The true cost of oil: Garth Lenz @ TEDxVictoria

In the beginning of the US the people who where more intellectual went North and the animal types that liked African based slavery went South.

Your posts are often eccentric, but always entertaining !

Three members of my family helped both the law banning slavery to be enacted through both houses of the British Parliament, and later the Law allowing the Royal Navy to seize ships, without slaves, but rigged for slaving.

One of my other ancestors served as a very young (16)officer with General Ross's 1814 expedition to burn the public buildings in Washington. Curiously, it was the slaves of Pres.Madison who saved Gen.Washington's portrait.Washington was noted to be a harsh slave owner, with over 300 slaves. This is evidenced by the significant number of his slaves who ran away to fight for the British forces.

Not a commonly talked about aspect of Washington's character!

Slavery has been given a more negative image in recent years that didn't match reality from back then.

In the North many white people who were poor in Europe would enter into "temporary slavery" in order to pay for the trip.

Obviously you can see the finances in this...

In the North you had to pay a lot of money to get a European to come and work and then you would lose them after a few years.

In the South you could buy an African and get more work out of them and even be able to breed them for more profits.

From the very beginning the use of Africans as workers was discouraged in the North. It's only the big plantations in the South that needed vaste amounts of labor where Africans were necessary to drive the economy.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Quincy_Adams_and_abolitionism

John Adams (my relative was Sam Adams, so not directly related) as president was strongly against the use of permanent African labor, so pretty much from the start it was controversial.

People these days are trying to make America "look bad" by distorting the truth, but in reality the issue of slavery was thought of as like the issue of labor. People allowed themselves to be "wage slaves" just like today.

Anyone who has ever worked a day in their life "knows" what being a slave means.

Slavery means you have a "boss".

Only the independent entrepeneur is without a slave master, but they must be subservient to the marketplace to run their business, so in a way they are not totally free either.

The family farmer was the "ideal" because it was seen as the closest to pure freedom that was possible.

Once we moved from country to city, freedom in our lives has decreased because we are more and more dependent on our "masters" whether they be our bosses or our governments.

Those Founders had an understanding of freedom that was far deeper than we have today... we are actually "less free" these days than they were back then because we serve so many masters now.

Beer helped !

Beer increases GABA in the brain which tends to create that sense of "freedom". As we move into the use of other drugs we have tended to forget the freedom of that state. One could argue that without beer the Founders (and the whole society) would have been too fearful of government (the British) and not have rebelled.

So the freedom to oppose government power came from GABA in the brain !!!

(funny but true)
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... provide a link to a reputable source that explains it in a bit more detail.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

Although I do not usually quote the UK's Guardian newspaper, I thought that the article titled;

"Health risks of shipping pollution have been 'underestimated''by John Vidal, environment editor
Guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 April 2009 . might provide you with some insight into the problems associated with this highly toxic pollutant.

Since 2009, more research has been undertaken. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has conducted alarming studies on the damage to marine life. Other studies have revealed that the effects of bunker oil pollution are far more devastating than simple oil spills, like Deep Water Horizon.

The damage caused by toxic bunker oil pollution to the oceans ability to act as a 'carbon sink', has not yet been accurately assessed, but the early tests reveal far greater damage than previously thought.

The environmental damage is just one aspect. The fact that over 60-160,000 thousand death from cancer per year are attributed to bunker oil carcinogens, and more than 3 million new cancer victims each year, is also a reason to abolish this toxic product.

But since 85% of all bunker oil related deaths are in the northern hemisphere, Australians are very fortunate.

But what of the thousands of Large container vessels passing through the precious Great Barrier Reef each year ? So far, Australia's been very lucky. On 3 April 2010, bulk coal carrier Shen Neng 1, ran aground on Douglas Shoals, spilling up to four tonnes of oil into the water and causing extensive damage to the reef.

The fuel spilled was luckily only from the vessels far less toxic, auxiliary diesel tanks, but each vessel has the ability to spill thousands of tonnes of highly toxic, spill dispersal resistant, bunker oil. Such an event would effectively destroy the Great Barrier Reef, forever !

