I Was Wrong

[bshonesy]

We are our own worst enemy but I also don't buy in to all of these variations being man made. I think the planet goes through evolutionary phases along with the sun. Now if you want to talk about pollution of the ocean then we are totally to blame.

How do we know polar bears can't adapt?

Are you suggesting it is a coincidence that global temperature rising aligns with the rise of human utilization of fossil fuels? The Sun’s irradiance does vary over time, but notice the moving average is actually trending down since the 1950s, the opposite of temperature and carbon. It’s easier to believe the pollution because you can’t refute that nature didn’t put trash in there. Similarly, you cannot refute that we have put carbon into the atmosphere (and ocean) at unnatural rates and this has led to climate change.

 

[jabberwock]

Are you suggesting it is a coincidence that global temperature rising aligns with the rise of human utilization of fossil fuels? The Sun’s irradiance does vary over time, but notice the moving average is actually trending down since the 1950s, the opposite of temperature and carbon. It’s easier to believe the pollution because you can’t refute that nature didn’t put trash in there. Similarly, you cannot refute that we have put carbon into the atmosphere (and ocean) at unnatural rates and this has led to climate change.

Oh my gosh! Those graphs are not alarming.

The rate is only unnatural if we are unnatural.

 

[jabberwock]

Cattle are the #1 agricultural source of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
Save the Planet - Eat a steak.

What about human respiration? Are we all going to have to hold our breath?

1 billion cows, 8 billion people, it probably evens out by mass.

 

[jabberwock]

Cattle are the #1 agricultural source of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
Save the Planet - Eat a steak.

We had lamb tonight. (out of venison)
Does lamb count? Probably not huh?

 

[blaxsun]

What about human respiration? Are we all going to have to hold our breath?

1 billion cows, 8 billion people, it probably evens out by mass.

Well, I could also comment on human overpopulation - but then the fight would truly start…

 

[blaxsun]

We had lamb tonight. (out of venison)
Does lamb count? Probably not huh?

Close enough!

 

[bshonesy]

I'm not a climate change denier, but in my view the biggest mistake the environmental movement ever made was to drop all the issues over which there was pretty broad consensus (basic natural resources conservation, wildlife, scenery, clean air & water, etc) to push this idea immediately turned into a political football and with the effect of tuning out 1/2 of the stakeholders involved. Sensationalist news headlines and overreaching claims about climate change have also opened up the rhetorical space for the hardcore anti-environment faction.

More recently the loudest voices discussing climate change have been the most politically polarized. These Left Wing folks prioritize their ideological purity and insider jargon over the real world we live in and frame their treatment of climate change accordingly. This has further degraded wildlife/biodiversity as a value. You can even be a called a racist if you try to advocate for wildlife or nature and I've had this experience more than once.

The dismissal by environmentalists of the rest of the environment as a value also begs the question of the intended goal of climate change mitigation. If the answer is the preservation of "civilization" or "humanity", then unless you live way out in the boonies all you have to do is look out your window to seriously undermine this assumption.

This is a well thought out statement, and I agree that the politicalization has significantly hurt the cause. I would disagree that all climate change activists are the most polarized. I think it often comes across that way because frankly a lot of folks are quite worried or even scared of what is to come - breeding passion that can come across as being fanatical.

When we see an article that says climate change may lead to a collapse of the North Atlantic Current in our lifetime, or that major coastal cities may be under water in the next 30 years it’s comes across as sensational because it’s nothing we’ve ever seen happen; thus, our brain has no reference to make it seem plausible. However, if you read that smoking increases your risk of lung cancer or early mortality in generally, most people buy that and at least want to make the lifestyle change. Smoking does mean for sure something bad is going to happen to you, it’s increasing the risk (albeit by a lot). Same thing is true for raising global carbon and temperature, do we know exactly when or what is exactly going to happen? No, but there are a whole bunch of intelligent people who study and build computer models to project these things, and they do this for a living. They all keep telling us something bad is going to happen. Not the least of which is the collapse of an entire ecosystem (coral reefs). Nevertheless, some of us keep listening to the people who’s job it is to get people to vote for them, none of whom have a PhD in climatology or similar, and somehow that just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’m kindof surprised by all the responses on here, I honestly assumed people who loved coral enough to have them in their home and spend all their money and time taking care of them wouldn’t be so indifferent to their extinction.

 

[bshonesy]

Today I asked a scientist colleague who is a meteorologist if they believed in manmade climate change. His response was, "Maybe, but if so, it would be negligible. The system is immense. There are so many inputs and variables that you could never quantify it. So, if yes, then, it doesn't matter."

Just an informed opinion that is not mine.

So, you can’t just say “the system is immense” and you can’t quantify it. Global temperature and atmospheric carbon is rising and that started happening when man started frantically burning fossil fuel. The average pH of the ocean (which is also pretty big) has gone from 8.2 prior to the Industrial Revolution to 8.1. So I think you can actually quantify a lot of it and it’s overwhelming in fact. Where is the data to support the claim that “the system is immense”? It’s obviously not immense enough! Also where is the data to support the idea that it doesn’t matter? I’d say watching the world’s coral reefs die off suggests the opposite.

 

[bshonesy]

Oh my gosh! Those graphs are not alarming.

The rate is only unnatural if we are unnatural.

Alarming to who, you? Thank you for sharing your expertise with us. Care to elaborate?

 

[bluemon]

Alarming to who, you? Thank you for sharing your expertise with us. Care to elaborate?

Don’t bother. They are at the stage where they are saying

“none of this is unnatural because humans are part of the nature.”

once someone is at that point, there is no point arguing. Especially because arguing on reef2reef is part of nature

 

[thedon986]

Oh my gosh! Those graphs are not alarming.

The rate is only unnatural if we are unnatural.

