Scientific American article about side effects of raised CO2 levels on marine life.


Regards Hans

---

Oh sure, so let's just continue polluting our atmosphere full steam ahead, why don't we? Let's not worry about changing the chemical balance of the planet, hell, it's an entire planet, what effect could we have?

Let's assume tht I accept your argument. Remind me Chuck...which country sends the most CO2 into the atmosphere (hint: this country is specifically exempt from the Kyoto accord)? How do the emmissions of that country compare in volume with the emmissions from a typical volcanic eruption? What was the volume of release from the last recorded volcanic eruption? How much CO2 is being released by vocanic activity, world wide, on a daily basis (hint: the answer is not "none")?

Just wondering...

Let's be honest: 'this country' did not get exempt from the Kyoto accord, it bullied everyone so they could not follow what they didn't want to. Like the US does with everything else, they rule the block because they're the neighborhood bully. They're the big brother. I remember the trees all dying off around Lac Simon in the 80's thanks to acid rain - the vast majority from the states.

Free trade was supposed to be for everyone, but when Canada makes some cash off of lumber, oh, that's no good! We can't have that happening! Those damn Canajun foreigners! They still eat french fries you know! NOT freedom fries!!
I never ever had mail go awry before then! Only 50% gets to its US destination now!


Lastly, I would like to remind you that releasing Carbon into the atmosphere is hardly the only violation being perpetrated. Those self-same volcanoes you mention aren't gobbling up as much lumber at the cheapest price possible that they can. Those volcanoes aren't slashing and burning whole rainforests so they can afford to have TV and maybe eventually Micro$oft. Those volcanoes aren't receiving kickback to make sure that they aren't held to a sensible and responsible economic policy designed to protect the entire world.

Once again, the US acts as if it were the entire world.

---

Never Forget a Friend. Or an Enemy.

Let's be honest: 'this country' did not get exempt from the Kyoto accord, it bullied everyone so they could not follow what they didn't want to. Like the US does with everything else, they rule the block because they're the neighborhood bully. They're the big brother. I remember the trees all dying off around Lac Simon in the 80's thanks to acid rain - the vast majority from the states.

Free trade was supposed to be for everyone, but when Canada makes some cash off of lumber, oh, that's no good! We can't have that happening! Those damn Canajun foreigners! They still eat french fries you know! NOT freedom fries!!
I never ever had mail go awry before then! Only 50% gets to its US destination now!


Lastly, I would like to remind you that releasing Carbon into the atmosphere is hardly the only violation being perpetrated. Those self-same volcanoes you mention aren't gobbling up as much lumber at the cheapest price possible that they can. Those volcanoes aren't slashing and burning whole rainforests so they can afford to have TV and maybe eventually Micro$oft. Those volcanoes aren't receiving kickback to make sure that they aren't held to a sensible and responsible economic policy designed to protect the entire world.

Once again, the US acts as if it were the entire world.

Once again, please do your research. The country to which I was aluding is China. I am not sure how the US Postal Service relates to the Global Warming thread, but I have to grant you that the USPS is a pale shadow of what it once was. Also, the US is not 'slashing and burning whole rainforests' and actually cannot perform that nefarious deed due to a regrettable lack of rainforests to slash and burn within the US borders. Other countries do this and export to the US, but no one is forced into business with the US. As interesting as it is, exactly how does this point relate to the question as to whether or not human machination has significant effect on global climate?

Finally, I am also puzzled by spelling Microsoft with a "$". Once again, not apropos to the discussion about Global Warming but mildly amusing in the same way that Neo Nazis are when spelling America with a "k".

Chuck, a couple of others have made this point for me but I'd like to point out to you that it is a fact that there are more trees in N.America now than in the past 100 years. I'm not quite sure what you're talking about here. Now, as far as timber is concerned, I fully support Canada's right to sell as much timber as it cares to...I wasn't sure if you were upset with the enviornmentalists on your side over this or whether you were criticising some perceived trade policy or what.

