Greenpeace Co-Founder Declares Himself a Climate Change Skeptic 573
New submitter PensacolaSlick writes that [Patrick Moore a], co-founder of Greenpeace, and seven-year director of Greenpeace International, with other very pro-environmental credentials, has come out with a brief rationale for why he is "skeptical that humans are the main cause of climate change and that it will be catastrophic in the near future." He argues instead that in a historical context, human activity has saved the planet, declaring that "at 400 parts per million, all our food crops, forests, and natural ecosystems are still on a starvation diet for carbon dioxide."
(Consider the source, which according to the New York Times is "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism.") Moore breaks with what might be expected of a Greenpeace founder as well in that he is currently chair of Allow Golden Rice.
Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 1985 (Score:5, Informative)
But of course that fact won't get people to click on your article.
That makes me take him MORE seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern Greenpeace is doing things like defacing ancient monuments thousands of years old [mic.com] to spread propaganda. If this guy WERE with Greenpeace any time recently I would have cause to question his sanity and/or motives... instead he seems like a guy that actually cares about the environment instead of money or publicity.
Re:That makes me take him MORE seriously (Score:4, Insightful)
"One strike, you're out Greenpeace!"
Thanks for the 45 years of environmental activism, it was nice knowin' ye.
(I assume you hold companies to the same standard.)
Absolutley (Score:5, Insightful)
"One strike, you're out Greenpeace!"
If that strike is destroying monuments thousands of years old and causing irreparable damage to a very fragile desert ecosystem - yes, absolutely I would be strongly against ANY entity that did that, but more importantly didn't even consider it to be a problem.
Thanks for the 45 years of environmental activism, it was nice knowin' ye.
Greenpeace has not helped the environment in any meaningful way for at least two decades now. I consider helping them to be morally as questionable as supporting human trafficking, especially since you are taking away funds to help groups that actually help the environment instead of themselves (like the Nature Conservancy).
Re: (Score:3)
Conveniently ignore that greenpeace apologized and acknowledged it made a mistake.
Re:Absolutley (Score:4, Interesting)
I take it then that you'll be pretty negative toward the American administration who oversaw the destruction or loss of a substantial slice of cultural artifacts held in trust on behalf of the entire Iraqi civilization.
This from the man who likely repeated the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" times beyond measure. My goodness, is it possible that there were any WMD in the whole country?
Perhaps Rumsfeld hates all museums with the same uniform, searing passion, but I suspect he might have summarized the matter differently if 15,000 items walked out of the Smithsonian, including personal artifacts brought over to American on the Mayflower that were already so venerable they predated Constantine.
Now to deal with the article at hand:
If he thinks this trend could have continued deep into the extirpation of the chlorophyllosphere, he's badly in need of that new ultrasound treatment used to cure Alzheimer's disease in the mice model.
Epic fail. Crank dismissed.
Re:That makes me take him MORE seriously (Score:5, Interesting)
Some gems from the article:
Disgracefully, hunger and desperation have become the Genetic Engineering industry's best tools to penetrate the developing world's food supply.
Starving people still deserve the dignity of choice.
Re:That makes me take him MORE seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
And the article you link to doesn't mention that the Peruvian government lets the Dakar Rally use said monument as part of its route.
Is it possible there's politics involved in approving race cars but criticising environmental activists who wear normal shoes instead of special shoes?
Re:Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 1985 (Score:5, Interesting)
And apparently he's a "founder" of Greenpeace in the same sense that Willie Soon is a Harvare-Smithsonian astrophysicist -- which is to say he's worked with them.
So the headline should read, "Oil industry funded think tank announces that a guy who used to belong to Greenpeace is a climate denialist."
Not exactly prime clickbait.
Re:Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 1985 (Score:5, Insightful)
And I know for a fact he has been playing up his "greenpeace founder" credentials for a couple of decades now. He's uses it as a cudgel every time some corporation needs to fight regulation of their pollution. The guy is a hack and as usual, the dumb-as-rocks slashdot editors fell for it.
