SkepticLance

To KLB Please stop. This whole line of reasoning is totally distasteful. Let's get back to the science.

KLB said : SkepticLance, of all people in this discussion you really need to read the UCS report and you need to familiarize yourself with whom the UCS is and what it is not. I can tell you that the UCS is not a political hatchet organization out to destroy the characters of those who disagree with their position (unlike some of the groups that ExxonMobil has funded). I have no interest or desire in reading the UCS report. You have told me enough. Muck raking is muck raking no matter who does it or what their rationalisation is. There is not even anything new about it. As I said, I have been encountering this tactic for all the years I have been reading up on climate change. Both sides do it, and it is equally obnoxious, no matter who is involved. Again, if a scientist accepts research funds from business, whether Exxon Mobil or any other, it only means they have accepted funds to permit them to carry out their research. It does not tarnish them in any way. Scientists have been accepting research funds from business for many years. For example : medical researchers use Big Pharma as a major source of funding. Without that, many would not be able to carry out research at all. If you are going to start accusing scientists of corruption because they accept funds from business, where do you stop? If you attacked all such recipients, you would be accusing probably 50% of all research scientists globally of being corrupt. Let's stop this nonsense right now. Lets stop the muck slinging.

To KLB I do not give a damn about anything coming from Exxon Mobil or from the UCC. I do get concerned when I see reputable scientists names dragged through the mud because of the source of their funding, when this is irrelevent to the issues we are discussing. I am not accusing you, since you have not yet done that. I am saying, though, that the direction of your enquiries is heading that way, and you need to be careful. There is nothing new about this type of debate. Muck slinging has been a part of it from way back. On one side, GW enthusiasts accuse sceptics of being in the pay of oil companies. Sceptics accuse enthusiasts of running with what is fashionable because it is easier to get research funding that way. Both are right, and both are wrong. Both are dirty! Lets keep clear of the mud, and run the debate along the lines of what is scientifically sound, and not descend to reputation wrecking. Forget the ICC. If they are going around digging up dirt on scientists who disagree with them, then they deserve our contempt.

To 1veedo. If a contributor to this thread has good scientific reason to show that a point someone makes is not scientifically valid, then that is a legitimate part of the debate. However, if someone tries to discredit a scientist because he or she obtained funds from industry, whether Exxon or anyone else, then that is NOT a legitimate part of good scientific debate. That is called dirty play, and is to be discouraged.

To KLB Be very careful with your current course of action. The moment you start accusing scientists of corruption, you become a mud slinger. Scientists the world over, and in numerous disciplines, accept money from business in order to carry out their research. If you, or some lobby group, carries out research on any select group of scientists, you will find plenty of examples where they accepted money from sources that can be criticised. It is totally and completely irrelevent, and somewhat dirty. If you want to criticise a scientist, do it by looking at their work, and present the criticism in the proper scientific way. If you spend your time chasing up mud to sling, that says more nasty things about you than about those scientists.

Sayonara said : This is not an acceptable reference. SFN rules Section 2 Part 1©: Slurs or prejudice against any group of people (or person) are prohibited Actually, I disagree with you on this. I did not call any person or persons idiots. I referred to a particular type of behaviour (smoking) as being idiotic. My own experience is that most smokers actually agree with me. If I were to say that drink/driving is stupid, I think most would agree with me. This is not different.

Human urine is safe to drink. It is nearly always sterile, and contains substances that are just not very toxic. However, I were at a pub with a mug of beer, and someone came and pissed into it, I would be seriously annoyed. In the same way, second hand smoke is largely safe. Human lungs are wonderful filters. If someone inhales cigarette smoke, what they blow out has had the greatest part of all toxins very efficiently removed. They now line the smoker's lungs. If you do not believe me (remember, this is the science forum), here is an experiment you can do. You need cigarettes and matches, a cigarette holder, a flask, rubber and glass tubing, a two hole stopper for the flask, and a person who is idiotic enough to smoke. Set the flask up with some water inside, and two glass tubes through the stopper - one going to the bottom of the flask, and one just going through the stopper. Attach rubber tubes to the glass tubes out the top of the flask. Attach the cigarette holder and a cigarette in the holder to the tubing attached to the long glass tube. Light the cigarette and get the sucker to inhale through the other rubber tubing. The smoke will bubble through the water. You will see that, after just 3 cigarettes, the water has gone quite brown with tar. This give you the control part of the test. Now repeat the test. This time reverse the connection of rubber to glass tubing. Forget the cigarette holder. Instead get the sucker to inhale smoke from 3 cigarettes, and blow the smoke through the rubber tube leading to the long glass tube. This blows smoke through the water. See how brown the water is after 3 cigarettes. You will find that the control darkens the water, and the experiment does it only to a very minor extent. That is because the sucker who inhales the smoke, filters most of the nasty crap out of it before blowing it through the water. In spite of the fact that second hand smoke, having been so effectively filtered by the lungs of the sucker, is low in toxins, it is still nasty smelling and unpleasant. Like the person who pisses in my beer, leaving second hand smoke in the air that I breathe is just plain nasty.

