SpaceShark

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_seep

Laugh - Why is it when i purpose using the Gulf Stream as an clean renewable energy source I get heckled - - When I said USA only has 1 year supply "Out There" - I was referring to the oil reserves offshore - I thought that would of been a given since that's what we where talking about

 

Also an LED takes about 30–60 milliwatts to be powered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#Efficiency_and_operational_parameters

 

Hoover Dam has an output of around 2080 megawatts per year

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam#Power_plant

 

That means that the Hoover Dam' date=' could power about 34.6 billion LED lights per year. So for something to make the Hoover Dam's output look like an LED consumption, one can use the following ratio, X representing the amount of power you claim could be outputted from the Gulf Stream (in watts). I derived your claim from the analogy you used.

 

2,080,000,000 watts/ 0.060 watts = x watts/ 2,080,000,000

 

So simplify, (2,080,000,000)(2,080,000,000)/ 0.060= X watts

 

X=72,106,666,666,666,666,666 watts

 

Or 72 quintillion watts.

 

So could you clarify how we would go about extracting around 72 quintillion watts per year from the Gulf Stream?

 

Furthermore, the total world power consumption is around 15 terawatts per year.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption

 

I think my point is, it isn't good to make misleading, or over-reaching claims with simple analogies.[/quote']

 

Wow man -That LED statement was a joke - It was meant to convey the huge energy potential that the gulf stream is - If you took every river on this planet and multiplied that by 100 - You'd get the energy of the gulf stream - Does that analogy suit you better?

 

I think the point of my post was - What is the point of drilling off shore when the cost and risk are so high - since there is only a 1 year reserve out there - when we have an endless supply of energy floating by in the Gulf Stream

 

I'm sorry you missed it rain man - But I find your purposeful heckling disturbing - I am very passionate about this topic - I fail to see why this isn't the single most important goal in science today

So, i was thinking about the oil spill they've got offsore on the states and i started thinking:

 

Surely its possible for an oil resovoir to spring a leak under natural circumstances.

 

for instance, a fault line, erosion(not to sure how much of an effect this has on the sea floor). Okay, I'll admit i'm not to sure on the mechanism, but I do know that oilwells can experience geological activity and there are a couple of exploited resovoirs which are on fault lines.

 

So, are there any known natural oil spills?

 

As in not a direct or indirect result of human activity. no pipes drilling or tanks involved.

La Brea Tar Pit is the most famous - This oil volcano - as it is being called - leaking 200,000 gallons a day - heading towards our countries most pristine beaches and aquatic wild life refuges - makes me very sad since I live on a Florida beach - If it makes its way into the everglades - I don't even want to imagine the horror

I heard there is only 1 years supply of oil to run the United States out there anyways - If only some scientist can find a way to harness the Gulf Stream - There is an endless supply out there that would make the hoover dam look like a LED light

I think it would be nice if this forum had an environmental board to discuss issues like this

By Captain Paul Watson

"On the beach on San Juan Island, Washington, Allison

Lance walks her dogs every morning. She carries a

plastic bag in her hand to carry the bits and pieces

of plastic debris she picks up. Each morning she fills

the bag, but by the next morning there is always

another bag to be filled. Joey Racano does the same in

Huntington Beach further south in California. The

harvest of plastic waste is never-ending. Allison's

and Joey's beaches, and practically every beach around

the world is similarly cursed.

Recently in the Galapagos I retrieved plastic motor

oil bottles and garbage bags from a remote beach on

Santa Cruz island. Every year during crossings of the

Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, spotting plastic

is a daily and regular occurrence.

A June 2006 a United Nations Environmental Program

report estimated that there are an average of 46,000

pieces of plastic debris floating on or near the

surface of every square mile of ocean.

We live in a plastic convenience culture; virtually

every human being on this planet uses plastic

materials directly and indirectly every single day.

Our babies begin life on Earth by using some 210

million pounds of plastic diaper liners each year; we

give them plastic milk bottles, plastic toys, and buy

their food in plastic jars, paying with a plastic

credit card. Even avoiding those babies by using

contraceptives results in mass disposal of billions of

latex condoms, diaphragms, and hard plastic birth

control pill containers each year.

