The environment thread

[southsider2k5]

I disagree with this a lot. We should be striving to provide greater access to our National Parks - not less. I can tell you that here in Colorado, a town like Estes Park would be really, really hurt if an increase in admission led to fewer visitors.

 

If the Parks system is truly about the parks, the cottage industries of tourist towns are second to the needs of the parks. Living in a fully pledged tourist town, I understand the municipal dependency of tourism better than most. A lot of the parks themselves are suffering from the ridiculous amounts of people literally trampling them. Like I said the recovery of Mount Baldy over here was a big eye opener for me.

[StrangeSox]

You could limit attendance in ways other than "how much can you afford to pay to access public lands."

 

Our public parks were an explicit rejection of the for-the-wealthy-only natural spaces that were prevalent in Europe.

Edited October 25, 2017 by StrangeSox

[illinilaw08]

If the Parks system is truly about the parks, the cottage industries of tourist towns are second to the needs of the parks. Living in a fully pledged tourist town, I understand the municipal dependency of tourism better than most. A lot of the parks themselves are suffering from the ridiculous amounts of people literally trampling them. Like I said the recovery of Mount Baldy over here was a big eye opener for me.

 

This I agree with. I see it on the trails that I hike in CO all the time.* As SS said, it's a balancing act between providing access to the parks and dealing with the visitors who fail to respect the parks. But, IMO, upping the entry fee isn't the way to go about it because it makes it harder for all Americans to access the parks.

 

* Quick anecdote that sums this up - I was on a hike in the Mt. Evans wilderness that has a very popular trailhead. The dog decided to take a crap at the very end of the trail, so I had to schlep his crap out 4+ miles (trails in CO have had some major problems with people not cleaning up after their dogs). I'm back at the trailhead, drop the crap in a garbage can, and the ranger at the trailhead comes up and thanks me for throwing away my dog's crap. People, generally, need to be way more respectful of the outdoors...

[StrangeSox]

It's not just disrespectful people, though. More foot traffic on trails means more erosion, more wildlife disturbance, more chances for negative wild life encounters, more resources needed for increased demand on garbage, rest room, ranger services, etc. Even if everyone is staying on marked trails, packing everything out, and doing their best to leave no trace, they're still going to have an impact.

 

[Balta1701]

If the Parks system is truly about the parks, the cottage industries of tourist towns are second to the needs of the parks. Living in a fully pledged tourist town, I understand the municipal dependency of tourism better than most. A lot of the parks themselves are suffering from the ridiculous amounts of people literally trampling them. Like I said the recovery of Mount Baldy over here was a big eye opener for me.

So lets say that we need to cut back on the number of people visiting.

 

Do you endorse that the best way to do that is to filter out people who can least afford it?

[StrangeSox]

Exclusive: The Interior Department Scrubs Climate Change From Its Strategic Plan

A leaked draft of a five-year plan reveals how the DOI will prioritize “energy dominance” over conservation.

 

In the next five years, millions of acres of America’s public lands and waters, including some national monuments and relatively pristine coastal regions, could be auctioned off for oil and gas development, with little thought for environmental consequences. That’s according to a leaked draft, obtained by The Nation, of the Department of the Interior’s strategic vision: It states that the DOI is committed to achieving “American energy dominance” through the exploitation of “vast amounts” of untapped energy reserves on public lands. Alarmingly, the policy blueprint—a 50-page document—does not once mention climate change or climate science. That’s a clear departure from current policy: The previous plan, covering 2014–18, referred to climate change 46 times and explicitly stated that the department was committed to improving resilience in those communities most directly affected by global warming.

 

Not surprisingly, one of the DOI’s key performance indicators for the next five years will be the number of acres of public lands made available for oil and natural-gas leasing. Interior’s role in promoting renewable-energy development largely goes unmentioned. The new plan also has little to say about conservation, a word mentioned 74 times in the previous strategy blueprint and only 25 times in the new version. Instead of the protection of landscapes and ecosystems, the new report emphasizes Interior’s role in policing the US-Mexico border. The department manages nearly half of the southern border region, the report notes, as well as the third-largest number of law-enforcement officers in the executive branch. It intends to deploy them “to decrease illegal immigration and marijuana smuggling on DOI managed public lands.”

 

Drill, baby, drill! Let's kill this whole planet as quickly as possible.

