopping use altogher immediately is impractical and impossible.
however, we should be reducing our use and seeking to find new ways of creating the energy that we need.

Question for fossil fuel enthusiasts: What are you all going to do when the oil runs out, or even when demand outstrips supply and the price goes through the roof?

"Ok", people say , "we hope to have found something to replace oil by then"

That being the case, why not start researching alternatives now? Why not start cutting back on useage and leave the oil in the arctic where it is?
No sense in stopping straight away, i agree , but an oil free world is going to be forced upon us in time, so lets move towards it by lowering demand and production at the same time.

[reality-hammer.livejournal.com]

Indeed, something will have replaced it by then...and the market will determine when that is through mechanisms like supply, demand and prices.

There's a reason that oil, even with all the gloom and doom of "peak oil" and "limited supply" driving speculation cannot sustain prices at the $5 a gallon level.

Because that's the price where alternatives become economically feasible. Oil producers know this, even if speculators don't.

So whether it's electric or hydrogen or biofuels or alcohol or whatever we'll someday be using something else as our portable fuel of choice. But there's no reason to pay more for an alternative just to make ourselves feel better about where our energy is coming from. In the end it's all coming from the sun anyway.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

In the end it's all coming from the sun anyway.
yeah , but how much and how soon ?
See, it took millions of yrs to produce all the oil we used up in the last 200 yrs. And we are using more every year, not less.

We use oil b/coz it is energy rich - and you don't get the same number of kilowatts off of wind, or biofuels or hydro electrics.

We will probably have to reduce our consumption anyway, and we may as well start now and not later - aim for a soft landing insyyead of a catastrophic crash.

the market will determine when that is through mechanisms like supply, demand and prices.

If you need something like warp drive or dilithium crystals, supply, demand and prices will get trumped by the Laws of Physics - simple things like
1) these things don't really exist yet
2) you cannot invent things by simply throwing money at them - you need some basis in Reality before anything will start to work
3) a reality based alternative to high energy comsuption is already here - reduce , re-use and recycle.

job security, baby,

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

if everyone stopped using fossil fuels, it would put the environmentalists and global warming scientists out of a job...