Every year we eat and drink from some thirty-four

billion newly manufactured bottles and containers. We

patronize fast food restaurants and buy products that

consume another fourteen billion pounds of plastic. In

total, our societies produce an estimated sixty

billion tons of plastic material every year.

Each of us on average uses 190 pounds of plastic

annually: bottled water, fast food packaging,

furniture, syringes, computers and computer diskettes,

packing materials, garbage bags and so much more. When

you consider that this plastic does not biodegrade and

remains in our ecosystems permanently, we are looking

at an incredibly high volume of accumulated plastic

trash that has been built up since the mid-twentieth

century.

Where does it go? There are only three places it can

go: our earth, our air, and our oceans.

All the plastic that has ever been produced has been

buried in landfills, incinerated, and dumped into

lakes, rivers, and oceans. When incinerated, the

plastics disperse non-biodegradable pollutants, much

of which inevitably find their way into marine

ecosystems as microscopic particles.

Back in 1991, my ship, the Sea Shepherd , was anchored

in the harbor of Port of Spain, Trinidad. It began to

rain a hard steady downpour. A few hours later, the

entire surface area of the harbor was dirty white, as

if an ice floe had entered this tropical port. The

"floe" consisted of Styrofoam, plastic bottles, and

assorted plastic materials, as far as the eye could

see, and it had come down from the streets, gutters,

and streams into the harbor. And, of course, it was

all washing out to sea, dispersed by wind and tide.

What happened to it after that? The sun and the brine

broke it down into little pellets of Styrofoam and

little pieces of plastic - each an insidious,

floating, deadly mine set adrift in an ocean of life.

And over the years these little nodules have drifted.

Many have been ingested by birds and fish. Weeks or

months later, their victims decompose on the surface

of the water or on a beach, re-exposing the nodules to

the light of the sun, to be blown by the winds back

into the sea. These vicious little inorganic parasites

continue to maim and kill in an endless assault upon

life in our oceans.

The simple fact is that when you drop a Styrofoam cup

onto the street, you're causing more damage than you

would by dropping a stick of dynamite into the ocean.

You set in motion an invasion of thousands of killer

plastibots that will cause death and destruction for

centuries to come.

Eighteen billion of those disposable diapers end up in

the oceans each year; Americans alone toss 2.5 million

plastic bottles into the sea every hour. Our oceans

are full of floating plastic debris. There is no place

in the oceans where a fine trawl will not reveal

plastic nodules. Studies by Captain Charles Moore and

the Algalita Foundation found that even in the middle

of the Pacific Ocean, plastic nodules have been found

to outweigh plankton by a ratio of six to one. Similar

studies in the Atlantic have revealed the same ratio.

In the movie Castaway, Tom Hanks, marooned on a desert

island in the South Pacific, finds a plastic siding of

a portable outhouse washed up on the beach. The stuff

is everywhere. I have found plastic bottles with

Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and English writing

littering the beaches of even the most remote Aleutian

Islands.

And yet we give this global threat very little thought

at all. It is out of the sight of land-dwelling

humanity, and thus out of mind. The only industry that

seems concerned about plastic pollution is the marine

insurance business. The intake of plastics into the

cooling systems of engines is one of the leading

causes of maritime engine failures. Last year,

Japanese insurance companies paid $50 million in

claims involving plastic-related engine and prop

damage.

Drifting in our seas are tens of thousands of miles of

monofilament ghost drift nets and lines. This same

netting ensnares ship props and the necks of sea lions

and turtles. Over the years, my crew have retrieved

hundreds of floating monofilament nets from the sea.

All of them contained the rotting corpses of fish and

birds.

In a well-documented beach clean-up in Orange County,

California, volunteers collected 106 million items,

weighing thirteen tons. The debris included

preproduction plastic pellets, foamed plastics, and

hard plastics; plastic constituted 99 percent of the

total material collected. The most abundant item found

on the beaches of Orange County was preproduction

plastic pellets, most of which originated from

transport losses. Approximately one quadrillion of

these pellets, or 60 billion pounds, are annually

manufactured in the United States alone. You never

hear about these spillages in the newspaper, and there

is not a single plastic pellet spillage response crew

anywhere in the world.

