Suggested Discussion Outline

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Suggested Discussion Outline

Post by johnkarls »

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A. Major Threats To Our Oceans

A-1. Oil spills.

A-2. Acidification from carbon dioxide > carbonic acid (ocean acidification is the “flip side of the coin” of global warming from atmospheric carbon, 30%-50% of which is absorbed by our oceans which convert the carbon to carbonic acid).

A-3. Overfishing in general and modern trawlers in particular.

A-3-a. Trawler nets are often compared to bulldozing tropical rain forests -- but 160 times as much ocean bottom is destroyed annually as rain forests!!!

A-3-b. “Bycatch” -- or destroying everything caught in your nets (or by your 40-mile-long thousands-of-hooks fishing lines) that isn’t what you’re fishing for.

A-3-c. “Catch and Move On” which is the pervasive policy of the fishing industry = deplete fish stocks to the point of collapse and then move on to deplete other kinds of fish stocks to the point of collapse. (Has anyone seen Clam Chowder on a restaurant menu in the last decade???)

A-4-d. Destroying the marine life on “seamounts” (or sea mountains in the middle of the ocean that are not high enough to break the surface to comprise islands) -- which was pioneered by the Soviets in 1969 but comprises a special application of “catch and move on” since it occurs in the “ocean deeps” of international waters.


B. What We Can Do About Oil Spills


C. What We Can Do About Ocean Acidification

C-1. Please note that every time we discuss global warming, we consider the threshold question of whether any of us is willing to propose invading, for example, China to prevent it from bringing on line a new monster-size coal-fired electric plant EVERY DAY. [None of us has ever favored invading China.]

C-2. Please note that at our 10/10/2012 meeting, we agreed that thorium reactors should be employed to eliminate global warming because, inter alia (1) they produce no greenhouse-gas emissions, (2) they are both safer and cheaper than any other energy source so that all of the world’s nations will adopt them if for no other reason than self interest, and (3) they were successfully tested in an 18-month pilot project 50 years ago at the nation’s nuclear-power-research laboratory at Oak Ridge [thorium reactors did not become the standard because Adm. Hyman Rickover favored uranium reactors for nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers for reasons that did not include safety (for which other more-radical measures could be employed) or economy.]

C-3. Accordingly, perhaps we should recommend thorium reactors once more, this time as a solution for oceanic acidification.


D. What We Can Do About Overfishing In General And Modern Trawlers In Particular

D-1. National Territorial Waters

D-1-a. The U.S. and other nations can designate marine-life sanctuaries.
D-2-b. NB that most if not all of the developed countries led by Japan and Europe (including Russia in particular) have the most rapacious fishing industries.
D-2-c. NB that many developing countries sell the right to rape their territorial waters to provide governmental revenue.

D-2. High Seas (outside the territorial limits of 200 nautical miles + outer-continental shelf to an additional distance of 150 nautical miles)

D-2-a. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea requires signatories to practice conservation.
D-2-b. As previously mentioned, the developed countries led by Japan and Europe (including Russia in particular) are the most rapacious in violating this principle vis-à-vis the sea mountains that permeate the High Seas.
D-2-c. [Thank you for indulging me my Homage to Cecil Olmstead, Esq., who was the Moving Force behind the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea -- the Homage was attached to last week's e-mail and is posted in the "Participant Comments" section for our 9/11/2013 meeting on www. ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.]

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