Your mom was wrong, there aren't any other fish in the sea

Tonight I’m just going to bitch about this one article, but there’s plenty of material there. I’ve talked before about global warming, and how the environment as a whole is in a downward spiral. It seems like other people are finally realizing just how bad it is. Kinda. Maybe.

Fishing, climate change and pollution have left an indelible mark on virtually all of the world's oceans, according to a huge study that has mapped the total human impact on the seas for the first time. Scientists found that almost no areas have been left pristine and more than 40% of the world's oceans have been heavily affected.
…
"Our results show that when these and other individual impacts are summed up the big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected. It was certainly a surprise to me."
…
The oceans at the poles are less affected but melting ice sheets will leave them vulnerable, researchers said.

And in response to that last bit, I give you this, which says that Antarctica is poised and ready for a massive turnover. So just think of what’s already going on elsewhere that our gurus and scholars haven’t twigged to yet. These are two examples of what’s started, but from the looks of it, they still don’t have any idea just how big the repercussions will be. Anyway, back to the first article.

Fiorenza Micheli, an associate professor of biology at Stanford University, said the maps should guide ocean management in future.

"By seeing where different activities occur and whether they occur in sensitive ecosystems we can design management strategies aimed at shifting activities away from the most sensitive areas."

…and instead shifting them toward other areas that will become sensitive, because we’re now dumping our shit there instead, right?

To make the map scientists compiled global data on the impacts of 17 human activities including fishing, coastal development, fertiliser runoff and pollution from shipping traffic.

That’s a start, but I’m willing to bet they didn’t look at the feedback loops, the other “natural” effects that human activities have set in motion.

Halpern said the results, which were published in the journal Science and presented yesterday to the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, still gave room for hope. "With targeted efforts to protect the chunks of the ocean that remain relatively pristine we have a good chance of preserving these areas in good condition."

Check me on this, but that sounds like it’s mutually exclusive with the previous plan. You can either save the areas that haven’t been tainted yet, or you can take advantage of those areas to try and salvage the areas that are already heavily compromised, but not both.

"Humans will always use the oceans for recreation, extraction of resources, and for commercial activity such as shipping. This is a good thing. Our goal, and really our necessity, is to do this in a sustainable way so that our oceans remain in a healthy state and continue to provide us with the resources we need and want."

Well, no, not necessarily. When the oceans become too polluted, they won’t be usable for recreation anymore. When there aren’t any more resources to be extracted, that’ll be done too. And shipping will be pointless if nobody’s got any goods to ship, or the means to ship them (or is just too greedy to share what they’ve got with those who need it). And what do you mean, remain in a healthy state? They haven’t been in a healthy state for over 200 years. And because of that, they’re already failing to “provide us with the resources we need and want.”

Fools. Blind bloody Panglossian fools.

It's not just global politics that's getting ugly

After the drought last year in the southeast, Georgia (and Atlanta in particular) is still aching for water. And with no relief in sight, they're turning to their neighbor, Tennessee. But it's not an appeal for help, it's a demand: "Hey, give us back what's ours!" To which Tennessee is responding, "Huh? What you talking' 'bout Willis?"

To try to alleviate their water shortage issues, Georgia wants a share of the Tennessee river, which is just barely outside the northwest corner of Georgia. And to support their claim to a share of the river, they're citing the erroneous surveying job back in 1818, which placed the line just over a mile too far south. Moving the line to where it's "supposed" to be would make the river flow through part of Georgia, entitling it to a share of the flow.

Granted, this may well not develop into anything, but it shows the stress that people are under, and how unreasonable they're willing to get in order to maintain their livelihoods, rather than facing up to the problem and doing something to fix it. Silly little (literal) border conflicts are going to escalate and become uglier and more numerous as more and more resources run shorter and shorter.

Here's another example: Electricity riots in India.

And this one is perfect, in its circularity: Iraq can’t pump and refine oil without electricity. The electricity comes in from Turkey. Turkey doesn’t have enough oil to prevent rolling blackouts (which are now euphemized to “power shedding” for some silly reason), so Iraq gets shafted, and their power gets cut off, which further ensures that Turkey doesn't get enough oil. How much longer before we get armed conflict, one way or the other? Especially with Halliburton over there to make sure the oil keeps flowing?

“Fear accompanies the possibility of death. Calm shepherds its certainty.”

A quote that I love from the end of the first season of Farscape, that has stuck with me for many years now.

I’m just gonna post a bunch of excerpts from this, a blog post by one of the people behind the movie What a Way to Go that I started talking about last fall.

Hansen says, and McKibben underscores, that there is a critical maximum number of parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to heed to prevent climatic catastrophe. That number, he says, is between 300 and 350.
…
We’re at 383 parts per million and counting, well past the number Hansen suggests is critical.
…
Hansen and McKibben say it’s not too late. They say: All we have to do is stop using fossil fuels… Now and everywhere.
…
It would take closing the highways, now and everywhere. It would take ending industrial agriculture, now and everywhere. It would mean shutting off everyone’s natural gas and oil fueled furnaces, now and everywhere.
…
Everything most of us take for granted as part of our daily lives is currently dependent on fossil fuels. When McKibben says “now and everywhere” he’s talking about the shutdown of industrial civilization.
…
We asked everyone we talked to, “What’s it going to take for people to change?” And what person after person said was, “It’s going to take a catastrophe. It’s going to take a catastrophe before people will wake up.”
…
It’s too late. It’s too late to get out of catastrophe. There’s no way this civilization is going to grind to a halt, get off the fossil fuel train, reduce the population voluntarily by 3/4 and start growing food sustainably, without catastrophe. We’re in for it. And we don’t even know what we’re in for.
…
When James Hansen and Bill McKibben say, “It’s not too late,” are they not supporting all of America to embrace denial?
Are statements that suggest it’s not too late not an example of refusing to accept external reality because that reality seems too threatening?
Are such statements not made to argue against a stimulus that provokes high anxiety: the stimulus being the idea that it IS too late?
Are these statements not used to “resolve” our conflicted emotions by supporting Americans to refuse to perceive or consciously acknowledge these unpleasant aspects of external reality?
Are our best and brightest scientists and journalists, Hansen and McKibben being two representatives of those, caught in denial themselves? Or are they just stumped about what to say, what to do, how to be with all of this?
…
Here’s the data I look at: net geothermal, solar, wind, wood and waste electric power went from 195 billion kilowatt hours in 1980 to a whopping 370 billion in 2005.
Wow. Almost double in 25 years. Is there a bright spot here? Those look like big numbers and a large increase. Maybe that’s good. I wonder how those numbers compare with total fossil fuel energy use.
Whoops. Fossil fuels actually provide 93% of the world’s energy use. Renewables provide only about 7%.