Five Solomon Islands Disappear Into The Pacific Ocean As A Result Of Climate Change (go.com) 287
An anonymous reader writes: Climate change strikes again. A paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters says five of the Solomon Islands have completely submerged underwater due to man-made climate change, and six more have experienced a dramatic reduction in shoreline. The Solomon Islands has a population of a little more than 500,000 people, many of whom have been adversely affected by rising sea levels in recent years. NASA scientist James Hansen estimated that seas could rise by seven meters within the next century. In 2014, Losing Ground issued a report that shows how large areas of the Louisiana coastline are being lost to rising sea levels. A 2011 study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey determined that the state's wetlands were being lost at a rate of "a football field per hour." Michael Edison Hayden writes from ABC News, "The Solomon Islands provides a preview of how sea-level rise could affect other coastal communities in the coming years, according to the study, largely because the speed which erosion is taking place has been accelerated by a "synergistic interaction" with the waves that surround it.
Lies (Score:4, Informative)
...five of the Solomon Islands have completely submerged underwater due to man-made climate change...
That's a bold-faced lie. The total global sea level rise since 1880 is less than 25 cm (10 inches), according to the EPA [epa.gov]. The natural tidal range of the oceans is of the order of one metre (several feet). Any island that has "submerged" during that time period did so primarily because of other factors, such as the ground subsiding, or erosion driven by the wind and the waves.
This is especially obvious when you consider that anthropogenic global warming is not believed to have reached significant levels until around 1950 (if then).
As for houses washing away and such - any land that can be "submerged" solely by a sea level change of 25 cm was already getting scoured regularly by waves, storm surges, etc.
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Wave driven erosion can be dramatically accelerated by a small rise in water level. Were these islands on their way out anyway? Maybe not, if sea level were moving in the other direction.
Re:Lies (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you look at the EPA graph? I'm being waaaaayyyy too generous when I make it sound like AGW sea level rise-to-date could be as much as 25 cm.
The rate of rise was astonishingly constant from the beginning of the record in 1880 (allegedly ~70 years before man-made warming became meaningful), up until about 2000.
There is a small bump at the end representing approximately the last seven years. The size of that bump? About 2 cm. (Also, the bump is shrinking now and was never there to begin with in the satellite record; it's only present in the tide gauge data. There's a good chance it's just noise.)
The average annual sea level rise prior to the bump was about 0.15 cm, meaning that the bump accelerated the inevitable natural end of the "islands" by less than twenty years, even if you want to blame a non-linear increase in wave erosion. Colour me unimpressed, seeing as real islands generally don't have expiration dates that are humanly relevant, at all.
Re: Lies (Score:3)
Of course they were on the way out. It's called entropy.
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Can entropy ever be reversed?
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the oceans have been rising since the last ice age, these islands essentially at sea level already of course were on their way out this century or two centuries from now. Good thing the people got out now before there were even more people that had to evacuate
Re:Lies (Score:5, Insightful)
...five of the Solomon Islands have completely submerged underwater due to man-made climate change...
That's a bold-faced lie. The total global sea level rise since 1880 is less than 25 cm (10 inches), according to the EPA [epa.gov]. The natural tidal range of the oceans is of the order of one metre (several feet). Any island that has "submerged" during that time period did so primarily because of other factors, such as the ground subsiding, or erosion driven by the wind and the waves.
This is especially obvious when you consider that anthropogenic global warming is not believed to have reached significant levels until around 1950 (if then).
As for houses washing away and such - any land that can be "submerged" solely by a sea level change of 25 cm was already getting scoured regularly by waves, storm surges, etc.
Read the paper. It is short, linked, and not technical.
They aren't claiming that the island got submerged due to sea level changes. They are claiming that it got eroded.
As sea levels go up, erosion (in the form of waves) gets worse. They claim that the increased erosion has completed wiped out the islands. This is a separate effect from your silly claim of a lie. You can read the paper for how they try and separate the erosion from other effects like El Nino and tides.
Re:Lies (Score:4, Insightful)
They are claiming that it got eroded, and that it wouldn't have if the sea level were a tiny bit lower. There is no way they can know that, especially since the actual sea level rise-to-date which is possibly attributable to AGW is more like 2 cm [slashdot.org], not 25 cm.
This is a separate effect from your silly claim of a lie.
The statement in the summary, at least, is a lie because they are asserting a definitive cause-and-effect relationship where there is - at best - an unprovable possibility of one, rather than actual solid evidence for one. The claim is being sensationalized.
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Your post reminds me of a story in South Sea Tales by Jack London [gutenberg.org] in which people ride out a hurricane on a low-lying island by tying themselves to the palm trees.
Re:Lies (Score:5, Informative)
CNN had an article a few years back hyperventilating about GW and a small island nation sinking and slowly evacuating over the years. In the fine print they admitted it was the land sinking, not oceans rising, but seas rising our future!