Interestingly, Shipping fuels were left out of the Kyoto agreement. They are also exempt from of Julia Gillard's Carbon Tax.

Mt. Stromboli and Mt. Etna, (just outside Naples a major city) in Italy by themselves emit Sulfur in the range of 100 Tons per day - 36,000 tons / year. Global volcanic sulfur emissions are averaging about 17,500,000 tons per year (look it up) and can be much greater with a major eruption. It follows, if shipping emissions kill over 60,000 people per year, 1/3 of them in Europe, that would imply that the very much larger natural emissions would kill more people every year than World War 2. Not something that I have noticed, so I would have to question the assumptions behind the numbers.. Shopping for research grant money with scary headlines?

Interesting comment...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships-create-pollution-cars-world.html

You have to be skeptical of claims of "millions of cancer deaths" from something because it's often hard to identify the true cause. My own father died of cancer and we "assume" it's because he was exposed to excessive xrays as a kid, but we're just guessing. We have no idea what caused his cancer.

So as someone with personal experience with cancer in the family I'm a little offended by the jump to conclusions.

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Don't want to steer the thread off track too much more, but the situation in Mali brings up some old slavery issues...

Timbuktu (main city of Mali) was once a power center of the Muslim Empire.

The Muslims were the ones that practiced widespread slavery for something like 500 years before the practice was transplanted to the American South.

Just wanted people to realize that with Al Qaeda (radical Islam) coming back we are reliving old events.

Slavery was practiced by the Muslims in the same place that the French are bombing today.

Very interesting... history likes to repeat itself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/opinion/a-widening-war-in-mali.html?_r=0

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@ Safe,

Being Australian, (by way of UK) I absolutely support your belief in the beneficial aspects of beer ! Beer has always been supported by colonial administrations as it was healthier than the local water supply, encouraged diversified farming, and discouraged the consumption of distilled liquor.

Australian Beers are mostly lagers, and tend to have higher alcoholic content than US beer.

Cheers !

The economics of institutionalised slavery, is very interesting. Slavery undoubtedly retarded the development of advanced technology in the Roman Empire, and along with environmental depletion, contributed to the empires demise.

Relationships between Master and Slave, Master and Servant, are very complex. Much has been written about the idea that slavery is harmful to both master and slave. Both become enslaved by a degrading institution.

Some of the indigenous tribes of America practised slavery prior to European settlement.

A point to marcopolo.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/science/earth/burning-fuel-particles-do-more-damage-to-climate-than-thought-study-says.html

duplicate removed

Warren.

I would caution against using the idea that global warming is a matter of "rates".

The "Climate Cycle" is better seen as having a "trigger mechanism".

Once the polar ice melts (which it will no matter if humans help or not) the oceans will lose their saltiness and the ocean currents will slow. This reduces heat distribution and creates an "Extreme Earth" of very hot at the equator and very cold on the poles.

What man has done is "pull the trigger" on the climate change.

But the point is that it would have happened anyway !!!!

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So much of the "climate hysteria" is driven by a false view that climate is supposed to be constant. (it's not)

Basically it's "okay" to embrace "global warming" accelerated by mankind, but it's in the larger context of the inevitable "Climate Cycle", so at the end of the day nothing we are doing matters.

That's the "grand concept" that no one seems to get... the climate changes whether we exist or not, but only the timing is slightly different.

Global warming is "real" (has been for 20,000 years) and it will melt the poles and raise the oceans.

We must accept that the "Climate Cycle" is not "stoppable" and nothing humans can do matters.

It's apparent that "fear" of climate is more powerful than "knowledge" of it's cycles and physics.

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Basically we are "doomed" to climate change... we try to imagine ways to deny the coming reality, but when we think deeply and are honest with our knowedge we realize we cannot prevent what is coming.

(it's a fatalistic situation)

No one seems to be able to handle the truth. :(
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