The plastic products that end up in the sea from

consumers constitute less than 30 percent of the total

plastics dumped into the oceans each year. The greater

amount comes from accidental spillage of plastic resin

pellets produced by the petrochemical industry for the

purpose of manufacturing consumer plastic products, or

the breakdown of finished products into Styrofoam

nodules or hard plastic particles. Plastic nodules are

lost routinely in both the shipping and manufacturing

stages, spilling from shipboard containers or from

trucks onto streets and into storm drains.

Oil spills occur every day in our oceans, and major

spills occur on average every two weeks somewhere in

the world's marine ecosystem. Although these oil

spills are notorious killers of marine wildlife, their

deadly impact is confined to relatively small areas

geographically, and the impact is reduced with time.

The Exxon Valdez spill, for example, was confined to

Alaska's Prince William Sound, and although the impact

on wildlife was felt for many years, the ecosystem is

slowly recovering. Yet this other kind of

petrochemical spill is more invasive and permanent.

This type of spill is cumulative. The spillage is

never cleaned up and removed, but accumulates

perpetually.

I don't think that I am exaggerating when I say that

the spillage of plastic resin pellets poses a

significant and unappreciated threat to survival of

sea life. The oceans are becoming plasticized. This

threat becomes more lethal each year as the cumulative

amount increases. The impact of this spillage

contributes to more casualties than all of the world's

annual oil spills, yet we know very little about the

problem. In fact, the public does not even recognize

plastic resin pellet spillage as a problem at all.

Plastic pellets also pose an additional threat. They

act as a transport medium for toxic chemicals. Many of

these pellets contain polychlorinated biphenyl's

(PCB). The chemicals were either absorbed from ambient

seawater or used in the manufacture of plasticizers

prior to the 1970's. This transfer of PCB's from

ingested pellets into birds was conclusively proven

and documented in the fatty tissues of great

shearwaters (Puffinus gravis). Studies have shown that

75 percent of all shearwaters examined contained

ingested plastic.

Of 312 species of seabirds, some 111 species, or 36

percent, are known to mistakenly ingest plastic. In

Hawaii, sixteen of the eighteen resident seabird

species are plastic ingestors, and 70 percent of this

ingestion is of floating plastic resin pellets.

Seabirds in Alaska have been found to have stomachs

entirely filled with indigestible plastic. Penguins on

South African beaches have suffered high chick

mortality from eating plastic regurgitated by the

parents, and 90 percent of blue petrel chicks examined

on South Africa's remote Marion Island had plastic

particles in their stomachs.

It is a global problem, and for seabirds there are no

safe places. For most people, the ocean is a big

toilet. The belief is that garbage, sewage, and

plastics are dispersed and taken away.

Unfortunately, nothing is really ever "taken away"; it

is simply perpetually circulated. The oceans are

pulsating with powerful currents, and these currents

keep plastic debris in constant circulation. As a

result, debris travels in what are called "gyres." The

gyre concentrates the garbage in areas where currents

meet. For example, one of the largest of these

movements in the Atlantic is called the central gyre,

and it moves in a clockwise circular pattern driven by

the Gulf Stream. The central gyre concentrates heavily

in the northern Sargasso Sea, a place that is also

host to numerous spawning fish species.

The number of floating plastic pellets found in the

Sargasso Sea has been measured in excess of 3,500

parts per square kilometer. The same ratio of 3,500

parts per square kilometer was found in the waters of

the southern coasts of Africa. This study found that

plastic pollution had increased in South African

waters from 1989 to the present by 190 percent.

Birds, turtles, and fish mistake the tiny nodules for

fish eggs. Garbage bags, plastic soda rings, and

Styrofoam particles are regularly eaten by sea

turtles. A floating garbage bag looks like a jellyfish

to a turtle. The plastic clogs the turtles'

intestines, robbing the animals of vital nutrients,

and it has been the cause of untold turtle losses to

starvation. All seven of the world's sea turtle

species suffer mortality from both plastic ingestion

and plastic entanglement. One turtle found dead off

Hawaii carried over 1,000 pieces of plastic in its

stomach and intestines. And recently, a land-based

turtle rescued in a Florida waterway by Stephen

Nordlinger was unable to submerge due to the amount of

Styrofoam trapped in its body, making it permanently

buoyant.

