quote:

Originally posted by john galt:
So, you're suggesting that the most selfish and narcissistic species on the planet today, and likely the most selfish and narcissistic species since the Velociraptors that existed from 71 to 75 million years ago, should stop using fossil fuels because it might acidify the shallow parts of the ocean? ...and, as if that wasn't bad enough, you've decided that nuclear power, the only viable substitute which might possibly displace fossil fuels to maintain the lifestyle that 6 billion humans desire above all else, can't be used either.

I can see why BC's largest agricultural export is so popular; it no doubt makes delusional thinking seem real.

Humans have never stopped using anything until it's gone or they found something to replace it. There's not a 'hope-in-hell' that humans will do anything to stop the inevitable race to extinction for themselves and many of the other species on the planet. Sure, a few individuals like you and I will significantly reduce their impact on the planet, but those few are but a drop in the bucket and will never make any difference in the grand scheme of things.

Unless there is a plague that decimates the human population, the human race is doomed to extinction, just like the Velociraptors. We're simply not intelligent enough to survive.

quote:

Originally posted by john galt:

quote:

We are asked to act as if the Earth is in danger unless we spend trillions on remedies to Climate Change. None of the models that predict the dire future we face unless we act now can take the initial conditions of 1900 and show the temperature pattern from 1900 to 2010. If it can’t reconstruct the past, why should we accept its predictions?

The proper conclusion is that we don’t know, but Lindzen is correct: we need to study it more but we need not panic, and we certainly should not bet $Trillions that we understand climate.
--Dr. J Pournelle

quote:

Originally posted by john galt:
Ocean Acidification and Corals
Posted on January 31, 2009 by Anthony Watts

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/07/29/204427/the-video-that-anthony-watts-does-not-want-you-to-see-the-sinclair-climate-denial-crock-of-the-week/?mobile=nc

Anthony Watts - SourceWatch sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anthony_Watts Jump to Credentials held‎: Watts held an American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval (a discontinued credential that does not require a bachelor's

Guest post by Steven Goddard
New Lows: Sea Ice and “Steven Goddard” credibility September 14, 2011 “Steven Goddard” is a pseudonym used by an anonymous climate denialist crank, so incredibly sloppy that he even embarrassed arch climate denier Anthony Watts, as shown in this link, and as I showed in one of last year’s “sea ice wrap-up” videos. http://climatecrocks.com/2011/...goddard-credibility/

The BBC ran an article this week titled “Acid oceans ‘need urgent action‘” based on the premise:
The world’s marine ecosystems risk being severely damaged by ocean acidification unless there are dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions, warn scientists.

This sounds very alarming, so being diligent researchers we should of course check the facts. The ocean currently has a pH of 8.1, which is alkaline not acid. In order to become acid, it would have to drop below 7.0.
[B]Shall we say Ocean De-Alkalinization- how about Ocean pH reduction......
According to Wikipedia “Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.179 to 8.104.” At that rate, it will take another 3,500 years for the ocean to become even slightly acid.[/b] One also has to wonder how they measured the pH of the ocean to 4 decimal places in 1751, since the idea of pH wasn’t introduced until 1909.
DOH!
The BBC article then asserts:

The researchers warn that ocean acidification, which they refer to as “the other CO2 problem”, could make most regions of the ocean inhospitable to coral reefs by 2050, if atmospheric CO2 levels continue to increase.

This does indeed sound alarming, until you consider that corals became common in the oceans during the Ordovician Era – nearly 500 million years ago – when atmospheric CO2 levels were about 10X greater than they are today. (One might also note in the graph below that there was an ice age during the late Ordovician and early Silurian with CO2 levels 10X higher than current levels, and the correlation between CO2 and temperature is essentially nil throughout the Phanerozoic.)
sources?

At the beginning of the period, around 480 million years ago, the climate was very hot due to high levels of CO2, which gave a strong greenhouse effect. The marine waters are assumed to have been around 45°C, which restricted the diversification of complex multi-cellular organisms. But over time, the climate become cooler, and around 460 million years ago, the ocean temperatures became comparable to those of present day equatorial waters.[11]