Re:Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 1985 (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I give him his due in that he took part in some of Greenpeace's earliest activities. And I agree with him on Golden Rice and GMO foods. And he *does* have scientific credentials as an ecologist, although that doesn't mean he's not a crackpot -- especially when he weighs in on areas outside his expertise.
Re:Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 1985 (Score:5, Informative)
He commented that he had left Greenpeace because it "took a sharp turn to the political left" and "evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas"
From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 1985 (Score:5, Funny)
Climate Change on Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
You can only be amused by the responses these articles attract.
Here are some facts that puts all of these comments into perspective.
1. 99.9% of Slashdot commenters are NOT Climate Scientists. .01% of Slashdot commenters that ARE qualified to offer a valid opinion...don't do so on Slashdot. (U
2. Probably 90% don't even have education in areas remotely related to Climate Science.
3. 90% are the posts seem to cite Skeptical Science in order to prove their point.
4. Skeptical Science is run by a Cartoonist.
5. The
Re:Climate Change on Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like the Slashdot has the same composition of climate scientists that the IPCC does.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You can only be amused by the responses these articles attract.
Here are some facts that puts all of these comments into perspective.
1. 99.9% of Slashdot commenters are NOT Climate Scientists.
But most are literate and can evaluate material that they read critically.
2. Probably 90% don't even have education in areas remotely related to Climate Science.
Appeal to Authority is a fallacy. You don't have to be an "expert" to be able to evaluate written material.
3. 90% are the posts seem to cite Skeptical Science in order to prove their point.
And you're assuming without evaluation that all skeptical science is wrong and all non-skeptical science is not. Are you totally dense? There is no non-skeptical science. All science must be skeptical. Because some IPCC stooges are not, we have the problem we have!
4. Skeptical Science is run by a Cartoonist.
Eh, cartoonists are mostly very sharp en perceptive. Able to
Re: (Score:3)
he's refuting a variation on the appeal to authority fallacy.
the typical ATAF involves "X is an expert, we should listen to X".
the post he's refuting is making a related claim "X is not an expert, he is a cartoonist. We should NOT listen to X."
It's an inversion of the typical ATAF.
The key point is that scientific facts are true regardless of the status of X as an expert or non-expert.
In this case, X is a cartoonist, but X has more than a typical laypersons familiarity with the topic, even if he isn't a lead
Re:Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 1985 (Score:5, Interesting)
More like his wallet took a sharp turn to the right https://en.wikipedia.org/ [wikipedia.org] "Moore has earned his living since the early 1990s primarily by consulting for, and publicly speaking for a wide variety of corporations and lobby groups" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. So why was he in Greenpeace in the first place, likely pursuing the opposite sex. Caring sharing community activities often have a preponderance of the fairer sex (they are referred to as the 'fairer sex' for a reason) http://siteresources.worldbank... [worldbank.org].
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
they are referred to as the 'fairer sex' for a reason
"Fair" as in lighter, weaker. NOT as in open minded and logical.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, the green revolution was a result of government research efforts that the private sector is too short-sighted to invest in.
Farmers are stupid sod-kickers who do ignorant things like kill prairie dogs out of paranoia, when actually the little critters help to irrigate the soil with their diggings.
The internet was rejected by the private sector. AT&T saw it as competition for their business model which was based on telephones. The right, which fetishizes the private sector, is not good at disruptive i
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Calhoun's point of view is pretty much the same as the righties running today. The same rhetoric about "appeasement", the same paranoia about their way of life being destroyed. That is the essence of the right, and it is hopelessly backwards, on the wrong side of history.
You don't seem to know your history very well. As already stated, Lincoln supported emancipation for reasons of his own, which had absolutely nothing to do with "equality". His reason for wanting to end the keeping of black slaves was so they could eventually be removed from the continent entirely.
And to be honest, I don't know a single person who holds Calhoun's views today.
Re:Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 1985 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 1985 (Score:5, Interesting)
Can we talk about how the right endlessly defended slavery?
Take John C. Calhoun [wikipedia.org]: "he became a greater proponent of states' rights, limited government, nullification and free trade".
What does this have to do with today's right? John C Calhoun was part of the same party that Obama is now part of. And no, the parties didn't switch spectrum, rather all of them have changed their stances on certain subjects. Remember it was still the Democrats that were largely opposed to civil rights during the 50's and 60's (for example, it was a Democrat governor who called in the national guard to keep black students out of Central High School in Arkansas.)
