To me, it makes far more sense to spend our money on adaptive measures... on measures that address specifically observed problems... not on any and everything that MIGHT happen. If there's a prolonged drought, it makes no sense to spend $billions to change to some alternative form of energy. Instead, why not spend $millions to lay water lines into the affected areas, and to build desalinization plants to help serve the affected areas? Adaptation doesn't require scientists, just engineers and people who know how to make things. Even then, we must be careful not to foolishly create an "adaptation industry".

The history of living things on planet Earth teaches that the need for adaptation is a central theme for survival. Species who could not adapt are now extinct. If we spend our money in a crash program to stop CO2 emissions to save the environment from manmade warming, what happens if it doesn't work? Which AGW scientist will be the first to say "OOPS"? Should that happen, where will the money come from to adapt?

A study has been recently published, claiming that the warming caused by CO2 will be irreversible for about 1,000 years, even if CO2 emissions have been totally stopped. Although this is really far-fetched, it nevertheless points out that adaptive measures will serve mankind whether the warming is caused by man or by Nature.

On the bright side, maybe the climate is beginning to cool as some say. Maybe another ice age is about to start. If so, mankind will have to adapt to that as well. How far will an electric car go when you turn on the heater?

Support adaptation!

You lost me with the second sentence.

"The world is becoming almost irretrievably damaged in almost every direction."

This is simply not true, although like pretty well everyone else who cares about the environment, I have been convinced that it was true for most of my life. I was as astonished as anyone, when I read "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (which I approached very skeptically, I might add: I actually read a raft of articles arguing the pros and cons of the book before I even read the book itself), and realised that I'd been fed a line nearly all my life.

The world isn't perfect, but it's pretty good, and it's getting better. Certainly we don't want to drop the ball, but we need to know the truth.

Crying "fire!", when there is just a smouldering match is irresponsible and foolish. Cry "fire!" untruthfully often enough and eventually no-one will take any notice of you, no matter how well-meaning you are.

I agree - the article starts on a premise that is simply not true.. the bulk of the awful things that climate-doomsters are warning us about remain projections, not reality. There has been a lot of talk about rising temperatues, for example, but a closer look at temperature graphs on the likes of Hadley shows a decline not an increase. Same can be said for sea level increases - the real scare scenarios remain projections. Everyone talks about the extinction of species, but I would be interested to see to see a list of species that have actually become extinct in recent decades (as opposed to being on some kind of endangered list), and just how many of those extinctions are in developing countries as opposed to advanced.
As for the cities, perhaps the author is not aware that particulate pollution (a big part of smog) has declined in most cities in advanced countries over decades.. this has to do with a lot of trends such as industries being moved out of suburban areas, and even the CBD, also that people don't use fireplaces as they use to.. cities in which the use of fireplaces was widespread (when in Sydney? 40s? 50s?) use to be very smoky. Car exhausts use to be very dirty things.. there are now more cars but the exhausts have been cleaned up a lot more.. Perhaps we need more reality and less nostaglia..

Sorry Valerie, I’m with Clownfish on this article, not only from the generalized “wallowing in gloom”, but also the meander down “nostalgia lane”. Nothing seems to be the same as in my childhood, that’s good and bad. But today is today, call it progress, evolving or just change. We must change, continue to adapt and, at the same time, mitigate the damage we might do. I think this applies to the planet and to humans.

We don’t seem to pay as much attention to human damage as we do to the planet, I think that’s sad.

We express concerns for our “toxic environment”, rarely do we hear of our “toxic society”. In 2003 Australian of the Year winner, Professor Fiona Stanley wrote;

“Nearly 20% of Australian teenagers now have mental health problems. Nearly a quarter of all families now rely on welfare. Suicides among 15-19 Y.O. males have quadrupled since the 1970’s. Obesity has increased in teenagers from around 10% in 1985 to nearly 25% today. A quarter of all children aged four and five are now overweight for their height. The number of people aged 12-18 who are homeless on any given night has increased to 26,000 last year. Documented increases are evidenced in substance abuse, child abuse, binge drinking, teenage pregnancy, eating disorders, juvenile crime, juvenile diabetes, low birth weight babies, Neuro developmental complications, asthma, serious behavioral problems and autism. 12 Y.O. children are having more and more health problems, depression, anxiety, hyperactivity, schizophrenia, right through to violent behavior towards teachers and parents.

11 Y.O’s are presenting to the NSW Government with problems not encountered before. Some so violent that they are unable to be fostered, educated or controlled.