Perhaps corals are not so tough as they used to be? In 1954, the US detonated the world’s largest nuclear weapon at Bikini Island in the South Pacific. The bomb was equivalent to 30 billion pounds of TNT, vapourised three islands, and raised water temperatures to 55,000 degrees. Yet half a century of rising CO2 later, the corals at Bikini are thriving. Another drop in pH of 0.075 will likely have less impact on the corals than a thermonuclear blast. The corals might even survive a rise in ocean temperatures of half a degree, since they flourished at times when the earth’s temperature was 10C higher than the present.
The news wasn't all good however, as there was a disturbingly high level of loss of coral species from around the atoll. Forty-two species of corals are missing compared to a study made before the atomic tests were carried out.
There seems to be no shortage of theories about how rising CO2 levels will destroy the planet, yet the geological record shows that life flourished for hundreds of millions of years with much higher CO2 levels and temperatures. This is a primary reason why there are so many (how many?)[b] skeptics in the geological community. At some point the theorists will have to start paying attention to empirical data.

quote:

Originally posted by SUB:

quote:

Originally posted by john galt:
Ocean Acidification and Corals
Posted on January 31, 2009 by Anthony Watts

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/07/29/204427/the-video-that-anthony-watts-does-not-want-you-to-see-the-sinclair-climate-denial-crock-of-the-week/?mobile=nc

Anthony Watts - SourceWatch sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anthony_Watts Jump to Credentials held‎: Watts held an American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval (a discontinued credential that does not require a bachelor's

Guest post by Steven Goddard
New Lows: Sea Ice and “Steven Goddard” credibility September 14, 2011 “Steven Goddard” is a pseudonym used by an anonymous climate denialist crank, so incredibly sloppy that he even embarrassed arch climate denier Anthony Watts, as shown in this link, and as I showed in one of last year’s “sea ice wrap-up” videos. http://climatecrocks.com/2011/...goddard-credibility/

The BBC ran an article this week titled “Acid oceans ‘need urgent action‘” based on the premise:
The world’s marine ecosystems risk being severely damaged by ocean acidification unless there are dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions, warn scientists.

This sounds very alarming, so being diligent researchers we should of course check the facts. The ocean currently has a pH of 8.1, which is alkaline not acid. In order to become acid, it would have to drop below 7.0.
[B]Shall we say Ocean De-Alkalinization- how about Ocean pH reduction......
According to Wikipedia “Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.179 to 8.104.” At that rate, it will take another 3,500 years for the ocean to become even slightly acid.[/b] One also has to wonder how they measured the pH of the ocean to 4 decimal places in 1751, since the idea of pH wasn’t introduced until 1909.
DOH!
The BBC article then asserts:

The researchers warn that ocean acidification, which they refer to as “the other CO2 problem”, could make most regions of the ocean inhospitable to coral reefs by 2050, if atmospheric CO2 levels continue to increase.

This does indeed sound alarming, until you consider that corals became common in the oceans during the Ordovician Era – nearly 500 million years ago – when atmospheric CO2 levels were about 10X greater than they are today. (One might also note in the graph below that there was an ice age during the late Ordovician and early Silurian with CO2 levels 10X higher than current levels, and the correlation between CO2 and temperature is essentially nil throughout the Phanerozoic.)
sources?

At the beginning of the period, around 480 million years ago, the climate was very hot due to high levels of CO2, which gave a strong greenhouse effect. The marine waters are assumed to have been around 45°C, which restricted the diversification of complex multi-cellular organisms. But over time, the climate become cooler, and around 460 million years ago, the ocean temperatures became comparable to those of present day equatorial waters.[11]

Perhaps corals are not so tough as they used to be? In 1954, the US detonated the world’s largest nuclear weapon at Bikini Island in the South Pacific. The bomb was equivalent to 30 billion pounds of TNT, vapourised three islands, and raised water temperatures to 55,000 degrees. Yet half a century of rising CO2 later, the corals at Bikini are thriving. Another drop in pH of 0.075 will likely have less impact on the corals than a thermonuclear blast. The corals might even survive a rise in ocean temperatures of half a degree, since they flourished at times when the earth’s temperature was 10C higher than the present.
The news wasn't all good however, as there was a disturbingly high level of loss of coral species from around the atoll. Forty-two species of corals are missing compared to a study made before the atomic tests were carried out.
There seems to be no shortage of theories about how rising CO2 levels will destroy the planet, yet the geological record shows that life flourished for hundreds of millions of years with much higher CO2 levels and temperatures. This is a primary reason why there are so many (how many?)[b] skeptics in the geological community. At some point the theorists will have to start paying attention to empirical data.

[B]For that kind of money, I could come up with stinkier BS.....

Environment
Climate change scepticism

Climate sceptics – who gets paid what?

