Editorial: The Great Global Warming Hoax?

[sunsettommy]

It appears that no one has any complaints about the content of the editorial.

Venis is not the subject of the editorial.It is a red herring.

Why not stick with the atmosphere of earth instead?

[DogOnPorch]

It appears that no one has any complaints about the content of the editorial.

Venis is not the subject of the editorial.It is a red herring.

Why not stick with the atmosphere of earth instead?

Venus. No 'I'.

This planet has many similarities to Earth, just its once wet cooler atmosphere has been replaced by one made up mostly of CO2. That's why it was brought-up. Smarmy reply noted, though.

------------------------------------------

Shine on you crazy diamond.

---Pink Floyd

[Riverwind]

In my mind, it is the most troubling evidence yet that I have seen about global warming (or climate change). It's worth noting that I am not by nature an "environmental skeptic". I have no doubt that the greenhouse effect can occur. I also believe that human activities upset nature's balance. I believe this in part because the price system does not incorporate accurately environmental harm and hence it creates the wrong incentives.

August,

A few points to ponder:

1) Every credible sceptic agrees that CO2 will cause some warming. The issue is whether the warming is large enough to be concerned about.

2) The significance of the Argo data is easy for a layperson to understand but it is not the only set of data which casts doubt on the CO2 hypothesis. For example, the satellite and weather balloon data from the mid-troposphere also show temperature trends that are much less that what is predicted by the CO2 hypothesis. The recent 'weather noise' is also much colder than what would be expected given the CO2 hypothesis.

3) The NASA Aqua satellite has found evidence that clouds provide negative feedback that cools the atmosphere when it heats (i.e. the clouds act like a thermostat which prevent the earth from overheating).

I recommend this page if you are interested in more information: http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spence...bal-warming.htm

[sunsettommy]

Venus. No 'I'.

This planet has many similarities to Earth, just its once wet cooler atmosphere has been replaced by one made up mostly of CO2. That's why it was brought-up. Smarmy reply noted, though.

------------------------------------------

Shine on you crazy diamond.

---Pink Floyd

Meaning that you have nothing to offer in the form of a counterpoint with the posted editorial.

The planet earth CO2 levels in at least the last 1 BILLION years.Has never exceeded 10,000 ppm.Meaning less than 1% of the atmosphere by volume.

See why Venus is a red herring?

Edited March 26, 2008 by sunsettommy

[DogOnPorch]

Meaning that you have nothing to offer in the form of a counterpoint with the posted editotial.

The planet earth CO2 levels in at least the last 1 BILLION years.Has never exceeded 10,000 ppm.Meaning less than 1% of the atmosphere by volume.

See why Venus is a red herring?

Pointless even dealing with you. Ta.

--------------------------------

'Hey lady! do I look all blurry to you? 'Cause you look blurry to me!

---Dean Martin

[sunsettommy]

Pointless even dealing with you. Ta.

--------------------------------

'Hey lady! do I look all blurry to you? 'Cause you look blurry to me!

---Dean Martin

That is because you have no point to make on the editorial and that you have not discussed the contents of the editorial I posted either.

Since posting the editorial in 3 forums and seeing it in 2 more in the last week.I have yet to get an actual counterpoint to the editorial.

I think that is because you and other people do not have one.

Look at the others in the thread.They are not even on the topic of the editorial at all.Maybe because the editorial is good and they simply want to discuss some other topic of "climate change"?

[jdobbin]

Lastly, why didn't you provide a link to the original website. That would be more honest and give you some credibility. As it is, you appear like just another self-promoting huckster who doesn't know very much (if anything) about this topic.

It is all about self promotion and should have been deleted post haste for no comments offered. It also didn't need its own thread.

http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums/index.p...E=01&HID=17

POSTING CONTENT

All posts must contain some aspect of an argument or attempt to stimulate discussion. Simply posting a URL to an outside source or posting statements that are only one or two sentences long will not be tolerated and the post will be deleted. In addition, use the search feature to ensure that the topic you are posting is not already being discussed somewhere else in the forums.

It is also important that you stay on topic and keep the discussion focused. If the thread begins to wonder off into a new topic area, start a new thread and continue the discussion under the new thread. If you feel a thread is being watered down with too many different topic areas and you do not want to start the new thread yourself, feel free to contact the Admin and request a new thread.

Edited March 26, 2008 by jdobbin

[sunsettommy]

Jim Pedan has given us permission to post this in it's entirety at my forum.

Editorial: The Great Global Warming Hoax?

EXCERPT:

Editor's Introductory Note: Our planet has been slowly warming since last emerging from the "Little Ice Age" of the 17th century, often associated with the Maunder Minimum. Before that came the "Medieval Warm Period", in which temperatures were about the same as they are today. Both of these climate phenomena are known to have occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, but several hundred years prior to the present, the majority of the Southern Hemisphere was primarily populated by indigenous peoples, where science and scientific observation was limited to non-existent. Thus we can not say that these periods were necessarily "global".

