muso wrote on Oct 31^st, 2009 at 7:29am:



Proxy? Indirect method, you say? You mean conjecture.

Soren wrote on Oct 31^st, 2009 at 10:05am:


The word you used was acidification before you surreptitiously changed it to acidity . I don't know if both were intended to be sleight of hand or not, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt (against my better judgement). Acidification is the process where a solution becomes acidic. Strictly speaking, the ocean pH is reducing. It will never become acidic as such. The graph shows pH, not acidification.  Put simply, pH is a measure of how acidic or how basic a solution is. More  rigorously, it is the negative log of the hydrogen ion activity. I won't go into reasons why we changed from concentration to activity, but is related to the presence of other dissolved ionic species.

My first degree was in Chemistry. Don't argue simple Chemistry with a Chemist.  

Quote:


If you're implying that nobody has bothered to investigate it in any great depth, then I'd say you'd be very far from the mark. I could cite a pile of papers that have validated and improved the rigour of the technique over the years.

Here is one researcher who has investigated boron isotope techniques in considerable depth:

http://qcpages.qc.edu/EES/pep/hemming.html

Take a look at the list of papers on that site. That just represents the papers in which this researcher has participated. It's hardly as flippant as you make it out to be, and many people have tried to find faults with the technique over the years.  Some have pointed out errors, and appropriate changes have been made to improve the technique as a result.

That process is an intrinsic part of the scientific method.

muso wrote on Oct 31^st, 2009 at 12:15pm:



I have impeccable scientific credentials - I am sceptical. I don't know since when you had to be a Leninist so as not to be called anal or young earther or whatever intemperate or bitchy terms are the latest in the warmer's arsenal.

For me, if you are right and reason is on your side, warmists would not need to resort to pseudo-inquisitorial, Leninist vocabulary and outlook. If the science is complex and multifaceted, scepticism is something you lot should be demanding.

Put it simply, whatever Bob Brown, Clive Hamilton, Philip Adams or or that bearded bloke in the boat with Roy Slaven believes in can't be true.

Soren wrote on Oct 31^st, 2009 at 12:44pm:


Still deliberately missing the point. The process of ocean acidification has not been going on for 25 million years. It's a recent phenomenon. The vertical line is acidification. What happened before were very slow gradual fluctuations.

Soren wrote on Oct 31^st, 2009 at 2:32pm:


It's obviously in the interest of the coal companies not to stop producing coal. Wouldn't you say?

pjb05 wrote on Nov 1^st, 2009 at 7:50am:


Your post smacks of an agenda to shift from the scary science and get back to nice comfortable politics.

Most businesses are not concerned about 2050. The longest term detailed planning is 10 years or maybe 15 years.

What is, in fact an extremely urgent issue is being treated as a minor inconvenience that we'll probably get round to fixing one day.

Australia is in a dilemma as a major coal producer and with an enormous reliance on coal fired power stations.

To be blunt, coal production must stop - not just eventually. It needs to be phased out within the next 15 years. We need to be spending enormous amounts of capital in decarbonising the economy. It needs to be done in conjunction with other coal producing countries.

I've already talked about the risks of not doing that. It's in the Copenhagen sythesis report.

Will it affect jobs, and the economy? You bet it will. Big time.

If we do nothing about it, will it affect jobs and the economy worse?

Is the Pope Catholic? What the bugger do you think we've been saying all along?


Let me give you an analogy. You're on a sinking ship and you need to get to the lifeboat. The deck around it is under 6 inches of water.

What would you do? Bitch and whine that if we have to get in the lifeboat, we'll get our feet wet and die of hypothermia, and we'd be safer standing on the dry part of the ship?