Empire of the Iguanadons

So have you been noticing the news lately? All around the world there are huge mass-deaths of birds and fish. Sometimes other animals as well. This isn't your ordinary one-offs though that happen once in awhile and are fairly isolated. These are massive repeats of the same sort of thing all over the world, and all within the last week or so.

In Arkansas, 100,000+ dead fish turned up in a river. Thousands of blackbirds die off, blamed on "fireworks" from New Years Eve. 40,000 dead crabs wash up in the UK. Birds supposedly scared to death in Sweden. Scared of what though? Yet more dead birds in Texas. Thousands of dead fish in Florida turn up. Starfish and jellyfish have turned up dead in South Carolina by the hundreds. In New Jersey, thousands more dead fish. Manatees in Florida. Thousands of fish dead in Australia.

Not enough for you yet? How about 100+ tons of dead fish in Brazil. Yeah, you read that right, 100 tons. Imagine just how many fish that is and how bad that must smell. Not as bad as 150+ tons of dead fish in Cambodia. Still not enough? Here's another 10 tons from New Zealand.

And of course, why not, lets EAT thousands of mysteriously dead fish in the Philippines. Who's going to care, right? We can wash it all away with the green river in Canada.

Now, I don't know about you, but that's just plain werid and it's way too many incidents so close together to be ignored. Hasn't anyone seen The Core? Surely someone out there must have better explanations for all of this than "the fireworks did it", because nobody in their right mind is going to buy that in regions where these birds have been around fireworks for years and NEVER HAD IT HAPPEN BEFORE.

The kinds of reasons I'm seeing given as "scientific" explanations for it ring about as true as "it was a contrail", or "it was a weather balloon". I think most of us are smart enough to realize when we're being lied to. The question is what are we being lied to about?

Anyone perhaps remember talk not too long ago about solar flares and potential shifts in the Earth's magnetic field? Maybe even severe enough to lead to a pole reversal? Did anyone stop to consider what that would look like to us unprofessional laymen? Yeah, you guessed it, one of the possible initial signs of a catastrophe like that would be mass wildlife kills. Kills that would otherwise have no logical explanation because there would be so many of them in so many different parts of the world.

The media so far has been near silent on the issue. The nightly TV news isn't saying a word about this. No reports on the radio outside of passing mentions by talk show hosts doing other things. Not a single article in the LA Times about it beyond the first one that happened in Louisiana. Someone out there is engaged in a cover up and trying to feed us lies to explain it. Either saying it was fireworks, or - get this - secret Chinese stealth fighter technology. As if the Chinese have nothing better to do with their time than kill birds and fish.

One of the listed incidents - the piles of dead fish in Australia - is the only one with a plausible explanation. The epic floods they're having pushing freshwater species of fish into the ocean. The rest is all just plain insulting.

So does anyone care to put forth a plausible theory for all this? All I have is magnetic polar shift.
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RIP United States of America

July 1776 - November 2012.

@Conner:

For renewalables etc to become worth while, the US needs a national Super Grid for power delivery, to move power from say Cal where they have lots of sun to NY where they consume the energy. The trouble is, to do this you need 1000+kva DC transmission lines, not the 350kva lines that the US typically uses, but states in the middle do not want it either going through their land, or will not pay for it because they cant use it or the typical whinings of the states etc. So having 4 billion local power generators is not conducive to the changes needed to make the wholesale changes across the board, and the federal gov is like a toothless tiger because it cannot make anything happen because it is a state issue not a federal one.

We like our federal government to be a toothless tiger when it comes to interference in states' rights though. We also like them to be largely toothless when it comes to unreasonable interference in free market principles. I'd have figured by now you'd have caught on to that after your time here

Basically, the United States has two power grids, one on either side of the continental divide. Parts of Canada are connected to the Eastern Grid. The eastern grid has ~70 nodes, the western one ~40. Alaska shares a sub-grid with the Yukon, and that grid has 4 nodes. These grids are connected by super-nodes, but the process of transfering the power from one grid to another is time consuming. A few years ago, a snow storm took out 3 nodes on the eastern grid, leaving the eastern seaboard without power for ~a week.

About 40 miles from my house there's a like 100 acre windfarm, that California tax payers shelled out like 120 billion for, and they got it built...and no way of connecting it to the grid. (apparently there's a mountain between the farm and the sub-station it was supposed to connect to. I would have noticed that before I built it, but hey.)

Thanks guys, I think Samson and Dallen pretty well covered what I would've had to say about all that.

Can you back that claim up with figures?

According to this list: List of countries by CO2 emissions

The US outputs almost as much CO2 as China, a bit more than the European Union, and about 4 times as much as India. Keeping in mind that China and India house about 4 times as many people as the US, and the EU not much short of twice as many, the figures per capita aren't looking terribly good.

If you feel the total sum is more important than the number per capita, then obviously the US pollution figures are dwarfed by those of Eurasia.

There is also this: China leading the world in renewable energy
China isn't doing this (or anything at all really) for the benefit of mankind. Pollution is just a more immediate problem there, because of the very large population and the relatively small area of the country with a habitable climate.

In all, I don't see much support for the statement that China and India are the world's largest polluters and not doing anything about it.

Samson was talking about "actual" pollution. Not something that happens "anyway" that some politicians want to call pollution. About 3/4 of the air around you is CO2. You put it back around you every-time you exhale. Since man has been able to produce CO2, the amount of it has changed 0.008%.

Your figures are at least 5 years old according to the datestamp on that chart. That's the problem with AGW supporters. Bashing people over the head with the same 5-10 year old data all the time and expecting nothing has changed since then.

