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News Briefs 16-01-2007

This is a circular vortex, spinning…

Quote of the Day:

Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.

Martin Luther King

Editor
      1. Avoiding the Debate
        [quote=Lee] Global climate change denialism……raises its ugly head once again. [/quote]

        Climate change has occured every single day since the formation of this planet. I don’t hear anyone denying that. I’m just having trouble finding the fossil record of all those old SUVs responsible for the climte changes of the past.

        1. Avoiding the Debate, redux
          It would be very hard for anyone to deny that changes have happened without the help of human help in the past.

          In the same vein of argument though what I personally find interesting is how much people can deny having any impact over their environment.

          This planet is not that large anymore. I remember how the smoke plumes of burning oilfields in Kuwait were clearly visible from space. This should hint at how local events can impact global atmosphere.

          While undoubtedly natural events impact and will continue to impact the planet and the local system, we will continue to avoid seeing how we, ourselves, may be the drop that eventually tips the balance.

          As Krishnamurti said, nothing can change until we see, truly see, that we are personally responsible for the state this world is in. Of course, he was not referring to global warming but the basic concept remains as it is consistent with human consciousness.

          What we are dealing with all the time is human consciousness or rather lack of. It may not even be possible to have any grasp on reality until the consciousness enigma is resolved. It impacts everything but it will have none of it when the bill comes around.

          In the end, why would all this noise about having an impact or not matter? We won’t be here to pay those bills when they do come, right? right.

          1. Kuwait’s impact
            [quote=Richard]
            In the same vein of argument though what I personally find interesting is how much people can deny having any impact over their environment.

            This planet is not that large anymore. I remember how the smoke plumes of burning oilfields in Kuwait were clearly visible from space. This should hint at how local events can impact global atmosphere.
            [/quote]

            Hi Richard,

            It’s interesting that you should choose that particular example to make your point. Carl Sagan made a prediction during the first Gulf War that smoke from the oil fires set by Saddam Hussein’s army would result in a worldwide ecological disaster of Global Cooling. Atmospheric physcist Fred Singer, a climate change skeptic, stated that Sagan’s prediction was nonsense and that the smoke would quickly dissipate. The smoke was gone in a matter of days, no atmospheric harm was done, and Sagan admitted to his error.

            Those who have been to space have seen many things. The pyramids, the Great Wall, highways, and airports are all visible from space. But that doesn’t make them impending disasters, nor does it make the world smaller. Carbon dioxide, the proposed cause of alleged Global Warming, is invisible, and the planet is still the same size.

            All our carbon dioxide contributions are dwarfed by a single volcano that one can also view from space.

            Bill

          2. Of course Bill
            I was merely pointing out that if you can see it from space, it will have an impact. Not necessarily an impending disaster of course but you know that this sooth will disperse around. Its like looking into a fish tank and dropping a few drops of die. A little of it may not have a very noticeable impact over the whole tank even if you can see its initial impact locally but if you keep on dropping more the color of the water will definitely change over time. Even though it will dissipate, it will not ‘disappear’.

            What we do not see we tend to dismiss as unimportant (referring to invisible gas or dissipated smoke). I would be curious to ‘see’ how gas movement and concentrations around the globe look like though.

            Generally, any single event is not in and by itself a global catastrophe. Furthermore, if Carl Sagan said such a thing, it should definitely be weighted against all other stuff he may have said as it shows a judgment too heavily tainted with drama.

            It is the accumulation of events and the potential for a domino effect that may be the drop that could offset an otherwise natural phenomena.

            No matter what, it should be obvious that man has an impact on his environment. How much of that impact accounts for the changes we see? Not obvious and there are many arguments but no clear consensus. Can it tip the balance over? Not being sure we may be better to at least act on the side of caution because these matters will not be reversed so easily.

          3. Watch out for the water vapor
            [quote=Richard]I was merely pointing out that if you can see it from space, it will have an impact. [/quote]

            And my point is that although one could see it from space, it went away in a few days and made no difference at all.

            [quote=Richard]
            Not necessarily an impending disaster of course but you know that this sooth will disperse around. Its like looking into a fish tank and dropping a few drops of die. A little of it may not have a very noticeable impact over the whole tank even if you can see its initial impact locally but if you keep on dropping more the color of the water will definitely change over time. Even though it will dissipate, it will not ‘disappear’. [/quote]

            Your fish tank is a poor analogy, Richard. Your fish tank is a small, static, closed system if it cannot make your dye go away. The earth is a dynamic open system with energy added every moment. The earth experiences internal energy systems (hurricanes, tornadoes, rain, snow, etc.) and external influences (sunlight, asteroids, and radiation of every sort). Put a pump on your fish tank, filter the output and return it to the tank. Your dye will dissipate and disappear easily. That’s what a dynamic system does.

            [quote=Richard]What we do not see we tend to dismiss as unimportant (referring to invisible gas or dissipated smoke). I would be curious to ‘see’ how gas movement and concentrations around the globe look like though.[/quote]

            That’s not true in the US or in Canada, where you live, either. There are expensive fines and jail terms for corporations and individuals that pollute toxic waste. You are confusing toxic waste pollution and carbon dioxide. No one supports pollution of toxic waste.

