More science - climate change is a lie!

[Shadowrider]

I wouldn't say it's back to 100% but the ecosystem is certainly recovering. Check back in a decade and I'll bet you wouldn't know the difference.

Just a cursory google search turned up this story about seafood in NO. It was the most recent story I found on page 1. April 2014

http://www.nola.com/dining/index.ssf/2014/04/the_2010_gulf_of_mexico_oil_sp.html

Sounds like most seafood is back but at lower numbers than before the spill. One would expect that I would think. Just takes time to build up population numbers after a disaster.

^^^ This is what I was talking about.

People are just short sighted in their thinking. I have no idea what the wildlife numbers were before or since, but one thing I do know. If there were a sizable impact from the spill Obama and his minions would be screaming it from every mountaintop, but we hear nothing but crickets. I prefer to think in a more complete scenario. Kind of like a year to us is like a nanosecond to the earth. When the politicians start making statements I call BS because I'm looking at a bigger picture. They are just kneejerking 100% of the time.

 

[dennishoddy]

Mother earth sure seems to be taking care of Prince William Sound in its recovery from the worst spill in US history. The recovery is not complete, but when I was up there two years ago, There were no visible signs of contamination, and the guide that was giving a narrative of the local fishing, and sea life, said things were pretty much back to normal.

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/stories/oilymess/oily06_recover.html

 

[Kyle78]

There is absolutely nothing unique about the rate or magnitude of this recent change.

Trained scientist say other wise. Backup your beliefs with proof.

 

[TerryMiller]

I can also remember the cries from the doom and gloomers during Desert Storm that with Saddam lighting up the Kuwait oil wells, it would take decades just to extinguish the fires, let alone clean up afterwards.

First of all, they knew nothing of the grit and guts of those fighting the fires. Didn't they extinguish them all in about a year? I suspect that clean-up has been remarkable as well.

 

[Shadowrider]

The World has also lost about 50% of it's forests. Forests are BIG carbon sinks, and help balance the entire planet. Let's not also forget the ever growing dead zones in the oceans. Plankton produce the majority of the planets O2, and the dead zones are affecting those also.

There's another side of this argument that I've never heard addressed a single time in my life. Yes, as the human population has increased we've lost forest. But we've also added farmland which grow crops. There is an offset there, I don't know how it compares, but it's there and I've never heard it mentioned. Go into the midwest and look at all the irrigated farmland. Millions of acres of plants eating co2 and producing oxygen that weren't there until recent times.

 

[Kyle78]

If CO2 levels are an existential threat then why aren't climate change scientists bigger advocates for rapid expansion of nuclear energy? It is the most viable way to produce enough energy with zero emissions for modern life to exist. Their solutions of carbon taxes are very telling IMO.

Some are for Nuclear energy, but it also has waste/byproduct that's extremely dangerous and long lasting. If they can get solar energy past the 10% efficient rate using common materials, we'll see a boom in it. right now it's costly to produce panels, and they use some nasty metals in them. Been seeing some break throughs using carbon nano tubes and other common-non rare materials. Scientists are working hard on that avenue. I don't understand your statement about carbon taxes tho..

 

[Kyle78]

There's another side of this argument that I've never heard addressed a single time in my life. Yes, as the human population has increased we've lost forest. But we've also added farmland which grow crops. There is an offset there, I don't know how it compares, but it's there and I've never heard it mentioned. Go into the midwest and look at all the irrigated farmland. Millions of acres of plants eating co2 and producing oxygen that weren't there until recent times.

I suggest you read up on the ecology of the great plains, and what it was like before white settlers killed off the vast roaming herds of bison. Once they were removed, it started a break down of the Tall Grass Prairies entire ecosystem. Once white settlers started plowing up and planting food plants, we started off a chain event that lead to the Great Dust Bowl. Literally a ocean of moisture was lost once settlers started plowing under the deep rooted native plants, and it still has not returned. The underground water basins of the entire great plains is slowly drying up. It won't be replaced in many life times using current water practices. Also your assuming that food stock and non native plants do a better job at storing Carbon. Your not realizing we harvest that carbon in form of food/meat and it re-enters the cycle. It's never stored away.