In another after the terrible tsunami, they hyperventilate again with the headline "sea rise from GW will be like the tsunami zomgggg!" In the fine print they meant 30 feet not over seconds but 300 years.
Also New Orleans is sinking because the river delta is bottled up instead of meandering back and forth over centuries and no longer deposits fresh silt everywhere to boost the slowly compressing silt. This was figured out long ago.
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Wait - you're quoting this very slashdot discussion to support your argument?
Well done.
Re:Lies (Score:4, Informative)
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That source doesn't show a 2 cm rise due to AGW, it just shows a 9cm rise since 1880 with no explanation. Also note that this is the global average, but some areas have experienced more and some less.
Re:Lies (Score:4, Informative)
They are claiming that it got eroded, and that it wouldn't have if the sea level were a tiny bit lower. There is no way they can know that, especially since the actual sea level rise-to-date which is possibly attributable to AGW is more like 2 cm [slashdot.org], not 25 cm.
This is a separate effect from your silly claim of a lie.
The statement in the summary, at least, is a lie because they are asserting a definitive cause-and-effect relationship where there is - at best - an unprovable possibility of one, rather than actual solid evidence for one. The claim is being sensationalized.
The summary definitely overstates things. But the paper itself is guilty of none of the things you imply.
There's actually a link to the entire paper with the abstract, I'll even helpfully bold the important bits:
Low-lying reef islands in the Solomon Islands provide a valuable window into the future impacts of global sea-level rise. Sea-level rise has been predicted to cause widespread erosion and inundation of low-lying atolls in the central Pacific. However, the limited research on reef islands in the western Pacific indicates the majority of shoreline changes and inundation to date result from extreme events, seawalls and inappropriate development rather than sea-level rise alone. Here, we present the first analysis of coastal dynamics from a sea-level rise hotspot in the Solomon Islands. Using time series aerial and satellite imagery from 1947 to 2014 of 33 islands, along with historical insight from local knowledge, we have identified five vegetated reef islands that have vanished over this time period and a further six islands experiencing severe shoreline recession. Shoreline recession at two sites has destroyed villages that have existed since at least 1935, leading to community relocations. Rates of shoreline recession are substantially higher in areas exposed to high wave energy, indicating a synergistic interaction between sea-level rise and waves. Understanding these local factors that increase the susceptibility of islands to coastal erosion is critical to guide adaptation responses for these remote Pacific communities.
I don't see these definitive claims you speak of, instead I see "sea level rise predicts X, here we observe and analyze some X that's consistent with sea level rise". I'd be more careful before making sensational claims of sensationalization.
Re:Lies (Score:5, Interesting)
I have now read the entire paper. It is true that it does not ever directly attribute the sea level rise in the Solomon Islands to AGW. (The linked ABC news article does though - surely the scientists will be publicly denouncing the media's gross distortion of their claims any minute now... ?)
On the other hand, the premise of the paper is that sea level rise is responsible for significant loss of land area in the Solomon Islands (and the authors worked very hard to connect sea level rise to AGW at every opportunity, even though they didn't quite come out and say that AGW has actually caused any sea level rise yet).
That's a problem, because nowhere in their paper (that I could find, anyway) do they actually offer any evidence that the local sea level rise experienced by the Solomon Islands contributed meaningfully to the loss. They point out several other factors that likely dominated, one of which was erosion by wave action. They then attempt to connect this back to AGW with the following statement:
Wave energy can interact synergistically with localised sea-level rise (through changing wave refraction dynamics and more wave energy propagating across reef crest onto the coast) to exacerbate coastal erosion (Storlazzi et al 2015) and thus may be a key driver of the rapid coastal recession in the Solomon Islands. Further work is required to determine the relative importance of extreme wave events or incremental changes in incident wave energy and their interactions with sea-level on shoreline dynamics of islands.
Notice the operative words there: "can", "may be", and "further work is required". They don't actually have anything to say on the subject - that is, on the causal connection between sea level rise and increased wave erosion - other than "maybe you should read these other guys' papers" and "give us money and we'll write something too". But, they decided to name their paper after it anyway, and the media ran with it.
The main actual content of the study - once all of the background material and discussion is filtered out - is basically just:
1) Some statistics about the rates of erosion and accretion on various islands in the Central Pacific, including the Solomon Islands.
2) More statistics about the atmospheric and oceanic conditions over time around those islands - much of which was extrapolated, not measured.
3) A few anecdotes about communities that need to relocate - all of whom, from the sound of it, were in poor locations to begin with.
As someone else pointed out, the last graph clearly shows (if you know how to read the axes, anyway), that there was a net increase in land area for the islands chains studied; the authors simply chose to focus upon a specific few tiny islands that shrank.
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I have now read the entire paper. It is true that it does not ever directly attribute the sea level rise in the Solomon Islands to AGW. (The linked ABC news article does though - surely the scientists will be publicly denouncing the media's gross distortion of their claims any minute now... ?)