Leaked documents show US thinktank the Heartland Institute has been making payments to experts and scientists to cast doubt on climate science. Here, we profile some of the figures

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Leo Hickman
Leo Hickman
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 February 2012 17.12 GMT
Article history


Anthony Watts

Who they are A former TV weatherman from California who runs the "world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change", according to his climate sceptic blog, Watts Up With That?

How they influence Watts has been interviewed on Fox News by Glenn Beck about climate change and spoken at climate sceptic conferences. His blog posts, and those of his contributers, are widely and rapidly linked to and discussed across the climate sceptic 'blogosphere'.

Quote "Heh, I've yet to see that check or any from Exxon-Mobil or any other energy or development company. Somebody must be stealing checks out of my mailbox. /sarc – Anthony." (May, 2011)

Funding details Leaked documents revealed Watts was paid $44,000 by Heartland Institute in January – with a further $44,000 promised later this year – to set up a website "devoted to accessing the new temperature data from NOAA's web site."

Heartland Institute funding
$44,000 one-off payment


Ocean Acidification to Hit 300-Million-Year Max

By Ars Technica
March 2, 2012 |
10:00 am |

By Scott K. Johnson, Ars Technica

Some like to point to cycles when dismissing climate change, brushing off warming as simply being the thing that happens right before cooling. In this view, concern about climate change is akin to the naïve worry that half of schools are performing below average. This is why we need context. We need to know whether an observed change is more like a world premiere or a familiar re-run.

arstechnica
A new paper in Science examines the geologic record for context relating to ocean acidification, a lowering of the pH driven by the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The research group (twenty-one scientists from nearly as many different universities) reviewed the evidence from past known or suspected intervals of ocean acidification. The work provides perspective on the current trend as well as the potential consequences. They find that the current rate of ocean acidification puts us on a track that, if continued, would likely be unprecedented in last 300 million years.

There are several ways acidification events leave their signature in the rock record. The isotopic composition of carbon changes with shifts in the carbon cycle, such as the movement of greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Isotopes of boron present in marine shells track ocean water pH. The ratios of other trace elements in marine shells (such as uranium or zinc) to calcium indicate the availability of carbonate ions. (Ocean acidification is not just about pH, but the reduction of carbonate mineral saturation that makes it more difficult for calcifiers to build their shells.) In addition to all this, the fossil record records the extinctions and morphological changes in marine species that occur around catastrophic events in Earth history.
Reconstructing the past

The paper covers the last 300 million years. That’s not just a round number—it’s about as far back as we can confidently go. Because plate tectonics drives oceanic plates back down into the mantle at subduction zones, there is no oceanic crust or sediment older than 180 million years for us to examine.

To look back farther than that, you’ve got to rely on the limited supply of marine rocks that shifted onto continental plates. That makes it harder to construct a global picture, as some regions become over-represented. Also, as these records extend deeper and deeper into the past, uncertainty in ages and calcifier physiology reduces confidence in the results of these analyses. Beyond 300 million years ago, the unknowns for some of these measures are just too large.

The first period the researchers looked at was the end of the last ice age, starting around 18,000 years ago. Over a period of about 6,000 years, atmospheric CO2 levels increased by 30 percent, a change of roughly 75 ppm. (For reference, atmospheric CO2 has gone up by about the same amount over the past 50 years.) Over that 6,000 year time period, surface ocean pH dropped by approximately 0.15 units. That comes out to about 0.002 units per century. Our current rate is over 0.1 units per century—two orders of magnitude greater, which lines up well with a model estimate we covered recently.

The last deglaciation did not trigger a mass extinction, but it did cause changes in some species. The shells of planktic foraminfera decreased by 40-50 percent, while those of coccolithophores went down 25 percent.

During the Pliocene warm period, about 3 million years ago, atmospheric CO2 was about the same as today, but pH was only 0.06 to 0.11 units lower than preindustrial conditions. This is because the event played out over 320,000 years or so. We see species migration in the fossil record in response to the warming planet, but not ill effects on calcifiers. This is because ocean acidification depends primarily on the rate of atmospheric CO2 increases, not the absolute concentration.

Next, the researchers turned their focus to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (or PETM), which occurred 56 million years ago. Global temperature increased about 6°C over 20,000 years due to an abrupt release of carbon to the atmosphere (though this was not as abrupt as current emissions). The PETM saw the largest extinction of deep-sea foraminifera of the last 75 million years, and was one of the four biggest coral reef disasters of the last 300 million years.

