muso wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2009 at 10:24am:


One relevance is that the differnce between 280 and 387 - 107 parts per million - is not all human emission. but to make it simple, let's say it's all human emission. So the thesis is that global warming of catastrophic proportions is causedd by an increase of 100 parts in a million of the atmosphere. That is 1 percent of 1 percent.

The last time the Thames froze over was in the 1810s. Then it warmed and there was, in Australia for example, a massive drought in the late 19th century. Then in the 1920s and 1930s it was warmer. Then from the 1940s to the 1970s it was colder, then warmer. Take those models, calculations, conjectures and proofs or whatever they are,  predicting future catastrophy  - and run them backwards, over those known and documented past temperature changes.

Can you say that your 'human emissions of CO2 causes global warming" thesis stands up and explaines those past changes? No. You cannot establish the influence of human CO2 emissions over these past changes, let alone causality.

muso wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2009 at 11:45am:

The whole post was a repeat of parts of my previous two posts. Tsk, tsk, careless reader....

Most of your post dwells on the hypothesis that because we have an extremely low concentration of a gas means that it's harmless.  Low concentrations of gases can and do cause harm. For example breathing hydrogen sulfide at just 100ppm can cause immediate danger to life. Why don't you try it?  - After all, it's just 1/10 of 0.01 percent of the air you'd be breathing.

Besides, we're talking about approximately 450ppm, not today's 387ppm.  The crisis is not yet on us, so your entire argument based on today's CO2 concentration is crumbling at the foundations.

I told you that before, but still you keep on coming back with 107 ppm. Now who's the careless reader?

Today's concentration of CO2 we can live with. So far, we've had around 0.7% warming.  At the current level of production of greenhouse gases, the atmospheric CO2 will continue to rise. At the moment, it's rising around 1.9 ppm every year. We have enough coal reserves for around 500 years at least, so it's not resource constrained.

See my sticky notes point 5:

Quote:


Ocean acidification is currently progressing at a faster rate today  than in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 56 million years ago.  This resulted in major extinctions in the sea and on the land.

I have assessed the following wikipedia article and it seems to be reflective of mainstream research:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum

It makes for interesting reading. Obviously the causes were different - perhaps a large meteorite or a comet. The article gives a number of hypotheses.  Neverthless cataclysmic though this event was, our current level of acidifcation exceeds that of the PETM.

By the way, you make the point that part of that 107ppm is natural. What is your reference for that? - because I know that it's a bogus claim. If all the CO2 that has been emitted by man were collected in the atmosphere, the concentration would be around 600ppm, not 387ppm. Fortunately the sea has absorbed some of that, although as I said before, it's a mixed blessing. The penalty will be enormous harm to marine life by the mid century.

The current IPCC plan of limiting Global Mean temperatures to a 2 degrees C guard rail will not be enough to save the Great Barrier Reef. We might as well overfish the reef, because it won't last more than about 50 years or so. Any vast amounts of money we are currently spending on conserving the Great Barrier Reef will be wasted.

That illustrates the extent of the crisis.    

muso wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2009 at 8:48am:



I don't think you refuted anything. ANd no, my conscience is not bothering me and no, I am not dishonest.

I genuinely do not believe or have seen evidence that humans have been changing the climate. To me it is genuinely unbelievable. Honest.

mantra wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2009 at 10:50am:


Emissions are man made pollution too. It's not related to the oil spills. It's related to the emissions of CO2. It's a simple matter to measure ionic species in seawater.

Oil spills are important, but much less than ocean acidification because they have relatively limited effects in comparison.

This might be interesting for you to listen to. Economists and governments are starting to do the right thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=688HLeGghXs

I'm having computer problems at the moment - and don't want to download Adobe Flash, but from what I've read - some governments are interested in doing the right thing, but the rest are just paying lip service to appease the mobs.

I'll look into this "measuring ionic species in seawater" and see exactly what it means.

Mantra, When carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater, it forms a weak acid, called carbonic acid. This dissolution of carbon dioxide has lowered the average pH of the oceans by about 0.1 units from pre-industrial levels. We can tell that the acidification is due to Carbon dioxide by measuring the carbonate and bicorbonate ions present in solution. It's quite straightforward and non controversial to do that.

Soren wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2009 at 12:18pm:


If it were just 'checking', that would be fine. Deliberately changing data is a totally different ballgame. Let me make this quite clear - When I said 'manipulate' I meant fudging the figures.

Plimer does the same. It's open for anyone with a calculator to check.  I've provided the links before.