Data from the W.A. Government “…..they have seen a trebling almost every five years of children with quite significant behavioral problems; they have to be taken out of classrooms. These children are severely disruptive, very angry”. This report is referring to five year olds!

I can relate to save the planet, hug a tree, eat veggies and emit less carbon however, in the end I’m a humanitarian.

I agree with Daisym, we need to worry about adapting more than what might or might not happen (and that may be a big OOPS for those scientists and science generally may not recover well from this whole AGW business. Won't it be a terrible pity if it all turns out we should have spent all that money and research effort adapting to what we cannot change, instead of trying to prop up egos and reputations, tilting at windmills)

We could pollute less, agreed, we'd like others to pollute less but they don't want to be told this by foreigners who have drinkable water and abundant electricity on tap, everyone deserves the chance to better themselves.

There is always nostalgia for what places used to be like, my father visited me in Bali in the late 70s while I was there surfing, he was horrified at what an awful place it now was, he visited Bali on a ship in the mid 40s. People now remember most fondly the Bali of the 70s, while the Balinese are happier now that ever before, they have adapted.

When it starts to cool again, as it always has, we may be nostalgic for the days when it was warmer.

It seems to me that Valerie is essentially correct.

This organization has been keeping track of the health of the planet for over 35 years. It seems to me that they know what they are talking about.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/23

Plus http://www.earthwatch.org

Ha ha, Worldwatch Institute. Continually fudging data to support their determinedly gloomy worldview - and continually getting it wrong.

A typical early Worldwatch howler was the 1965 claim that food problems would be a nearly insoluble problem over the ensuing decades. Which was completely wrong.

Not that Worldwatch's precognition improved any as time went on. For instance, claiming that the world's forests had declined and degraded significantly, when in fact they had actually slightly increased - and making the wildly exaggerated claim that 16 million ha of forest were disappearing every year.

Worldwatch also claimed that acid rain was destroying forests - which simply was not true.

Another typical example of Worldwatch's selective data use was exaggerating a mild, short-term decline in world trade in the early 80s to claim that world trade was collapsing.

Reading Worldwatch's reports is like watching a sham psychic like John Edwards: Floundering about, making wild guesses and jumping to exaggerated conclusions from the flimsiest information - all to the amazement of the gullible rubes in the audience.

Valerie Yule: "The causes of global damage include the effects of pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - as well as thousands of other pollutants".

Now, I'm aware that's the official line, and its backed by the IPCC bankers, etc.

But consider the basic implications: CO2 overwhelmingly comes from the oceans and forests breathing as part of a natural and ancient self-regulating planetary atmosphere. If more than 95% of the planet's CO2 comes from those sources, how can we then keep defining CO2 as "a pollutant"?

Not only human beings, but all species, emit CO2 as part of their natural, self-regulating structure. If CO2 is "a pollutant", then somehow ourselves and all other species have been - and will be - "polluting" the atmosphere no matter what we do!

Therefore, the AGW faith must somehow urge, explicitly or implicitly, the annihilation of much life on this planet. Why not start with the drying out the oceans - the largest "CO2 polluter"? Then stopping the forests in their vast "polluting" process? Then, of course, it'd be time to destroy masses of animals, including we human beings as proportionally "greater CO2 polluters"!

The AGW cult's strange definition of "pollution" explains just why Malthusian genocidalists are coming out of the woodwork now. It also explains why free-trade neoliberalists feel so encouraged to expand their regimes of vast, debt-laden austerity, pumping yet greater burdens of useless monetarist debt, for decades to come.

And yes, it does appear to be heading towards a cooling trend. Sun spot activity (actually, the lack thereof), current Arctic ice caps, and temperature trends, would all support that assessment.

The longer-term view indicates that we're entering the latest Ice Age cycle. Of greatest concern is that once ice starts to spread and consolidate, the effects of planetary cooling intensify as the broader ice sheets reflect so much solar radiation OUT of the atmosphere, thereby ensuring a faster cooling process.

Therefore, we need to start building nuke power fast, and widely. If I'm not mistaken, China and Indonesia are about the only countries embarking on such projects.