However, "Global Warming" in recent historical times has been an undisputable fact, and no one can reasonably deny that.

But we're hearing far too often that the "science" is "settled", and that it is mankind's contribution to the natural CO2 in the atmosphere has been the principal cause of an increasing "Greenhouse Effect", which is the root "cause" of global warming. We're also hearing that "all the world's scientists now agree on this settled science", and it is now time to quickly and most radically alter our culture, and prevent a looming global catastrophe. And last, but not least, we're seeing a sort of mass hysteria sweeping our culture which is really quite disturbing. Historians ponder how the entire nation of Germany could possibly have goose-stepped into place in such a short time, and we have similar unrest. Have we become a nation of overnight loonies?

http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/modu...?name=Jim_Peden

Forum rules:

All posts must contain some aspect of an argument or attempt to stimulate discussion. Simply posting a URL to an outside source or posting statements that are only one or two sentences long will not be tolerated and the post will be deleted. In addition, use the search feature to ensure that the topic you are posting is not already being discussed somewhere else in the forums.

"But we're hearing far too often that the "science" is "settled", and that it is mankind's contribution to the natural CO2 in the atmosphere has been the principal cause of an increasing "Greenhouse Effect", which is the root "cause" of global warming. We're also hearing that "all the world's scientists now agree on this settled science", and it is now time to quickly and most radically alter our culture, and prevent a looming global catastrophe. And last, but not least, we're seeing a sort of mass hysteria sweeping our culture which is really quite disturbing. Historians ponder how the entire nation of Germany could possibly have goose-stepped into place in such a short time, and we have similar unrest. Have we become a nation of overnight loonies?"

Does attempt to stimulate discussion.

Check

Two paragraphs long

Check

It is not found anywhere else in the forum.

check

I linked to my forum because the EDITORIAL is in the original.But since some people are irrationally whining over it.

Here is the newer version from James Peden himself!

http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html

Meanwhile:

Forum rules,

It is also important that you stay on topic and keep the discussion focused. If the thread begins to wonder off into a new topic area, start a new thread and continue the discussion under the new thread. If you feel a thread is being watered down with too many different topic areas and you do not want to start the new thread yourself, feel free to contact the Admin and request a new thread.

How many people here has been discussing the contents of the EDITORIAL?

Edited March 27, 2008 by sunsettommy

[buffycat]

On the subject of oceans being poisoned by increasing CO2 levels, you might be interested in checking out the book "Under A Green Sky" by paleontologist Peter Ward. Ward was studying rock layers of the Permian-Triassic Extinction - referred to as "the great dying," it was an event that wiped out at least 96% of marine animals on earth. Ward was looking for evidence of a comet or asteroid impact similar to the one that caused the later extinction of the dinosaurs, but instead found evidence that a sharp spike in CO2 levels warmed the poles and slowed the circulating ocean currents enough to literally poison the oceans. http://www.amazon.com/Under-Green-Sky-Warm...s/dp/006113791X

The P/T Extinction was caused by volcanic flood basalts, but he sees the increase in human-produced CO2 as capable of creating the same kind of mass extinction in the next 50 to 100 years.

Thank you for the link, I will look at it further and get back to you on it.

WRT the Permian extinction event though, it was the greatest die off of life on Earth, both in the oceans and on land than we have ever seen as a planet. However, it is important to keep in mind the arrangement of the continents during this episode - all were one. In an odd way through technology we have done this again - even though physically our landmasses are separated. Air travel and ship voyages have effectively 'united' all of the Earth - thus when Malaysia catches a cold, it's easy to pass it to New York

[sunsettommy]

From the link:

"As we can see above, carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation (IR) in only three narrow bands of frequencies, which correspond to wavelengths of 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM), respectively. The percentage absorption of all three lines combined can be very generously generously estimated at about 8% of the whole IR spectrum, which means that 92% of the "heat" passes right through without being absorbed by CO2. In reality, the two smaller peaks don't account for much, since they lie in an energy range that is much smaller than the where the 15 micron peak sits - so 4% or 5% might be closer to reality. If the entire atmosphere were composed of nothing but CO2, i.e., was pure CO2 and nothing else, it would still only be able to absorb no more than 8% of the heat radiating from the earth."

2 of the 3 CO2 bands have negligible absorptive powers.They can be safely ignored.

[WIP]

I am not sure what you tried to show with your link. Cold temperatures are not a sign of global warming. If global warming is occurring the winters will, on average, get warmer.