[Reddy]

We get this debate a lot in my hometown as we have an admission price to our beach at lake Michigan and hear this argument a lot. I really don't mind the idea of the people who consume the national parks the most being the ones who pay the most towards its maintenance. It also isn't a bad idea to push the cost to the point where it discourages some amount of visitations as a lot of parks are under pretty high stress levels from human interference and could benefit from a lot less traffic.

 

Personally we have the Dunes National Lake Shore in Michigan City and I am just awestruck at what Mt Baldy looks like today after being closed to the public for about five years ago (remember the kid who fell into the sand hole). For the first time in my lifetime it looks healthy and beautiful. It has also slowed the movement of the dune away from the lake front.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding about who this would affect. It wouldn't affect those who frequent the parks MOST (they would get an annual pass of $75), it would most harshly affect middle class families on their ONE vacation a year who visit during peak season because they don't have time off work/school any other time of year to go.

 

This puts the burden of maintaining the parks squarely on the shoulders of the middle class, and it's abhorrent. This wouldn't even make a DENT in the deferred maintenance backlog. It would raise $70 million. The backlog is in the BILLIONS.

[Reddy]

If the Parks system is truly about the parks, the cottage industries of tourist towns are second to the needs of the parks. Living in a fully pledged tourist town, I understand the municipal dependency of tourism better than most. A lot of the parks themselves are suffering from the ridiculous amounts of people literally trampling them. Like I said the recovery of Mount Baldy over here was a big eye opener for me.

You're right, and the NPS is working hard on solutions they were planning to unveil over the coming months. I'm working at the National Parks Conservation Association. I have access to all of this behind the scenes information. Zinke decided to cut their knees out from under them by pre-empting them and making their jobs infinitely harder.

[iamshack]

Who do you guys buy your electricity from? Do you buy from ComEd, or have you chosen an alternate supplier?

[StrangeSox]

 

UN warns of 'unacceptable' greenhouse gas emissions gap

Report reveals large gap between government pledges and the reductions needed to prevent dangerous global warming

 

We're not cutting emissions fast enough to avoid a 2C rise. Might as well bake that in as the minimum rise going forward and try to plan mitigations around that (we won't; we're more likely to have state governments explicitly ban state agencies from accounting for AGW).

 

Current plans from national governments, and pledges made by private sector companies and local authorities across the world, would lead to temperature rises of as much as 3C or more by the end of this century, far outstripping the goal set under the 2015 Paris agreement to hold warming to 2C or less, which scientists say is the limit of safety.

 

The UN’s findings come in its latest assessment of progress on climate change, published on Tuesday ahead of the COP23 conference, a follow-up to the Paris agreement, to be held in Bonn next week.

 

There was some good news, however: the report found that carbon dioxide emissions had held steady globally since 2014. Against that, emissions of other greenhouse gases, notably methane, had increased.

[StrangeSox]

Pruitt: Scientists receiving federal grants will be cut from EPA advising roles

 

Pruitt is going to kick out all of the real scientists and replace them with "independent" industry funded hacks.

 

Finalized this action today.

 

 

The move sets in motion a fundamental shift, one that could change the scientific and technical advice that historically has guided the agency as it crafts environmental regulations. The decision to bar any researcher who receives EPA grant money from serving as an adviser appears to be unprecedented.

 

“It is very, very important to ensure independence, to ensure that we’re getting advice and counsel independent of the EPA,” Pruitt told reporters Tuesday.

 

He estimated that the members of three different committees — Scientific Advisory Board, the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee and the Board of Scientific Counselors — had collectively accepted $77 million in EPA grants over the last three years. He noted that researchers will have the option of ending their grant or continuing to advise EPA, “but they can’t do both.”

Angela Nugent, who previously worked for the EPA as the designated federal officer for the board, said that the determination regarding EPA grants would differ from how the agency used to determine when a conflict of interest had occurred.

 

“It would be a major departure from current policy” to assume that board members have a conflict of interest merely based on their grants, she said.

 

In the past, Nugent said, the board has required financial disclosures from members in relation to each particular study or project on which they were advising. Determinations of conflict of interest were then made relating to the specifics of the subject matter conflicts, rather than a blanket bar because an individual had an EPA grant.

 

Hope everyone who votes R loves turning over a blasted, toxic wasteland to their children and grandchildren.