This is really the ultimate position of those who demand we panic. We are a blight upon the earth that does not deserve what we have.

 

[jabberwock]

Alarming to who, you? Thank you for sharing your expertise with us. Care to elaborate?

You are going to have to read ALL 17 PAGES.

 

[jabberwock]

So, you can’t just say “the system is immense” and you can’t quantify it. Global temperature and atmospheric carbon is rising and that started happening when man started frantically burning fossil fuel. The average pH of the ocean (which is also pretty big) has gone from 8.2 prior to the Industrial Revolution to 8.1. So I think you can actually quantify a lot of it and it’s overwhelming in fact. Where is the data to support the claim that “the system is immense”? It’s obviously not immense enough! Also where is the data to support the idea that it doesn’t matter? I’d say watching the world’s coral reefs die off suggests the opposite.

I interviewed a potential scientist hire a few years ago. I asked them to tell me about their senior project. They elaborated on how they were studying beach erosion. They had concluded that the beach in their study area had eroded by a shocking 8mms over the last 30 years. When I asked them if that quantity might be within the margin of error of the experiment, they had no idea what I was talking about. This is the issue with "science" today. It has become an infallible religion, and most of the scientists are doing it incorrectly..

 

[jabberwock]

Don’t bother. They are at the stage where they are saying

“none of this is unnatural because humans are part of the nature.”

once someone is at that point, there is no point arguing. Especially because arguing on reef2reef is part of nature

"They" is revealing to your position and intentions.

 

[blaxsun]

It's telling that no one is willing to discuss overpopulation. Maybe Richmond Valentine had the right idea...

 

[Lowell Lemon]

There is very clear isotopic evidence that :

The additional carbon is biogenic (non-mantle).
The carbon being added is from coal, oil and natural gas.

Here is a good, basic explanation (From Climate.gov) :

"Carbon-14 (or 14C) is also known as radiocarbon, because it is the only carbon isotope that is radioactive. It is perhaps most famous for its use in radiocarbon dating of archeological artifacts ranging from mummies to cave drawings, and it plays a crucial role in studying fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions as well.


Fossil fuels are, well, fossils, and are millions of years old. Because of this, all of the radiocarbon initially present has decayed away, leaving no 14C in this ancient organic matter. All other atmospheric carbon dioxide comes from young sources–namely land-use changes (for example, cutting down a forest in order to create a farm) and exchange with the ocean and terrestrial biosphere. This makes 14C an ideal tracer of carbon dioxide coming from the combustion of fossil fuels. Scientists can use 14C measurements to determine how much 14CO2 has been diluted with 14C-free CO2 in air samples, and from this can calculate what proportion of the carbon dioxide in the sample comes from fossil fuels."

"Inorganic materials can't be dated using radiocarbon analysis, and the method can be prohibitively expensive. Age is also a problem: Samples that are older than 40,000 years old are extremely difficult due to date to tiny levels of Carbon-14. Over 60,000 years old, and they can't be dated at all." July 12, 2019 https://www.nationalgeographic.com

 

[rhizotron]

If your mind is already made up, why even participate in the discussion?

 

[blaxsun]

 

[bshonesy]

I interviewed a potential scientist hire a few years ago. I asked them to tell me about their senior project. They elaborated on how they were studying beach erosion. They had concluded that the beach in their study area had eroded by a shocking 8mms over the last 30 years. When I asked them if that quantity might be within the margin of error of the experiment, they had no idea what I was talking about. This is the issue with "science" today. It has become an infallible religion, and most of the scientists are doing it incorrectly..

Thanks, I know what margin of error is. FYI, a person with a bachelors degree who has done a “senior project” is not a scientist. They are a person with a bachelors degree who has done a senior project. It doesn’t make them dumb or part of an infallible religion, it just means they are not a trained scientist. Hence, using their naivete to prove that the rest of us don’t know what we’re doing is telling of your level competence .

 

[Lowell Lemon]

It has not been 'much' warmer or colder in the past 1 million years. Temps for the last million years have been governed by a period of glacial, inter-glacial (caused by variations in the Earth's orbital parameters). Those variations are no longer going to occur and the planet will continue to warm due to CO2 now being the 1st order control.

In many ways, temperature may not be the biggest concern (at least to reefs) but pH which will continue to decline as co2 concentrations increase. This makes it metabolically more 'expensive' for corals (and many other marine organisms) to crystalize aranonite.

How can anyone arrive at those conclusions without records of the actual baseline of concentrations through the observed period of time? It is just educated guess work without knowing the baseline conditions. And last time I checked according to theory no scientists existed to record those conditions. Again what forces could be acting on the samples that might account for variations? Again Carbon-14 is not usable in periods over 50,000 years according to current observable science. A quick internet search reveals that as an accepted norm in today's scientific community.

Could a cataclysmic event have created some of the variations in the data of the core samples? Flood, earthquake, volcanic eruptions, meteor strike, firestorms, ect? Again there is no record of Co2 or carbonate levels at any time in unrecorded history. Just a theory to support someone's model of what they think might have happened based on extrapolated data from recent history.

Honestly, science should be able to produce repeatable results before we can hint that it might be fact and not theory. That is what is demanded in a laboratory setting anyway.

Since there is no recorded baseline concentrations the age of organic or Inorganic materials is just a guess. Science cannot prove the actual age of the earth without knowing those baseline readings. We can make guesses but let's be honest they are just educated guesses and we call them theories. Just as the actual atmospheric levels of Co2 at any point prior to recorded sampling history is just an educated guess.

I don't deny science but it has limitations to explain how we got here and why and it takes just as much faith as religion to believe some of it's adherents claims. The media and politicians have elevated current "science" to a religion that demands the skeptics silence...since when is that science?