rand, what do you think of this person's questions?

Post #281,164 by boxley 4/9/07 9:59:01 PM Reply	rand, what do you think of this person's questions? they are reasonable but no one seems to have answers, just screaming epithets. Your comment about reasonable agnosticism on the subject I would find your take on his page interesting. thanx, bill Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep reach me at [link\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
Post #281,189 by rcareaga 4/9/07 11:26:32 PM Reply	frankly, he sounds like a twit Like today, some people demanded thirty years ago that we must take dramatic steps to halt the inevitable expansion of ice and save mankind. Suggestions three decades ago included melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers to melt the ice. (Yes, you read that right.) Today\ufffds suggestions are no less loony, and include Al Gore\ufffds idea of eliminating the combustion engine (that means taking away your cars) to stuffing corks into cows\ufffd behinds because they produce methane (a \ufffdgreenhouse\ufffd gas). Yeah, right, the ol' "some people" trope ("Some people think that America should just surrender in Iraq, forcibly convert all its citizens to Islam, mandate clitorectomies for all girls on their thirteenth birthday and rethink certain provisions of the Patriot Act, but I don't agree with them!"). Look, box, I readily grant that a lot of people—far too many—who are braying about "global warming" are doing so without a shred of relevant technical background, and advance their positions rather as a matter of faith and not after an informed analysis of the evidence and arguments on either side. This goes, incidentally, for many of the reflexive debunkers as well as for the sandal-and-tiedye set. I call myself "agnostic" on the subject because I am very far (as, I suspect, most of us are in this dust-up) from having the chops to read the extant literature intelligently. I am also unable to parse the sort of papers on quantum physics that are subject to peer review, and am obliged to rely on the works of popularizers who can gear the subject down to the comprehension of a poor besotted old English major, and I suppose that I must perforce accept the existence of leptons, neutrinos and quarks as a matter of uncritical belief. In this subatomic realm I rely on the claims of a community of scientists who have advanced hypotheses as to the nature and behavior of these droll particles, and who have submitted experimental evidence to peer review. The beepster would have us believe that the absence of published papers treating the four basic elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water in modern physics journals is the consequence of a conspiracy of silence against the Aristotelian School. I grant as well that climatology is an inexact science, and that much remains to be discovered as to how the various elements interact with one another, and what the long-term consequences of human contributions to atmospheric carbon might be. I will cheerfully mock anyone on the Green side who avers that these questions are settled. I accept Al Gore's sincerity (and really, box, that "invented the internet" was not merely a cheap shot but a tired and discredited one) and am inclined to believe that he has probably studied the issue for longer than any of us here, but I do not take his every pronouncement as gospel. I note that a preponderance of scientists presently active who have addressed the issue appear to have concluded that the past two hundred years of human-initiated carbon emissions are directly related to the observed rising levels of atmospheric CO2, and that a majority of these believe that those rising levels contribute to the "greenhouse effect," i.e., "global warming," and that many of those have concluded that "global warming" could have some consequences we might not like. Against these modest proposals we are asked to believe that a conspiracy exists by "liberal" scientists (who really know better, but who hate American prosperity) variously to inflate the data or lie outright, and whose monolithic steamrolling of all dissent is opposed by only a brave band of maverick journalists (e.g., the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal), a small, embattled television outlet (Fox News), a few radio talk show hosts and here and there a lone iconoclastic scientist sustained only by the Truth and a nice stipend from the energy sector. I ain't buyin', and I find beep's notion that just because the majority of climate scientists hold a position he doesn't he agree with, then they must be squashing the real majority that would...uh-uh. Regarding the finer points of "global warming" and what should be the public policy responses...well, these are matters on which reasonable men may reasonably disagree. For the rest, though...well, I hate to keep returning to my tobacco analogy, but if in your survey of ten oncologists you find eight concluding that there's a link between smoking and lung cancer, and two denying this, and if you notice that the two dissenters are both on retainer with R.J. Reynolds...well, a conclusion kind of invites itself, don't it? cordially, Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
Post #281,197 by bepatient 4/10/07 1:13:15 AM Reply	Thats funny. You engage in the shout-down theory of climate debate..then claim agnostic. I point out that this shout-down theory has a chilling effect on debate, limiting those that will step into the debate and you rail this as conspiratorial. Well if you would bother to pay attention (instead of just knee-jerking into a thread because I happen to be posting there)...you would notice that there is actually real debate in this area. Is the climate warming...yes. Nearly all agree. Is it the warmest period in global history. Well if you take the current folks definition of history (since 1850) certainly. Unfortunately, on a planet thats several orders of magnitude older than that I would say it is completely unwise to base your entire argument on a mere blip of the historical record. But, if you look back at the (admittedly less reliable) extrapolations of temp garnered from ice core and other methods...you would notice that temp has gone up and down on this rock a few times. Here's the >real< issue. Is CO2 the determining factor? There is growing evidence to say that it is NOT the real problem. After all, its a minor greenhouse gas as greenhouse gasses go. And when you tie in man's output versus natural output, the balance is even smaller still. Most studies show that the >other< greehouse gasses have a larger impact on temp. Methane is 30 times more impactful on warming. So why all this focus on carbon? Well because its trendy to blame big oil and our industrial excess for the problem. Methane is mostly farm and agricultural based...