This Is Why I Am Not An "Enviromentalist"

uneverno

uneverno

Active Member
Wow bs21! Seriously good dissertation.

stdreb27:
To that I'd only add, that being on a saltwater aquarium forum, we all know the harm that Nitrates can cause in our reef tanks.
Now consider the dead zone that has grown to the size of Connecticut over the last few decades off of the Mississippi Delta. Combined with unnaturally large freshwater input we also have agricultural (read petrochemical fertilizer) runoff. High amounts of Nitrates resulting in algae blooms and dying invertebrate ecosystems. Don't we already know this in microcosm?
Statistically impossible to prove human impact? I think not. If, however, you can demonstrate that this is a natural cycle, I'm all ears.
 
stdreb27

stdreb27

Active Member
Originally Posted by uneverno
http:///forum/post/3026224
stdreb27:
To that I'd only add, that being on a saltwater aquarium forum, we all know the harm that Nitrates can cause in our reef tanks.
See this just doesn't make sense. We raise fish and coral with very low tolerance levels. Who only live in certain nutrient poor areas of the oceans. For your argument to work they'd have to be coral reefs anywhere. And there simply is not.
I've always held that our fish aren't as sensitive to nutrients in the water as we make them out to be. Think about it, they sink whole aircraft carriers to create dive zones and promote marine growth. They can't clean all the crap out of those ships. Plus those ships release all sorts of trace materials as they oxidize. Oil rigs, ships all have built in mechanisms because marine growth will literally destroy the structure if it did not.
As for our planet. Personally this green movement has nothing to do with the planet. It has to do with a power grab. (look up "environmentally unfriendly" W's house vs the noble prize winning for his "green work" Al Gore.
I'm not against being a good steward of our planet. I believe that is part of our jobs as humans put here by God. But the the solutions are worse than the problems. From power compact lights with enough mercury to need a hazmat crew, to a president advocating government "advising" the people when to turn on and off the lights and their AC. To cars filled with actual toxins in the form of batteries. It is illogical and bass ackwards. It bad math, and faulty science and a fraud. The biggest scientists are paid by people looking for results to fit their agenda. And the biggest advocates are murders, or busy fabricating the next hockey stick graph.
 
uneverno

uneverno

Active Member
Originally Posted by stdreb27
http:///forum/post/3026286
See this just doesn't make sense. We raise fish and coral with very low tolerance levels. Who only live in certain nutrient poor areas of the oceans. For your argument to work they'd have to be coral reefs anywhere. And there simply is not.
That's absolutely not true. The ocean is a low nitrate/phosphate environment regardless of whether or not the additional parameters required allow for the growth of reefs. There are no reefs off the coast of Louisiana. That is meaningless in terms of the dead zone. The zone is demonstrably man made, reef presence or not. http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/
Nice try though.
As for our planet. Personally this green movement has nothing to do with the planet. It has to do with a power grab. (look up "environmentally unfriendly" W's house vs the noble prize winning for his "green work" Al Gore.
You'll get no argument from me there. Al Gore is a profiteer. So is W. One is barely beige living in his 10,000 sq' house, the other brown, vacationing on his 100,000 acre ranch in Paraguay...
Yer kinda calling Castro good compared to Stalin. Green? Hardly fits the bill for Dubya or Algore.
I'm not against being a good steward of our planet. I believe that is part of our jobs as humans put here by God. But the the solutions are worse than the problems. From power compact lights with enough mercury to need a hazmat crew, to a president advocating government "advising" the people when to turn on and off the lights and their AC. To cars filled with actual toxins in the form of batteries. It is illogical and bass ackwards. It bad math, and faulty science and a fraud. The biggest scientists are paid by people looking for results to fit their agenda. And the biggest advocates are murders, or busy fabricating the next hockey stick graph.
Again, I agree. I'm not your run of the mill extremist. Yes, CF bulbs are full of mercury. I run them in my house anyway, because they consume 1/5 the electricity that incandescents do, and last 10-15 times as long. That's less smog in Arizona and Colorado and other places that CA buys its power from, and the bulbs can be recycled. But less altruistically, that amounts to an almost 50% savings in my electric bill, compared to that of my neighbors'.
Per PG&E's own statistics, replacing one incandescent bulb with a CF in every household in CA is the equivalent of taking 2 million cars off the road in terms of GHG production. That means less consumption, which translates into longer life of the power producing resource (largely Persian Gulf fossil fuels). How could that be anything but good?
Do you have any idea the hazardous waste generated in the process of creating solar panels? It's seriously ugly.
We don't live in a perfect world. I don't get the Sierra Club/Greenpeace/PETA mindset either though. To berate interim solutions because they're less than perfect is simply foolish. It's a start. It's progress. Is that not the objective?

