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"NEW ORLEANS - The "Dead Zone" off the Louisiana coast mapped this week is 6,662 square miles ? or about the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, Dr. Nancy Rabalais, Chief Scientist for Northern Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Studies reported on Friday. The low oxygen waters extended from near the Mississippi River to the Louisiana/Texas border."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060728/ap_on_sc/dead_zone;_ylt=AsWrK9nf4_pd3DVbz5B3XZr737YB;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MzV0MTdmBHNlYwM3NTM-

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Keep tuned. It will just keep getting larger and larger ... until there isn't any seafood left.

People are amazinglhy short-sighted.


DA Morgan
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actually, if you would bother to read the link, you'd see that it has gotten considerably smaller than it was at its largest. so it is not "keep(ing) getting larger and larger). try reading something before you comment on it.


the more man learns, the more he realises, he really does not know anything.
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dehammer wrote:
"you'd see that it has gotten considerably smaller than it was"

Which is truly fascinating in view of the fact that the very first sentence in the linked article states:

"which increased with this year's measurement, is 5,000 square miles."

Try reading for comprehension. That is was larger in the past does not mean it isn't growing. When spring turns to summer do the days always get warmer with a straight linear progression?


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perhaps you should take your own advice. it was much bigger in 2004 than it is now. it shrinks and grows every year, this year it grew more then expected. just because it grew toward summer (as it was expected to) does not mean its going to "keep getting larger and larger ... until there isn't any seafood left."


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Very little, if anything, related to local climate has no fluctuation.

Perhaps if DA had used 'the trend is such that this will continue to get larger over the years' you would not have opposed the issue dehammer?

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they have been working on making it smaller, and have had some success. so it is not actually getting larger over the years if the size was considerably larger two years ago than it is now. making global statements like "until there isn't any seafood left" is either nothing but hyperbole, or a statement to intended to insult everyone.

no. Da made that statement intended to show that humans were destroying the world without care. the fact that is has been under some control for the last several years is proof against that. DA also refuses to read things to find out what the stories are about before he pontificates on them.


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For a moment, let us accept all that as true.

Let us not get derailed. The main topic as I understand it is that the 'dead zone' grew last year? Did this happen in spite of the attempts to address the issue?

Is a dead zone normally around in some size, i.e. when did we first notice it?

Because someone exagerates does not make the issue more important, nor does it automatically make it false.

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Too many nitrates in the run off apparently.

I wonder if they can filter the mississippi for nitrates chemically to reduce the damage? Some type of chemical 'lock'.

I don't think there is any reason to think with will increase very much. However I certainly understand why they want to minimize the dead zone.

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1st off i made a mistake (from memory of reading the article) i said it was bigger in 2004, but it was 2002 instead.

another thing is that, contray to DA, view it is already being worked on. its not shortsighted at all.

Quote:
Federal environmental officials are quite aware of the role Midwestern nitrogen plays in creating the dead zone. In January the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency presented Congress an "action plan" for resuscitating the gulf by 2015. The proposed $15 billion plan calls for funding research that tracks the flow of nitrogen in the basin. It would also support incentive-based programs for getting farmers and other landowners to reduce the amount of nitrogen they send south by 30 percent.
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/volunteer/julaug01/hypoxia.html

we just did not realise 40 years ago when the amount of nitrates that hit the gulf was only half what it is now, that there was such a big amount of damage. Now that we are aware of it, were likely to be able to do more about it. It will just take time and money.

i wonder if there is any way they can find a sea plant that will thrive in the low oxigen conditions of summer and still be in good shape in the high oxigen (relatively speaking) of winter.


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Zythryn it is not just nitrates. It is also phosphates and numerous other nasties.

The simple solution, given the US produces far too much food, is to stop using so much and move more and more agriculture to so-called organic (how I hate this use of the word) farming.

Acre for acre it produces far more food and far more farm profit.


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only if the market will bear it. as it is, the profit margin would not be enough to cover the difference unless it maintain the level it is now. going to largely "organic" produce would cut out a large amount of the difference in price. as soon as that happen, the larger profit would disappear and the larger cost would still be there to be assorbed. even the "organic" farming is not as profitable as many people think. Most of the money from farming actually goes to the processors and such, rather than the farmers.


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And if the market won't bear it then we just keep poisoning the gulf. Sounds like a winner to me.

But being a true capitalist I propose we just increaes the cost of food grown with nitrates and phosphates to include the cost of removing them from run-off. That ought to clinch it.