The aim of the article about damage control is to list some constructive actions that are possible to help to prevent more damage in the world.
Why submit to trying to adapt to horrible conditions that could be prevented? I am not nostalgic for horrible conditions in the past that my generation had to adapt to.
Please re-read each of the 57 sentences in this short article, to consider the constructive actions are suggested.
Evidence about the damage that is happening now can be found easily – eg. Google, the New Scientist and other earth watch, and your own observations. This includes the human problems which Spindoc rightly refers to, which I have been chiefly concerned with in my own work over sixty years.
The world is getting better in many ways - We should stop the ways in which it is getting worse, including in developing countries, which are now copping the pollution and deforestation that the West may be avoiding. We tourists who visit Bali need some investigative reporting about what is happening there today, that needs changing, for example. And while Australia still has lyrebirds, bandicoots and healthy koalas, the 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species lists 717 animal species and 16 animal subspecies that have become actually extinct since 1500. Gone
.
The old saying says: Change what needs to be changed, adapt to what cannot be changed – and have the gumption to tell the difference.

You can say, “Jack’s, all right mate, where I live.”
You can say, “Everything is so doomful, let’s just wallow.”
You can say, “There are things that need fixing or there will be trouble,” – and set about how to fix them.
See a smouldering match? Stop the fire.

Most civilisations – hundreds of them - have not survived. They could not adapt in time. We should be able to know better and do better.

Valerie,

Why have you adopted the term Climate Change? Isn't that in effect 'Damage Control' ... a change from the now undoubtably proven wrong 'Global warming'.

Glass half empty, glass half full. Cheer up, Valerie. Try A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich or Stalingrad, and your damaged outlook will improve.

Keith, I have not adopted the term Climate Change. Damage control is a wider and greater problem than climate change.
I wrote “Climate change” has become a happy hunting ground to divert us from the greater problem which subsumes it - damage control.” And lo, commentators on this article are still focussing on ‘climate change’and ignoring the main point.

Damage that is happening includes: - (and from many causes)
Big social problems that Spindoc rightly refers to as needing urgent attention
The enormous waste – so much thrown out even before it is used, so many resources spent making products with build-in-obsolescence, so many people with wasted lives in futile jobs or not jobs
Quality of life in megaslums
Industrial diseases still not prevented
Extinctions of marvellous animals and loss of habitat for many more, especially birds
Our own quality of life as we are asked to put up with worse traffic, worse water, no gardens, increasing surveillance and noise, landfill problems – and we have and enjoy so much that our grandchildren may never see (? the Barrier Reef? unspoiled beaches?)
The damage through wars
Food, water and timber resources becoming shorter for the poor, eg in sub-Saharan Africa. The fishermen whose fishing areas have been trawled out by Western fishers, wrecking sea bottoms.
Peasants' landholding problems as their families have nowhere to farm.
Social unrest and even chaos in countries like Rwanda, Fiji,
Hundreds of thousands of people made homeless by the recent financial messes.
Up to twenty million people who are economic and political refugees, millions dependant upon outside aid. In the 19th and 20th centuries of Westerners' population booms, the millions of excess people could migrate to fill open spaces in USA, Canada, Australia etc. Now other countries are having their population booms with no empty spaces to migrate to.
And there is more.

This is not wallowing – this is saying – Start somewhere to stop some of this damage!
It need not become as bad as it may.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.Near them,on the sand,
Half sunk,a shattered visage lies,whose frown,
And wrinkled lip,and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive,stamped on those lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them,and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozmandias,king of kings:
Look on my works,ye mighty,and despair!"
Nothing beside remains.Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck,boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

OZMANDIAS - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Has anyone given thought to the fact that the golbal financial downturn has in fact already reduced emmiosions.

Less demand, means less production, which means less emmisions.

No good saving the planet if we can't afford to feed ourselves.

The fact is that the environment has to take a back seat when the ecconomy is running on empty and it will never be any different. Unless of cause you wish to live in a hole in the ground somewhere and either grow or catch your own food.

Last Sunday I drove from Melbourne to East Gippsland. I hadn't been that way for 30 years or so, and as we passed through former farmland now taken over by innumerable McMansion housing developments the air got hazier and smoggier. For 100km or so the sky was blighted by smog that pours from the disgusting brown coal fired power stations.

A couple of days before, on the way into Melbourne, we passed through some of the country devastated by the Black Saturday fires - only to witness further destruction wrought by the North-South water pipeline under construction.

Valerie Yule's article may be a bit simplistic, but I think she's quite right in general terms. We've certainly managed to stuff up large chunks of the Australian environment in a very short time.

In the 1960s, Paul Ehrlich, the Paddock brothers, and a number of other scientists and environmentalists were predicting famines in the 1970s. They were extrapolating from current trends in food production and population growth. However, they could not anticipate the success of the Green Revolution, which doubled and tripled grain yields. Cornucopians like Julian Simon and Clownfish have been dining out on this ever since. However, Norman Borlaug, the scientist who has been given the greatest credit for the Green Revolution, often said that all they were doing was buying the world some time to stop population growth.