The amount of plastic pellets present on beaches is

astonishingly high. In New Zealand, one beach was

found to contain over 100,000 pellets per square

meter. Thus, it is not so farfetched to suggest that

people are in fact sunbathing on plastic beaches -

literally. I have stopped my ship in mid-ocean and

found flip-flops, suntan oil bottles, plastic Coke

bottles, garbage bags, and even large floating

industrial plastic sheets. In each place sampled, we

have also found plastic pellets.

Once, on the bottom of the Mediterranean off France, I

witnessed a scene that appalled me. The entire bottom

was made of plastic. Bottles and plastic bags swaying

with the tide, replacing the sea grasses and algae. It

was especially sad to see one little fish scurry from

behind a white plastic bag to take cover from me in a

sunken automobile tire.

Brushing aside another drifting white bag, I spied a

flicker of red on the bottom. What I found was a

plastic face staring up at me with a great big smile

and two enormous plastic ears. It was the decapitated

head of a Mickey Mouse doll.

It's a plastic sea out there."

Permission is hereby given by the author for this

essay to be freely distributed and/or published.

Do any straight lines exist in nature?

I stumbled across an article today from geology.com that I think may answer your original question, spaceshark. Setting aside that stuff about sea levels and Exodus, NASA's GRACE (Gravity and Recovery Climate Experiment satellite system) shows that the massive unloading stress from ice melt in Greenland is contributing to as much as 1 cm/year in uplift.

Check it out: http://geology.com/press-release/greenland-ice-sheet/

Thx Oshmunnies - i imagine the speed of the melting glaciers would be a factor too - but the idea of the earth being capable of expanding and contracting intrigues me

If something is traveling faster than the speed of light - how would you detect it? Can sound waves detect light waves?

If you subscribe to the power of infinity - Then it will have to lie in the realm of the space dimension - all of space is but a point of absolute nothingness - which everything single particle of matter is contained - thus you will have your instantaneous travel

Here I disagree with you Shark. I am not realizing anything.

 

You give me the occasion to repeat my point: creation IMHO is a human concept' date=' it is not observation. If you stick to observation, you must consider that what we call creation in usual world is in fact [u']transformation[/u].

 

I know there are elements of theories & experiments that suggest that particles can pop up from absolute nothing. It may be, but I stand extremely reticent to believe in creation from nothing. In the worst case, I prefer consider that what we call "nothing" today will be called "something" by future scientists.

 

In any case, "the ultimate power of infinity" sounds like poetry, nothing more.

The ultimate power of infinity - There is no begging or end to time and space - Everything is made up by something smaller - if we take that to infinity - then infinity runs both ways - our universe is just part of something so big we will never be able to see it - and that is part of something even bigger and so on

What I meant about our creation by the pure power of infinity was- if you arrange everything in an infinite amount of ways - eventually that created us - because time and space are infinities - all things are possible

Merged post follows:

The universe does have hot and cold spots. A star is hot. Deep space is cold. Space inside galaxies is warmer than space outside galaxies. Space inside galaxy clusters is warmer than space outside. And so on. However, on larger and larger scales, the universe gets smoother and smoother.

I guess I have to chose my words more carefully so you don't keep misinterpreting them - I thought when I said the universe has a constant temperature - You would of understood that I meant what makes up 99.9999999 of our universe -space - in case you still don't know - and yes it DOES HAVE a constant temperature

From ewire dot com

"Richard Guy in his new book "The Mysterious Receding Seas" Puts forward conclusive proof that our Planet Earth is expanding. The expansion process dictates that seas recede from shorelines worldwide making the landmass appear to rise. Guy states that the isostatic rebound theory is an error in geological interpretation. For over a century geologists have propounded that the land mass rises from the ocean by a process called isostacy.

This is because sea level datum has always been accepted as fixed in elevation. All levels on land are taken from sea level datum. This acceptance of sea level datum, as a constant, is the key factor in the geological misinterpretation. This misinterpretation gave rise to the Isostatic Theory.