You need to understand, we're not creating new carbon. we are releasing stored carbon from fossil fuels that was stored inert underground.
I'm of the thought that mother nature does it best when it comes to plants and balancing out the planet. If we can decline our release of CO2 into the Atmosphere, the planet will rebalance it's self. But we have to keep from destroying the existing forests and polluting the oceans to let that happen.

 

[Shadowrider]

I'm fully aware of the cause of the dustbowl. I worked the OK panhandle, SW Kansas, and SE Colorado for a couple of years researching land records. You can actually see the Grapes of Wrath in the courthouse records. I also loved to go out to Optima lake when I was up there and read up on that whole fiasco, so I'm aware. And again it was a short time even in human context. I'll also add that there are probably more acres growing crops right now than then and there is no dust bowl. The difference is irrigation. If the aquifer is ever depleted they will just plant native grasses and go farm someplace else.

I've posted before that I think that some of these studies are just a wild a$$ guess, but since you seem to believe them, here's a good one.

If I see enough of these like this one I might have to rethink my position on that.
Good synopsis with lots of pretty graphs

Here's the intro:

ABSTRACT

Scientific studies have shown that atmospheric Carbon Dioxide in past eras reached concentrations that were 20 times higher than the current concentration. Recent investigations have shown that the current change of climate is part of a larger cycle known as climatic lowstand phase which precedes a sequential warming period known as transgression phase. The purpose of this evaluation is to demonstrate that the Earth is actually cooling, in the context of the total geological timescale, and that the current change is equivalent to a serial climate phase known as lowstand.

INTRODUCTION

In the last 20 years, public interest in climate phenomena has grown, especially since the UN-IPCC began its campaign warning of catastrophic climate changes ahead. At Biology Cabinet, we maintain that the changes that we have observed since 1985 have been natural and that human beings cannot delay or stop the advance of these changes, but can only adapt to them. In addition, we have shown that the changes that we observe at present are the result of natural cycles which have occurred many times before.

Here's the bottom line:

At the moment, the area of continental flood is almost 7%; according to climatic succession, we expect the area of continental flood to increase to almost 10%, but never so massive that it will put human populations in danger, as the IPCC has taken to suggesting almost every day. Allow me to clarify that most of the claims regarding catastrophic climate change filling the newspapers are overblown and based on data that is being arbitrarily exaggerated to blame humanity for climatic changes which are absolutely natural.

 

[Kyle78]

If your going to actually try to learn about actual science. Try reading actual scientific papers and websites. Not bunk websites with gibberish on it. Also a field of planted wheat has no were the amount of bio-diversity that a acre of forest has. Your trying to say acre of wheat is equal to a acre of forest when it comes to processing CO2.

You can sit and deny that humans haven't negatively affected the planet, and we're killing off species faster then ever before in history, cept with a asteroid strike.
I'm no tree loving hippy, but I'm not blind to the obvious impacts we're experiencing. I suggest you take a few classes of basic biology/ecology at your local college.

 

[doctorjj]

Trained scientist say other wise. Backup your beliefs with proof.

The person making the extraordinary claims is the one who has to show proof, but I will since I know you can't.

The warming that ocurred in 1925-1944, which preceded any major human influences through greenhouse gasses, matches the magnitude and rate of the late 20th century temperature rise, almost identically. So, even during the 20th century itself, during the thermometer record and not having to use proxy data, it is easily demonstratable that the late 20th century temperature rise attributed to manmade greenhouse gasses is not unique at all.

This is a graph reconstructed from the Vostok ice core data showing the recent warming trend, of the past 100 years, in context with other warming trends that have occurred before. The 20th century warming is not unique.



Here are a bunch of articles which I'm sure no one will read.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL023540/abstract

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0442(2004)017<4045:TETWIT>2.0.CO;2

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...9905)19:6<581::AID-JOC396>3.0.CO;2-P/abstract
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/early-20th-century-global-warming