Now we are up against global losses or shortages of arable land, fresh water, fish stocks, biodiversity, fossil fuels and minerals that are vital for our technology, and capacity of the environment to safely absorb wastes. This is according to scientists, not ignorant fringe Greenies. Papers on these topics can be found in Nature and Science, the top peer-reviewed science journals, and the peer-reviewed journals in the different relevant fields. The research is also covered in science news magazines such as New Scientist and Scientific American.

Attacking the World Watch Institute is merely shooting the messenger. Either you admit that the threats are real, or at least credible enough to be taken seriously, or you have to explain why so many scientists from so many countries, with different cultures, religions, political views, and national interests, are writing these things if they know them to be false. Why are are farmers lying about how deep they have to go to find water? If there is a conspiracy, who organised it and why? Why has no one broken ranks and leaked to the press?

Yes, indeed, Divergence, Norman Borlaug has warned about unrestrained population growth - so it's just as well that population growth is indeed being restrained, isn't it?

Indeed, the UN estimates that the global population will plateau before the end of this century - due in no small part to the work of secular saints like Borlaug, and their good work in raising developing countries out of poverty. After all, prosperity is one of the best contraceptives around.

But comfortable western "green" elitists aren't happy with Norman Borlaug - not at all. Tsk, tsk, all those nasty brown people using up our precious resources; that won't do at all! If one can't afford organic food, then one shouldn't eat at all.

But, it's sadly amusing to see that the rubes are still paying their two bits to see charlatans like Ehrlich and Brown work their sleight-of-hand.

Ehrlich and Brown were indeed wrong in the 70s (and not just about food, but about minerals, energy and just about every other resource you care to mention); they were also wrong in the 80s and the 90s.

"Now we are up against global losses or shortages of arable land, fresh water, fish stocks, biodiversity, fossil fuels and minerals that are vital for our technology, and capacity of the environment to safely absorb wastes."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but - b*llsh*t.

Clownfish,

See this update on the famous Ehrlich-Simon bet on the prices of five metals. If the bet had closed in 2008 instead of 1980, Simon would have only been right about one of them, and Ehrlich would have won, i.e. Ehrlich was only wrong about the time frame.

http://www.uslaw.com/library/Intellectual_Property_Law/EhrlichSimon_Bet_Update.php?item=78581

It is also notable that Simon refused to take Ehrlich's second bet on such things as fish stocks and grain production per person.

If environmental threats are all such nonsense, perhaps you can explain why reputable scientists are risking their reputations by writing such things, why reputable journals are publishing their papers, and why governments are giving them grant money, when everyone would prefer that they were wrong.

People like yourself are happy to believe scientists when their findings lead to yummy new consumer goods or cures for your ailments, but not when their findings threaten your world view or your religious beliefs. Then you look around for someone - anyone - who will tell you what you want to hear. This is not to say that the maverick is never right, but for every such case, there are many more where the maverick was wrong.

Many people suffered from ulcers over the years and some died because the medical establishment here and elsewhere was not open to new ideas on their cause. Those numbers pale, however, in comparison to the people who died of AIDS and the babies who were infected in South Africa because Thabo Mbeki withheld antiretrovirals from his people, choosing to believe the maverick Peter Duesberg instead of the medical establishment. Babies are dying of whooping cough right now in developed countries because parents have been influenced by maverick doctors to not vaccinate their children.

"If environmental threats are all such nonsense"

Er, go back and read my earlier posts on this thread: I don't say that there *aren't* environmental threats, but that they are quite often nowhere near as dire as certain environmental lobbyists claim.

Lying is lying, it doesn't matter which side is doing it, nor how politically acceptable their motives are.

"why reputable scientists are risking their reputations by writing such things, why reputable journals are publishing their papers, and why governments are giving them grant money, when everyone would prefer that they were wrong."

Because quite often, scientists are not writing such things: Environmental lobbyists, with an eye to continued donations and grants, often misrepresent - or outright fabricate - scientific studies, and a compliant media joins in the sham: after all, bad news is what sells.

Consider, for example, recent media reports claiming that a scientific study had shown that children of older fathers were less intelligent that others. Anyone who bothered to look up the actual study would find that the researcher himself had cautioned against generalising too much from his study, which found that children of older fathers averaged two IQ points lower than other children.

Given that individuals can typically vary at least two points between different IQ points, the difference was thus statistically insignificant.