Welcome to science journalism, we're lucky they didn't talk about a nuclear war.
On the other hand, the premise of the paper is that sea level rise is responsible for significant loss of land area in the Solomon Islands (and the authors worked very hard to connect sea level rise to AGW at every opportunity, even though they didn't quite come out and say that AGW has actually caused any sea level rise yet).
That's a problem, because nowhere in their paper (that I could find, anyway) do they actually offer any evidence that the local sea level rise experienced by the Solomon Islands contributed meaningfully to the loss. They point out several other factors that likely dominated, one of which was erosion by wave action. They then attempt to connect this back to AGW with the following statement:
Wave energy can interact synergistically with localised sea-level rise (through changing wave refraction dynamics and more wave energy propagating across reef crest onto the coast) to exacerbate coastal erosion (Storlazzi et al 2015) and thus may be a key driver of the rapid coastal recession in the Solomon Islands. Further work is required to determine the relative importance of extreme wave events or incremental changes in incident wave energy and their interactions with sea-level on shoreline dynamics of islands.
It does make sense that sea level rise is going to increase wave erosion and it looks like they've seen ~15cm rise in sea level in that region which is pretty significant.
3) A few anecdotes about communities that need to relocate - all of whom, from the sound of it, were in poor locations to begin with.
As someone else pointed out, the last graph clearly shows (if you know how to read the axes, anyway), that there was a net increase in land area for the islands chains studied; the authors simply chose to focus upon a specific few tiny islands that shrank.
Figure 7? It's possible, they should have addressed it. If looks like smaller islands in specific were really shrinking, I'd be curious about the mechanism for how the bigger ones got larger. Is wave erosion spreading out sediment from the island itself making
Re:Lies (Score:4, Insightful)
Notice the operative words there: "can", "may be", and "further work is required". They don't actually have anything to say on the subject - that is, on the causal connection between sea level rise and increased wave erosion - other than "maybe you should read these other guys' papers" and "give us money and we'll write something too". But, they decided to name their paper after it anyway, and the media ran with it.
This is how science works. You don't start from scratch every time, proving basic physics and maths until you build up to your main point. You base your work on the work of others, building on it to advance the field. You avoid making definite statements when you can't be entirely sure, but suggest promising areas of further work.
I agree that the media has puffed this up into more than the paper warrants, but the paper itself is perfectly fine. You use a lot of weasel words and make baseless accusations, like saying they chose to focus on the islands that shrank as if it's part of some sinister plot to prove AGW is bad, when actually it was just the focus of the study. Not every study has to be a holistic review of all possible related issues, you know.
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This is how science works. You don't start from scratch every time, proving basic physics and maths until you build up to your main point.
Sure. But it would be nice if their paper actually had anything new to say, at all, with respect to its titular topic. I could not find anything new in the entire paper about the " Interactions between sea-level rise and wave exposure on reef island dynamics", except the unsupported "can", "may be", and "further work is required".
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This study represents the ïrst assessment of shoreline change from the Solomon Islands, a global sea-level rise hotspot. We have documented ïve vegetated reef islands(1â"5hainsize)thathaverecentlyvanishedand a further six islands experiencing severe shoreline recession. Shoreline recession at two sites has destroyed villages that have existed since at least 1935, leading to community relocations. The large range of erosion severity on the islands in this study highlights the critical need to understand the complex interplay between the projected accelerating sea-level rise, other changes in global climate such as winds and waves, and local tectonics, to guide future adaptation planning and minimise social impacts.
In other words, we have nothing to add to the particular issue of sea level rise interactions with wave exposure on reef island dynamics, contrary to our
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It's "bald-faced lie." (As in, a lie so brazen that you don't even use facial hair to hide your smirking expression.) If you're going to use the idiom, at least get it right!
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"Bold-faced lie" is also an English idiom, albeit likely of more recent origin.
Also, since the phrase makes sense by itself, even without having heard it before, it is a valid, meaningful English phrase even if you refuse to acknowledge idioms coined after [insert arbitrary date here].
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Unfortunately it seems like there are lies and deception and agendas on both sides of the AGW issue.
If we would only take an objective look at objective science, we'd actually have an answer that all reasonable people should agree on.
I say "should" because of course they won't. It seems like even reasonable people lose reason when it comes it AGW.
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Unfortunately it seems like there are lies and deception and agendas on both sides of the AGW issue.
This is true. In the absence of clarity though, I think the sensible thing is not to panic, discard the foundation of the world's energy economy, and cede power to a global government. That may just be me, though.
Hopefully renewables and/or nuclear (fission or fusion) will eventually get good enough (actually good enough, without excessive subsidies) that people won't want to mess around with fossil fuels, and then we can put the whole argument to rest.
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As for houses washing away and such - any land that can be "submerged" solely by a sea level change of 25 cm was already getting scoured regularly by waves, storm surges, etc.