We don’t have good records of pH over this period, so it’s difficult to tell how much of the extinctions were caused by ocean acidification as opposed to the temperature change or decrease in dissolved oxygen that results from warming ocean water.

The group also examined the several mass extinctions that defined the Mesozoic—the age of dinosaurs. The boundary between the Triassic and Jurassic included a large increase in atmospheric CO2 (adding as much as 1,300 to 2,400 ppm) over a relatively short period of time, perhaps just 20,000 years. The authors write, “A calcification crisis amongst hypercalcifying taxa is inferred for this period, with reefs and scleractinian corals experiencing a near-total collapse.” Again, though, it’s unclear how much of the catastrophe can be blamed on acidification rather than warming.

Finally, we come the big one—The Great Dying. The Permian-Triassic mass extinction (about 252 million years ago) wiped out around 96 percent of marine species. Still, the rate of CO2 released to the atmosphere that drove the dangerous climate change was 10-100 times slower than current emissions.
Matching the modern to history

In the end, the researchers conclude that the PETM, Triassic-Jurassic boundary, and Permian-Triassic boundary are the closest analogs to the modern day, at least as far as acidification is concerned. Due to the poor ocean chemistry data for the latter two, the PETM is the best event for us to compare current conditions. It’s still not perfect—the rate of CO2 increase was slower than today.

Perhaps more significantly, the ocean chemistry was actually less sensitive to change then. The ratio of magnesium to calcium in ocean water changes over time due to differences in volcanic activity along the mid-ocean ridges, among other things. When magnesium is high (as it is today), a form of calcium carbonate called aragonite becomes dominant. Aragonite is more soluble than calcite, so “aragonite seas” are more susceptible to the effects of acidification. Even though the PETM did not feature aragonite seas, it was a tumultuous time for many marine species.

While the authors frequently point out the difficulty in teasing apart the effects of ocean acidification and climate change, they argue that this is really an academic exercise. It’s more useful to consider the witches’ brew with all the ingredients—acidification, temperature change, and changes in dissolved oxygen—since, historically, those have come together. That combination produces unequivocally bad news.

The authors conclude, “[T]he current rate of (mainly fossil fuel) CO2 release stands out as capable of driving a combination and magnitude of ocean geochemical changes potentially unparalleled in at least the last ~300 [million years] of Earth history, raising the possibility that we are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change.”

Image: NOAA

Citation: “The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification.” By Bärbel Hönisch et al. Science, Vol. 335, No. 6072, Pg. 1058-1063. March 2, 2012. DOI: 10.1126/science.1208277

Source: Ars Technica

quote:

Originally posted by john galt:
Ocean Acidification and Corals
Posted on January 31, 2009 by Anthony Watts
Guest post by Steven Goddard
The BBC ran an article this week titled “Acid oceans ‘need urgent action‘” based on the premise:

The world’s marine ecosystems risk being severely damaged by ocean acidification unless there are dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions, warn scientists.

This sounds very alarming, so being diligent researchers we should of course check the facts. The ocean currently has a pH of 8.1, which is alkaline not acid. In order to become acid, it would have to drop below 7.0. According to Wikipedia “Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.179 to 8.104.” At that rate, it will take another 3,500 years for the ocean to become even slightly acid.

quote:

Originally posted by john galt:

There's not a 'hope-in-hell' that humans will do anything to stop the inevitable race to extinction for themselves and many of the other species on the planet. Sure, a few individuals like you and I will significantly reduce their impact on the planet, but those few are but a drop in the bucket and will never make any difference in the grand scheme of things.

We're simply not intelligent enough to survive.

quote:

Originally posted by SUB:
Quoting out of context....
John Galt- were you involved with the climate gate affair?
Correction: misquoting out of context//

quote:

Originally posted by Ttommy:
When I see the gubbermints and big business stop insulting my intelligence with what they do, then I'll take this save the planet crap seriously. Until such time I'll pollute and do what the hell I want knowing that whatever I do is completely insignificant and makes no difference to anything what so ever.

quote:

Originally posted by SUB:

quote:

Originally posted by Ttommy:
When I see the gubbermints and big business stop insulting my intelligence with what they do, then I'll take this save the planet crap seriously. Until such time I'll pollute and do what the hell I want knowing that whatever I do is completely insignificant and makes no difference to anything what so ever.

Change begins with you//