---

Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

Trade policy. I have no research to back it up, but I see quite clearly that 'Free Trade' was actually meant for the US. There are Walmarts, McDonalds, and other US companies everywhere. How many loads of Canadian companies are in the states? Do ever see a Hudson's Bay company outlet down there? Do you have a "Belle Province" fast food? (Do you even know what a 'poutine' is?) How about a "Provi-Soir" convenience store? There are 7-11's up here!!! Canadian Tire hardware? We also have 'Home Depot'!

And when Canadian lumber gives your northern neighbors the advatage, ohhh, Bush is sure pissed with that! And when it was water he wanted, that our previous Prime Minister wouldn't let him exploit, he was so pissed he didn't bother coming personally for any meetings up here; he'd send someone else. Snubbed 'Canada' out of the list of friends of the US. Didn't apologize, as the supreme commander, for friendly US fire that wiped out a batch of Canadians overseas.


So I'm a little pissed at the lack of equity.
Although I would have to be environmental! I am sure those 'less woods 100 yrs ago' would be due to a much higher reliance an wood in the past! I will bet there was a hell of a lot more woodlands when our countries were being settled at the same time!

The point I was making about 'slash and burn' was that your example of Volcanoes spouting C into the air sure doesn't compete with any country slashing and burning the lungs of the Earth. When I notice a huge difference between city air and the air out in the countryside, it makes me utterly disgusted with humanity.

---

Never Forget a Friend. Or an Enemy.

Chuck:
The comparison with the US economy is not helpful. You see more US companies in Canada that Canadian companies in the US because of the vast difference in the size of the two markets. According to the Canadian Population Clock (www.statcan.ca/english/edu/clock/population.htm), the The population of Canada is 32,543,976 as of 5/30/2006. The US version (www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html) shows the population as 298,863,150. The difference in relative market size is why there is more investment capitol in the US for expansion into Canada.

Air quality is and has been for decades a very important issue. In the US, air quality has improved tremendously since the 1960s, when I was first old enough to take notice. But local air quality is a local or at most regional issue.

And really, what does that have to do with Global Warming? Please try to stay on subject because when you rant about side issues (however important they may be as separate issues) you dilute your message.

Dude, air quality is hardly a regional issue. Acid rain in Canadian lakes was so rampant in the 80's, the ecology was changing and scientists were quite worried. This surely came from the US plants; vastly superior in number and production. I don't have a reference, but anything David Suzuki put forth in that time period was bound to have mentionned it. Your neighbors to the north are paying for the excesses and environmental disregard of the south.

Economic growth at great disregard for the environment (of which global warming is one direct result) is going to wind up getting the world sterile and dead.

By the way, I find 'ranting' to be a dismissive term that ignores an argument - which you didn't seem to want to do. In the past we used to say someone was talking crazy.

---

Never Forget a Friend. Or an Enemy.

Dude, air quality is hardly a regional issue. Acid rain in Canadian lakes was so rampant in the 80's, the ecology was changing and scientists were quite worried. This surely came from the US plants; vastly superior in number and production. I don't have a reference, but anything David Suzuki put forth in that time period was bound to have mentionned it. Your neighbors to the north are paying for the excesses and environmental disregard of the south.

Economic growth at great disregard for the environment (of which global warming is one direct result) is going to wind up getting the world sterile and dead.

By the way, I find 'ranting' to be a dismissive term that ignores an argument - which you didn't seem to want to do. In the past we used to say someone was talking crazy.

Some 'acid rain' heads north from the US to Canada. Canada also sends the occasional Smoke Cloud That Blots Out The Sun down to the US during forest fire season. Both countries get plenty of pollution from China due to jet stream air currents and China's exemption from the Kyoto Protocol.

As for Canadian lumber, the US government has been less vicious than it has been incoherent on the issue. Parts of the US government cheer on the lumber industry as part of NAFTA and such... other parts chide Canada for daring to cut down poor defenseless trees. If the US government actually had a coherent position, then someone could argue whether it was useful or harmful.

---

No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

By the way, I find 'ranting' to be a dismissive term that ignores an argument - which you didn't seem to want to do. In the past we used to say someone was talking crazy.

