I don't think I want to drop the denialist tag. I reserve it for those who ought to know better because of their qualifications, and in some cases know exactly what's going on.

It is actually much more serious than the holocaust because we need to act much quicker than we are currently acting.

This is not a game about maximising profit. People will die this century as a result of the changing climate. These people who spread confusion have blood on their hands. No - I don't have a crystal ball, but the various projected outcomes for a variety of emission scenarios have been subject to the scrutiny of peer review, and are accepted by every National Academy in the world. Many years ago I learnt  that you never shoot the messenger, even if you don't like the news that he brings.

Governments are committing themselves to a future of coal production without considering the fact that clean coal may not be such a cost effective alternative. The fact is that there are some who continue to block the progress of renewable energy production, not by putting up a coherent case that stands on its own merit, but by nibbling away at the edges, by deliberately muddying the waters and by regurgitating half truths at every opportunity.  

A frequently used tactic is to use somebody else's research and twist the results to support the case. In all cases the original researchers are horrified to find that their work is being used for this purpose without doing the common courtesy of consulting with them first.

I asked you a question before. Would you like me to ask one of the original researchers for their opinions on the matter? You're not an expert on the subject, and it's not my own specialised field, so I can hardly see how you could object to asking an expert.

I think you are well aware what the result of that enquiry would be.

You don't need my permission to contact Barnes and Lough Muso. Their answer will rather depend on the questions you ask. Why don't you ask them if the study in question was 'significant' or if it didn't account for acidic attack on corals? Ie your earlier criticisms.

freediver wrote on Sep 4^th, 2008 at 4:15pm:


Actually I wasn't the one who used that term FD, you and Muso did (thats why the inverted commas).

freediver wrote on Sep 4^th, 2008 at 4:38pm:


Nice try FD but you should have looked a bit closer. I looked back at the thread the old fashion way and found that Muso was first to use the term 'significant' in the context of the B&L paper and its significance to the issue of acidification and the GBR (post 464 p6). The prior references attributed to me weren't actually my words but commentary from the CO2 Science website describing actual rates of calcification that B&L found over a certain time period. Ie an entirely different context!    

freediver wrote on Sep 4^th, 2008 at 5:38pm:


Only because you chopped this bit out (mid sentence in fact):

and its significance to the issue of acidification and the GBR (post 464 p6).


[freediver wrote on Sep 4^th, 2008 at 5:38pm:


You being rather obtuse, FD. The context in my earlier posts was totally different - that's my point. And as to my suggestion of asking B&L about the 'significance' I did refer to Muso's use of the term.  

My last post for a while, but it seems we don't need to ask the original authors:

http://www.climateshifts.org/?p=142

"The paper outlines Porites growth at two sites in the northern reaches of the GBR, about 450km apart. The project examined calcification rates, which are a combination of coral skeleton density and the linear rate at which the coral grow.

“The fact that the two sites are reasonably well separated and have different general characteristics and different average water temperatures but are still showing the same decline in calcification is good evidence that something unusual is happening,” Dr Lough said.

Reef-building corals create their hard skeletons from materials dissolved in seawater. When large amounts of carbon dioxide enter seawater, the resulting chemical changes effectively reduce the ability of marine organisms to form their skeletons.

“It is basically an equation – change the background conditions like temperature or pH and that shifts the equation,” Dr Lough said.

Calcification will not switch off completely, according to Dr Lough, but marine creatures won’t be able to do it as well as they have in the past.

Rates of coral calcification are known to be naturally variable over long time scales. What is concerning now, according to Dr Lough, is that the rate of change exceeds what would be expected in natural cycles of coral growth.

Earlier analyses of coral growth data had shown that calcification had been increasing during the 50 years up to around 1980, in line with a rise in average sea surface temperature over that time. Dr Lough and colleagues had suggested back then that some corals might initially respond to global warming by increasing their growth rates.

However, it appears that the higher growth response only goes so far and that a sharp decline now may indicate that the greater acidity is overwhelming any growth effects caused by warming.

“A decline in coral calcification of this magnitude with increasing seawater temperatures is unprecedented in recent centuries based on analysis of growth records from long cores of massive Porites,” according to the paper.

If projections are correct that pH could decrease by up to 0.4 by the end of this century, this would be “well outside the realms of anything organisms have experienced over hundreds of thousands of years,” Dr Lough said."

Matter settled ?

LOL

That's a very weak argument, PB. Of course we need to understand all the implications and further work needs to be done to confirm the data.

Something significant enough to wipe out the reef needs to be investigated as thoroughly as possible!

If you had been following the debate for the last 2 years instead of cherry picking old papers then it would be abundantly obvious that marine biologists are extremely concerned about this issue.

Put it this way. It's a question of "We're in the poo - I wonder how deep it is" rather than a "I wonder if I stood on something. Maybe I'd better taste that brown substance on my shoe to see if it's actually chocolate" kind of check.

Then why did you chop it out of the quote, muso?