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The Forum > Article Comments > Thin green line > Comments

Thin green line : Comments

By Philip Machanick, published 4/6/2010

There is a thin green line separating humanity from economic and environmental catastrophe.

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phoenix94, you are being willfully obtuse on CO2 - no-one says it is a pollutant, but increasing atmospheric CO2 has serious effects, on temperatures, climate stability, the acidity of the ocean and the marine food chain. I'm sure you know all this, so why do you keep wittering on about it being a pollutant? And before you start on it being a plant growth enhancer, keep in mind that recent research has shown that increased growth from CO2 is accompanied by a decrease in plant protein, so no net benefit.

On the ice volume question, Antartica is currently losing 150 cubic kilometres of ice per annum, which is enough to chill quite a lot of martinis.
Posted by Candide, Friday, 4 June 2010 11:59:51 PM
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"Even if the CSIRO is wrong, what is wrong with taking initiatives to lessen possible climate change?"

Er... because it would cost an enormous amount of money that could be better spent on something with more likelihood of producing a tangible benefit?

Next question please.
Posted by Jon J, Saturday, 5 June 2010 11:17:01 AM
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Author response:

Some rather quick to jump to accusations of dishonesty here.

Antarctic sea ice: where do you suppose that comes from? The continent is losing land ice too fast for it to melt through accelerated iceberg calving, i.e., that ice is landing in the sea. The big deal with Antarctic and Greenland ice is it's mostly on land, so losing it means adding to sea level rise.

The problem with unreviewed publications like Dr Long's is that they often don't contain enough information to replicate their calculations, and this is the case with this one. To calculate temperature based on ground stations, you need to weight each for area. Did he do that? Did he do that correctly? Probably not, if he is calculating averages without adjusting for missing stations. If you calculate a simple numeric average without taking area into account, you answer is meaningless. Take a look at my blog http://opinion-nation.blogspot.com/2010/04/warmest-year.html where I review the latest satellite data from UAH, is not subject to bias from local warming. 2010 is increasingly looking like heading for a new record with no obvious cause in natural drivers.

Hasbeen: what's your source? At http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/ithi.html you can plot Arctic ice thickness at a given date. Thick ice on 31 May 2010 http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/retrievepic.html?filetype=Thickness&year=2010&month=5&day=31 for example is a tiny fraction of the plot compared with 31 May 2007 http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/retrievepic.html?filetype=Thickness&year=2007&month=5&day=31 , the year that was the previous low in ice extent.

Cornflower: every serious climate scientist knows that a real greenhouse does not trap heat the same way (trapping warmed air by a physical barrier) as the unfortunately named greenhouse effect (trapping heat by absorbing longwave radiation). Someone gave the effect the wrong name. So what?

Calling people "warmists" etc. is feeble. If you use insults I won't take the bait. I base my views on researching academic literature (I try as far as possible in articles like this to use references free to the public, but that isn't the limit of my reading). I don't base my views on unreviewed blogs where you can say pretty much whatever you like, or advocacy sites.
Posted by PhilipM, Saturday, 5 June 2010 1:48:36 PM
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Lawson

Yes “it is now clear the sun is going towards a minimum”, unfortunately this does not explain the record temperatures we have been experiencing over the last decade. It is also acknowledged that ENSO/NAO/etc don’t drive climate. No climate scientist has ever said the Earth System is not complicated.
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Phoenix94

You continually spruik D’Aleo and Anthony Watts. The former at home with the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) and the latter with his popular blog, Watts Up With That (WUWT).

The SPPI is a self proclaimed neo-con think-tank whose roving front man, 'Lord’ Christopher Monkton, was recently shown to be fraudulently misrepresenting not only climate science, but the very scientists he cites to mount his fraudulent claims.

http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/

WUWT is just a blog site that pseudo-sceptics and wannabe armchair scientists gravitate towards. Real science is done in the scientific institutions and academies around the globe, with their results published in recognised journals, not blogs.

The link to Dyson didn’t work for me.
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Jon J

Here's a tip: the Northern Hemisphere has more land mass than the Southern Hemisphere. Hint: heat capacity of water.
Next question please.
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Hasbeen

You obviously don’t understand what the satellite array measures.
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Cornflower

On all the available evidence, the CSIRO is not wrong.
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Raycom

No assumptions necessary, the greenhouse effect has been studied for well over 100 years.

You say “scientific experiments prove the lack of effect that CO2 content has on atmospheric air temperature.”

Really? Can you please give a link so that we may all see. There could be be a Nobel in it if someone has overturned 100 + years of atmospheric science.
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Candide

Perhaps phoenix is confusing CO2 with “carbon pollution reduction scheme”?
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Phil

Curmudgeon is the ‘science writer’ Mark Lawson – he says he has a book coming out this month. He hasn't given any details so I can't really comment, will just have to wait and see.
Posted by qanda, Saturday, 5 June 2010 3:53:35 PM
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When I saw "There is a thin green line separating humanity from economic and environmental catastrophe." and also "a catastrophe that is inevitable if we carry on as we are"

I immediately suspected that here is another eco-exaggerator .. so went and looked at some of the author's other articles, got to the first one: "The Obama Landslide: With just under a week to go to the US presidential election, I now feel confident in predicting not only an Obama win, but a landslide of historic proportions."

Obama won with 50.9% of the vote - is that a landslide by anyone's measure? I didn't read any further .. the pattern is clear.

So I'll put this hysteric's opinions in the same light, if you think we're heading for a disaster Phil, then we'll probably get a sun shower and that's about it.

A swing to the Greens that's fine for a protest vote, but all you do is reinforce through deals with the ALP that the Greens are just a sub sect of the ALP. You might deny it, but the evidence is clear that's where your support goes.

A lot of the Green's actions are not seen as dealing with hard problems, they are seen as interfering with people's lives and people do get sick of it. I would suspect that the opposite to what the author wants will soon occur,that the Greens will become pariahs for all their meddling and sanctimonious finger pointing.
Posted by rpg, Saturday, 5 June 2010 5:31:17 PM
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rpg, Obama won with 53% of the vote according to all sources I've found. Where do you get 50.9%? If you stop reading as soon as you find something that confirms your prejudices you won't learn much.
Posted by PhilipM, Saturday, 5 June 2010 8:42:52 PM
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