All I'm arguing is that there's no harm in consuming less. If nothing else, it reduces our dependence on our less than friendly oil suppliers.
 
stdreb27

stdreb27

Active Member
Originally Posted by uneverno
http:///forum/post/3026334
That's absolutely not true. The ocean is a low nitrate/phosphate environment regardless of whether or not the additional parameters required allow for the growth of reefs. There are no reefs off the coast of Louisiana. That is meaningless in terms of the dead zone. The zone is demonstrably man made, reef presence or not. http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/
Nice try though.
You'll get no argument from me there. Al Gore is a profiteer. So is W. One is barely beige living in his 10,000 sq' house, the other brown, vacationing on his 100,000 acre ranch in Paraguay...
Yer kinda calling Castro good compared to Stalin. Green? Hardly fits the bill for Dubya or Algore.
Again, I agree. I'm not your run of the mill extremist. Yes, CF bulbs are full of mercury. I run them in my house anyway, because they consume 1/5 the electricity that incandescents do, and last 10-15 times as long. That's less smog in Arizona and Colorado and other places that CA buys its power from, and the bulbs can be recycled. But less altruistically, that amounts to an almost 50% savings in my electric bill, compared to that of my neighbors'.
Per PG&E's own statistics, replacing one incandescent bulb with a CF in every household in CA is the equivalent of taking 2 million cars off the road in terms of GHG production. That means less consumption, which translates into longer life of the power producing resource (largely Persian Gulf fossil fuels). How could that be anything but good?
Do you have any idea the hazardous waste generated in the process of creating solar panels? It's seriously ugly.
We don't live in a perfect world. I don't get the Sierra Club/Greenpeace/PETA mindset either though. To berate interim solutions because they're less than perfect is simply foolish. It's a start. It's progress. Is that not the objective?

All I'm arguing is that there's no harm in consuming less. If nothing else, it reduces our dependence on our less than friendly oil suppliers.
Umm no Bush doesn't live in a 10,000 sq ft house.
It is actually kind of really funny.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007...eorge_bush.php
I don't know how close to where you live, but there is a reason coral only develops in certain areas. At least the coral we raise, and that is because the water in other places is not suitable for their inhabitance. I don't know where exactly you live. But when I've been down on the texas coast. The water parameters aren't 0-0-0 but the gulf coast is still teeming with sea life.
as for the dead zones you should be happy, imagine all the "bad" co2 those blooms consume...
 
bs21

bs21

Member
Originally Posted by stdreb27
http:///forum/post/3026286
I'm not against being a good steward of our planet. I believe that is part of our jobs as humans put here by God. But the the solutions are worse than the problems. From power compact lights with enough mercury to need a hazmat crew, to a president advocating government "advising" the people when to turn on and off the lights and their AC. To cars filled with actual toxins in the form of batteries. It is illogical and bass ackwards. It bad math, and faulty science and a fraud. The biggest scientists are paid by people looking for results to fit their agenda. And the biggest advocates are murders, or busy fabricating the next hockey stick graph.
I agree with you that the alternatives are not an effective immediate change. I do however think that there are a plethora of other alternatives that are low cost that can be a more immediate change. For example my rant on storm water/ water management. Any of the methods used are low cost to build form scratch and also fairly cheap to retrofit into existing sites. The exception being green roofs. But if I own a highrise office building that provides outdoor green space that can be used by the office employees I am going to be more likely to fill my building than the guy next door without one.
Also there is a concept of carbon farming which i find interesting. Try not to limit this idead to just being a farm. Some background....the midwest before colonization and subsequent agriculture was all primarily switch gass plains. Switch grass like all plants uses carbon from the soil and atmosphere to build its hard stems (all plants do this some being more effective than others). Switch grass is knowto be one of the best carbon fixers. Now when burning fossil fuels the argument comes from the ammount of carbon that "the earth had stored away" in the form of coal/oil when burned is released back into the atmosphere. This happens along with volcanoes etc.. and supposedly increased ammounts of livestock and landfills with methane etc....
This is where "carbon farming" comes in. The idea is that planting large areas of switch grass will use up excess carbon in the atmosphere and store it away in its structure. When the grass is mowed (which is beneficial to the grass by stimulating new groth) it stores this carbon away in the grass stalks cut down. The grass can be used for a number of things also after being cut. An easy way to turn this into something profitable or useful is to use it for compost material. There is also alot of research being done on turning the sugars from the plant cells into fuel. Scientists working on this are able to produce fuel and say by 2012 or so they will be able to produce for under a dollar a gallon. The switch grass is also more efficient than using corn ethenol also.
contd' again ......sorry i have alot to say
 
