Anchors Cause “extensive, persistent” Damage to Seafloor

[flightlead404]

Originally Posted by Bowdrie

My understanding was that TEL was originally introduced as a way to increase performance in aircraft engines to eliminate "knocking/detonation" at higher altitudes.

No, automobile engines. However the single biggest source of TEL is now piston engine aircraft (at least in the US).

Originally Posted by Bowdrie

One of the persons in the study was noted as being a "lecturer".
Well, I don't know about you, but I'm tired of being "lectured to" by people who get paid to find problems, (or invent them,) that always end-up requiring me in some way-shape-or-form to shell-out more money to "solve problems" that never go away.

Head, meet sand

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by flightlead404

Its also interesting to compare statistics on violent crime with lead in the atmosphere skewed 20 years. Lead is known to cause behavioral issues along with the concomitant drop in IQ.

Indeed.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by SaylorMade

6.000 km2 is 0,0016 percent of the ocean area.

Stuff like this draws attention away from the real problems, of which there are plenty.

Very common to show what appears to be a big number without providing context.

Of course, more important would be to consider viable coastal anchoring location areas (still likely to be a tiny percentage of the area). Of course, there are already plenty of anchoring restrictions:
- No anchoring in channels.
- No anchoring in sea grass.
- No anchoring in coral.

Generally, these aren't a bad idea...particularly for large commercial vessels and in normal times, I expect you will find the vast majority of anchoring occurs in relatively confined locations (ie: right outside of ports)

Of course, right now, things are all buggered up with supply chain issues and there is a lot more anchoring of large ships than is normal (they only make money when they are making miles, so owners really don't want their ships anchored).

In the longer term, one potential solution is timing. If you are doing a 10day pacific run and your berth won't be open until day 12, there's no point steaming ahead at full speed only to anchor for 2 days. Slow down, so you arrive just as the berth is freeing up. It's not a 100% solution but even if it's a 75% solution, it helps a lot:
- Ship may want to go faster to stay clear of a storm.
- There may be delays in the berth opening up.

Of course a lot of port delays are man made where they have rules in place that limit efficiency.

Then there is the question of if disturbance is just disturbance or if it's damage. For a long time, we had policies to stop forest fires as soon as possible by any means possible to protect the wilderness. What happened was you stockpiled more and more fuel until it reached the point where the fires were much worse. They have finally started to realize that after the fire, you see a burst of new growth with many species benefitting from the disturbance. Is there any similar effect with anchoring? Particularly in barrier island areas, it's completely normal for the sea bottom to shift and change over time.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by flightlead404

Well I am, I'm not breeding. We have way too many people on this planet already. We collectively as a species are way past the point at which we should be talking about mandatory global birth control.

The planet probably does have way too many people. I've never actually seen a carrying capacity study to address this question, but evidence certainly supports this assertion.

But it's a problem rapidly approaching a solution. Peak global population is expected to happen in a few short decades from now. Could come as early as 2050, or might be as late as around 2100. Either way, it's coming fast, and very soon (from an ecological standpoint).

We don't need mandatory birth control. We already know what leads to lower fertility rates: wealth and education, especially for women. If we want people to stop having so many children, the answer is make them wealthier and give them access to better education.

[GordMay]

Two billion years ago, cyanobacteria oxygenated the atmosphere and powerfully disrupted life on Earth. Although cyanobacteria introduced oxygen to the atmosphere, atmospheric oxygen levels were stagnant, and rose to only about 10% of our present-day levels. Those low levels persisted for almost 2 billion years.
Homo sapiens sapiens have materially changed our world, in a century, or two.
And, we’re the first species, that’s become a planet-scale influence, and is aware of that reality [some of us, at least].

How life shaped Earth

”... While our species may be unique in producing massive global change in a very short time, we are not the only ecosystem engineers. In fact, the natural world around us has been shaped by living organisms in many ways that don’t immediately meet the eye...
... A major turning point in the history of life on Earth was the ‘Great Oxygenation Event’ around 2.4 billion years ago, when photosynthetic microbes related to today’s cyanobacteria converted an anaerobic biosphere into a largely aerobic one. The change to the atmosphere by itself is already one of the biggest Earth-shaping changes that life has made, but its knock-on effects also reached into other parts of the Earth system, including minerals...
... It is probably not a coincidence that the ‘Great Oxygenation Event’ was shortly followed by the first of the ‘Snowball Earth’ episodes, when the Earth went into a deep freeze, and became enveloped in ice. That’s quite a trick for a single-celled organism to pull off. ...”

➥ https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...60982215010908

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

The planet probably does have way too many people. I've never actually seen a carrying capacity study to address this question, but evidence certainly supports this assertion.

But it's a problem rapidly approaching a solution. Peak global population is expected to happen in a few short decades from now. Could come as early as 2050, or might be as late as around 2100. Either way, it's coming fast, and very soon (from an ecological standpoint).

We don't need mandatory birth control. We already know what leads to lower fertility rates: wealth and education, especially for women. If we want people to stop having so many children, the answer is make them wealthier and give them access to better education.

