The Enviro- Apocalypse is upon us - and it is not Global Warming.

Humans Have Created a New Natural Disaster
Massive seaweed infestations are killing sea turtles and befouling beaches across the Caribbean—and scientists say it's just the beginning.

shorelines.https://newrepublic.com/article/150775/humans-created-new-natural-disaster




This stuff is disgusting .. not only does it kill sea creatures - it smells like rotten eggs and makes a mess of the beach and swimming is in the stuff is disgusting. Last few times I was in Mexico this stuff was all over the place.

So the dispute is not about whether or not this is due to fertilizer run off - the dispute is about the primary sources/locations of this run-off - with Brazil being the main contender.

The Oceans are not a garbage can - Pollution of the Oceans "not CO2" is the number one environmental issue this planet is facing ... This dirty little secret that is neither little or a secret - has been mostly ignored ... as everyone focuses on CO2.

It is not that CO2 emissions is not an issue - but, it is somewhere around number 4 on the list. 2 and 3 being Population growth and industrialization of our populations.

Google "Dead Zones" in the Oceans - these are areas in the Oceans that are void of oxygen due to nitrogen which stimulates bacterial and other plant activity which uses up the oxygen in a zone.

The number of dead zones has been rising at a torrid pace.

Yet - almost nothing is being done about this issue while everyone rushes to jump on the CO2 bandwagon.

Roughly 1.6 Billion people - out of 7.6 Billion - are industrialized. We are now industrializing the other 6 Billion at a rapid pace. A study I read on China stated that if China was to reach our level of consumption ... would resource production would have to double. We are at 36 .. China was at 11 and someone eating a bowl of rice a day in Africa is at (1) with respect to consumption.

When someone goes from a bowl of rice a day - to having a piece of meat once in awhile - this adds to the nitrogen equation.

Obviously 2/3 also add to the CO2 equation but - the number one issue is pollution of the Oceans .. not just by nitrogen but by heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) - nasty byproducts of industrialization.

 

Non-CO2-centric environmentalism is sooo 2012, man. What are you, some kinda throwback? Save the whales lolz!

Being seriousness now, the oceans really are the lifeblood of the planet. We can't be too careful with them.

Though I have to wonder how much of this is ferilizer and how much of it is Fukushima, Deepwater Horizon, etc.

Hopefully, by modernizing the world we can curb population growth. The US and Europe pretty much flatlined on pop growth (except for immigration) once reaching 'peak modernization'. If we can get the rest of the world to assimilate a similar response to high quality of living (after achieving that quality of living, of course), we'll be stable in no time.

 

Its beyond disturbing. No industrialized nation has population growth .. these populations would be declining if it were not for immigration.

Where is the conversation about that ? Perhaps we should be limiting immigration to the death rate .. this rush to grow a companies revenue by 10-20% every year is not sustainable long term. This is a problem of the publicly traded company ... With a private company - if the owner is making a million dollars a year - he is happy - and he may even kick back a bonus to the employee's .. not so with the publicly traded monster .. it must grow eternally ... until it eventually gobbles up almost everything.

But I digress somewhat. There are no serious conversations going on about population growth .. nor industrialization which is an even more serious issue. We have to much crap going into the oceans right now - with 1.6 Billion industrialized. Imagine how much more that would be if we increase the industrialized population to 3.2 Billion - which is still less than half the planet.

In perusing the New Green Deal - I see a line that says we will not transport our pollution problems to other nations. Good .. this is something good. Then - I see Cortez- and a host of other environmental groups protesting the Keystone Pipeline.

1) Fact: while it would be wonderful if we didn't have to use any carbon fuels - the fact of the matter is that next year in the USA we are going to use 20 million barrels a day - every day 365 days a year.

2) Fact: roughly 46% of oil coming into US refineries is imported from 70 different nations .. a whole lot of which comes from Nigeria - a nation which is a toxic nightmare .. .dumping all kinds of nasty pollutants into the Ocean .. and no descent labor standards either but that is another story.

So then - where do we get that oil from ? The choice is not between oil or no oil. The choice is between "Canada" a nation with enviro regulations that doesn't dump stuff directly into the Oceans .. or "Nigeria". How is going with Nigeria not 1) increasing pollution and 2) transporting our pollution issues to other nations.

It is simply no contest - a barrel of Canadian or Norwegian crude is way more enviro friendly.

Obama tried to claim that the Canadian Oil had a higher carbon footprint ... put off the pipeline for a few years studying that issue - which is a back of the napkin calculation to which we already knew the answer. The study came back - "no significant difference".. Obama then made up some other nonsense about - "We need to use less oil". As if this was some kind of answer to the question "Canada or Nigeria"

Not only is buying from Nigeria more enviro destructo - (and this is not going to be PC) it fuels industrialization in that Nation.
Shipping by Pipeline rather than tanker is also more environmentally friendly option.

