I think we covered the first and secaond laws of thermodynamics in plumbers school.
Ya got nothin’ but the air warms up before the ocean in the morning? Idiot.
Comment on Lindzen et al.: response and parry by Captain Kangaroo
↧
↧
Comment on Letter to the dragon slayers by physicistdave
Doug Cotton wrote:
>It’s ironic that there are many who call themselves skeptics, yet still cling to some of the false physics invented by the IPCC regarding backradiation (and other radiation from a cooler atmosphere) and its supposed ability to warm the surface.
Doug, are you really, truly this ignorant of the history of the concept of the “greenhouse effect”? It really, truly was not invented by the IPCC! I learned about it over four decades ago, *long* before the IPCC existed.
For heaven’s sake, stop pretending that the standard physics of radiation was invented by climate modelers, the IPCC, or anyone except physicist like Maxwell, Planck, et al.
I’m old enough to remember when there was more concern about possible global cooling than global warming, but way back then, the physics of radiation was the same as it is today. Maxwell, Planck, et al. knew that views such as yours were nonsense.
Anyone who wants to see that you guys are just faking it can go into a university library and see that fifty years ago the physics books taught the same facts about radiation as they do today — this is not some grand conspiracy by climate catastrophists!
Dave Miller in Sacramento
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by Bart R
thisisnotgoodtogo | April 11, 2012 at 3:03 am |
The plants grow better and and make protein.
A bogus claim.
1. The key to intensive agriculture is exploiting the dwarf variant of food crops, which forces most growth into the harvestable portions. The dwarf mechanism in plants is suppressed by increased CO2. They discovered this in greenhouses when they couldn’t figure out why pots containing what should have looked like bonsai contained monstrous giants bolting all over the place. Of course, it’s now a well-studied effect entailing several plant hormones either suppressed, enhanced or altered by the CO2 level.
2. Study the effects of CO2 on plants — especially immature plants (every plant has to be young sometime) — and you’ll find it acts more like steroids do in athletes preteen athletes. Plants grown in high CO2 tend to be leggier with frankenbranches, more brittle, and though they have greater vigour in forming woody attenuated piths (cellulose, one of the indigestible proteins) also lose their frankenleaves sooner to premature age.
3. If you have excesses of every other condition and nutrient beneficial to plant you can somewhat offset some of the plant hormone suppressing effects and get some real benefit in some cases. However, you also set up your plants to deplete the soil directly (www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123798&org=NSF&from=news), and your extensive application of fertilizer will require intense soil conditioning which has a long term effect of soil death. Unless a flood or drought beats you too it. And those are getting more common, too.
4. But not to worry. Soil is alive. It’s full of microbes, from archaea (well, you prefer not, generally) to bacteria to fungi, microscopic plants and microscopic or tiny animals. Sometimes the soil microsystem acts like a wounded organism to heal itself and recover. And sometimes that healing flushes nitrogen out of the soil so fast that, like a fever does in a human body, the healing process burns out the soil and it dies.
5. Sometimes — remember that CO2 hormone effect? — some species get overstimulated and run rampant, like weeds. Only they’re archaea (well, you hope not), or bacteria (some of which can be helpful in some concentrations) or fungi (many of which are comutual or saprophytic and generally helpful in moderation) or pathogenic fungi that eat living plant roots like parasites or disease – athlete’s foot for your trees, bushes and crops. Picture a return to the fun and frolic of potato famine.
Sure, as a tool for greenhouse growers CO2 can be, judiciously applied, advantageous. Like any powerful hormone modifying drug.
Without control, in the wild? That’d be like a street drug, except plants and soil can’t just say ‘no’.
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by Bart R
climatereason | April 11, 2012 at 2:29 am |
Have you been to your acres?
I imagine the carbon footprint of going there doesn’t really pay off, but I’ve been to your acres. Perhaps not your exact two acres. But the pilot on my last trip waved over at one section and lauded the project. He thought it was noble as all get out, and sincerely I don’t disagree.
You know, it’s nice and all, but it’s also heavily poached for timber, subject to a rapidly shifting river, erosion, seasonal flooding, and the Amazon, it’s so huge someone could set up a ranch in the wrong part of the rainforest the size of Rhode Island by accident and authorities won’t find out about it until they get a shipment of two-year old beef, or so the pilot said.
It’s not a difficult balancing act. It’s an impossible imbalancing show.
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by Bart R
phyllograptus | April 10, 2012 at 10:31 pm |
Oh, you heard that CBC Ideas show too? Or was it the Stuart Mclean version of the story? I often listen to the propaganda arm of the Harper government while in Canada to try to hear that guy who skewered Billy Bob Thornton.
One may think the Rideau Canal is an artificial construct that couldn’t be built now if subject to environmental review, but seeing as the Harper government just announced Canada wasn’t going to be doing any more environmental reviews on anything — in some cases turning over a stooge version of that function to the provinces (which is a lot like turning it over to Enbridge, except taxpayers still pay for the dog & pony show) that the federal level can then overrule ‘in the national interest’, in other cases like sea habitats, Great Lakes monitoring and the like simply shutting off all inspection, monitoring or reporting at all — it’s hard to see the merit of your argument.
