• Please use real names.

    Greetings to all who have registered to OPF and those guests taking a look around. Please use real names. Registrations with fictitious names will not be processed. REAL NAMES ONLY will be processed

    Firstname Lastname

    Register

    We are a courteous and supportive community. No need to hide behind an alia. If you have a genuine need for privacy/secrecy then let me know!
  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

Mile Zero

James Lemon

Well-known member
i-ptPLCqz-L.jpg


Somewhere near mile zero of the Alaska highway. Many moons ago huge meat eating dinosaurs once roamed this vast territory. Now the "Evil doers" and their minions are enduring freezing cold temperatures to help keep the little boys and girls in California warm on those cold chilly nights.​
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
i-ptPLCqz-L.jpg


Somewhere near mile zero of the Alaska highway. Many moons ago huge meat eating dinosaurs once roamed this vast territory. Now the "Evil doers" and their minions are enduring freezing cold temperatures to help keep the little boys and girls in California warm on those cold chilly nights.​

James,

We could, of course pretend the bait you laid for an argument wasn't there. But that would disrespect your strong political views that this pipeline is a good thing and necessary. So I accept the challenge as a worthy educational debate, if it can be addressed without acrimony. It's fraught with danger as folk can get so offended if the wrong trigger phrase is uttered in error!

Thanks for posting. We do need, as photographers, to hold a lantern up to see what on earth we are fmdling to each other and the planet over which we claim dominion.

So yes, its always good to see what these "evil doers" are up to. Worrying about them right now, however, is like concern about a passing thunder cloud!

Remember one man's oil pipeline might be another man's dinosaur. But that is unlikely as the beasts reigned for 160-180 million years, and these our oil pipes will be empty in a relatively brief flash of future time.

Still, right now, the pipes keep millions of jobs going and permit people to enjoy, (and BTW, unwittingly test), pretty useful, (but, arguably, environmentally-disruptive), plastics, on our planet, an interesting game in itself.

Paradoxically I go to bed happy every day, as my personal world is blessed. Still I accept that this is self-indulgent. I really do know the clock is running.

So, is the pipeline bad? Of course not. Pipelines don't kill people!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
For those who might not get the nuance of poetic angst of a diehard environmental advocate, let me explain simply:


"So, is the pipeline bad? Of course not. Pipelines don't kill people!"


This is a reference to the gun lobby mantra: "Guns don't kill people: people kill people!

So I was being sarcastic. I am actually mocking the concept that the pipeline is safe.

We do not need more fossil fuel. We need to conserve fossil fuel for essential life saving chemicals

We need to have less oil in the supply chain so it is expensive to use and to enable less toxic technologies to flourish.

Asher
 

James Lemon

Well-known member
For those who might not get the nuance of poetic angst of a diehard environmental advocate, let me explain simply:


"So, is the pipeline bad? Of course not. Pipelines don't kill people!"


This is a reference to the gun lobby mantra: "Guns don't kill people: people kill people!

So I was being sarcastic. I am actually mocking the concept that the pipeline is safe.

We do not need more fossil fuel. We need to conserve fossil fuel for essential life saving chemicals

We need to have less oil in the supply chain so it is expensive to use and to enable less toxic technologies to flourish.

Asher

Asher

This particular line will transport natural gas. Is walking across the street safe ? What about automobiles, locomotives, airplanes, are they safe?

James
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Asher

This particular line will transport natural gas. Is walking across the street safe ? What about automobiles, locomotives, airplanes, are they safe?

James

Automobiles, locomotives and airplanes can all, potentially run on electricity. So these modes of transport are inherently not required to use fossil fuels and increase our carbon footprint.

Accidents can be minimized by employing our technologies better. However, without an improved path to sequestration of the oxides of carbon, nitrogen and sulphuric, burning fossil fuels, (without accounting for the resultant combustion products), damages our atmosphere and displaces the equilibrium towards higher mean temperatures. Loss of polar and glacier ice raises ocean levels threatening low-lying communities worldwide.

If, however, we decrease production of fossil fuels, we shift the markets to sustainable sources. We also make communities more self sufficient in energy economics.

Just 20% would have a profound effect.