It should be obvious! Many uninformed people are citing the cold winter as evidence against global warming. The Russian story points out what should be an obvious fact that the weather is not the same everywhere. This winter, using North American temperature readings might appear to be evidence for cooling or no change, while temperatures in Russia are 2 degrees above normal. It all depends where you're taking the measurements from. And that same variability impacts arguments like the contention skeptics use that the climate was warmer in the middle ages because grapes were growing in England and the Danes were able to set up colonies in Greenland and Labrador. But anecdotal evidence from the MiddleEast and China showed that they were having droughts and cold winters during that time, and that this was a primary incentive for Genghis Khan and the Mongols to leave their homeland and try to conquer the world.

Human activity is NOT the same as CO2. It is very dangerous to mix up the two because that can lead to the wrong policy response. Land use changes and aerosols like black carbon play a significant role.

Despite what you have been told there is no conclusive EMPIRICAL evidence that CO2 has caused most of the recent warming. The claims are based entirely on dubious climate models which depend on a huge number of estimated parameters - parameters that can be adjusted to ensure the models produce the desired output. Unfortnately, many in the scientific community now accept computer models as 'proof' of a hypothesis. That is an absurd position that no one outside the community should accept.

The biggest complaint I have about the climate skeptics is that they are using uncertainty about climate cycles as "proof" that higher CO2 levels don't cause global warming. Some of the challenges I've read so far point to the time lag between rising CO2 and increase in temperatures, and if I'm not mistaken, Richard Lindzen claims that rising temperatures cause an increase in CO2. What these idiots are doing, is taking advantage of a system that's not completely understood and making sweeping generalizations about climate change based on their own simplistic understanding, and show little or no curiosity about the big picture: Case in point - CO2 absorption by the oceasns. Many climatologists and marine biologists have been aware that half of the CO2 dumped into the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans. The questions now being asked are: How much CO2 can the oceans take in? and what effects will increased ocean CO2 levels have on marine life? http://ioc.unesco.org/iocweb/co2panel/HighOceanCO2.htm and http://www.gdrc.org/oceans/fsheet-02.html and http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...2-in-ice-cores/ etc........there are lots more links for anyone interested in the subject, but I haven't come across any studies or analyses of the issue on ocean CO2 levels conducted by any of these global warming skeptcs!

More importantly, there is real data collected from a variety of reputable sources that shows that the climate models are most likely wrong.

If you want research funding you must believe in the CO2 hypothesis. Any scientist who dares to question the holy creed is ostracized. That said there are still a significant number of credible scientists like Linzden, Christy, Spenser or Pieke Sr. None of these people have links to oil companies (although places liek sourcewatch try to claim they do - those claims are false).

Ross Gelbspan journalist and author, wrote a 1995 article in Harper's Magazine which was very critical of Lindzen and other global warming skeptics. In the article, Gelbspan reports Lindzen charged "oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; [and] his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels and a speech he wrote, entitled 'Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,' was underwritten by OPEC." [3]

While generally considered a climate skeptic, John R. Christy was a co-drafter of the American Geophysical Union's December 2003 position statement on climate change, which concludes that:

"Human activities are increasingly altering Earth's climate, and that natural influences alone cannot explain the rapid increase in surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century."

Dr. Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA's Aqua satellite. [1]

Spencer is a prominent global warming skeptic. Since February 2004 he has been a columnist for TCS Daily writing over forty columns, almost entirely on the the topic of global warming.

TechCentral Station by the way, receives substantial funding and advertising from Exxon-Mobil. TCS does not run stories that support the global warming side, so I would say that there is an obvious quid pro quo, and Spencer is being rewarded for playing his part in the disinformation campaign even if his money goes through so many hands that it can't be traced directly to Exxon.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title...keptics#Funding

* I couldn't find Pielke in the sourcewatch list.

$2.1 million? What a joke. That nothing compared to what the various organization like Greenpeace spend lobbying for their point of view. See: http://www.climate-resistance.org/2008/01/...al-machine.html

A little hint - any website that uses the term 'denier' is nothing but a shill for the numerous organizations seeking to cash in on the CO2 hysteria. GW is big business. If you accept the premise that money corrupts science then the MUST accept that the billions allocated by governments to fund anti-CO2 measures must corrupt the science even more than any puny funding provided by oil companies.

As mentioned above, accounting is a very creative artform and large corporations such as Exxon do not have to fund skeptic researchers directly. Note that in the case of Spencer, he is being paid by an internet news source that receives large funding from Exxon.

[WIP]

Thank you for the link, I will look at it further and get back to you on it.

WRT the Permian extinction event though, it was the greatest die off of life on Earth, both in the oceans and on land than we have ever seen as a planet. However, it is important to keep in mind the arrangement of the continents during this episode - all were one. In an odd way through technology we have done this again - even though physically our landmasses are separated. Air travel and ship voyages have effectively 'united' all of the Earth - thus when Malaysia catches a cold, it's easy to pass it to New York

Your welcome!