The land mass does not rise, Guy states, but rather the sea levels fall creating the illusion that the land mass rises. Guy points out that sea levels have been falling for millions of years.

We fail to recognize this because successive generations accept the sea level where they find it. Each new generation is totally unaware that sea levels fall and still continue to fall. Guy cites examples from early history and the bible from Noah and the Ark to the Exodus. His findings on the Exodus are quite amazing. Guy has uncovered facts about the Exodus that no other scholar has unearthed. You will be totally convinced after reading his book. Guy proves his points clearly and convincingly and takes you into ancient history to show why all ancient civilizations evolved in the high mountains around the world.

The Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indus, Tibetan, Chinese, Incas and Aztecs all evolved at high elevations. Guy tells you why. 'The Mysterious Receding Seas" will take you back into history on an amazing journey."

If the plates are breaking a part - I would think this could be a contributing factor

Warning - Surfed on in to here to take a bite out of science - I'll gobble it all down - digest what i like - ( , ) the rest back out

LLTF

This is inaccurate. It's a very common misconception that the expansion of the universe is like an explosion from a single point. It is not. The universe does not have a center and it does not have edges. Everything is simply getting farther away from everything else' date=' on average. There is no point at which you can say the Big Bang occured. It occured everywhere.

 

Which is why....

 

..this is not an accurate picture. The universe is not like a star or a galaxy, because those things have boundaries. The universe is unbounded. It is either infinite, or it "folds back on itself," but either way, there is no amount of distance you can travel to reach an "edge."[/quote']

 

I have to disagree - If that where true - the universe would not have a constant temperature - it would have hot and cold spots - The fact that IT IS constant - means there is an external force keeping it so - plus the fact it IS NOT expanding in an constant form - also suggest there is another external force moving it - Like a cloud of smoke in the wind

 

I subscribe to the theory of infinities - everything is made up something smaller and we make up part of something infinitely bigger - Once you come to grips with that fact - You will realize how we got created - By the ultimate power of infinity

Sorry SpaceShark,

 

You're going to have to define 'things' and 'see.'

It's my understanding our universe is expanding since the big bang from a singular point - So we will only be able to gather information as far away as light has traveled since then

See with x-Ray telescopes, gravity detectors, gamma detectors? Not sure any of these constitute 'see.' Though they might.

It's just a distance gauge for our capabilities to gather information

What 'things' have [/i']to be traveling faster than C?

I was just thinking that there has to be more than one universe - like there are billions of suns in our galaxy - and there are billions of galaxies in our universe - Wouldn't there be billions of universes inside - lets just call it God since we don't have a name for it yet

Light would be to slow of a median to bind them together - what ever binds matter together would have to travel at - Ok don't call be crazy - Infinity Speed - Go a head and laugh now - but for some weird reason I know I'm right

Why? If space itself (is--or has in the past) expanded at faster than C' date=' why would 'things' have to receed faster, on their own?

 

Just trying to figure out what you're asking.

 

Bill Wolfe[/quote']

 

Now I'm trying to figure out what you're saying

I stared thinking what would really happen if the polar ice caps really melted away - Everyone all ways focuses on the effects of the rising seas - But I started thinking - what other effects could happen

If water weighs 62 lbs a cubic foot - so when you start displacing billions upon billions of metric tons around - Shit is going to happen - My guess is the pressure released from the polar caps will cause frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions

I believe a continental plate could crack under all that stress - when it has to realign itself to match for the new external gravitational pressures

So my question is - Do ice caps have a force in moving the plate tectonics?

SpaceShark

I've been having some thoughts lately and just want to put them out here.

1) We can only see as far as light has traveled since the big bang.

2)If there are other universes - than something has to be able to travel faster than the speed of light in order for them to form - Could this be what binds matter together?

3)If something is traveling faster than light - How would we be able to see it - In the subatomic world -things need to be observed

4)Black holes are dark because light can not escape it - In order for than to happen - things have to be traveling faster than the speed of light

5) Could this be the creation of "Dark Matter"

Those are my thoughts for today

SpaceShark