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The Forum > Article Comments > Damage control - a greater problem than climate change > Comments

Damage control - a greater problem than climate change : Comments

By Valerie Yule, published 14/5/2009

Climate change has become a happy hunting ground to divert us from a greater problem - damage control.

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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
Posted by Divergence, Friday, 22 May 2009 11:19:31 AM
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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?
Posted by CJ Morgan, Friday, 22 May 2009 7:21:58 PM
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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.
Posted by mil-observer, Saturday, 23 May 2009 9:50:58 AM
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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.
Posted by CJ Morgan, Saturday, 23 May 2009 10:28:34 AM
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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
Posted by mil-observer, Saturday, 23 May 2009 3:12:50 PM
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“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
Posted by Protagoras, Sunday, 24 May 2009 3:03:50 AM
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