The P/T Extinction might indicate that we should be more worried about what happens with CO2 absorbed by the oceans than worrying about storms or rising sea levels. This is what bothers me about the "don't worry, be happy" collection of global warming skeptics - they are narrow focused on either disproving a human connection to climate change or denying that CO2 levels impact temperatures; none of them are interested in gaining a further understanding of how they weather cycles function. I heard one of these idiots offer the fallback position that even if the climate is getting warmer, it's good news for Canada! That's an indication of how superficial the skeptics want to treat the issue.

[Riverwind]

I said:

Despite what you have been told there is no conclusive EMPIRICAL evidence that CO2 has caused most of the recent warming.

You responded with some ramble about the CO2 cycle and the oceans. The fact remains - there is no conclusive empirical evidence that demonstrates that CO2 is responsible for the majority of the warming seen today. Yet we have alarmists who are seeking to profit from the GW hysteria claiming that it is has been *proven*. The intellectual dishonesty coming from alarmists is one of the reasons I don't trust them.

As mentioned above, accounting is a very creative artform and large corporations such as Exxon do not have to fund skeptic researchers directly. Note that in the case of Spencer, he is being paid by an internet news source that receives large funding from Exxon.

As I said, any money provided by Exxon is insignificant compared to the money provided by various groups seeking to cash in on the GW hysteria. Why are so blind to this? You even linked to realclimate which is a front for an environmental organization funded by Soros - someone who, like Al Gore, is looking to cash in on the carbon credit trade.

My personal opinion is that everyone is biased in some way so it is important to hear all sides and evaluate the arguments. That is one of the reasons I think the 'funded by exxon' smears are so ridiculous. That fact that you try to use that as an argument completely undermines your own credibility and makes me wonder what financial interest you have in promoting the GW hysteria. If you were really concerned about the fate of humanity then you would welcome all science that could help us better understand the problems facing us - arbitrarily rejecting science because it presents facts that make you uncomfortable is a recipe for ignorance.

[sunsettommy]

Your welcome!

The P/T Extinction might indicate that we should be more worried about what happens with CO2 absorbed by the oceans than worrying about storms or rising sea levels. This is what bothers me about the "don't worry, be happy" collection of global warming skeptics - they are narrow focused on either disproving a human connection to climate change or denying that CO2 levels impact temperatures; none of them are interested in gaining a further understanding of how they weather cycles function. I heard one of these idiots offer the fallback position that even if the climate is getting warmer, it's good news for Canada! That's an indication of how superficial the skeptics want to treat the issue.

Instead of responding to your silly attack on skeptics.How about tackling this link instead?:

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

An email from Kirtland C. Griffin [[email protected]] of Guilford, CT

In an article in the Economist, Feb 21st 2008, it talks about the acidification of the oceans caused by anthropogenic CO2. It says that if something doesn't change, portions of the world's oceans could no longer support certain forms of aquatic life. Specifically at risk are sponges, corals and brachiopods. The concern relates in part to the huge volcanic eruptions at the end of the Permian Period 252 million years ago. They say that CO2 spewed from the volcanos caused the world's oceans to become more acidic, or probably more correctly, less alkaline.

The origin of the concern is a mathematical model. Where have we heard that before? They say that it is not only the reduction in alkalinity that is a concern but that, in conjunction with increasing ocean temperature, is more detrimental than either alone. Of course, the claim is made that this could lead to a domino effect and who knows what could happen if we continue to emit green house gas pollution? my emphasis

http://antigreen.blogspot.com/

AGW believers are getting desperate.Global Warming has not been happening since 2001.So they are now pushing the even less supported idea that acidification of the ocean is near the level of destruction of ocean life.At least in large areas of the waters.

[jbg]

AGW believers are getting desperate.Global Warming has not been happening since 2001.So they are now pushing the even less supported idea that acidification of the ocean is near the level of destruction of ocean life.At least in large areas of the waters.

My instincts are with the skeptics. Is there any research on this issue?

[WIP]

I said:

You responded with some ramble about the CO2 cycle and the oceans. The fact remains - there is no conclusive empirical evidence that demonstrates that CO2 is responsible for the majority of the warming seen today. Yet we have alarmists who are seeking to profit from the GW hysteria claiming that it is has been *proven*. The intellectual dishonesty coming from alarmists is one of the reasons I don't trust them.

RAMBLE! So you want "conclusive empirical evidence" that increased ocean CO2 levels can continue on with no harmful effects to life on earth. Excuse me if I prefer to err on the side of caution!

As I said, any money provided by Exxon is insignificant compared to the money provided by various groups seeking to cash in on the GW hysteria. Why are so blind to this? You even linked to realclimate which is a front for an environmental organization funded by Soros - someone who, like Al Gore, is looking to cash in on the carbon credit trade.

