NYC Parks employees discovered oil seeping to surface through the grass at Sheep Meadow in Central Park. Upon the discovery, Mayor Bloomberg and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe quickly approved some exploratory drilling and geological analysis. The results appear to be very encouraging for anyone worried about gas prices.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn quickly embraced the continued drilling and exploitation of this new megafield, citing the many programs around the city that this could help fund, like eliminating tolls on all bridges & tunnels, abolishing parking meters and reducing other fees that city drivers face. "It's time to give something back to the city's oppressed automobile drivers and this new oil field will help us reduce the burden on these hard working New Yorkers who fight traffic everyday". Quinn added "it's time to rethink the City as a place that welcomes automobiles, instead of discourages them. People want more cars on our streets and we should support them by making it as easy as possible instead of pandering to pedestrians, cyclists and mass transit rider who only complain about poor safety conditions and are never satisfied."
While for many this was seen as a great new source of revenue for the city, many in the area complained that it would ruin a historic park. "Drilling for oil in Central Park will ruin the neighborhood and destroy the vision of an urban oasis set forth by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux," a resident of Fifth Avenue protested as she drove through the park in her Ford Expedition.
Read more at the Oil Drum.
More good news on global warming comes to us from RealClimate, which reports on new research from the New Zealand Institute of Veterinary Climatology that shows a statistical inverse relationship between the sheep population in New Zealand and global temperatures. The statistical analysis shows that as the numbers of sheep have dropped in New Zealand, world temperatures have increased. Researchers hypothesize that the increased albedo of land that is no longer covered in sheep results in less solar energy radiating back out to space.
There is in fact an important destabilizing feedback in the system: as climate gets warmer, there is less demand for wool sweaters and wooly underwear. Hence the sheep population tends to drop, leading to even more warming. In an extreme form, this can lead to a "runaway sheep-albedo feedback," which is believed to have led to the present torrid climate of Venus. Read more at RealClimate.org.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Geez, the Central Park one actually had me going. Good work. Heheheheh.
ReplyDelete