This is a fragment from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary on the term "rant":

Pronunciation: 'rant
Function: verb
Etymology: obsolete Dutch ranten, randen
intransitive senses
1 : to talk in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner
2 : to scold vehemently
transitive senses : to utter in a bombastic declamatory fashion

Regardless of your feelings about the word it is not dismissive but rather descriptive. We all rant occasionally, especially when trying to make a point. I was not dismissing your other points, I was saying that they were off subject. I did not and will not resort to defamatory statements when I am involved in a reasoned discourse. I have also assumed that we were having such.

From the website of the Neal Boortz show this morning.
[url=http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html]www.boortz.com[url]

Thursday -- June 1, 2006

DISSENTION CANNOT BE TOLERATED

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (the NOAA) is best known as the government agency that runs the National Weather Service and forecasts the weather. In addition to that, the NOAA charts and observes changes in the Earth's environment. Then there's also the NHC...the National Hurricane Center. These folks are the ones that go on TV and tell us about hurricanes whenever one is bearing down.

Have you heard? Al Gore has a film out there called "An Inconvenient Truth." This film says that Hurricane Katrina was the fault of global warming .. and that global warming will cause more hurricanes like Katrina.

So what do these two bits of information have to do with each other? Well it seems that some of the top names in the science of hurricanes don't exactly agree with Al Gore's film. That, neighbors, cannot be tolerated.

Chris Landsea is the science and operations officer at the NHC. He says that the Atlantic Basin, where hurricanes are born, is experiencing a natural 25 to 40 year cycle in hurricane intensity. Landsea says that there has "been no change in the number and intensity of Category 4 or 5 hurricanes around the world in the last 15 years."

This, my friends, is blasphemy to the religion of environmentalism. After the big hurricane season we had last year...Katrina, Rita and so on, how dare the leaders of these agencies came right out and say the hurricanes were part of the Earth's natural cycle?

This is not setting well with the eco-radicals. They believe that there is one and only cause of these strong hurricanes, and that cause is, of course, global warming. They also believe that there is one and only one cause of global warming, and that cause is man in general, and the United States in particular.

In order to "protest" the statements of the NOAA and the NHC, the global warming nut jobs are staging a 37-hour protest at the offices of the NOAA in Silver Spring, Maryland today. They're demanding that the weather services stop covering up the link between global warming and hurricanes. And, of course, they're demanding resignations! Demanding resignations, you see, is the sport of the left. Rather than paying some monetary dues to be part of the anti-rational left, you simply demand someone's resignation. Find someone who expresses an opinion with which you do not agree ... and demand their resignation! Bingo! You're in the club!

If you want to get along remember these so-called facts:

Hurricanes are stronger than they have ever been.
Hurricanes are stronger because of one thing. Global warming.
You have no right to deny the existence of global warming.
You have no right to deny the "fact" that global warming is caused by man, and only by man.
You have no right to point out that the sun is actually in a cycle during which it is hotter.
The sun has nothing to do with global warming.
There ... got it? Now you can go in peace, be ignorant and multiply.

---

Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

I think that the environment is warming, but the root causes are moot.

I also think that the start of the Global Warming Movement was rooted in the existence and ongoing maintenance of government and private sector grants made to investigate the subject. Thirty years or so ago the hot topic was Global Cooling, but that subject never attracted the amount of money or attention that the Global Warming Movement does today.

Arctic Ocean used to be toasty
Research links climate change to greenhouse gases

By Andrew C. Revkin
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

June 1, 2006

The first detailed analysis of an extraordinary climatic and biological record from the seabed near the North Pole shows that 55 million years ago the Arctic Ocean was much warmer than scientists imagined – a Floridian year-round average of 74 degrees Fahrenheit.

The findings, published today in three separate papers in the journal Nature, fill in a blank spot in scientists' understanding of climate history. And while they show that much remains to be learned about climate change, they suggest that scientists have greatly underestimated the power of greenhouse gases to warm the Arctic.

Previous computer simulations, done without the benefit of seabed sampling, did not suggest an ancient Arctic that was nearly so warm, the authors said.

“Something extra happens when you push the world into a warmer world, and we just don't understand what it is,” said one lead author, Henk Brinkhuis, an expert on ancient Arctic ecology at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.

The studies draw on the work of a 2004 expedition that pulled the first significant samples from the ancient seabed 50 miles from the North Pole: 1,400 feet of slender shafts of muck, organisms and rock representing a climate history that dates back 56 million years.