Ok I don't want to get involved in stupid AGW arguments, but I used to live in a place that lost it's beach when a new ferry service started up nearby.
The ferry only generated wake of a few cms, but the constant wake, along a water system that wasn't used to it caused a significant change in the ecosystem.
So yeah, there's probably a bit more to it than just raw numbers.
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Re: Lies (Score:2)
Is there a reason why increases in sea level vary globally. I can understand they may differ between - for example - the Atlantic and Mediterranean. But differently around the Pacific?
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The post you replied to is addressing claims that AGW-induced sea level rise is already causing significant damage, which is clearly bogus. One of the reasons I am sceptical of the claims of sea level doom, is the fact that its prophets seem incapable of distinguishing clearly between predictions about the future, and present reality.
That is not a joke: it's a real, peer reviewed scientific paper.
And there are other "real, peer reviewed scientific paper"s that say the number will be more like 2 meters. Almost as if the science is not settled...
Moreover, all of the catas
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The natural tidal range of the oceans is of the order of one metre (several feet).
That's at sea. NOT on the coastline.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"Of the order" is a science/engineering term meaning "very roughly", within a factor of two to ten (depending on the context). I was just too lazy to go look up the actual numbers, so thanks for the link.
It looks like the actual range is 0-16 meters depending on the location, but with most beaches being very much at the lower end of that range.
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Except it's not actual sea level rise... (Score:5, Informative)
Not climate change.
"Ten houses from one island were washed away at sea between 2011 and 2014"
Oddly enough, the Solomon Islands were struck by Tropical Cyclone Freda in 2012. What a coincidence. And they've lost five low-lying reef islands in the last 70 or so years. Out of ten THOUSAND islands in the Solomons.
Here's part of the paper's abstract:555
"Using time series aerial and satellite imagery from 1947 to 2014 of 33 islands, along with historical insight from local
knowledge, we have identified five vegetated reef islands that have vanished over this time period and a
further six islands experiencing severe shoreline recession. Shoreline recession at two sites has
destroyed villages that have existed since at least 1935, leading to community relocations. Rates of
shoreline recession are substantially higher in areas exposed to high wave energy, indicating a
synergistic interaction between sea-level rise and waves. Understanding these local factors that
increase the susceptibility of islands to coastal erosion is critical to guide adaptation responses for these
remote Pacific communities."
Actual story: "People built houses near the beach on islands that were being washed away in the first place, and we're going to blame it on the SIX INCHES of global sea level rise since the mid-1930s."
They also casually toss in the fact that the Solomons are very geologically active, and a lot of the sea level rise they refer to is RELATIVE sea level rise - in other words, the water didn't rise, the land sank - often by as much as three times the amount of actual sea level rise over time.
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No, Roviana is mostly handwaved - and the five islands that eroded away did just that: eroded. They didn't submerge to due the sea rising, they just disappeared due to wave action because of normal changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (which has not been tied to AGW in the real world), along with a few big hurricanes.
Roviana didn't experience as much loss because they're sheltered from the worst of the wave action. The islands that "disappeared" were on the side with both greatly increased wave action
did sea level rise only on that part of ocean? (Score:3, Insightful)
and how much did the sea level rise?
to say whole islands and coastlines that were permanently above(not land that go below due to tides and seasonal weather for instance) are now below sea through rise of sea level(instead of soil erosion, effect of currents, artificial land/jetty creation, volcanic activity, etc ) means sea level must have risen considerable number of centimeters.
if sea level rose uniformly (and it must), coastline should be lost on all parts of the world to similar significant extent, and this needs be observed more broadly.
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i live on the sea shore in tropics, for very long time, i for one don't see any change whatever . but it is not scientific to generalize from my experience, nor should we generalize from isolated observations, about a phenomenon, which if true, should be observed more generally.
Louisiana erosion man-made,not climate change (Score:2, Interesting)
The erosion in coastal Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi River *is* man-made, but not attributable to climate change.
As the Mississippi river was "controlled" for flood prevention and shipping, less and less sediment from upstream flooding and erosion has been available to replenish the delta at the river outflow. That is why the coast is eroding
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Timeframe? (Score:2)
You are free to disbelieve. (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, the evidence was presented. The cost of denial is upon you, you pick wrong you pay. My money is going to investment into Appalachian Ocean Front properties.
Former Climate Change Skeptic Here... (Score:2, Interesting)
Until recently, I was your typical far-right climate change skeptic. After seeing for myself the changes in places I once lived, speaking with people from around the world who have seen the changes first hand, evaluating the data for myself (I'm a healthy skeptic).
What's not being discussed is Africa. The water shortage in Africa is becoming a real problem. Wars are on the verge of happening because of water shortages. I lived on a certain island for years, and as a child, it never got above 80 in the summe
Bullshit (Score:2, Informative)
Bullshit
My congressman (Score:2)
Fine Art of Denial (Score:2)
Re:SAVE THE BAGS (Score:4, Insightful)
How about just pricing fossil fuels to take into account extant and future climate change, and then let the market find the solution? Is the market capable of finding solutions to finite and/or expensive resources or not?