KLB said : Okay, I'll put it this way, if we do not bring CO2 levels in the atmosphere under control such that we slow and then stop global warming, those things WILL happen. Not six foot sea level rise, however. Current sea level rise is 3 mm per year. Over 100 years, that comes to 300 mm, which is about one foot; not six feet.

1veedo said : I actually have no problem with your charts (I've never looked to see where they come from but I'm just assuming they're correct). Demanding that I "agree with your charts" does not help your position out any because the validity of your charts has little to do with the validity of your arguments. One of the commonalities I have seen in arguing with 1veedo is that he always falls back on authority. If the facts (like Icemelt's charts) do not agree with his views, then he will simply quote some statement or calculation result from IPCC and say that proves the facts are wrong. In fact, I do not believe 1veedo has opinions, ideas or conclusions of his own. He is simply a distorted reflection of the IPCC reports. I was in argument with 1veedo a while ago. He came up with a statement from someone in the IPCC that most of the warming since the year 1900 was caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases. I showed from his own posted graphs that this was impossible. The temperature changes did not correlate with those gases. However, he remained unconvinced. Why? Because IPCC is God and mere facts cannot compete.

1veedo said : Temperatures are rising at a rate ten times faster then any other time in the history of the planet. You do not know that, and neither does anyone else. We are still learning about past climate changes, and we cannot scientifically make such statements without totally destroying our credibility. For example : very recently (the last month) some research was completed in the Antarctic, in which a core (of rock, not ice) was removed from under the Ross Sea, going back to represent a time 12 million years ago. Analysis of this core is still under way and will be for quite a long time. However, preliminary results show several times in the last few million years when the Ross Sea was completely free of ice. These are warmings that we did not even know existed until this research was done. So be careful with your assertions. Humans are still learning of past warmings, and many surprises no doubt lie in wait.

Our Earth has 1000,000,000,000,000,000 tonnes of sea water. If we lost 10,000 tonnes each second, it would take nearly 200 million years to lose it all.

Things always happen together. Just came across another pertinent reference. This time the New Scientist editorial (Australian printed edition) 28 April page 3. I quote : "Events in Australia, meanwhile, illustrate the power of gun control. In 1996, after a gunman in Tasmania killed 35 people, semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns were banned. (Access to semi-automatic handguns was already controlled). Since then, gun deaths have dropped, and most striking are the figures for mass shootings. In the 18 years prior to 1996, there were 13; in the past decade, none. (Injury Prevention, vol 12. p 365.)" This editorial ends with the following comment : "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that fewer families would be mourning if Cho had been limited to a revolver with six shots per reload." That because semi-automatic handguns are available in the US. This editorial certainly supports the idea that tighter gun control saves lives.

For a start - a reference to sequestering carbon in soil. http://soilcrop.tamu.edu/research/pedology/carbon.htm

Just a reference for everyone's perusal. Seems like the Swiss are having problems requiring more gun control. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10437279

KLB said : You could start by providing links to references for your last post before my complaint. Can you be more specific? As I see it, I made some general statements which, as I said, are part of the latest IPCC report, and I made some statments relating to biology, which can be verified with some quite basic (1st year university) biology textbooks. If you can tell me what it is you doubt, I will try to find a suitable reference.

Also to KLB. For your information, my degree is in chemistry and microbiology. However, I have second year university courses in biology and in ecology. When I discuss matters relating to biology, it is from sound knowledge, and not something speculative.

To KLB What supporting documentation do you need? The statements I have made about plant growth with increased warming is just basic biology, while the information about the degree of warming predicted by the IPCC for global average and for high Arctic is in their latest report. Is there anything else needed?