But that wouldn't sell, now would it?

One could also point to the notorious "Australia is the fattest nation on earth" study: A deeply flawed study that has, nonetheless, become conventional wisdom.

Further examples abound, especially in the arena of environmental issues, but word limits forbid.

Finally, why do governments give out grant money? Because effective environmental lobbyists have successfully scared the pants off all and sundry with their lies, distortions and half-truths.

“Car exhausts use to be very dirty things.. there are now more cars but the exhausts have been cleaned up a lot more.”

Sheer unmitigated rubbish Curmudgeon.

Petrol and diesel emissions remain the largest source of man-made carcinogens on the planet. Ever heard of fossil fuels Curmudgeon?

And burning petroleum emits about three-fourths as much CO2 as burning coal, and thanks to oil’s role as the established fuel for transportation globally, it’s neck-and-neck with coal in the race to become the leading greenhouse gas producer.

"Dr Kearney, former head of Sydney University’s Infectious Diseases and Immunology Department alluded to the book: “ Lives Per Gallon”, which said that the oil and car industries had acted again and again to deceive regulators about the hazards of their products and had used their wealth to hamstring attempts by state and federal legislators to make laws that address such threats."

http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:PkcBkCK1UUIJ:www.bbibioenergyaustralasia.com.au/article.jsp%3Farticle_id%3D1232%26article_title%3DThe%2BCorruption%2BOf%2BScience+ray+kearney+unleaded&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

And the corporate grim reapers (supported by spindoctors) continue to wreak havoc on the planet. These are the “upstanding” corporate citizens who like to boast about sponsoring the local CWA ladies’ Devonshire tea parties to divert attention while they cut loose on our ecosystems.

Clownfish says: “For instance, claiming that the world's forests had declined and degraded significantly, when in fact they had actually slightly increased - and making the wildly exaggerated claim that 16 million ha of forest were disappearing every year.”

As is typical of Clownfish's posts, there's never a link to be seen anywhere and only those suffering from depleted cranium would take him seriously:

UNEP 2008:

"Global economic growth over the past 50 years has been accompanied by accelerated environmental decline.

"Over the past 300 years, the global forest area has shrunk by around 40 per cent; half the globe's wetlands have been lost since 1900 and human - led species extinction rates are now 1,000 higher than the 'natural' rate of extinction.

"Some 60 per cent of the Earth's ecosystems and the goods and services they provide are now degraded."

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=548&ArticleID=5957&l=en

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2448863

protag: "And burning petroleum emits about three-fourths as much CO2 as burning coal, and thanks to oil’s role as the established fuel for transportation globally, it’s neck-and-neck with coal in the race to become the leading greenhouse gas producer...the global forest area has shrunk by around 40 per cent"

No, wrong on several counts there.

First: the ocean is "the biggest greenhouse gas producer", and will remain so even if every man, woman and child in the World drove Humvees from the driveways of their constantly air-conditioned McMansions.

Second: So what if "burning petroleum emits about three-fourths as much CO2", etc.? All living organisms emit CO2, including above-said ocean.

Third: So what if forest depletes? The silly assumption behind such scaremongering is that humans contrive to replace pristine rainforest with car parks and Walmarts. Yet Australia's rainforest coverage is understood to have depleted down to some 2-3% of pre-white settlement, for example, but that long-term destruction was rarely the cause of such real, current environmental problems as salinity and soil erosion. Elsewhere, forest depletion and degradation replaces with new vegetation, including plantations. That's a resource management issue, not a cause for eschatological panic and Malthusian fire-and-brimstone hatred towards humanity and civilization!

Or is all that actually the life-denying cancer and weakness at the heart of this green cult? While its head is driven by cynical financiers in the Stern/Garnault/Gore mould, desperate to impose another, more controllable type of debt bubble in ETS/CRTS, etc.

“First: the ocean is "the biggest greenhouse gas producer", and will remain so even if every man, woman and child in the World drove Humvees from the driveways of their constantly air-conditioned McMansions.”

Do you ever cringe with embarrassment Mil-observer? The oceans are the planet’s main carbon SINKS. Together with other carbon sinks, it is the ocean which absorbs the “human-generated carbon”. You really should try to learn more before putting foot in mouth.

However, it is evident that the ocean’s ability to absorb the elevated major greenhouse gas has weakened and in the last ten years or so they have become increasingly unable to play this role, in both the northern and southern hemispheres. In addition, CO2 is less soluble in warmer water, so as the oceans warm, eventually they start to emit CO2.