            [quote=Richard]Generally, any single event is not in and by itself a global catastrophe. Furthermore, if Carl Sagan said such a thing, it should definitely be weighted against all other stuff he may have said as it shows a judgment too heavily tainted with drama.[/quote]

            Drama, indeed. That’s exactly why I thought it was an interesting example for you to make your point. Your description seems somewhat dramatic, as well. If you had followed the link that I posted to Carl Sagen you would know that he did say it and he did admit his error.

            [quote=Richard]It is the accumulation of events and the potential for a domino effect that may be the drop that could offset an otherwise natural phenomena.

            No matter what, it should be obvious that man has an impact on his environment. How much of that impact accounts for the changes we see? Not obvious and there are many arguments but no clear consensus. Can it tip the balance over? Not being sure we may be better to at least act on the side of caution because these matters will not be reversed so easily.[/quote]

            Pollution and GW are two different subjects. Water vapor is the largest greenhouse gas quantity, much larger than carbon dioxide.

            Bill

          4. The magically dissappearing smoke 😮
            The smoke did not just go away bill, it was absorbed by the environment. Things don’t just disappear out into nothingness.

            The analogy does not appear to be useless even if ‘flawed’.

            Let me rework it a bit here then.

            If in that tank you have some sand and gravel, it may act as a filter and effectively trap some of the die, making it seem as if it disappeared.

            It has not disappeared though but it effectively got trapped.

            Even then, the filter that you added in the equation, if you keep on adding some die, will eventually get filled and become useless, rejecting stuff back into the tank.

            The filter will work for a time until you have added the one drop too many that will tip the balance the other way. The water will be saturated at one point and you will get some die deposits/bubbles/whatever.

            Now, you can’t argue that you only need to change the filter every now and then since you would again adding an arbitrary solution that does not come from the environment itself.

            What I mean by this is that even though, and you are right in this, the earth is a dynamic system, it nonetheless has a limit on how much it can neutralize what you would keep on adding into it.

            I will not venture myself into statements that the limit is this or that but, and that is my only point really, comes a time when that system cannot compensate for changes it did not generate on its own, the whole system then becomes altered. The dynamics are changed.

            The whole remains dynamic but its working values are not the same therefore the results are modified.

            In itself, this might not be too bad but if it just happened that these modifications were to piggyback over a peak in a natural process, you might get an amplified reaction.

            It is not so much that things would then become out of control since they have never been under our control.

            So I will agree with your argumentation that a dynamic system will ‘reabsorb’ or ‘recombine’ what was split and injected into the system at a certain rate. The question then would be is the rate at which items are recombined so that their potential impact is nullified equal to or better than the rate at which they are split and injected.

            Another question is at which point does the system saturate and injected material cannot be recombined because it is at this point that you will get a real net impact.

            Btw, My remark about Sagan was just a way of speech. I did not want to suggest that you were misleading.

            I do not see that I am dramatizing anything beyond the simple statement that things have an impact, whether human induced or not, and that looking the other way instead of making a clean act of ourselves could lead to backfires.

            That is not dramatic, really, what is dramatic is human nature. I do not believe that nature itself will perceive a drama because we drop more die into it. It will simply obey its own laws and the dynamic system you explained will act accordingly. Then it might become a drama for the unfortunate that are in the wrong place and can’t do anything about it.

          5. Forget the fish tank
            [quote=Richard]
            The smoke did not just go away bill, it was absorbed by the environment. Things don’t just disappear out into nothingness.[/quote]

            You are quite right, Richard. And that’s why your fish tank analogy sucks.

            [quote=Richard]The analogy does not appear to be useless even if ‘flawed’.[/quote]

            No, it’s useless. You are trying to make a simple, closed system analogous to a complex, open system. Take it from a systems engineer; you can fix it up all you want but a fish tank will never be analogous to the Earth unless you add rain, fog, dust storms, ice, snow, sunlight, hurricanes, tornadoes, land mass, hail, sleet, asteroids, clouds, changing temperatures, comets, tides, volcanoes (above sea level and submerged), a magnetic field, and a hot nuclear core to you fish tank. Forget the fish tank.

            The reason that I say that you are being dramatic is that, like Sagen, you are using Saddam’s Kuwait oil well fires as your example. That example resulted in no harm being done. In fact, the smoke did just go away. F-111s snuffed-out the fires leaving nothing but smoke. The dynamics of the system, the Earth, reduced the smoke to more basic elements and returned them to the system with no harm done. The Earth, not your fish tank, can absorb small fires like that. It’s the big natural disasters like volcanoes that that years to absorb. Saddam’s Kuwait oil well fires are a dramatic example, but it didn’t prove Sagen’s point and it doesn’t prove your point either.

            You still seem to be confusing toxic pollution with GW. Not even the GW-proponents are claiming that toxic pollution is causing GW. They are blaming carbon dioxide accumulation in the troposphere. No one thought Saddam’s Kuwait oil well fires were a good thing. But they have nothing to do with Global Warming or Global Cooling.