As a development economist, to me development is a necessary and good thing. If you believe Canada’s doing that any more, you’re simply gullible. Your country is run by opportunistic leeches.
↧
↧
Comment on Lindzen et al.: response and parry by Captain Kangaroo
pointless dickhead alert.
↧
Comment on Lindzen et al.: response and parry by Bart R
David Springer | April 9, 2012 at 9:16 am |
“The engineer does a cost-benefit analysis and finds..” but did you, David?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/climatedesk-stop-climate-change-cost/
Virtually everyone with the resources to thoroughly cost out the whole of the story comes to a similar conclusion within a few percent independently, and regardless of method.
People with an axe to grind, or poor resources to attempt the analysis, come out with a wide variety of obviously inflated results when working independently, and when citing one another seldom demonstrate the least measure of fact-checking.
There are still people citing Lomborg in one or another of his many later-repudiated ‘analyses’. Nova? A childish and obvious hack job two orders of magnitude higher than any other independent guestimate. Ergas? Impossible to tell where the analysis ends and the rant begins, other than ‘somewhere in the first page’. Inhofe? He’s been corrected more often than a keyboard with a faulty multiplexor. Lamar Alexander? His reports prove the opposite of the reasons he cited for commissioning them.
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by climatereason
BartR
No of course I havent been there. Trying to conserve these sort of habitats with all they mean to bio diodiversity is I think important, even if carried out at long distance and the habitats are disappearing at too fast a rate for it to be comfortable. Its spitting in the wind I know but what else can be practically done by the average person?
tonyb
↧
Comment on Lindzen et al.: response and parry by Bart R
For the general reader not familiar with American usage and idiom..
The epithet Web uses is considered mild in much of the USA, especially moreso for some raised in rural areas, or demographically by age.
On the other hand, the faintly innocuous ‘boffin’ Web referred to elsethread will cause a storm of blushes to appear on the cheeks of fans of Twilight or Hunger Games if said in the classroom by an adult.
It’s amazing the idioms there are out there.
↧
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by Considerate thinker
I guess peterdavies252, it’s the amount of taxation that can be creamed off the top of conservation efforts that will be the make and break of government attention and eco tourism might just supply that taxation stream but then that, will only work if you free up the ability for visitors to easily and conveniently visit in gas guzzling planes and automobiles. Or will it be a virtual paid tour via the internet. The Municipal zoo of the future?
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by Bart R
climatereason | April 11, 2012 at 5:04 am |
..what else can be practically done by the average person?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/climatedesk-stop-climate-change-cost/
When were you ever an average person, tonyb?
Lobby.
Rewards are inverted in the Market. There is a specific disease causing specific symptoms. It has a specific treatment.
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by peterdavies252
You are probably right Considerate thinker, in that the benefits of eco tourism will ultimately be limited in terms of net aerosol and other pollution effects on the net environmental budget.
Most countries have unique wildernesses of their own well worth visiting by local populations rather than attempt to attract visitors from afar. The net environmental budget effect would be considerably less and at the same time provide a more edification for local populaces with appropriate encouragement to press for more conservation measures for the benefit of future generations in that country.
The foreign tourist would not be all that interested in preservation of local environments.
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by peterdavies252
And, as for internet virtual zoo tours, I equate such concepts on the same plane as pornography, its much better when you can eyeball it, feel it, hear it and smell it 
↧
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by climatereason
BartR
Obviously I have the advantage that big oil pays me lots of money for my articles but other than that I’m ordinary. Will read the linked article shortly
tonyb
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by climatereason
Max
Where have you been-we were gewting worried…
tonyb
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by Girma
Max
Where have you been away from the battle?
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by manacker
Jim D
“It is predicted?”
Let’s wait until it happens before changing the stratigraphy, Jim.
And let’s not get overenthusiastic or pompous about man’s importance on our planet’s evolution.
Max
↧
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by timg56
Brent,
Doesn’t this work only if nations establish cap & trade laws? You won’t see the US doing so anytime soon. Who cares if WWF or any other group uses private money to buy land for conservation purposes, so long as they have no mechanism to recover money from public sources?
Actually, I can answer that. Who might care are the people who lose opportunity to to improve their condition by making use of the land. Still, if private capital wants to buy land to to conserve it, I generally have to support it.
↧
Comment on Conservation in the Anthropocene by manacker
Doug Cotton
Agree that the “johnosullivan” report on NASA would warrant a separate thread here, provided our host agrees.. Can we get any independent confirmation?
Max
↧
Comment on Lindzen et al.: response and parry by Captain Kangaroo
Unbelievable. Physics starts with understanding the physics of systems. In this case it is analysis from the 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics. If you make assumptions that are not physically realistic it leads to the most fundamental error. That of being an idiot and then compounding it with further idiocy.
↧
More Pages to Explore .....