Such weakening of one of the Earth’s major carbon dioxide sinks will lead to higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the long-term, seriously exacerbated by the actions of ignorant hillbillies like yourself.

Second: So what if "burning petroleum emits about three-fourths as much CO2", etc.? All living organisms emit CO2, including above-said ocean.

You have my pity Mil-observer. It is obvious that you wouldn’t know a VOC from a sock and I have much better things to do than conduct remedial classes for the climate mafia.

How sad. Protag means that oceans are not CO2 emitters at all, but just absorbers of "carbon"? Try the term "outgassing", which may double as an apt description of protag's prolonged, but still very premature, ejaculation - and one sparked off by a fetish about the "carbon sink" concept and other AGW S&M rituals...

Sort of gives it away if the self-appointed science guru refers repeatedly to "carbon" (a la carbon compounds like common plastics, wood, etc.)! All that bluster to condescend from a position of shocking ignorance, matched by gigatonnes of toxic arrogance.

Onlookers take note: such is the blind, haughty fanaticism that the AGW creed generates.

So back to basics: "the ocean is the biggest greenhouse gas producer". Please, someone dispute that factual assertion with a point based on fact, not protag's fantasy.

Clownfish,

Of course there is sensationalism in the popular press, but Nature and Science are among the world's leading peer reviewed science journals. Publishing in them is a great honour, and the people who write the papers and edit the journals are all scientists. The people who write for New Scientist, Scientific American, Natural History, and some others are both scientists and specialised science journalists, who almost always have science degrees themselves. If you pick up a copy of New Scientist, you will notice that they always quote additional opinions whenever they cover anything that might be considered sensational or controversial. Otherwise, they would be jumped on from a great height, because there are a lot of scientists among their readers.

If an environmental threat has been sensationalised, then you would expect belief in it to become less in groups that know more. This is what you see with opposition to nuclear power. There is a much more hysterical reaction to it among the general public than among engineers and scientists. In other cases, such as anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the opposite is true. See this survey from Eos, the earth science journal

http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

The more you know about the science, the more likely you are to believe in AGW.

Mil-ob,

No one disputes that CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas or that concentrations in the atmosphere are up by about 30% over pre-industrial levels. There is debate about the feedback mechanisms on climate, which are not fully understood. Why do you think that it is a smart idea to do an uncontrolled experiment on your planet's atmosphere? See

http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/environmental/200611CO2globalwarming.html

mil-observer: << the ocean is the biggest greenhouse gas producer >>

Huh? So now m-o is implicitly acknowledging global warming, because rising atmospheric temperatures are what causes the ocean to release CO2 into the atmosphere. Otherwise, the ocean absorbs about 50% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Is that what you meant, mil-ob?

CJ: No, you're obviously caught up in some entropic, no-hoping and degenerate nonsense, which denies the infinite complexity and versatility of our universe. The world's largest organic milieu, the ocean, has always led vegetation (let alone civilization) in emitting CO2, long before the crackpot AGW theory-scam spread its wacky interpretations of the natural world.

Oceans' very "outgassing" of CO2 is so vast, and - even more so during warming phases - dwarfs anthropogenic CO2 when compared against oceanic absorption of CO2 elsewhere. That's not to forget the complexity of currents' heat and cold storage either, and the cyclic delays.

A.K.A. “breathing”. It's like simple calisthenics in primary school or yoga class: “In goes the good air, out goes the bad air”. Of course, that would have to be updated to suit sicko-green cultists: “In go the poisonous 'carbon emissions' (because of humans and civilization), and out go even more poisonous 'carbon emissions', all set to kill us if we don't end civilization and start culling humanity”.

“Carbon sinks” are perhaps the holiest of holies for AGW's most devout. That's how states got conned into wasting vast resources on useless “carbon sequestration” rubbish. Again, these people betray their silliness by referring to the common element “carbon” here. Imagine: “we spend a few bill in a plan to trap carbon underground in amongst, ugh, carbon!”

Big deal that oceans (and vegetation) absorb CO2 as well as emit CO2! Carl Wunsch's own descriptions confirm that oceans' massive CO2 emissions even stretch back to natural events centuries ago. So what that oceans warmed up in some places in response to sunlight and reduced cloud cover? Ever swum in tropical waters? Beware, they emit so much CO2!