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"How about just pricing fossil fuels to take into account extant and future climate change"
One approach could be to tariff imported oil to keep the gasoline price in the US at, say, $3.50/gal. If a Republican is elected this year, we can include Canadian production in the 'domestic' side of the tariff area. This will cause several good things to happen at once, videlicet:
1. The Ay-rab world is screwed and will go bankrupt. Good riddance as funding for international terrorism disappears.
2. Domestic oil produ
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Number 1 is already happening:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/1... [cnn.com]
Saudi Arabia just made major replacements in it's government to deal with the collapsing income crisis.
Most oil countries based their economy on $100 or higher oil prices and their citizens do not want to give up the perks now that it is in the $40s.
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That, by definition, is in no way related to the Market.
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Already done by most first-world countries.
It's GBP 1.20 per litre, here in the UK. Do the conversion and exchange - that's about $6.5 per gallon.
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I think the idea is that it's a tax, which goes into a fund to ameliorate climate change effects. Doesn't help the oil companies (unless you count preventing them from being sued for climate change because it's now out of their hands). Sucks for energy availability to the poor though. I wonder what fifty years of suffering through that would do to our infrastructure though. Mass deaths? Cheap and ubiquitous mass transit and subsidized heat efficiency improvements to housing?
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Australia briefly introduced a carbon tax, some of which went to the poor and elderly whose portion of daily living costs towards energy was so significant that their quality of live would be significantly effected. Carbon emissions went down and the economy was stimulated by R&D in high-tech renewable energy - solar, wind, nuclear, etc.
The situation, of course, did not last long. Rupert Murdoch and his friends went hard against it in the media. When laws forced them to provide balanced points of view,
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Say what?
Bob Hawke and Jay Weatherill want to build a nuclear waste dump but there's no suggestion in the report [sa.gov.au] released on Friday that there's any urgency to embrace nuclear power. The NIMBYs have killed that idea stone cold except for a few maverick Liberals.
Dr James Jansson of the Science Party is the only one seriously floating [scienceparty.org.au] nuclear technology as a climate change busting option in this forthcoming election. I'm hardly pro-nuke but I welcome his pragmatic boldness on the matter - having Nic
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did he say that ALL the profit should go to the oil companies?
of course, they own the congress and no one says anything bad about our FRIENDS, the texans (even if not from texas).
but I could imagine pricing fuel so that it motivates everyone to find better choices; and the excess should go into REBUILDING our infrastructure.
how's that for a plan?
nah, would never work. sounds too much like that word that the R's hate that starts with an S.
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Based upon a $3.00 gallon of gasoline, the average break-down is as follows.
Gasoline Retailer $.01 cents per gallon
Oil Company $.08 cents per gallon
Refining $.29 cents per gallon
Marketing/Distribution $.32 cents per gallon
Cost of crude $1.71 per gallon (delivered)
Taxes $.59 cents per gallon - no one in the gubmint got their hands dirty supplying oil but they take the lion's share.
Who is gouging who?
Re:SAVE THE BAGS (Score:5, Insightful)
no one in the gubmint got their hands dirty supplying oil
Are you joking? Did you not see the price tag on the second gulf war?
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I don't think anyone has seen the final sticker price for that.
The 144 character critique (Score:4, Interesting)
The more I think about this thread the more it bugs me. Why did my post get five points? It's not because it's especially insightful. It's because I crafted the post to score points. I made it short. I phrased it so it was slightly confrontational. And, I left out the answer I would like to have given:
Whether the tax reflects the government's contribution to delivering fuel is irrelevant. In many parts of the country people have voted to impose taxes on themselves to cover the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure. That is not gouging. That's taxation WITH representation.
But the post that gave that answer was too long and too late. It's buried in this thread having garnered a single point.
We are living in an age where people are persuaded by tiny bits of information. We don't take the time to consider nuances. We don't think through complex problems. We just toss little arguments back and forth to score popularity points.
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The goal of war is not to improve the supply of oil, it's to profit. Halliburton and many others made their money from contracts they'd never have gotten without the war.
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The goal of war is not to improve the supply of oil, it's to profit. Halliburton and many others made their money from contracts they'd never have gotten without the war.
Ah yes, because the Cabal doesn't mind killing off thousands of young soldiers, and injuring thousands more. We hear this rhetoric frequently, but nobody seems to be able to point a finger at who these mysterious bastards are. Can you?
Disclaimer: Certainly there are plenty of companies that profit off of war. I've worked in/around them (including being heavily involved in bidding on contracts), for nearly 40 yrs., and never come across anyone pushing for a conflict in order to make more profits, nor doin
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My aunt went on a diet but, like so many, she didn't lose much weight and regained what little she did - based on your logic, I can therefore conclude that losing weight was never the intention of going on a diet.
