Red Tide that bad??? (Clearwater: standard of living, authority, to eat)

[beach43ofus]

Nature has its reason/purpose for Red Tide, we just don't know what it is yet.

[craigiri]

An old timeline exposes some of the reality including attempts at cover up. In those good old days, even Mote admitted that human activity made it much worse...ah, for the good old days before Red Tide Rick....

http://crca.caloosahatchee.org/crca_...e_Timeline.pdf

The gems from that time line include.....

1998 - the start of a YEARLY blooms.

Cover-ups "Sarasota County health officials propose posting red-tide alert signs on area
beaches, but tourism officials warn that they could have an adverse affect. "

Researchers at Manhattan's Haskins Laboratories report that freshwater runoff
contributes to red-tide blooms by reducing the salinity of ocean water and boosting levels of
various nutrients. As algae feed on the nutrients, said the scientists, they release a toxin. As fish
begin to die from the toxin, bacteria attacking the carcasses further feed the algae, creating a
"biological chain reaction."

"The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reports that "red-tide blooms are correlated with years
of high rainfall and heavy freshwater discharge from the western rivers of the Florida peninsula."
This discharge, says the corps report, "seems to bring in some nutrient which leads to a bloom ...
when other conditions are right."

I could go on, but read the document (and others) for yourselves. It's clear that Mote was never in the business of finding causes and cures - rather is being paid for "prediction and monitoring" and now for studying "spraying clay and ozone" to mitigate it. In fact, our local paper has an article about a new "scientist" who Mote hired and the entire article including quotes from her doesn't mention one word about human activity. Sickening, IMHO.

No doubt we have gone backwards due to head in the sand thinking and rollbacks in the last decade of planned fixes. The bigger question is what we will do going forward. Job #1 is exposing the lies and cover-ups of which I intend to help with (not here - elsewhere and in my support of certain orgs)...

Whatever your opinion(s), facts remain. I would hope Floridians put pressure on the government and stop with the complete denial.

[duffer47]

The biggest contributing factor to our environment is the ever increasing Earth's population. This will continue to put a strain on our resources and affect our quality of life. The Earth's population is currently near 7.7 billion and is increasing by 83 million each year and the rate will only increase as time goes by. In just 100 years between 1900 to 2000 the population increased from 1.5 billion to to 6.1 billion a dramatic increase. The need to grow more food will only add to the demand for more fertilization and use of previously undeveloped land. See the link to the World Population clock.
World Population Clock: 7.7 Billion People (2018) - Worldometers

[beach43ofus]

If Mote, or anyone else, had a cure for it, it would already be implemented. Mote is trying to determine the root causes for it because there is so much tourism commerce at stake. Mote even ran a test on a chemical/machine/filter they came up with and tested it on a small scale in a canal a few weeks ago. I never heard about the results of that test, so I guess it wasn't successful.

[srq57]

Mosiac is Mote's biggest sponsor and contributor. Whatever Mote finds, the results will always be questioned because of this suspect alliance.

[beach43ofus]

Originally Posted by srq57

Mosiac is Mote's biggest sponsor and contributor. Whatever Mote finds, the results will always be questioned because of this suspect alliance.

Is there any real science anymore? Is any scientist in Florida impartial?

We need the winds to shift. Today, they are 19-26mph out of the Northwest. That is a bad combination

[craigiri]

Originally Posted by beach43ofus

Is there any real science anymore? Is any scientist in Florida impartial?

We need the winds to shift. Today, they are 19-26mph out of the Northwest. That is a bad combination

Army Corp of Engineers, NASA, NOAA, many of the unpaid (by the state) Scientists at Florida Universities, etc.
My nephew is a trained marine biologist and my daughter is an engineer and lawyer in the environmental field. They have no axes to grind except to live cleanly and clean up things for others. My Nephew was raised in Fl but left for coastal SC because he saw it was basically hopeless given the political situation.