While there is ample fossil evidence around the edges of the Arctic Ocean showing great past swings in climate, until now the sediment samples from the undersea depths had gone back less than 400,000 years.

The new analysis confirms that the Arctic Ocean warmed remarkably 55 million years ago, which is when many scientists say that the extraordinary planetwide warm-up called the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum must have been caused by a massive outburst of gases such as methane and carbon dioxide. But no one has found a clear cause for the gas discharge.

Most climate experts agree that the present-day greenhouse gas buildup, led by carbon dioxide, is predominantly a result of emissions from smokestacks, tailpipes and burning forests.

The samples also chronicle the subsequent cooling that the researchers say began about 45 million years ago and led to the cycles of ice ages and brief warm spells of the last several million years.

Experts not connected with the studies say they support the idea that it is greenhouse gases – not slight variations in Earth's orbit around the sun – that largely determine the extent of warming or cooling.

“The new research provides additional important evidence that greenhouse-gas changes controlled much of climate history, which strengthens the argument that greenhouse-gas changes are likely to control much of the climate future,” said one such expert, Richard B. Alley, a geoscientist at Penn State.

The $12.5 million Arctic Coring Expedition, run by a consortium called the International Ocean Drilling Program, was the first to drill deep into the layers of sediment deposited over millions of years in the Arctic.

The samples were gathered late in summer 2004 as two icebreakers shattered huge drifting floes so that a third ship could hold its position and bore for core samples for nine days.

---

me@rescam.org

I find it very odd that total solar flux is accounted as almost negligible in the Global Warming community, especially when you consider that the sun is the primary energy source driving the climate engine. Every paper I read seems to treat solar energy as a constant. This is possibly due to "dumbing down" the information for easy understanding by the unwashed masses.

Currently, approximately 174,390,000,000,000,000.0 watts per second of energy hit the earth 24/7/365. That value varies short term over a 10 to 12 year cycle such that the irradiance at the top of the atmosphere changes +/- by approximately half a Watt per meter squared (W/m2), but wait, there's more.

Over the last century, the irradiance at the top of the atmosphere has trended upward to the effect that the mean value has increased from about 1365 W/m2 to about 1367 W/m2 (I have also read papers estimating 1370 W/m2 to 1372 W/m2). Considering the surface area of the earth, this is an astounding increase in the climatic energy budget.

This longer term variability is obviously of a sinusoidal nature, but we have absolutely no idea what the amplitude and period of the variations are. We simply do not have enough data.

It seems to me to be reasonable to, at the least, admit the possibility that solar variability may have somewhat to do with the whole global warming issue.

Well. Earth and Sol have variability in their natural course of 'life'. However, we humans are mixing things up for Earth by polluting its biosphere, changing the concentration of gasses in its atmosphere, and changing the coverage of plants on it.
We humans do that.
How could we expect there to be no change? The attitude of the planet being so huge that our operations couldn't possibly affect it is ludicrous.

Anybody ever read 3001?

---

Never Forget a Friend. Or an Enemy.

.
.
.
(Unrelated comment)
.
.
.

Robert, just what, exactly does this have to do with Global Warming?

youre right Bill I have deleated the post. Please edit your post accordingly Thanks..

---

Well. Earth and Sol have variability in their natural course of 'life'. However, we humans are mixing things up for Earth by polluting its biosphere, changing the concentration of gasses in its atmosphere, and changing the coverage of plants on it.
We humans do that.
How could we expect there to be no change? The attitude of the planet being so huge that our operations couldn't possibly affect it is ludicrous.

Anybody ever read 3001?

Yes, we have done and are doing those things. I have not maintained that we could not possibly affect the planet, I have maintained that research has not established that we have had a meaningful effect on climate. The evidence looks good, but is not conclusive, that we (meaning all of humanity) have had a measurable but miniscule effect.

But the research continues to be questionable in areas. A case in point are the studies of CO2 concentration in ice cores. They seem to show that years ago CO2 levels were about half what they are now. The cores were drilled, raised to the surface, removed to a lab and CO2 concentrations measured. Apparently good science.