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I don't know where you got those figures, but the retailer makes more than $.01 per gallon. In 1972 the gas station I worked at made about $.05 per gallon on regular and that was when prices at ~$.38 ish cents per gallon (~ $1.40 now). I doubt they make less than that now.
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It may well be treated as a loss-leader, cheap gasoline, expensive everything else.
Re:SAVE THE BAGS (Score:5, Informative)
Based upon a $3.00 gallon of gasoline, the average break-down is as follows.
Gasoline Retailer $.01 cents per gallon Oil Company $.08 cents per gallon Refining $.29 cents per gallon Marketing/Distribution $.32 cents per gallon Cost of crude $1.71 per gallon (delivered)
Taxes $.59 cents per gallon - no one in the gubmint got their hands dirty supplying oil but they take the lion's share.
Who is gouging who?
I work in the oil industry providing logistics software as a service. Let me reformat your list, again based on $3.00 per gallon of gasoline (your numbers are off but they're mostly besides the point):
$0.01 per gallon Gasoline retailer
$0.08 per gallon Oil company
$0.29 per gallon Oil company (refining)
$0.32 per gallon Oil company (marketing and distribution)
$1.71 per gallon Oil company (crude extraction and delivery)
$0.59 per gallon taxes
Totals:
$2.40 per gallon Oil company
$0.59 per gallon Taxes (seems like a good price for the roads and infrastructure and environmental cleanups involved, no?)
$0.01 per gallon Gasoline retailer
And at every step of the way, the oil companies push off every last inch of risk and liability they can, but hook and by crook, on whomever they can force it.
You, sir, are ignorant and a fool. And spewing your ignorance and foolishness all over the 'net is a detriment to us all.
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Re:SAVE THE BAGS (Score:5, Insightful)
Gasoline Retailer $.01 cents per gallon
Within 5 miles of my house, gas prices vary by 40 cents per gallon (Chevron is the highest, Rotten Robbie is the lowest). So there is no way that the retail margin is only 1 cent.
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Does the retailer or the oil company set the price? Where I am, all gas stations go up and down in price in lock step and talking to the cashiers, they get a phone call that sets the price.
It would be nice to have some actual competition instead of the most expensive gas in N. America, but at least locally, the independent gas station is dead and the 5 or 6 oil companies don't seem to have any interest in competing, at least in gasoline sales. Diesel does vary and all gas stations sell junk food which is wh
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Look up the terminal gate price. You'll be amazed at just how many companies take a loss in retail and move those accounting figures around. Now this may not be the case ink the USA but certainly in all the parts of the world I've lived in the margains were indeed razor thin and boosted by ludicrously overpriced "additional services and products" such as a service garage or my favourite the stat that BP is the largest coffee provider in New Zealand and that coffee is by an order of magnitude the largest mar
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"no one in the gubmint got their hands dirty supplying oil but they take the lion's share"
How much does it cost to subsidize the entire road infrastructure of the country?
Re:SAVE THE BAGS (Score:4, Interesting)
Ugh, another goon who gets all of their news from the internet. Gasoline is a futures market; by the time it hits the retailers storage tank what they paid for it is so far removed from the current market price that is almost no correlation with crude oil. Yet if you looked at the prices side by side historically they appear to be tied together even though it takes a refinery two to three weeks to break a barrel of crude into useful products. That is because you are not being charged based on what it cost the gas station to get what they have. You are being charged based on what it would cost the station to replace that amount if they had to purchase it again that same day. Think about it, how often do you see the price of gasoline change at a station? Like eight to ten times a week? How often do you think that delivery truck stops by to fill the tanks, maybe once a week give or take based on location? Don't get me wrong, gas isn't some power house profit center. I am all too aware that it cannot compete with the kind of markup you get with coffee, energy drinks or junk food. But the crap about them only making one cent on each gallon was basically propaganda so that red necks would stop torching gas stations.
Why are we talking about gasoline and oil company profits anyway? Although the demand will always be there, gas is not, was not and has never been the most profitable part of a barrel of oil in terms of profit per unit of input. It's almost regarded as a waste product, and you see this periodically when refineries need to make room for other products and so they flood the market; name one other commodity that behaves like that. Oil companies will make literally any other product they can rather than waste it on producing gas.
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Just because your country decided to tax fuel more than ours does doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to complain about our own.
As for your suggestion that we walk more, there are no homes within walking distance of my office (and fwiw, I walked an hours just for the exercise yesterday). The U.S. is vastly more spread out than the U.K., so please stop trying to make a comparison...it's apples vs. oranges. We're not going to rebuild our entire infrastructure, and in many places you can't find affordable hous
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Tariffs.
You, a sovereign state, can't force the oil companies to charge more, but you can raise the tariffs on them. Then the oil companies don't get more money per barrel, but you do.