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of course, your right (please watch out for the dripping pools of sarcasm). it has to be just like you say because your the expert on everything or we will totally destroy the universe in the next 24 hours.

in case you have not bother to open your eyes bigger than the total shut mind of yours, there are people looking for ways to fix it. people who have degrees in the areas that are involved with this. people who are capable of doing more than teaching. they are looking at ALL solutions, such as economical, chemical, biological, and ecological. farmers are looking at various solutions themselves and the government is looking for solution. this does not look to me to be so shortsighted. it is extremely more longsighted than your bare glance solution. IF YOU are not through pontificating on how everyone but you cant see the problems or the solutions, why not just open up your own church and proclaim yourself god. If you had any common sense, you would realise that the problem is way to big to be fixed with a tiny solution. Perhaps you could make a suggestion that some of the farmers could go to organic crop growing, but to set there and think that you can make global decisions and statements and keep any kind of credibility is extremely childish.

no, there are solutions that they are working on. in the small amount of research I've done already, I've seen several suggestions that they are trying, from bringing new types of sea plants, that can handle the lower oxygen and will raise the o2 levels, to the possibility of putting various types of plant and animals in the rivers that that have the potential of reducing pollutions, to government subsides to changing the types of farming done, to putting chemicals in the river to leach out the pollutants, to various types of crop rotations.

to make it short, i don't like your holier than thou attitude coming in here and telling everyone that everyone but you is destroying the earth and no one but you is smart enough to realise this. that attitude does not help the situation and does nothing but inflame people. If you doing nothing but trying to start fights, why pretend that you care.


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Some people are looking for a cure for AIDS too. Do you plan on having unprotected sex and hope that they will find the cure in time to save you?

That people are trying to solve a problem does not:
A) mean they will succeed
B) mean they will succeed in a timely manner
C) mean you be irresponsible about the problem

Or does it in your opinion?


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oh, but the fact that they have not yet succeeded means you can make global statements about them not even trying or worse, no one but you cares? Unless you are the one that discovered it, the fact that it is known and they are working on it means that others care even more than you could ever understand. WHEN you are the one that is sole supporter for change, then you can make such statements until then you are doing nothing but making every situation worse.

you brag about driving a fast, over powered, automobile the manufacturing of which required the production of way more pollutants than required, so that you can sail in around in a sail boat that was created using chemicals that are harmful to the earth, the decry how everyone else is causing so much damage. then you try to make it look like your ashamed of how all the other Americans are such uncaring polluters. you decry and insult any attempt to find alternative fuels, or ways of growing things that require less fuel, then claim its the others that don't care. you make wide sweeping claims that the entire ocean will be destroy soon, despite the fact that if you would bother to read anything but the titles, you would know that its a relatively small area, and they are working hard at reducing it already.

why are you hear but to insult and put down everyone else. i don't see you coming up with any slightly reasonably researched ideas. If you had done the slightest research on the idea of transforming an entire area (covering several states) to a very expensive form of farming, without even considering making it slightly financial feasible, you would know that was the absolutely worse idea. It proved you know nothing about the idea.

i showed you several things they are thinking of and showed you that its not something that has a large risk of becoming fatal to the planet in any kind of time frame yet you keep insisting that it will destroy the worlds sea. cant you even take a couple of minutes from your extremely selfish life to see what is really happening in the world. if you time is so valuable that you can even be bother to read the articles your are pontificating about, perhaps you need to spend less time here.

worse of all, you have the audacity to accuse others of pontificating while you are doing nothing else. At least im willing to look into the situation to see if there is anything i can do, instead of deliberately bragging about how im making it worse.

do you even know that the goverment is already paying farmers to set aside land to assorb the chemicals before they reach the rivers? there are plants that can put the chemicals into the air in forms that are helpfull to the planet.

Quote:
That people are trying to solve a problem does not:
A) mean they will succeed
but it does mean they are trying and that if one forms does not succeed another will or atleast they will keep trying.

Quote:
B) mean they will succeed in a timely manner
so where's the fire. they have slowed the growth down at worse, and have kept it below the worse years for four years now. its not growing, its not spreading, its not getting worse. the damage was already done, but due to the timely efforts of all the people that have been working one it for the last 40 years, its not gotten worse. so why is there a need for "timely manner" of fixing the problem.

Quote:
C) mean you be irresponsible about the problem
im sure a lot less irresposible than someone who claims its not even been noticed. Have you even bother to look at what the causes really are. have you even bother to see what has succeeded so far... oh yea, you claim they have not done any succeeding. Have you bother to see if there is anything you can do.... oh, your too busy blaming the problems of the world on everyone else to consider that you are just as responsible as anyone else that does not care.

they are working one it. they will find a solution that works.

IF you want to help, start buying organicly grown foods so that it will increase the market for them and decrease the market for traditionally grown foods.


the more man learns, the more he realises, he really does not know anything.

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