bs21

bs21

Member
So who is going to grow all this switch grass? Obviously as a farmer i would think you are damn crazy to tell me i'm supposed to get rid of my crops to grow switch grass especially with a small market to sell my grass to. But what about alternative locations to "carbon farm". Where is there large open spaces that are mowed periodically anyway? well some places i can think of are any open public land (parks, community owned land etc...) what if local communities planted a low maintenace grass that is highly disease resistant. This grass they are allready paying people to mow and then can heap up and turn into compost to use throughout parks and other public facilities in turn lowering maintenance costs. Lowering costs because soil ammendments and composts would not have to be bought. Also why not sell to the "green" people who would love to buy this product at a low cost from their community for their own homes and gardens. If you were to consider all the public land that had a half an acre or more of land that they could plant switch grass (inexpensive extremely low maintenance seed mix) we could potentially burn the ---- out of some fossile fuels and still take a big dent out of the carbon being released into the atmosphere.
Side note and final thought because i'm tired and not sure if this is making sense anymore. Switch grass being extremely fast growing and dense would also help to outcompete other non native plant species that cause problems in certain ecosystems rendering them less of a problem. And if you read my rant about storm water earlier it would also be a plant that would really slow water runoff and allow for more recharge.
Again this i think is an interesting idea and even if you don't buy the adding carbon to the atmosphere bit there are still other benefits to this. maybe t is going on alot of faith to consider that local communities would do this on their own innitiative but i still think there are some possibilities for applications. It could be a great selling point by telling people look we are doing are part for the environment and all the while at a small cost to themselves which will probably pay for itself in a short while. SO i like alternatives not often heard of that provide remedies no matter how small to multiple areas of concern that arenot only inexpensive but easy toaccomplish and are not more detrimental like hybrid car batteries, cf lights....and can bring people a profit.
Thanks for reading......my brain hurts.
p.s. i make a living on land development so the "destruction of the environment" for human expansion is how i pay the bills. But what i have learned and is not often talked about is that developing with the environment is not only possible it is also easy with a benefit to the environment and us.... it seems to me there are two main schools 1 being the who cares about the environment we aren't doing anything and if we were i don't care because i'll be dead before anything majore happens & 2 we need to join hippie communes and become socialist crazies!!! and again all this has done is show me there is allways a compromise that is best of both worlds.
I am also and active fisherman/hunter/outdoorsman so i like to preserve the environment for my own selfish purposes.
 
stdreb27

stdreb27

Active Member
Originally Posted by bs21
http:///forum/post/3026525
I am also and active fisherman/hunter/outdoorsman so i like to preserve the environment for my own selfish purposes.
Hunters and outdoors man are the real conservationists.
Look, I have no problem with not being wasteful. I have a problem doing things based on a complete fallicy, like the garbage Al Gore spews.
Like today, he was predicting 600 million "climate refugies"
"Mr. Gore spoke of ice melting at both poles. Just the collapse of the Western Antarctic Shelf, he said, could raise global sea levels by 20 feet. By his calculation, that would lead to about 600 million “climate refugees.”
He equated people like me who think he is full of $___, to the people who think the lunar landing was filmed on a set.
Then he turned around and said that the only reason scientists produce any data in opposition to him is because they are profiteering on the destruction of our planet.
(I wonder how his green fund is doing)
Then I have a problem with the government turning around and mandating that I be green.
 
uneverno

uneverno

Active Member
Originally Posted by stdreb27
http:///forum/post/3027103
Hunters and outdoors man are the real conservationists.
God help me, I agree.
Organizations such as Ducks Unlimited are far more conservationist and far less politically/financially motivated than Greenpeace et al.
 
stdreb27

stdreb27

Active Member
Originally Posted by uneverno
http:///forum/post/3027118
God help me, I agree.
Organizations such as Ducks Unlimited are far more conservationist and far less politically/financially motivated than Greenpeace et al.
I'm far more friendly to the environment than the nuts that live in Oregon.
 
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