And as more recent years' colder temperatures, and last year's northern ice sheets, suggest: yet higher atmospheric CO2 would encourage and accelerate vegetation, marine life, and civilized production ahead of a looming Ice Age. That's not to give tacit assent to Ruddiman's nonsense about campfires staving off an Ice Age either; I assert merely that civilization needs the best preparation possible, including nuclear power and other strong infrastructure.

m-o: << you're obviously caught up in some entropic, no-hoping and degenerate nonsense, which denies the infinite complexity and versatility of our universe >>

I guess that's a no, then? Do you ever spend any extended time outside the urban environment that apparently sustains your fantasies of infinite human expansion at the expense of everything else?

There's a rapidly shrinking natural environment out here in the real world. You should go outside more often, if only to see it while it still exists.

Oh, so it's about “going outside more often” and “communing with nature”, feeling some deep bond of "blood and soil" perhaps? How terribly mystical - in a corny and irrational fascist/nazi kind of way...that's why these greens always end up with Malthusian genocide and homilies about “animal rights”, where beasts are at least on par with humans (says so much for their own beastly primitivism).

Divergence: “The more you know about the science, the more likely you are to believe in AGW...No one disputes that CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas or that concentrations in the atmosphere are up by about 30% over pre-industrial levels.”

These are vain, provocational assertions, degrading an already polluted discussion, encouraging further toxic and fanatical ignorance as that betrayed by protag. Don't forget that case either: protag's confident claim that oceans don't emit CO2, and are thereby not the leading CO2 emitter, reveals just how wacko the green cult has become, and the deep intellectual corruption it helps to intensify. And the “30%” claim is outlandish, over-the-top ambit sophistry, sleazed in by stealth.

Divergence's second sentence would usually come packaged with the qualifier “seriously”, as a device by carbon dioxide people to suggest that anyone disputing “the science” should be just ignored. And they could not be “scientific”! Well, we already know several prominent examples of open scientific “dispute” against AGW. Indeed, “dispute” seems an understatement: it's more like we dissidents are here waging a bitter, protracted war of ideas, evidence, and intellectual and moral principle.

One hundred scientists protesting AGW to Ban Ki Moon. See: http://www.nationalpost.com/most_popular/story.html?id=164002 and http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=164004

Then 31,000 scientists in an open online petition against AGW dogma. See: http://www.petitionproject.org/

Then consider Dr R Tim Patterson's direct challenges to The Cult, as in my quotes thereof at a current OLO cross-thread: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8911#141819

“Carbon sinks” are perhaps the holiest of holies for AGW's most devout.”

Mil-tailings - Perhaps we should try to tolerate a loony who (a): reckons Jesus wears a Rolex and plays golf with Curmudgeon on Saturdays and (b): gets the drum from the supernatural that man must go forth and multiply.

I see that you have have changed your mind about “the ocean is the biggest greenhouse gas producer" to the “ocean emits CO2.” A very shifty but subtle retreat mil-tailings. Let me offer a hypothesis to assist with your "enlightenment":

(1): Dumping you into the ocean today would, at a guess, see the gaseous emissions from your decaying carcass emit from the ocean into the atmosphere perhaps in 20 or 30 years time? The lag time for your atmospheric large gaseous emissions would be considered brief in comparison but there would be good reason why the ocean would want to expel the last toxic remnants of a drivelling windbag.

(2): Climate scientists could offer you another example - that is the Indian Ocean , which, after absorbing atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide will begin to emit part of that carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, but not until some 55 years have passed.

(3): The carbon dioxide that the Southern part of the Atlantic Ocean takes in today will begin to emit part of that carbon back into the atmosphere some 70 years hence.

Mil-tailings - I believe your tasteless and senseless hypocrisies makes you a laughing stock since oceans are not known for their production (manufacturing) of carbon dioxide – they act as a sink for CO2 which is manufactured elsewhere particularly from the A/burning of fossil fuels.

Your hollow prattling about Tim Patterson et al, who take their orders from the oil conglomerates http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?ContentID=4870 puts you in the dummies’ corner for it's glaringly obvious that you as a member of the climate gestapo, have no intention of trying to understand the science on global warming. You're here to tip a bucket on those who do try and that's tough - for you that is:

http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:VGbAWskksT0J:www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/26/11550/9864+tim+patterson+marshall+institute&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

What a right royal nutter. Pity it doesn't get more publicity; AGW could just evaporate as the duped and plain gullible try dealing with their inevitable shock at protag's green-frothing madness.

OK. So oceans only emit CO2 if that CO2 has come originally “from elsewhere particularly from the burning of fossil fuels”? That cancels out the biological integrity of all marine life for a start; from plankton to sperm whales, coral to seaweed. Let's forget too about the WATER - ALL NO PROCESS OF EXPIRATION – zip!