There's no way in hell I buy that the data I see is anything resembling accurate when they list the US with massive tonnage figures that simply don't jive with common sense. China and India burn coal like they were drinking it as water. Their skies are routinely choked with pollutants, yet somehow we're expected to believe that the US is destroying the Earth when our skies are clean and clear.

Two countries in the throws of their major industrial revolutions and somehow the big bad evil US is always made out to be the monster it's not.

As an interesting aside, if you go by the per capita figures, Australia is destroying the world, not us.

And I can go through pages of Google hits who all claim a different country is the biggest CO2 emitter, depending on who wrote the article at the time, and when it was written, and none of them so far are any newer than 2008.

The one thing they all agree on though, China alone is responsible for 2/3 of global CO2 output. So if you want to pick on someone, pick on the ones who are actually guilty of something. Something other than feeding plants that is.

(BTW, your NY Times link demands I register, not happening)

I never said they weren't doing anything about it either. I said nobody is expecting them to do anything about it. They only expect *US* as in one singular country to do anything about it. Well to hell with that. Give me one good reason why only the US should be expected to collapse its economy when nobody else is? I won't hold my breath.

Actually Samson, Australia has roughly equal per capita CO2 emmisions whe compared to the USA. And we also have to deal with things like the need for cooling during summer (I've got the air conditioner on right now but I'm still sweaty, btw) while as the heating required by the rest of the developed world is nowhere near as energy intensive. Of course that doesn't excuse Australia either, but anyway.

And as for who is the biggest CO2 emmiter, I highly doubt that China could account for 2/3 of the worlds energy emmisions, though it wouldn't surprise me if they are the biggest emmiters none the less. In any case, I'm to busy pulling out my hair trying to get FO3 to work (stupid piece of shit) to go looking for the actual figures.

Energy? No. Nobody claimed that. CO2 though, yes, there's gobs of shit out there to substantiate that China alone is responsible for 2/3 of the world's CO2 emissions. I suspect 2.5+ billion screaming Chinamen has something to do with that

LOLs, i thin you been smoking something and not sharing. Or maybe all that pollution in Cal has destroyed the part of your brain that processes reality. I would post some current relevent data, but Samson donta likes thins that comes from them smarts pepels. Its all a conspiracy to make him pay more for electricity and for Soros to take over the world. /sarcasm. if you had not guessed.

Oh and just because i can the top 5 CO2 emitters are in order of achievment:

USA 5.7
China 3.5
Russia 1.5
Japan 1.2
India 1.0

So be proud USA, you are Number 1 in all things that matter, Destroying The World.

Scoff all you like, the truth hurts though. Your reaction to it is typical. Your numbers are also patently false and 2 minutes Googling proof would show you that. And you call me crazy.

Even Wiki says you are bonkers

Carbon Emissions

Samson, are you sure you don't mean 'asia accounts for 2/3 of the worlds CO2 emmisions?

Wikipeida is also full board into blaming man for AGW, their sources can't be trusted.

No, I don't mean Asia. I mean China.

If you google "top polluters in the world", you get different answers depending on who's talking.
BBC votes for: China
Coolearth votes for: Brazil
Wikipedia votes for : Aberbaijan (any ever hear of that?)

No site on the first 2 pages votes for: The United States.

Azerbaijan? Yes, it's one of those old Soviet bloc places.

Well, in the case of Brazil they have probably incoporated fires and CO2 emmisions from forest clearing, so in a sense that could be plausible (or maybe not, though Brazil's figures are undoubtably expanded MASSIVELY by rainforest clearing).

As for the Soviet bloc place, are you sure they were talking about an overall coutry level in that context?

@prettyfly: I was not concerned with context for this.

Pollution and Carbon Emissions are different things. As the discussion was about C02 emissions, try googeling "CO2 emissions by country"

Wiki says:

1 China 6,538,367.00 22.30%
2 United States 5,830,381.00 19.91%
- European Union 4,177,817.86 14.04%
3 India 1,612,362.00 5.50%
4 Russia 1,537,357.00 5.24%
5 Japan 1,254,543.00 4.28%

Around and around we go... they're using data that's 5-10 years out of date. Reality is out of sync with the "blame the US for everything" crowd.

1. The discussion wasn't necessarily about CO2 emissions.
2. CO2 is not pollution
3. No matter which way you want to go with 1&2, the United States isn't the top of anyone's list. (Well, except Fury's)

Something to ponder-

Why isn't it called The United Commonwealths, Republics, and States of America?

CFCs do react with ozone actually. Get some ozone and CFCs and reproduce the effects if you don't believe me. So they are certainly ozone layer destroying.

Where do you propose we get the CFC's?

You guys sure are prolific about posting sometimes...


I'm sorry, I guess I don't see the relevance of this statement, unless you somehow don't realize that the rest of us have a summer period each year too...


Oh, don't forget that Muhammad also thinks the big bad United States tops the list too.


Nah, the name would be too long then, that would even beat out places like the United Soviet Socialist Republic, countries always try to keep their names limited to four or five words and they try really hard to avoid requiring punctuation in their names so when folks make lists of countries one won't appear to be two (or more) on the list.. must be some unwritten rule known by all those creating countries.


From older cars and other older devices with refrigerant, obviously, never mind that we'd be potentially breaking laws to be able to do so, right.
Of course, by the same token, how does one go about getting some ozone and containing it for the purposes of testing? Let alone, how does one go about measuring the effects this testing will produce in a home setting?

From one of those old air purifier things that makes ozone as a byproduct of its operation, of course. Breezy says he's got some r12 refrigerant laying around somewhere. Now we just need to get him one of those purifiers. Then we can put to rest the idea that CFC is an ozone killer for 50 years.

Nobody here ever claimed CFCs don't react with ozone. We just don't buy into the lies that CFCs will destroy it if we keep using them. Guess which two countries aren't bothering to go along with CFC restrictions?