Just like no outsiders knew before last week how much unrecoverable debt Bear-Stearns was holding, there is no way to know how much Exxon-Mobil is devoting to their multifaceted disinformation campaign unless someone does a forensic audit. I already pointed out previously that there are political interests on both sides of the global warming debate; but there is a much larger and more diverse group of scientists worldwide who believe there is a compelling case for man-made global warming, so they can't all fit in George Soros's hip-pocket like the small band of expert skeptics who are funded by lobby groups working for Exxon or the coal companies.

[WIP]

Instead of responding to your silly attack on skeptics.How about tackling this link instead?:

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

An email from Kirtland C. Griffin [[email protected]] of Guilford, CT

In an article in the Economist, Feb 21st 2008, it talks about the acidification of the oceans caused by anthropogenic CO2. It says that if something doesn't change, portions of the world's oceans could no longer support certain forms of aquatic life. Specifically at risk are sponges, corals and brachiopods. The concern relates in part to the huge volcanic eruptions at the end of the Permian Period 252 million years ago. They say that CO2 spewed from the volcanos caused the world's oceans to become more acidic, or probably more correctly, less alkaline.

The origin of the concern is a mathematical model. Where have we heard that before? They say that it is not only the reduction in alkalinity that is a concern but that, in conjunction with increasing ocean temperature, is more detrimental than either alone. Of course, the claim is made that this could lead to a domino effect and who knows what could happen if we continue to emit green house gas pollution? my emphasis

http://antigreen.blogspot.com/

AGW believers are getting desperate.Global Warming has not been happening since 2001.So they are now pushing the even less supported idea that acidification of the ocean is near the level of destruction of ocean life.At least in large areas of the waters.

Is there a point to this rambling blogpost? The author states:

Now I am no ocean scientist, nor am I a chemist, but something smelled. After a little looking I found my information on the CO2, carbonic acid, calcite system.

So right off the bat he declares he has no expertise to challenge whatever evidence there is for oceanic acidification, but that's not going to stop him from throwing in his two cents worth anyway:

The oceans are a vast reservoir of Carbon in various forms and there is a well regulated compensation system that covers a wide range of CO2 concentrations and temperature variation that has worked over billions of years. The other thing was that volcanos spew out CO2 but also SO2 as the Number 2 gas. Sorry, no pun intended. SO2 dissolved in water yields sulfurous acid, so I am told by Oliver Manuel, which is a much stronger acid than carbonic acid. So the effects associated with volcanic eruptions are unrelated to the current situation and was more severe. But that has never bothered the DAGW proponents. When I presented my rebuttal, the response was that this has nothing to do with the AGW agenda. This is different. IT CLEARLY IS NOT!

And that's it???

How much has this crank read about the theories and research into the Permian-Triassic Extinction? If he read other research besides the one quoted in the Economist he might realize that the acidification may not have come directly from volcanic activity in the first place, but instead was a consequence of oceans becoming stagnant as increased greenhouse gas levels warmed the poles enough to drastically slow down the convection system that powers ocean currents. The result would be a stratified ocean with less ability to absorb oxygen. And the following study also notes that sulphuric acid in the oceans was not directly from volcanoes either, but instead resulted from hydrogen sulfite given off by anaerobic bacteria:

The oceans of the Permian seem to have been very stratified. That is to say that the oceans did not intermix from the bottom depths to the ocean surface. There were very distinct layers. Additionally, as the world warmed, the ice caps melted. This decreased the salinity of the top waters and made the stratification worse. This caused the bottom of the ocean to be anoxic (ie very little or no oxygen dissolved in the various layers). The warming made the anoxic conditions worse. Warm water holds less oxygen than does cold. Life in the water would be...less than comfortable. With the melting of the very extensive ice caps, the oceans would rise and the anoxic layers would be brought up to depths that would originally have been habitat for the Permian marine organisms (This is Hallam's regression-transgression-anoxia theory).

Then the warmed ocean unleashes a nasty surprise for the surface and atmosphere: we get methane hydrate burps. There is a large amount of methane sequestered in the ocean in the form of ices. When the water warms too much, the methane is released from the ice. This makes it way into the atmospehre. Methane is a much better greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This ended up causing a further 5 degree C atmospheric rise. This happened very quickly and helped to pummel the End-Permian lifeforms even more. If the simulations (PDF) of Jeff Kiehl and Christine Shields of NCAR hold up to the fossil record, this means that the methane in the atmosphere end up whacking the ozone and unleashes a lot of normally blocked ultraviolet light [here too] above and beyond the norm which helps kill off the terrrestrial ecosystems as well.

As if to add insult to injury, the hypoxic-anoxic oceans encouraged growth of anaerobic bacteria that produce lots of hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is nasty stuff and highly toxic. It would help kill even more in the oceans than even oxygen deprivation would. It would, futhermore, bubble out of the oceans and kill right and left anything that took a whif on land. However, to make things even worse, Kiehl et al state that it increases that length of time that the methane remains in the atmosphere. This increases the amount and heating and away we go.