Then there's Carl Wunsch's career as oceanographer. Out you go Carl, forget about modelling the fluctuations of oceanic CO2 emissions, the largest source on earth: protag just gave you a simple geographic calendar, 55 and 70 years respectively, and none from within the ocean itself! Cloud cuckoo land.

Then there's the dark, “investigative” stuff of “big oil” conspiracy. Tim Patterson has worked in an institute that had got some small funding traced to Exxon! Egads! Practically every university and academic institute in North America has had some small donation from Exxon; it's one way liberalist economies keep education systems going, along with giving tax breaks to corporate friends.

By protag's febrile nuttery, “big oil” must somehow be involved in a conspiracy against the financiers of IPCC, and “heroic” types like hedge fund pig Fat Al Gore. Onlookers: do check protag's links: they're of very similar "research" quality to the vast body of "investigation" into such nonsense as Roswell aliens. That's scary, because it demonstrates how the laity can become actually politicized on this issue by deception.

So back to base (again), with facts:
1) “The ocean emits CO2”,
2) The ocean is the biggest producer of CO2”, and (for emphasis, forgive the tautologies)
3) “Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are miniscule compared to that emitted by the ocean”.

“What a right royal nutter. Pity it doesn't get more publicity; AGW could just evaporate as the duped and plain gullible try dealing with their inevitable shock at protag's green-frothing madness.”

http://www.ccas.ru/tarko/ocean_e.htm

Now steady on mil-o. We certainly don’t want you hyperventilating on OLO just because your hate-based faith system gets you in a tizz and you resort to cud spitting....whoops……oooh.....ah.....nah....no worries on-liners, I’ve got meself another hanky.

Carl Wunsch you say mil-o? Indeed a distinguished scientist who was the victim of Martin Durkin (et al), the producer of the pseudo-documentary, The Great Global Swindle, in which Durkin fraudulently misrepresented this fine scientist and others who have researched global climate. But of course Durkin and the other oily megalomaniacs are the charlatans you support but like you, are looking pretty damn stoopid!

Professor Wunsch remarked in his letter to Channel 4 in Britain:

“Never before, however, have I had an experience like this one. My appearance in the "Global Warming Swindle" is deeply embarrasing, and my professional reputation has been damaged. I was duped---an uncomfortable position in which to be.

“At a minimum, I ask that the film should never be seen again publicly with my participation included. Channel 4 surely owes an apology to its viewers....... I will be taking advice as to whether I should proceed to make some more formal protest.”

Professor Wunsch said that the use of his remarks in this way came close to fraud.

And in the past, two eminent British scientists who questioned the accuracy of a Channel 4 programme that claimed global warming was an unfounded conspiracy theory have received an expletive-filled tirade from the programme maker.

In an e-mail exchange leaked to the Times (UK), Martin Durkin, responded to the concerns of Dr Armand Leroi, from Imperial College, and Simon Singh, the respected scientific author, by telling them to “go and f** yourself” and “you’re a big daft cock.”

So what wildly manufactured abusive response can we expect from you this time mil-o, in providing political fodder for the rest of we punters whom you regard as illiterate dimwits?

Here it is again, untouched and unsullied facts exposing the fraudulent protag:

1) “The ocean emits CO2”,
2) The ocean is the biggest producer of CO2”, and (for emphasis, forgive the tautologies)
3) “Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are miniscule compared to that emitted by the ocean”.

Nothing abusive there, except of course to the self-abusive protag.

Good to see reference to the spat over TGGWS though; sad that no formal legal action went ahead, kept as it was in the realm of publicity.

Protagoras, perhaps if you cared to consult the FAO statistics for global forest cover?

It might also be pertinent to note that Worldwatch Institute referred to FAO's State of the World's Forests 1997 to claim that Canada was losing 200,000ha of forest per year - when that source actually showed almost the exact opposite.

Maybe poor old Lester was just reading the graph upside-down ...

Divergence, I rather suspect that your beloved publications have bought into the hysteria a little too much, and risk embarassing themselves with such tabloid alarmism as claiming that we are consiging humanity to the dustbin of history.

Witness, for example, their strident and bullying reaction to Bjorn Lomborg.

And actually, the more I read of the science, the less am I convinced by the shrieking hysteria of the alarmists. I used to be a card-carrying believer - I'm embarassed to admit that I even have a copy of "An inconvenient truth" - until I began to read more on the subject - not to mention become increasingly unnerved by the antics of the Climate Change alarmists.