Natureboy said : James Lovelock has said that we don't even have more than 30 years before the effects of global warming will destroy our way of life. It doesn't seem like long, but just think about our delicate our society is. You need to be a bit careful quoting Lovelock in this subject. He has made some extreme statements without any data to back them up. The truth is that the data does not support the '30 years to disaster' idea. Temperature rise as global average is 0.16 C per decade. 30 years means average increase of 0.48 C. Say half a degree. Sea level as global average rise is 3 mm per year, or 90 mm in 30 years. Say a little under 4 inches. Neither statistic suggests our way of life being destroyed. KLB said : Only under very specific circumstances do plants actually get buried and their carbon sequestered before decaying. As such only a very, very small percentage of plant materials actually remove carbon from the environment on a "permanent" basis. Sorry, but this is simply not correct. Over most of the world, the build up of organic matter in soils from plant material is normal. It is not a rare event, or else we would not have those wonderful organic rich soils. Have you not done biology? Even at school, kids are taught about earthworms (and sometimes other organisms) carrying plant material into the soil, building up humus. In fact, the biggest source of carbon sequestration world wide is organic matter in soils. This is why those worrying about CO2 increases in the atmosphere are concerned about plowing. Plowing increases oxidation of humus, thus increasing atmospheric CO2. I really don't think you appreciate the scale of the arctic and sub-arctic regions of Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Siberia. We are talking about phenomenally large masses of land. It is my very real appreciation of that fact that contributes to my relative optimism about global warming. In Canada, Alaska, and Russia, there are immense tracts of land that are currently very cold and support only slow plant growth. The IPCC and others say that these areas will warm at 3 times the global average rate. Thus, if the world average increases 3 C which is the IPCC prediction for this century, then these areas will warm 9 C. This translates into an enormous amount of extra plant growth, which will soak up massive CO2. It will also, as already discussed, add immense amounts of carbon into soils. You may notice that there is very little said in Russia about global warming. I suspect that the Russians are rubbing their hands in glee in anticipation. If warming goes as the IPCC predicts, they will be big winners. Even with massive temperature swings you are not going to warm the soil enough to shift from slow growing tundra type vegetation to rapidly growing temperate or tropical vegetation in our lifetime. You cannot have it both ways. Either the region will warm enough to melt permafrost and release the CO2 and methane you are worried about, or it won't. If it melts permafrost, (and assuming the 9 C increase the IPCC predicts) there will be massive increase in plant growth.

KLB said ; you are assuming that the growing plants are actually sequestering the carbon and not decaying themselves. If buried organic material is decaying and releasing its carbon into the atmosphere as CO2, why would surface dying plants not also decay? Conversely, if surface living plants die and get immediately buried such that they do not decay, then why would the buried dead plants be decaying so rapidly that they pose a serious concern? Don't you see, you can't be decaying buried plants while at the same time be burying the surface plants before they decay? This is kind of weird 'logic'. The build up of carbonaceous material in soils is happening all over the planet. Anywhere plants grow without being disturbed by humans, organic matter drops to the ground and gets incorporated into the soil as humus. If the soil is cold and waterlogged, which is what we are talking about when we discuss recently melted permafrost, the rate of decay is very slow indeed. However, with warming and more humus and more plant growth, the degree of waterlogging gets less and the soil becomes more hospitable to plants. Your picture of melted permafrost emitting CO2 and methane only applies over a limited temperature range. And we are told that Arctic regions will warm very quickly. In relation to warmer but still cold countries, I am not indulging in wishful thinking. It is basic biology. The warmer the climate, the faster the plant growth. Cold (but not permafrost) parts of Canada and Russia will also warm rapidly, if the IPCC picture is correct. They will thus stimulate a massive increase in plant growth.

To ParanoiA I have addressed both of the alternative issues you raise. However, repeating myself .... 1. Violent American culture. This is something that I cannot change, or even suggest a cure for. I do not even know for sure what its cause is. I suspect it is a combination of history - the 2nd amendment etc,; plus Hollywood. Of course, in America Hollywood often rewrites history. (I bet you cannot correctly tell me how Davy Crockett really died). Much of the rest of the world views Hollywood productions, but are less affected. That may be because Hollywood glorifies the violent American, and non Americans do not so closely identify personally? 2. Balancing government. This is a rationalisation for those bound in their own gun-violent fantasies. Very few Western governments have required removal by their citizens, and the few that did, had the support of those citizens. eg. Adolf Hitler. If it ever happens, guns can be obtained by a sufficiently large group of sufficiently determined freedom fighters. I used the example earlier of the IRA. However, there are lots of groups who consider themselves, rightly or wrongly, as freedom fighters, and they all seem to manage to get hold of weapons. What an individual may be prevented from getting, a large group with more resources, can do. I could even work out a way, myself, for smuggling weapons into the USA if needed, with the resources of a large group. If I can think of it, so can others.