I am just scratching the surface here but - there are serious conversations that need to be had - and we are not having them.

This is somewhat sarcastic but we need Global Warming to wipe out a few billion people to save the oceans .. and thus the planet. Think its something like 60% of the oxygen comes from the Ocean .. mess with that equilibrium and that would be that...

 

People who define simple isolated systems like "kelp growth" or "dead zones" within complex systems like "climate" and "ecosystem" in order to determine cause and effect behaviors that can be applied to the complex systems don't understand complex systems in general.

The reality is that there are nearly infinite feedback mechanisms that we are completely unable to precisely measure, let alone predict how they will behave in response to change. Yeah, we can have an effect on kelp. We can have an effect on dead zones. But the idea that we know what our mitigation in either direction will do to the climate, or to the environment as a result is foolish.

 

So what do you want me to do, buy a Prius?

 

This Thread is specifically NOT- about Climate Change - except to say that it takes almost all the attention away from the number 1 environmental issue which is pollution of the oceans.

Unlike Climate - we can make measurements of the oceans and look at specific parameters .. and make specific cause and effect determinations. Mercury in Tuna for example - we know what the level of Mercury is (more than 2 cans of Tuna a week and you exceed the mercury guidelines for pregnant women) and we know the source.. Smokestacks in Asia.

In the case of nitrogen - we are not talking a complex system - certainly not complex relative to climate change. I worked for 10 years as both a Project Manager and Research Scientist - cleaning up hydrocarbon contaminated soil and groundwater using alternative remediation technologies (something other than "dig and dump") - such as bioremediation. Getting bacteria to "eat" the hydrocarbon contaminants.

The process is relatively simple - add nitrogen (and other nutrients) - the bacterial population go through the roof - and the contaminant is degraded. Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) is not some mystery in a box. It is the rate at which bacteria are using oxygen in a given system. We can measure this directly. We can calculate how much oxygen will be used per pound of nitrogen.

There are things that can be debated with respect to climate change - No Scientist who has any clue what they are talking about debates that nitrogen is causing this problem ... and we know the source - fertilizer run off.

 

Reading and understanding the OP would be the first step. You would then know that this thread is not about climate change and that buying a Prius is not going to have any impact on fertilizer run off into the Oceans.

 

And my response was specifically not about climate change. It was about the fallacy of overgeneralization.

I'm going to go with: you're arguing a distinction without a difference. I'm not saying that the nitrogen cycle is a complex system. On the contrary, I'm saying you've taken a simplified system; the nitrogen cycle and made inferences about the complex system; the entire environment. You've made a value judgement about the impact that you assume the simple system will have on the much more complex one. These leaps to conclusions about cause and effect most usually end with the phrase, "Well, geeze. That was unexpected." as more data about the complex system is collected.

 

As few as 6000 years ago the Sahara was a lush tropical forest that supported relatively advanced human civilizations. It was covered in vast lakes and rivers. 6000 years before that it was a desert.

The natural state of the simple systems within the entire closed loop of our solar system is constant flux, not stability. Somehow relative stability is able to persist despite the chaotic flux of all the subsystems that exist within the closed system, and we have very little capacity to calculate why that is. Part of the reason why is that we ourselves are part of the closed system. We don't have a point of perspective outside of it. Which is worse for the environment, the Saharan desert, or the Saharan rainforest? Could we ever know such a thing for sure?

 

I have been saying this all along... Our three worst states for dumping are the liberal bastions of New York, California and New Jersey.

The, "Extinction Studies," research project at the Field Museum in Chicago has known this for years. The biggest problem is in regards to the impact on the Invertebrates populations in third world countries where the natural water flow eutrophication has been significantly curtailed.


But still we have these DUMB - PLUCK Democrats whining about Warming.

 

There was no "overgeneralization fallacy" Every once in awhile you run into a subject matter expert - and this is your lucky day.

I get that you do not understand the system we are talking about ... I do. We can go as deep into this as you like - until your brain screams "stop" - but I assure you that you do not know what you are talking about.

Lets take a complex environmental system such as a farmers field - There the things that are going on at a microbiological level are extremely complex - but every day we alter that system in predictable ways - by adding "nitrogen".

Now you can do all kinds of chemical tests to try and determine soil fertility - I need only one .. I do a bacterial assessment of one group of bacteria - denitrifying bacteria. The chemical tests will tell you that the soil "might" be fertile - and can help you adjust your amendments. The DN bacteria tell you "defacto" that the soil is fertile. If they are happy .. the farmer is happy.

