[ale] Way OT: In case you missed this in the news... Climategate

[Jim Kinney]

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 7:56 PM, Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer at gmail.com>wrote:

> Jim,
>
> As an example, I consider the below statement from the letter you
> linked to alarmist.
>
> "Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more
> acidic."
>

There's nothing wrong with that statement in terms of either accuracy or
objectivity. If the pH of the oceans were 14 and they changed to become
13.99, then they became more acidic. It is an indicator of direction.


> I say that because the oceans are basic, not acidic at present.  So an
> objective statement would read more like.
>
> "Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans less
> and less basic, and may at some point make them acidic."
>

Less basic _is_ more acidic. I made straight A's in all my chemistry
classes. Most discussions of acid/base reactions are given in terms of
acidic  conditions due the reactivy of acidic solutions be a more "active"
process. Giving up a proton is a more concerning thing than capturing a
proton. When captured, we know where it is. When released is is a big
unknown as to where it is. Additionally a free proton can rapidly instigate
a chain of events and still remain essentially free. Basic chemistry (pH
basic, not "simple") has a more "constrained" chain of events.

I'm not positive on the total impacts but I pretty sure that a shift of 0.1
in pH will be a huge change in what lives and what dies in the oceans. It's
that level of change that allows the red algae blooms that  spell death to
hundreds of square miles of oceans at a time. That's a localized event.
Imagine the fishing that will be available if the only place left that has a
pH in the range to not allow red algae blooms is the arctic ice melt
current.

>
> It just seems the global warming alarmist community uses alarmist
> terminology in general.
>

It's the only way to get the entrenched morons to even pay attention. People
are in general stupid and lazy and very self-centered. How may people do we
all know use other operating systems even though we have provided solid
evidence for over a decade that what we use is far superior.

However we are talking about a process that lasts longer any election cycle
and will have far more devastating impact that anything we can apathetically
ignore. Other than global nuclear war, deliberate biological warfare, of
mutagenic polution of the crop producing regions of the world, global
warming is the next great man-made plague. We totally lack the political
will to act decisively on nearly anything with a lifetime of less 4 years so
it's no surprise that we are politically paralyzed by a process that will
require immediate action with the next 10 years with payoffs to not be
apparent for several generations.

How many of us worked through the Y2K process only to be laughed at when
nothing happened.

We have at this point in time only one single rock to survive on. We are, as
a global species, so blinded by economic "progress" that we will willingly
feed our children and grand-children to the fires we built in order to make
a handsome ROI now. All the while we get fatter and lazier while chocking
the skies with exhaust our cars spew while we drive 8 blocks to the next
mall to buy more crap.

That the denialists to continue to vomit their tiny "ideas" of how "fake" or
"made up" all the thousands of scientists lives have been spent globally to
conspire to make up global warming is no surprise. Most of our current
populations is able to put food on the table with some process that depends
on aggravating the processes that produce global warming chemistry
components.

That Burt Rutan would lend his view as opposed to the thousands of
scientists who say daily we have a problem is also no surprise. He is not a
climate scientist. He is not a chemist. He is a very bright airplane
engineer with a vested interest in the carbon fiber, epoxy resin components
and the other exotic components needed to build his gear.

Airplanes are horrid polluters. Part of my brother-in-law's PhD was the
design and build of a tailpipe tracking remote airplane exhaust analysis
system. The output of the airplanes is far nastier than was previously
believed. The engine makers were shocked at his study and now GE and Rolls
Royce are going back to the drawing board to try and clean things up.

That "alarmists" would use language to "scare" people is not the point. The
scientific data they use is valid. As long as the morons are able to do
anything but squirm in the bright lights of their selfish views, the "scary"
language will have to be used to get it through their stupidity that changes
must be made.

If the data is scary, try explaining to your kids how they will have to tell
their grandkids that you were to selfish to make the changes that would have
made their lives better.

>
> If you read the Burt Rutan PPT, you see if does not say the GW
> alarmists routinely lie.  He says the information is cherry picked and
> specifically packaged to make it appear alarming.  OTOH, the ppt
> presents the same info in a larger context that is "designed to
> inform, not alarm".
>
> fyi: I assume that some model forecasts the oceans ph dropping below
> 7.0 and thus having acidic oceans at some point, but it hasn't
> happened yet.  Also, rain water is below 7.0, so fresh water sources
> are typically acidic. The ocean is basic due to all the submerged
> limestone around the world.
>
> Greg
>
>
If someone spews exhaust they can't breath a bag of, they are making a mess
for someone else to clean up. That violates the "self-reliance" viewpoint of
the typically conservative crowd who are generally the climate change
denialists. I love the hippocracy of both side. The tree-huggers who buy
crap from Patagonia instead of China. It was still made by a poor person who
has access to fewer resources in their life than we have in a month. And
then it was shipped over in container ship that likely burned diesel oil.

Bah. Humans deserve to be wiped out. I'm voting for the cockroaches.

-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
Doing pretty well on all 3 pursuits
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