KLB said : Because of how cold the ground is this plant growth IS NOT going to happen quickly enough to sequester the carbon for hundreds if not thousands of years. This point would be true if warming was slow. However, in the high Arctic, it is about 3 times the global average. If the IPCC is correct, the global average warming will be about 3 C in 100 years, which translates into 9 Celsius in Greenland. That is ample to stimulate very substantial plant growth. In addition, the warming will accelerate plant growth in slightly warmer countries, such as Canada, and northern USA. Just because coal is an important thing we need to focus on, doesn't mean we don't also address oil consumption. I do not think we will agree on this. My view is that burning oil and natural gas is not something that can, practically speaking, be reigned in, and is probably not worth the effort, bearing in mind that it is gonna happen anyway, in spite of the best efforts anyone can wield. If one country conserves, another will waste. More important are : 1. Stop the mining and burning of coal. 2. Find alternatives, other than coal to liquid conversion. China is opening a new coal burning power station every week. One month of new development is equivalent to the sum total of all power plants Australia built to burn coal, over the last 100 years. China should be going nuclear big time, instead. So should the USA, Europe and Eastern Europe. Wind power is fine, but limited. Air travel can be continued with suitable liquid fuel alternatives. Hydrocarbons can be synthesized, or obtained from modified biofuels, and used as jet fuel. There is a lot of development required to give us these technologies. This is where the big effort needs to be put in.

Dak, We are butting our heads against a brick wall. When people are living, inside their heads, their own personal Clint Eastwood 'Dirty Harry' fantasies, nothing we can say will budge them. Throughout the OECD, as you know, sensible gun laws keep the murder rate well down compared to the USA. Multiple deaths have not affected American thinking, so your arguments and mine are not going to do it either.

To KLB Permafrost and plant growth. It has all happened before. At the end of the last glacial period. And guess what. Plant growth took over. Plants are more vigorous and robust than you are prepared to accept. With warming they will expand, as they did before. On burning fossil oil. I think you glossed over the point. That is; the need to focus on coal. Trying to cut down on Humvees or air travel aint gonna help. Developing non fossil alterantives for the future and stopping the development of coal will.

To Dak. Well done. Your last post was more sensible than I have seen for a long time. I just wish the US authorities would take note. ParanoiA, please read Dak's post, and learn.

KLB said : We really don't want to see a 10C rise in temperatures at the sub-arctic because this would mean devastating temperature changes in the equatorial regions where so much of humanity lives. Actually that is wrong. Temperature increase in the high arctic is about 5 times that in the tropics. If temperatures grow 10 C in Greenland, say, it will grow about 2 C in the tropics. This is basic greenhouse theory, and observed fact. And your 'logic' relating methane in melting permafrost is short term logic. If we look at a period of decades rather than years (which we have to) then plant growth in areas previously devoid of such plant growth, can become lush. As the plants grow, not only do they build carbon into the biomass of their tissues, but they add humus to soils. Long term, warming leads to more carbon tied up in soil - not less. 1veedo said Methane has increased by a much larger percent then CO2 has! Natural methane levels are 715ppb and today it's risen all the way up to 1732! We're talking over a 100% increase compared to a 20~50% increase of CO2. That may be correct. However, over the last couple of decades, levels have fallen again. Not by much to be sure. The point is that it is not rising. Hence it is not driving warming. A comment to KLB. You appear to have a bit of a 'downer' on burning fossil oil. You should realise that oil and natural gas are not the problem. Both will essentially run out in 30 to 60 years, and will contribute only about 20 ppm in CO2 increase over that time. Whatever any of us do, that oil and gas is gonna be extracted and burned. If not by us, then by China and India. You can be absolutely sure that the nations who own the oil are not gonna refuse to sell it! The real problem is coal. There is enough in the ground to raise atmospheric CO2 by 1000 ppm. If you want to attack a fossil fuel, attack coal. There is a very real possibility that nations like the USA and China, who need vast amounts of liquid fuel, will simply build coal to liquid fuel plants and make enormous amounts of fuel that way - continuing to increase CO2 long after the oil runs out. The USA already has its first coal to diesel plant - making 5000 barrels a day. I regard the 30 to 60 years oil is available as a 'breathing space ' - a time in which humans can develop biofuel or hydrogen to power our vehicles etc afterwards. Since the oil is gonna burn regardless, I feel no guilt about driving my car or flying in an airplane.