squeers - if you seriously believe that your earlier post was not a silly, abusive rant then your world view is indeed odd. As for minimifidianists that was a new term of abuse. I had to look it up. I'll keep that for my scrap book.

But now you've confused an insistance that scientists have to produce some sort of proof for their assertions, with denial that humans are affecting fishing grounds and land use pattens. No so. It is, in fact, the other way round. The obsession with greenhouse has blinded its believers to those dangers.

Take fisheries.. there is is research to suggest that all the world's fisheries will close within decades, but not due to nonsense about acid ocean but due to over fishing. Dump the acid ocean nonsense and concentrate on over fishing as an issue.. vastly more important..

Characteristic of Mark Curmudgeon to simply dismiss reputable scientific research - dealing with ocean pH - as "nonsense". Curmudgeon has never understood the concept of a scientific theory, and the nature of probability, and this enables him to airily disregard any evidence which doesn't suit his ideological position. Many studies have been done which have shown that small ocean dwellers such as the foraminifera depend on a particular level of calcium carbonate dissolved in the ocean, in order to make their shells. If the ocean changes, as it has in the past, they evolve - but if it changes quickly, as it is doing now, they will probably be unable to adapt. This matters: they are at or near the bottom of the food chain, and Curmudgeon is at the top. Here's just one reference: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ancient-ocean-acidification-intimates-long-recovery-from-climate-change

Nicco
the point of your earlier post was that you were accusing me and others of overlooking other human effects on the environment, and I pointed out the exact opposite was the case. Even if you accepted the acid ocean argument in all its glory detail, other human effects far outweigh it and are more immeidate, as I explained.

In fact I have looked in some detail at the ocean acidification scare, and this reputable research you talk about basically doesn't exist, or not in the way you think it does. Take a closer look at it. What they've done is conduct laboratory tests for sea creatures at very high levels of CO2 and found that there were problems. However, they also had to admit that the creatures will adapt. So the arguement has shifted to the RATE OF CHANGE in CO2 being too fast for them to adapt, which is too hard for laboratory tests.
There is some field work suggesting that there have been changes to date, but all the rest is straight speculation in a very complex environment.

Now its time to move on.

Curmudgeon
Of course there are complexities but the answer is not to "move on" - I assume from that you mean business-as-usual and further degrade the land and seas - but to adopt the precautionary principle. If scientists warn on the basis of evidence (you may use the pejorative term 'speculation' but I would rather call it 'serious extrapolation from the evidence') that acidification may wipe out the near-bottom of the food chain, then surely the response should be to slow the acidification of the oceans by reducing the release of CO2 into the atmosphere.
I really find your position gravely irresponsible.

Extraordinary twists and contortions being performed by Mark Curmudgeon, so as to avoid conceding that the scientists (overpaid conspirators as they are) might just have got it right. Curmudgeon's caricature of marine researchers is simply that - a caricature. It contains a tiny morsel of truth (yes, researchers have examined the effect on small calcareous beings under high CO2 conditions) which is used to prop up the rather dishonest suggestion that no other research has been done. Surely Curmudgeon doesn't believe that Australia's marine scientists, taking ship from Hobart and Townsville, are unaware of the urgent questions which atmospheric and marine CO2 present? That they have not been sampling the surface, the deeps, the reefs, the undersea ridges? Surely he has some understanding (he claims to have been a science journalist) of the pace of evolution, the rate of adaptation? Once again, ideology triumphs over scientific enquiry.

Curmug.
“Stop abusing and start debating”, you say.

There is nothing to debate; the debate has been finished for some time. You are stirring up an argument to use the ensuing comment to put your point of view across. To muddy the waters
I know that the idea is to repeat the propaganda as often as possible the way Joseph Goebbels taught and then most people who do not do a lot of thinking will believe it.

So to refute your article completely, it is the right wing owned “news” (at least 70% at last count) media that keeps on throwing red herrings out and confusing the issue.

You say “what actually happens is that companies like Exxon-Mobil grant funds to public organizations that may then, as part of a larger brief, say something about global warming”.

Any think, tank is owned and directed by the source of its funds