In the end, what killed life at the end of the Permian? It was a negative feedback that in effect, even in such a hellaciously hot climate (72 C at the equator!), snowballed. If ever there was a time that we, the planet Earth, was dangerously close to tripping over the edge into a run away greenhouse, that would have been it. Not the Eocene. The mechanisms that regulate the CO2 content in the atmosphere broke down, got depressed, and nearly shot itself in the head; in effect nearly ending all life.

http://thedragonstales.blogspot.com/2006/1...used-great.html

[Riverwind]

RAMBLE! So you want "conclusive empirical evidence" that increased ocean CO2 levels can continue on with no harmful effects to life on earth. Excuse me if I prefer to err on the side of caution!

The fact that you insist on talking about the oceans indicates that your agree that there no empirical evidence that shows that CO2 has caused the majority of the warming.

So how many human lives should be sacrificed in the name of your 'precautionary principle'? It is something you should think about because that is the unavoidable consequence of CO2 regulation. Are you willing to accept and enforce strict limits on the world population? If not then you obviously don't think the problem is that serious.

there is no way to know how much Exxon-Mobil is devoting to their multifaceted disinformation campaign unless someone does a forensic audit.

In other words, if you can't find the facts to support your claims you will just make up conspiracy fantasies. Edited March 28, 2008 by Riverwind

[WIP]

The fact that you insist on talking about the oceans indicates that your agree that there no empirical evidence that shows that CO2 has caused the majority of the warming.

I don't know how else to get the point through that the planet's ecosystems are not completely understood, so how can global warming skeptics make declarations about the causes when they don't even show any interest in what's happening in oceanic research. Their job is nothing more than running interference for their paymasters.

So how many human lives should be sacrificed in the name of your 'precautionary principle'? It is something you should think about because that is the unavoidable consequence of CO2 regulation. Are you willing to accept and enforce strict limits on the world population? If not then you obviously don't think the problem is that serious.

In other words, if you can't find the facts to support your claims you will just make up conspiracy fantasies.

I was going to ask this before but exactly who's lives are being sacrificed by a precautionary principle? If the debate wasn't detoured by baseless challenges that the more than six billion people on earth are having no effects on the climate, we could also address other sources of greenhouse gas emissions like the slash and burn agriculture that's practised in many third world countries.

If it wasn't for religious authorities like the Pope and the corresponding Muslim leaders, over-population would not even be an issue now! The birth rates are declining in all countries, even third world nations, that allow women access to birth control. It's only the Muslim and Catholic dominated nations that ban birth control and abortion which are still growing out of control.

[buffycat]

http://www.amazon.com/Under-Green-Sky-Warm...s/dp/006113791X

This is the response I promised you.

Sadly, it isn't much. I will have to look at my public library to see if there is copy of this book, but from the description at amazon, I am not overly hopeful as to the books relevance to fact.

The Permian extinction, as I have already stated, was the most devastating event we have seen on this planet, in regards to loss of species. That said, pinning it all on CO2 levels is beyond simplistic and certainly misleading.

The world itself was a very different place at that time - from global temperatures, to oceanic circulations, to the arrangments of continents. I think Ward is grabbing for straws here, and jumping on the bandwagon of media spin at the same time. This kind of hypothesis is just plain dangerous, for it allows us to explain a complicated event (climate change) with overly simplistic explanations.

It's not just CO2, the Earth is complex system, never in a steady state, subject to the whims of our sun, and the other orbital forcing parameters (wobble, tilt, perihelion). The circulation of our oceans and their interaction with the atmosphere and biosphere add yet another dimension to this puzzle we call life on Earth. Blaming CO2 emmissions for all it's ills is silly at best, and dangerous at most, because it allows us to glaze over other, more pressing issues, such as soil erosion, water contamination, food contamination usw.

Anyways, that's my rant for now.

I might add more later, but must cook dinner for the family (I am so darn domestic).

[Riverwind]

I don't know how else to get the point through that the planet's ecosystems are not completely understood, so how can global warming skeptics make declarations about the causes when they don't even show any interest in what's happening in oceanic research.

The problem is we don't understand the climate enough to know if 1) we are actually having an effect and 2) whether we can actually do something about it. Given that uncertainty everyone has a duty to challenge the GW profiteers before committing trillions to solve a 'problem' that may be beyond our abilities to solve.

I was going to ask this before but exactly who's lives are being sacrificed by a precautionary principle?

The precautionary principle is a bastardation of Pascal's Wager which assumes that cost of being cautious is zero whether the risk is real or not but the cost of not being cautious is huge if the risk is real.