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Nah, just back to $100 a barrel is fine. That way the places that are warm year around (which coincidentally happen to be oil producing regions) don't have any short falls.
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The idea is that if you increase the taxes on something that's destroying our planet, the green alternatives will become cheaper than oil by default and people will be forced to make the right choice.
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Apart from the cost of buying the car itself, the green alternatives are usually barely more expensive than fossil fuels. And for electric cars, they're cheaper in the long run.
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Generally speaking the green alternatives are actually cheaper in many cases.
In fact - you don't know how much cheaper.
My father is an electrical engineer - he is actually encouraging people now to BORROW money to go full solar - because the gains are so big that even while paying interest on the capital outlay you are still making a profit compared to remaining on the coal grid. It's a fairly complicated set of equations -starting with a highly conservative estimate of a mere 10% per annum increase in the
Efficient markets are not idiotic (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure why you accuse this of being thoughtless.
This is the classical "efficient market" approach to a problem of consequences: the people who cause the consequences should pay the cost of those consequences. Classical economics argues that markets are inefficient when a person (or corporation) can gain benefits from an action, but somebody else pays the cost.
So, if carbon dioxide emission has a cost, in terms of effects of global warming, the efficient market solution would be that the people emitting carbon dioxide should pay that cost, and hence allowing them to adjust their usage in such a way as to incorporate the consequences.
Free market transactions (Score:5, Informative)
Government intrusion via a "market-like" mechanism is not the free market.
Absolutely. And a totally "free" market includes transactions of the following sort: "I point a gun at you and give you the choice, either I take your money, or I shoot you and then take your money." That's a free market transaction with no government interference. But this transaction is beneficial to the robber only because the consequences to you are not included in the robber's profit calculation.
The government's role is as a mechanism to say "if your actions create a consequence to other people (such as, say killing them), your actions need to be regulated."
We have already established that this is what the government does. We're just arguing in which circumstances government intervention is needed.
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This is going to be hard for you to accept, but you got modded down because you said something stupid, and may, in fact, be an idiot.
Re:Then why is the WH stonewalling AGW doc release (Score:4, Funny)
You freakin' conservative wack job. Obama has nothing to hide when he refuses to release public funded studies. And Hillary had nothing to hide when she deleted all of those emails from the server that she wasn't allowed to use. And Obama was just showing his love for this country when he released all of those dangerous terrorists back to the mid-east, and when he releases all of those felons, including murders, from federal prisons, and didn't even deport the illegals.
Put back on your tinfoil hat. Clearly there is nothing to see here.
Woosh (Score:3)
When the lead-in inflammatory comment is the sarcasm flag...
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Hog Island, New York - I'll be amazed if any of the Man Made climate change folks knew about it before frantically googling it.
The climate is changing. Eventually we'll lose Lake Michigan because the topology of the area will continue to revert to pre ice age conditions. I won't be alive when Illinois is tropical again. Growing up in Lockport , Illinois and seeing the shale with fossils embedded sorta made me look farther than less than 50 years of data.
But I'm silly that way :)
You should share this groundbreaking insight with the worlds scientists, they have overlooked this completely, good thing you didn't.
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As long as the latitude of Lake Michigan does not change magically, it never will be tropical.
Regardless of global warming you will have occasionally a harsh winter.
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Mitigation (Score:5, Insightful)
You're either underestimating the future change or overestimating the past change. Generally there isn't a goal temperature/CO2 level, just a pre-industrial baseline. We've already done enough to change the planet drastically. At this point we're just hoping that we don't continue to make things worse. At this point, we're still emitting ever-greater amounts of carbon year after year. At what point do you imagine that we should maybe dial back the things that we know raise the equilibrium temperature of the Earth? How quickly do you think plants and animals can adapt to 3-5 degrees of global temperature change? Because it looks like people would rather find out the answer to these things by massive uncontrolled experiment rather than simulation at this point. Buckle up.
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Well, Wikipedia's notes on ice and sea level are brief but referenced:
"During the most recent North American glaciation, during the latter part of the Wisconsin Stage (26,000 to 13,300 years ago), ice sheets extended to about 45 degrees north latitude. These sheets were 3 to 4km thick.
During the last glacial period the sea-level has fluctuated 20–30 m as water was sequestered, primarily in the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets."
It s alie, they are actually growing. (Score:5, Informative)
Not even that fortunately.
Read the article, the summary is a bald faced lie.
In fact, the total land area of the Solomons is growing relatively quickly, there are a few exceptions, which are
basically old unstable low lying reefs that were washed away in a couple of major tropical cyclones, which is
very normal. They are selectively reporting a very few examples where it is not..
Add to that a couple of islands where, due to human pollution the coral has experience die back (remember, many
of these islands are natural growing coral, when it dies, they erode away..)
Its actually quite impressive that the total land area is growing..
Of course that doesn't suit certain political agendas, and doesn't generate free money (aid..), so....