As said previously - there are things that scientists debate - especially with respect to systems that are much harder to understand. This is not one of those systems .. No one (with any expertise) debates what is causing the Sargassum growth .. we know it is the nitrogen/ fertilizer run off. .

This is not a value judgement .. it is not a "guess" nor a generalization- it is a simple statement of fact.

The only question that is being debated is what the main sources are - as in which countries contribute more or less.

 

I have often stated that by the time Global warming starts to really impact peoples lives - it won't matter because the environmental disaster due to ocean pollution will have long since taken over the conversation.

 

This thread is not about climate change - please stick to the topic.

 

No there most definitely is. I’ve been saying from the very beginning that you’re attempting to draw a relationship between the system you’re talking about, the nitrogen cycle, and the much more complex system of environment as a whole. You’ve said multiple times now that change in the nitrogen cycle is an environmental disaster, a crisis, heck, you used the word apocalypse. You’ve generalized a specialized system.

I don’t know how you get that. I didn’t talk about the system at all. I’m talking about your fallacious conclusion. But keep on jumping to those unsupported conclusions, like: I don’t understand the system you’re talking about.

You’ve absolutely made a value judgement about how the change in the cycle impacts the environment as a whole. #1 environmental issue, disaster, and apocalypse are not points of data. They are value judgements about a open system that you can’t make that claim about based on the data you have about your small closed system. I’m not talking about your specialized field. I’m talking about when you attempt to plug your specialization into the generalized system.

 

Still not talking about the climate. Still talking about systems.

 

Yeah, you’re not making any value judgements at all.

 

Wait a minute. Are you just reading the first sentence and then responding? Try reading the whole post.

 

I was feeling pretty good when I awoke this morning. Not so much now.

 

Now you are just blubbering - making all kinds of accusations but not backing them up .. including straw man fallacy and misrepresentation because you have nothing to say.

1) How is stating the simple fact that fertilizer run off is the cause of the Sargassum epidemic - a generalization ?
2) Contrary to your claim - the above conclusion was supported - both by a link and other information. None of which you have addressed.
3) The reference to the possibility of an apocalypse was accurate .. It is laughable that someone would complain about someone referring to all out nuclear war as an apocalypse .. the same is possible if we kill the Ocean.

4) We use closed and simple systems to describe open systems all the time. You have no clue what you are talking about.

 

I did not claim to not be. What is wrong with value judgements - if the judgement is correct ?

 

Has this ever happened before? When? And if yes, and man had nothing to do with it, would any eco-Nazi have the integrity to admit it?

 

Pot. Kettle.

If you think this is what I'm calling a generalization you haven't read a word I wrote. The generalization you made is defined multiple times in my posts.

I'm not going to address something I'm not talking about. I'm not refuting your description of the mechanism, nor its cause. I'm refuting your unsupported conclusion that the subsystem has the claimed effect on the entire system.

You can laugh, but laughing isn't really a winning strategy. Instead, how about an argument that the cycle has no feed back mechanism to induce a natural recovery? Because I would counter with an argument that we may very well be that natural feed back mechanism. Sargassum blooms are an incredible resource that could easily be harvested to reclaim industrial farming runoff. They are a fertilizer, they are a fuel, they are a habitat. Ya gotta remember that even though we influence the system, that doesn't mean the system cannot react positively to that influence. Just because there's a change to a system, that doesn't mean that the consequences are negative.

Yes, we do do that. And the end result of this is a model that does not accurately describe the full system.

 

You are full of beans ...

I said How is stating the simple fact that fertilizer run off is the cause of the Sargassum epidemic - a generalization ?

You said
If you think this is what I'm calling a generalization you haven't read a word I wrote. The generalization you made is defined multiple times in my posts.

You then go on to say - I'm not going to address something I'm not talking about. I'm not refuting your description of the mechanism, nor its cause. I'm refuting your unsupported conclusion that the subsystem has the claimed effect on the entire system.

The fertilizer run off is the sub system - and the Sargassum epidemic is the effect on the entire system.

You say this is not what you are talking about - - then all of a sudden this is what you are talking about - followed by the false clai that you have refuted my conclusion (which is actually the conclusion in the links given) and then state the falsehood that this conclusion is not supported ... when it is supported both by the links given and my commentary.

 

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. I’ve been wondering what the impact of all the flooding in the Midwest this year on the gulf will be in relation to fertilizer and organic matter ending up where it doesn’t belong.

For what it’s worth, nitrogen management is currently going through another phase of improvement in my neck of the woods. Tight economic margins will do that I guess. The largest producer and user of hog manure fertilizer in my area is beginning to plant cover crops after application. A few people are also going back to split application of fertilizer with a majority going on in crop to avoid leaching and runoff with our increased rainfall the last couple years.

I don’t have any answer to the problem of population growth or increased standards of living.

 

So what do you propose?