July 18, 2010 archive

National Academies suggests a different Climate Change Metric

ClimateGate Advocates — just got their work cut out for them …

Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts Over Decades to Millennia

July 16, 2010  

Choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia, says a new report from the National Research Council. Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.

Who is the National Academies?

ABOUT:

The National Academies perform an unparalleled public service by bringing together committees of experts in all areas of scientific and technological endeavor. These experts serve pro bono to address critical national issues and give advice to the federal government and the public.

Four organizations comprise the Academies: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.

Why the economy isn’t recovering

  There has been a lot of talk about a double-dip recession recently by people like Paul Krugman and Nouriel Roubini, how to define it, and what it means. What is missing from these discussions is the most obvious question of all: why won’t the economy recover?

  Capitalism is supposed to be self-correcting – or so we’ve been told – and a recession like the one we’ve had is supposed to be that reset button. So why aren’t businesses hiring?

  I’m going to try to answer that question in the simplest way possible.

 There are two primary reasons why the economy isn’t recovering, one reason is cyclical, the other is secular.

Deepwater Balloons

Deepwater Balloons 11
Recent paintings and photographs  

Boulder City, NV



Lake Mead

Boulder City was originally conceived in 1931, and “finished” in 1932, as housing for the workers on Boulder Dam, as it was then called.  Alcohol sales, membership in unions and all forms of gambling were prohibited in the city.  Originally property of the Bureau of Reclamation, it became an incorporated city in 1960, after the Bureau relinquished control in 1958.

This is part of a continuing series on Las Vegas and the surrounding environs.  If you take a tour of the dam and choose to go by SUV instead of bus, you may get a driver/guide who do more than just take you to the dam.

Open Strawberry

Photobucket

Updated: Seep?! Govt To Order BP Well TURNED BACK ON After Test Ends

Outrageous.  Our U.S. Government is ordering them to resume oil bombing the Gulf.

BP oil spill,sealing cap,stack cap,stack ram,leak stopped,leak capped

It’s only cute the first time. screenshot ROV Skandi cam and 2 ROVs checking out the new top of the seal cap and stack assembly that was installed over the old well BOP

BP’s Deepwater Horizon Macondo oil well, which was successfully turned off last Thurs July 15 at 1:20 pm PDT after 86 days of uncontrolled gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, will be turned back on to start re gathering oil and gas, as soon as the pressure tests are done, according to today’s Bloomberg.com.

BP oil spill,Gulf of Mexico,Yucatan peninsula bp oil spill,franklin eddy

Haven’t we seen enough of that at this point ?  This was the Gulf of Mexico the day the new cap was placed over the BOP, 7/12/10 before they started cranking it down slowly. photo NASA


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/…

BP had been considering whether the positive test results would allow it to keep the well sealed, stopping the flow of oil until the leak could be permanently plugged. Allen has said consistently that it was “likely” the government would choose to use BP’s new, tighter-fitting cap to resume capturing oil after the tests.

More Oil Spilling

While the company eventually plans to reach collection capacity of 80,000 barrels a day, more than the estimated size of the leak, reopening the well would lead to some oil escaping to the sea before the vessels are connected, Wells said yesterday.

“Thad Allen wants to do containment because they want to find out what the real flow rate was,” Don Van Nieuwenhuise, director of Petroleum Geoscience Programs at the University of Houston, said in an interview yesterday. “Unless they do something like that, they’ll almost never be able to prove what the true flow rate was.”

Pressure inside the well had risen to 6745 pounds per square inch by Saturday.  Originally BP said they wanted to see 7,500 psi to say that the well was safely intact, yesterday, they fudged that a little in a press briefing around 29 hours along and said at 6745 psi “there is no evidence that we don’t have well integrity.”   Bloomberg quotes BP’s Kent Wells as saying “we feel more comfortable we have integrity.”

