Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
Sigh... wikipedia. Didn't you question why the ranges were so broad and vague? (and had no citation)

It was citated, #7, or this. I didn't bother to read it (except to confirm that the numbers are in there), but you obviously never bothered to read the wikipedia article if you missed the citation. It even explains why there is a big range of numbers: "The higher ends of the ranges quoted are for each gas alone; the lower ends account for overlaps with the other gases."

Quote: Original post by Kaze
All of your sources seem to be ten to twenty years old.

They are that old. The most recent of Nelson's references are from 2000 and one of them is from the Cato Institute. The Monte Hieb site is dated 2003. It was linked to earlier in this thread to buttress a similar claim, that was similarly debunked.

For more on the 9-26% range see Water vapour: feedback or forcing? See also Recent Greenhouse Gas Concentrations (Updated December 2009).

Quote: Original post by WazzatMan

Quote: We Are Breeding Ourselves to Extinction [www.truthdig.com] (Mar 8, 2009)

I wouldn't call that article reliable. The author, an obvious demagogue, seems desperate to shift the entire burden of dealing with this situation to industrialised Western countries, where birth rate is slowly shifting to the negative, while simultaneosly removing it from poorer countries where the problem is actually occuring. In fact, I would argue that our financial support, which only sustains the population and it's goverment in the short term, and is rarely used to implement significant infastructure building, is actually one of the causes of this, and many other, problems.

Of course, the author doesn't give a solution for "population control", because we all know the minute a solution is implemented he will be writing an article complaining about it, unless it "takes care" of him too.

I disagree with your assessment. I don't think the author is a demagogue, or that he shifts the burden of dealing with overpopulation to industrialized nations. He places responsibility for overconsumption on industrialized nations. Yes, he doesn't offer a solution, but so what. He doesn't have to. Furthermore, we don't all know how he will respond to the implementation of some undefined solution. The solution is simple really and it's been known for decades. Empower women. At any rate, if you're interesting in a more thoughtful rebuttal to Hedges, check this out: Why Climate Change Malthusians Are Wrong.

Quote: Original post by Eelco
Yeah, CO2 is changing ocean pH. Faster than organisms will be able to cope with it? Perhaps some; but the ocean has seen crazier things than this. Like, ten times higher CO2 concentrations. One would expect the ocean's ecosystem overall to be fairly robust to such changes, having seen many of them, and it still being full of species from billions of years ago. There are lots of species that do better in less alkaline seawater. Not everyone can win.

You might get a fishtank or two ( or five, like me, including aquaponics and hydroponics projects ), and see exactly how PH ( and co2 ) affects plants and animals.

Ecosystems are not robust, where do you get that from? Ecosystems change with time as they *evolve*, not simply because there is a reason to change. There is no changing, just evolving - the exception (maybe) being humans. In times past organisms had been adapted to a different sort of planet - in times present, they arent.

If things start to die because of a PH problem ( such as plankton ), there will be a massive die-off in the entire ocean food-chain. The ocean's oxygen production will go down (50% of the planets's production is in the surface ocean), and the Earth's largest organic carbon sink will stop working. Ozone goes down, co2 goes up.

It's too bad that everything on the planet is interconnected, otherwise there wouldn't be a problem about nitpicking what to keep and what to rape.

Go watch Avatar, people, then hop on the co2-is-evil wagon!!! do it!!! Plastic is also bad. Plastic *and* co2 are evil, people!!!!

amusing to read a crappy book last night from arthur c clarke (from 1990) set in the year c2005-2012

talking about the ocean rising 1-2 cm a year

Quote: bluepeace and the other environment groups put the blame on man; the sciencetists were not so sure. it was true that the billions of CO2 from thermal power plants and automobiles made some contribution to the notoriouss greenhouse effect

Here's something to note the next time you encounter someone claiming that global warming is caused by the sun.

Earth's upper atmosphere cooling dramatically

Quote:
When the sun is relatively inactive — as it has been in recent years — the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere cools dramatically, new observations find.
...
Knowing just how the energy flowing out from the sun naturally impacts the state of the thermosphere also will help scientists test predictions that man's emissions of carbon dioxide should cool this layer. (While that may seem to contradict the idea of global warming, it has long been known that carbon dioxide causes warming in the lowest part of the atmosphere and cooling in the upper layers of the atmosphere.)

Earth's thermosphere is one of the least explored parts of the atmosphere, but it is important because "the thermosphere is where the sun first interacts with our atmosphere," said James Russell III of Hampton University in Hampton, Va.
...
The sun has been in a particularly prolonged and deep solar minimum for the last couple of years, with fewer sunspots and solar storms erupting on its surface. When the sun is in this state, it also sends less energy out in the soft X-ray and extreme ultraviolet parts of its spectrum. These wavelengths of light have a significant impact on the thermosphere, where air molecules absorb their energy and the reradiate it in the form of infrared energy.

The TIMED mission measured both the amount of incoming solar energy in the thermosphere and the amount of energy being sent back out into space from the layer and found a significant decrease in both.
...
Less radiation in both directions means that this layer of the atmosphere also cools substantially. In fact, the thermosphere has cooled by a factor of 10 since the last solar maximum in early 2002.

"I certainly didn't expect to see this eight years ago," Mlynczak said.

The exact temperature of the thermosphere can vary substantially, but the average temperature above 180 miles (300 km) is about 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius) at solar minimum and 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit (927 degrees Celsius) at solar maximum. (Though these temperatures sound hot, you would not actually feel warm in the thermosphere, because the molecules in that layer are too far apart.)
...

Yep, gases shrink when cooled. Proceed to provide linkies for all of my info - do it for the community and humanity abroad.