[StrangeSox]

The White House will name nuclear energy, natural gas, and coal as answers to climate change at a UN conference. https://t.co/JAMbBIqOHI

— Axios (@axios) November 2, 2017

 

[StrangeSox]

Trump administration releases report finding ‘no convincing alternative explanation’ for climate change

 

The Trump administration released a dire scientific report Friday detailing the growing threats of climate change. The report stands in stark contrast to the administration’s efforts to downplay humans’ role in global warming, withdraw from an international climate accord and reverse Obama-era policies aimed at curbing America’s greenhouse-gas output.

 

The White House did not seek to prevent the release of the government’s National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by law, despite the fact that its findings sharply contradict the administration’s policies. The report affirms that climate change is driven almost entirely by human action, warns of potential sea level rise as high as 8 feet by the year 2100, and enumerates myriad climate-related damages across the United States that are already occurring due to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming since 1900.

 

“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the document reports. “For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”

[Reddy]

Who do you guys buy your electricity from? Do you buy from ComEd, or have you chosen an alternate supplier?

I think Arcadia is great. I've used them for about a year

[StrangeSox]

Nicaragua and Syria have signed onto the Paris Climate Accords, leaving the United States as the only country in the world who isn't a signatory.

Edited November 7, 2017 by StrangeSox

[iamshack]

I think Arcadia is great. I've used them for about a year

Are you still in NY, Reddy?

 

I have been immersed in electricity restructuring for like 6 months.

 

We are going through the process in NV and people do not know what they are voting for.

[Soxbadger]

Sounds like the Keystone pipeline leaked.

Edited November 16, 2017 by Soxbadger

[Reddy]

Sounds like the Keystone pipeline leaked.

Everything is awful.

 

200,000 gallons. Ya know... exactly what everyone said would happen.

[Soxbadger]

Everything is awful.

 

200,000 gallons. Ya know... exactly what everyone said would happen.

 

But now I can legally bring back elephant tusks to the US.

 

Gotta have my priorities.

[StrangeSox]

Doomsday on Ice

Rapid collapse of Antarctic glaciers could flood coastal cities by the end of this century.

 

 

The glaciers of Pine Island Bay are two of the largest and fastest-melting in Antarctica. Together, they act as a plug holding back enough ice to pour 11 feet of sea-level rise into the world’s oceans — an amount that would submerge every coastal city on the planet.

 

A wholesale collapse of Pine Island and Thwaites would set off a catastrophe. Giant icebergs would stream away from Antarctica like a parade of frozen soldiers. All over the world, high tides would creep higher, slowly burying every shoreline on the planet, flooding coastal cities and creating hundreds of millions of climate refugees.

 

All this could play out in a mere 20 to 50 years — much too quickly for humanity to adapt.

 

 

Three feet of sea-level rise would be bad, leading to more frequent flooding of U.S. cities such as New Orleans, Houston, New York, and Miami. Pacific Island nations, like the Marshall Islands, would lose most of their territory. Unfortunately, it now seems like three feet is possible only under the rosiest of scenarios.

 

At six feet, though, around 12 million people in the United States would be displaced, and the world’s most vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map.

 

At 11 feet, land currently inhabited by hundreds of millions of people worldwide would wind up underwater. South Florida would be largely uninhabitable; floods on the scale of Hurricane Sandy would strike twice a month in New York and New Jersey, as the tug of the moon alone would be enough to send tidewaters into homes and buildings.

[Balta1701]

Not sure where this one fits, but Texas, California, and Florida are all getting a total middle finger on rebuilding funds from the government. Texas had something like $150 billion in damage from Harvey, so far the government's to about $50 billion, there's another $30 billion package out there, and that's it. There appears to be basically no money coming for any sort of improvements in flood control systems in the state, so when a worse storm hits be ready to have the impact felt nationwide. California is basically getting no additional wildfire rebuilding funds.

[StrangeSox]

Another thing buried in the GOP tax bill: opening up ANWR for oil exploitation.

 

[BigSqwert]

Just short of a year after President Obama created Bears Ears National Monument, President Donald Trump will travel to Utah to shrink it and Grand Staircase Escalante.

via

[StrangeSox]

Trump shrinks Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments by 85% and 50% respectively.

[BigSqwert]

Maybe we should have named those monuments after Confederates if we wanted this idiot to defend them.