The problem is that CO2 and water have a highly active chemical life. The studies seem to assume that CO2 was trapped in ice and lay dormant until the cores were drilled, ignoring the fact that water is present and moves through ice in glaciers and ice caps, even (or especially) very deep in the ice. Also, no effort was recorded that attempts were made to either keep the cores at 'in situ' conditions of pressure and temperature or even to seal the cores to prevent outgassing when they were raised to the surface. As I see it, because pressures, temperatures and impurities in the ice affect the measured CO2 levels so significantly, these oversights bring the results into question.

Chill out over global warming
By David HarsanyiDenver Post Staff Columnist

You'll often hear the left lecture about the importance of dissent in a free society.

Why not give it a whirl?

Start by challenging global warming hysteria next time you're at a LoDo cocktail party and see what happens.

Admittedly, I possess virtually no expertise in science. That puts me in exactly the same position as most dogmatic environmentalists who want to craft public policy around global warming fears.

The only inconvenient truth about global warming, contends Colorado State University's Bill Gray, is that a genuine debate has never actually taken place. Hundreds of scientists, many of them prominent in the field, agree.

Gray is perhaps the world's foremost hurricane expert. His Tropical Storm Forecast sets the standard. Yet, his criticism of the global warming "hoax" makes him an outcast.

"They've been brainwashing us for 20 years," Gray says. "Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we'll look back and see what a hoax this was."

Gray directs me to a 1975 Newsweek article that whipped up a different fear: a coming ice age.

"Climatologists," reads the piece, "are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change. ... The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."

Thank God they did nothing. Imagine how warm we'd be?

Another highly respected climatologist, Roger Pielke Sr. at the University of Colorado, is also skeptical. Pielke contends there isn't enough intellectual diversity in the debate. He claims a few vocal individuals are quoted "over and over" again, when in fact there are a variety of opinions.

I ask him: How do we fix the public perception that the debate is over?

"Quite frankly," says Pielke, who runs the Climate Science Weblog (climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu), "I think the media is in the ideal position to do that. If the media honestly presented the views out there, which they rarely do, things would change. There aren't just two sides here. There are a range of opinions on this issue. A lot of scientists out there that are very capable of presenting other views are not being heard."

Al Gore (not a scientist) has definitely been heard and heard and heard. His documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," is so important, in fact, that Gore crisscrosses the nation destroying the atmosphere just to tell us about it.

"Let's just say a crowd of baby boomers and yuppies have hijacked this thing," Gray says. "It's about politics. Very few people have experience with some real data. I think that there is so much general lack of knowledge on this. I've been at this over 50 years down in the trenches working, thinking and teaching."

Gray acknowledges that we've had some warming the past 30 years. "I don't question that," he explains. "And humans might have caused a very slight amount of this warming. Very slight. But this warming trend is not going to keep on going. My belief is that three, four years from now, the globe will start to cool again, as it did from the middle '40s to the middle '70s."

Both Gray and Pielke say there are many younger scientists who voice their concerns about global warming hysteria privately but would never jeopardize their careers by speaking up.

"Plenty of young people tell me they don't believe it," he says. "But they won't touch this at all. If they're smart, they'll say: 'I'm going to let this run its course.' It's a sort of mild McCarthyism. I just believe in telling the truth the best I can. I was brought up that way."

So next time you're with some progressive friends, dissent. Tell 'em you're not sold on this global warming stuff.

Back away slowly. You'll probably be called a fascist.

Don't worry, you're not. A true fascist is anyone who wants to take away my air conditioning or force me to ride a bike.

All contents Copyright 2006 The Denver Post or other copyright holders. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed for any commercial purpose.

---

To truly explore, one must keep an open mind...

I also remember scientists who claimed that Chloroflourocarbons and related compounds were in the process of depleting the earths ozone layer. In 1974 M.J.Molina and F.S.Rowland published their report. All the chemical companies, especially Dupont, automobile manufactures, appliance manufatures, consumer product manufactures, viciously attacked their studies because it was considered bad for business and the economy. Then many orthodox scientists chimed in and ridiculed their findings as well.

Well guess what...!!!

---

Account frozen...