(cow farts and the like)...so can we make a big stink about that??? No. We have to blame the big industrial machine. And no, you aren't going to hear very much about that, or the more direct mapping of solar activity to the temp variants. The shout-down tactics are in full force. Why? Money. Just as you toss about that this scientist is on this payroll, and that one on another...there are billions involved in making sure that carbon...specifically man-made carbon...continue to be blamed. Since I don't expect you watched Al Gore's testimony (I did, every painful moment)..I won't ask you to wonder how or why Al tried to make a distinction between man-made and natural CO2...and to try and make "natural" co2 less of a greenhouse gas than "un-natural" co2. You see, when politicos start talking about defying the laws of nature and telling me that one molecule of carbon dioxide is heavier than another molecule of carbon dioxide...I start to get a bit suspicious of motive. Much easier on you to ignore the facts and base your opinion solely on the fact that I'm on the other side of debate. I couldn't possibly have a well informed opinion. Box and I just make this stuff up to yank your chain. Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry._{Adrian Belew}
Post #281,198 by rcareaga 4/10/07 1:17:25 AM Reply	"instead of just knee-jerking into a thread... because I happen to be posting there." Get. Over. Yourself. Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
Post #281,204 by bepatient 4/10/07 1:42:57 AM Reply	I'm quite over myself. Have been for quite a while. But if I were to trend line this like the enviro's have trended CO2...I'd say there is a correlation. And I've studied statistical modeling. Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry._{Adrian Belew}
Post #281,210 by Another Scott 4/10/07 7:31:21 AM Reply	On methane: See #26566. [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=26566\|#26566]. Most methane from cattle is from burping, not farting. Methane is 21x worse than CO2, not 30x (gram per gram) - at least according to that link. Cheers, Scott.
Post #281,214 by boxley 4/10/07 8:28:49 AM Reply	thanks for the detailed reply Im not a scientist and share the educational background of most of the actors that support global warming. Is global warninbg happening? Yup. Is man causing it? Nope (so far) since the 70's we have been cleaning up the environment. I watched at close range a volcano blow off in alaska. It laid a 4 inch pile of dust in Anchorage. It released the same amount of c02 in 3 days as man has in the last 50 years. Now to have a twit tell me that volcano c02 is different from man made c02 tells me that this is a religion, not a science. That makes me very loath to agree with them. thanx, bill Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep reach me at [link\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
Post #281,216 by Another Scott 4/10/07 8:53:16 AM Reply	I don't think your numbers are quite right. I think we've been through this before. :-) Studies of the [link\|http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87\|carbon isotopes] indicate the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is due to burning of organic carbon. Estimates are that the contributions from anthropogenic CO2 sources are [link\|http://www.gaspig.com/volcano.htm"\|150x that of volcanoes]. Volcanoes are a major source of SO2, which is a very strong greenhouse gas. Many argue that volcanoes cause global cooling - see Pinatubo. Cheers, Scott.
Post #281,219 by boxley 4/10/07 10:50:12 AM Reply	nice try, an assertion that man is 150* volcano and a link to the actual document that goes nowhere is not a valid scientific observation. thanx, bill Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep reach me at [link\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
Post #281,225 by Another Scott 4/10/07 11:59:50 AM Reply	Here ya go. [link\|http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v351/n6325/pdf/351387a0.pdf\|Nature] (subscription required). Eruptive and diffuse emissions of CO2 from Mount Etna - P. Allard, et al., Nature 351 30 May 1991, p.387 [...] According to these results, Etna is an important emitter of volcanic carbon dioxide. Although it makes up only 0.07% of the annual anthropogenic CO2 loading (2 x 10^4 Tg; ref 34), its CO2 discharge by sustained crater degassing (13 +/- 3 Tg/yr) is one order of magniture higher than the annual CO2 output from Kilauea 7,8 and actively degassing arc volcanoes 9,10 (Table 2). [...] Yes, that's just one volcano, but Etna is a big contributor and it pales in contrast with the anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions. The HTML for the 150x link was busted. Here is the [link\|http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html\|correct link]. The original paper (by Gerlach, also a paper on Etna in Nature) is [link\|http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v351/n6325/pdf/351352a0.pdf\|here]: Mount Etna emits CO2 gas at an astonishing rate - 25 million tons a year is the conservative estimate of Allard et al. on page 387 of this issues 1. This equals the output of four 1,000 MW coal-fired power stations. Active volcanoes on land typically pump out CO2 at rates more like 0.1 - 2 million tons a year [...] HTH. Cheers, Scott.
Post #281,229 by boxley 4/10/07 12:20:32 PM Reply	you did read it right? Annual Average Global Emissions of HCl, HF, and HBr, in Tg Source \t HCl HF HBr Volcanoesn 7.8 0.4 0.078 Oceans 300 0.02 1 Coal combustion \t 1.8 0.18 0.08 Petroleum combustion \t0.013 0.00036 Natural gas combustion .0022 natural gas plus petro plus coal doesnt equal 7.8 much less 150 times volcanos thanx, bill Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep reach me at [link\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net\|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
Post #281,231 by Another Scott 4/10/07 12:26:29 PM Reply	HCl is not CO2. Volcanoes pump a lot of stuff into the air - including hydrochloric acid (HCl), hydrofluoric acid (HF) and hydrogen bromide (HBr). They're not a major source of carbon dioxide in comparison of us burning stuff. The CO2 numbers are from the Nature papers I excerpted. Cheers, Scott.

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