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Not even that fortunately.
Read the article, the summary is a bald faced lie.
In fact, the total land area of the Solomons is growing relatively quickly
Is this from the paper? I saw no indication that the total land area was growing in the paper.
Re:It s alie, they are actually growing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Check out the last graph in the original paper. It shows (pay attention to the axes) that the Central Pacific island chains studied, as a group, increased significantly in land area.
However, the Solomon Islands, specifically, may be an exception to that. (I'd need the raw data to tell for sure; the net change is close enough to zero that I can't just eyeball it from the graph.)
In any case, the specific islands which are the main focus of the paper were all tiny (the largest was only 0.25 (km)^2) and not at all representative of the Solomon Islands as a whole. They were selected for further scrutiny specifically because they were eroding quickly; in a chain with hundreds of islands, there were bound to be at least a few getting smaller.
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Check out the last graph in the original paper. It shows (pay attention to the axes) that the Central Pacific island chains studied, as a group, increased significantly in land area.
However, the Solomon Islands, specifically, may be an exception to that. (I'd need the raw data to tell for sure; the net change is close enough to zero that I can't just eyeball it from the graph.)
In any case, the specific islands which are the main focus of the paper were all tiny (the largest was only 0.25 (km)^2) and not at all representative of the Solomon Islands as a whole. They were selected for further scrutiny specifically because they were eroding quickly; in a chain with hundreds of islands, there were bound to be at least a few getting smaller.
Figure 7? They don't have a mean but it really looks to me like the mean would be negative.
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Figure 7?
Yes.
They don't have a mean but it really looks to me like the mean would be negative.
As I said: pay attention to the axes. Notice how all the shrinking islands are on the left side of the graph? That means it's the small islands that are shrinking. The large islands on the right are mostly growing. Moreover, it is a logarithmic scale, so the islands on the right are 100x the size of the islands on the left. That means that a single growing island on the right cancels out many shrinking islands on the left.
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Yes, clearly the real problem is those damned kangarelephants won't quit hopping on the islands. Yeah, that's it.
Just as Rep. Hank Johnson. He's an expert on islands, particularly Guam [youtube.com].
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So you have some actual evidence that these islands sinking is due to subduction, right? As well as evidence that there is no sea level rise, right?
There is plenty of evidence that sea levels are rising ... by about 2.5mm per year, or about an inch per decade. There is no way that is enough to "sink an island". This article is the kind of stupid over-the-top alarmism that drives more people into the denialist camp.
Climate change is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, but it is not an imminent crisis. We don't need lies and hyperbolic exaggerations to scare people into taking action. That is counter-productive, and just leads to crisis-fat
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Wave action is what erodes and ultimately destroys islands, and any increase in the water level is going to have an effect on wave action.
That being said, from looking at the pictures in the PDF report it kind of looks like this can be explained by extreme weather events, like a cyclone. One of the islands has completely moved since the 1940s. As in, its current boundaries and its boundaries in the 1940s do not overlap at all. That sounds like "regular" erosion of island land brought on by extreme weathe
Re: subduction, try it, its free! (Score:3)
http://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/... [npr.org]
Meanwhile Miami Beach is already underwater
Re:subduction, try it, its free! (Score:5, Informative)
So you have some actual evidence that these islands sinking is due to subduction, right?
I don't think he needs it. According to the most alarming numbers, sea levels have risen some 10 cm in the past century. If we have already lost three islands to increased sea level, those islands would have to be on average 10 cm tall or so. Even assuming that the rise in sea level has strong local variations, we're talking about some really flat islands here.
In most places I've been to around the Pacific, the tide variation is more than 10 cm. So, how do we know that these islands are primarily sinking due to subduction? Easy. Here's how we know that they are gone because of rising sea levels. if the islands, 100 years ago, were under water every time the tide was high, and now are under water permanently, it is possible (but not demonstrated) that the islands are gone due to rising sea levels. If the islands were permanently dry, and they were significantly taller than 10 cm 100 years ago, then we know that their "disappearance" is due to subduction since it couldn't be cause by rising sea levels.
Re:subduction, try it, its free! (Score:4, Insightful)
There's another, easier answer:
Erosion due to weather, wave, and tidal activity. This can be quite fast compared to the glacial rise of the sea level or tectonic plate movement.
From the paper in question:
Reef islands? These are formed by coral that do not grow above the surface of the water. It's the sand and other junk that pile up on these reef islands that has washed/eroded away.
From Wikipedia (Solomon Islands):
I suppose mentioning that would be counterproductive to the scare-mongering.
Re:subduction, try it, its free! (Score:4, Informative)
So you have some actual evidence that these islands sinking is due to subduction, right? As well as evidence that there is no sea level rise, right?
With a sea rise of (best case) 2.5mm/year, I really have to ask - how short do you think these islands were?
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I had a feeling the ACs weren't going to like this story one bit. No sirree. You can't pull any o