In the meanwhile we need to better understand the role of the oceans single-cell organisms, phytoplankton. This life form is the start of the food chain supporting almost all ocean life. In addition, these minute plants take up carbon dioxide and in return deliver oxygen to the atmosphere. In total, 50% of our atmosphere's oxygen is gifted to us by these trillions of lowly plants! The carbon they take up is trapped in their chalk shells. At death, shells fall to the ocean floor removing tons of carbon dioxide from the air we breath and so making human life sustainable.

If we invest the same effort into managing energy use, as we have in producing instruments of war, we can still use fossil fuel as part of an energy menu in a disciplined accountable manner.

We have a lot to gain from our reserves of fossil fuels. Simply relying on it almost exclusively for transport and energy sources is a pressing, (but addressable), existential danger we can, should and must bring under control.

Asher
 

James Lemon

Well-known member
(If we invest the same effort into managing energy use, as we have in producing instruments of war, we can still use fossil fuel as part of an energy menu in a disciplined accountable manner.)

Asher

War is too lucrative and politician's are great salesmen for defense contractors, so good luck with that notion.

James
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
(If we invest the same effort into managing energy use, as we have in producing instruments of war, we can still use fossil fuel as part of an energy menu in a disciplined accountable manner.)

Asher

War is too lucrative and politician's are great salesmen for defense contractors, so good luck with that notion.

James

James,

The cost of scientific research of microorganisms has dropped to a fraction of what it was 20 years ago whereas military research has increased! To discover new materials to mask and protect war machines, for example is in the US$ tens of billions, whereas finding mutant organisms that have a few percent more efficiency in trapping carbon dioxide is in the range of US $10-30 million.

At this time we have, (almost for free), decades of detailed ocean and atmospheric 3D data on the earth's biosphere. It is a side product of our eyes in space. Look at this stunningly beautiful movie!

Craig Ventner's research ship, Sorcerer II, in the Galapagos islands has already sequenced many novel organisms and so we have banks of novel genes to study and potentially exploit. To get a glimpse of where science is, read this description of Venter's company's achievement in building the first self-replicating organism by synthetic means from scratch.

I imagine that any future plan to modify an existing organism would be only about $30,000,000 and with about 10 attempts, we would have a working new plankton, if we knew exactly what was needed. Over the next 10-50 years, costs would drop and eventually we will be able to brew plankton safely and clean up the planet if all other means fail.

All the needed research is already in progress.

Still it would be helpful if we limited fossil fuel use while we get to know the natural cycles of plankton fixation of carbon.

I am pretty optimistic!

Asher
 

James Lemon

Well-known member
James,

The cost of scientific research of microorganisms has dropped to a fraction of what it was 20 years ago whereas military research has increased! To discover new materials to mask and protect war machines, for example is in the US$ tens of billions, whereas finding mutant organisms that have a few percent more efficiency in trapping carbon dioxide is in the range of US $10-30 million.

At this time we have, (almost for free), decades of detailed ocean and atmospheric 3D data on the earth's biosphere. It is a side product of our eyes in space. Look at this stunningly beautiful movie!

Craig Ventner's research ship, Sorcerer II, in the Galapagos islands has already sequenced many novel organisms and so we have banks of novel genes to study and potentially exploit. To get a glimpse of where science is, read this description of Venter's company's achievement in building the first self-replicating organism by synthetic means from scratch.

I imagine that any future plan to modify an existing organism would be only about $30,000,000 and with about 10 attempts, we would have a working new plankton, if we knew exactly what was needed. Over the next 10-50 years, costs would drop and eventually we will be able to brew plankton safely and clean up the planet if all other means fail.

All the needed research is already in progress.

Still it would be helpful if we limited fossil fuel use while we get to know the natural cycles of plankton fixation of carbon.

I am pretty optimistic!

Asher

Asher

Yes this is interesting stuff. Every once in awhile there are major discoveries and breakthroughs, computers and learning to read the DNA code are some of the more recent that come to mind.

Although it does take a long time in the innovative stages of anything, things seem to snowball from there. I wish him the best of luck with his endeavours, definitely more interesting than Elon Musk!

James
 
Top