Pascal's Wager does not apply to CO2 because the cost of being 'cautious' is huge as well. And that cost will be measured in terms of lives lost because denying people access to cheap energy is the same as denying them access to food, shelter or medical help. That is why GW is and always will be the obession of spoiled rich kids like Al Gore. Are you willing to go live in a eco-town with no running water and composte toilets (a.k.a outhouses)? Would you be ok if you or someone you cared about dies because a medical treatment produced 'too much CO2'. These are the real consequences of the policies you advocate. Why to do you deny them?

The birth rates are declining in all countries, even third world nations, that allow women access to birth control.

Birth rates decline in rich societies. Denying people access to cheap energy will make societies poorer which will make the overpopulation problem worse. Allowing third world countries to develop is the best way to get them to limit their population. Edited March 28, 2008 by Riverwind

[sunsettommy]

Is there a point to this rambling blogpost? The author states:

Now I am no ocean scientist, nor am I a chemist, but something smelled. After a little looking I found my information on the CO2, carbonic acid, calcite system.

So right off the bat he declares he has no expertise to challenge whatever evidence there is for oceanic acidification, but that's not going to stop him from throwing in his two cents worth anyway:

The oceans are a vast reservoir of Carbon in various forms and there is a well regulated compensation system that covers a wide range of CO2 concentrations and temperature variation that has worked over billions of years. The other thing was that volcanos spew out CO2 but also SO2 as the Number 2 gas. Sorry, no pun intended. SO2 dissolved in water yields sulfurous acid, so I am told by Oliver Manuel, which is a much stronger acid than carbonic acid. So the effects associated with volcanic eruptions are unrelated to the current situation and was more severe. But that has never bothered the DAGW proponents. When I presented my rebuttal, the response was that this has nothing to do with the AGW agenda. This is different. IT CLEARLY IS NOT!

And that's it???

How much has this crank read about the theories and research into the Permian-Triassic Extinction? If he read other research besides the one quoted in the Economist he might realize that the acidification may not have come directly from volcanic activity in the first place, but instead was a consequence of oceans becoming stagnant as increased greenhouse gas levels warmed the poles enough to drastically slow down the convection system that powers ocean currents. The result would be a stratified ocean with less ability to absorb oxygen. And the following study also notes that sulphuric acid in the oceans was not directly from volcanoes either, but instead resulted from hydrogen sulfite given off by anaerobic bacteria:

The oceans of the Permian seem to have been very stratified. That is to say that the oceans did not intermix from the bottom depths to the ocean surface. There were very distinct layers. Additionally, as the world warmed, the ice caps melted. This decreased the salinity of the top waters and made the stratification worse. This caused the bottom of the ocean to be anoxic (ie very little or no oxygen dissolved in the various layers). The warming made the anoxic conditions worse. Warm water holds less oxygen than does cold. Life in the water would be...less than comfortable. With the melting of the very extensive ice caps, the oceans would rise and the anoxic layers would be brought up to depths that would originally have been habitat for the Permian marine organisms (This is Hallam's regression-transgression-anoxia theory).

Then the warmed ocean unleashes a nasty surprise for the surface and atmosphere: we get methane hydrate burps. There is a large amount of methane sequestered in the ocean in the form of ices. When the water warms too much, the methane is released from the ice. This makes it way into the atmospehre. Methane is a much better greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This ended up causing a further 5 degree C atmospheric rise. This happened very quickly and helped to pummel the End-Permian lifeforms even more. If the simulations (PDF) of Jeff Kiehl and Christine Shields of NCAR hold up to the fossil record, this means that the methane in the atmosphere end up whacking the ozone and unleashes a lot of normally blocked ultraviolet light [here too] above and beyond the norm which helps kill off the terrrestrial ecosystems as well.

As if to add insult to injury, the hypoxic-anoxic oceans encouraged growth of anaerobic bacteria that produce lots of hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is nasty stuff and highly toxic. It would help kill even more in the oceans than even oxygen deprivation would. It would, futhermore, bubble out of the oceans and kill right and left anything that took a whif on land. However, to make things even worse, Kiehl et al state that it increases that length of time that the methane remains in the atmosphere. This increases the amount and heating and away we go.

In the end, what killed life at the end of the Permian? It was a negative feedback that in effect, even in such a hellaciously hot climate (72 C at the equator!), snowballed. If ever there was a time that we, the planet Earth, was dangerously close to tripping over the edge into a run away greenhouse, that would have been it. Not the Eocene. The mechanisms that regulate the CO2 content in the atmosphere broke down, got depressed, and nearly shot itself in the head; in effect nearly ending all life.

http://thedragonstales.blogspot.com/2006/1...used-great.html

Aside from your hypocritical attack on Kirtland Griffin.I will not bug you about Will Baid who is a computer systems analysis.

The link YOU provided has little to say about CO2.It is built on a number of wikipedia links and other links.