            Bill

          6. To conclude the fish tank saga
            Hi Bill,

            My use of the Kuwait fires had for purpose to illustrate that emissions of whatever it is, in a sufficient amount, will mix with the atmosphere and spread globally.

            If, of course, the substance is slow to be reabsorbed within the environment and is continually being produced.

            Since the smoke was clearly visible and that it made quite a blob over a large volume of atmosphere, it is not difficult to see that countless sources emitting other substances all over the globe will tend to increase that substance’s density within the atmosphere.

            The smoke is a graphical example since it could be seen. CO2 is not visible but one can extrapolate.

            You must have misunderstood my use of that example. I am not so daft as to make a direct correlation between toxicity and GW.

            On the other hand, those industries that are heavy CO2 producers and their associated governments do not mind toxic waste production.

            That is made quite clear when considering the hand shaking being done between the US and Canada to multiply the production of oil with Alberta’s tar sands. In the process of extracting the oil, much arsenic, heavy metals and methane is produced. These are piling up and becoming a serious hazard to the underground water bed.

            This does not affect GW, except perhaps for the methane, but it is pretty obvious that they could not care less.

            Correct me if I am in the left field but your argumentation seems to suggest that human activities could never have any impact whatsoever over the Earth’s thermic balance?

          7. bio stuff
            Richard, you do know that oil, as well as the smoke and soot resulting from burning oil is biodegradable, right? It makes a difference. So is methane. But of course heavy metals are problematic.

            For my part, I am afraid that we may do drastic things to combat global warming, only to find out later that we made things worse, rather than better. We don’t understand enough to make intelligent choices at this point.

            —-
            May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house (George Carlin)

          8. I can only agree
            It is generally the problem.

            We generally don’t do things with the general well being and that on top of not really knowing what we are doing either.

            We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t because we are always doing the worst possible thing or are idle when we should be on the move. All this to insure that we do hit that wall and get a reality shock.

            I am certain that this civilization will indeed hit that wall since it is perfectly programmed to do so.

          9. Never, never
            [quote=Richard]Correct me if I am in the left field but your argumentation seems to suggest that human activities could never have any impact whatsoever over the Earth’s thermic balance?[/quote]

            Hi Richard,

            “Never” is a long time but our current output has very little effect. If we could control the warming/cooling cycle it would be a good thing, but our puny efforts are overwhelmed by the natural causes. Please read this to understand why the ice core samples give us the answer to global warming.

            Toxic pollution is an entirely different problem.

            Bill

          1. Thermodynamics
            Hi Anonymous,

            I’m simply a man on a quest to make the people that believe in GW understand what GW is. ;o)

            Bill

        1. ice ages……bumkin
          I’m sure some microbe under the antarctic ice would be thinking now that this ice age is getting a little tedious.
          Antarctic was once a lush forest. The dino’s needed at one stage, a lot of green matter to eat. Now I have never heard of a practical explaination of this yet. Could be the sun lost it’s heat for awhile, or this planet was shrouded and sheilded from the sun’s rays for many thousands of years, or the actual axis shifted moving the equator 90* from where it is now.
          It’s no mystery that the magnetic north moves all the time. Maybe some of these great structures from the past are actually balancing our planet on this plane. Some of the new work, like mining mountains and building great cities are having an adverse effect on this balance.

          “While contemplating on their life, anyone who says they have no regrets and would do it all the same again, have not learn’t anything.”
          LRF.

          1. Continental movement
            Hi Floppy1,

            Until about 200-million years ago Pangea was intact. Tectonic plate movement causes continental drift.

            There was a 22-degree shift in the axis at some time in the past. Hapgood poposed that this crust displacement was due to ice and landmass balance.

            Our mining and building efforts are much too small to have any influence on the balance of the planet.

            Bill

          2. thanks Bill
            thanks for that Bill. Add the info to my ever increasing mountain of stuff.

            “While contemplating on their life, anyone who says they have no regrets and would do it all the same again, have not learn’t anything.”
            LRF.

          3. GW
            Hi Thefloppy1,

            You are quite correct in your claim that the earth has been much warmer for several periods during the past, more recent than 200-million years, and we really don’t know why. Ice core samples not only indicate the warmer periods, the samples also reveal that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased following the warming periods, not preceding them.

            That makes it very difficult, actually impossible, to blame increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for previous increases in planet-wide temperature increases.

            You know what is said about those who ignore their history.

            Bill

          4. Tilt
            Hi Bill,

            My response is a bit late but here it goes i called your dare, i btw think conservative use of limited resources is shoowing respect for nature and those that come after us, and i agree that this co2 scare is ludicrous.
            Anyway i was looking at these pics and what i saw was the tilt, that let us presume happened 11,000 bc. It btw would throw all the other assumptions about where we go from here, based on the current situation, out.

            before the tilt and after the desert band is clear that the gobi still exists has everything to do with the himalaya and the fact that its a high plateau

            A matter of choice;
            Intimidation, corruption and lies, or serenity, sharing and sincerity.

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