Rockaholic Adventures

Hi Shawn - Saw a documentary on U.S. National Geographic channel, within the past 2-3 years, that presented the idea that the oceans were absorbing much of the planet's excess carbon dioxide, and this, along with warming in the oceans, could lead to acidification and accelerating death of life beneath the ocean. Once the life is gone, the nightmare scenario is that the oceans, starved of oxygen, will turn sour with bacteria and start emitting toxic gases into the atmosphere. The death of lakes in the Adirondack Mountains, that produce the same type of toxic-gas emitting bacteria, was used as a small-scale example of what was possible on a much larger scale. Too many folks get hung up on Al Gore as a personality, and forget about the science behind what the IPCC is doing. Hopefully this will change over time. Thanks for writing on this topic. - Larry

The answer of that question just struck me yesterday morning like a bolt of lightning!

I was staring at a pile of that morning's mail and the local newspaper. There was a huge pile of mail and almost all of it was junk!

Paging through the newspaper yielded page after page of junk ads. There was virtually no stories amongst the pages of junk!!!

I did a little fact digging and sure enough:

• Each year, 100 million trees are used to produce junk mail;
• 250,000 homes could be heated with one day's supply of junk mail; and
• Americans receive almost 4 million tons of junk mail every year.

The missing carbon is right there under our very noses! It's locked up in junk mail and junk ads.

Hi Shawn -

One more note, for those interested in following this issue further:

There was a very good, respectful debate, sponsored by BBC World TV, with both sides represented fairly, taking place within the past week or so (last Saturday?) in NYC at a venue called Symphony Space - the motion was:

"Major reductions in carbon emissions are not worth the money"

URL for the debate organization: http://www.intelligencesquared.com/announcements.php?ann=19.

The side wishing not to spend much money on this scored some good points during the debate - I think by bringing up many of the same points you're making, Shawn - so I would say it was "Fair and Balanced".

Not sure where to find the debate video - BBC/i-squared may wait a for a few weeks or so before making this public, if they choose to do so - BBC TV has a YouTube channel where they may end up posting it, but it wasn't there just now when I checked.

Looks like EPA or Congress may be taking some kind of action in April, and so this issue is something I'm following a little more closely at the moment.

Thanks for letting me share this.

- Larry

The largest contribution to carbon dioxide on this planet is not mankind, it is termites and volcanoes.A volcano can spew out more greenhouse gasses in one eruption than mankind can generate with all of his industry.With sunspot activity at an all time low, the present warming trend may stall an impending ice age for a decade or more.The last time the sunpots were this sparse was during the "little ice age".

We need to look outside of the box to get the big picture.

It is hard to grasp how small we really are as a species.Every human being on the planet could be placed into a cube 1 mile on each side, and still have some wiggle room.

Of course, that is just my opinion, I could be wrong.What do I know? I am just a shoe shine boy.

---------------SSB_______________________________________

Instantaneous carbon footprints of natural processes, like the aforementioned super-volcanoe may for an instant produce more greenhouses than mankind... and we are talking one super-volcanoe to do this even for an instant, but no natural process in modern history have persisted for over a hundred years and had the effects that the anthropogenic footprint has left.

I do agree with April, that awareness of the IPCC's actions without screaming the name, Al Gore is a step in the right direction. I'm really hoping my lovely nation, The U.S.A., starts taking advantage of carbon-nuetral energy sources and address the problems we have with public transportation.

It's an uphill battle to suggest you have the answer but it is a no brainer that wind energy, solar energy, nuclear energy, electric vehicles and viable public transportation could start to limit the damage we are doing to the environment.

"Uncertainty in the carbon cycle is greater than computer-generated models account for."

Hi,

if the modeling is incomplete or partially wrong or missing essential information - why is this to be refined model a problem?

We are urged to act with big efforts to try to limit climatic changes which are likely to occur.

So what shall we do here:

- discuss the probabilities of right or wrong or where to correct the model?

- decide what action to support or not to support despite incomplete knowledge?

I think we should compile all the necessities (climate is one among ? how many?) to ensure a survival of culture, civilisation and modern life of human communities.

Then we should discuss the different topics and select the most important ones where action may be successful.

RHABE

Check out this link for an effect larger than the carbon in the atmosphere.Bundle up, it's gonna get cold!

http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31:vanishing-sunspots-prelude-to-global-cooling&catid=1:latest

Last time this happened was 400 years ago....

Hear, hear,

Finally, some sensible people on this site. Check the article in New Scientist, Sept 21, 209 called "An Inconvenient Truth About Climate Change". The bloke Mojib Latif, an IPCC author, is now questioning the models and confirms the cooling tat is taking place.

The text is as follows. Sorry, I don't know how to insert a PDF ibto this post.

An Inconvient Truth About Global Warming
Posted by Kevin
Published: September21, 2009 - 1:08 AM

According to the scientists at the forefront of the climate change dogma, things arent going as predicted. From New Scientist:

Forecasts of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter. One of the worlds top climate modellers said Thursday we could be about to enter one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.

People will say this is global warming disappearing, he told more than
1500 of the worlds top climate scientists gathering in Geneva at the UNs
World Climate Conference.

"I am not one of the sceptics, insisted Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, Germany. However, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it.

Few climate scientists go as far as Latif, an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But more and more agree that the short-term prognosis for climate change is much less certain than once thought.

Latif predicted that in the next few years a natural cooling trend would dominate over warming caused by humans. The cooling would be down to cyclical changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, he said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. But how much? The jury is still out, he told the conference. The NAG is now moving into a colder phase.

In fact the globe has been cooling since the peak temperatures reached in 1998, and now the IPCC has realized that their models dont measure the observed decline and the coming declines.

G'day, there is a website that is run by an overnight radio host on Sydney, Australia's 2UE. THe URL is jimball.com.au. Jim, and many contibutors, has some interesting insights into the AGW acare, among other topics. Nothing is his or our opinions, just references and links to interesting articles. It is well worth a read, but allow plenty of time.

Ca-Vin

Oh yeah, if you can, have a look at "heaven and Earth", Global Warming: The Missing Science by Professor Ian Plimer. It is published in Australia by Conner Court and I know it was released in The U.S. in May/June. It sold out 5 printings in two months here, even thought the big publishers and distributors wouldn't touch it. I am talking 100's of thousands of copies. It is all factual with references throughout and is explained in a non-scientific manner. Ian is a professor of geology. Good read.

Ca-Vin