Siberian Traps--- A wikipedia entry

Douglas Erwin--- A simple BIO page

Deccan Traps--- A wikipedia entry

form of ices---- A wikipedia entry

better greenhouse gas---- A wikipedia entry

simulations---- A paper built on modeling simulations

whacking the ozone and unleashes a lot of normally blocked ultraviolet light---- Another modeling simulation

encouraged growth of anaerobic bacteria---- quoted from this link:

"Pedro Marenco, a doctoral student in Bottjer's lab, has been testing a leading theory for the P-T extinction: that a warming of the earth and a slowdown in ocean circulation made it harder to replace the oxygen sucked out of the water by marine organisms. According to the theory, microbes would have saturated the water with hydrogen sulfide, a highly toxic chemical.

For a mass extinction "you really needed a good killer, and it [hydrogen sulfide] is really nasty stuff," Bottjer said."

No mention of CO2 in the article

Extinction---- An Amazon book for sale

fungal spike'---- A wikipedia entry

It is silly to state that Methane is a much more powerful GHG than CO2.It is simply meaningless.Because water vapor swamps the very frequencies that Methane falls in (which is negligible).Not only that it is far less common GHG than CO2 which in itself is a trace atmospheric GH gas.

Methane blocks a very tiny amount of all possible outgoing IR.Since Will Baird is fond of an easily edited source (wikipedia) I will post this link to show how negligible methane is as an IR absorber:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Atmosph...ransmission.png

The chart is easy to read.Even CO2 is exposed as a minimal GHG as well.

I have long known about the "great dying" event.Since having read about it more than 10 years ago.I have two books that talks about it.I am still not convinced on the many speculated possibilities of the main cause of the mass dying.

Meanwhile the man you called a crank.Stated openly his lack of credentials.

The Economist link.Does not mention any science paper published or not.It was DEVOID of any research reference.This was the closest it went to any sort of science.I quote:

The biological significance of this acidification was a topic of debate at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston.

Then I read this misleading part:

Many species of invertebrate have shells or skeletons made of calcium carbonate. It is these, fossilised, that form rocks such as chalk and limestone. And, as anyone who has studied chemistry at school knows, if you drop chalk into acid it fizzes away to nothing. Many marine biologists therefore worry that some species will soon be unable to make their protective homes. According to Andrew Knoll, of Harvard University, many of the species most at risk are corals.

my emphasis

But of course the ocean is strongly alkaline.Even now.Then there are BUFFERING agents in the ocean waters.

The Economist was trying to blame CO2.I quote this dishonest misleading B.S.

EVERY silver lining has its cloud. At the moment, the world's oceans absorb a million tonnes of carbon dioxide an hour. Admittedly that is only a third of the rate at which humanity dumps the stuff into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, but it certainly helps to slow down global warming. However, what is a blessing for the atmosphere turns out to be a curse for the oceans. When carbon dioxide dissolves in water it forms carbonic acid. At the moment, seawater is naturally alkaline—but it is becoming less so all the time.

my emphasis

Carbonic acid is a weak acid that is easily buffered in the ocean waters.

Here is a giant link that really educational on ocean chemistry.The author is a doctorate in the field.

http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/acid.htm#intro

There is a lot more to know in science than reading misleading climate propaganda.

[sunsettommy]

To further expose the acidification of the oceans will doom us all in 91+ years baloney.

Here is I am quoting myself from GWS forum.

"Surface Ocean contains about 1,000 Gigatons of CO2

Intermediate and deep ocean contains about 38,000 Gt of CO2

In contrast to the atmosphere containing about 750 GT of CO2

Vegetation,Soils and Detritus contains about 2,200 GT of CO2

Each year, the surface ocean and atmosphere exchange an estimated 90 GT C;

vegetation and the atmosphere, 60 GT C; marine biota and the surface ocean,

50 GT C; and the surface ocean and the intermediate and deep oceans, 100 GT

C."

Mankind emits about 8.5 GT of CO2 per year.

The atmosphere CO2 is cycled out in less than 8 years.

CO2 is NOT a pollution."

The IPCC supports what I just quoted. http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig3-1.htm

As you can see that the ocean has most of the CO2 already.

[Argus]

People with huge bank accounts

I.e. smart, educated people?

deny global warming or cooling..Those with small or non-existant bank accounts

I.e. dumb, uneducated people?

accept the fact that human activity is making the weather extreme and destructive.

[Argus]

I don't know how else to get the point through that the planet's ecosystems are not completely understood, so how can global warming skeptics make declarations about the causes when they don't even show any interest in what's happening in oceanic research.

Given the lack of complete understanding how can the global warming fanatics make certain statements about the cause of earth's warming, or its duration, or predictions regarding its future affects on the earth?

And, in fact, the article in question did mention oceanic research - which seems to suggest little warming has actually occurred.

From my perspective, the evidence that man is a major contributor to global warming, or that we can affect it seems sadly lacking.