The area around the well has been very closely monitored since the test started for seismic disruptions and seafloor disturbances, and sonar has been deployed on surface ships circling the wellhead seafloor area from above.

Once reopened, oil and gas would be sucked up by a new, untested riser cap that would be placed on top of the new ram stack assembly that was installed over the old BOP, and by the Q4000 sucking the oil out of the old choke/kill pipes routed through a special manifold, and the Helix Producer.  A new riser pipe tower with a connection on top that can be detached more quickly and easily has been built on the sea floor to do this.   The problem with using oil processing ships on the surface to flare off the natural gas that comes along with this oil,  is that they still must be disconnected and moved offsite during hurricanes.

BP oil spill,sealing cap,stack cap,stack ram,leak stopped,leak capped

Here’s a screen shot grab I took on 7/12/10, from Skandi cam,  when the new sealing cap and stack assembly (left) were being lowered past the new floor riser pipe tower (center) on its journey down to the BOP.  I tried to sharpen it up a little but it was still pretty murky down there at that point.  But after watching the webcams for hours, it was exciting to see it finally go past something recognizable.  There are several ROVs all hovering around this in the background tracking the cap with their headlights.

But the ability to shut the well down completely again during the next tropical cyclone or hurricane instead of letting it spill unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico has not been discussed publicly.

So far we have dodged a weather bullet, in that the first hurricane to cross the Gulf this season, Alex, went across the southern Gulf from southeast to northwest and missed the Louisiana delta area entirely.  While the current forecast this morning from NOAA  http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gtwo_a…   says a tropical storm is unlikely in the next 48 hours, as hurricane season progresses anything could happen.  And that means more oil spewing into the Gulf, as much as 80,000 barrels a day of oil,  even if the reconnect times would be faster this round-  if everything new works and goes to plan.

High Court to Investigate: Torture

And you thought that meant the U.S. courts I’ll bet {we don’t do accountability of top officials representing us}, nope it’s the British high courts and a Brit Government Inquiry into torture is also setting to begin. But they both will bring out the U.S. participation in that which we condemn those we occupy and are fighting of doing.

Docudharma Times Sunday July 18




Sunday’s Headlines:

After Oil Spills, Hidden Damage Can Last for Years

Queen’s executioner beetle wins species naming competition

USA

Military reckons with the mental wounds of war

Arrests shed light on border kidnappings

Europe

Italian police raids reveal how an 80-year-old gangster held sway over the feared Calabrian mafia

Gays defy Polish traditionalists for EuroPride march

Middle East

Jaffa’s Arab haven of coexistence resists influx of Israeli hardliners

Iranians mourn 27 killed in suicide attacks

Asia

The face of South Korea’s boogeyman

Unlikely Tutor Giving Military Afghan Advice

Africa

‘At your service, Osama’ – the African Bin Laden behind the Uganda bombings

World celebrates Mandela Day

Latin America

Mexican drug cartels’ newest weapon: Cold War-era grenades made in U.S.

Obama Hypocrisy Hits a New Low – HCR Mandate IS a tax, after all !!

Obama used to insist that the healthcare mandate was not a tax. Now, in court, in fighting state nullification, the Obama Administration says just the opposite.

Late Night Karaoke

The hour is late.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

-Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, Dune

Night dreams through a moon age darkly

That the breath of something powerful is near

And it travels up the shattered road to eden

Breaking down the barrier of the fear

It stimulates the space that lies between us

Our two spirits through the senses of touch and feel

It maybe sanity that tells us what we’re feeling

But only love

Can tell us what is real



It’s not too late

East of edens gate

We’d rather learn to love than hate

Its tired and we’re getting late

The world is spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning

The hour is late

-Saruman, Lord of the Rings, the Twin Towers

What To Do In Case Of An “Internet Kill Switch”

With the recent influx of my mailbox and the heart wrenching hopeless nature of some of the messages, I feel that the day has come upon us that this information needs to be given to you.

Proposed Internet Kill Switch

Load more