Since the maps show that it extends many miles out (that means thousands of square miles), a little wind shift is not going to tell the tale. This would be like sitting in Bhopal, India during their poisoning and having a personal fan to blow the stuff away from you.

We are talking TRILLIONS of gallons of poisoned water. It doesn't decide to go away in a day or a week.

We know what you think. Let's talk more about what IS. What unaffiliated Scientists and Biologists know...and, yes, what they guess.

We know, for example, that Mote and FWC and other paid-off orgs are not in the business of finding and fixing the sources of excess nutrients. They are in the business of telling us where the poisons are and also trying to come up with ridiculous ideas about injecting ozone in the water. That might work for a pool, but not for Quadrillions of gallons. They may as well research how to steer hurricanes in another direction.

[craigiri]

Originally Posted by duffer47

The biggest contributing factor to our environment is the ever increasing Earth's population. This will continue to put a strain on our resources and affect our quality of life. The Earth's population is currently near 7.7 billion and is increasing by 83 million each year and the rate will only increase as time goes by. In just 100 years between 1900 to 2000 the population increased from 1.5 billion to to 6.1 billion a dramatic increase. The need to grow more food will only add to the demand for more fertilization and use of previously undeveloped land. See the link to the World Population clock.
World Population Clock: 7.7 Billion People (2018) - Worldometers

This was the case when there was 100 million or 1 billion people. An environmental disaster. However, we learned a lot of things since that time.

There are things you can change and things you cannot. We can throw our hands up and say "too many people", but it's not the people who decided to put Lake O water into the Gulf. It's not the people who decided on lax regulations for the phosphate industry and who shipped most of it to the former USSR.

I think people have to come around to this....doing things right costs a little more. Especially at first. But the cost/benefit ratio is very good and investment in systems pays off.

Take a very basic thing like the cesspools and septic regs that Scott decided not to put in place. He is effectively saying "poop is good for our waters because it saves some homeowners money". We can't do things that way anymore.

We can look at places vastly more populated than coastal Florida and they are taking action - like Hong Kong....

https://www.cleanharbour.gov.hk/en/home.html

Boston Harbor used to be a sewer and chemical dump. Now boaters, fishermen and tourists abound. It costs money but what good is money in the bank if we have to sit inside?

[beach43ofus]

"overpopulation", I did my part...1 child, so reduced population by 50%. Also reduced the # of cars, homes, sq ft of home by 50% too. I'll spare you the list of other measures I've taken.

"put Lake O water into the Gulf and Atlantic"...I have not researched this enough yet, but I read the "save the Everglades" environmentalists were a contributing cause of those 2 canals being dug to divert the dirty water away from the Everglades that was naturally filtering the filth as the flow headed South so by the time it reached the seas, it was clean. What I'd like to know is, were the Everglades showing great distress and habitat loss from the natural Southern flow of dirty water which compelled action, or not? I'd like to learn more about that even though its water under the bridge (pardon the pun).

I would inact laws that prevent any more Florida land from being bought for sugar, or phosphates.

I would stop ANY raw sewage from being dumped in to Florida waters...period. No slap on the wrist either...felony.

I would stop livestock from being grazed X # of miles from the shorelines. I'd Grandfather in the existing farmers, but no new grazing close to shore, or rivers.

No new septic tanks X miles from shore or rivers. I'm not sure what the X is, but scientists do.

I'm unsure how to address storm runoff. Too costly to filter it all. We do have tons of ponds much of it runs off into. I'd need to give that more thought.

We need solutions. No more talk and study's. I'm sure there have been multiple study's conducted on each of my solutions. Use those.

[duffer47]

Our resources on this planet are not infinite. Technology has allowed us to feed more per acre than 100 years ago. But it comes at a cost that we are seeing in our environment. There will be eventually a limit on how much of a population the Earth can sustain and the quality of life that will exist. To deny this is being unrealistic.