Famine will dictate population control, and very soon.
Arable land is fast approaching final death thanks to chemical fertizers that have been used extensively to feed the explosion in populations.. when that happens the dust bowls and desertification will spread unstoppably.. our water resources have also been abused and severely depleted.
Sure, certain areas will kinda survive the droughts because of location in the world yet, even the UK, constantly moaned about because of rain has water shortages every summer.
To many people, to little space for natural ground water accumulation because the best areas are concreted over.
Plus.. Look what one little regional war is doing right now..
But hey.. I'm sure the CF scientists (Google Searchers) know better..

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Famine will dictate population control, and very soon.

Been saying since at least the 1960s and since then population has more than doubled.

So, ................. not yet. But a few more anchor drags should do it.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

The planet probably does have way too many people. I've never actually seen a carrying capacity study to address this question, but evidence certainly supports this assertion.

But it's a problem rapidly approaching a solution. Peak global population is expected to happen in a few short decades from now. Could come as early as 2050, or might be as late as around 2100. Either way, it's coming fast, and very soon (from an ecological standpoint).

We don't need mandatory birth control. We already know what leads to lower fertility rates: wealth and education, especially for women. If we want people to stop having so many children, the answer is make them wealthier and give them access to better education.

Outside of Africa, the rest of the world is already at or below replacement fertility rates and falling. Even Africa is dropping fast. The overall world fertility rate has dropped by about half since the 1950's and is a hair above replacement rates. Probably will fall below in the next few years.

I suspect wealth and education are the result more than the cause of lower fertility rates (correlation vs causation question).
- Before recent times, it was financially beneficial to have large families. They were effectively free labor that cost very little to maintain and when you got old, they were your retirement plan. Even highly educated well-off couples typically had lots of kids.
- Now, it's frowned upon to expect kids to work (or even do chores). It's not uncommon for parents to be supporting them into their 20's (sometimes beyond). They are a huge financial drain and fewer and fewer expect to live with their kids when they get old. The wealthy and well educated were simply the first to make the transition as they more often had work that didn't benefit from having the cheap labor that kids provided.

By having fewer kids, people have more time to gain wealth. It's now typical for both parents to work which substantially increases income. With the extra wealth and fewer kids, parents can afford to send them further into the education system while saving to pay for their retirement years.

You can argue if it's good or bad for the social fabric of society but we've pretty much peaked in terms of population...just a matter of calling the exact date.

[grantmc]

Originally Posted by StuM

Ah yes, Picton Harbour.
I wonder what all those little magenta anchors with crosses over them mean? They seem to cover just about the whole harbour.

Yes Stu there are number of areas where anchoring is restricted in the Picton Harbour, almost all the restrictions are because otherwise a boat would be in the paths of the ferries or the large number of smaller commercial boats. It's a dangerous place for little boats. and there are crashes far too often.

[flightlead404]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

The planet probably does have way too many people. I've never actually seen a carrying capacity study to address this question, but evidence certainly supports this assertion.

But it's a problem rapidly approaching a solution. Peak global population is expected to happen in a few short decades from now. Could come as early as 2050, or might be as late as around 2100. Either way, it's coming fast, and very soon (from an ecological standpoint).

We don't need mandatory birth control. We already know what leads to lower fertility rates: wealth and education, especially for women. If we want people to stop having so many children, the answer is make them wealthier and give them access to better education.

Malthus was right!

We can either be proactive and begin to limit population now, or our population will be reactively limited due to the four horsemen (who are already making their presence known).

[thinwater]

Another solution is scheduling. Schedule arrivals to match dock and longshoreman slots. Imperfect, I'm sure, but airports do it. You don't take off until they have a slot to land. You couldn't eliminated the problem, but I'm guessing you could reduce it, and perhaps there would be other advantages. Steam slower saving fuel. Smarter weather routing. Perhaps the loading sequence at the other end could be adjusted (no point in loading a ship that won't have an unloading slot for a week). In many cases anchor could be avoided entirely.

[GordMay]

How far will global population rise? Researchers can’t agree

The UN says world population will plateau at 10.9 billion by the end of the century. Other demographic research groups forecast earlier, and smaller peaks, with global population reaching 9.7 billion by 2070, and then declining.

More about ➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02522-6

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by flightlead404

We can either be proactive and begin to limit population now, or our population will be reactively limited due to the four horsemen (who are already making their presence known).

What do you propose?

Short of crop dusting sub-sahara africa with some sort of sterility drug, we are naturally on a fast track to limiting and reducing population, simply by people choosing not to reproduce.

China ended the "1 child" policy and I think they are up to a "3 child" policy but hardly anyone is biting. China is facing a massive demographic collapse because they moved so quickly.

The population in the west is only holding because of immigration.
Japan's population is already dropping by a few hundred thousand per year.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

... The population in the west is only holding because of immigration...

To maintain a stable population, without immigration, a country’s fertility rate needs to be at the ‘replacement level’ of 2.1 births per woman.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by GordMay

To maintain a stable population, without immigration, a country’s fertility rate needs to be at the ‘replacement level’ of 2.1 births per woman.

N. America is at 1.8
Europe is at 1.6

Latin America is at 2.0
Asia is at 2.2

It's only Africa at 4.4 that is well above but it's also the fastest dropping rate but all areas are dropping.