The biggest change a lot of people refer to happened during the 80's under the Raegan. Prior to Raegan, Democrats were staunchly opposed to communism (Kennedy and Johnson for example) and somehow the modern Democrat party moved away from that hard line stance (Greenpeace is an example of that, and Patrick Moore cited the organization as looking favorably upon communism as an environmental solution as part of his reasoning for leaving.) At the same time, a huge portion of the US population shifted to the right, which was mainly those that were still hard-line opposed to communism and were disillusioned by the Jane Fonda types of that era.
And yes, during the 80's, communism was still a pretty serious threat to the west, it only stopped being so after its biggest backer (the USSR) decided they have had enough of it and finally dropped the Iron Curtain. And now to this day, several major Democratic figureheads like to claim that the Red Scare was just a big farce, communism really isn't so bad and just needs to be done right, etc.
However neither party has been in favor of either discrimination or slavery since at least the late 70's. But prior to then, Democrats were the pro-discrimination party, and prior to at least the 1900's they were still the pro-slavery party.
Re: Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 198 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Moron, science is their job, they go on working on science in the same exact way they already are, just different science. Of course on the other hand the fossil fuelers with trillions of dollars locked the the ground and the ability to get it out and sell it rapidly disappearing and no other alternatives for them. So on balance a scientist get paid tens of thousands of dollars to do science going on simply to do other science (because according to you, no global warming, zero need for weather science, fuc
Re:Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 1985 (Score:5, Informative)
Hey, you left out your link to a reliable source for this claim.
A total over an unstated number of years is meaningless. According to Forbes -- hardly a lefty source, and this is a denialist article -- the U.S. Government spent $32.5 billion on climate studies over 20 years between 1989 and 2009. [forbes.com] That's $1.6 billion a year. About $5 per American per year. Accoridng to the GAO [gao.gov] (notice the hyperlink, please starting using them, thanks) federal climate change acivities in 2010 were $8.8 billion, but that includes "technology to reduce emissions, science to better understand climate change, international assistance for developing countries, and wildlife adaptation to respond to actual or expected changes" -- so climate research is only a small part of that. Figure a quarter to a third of it is climate research. So we're looking at something on the order of $2 or $3 billion a year spent by the federal government on climate change research.
For comparison, the Iraq war was is estimated to have cost $1,100 billion [wikipedia.org] in total.
Exxon Mobills's profits -- not revenues, profits -- last year were $32.5 billion. And that's just one company.
The Army's R&D budget -- not the whole military, just the Army -- is around $21 - 32 billion. [aviationtoday.com]Climate research funding is chump change. I kind of liked this line of bullshit better when it was "those scientists telling us smoking causes cancer are just riding the research gravy train!" At least it was a fresh and audacious sort of intellectual dishonesty then. Now it's just pathetic.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 1985 (Score:5, Informative)
$106 billion was spent by US government on climate research by 2010
I... don't know where to begin with this figure. If "by 2010" you mean the amount which has been cumulatively spent on climate research since the United States was first conceived as a country, I probably would still not believe you. But maybe, at the outside. And only if you adjusted for inflation and you included work to address the 1930's Dust Bowl as "climate research."
That is a staggeringly ridiculous number, and the fact that you would present it here as though it were true, as though it were a plausible thing to say, represents a deep myopia. The total R&D budget for the US for 2015 is $135B, most of that goes to defense research.
Re: (Score:3)
1. No warming for nearly twenty years.
I went to Wood for Trees and plotted GISTEMP, HADCRUT4, RSS lower trop. and UAH lower trop. for the last 20 years. You can see the graph here. [woodfortrees.org] The only one even close to showing no warming is RSS. They have some issues because the satellite they use is out of fuel and can't keep its orbit so they have to adjust for that.
Your other 3 points are just climate science denier memes that don't stand up in the real world. 2) Climate models aren't expected to predict the short term variability of things like EN
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't agree with his latest position, not at all actually, but I'm with in on that one.
More specifically, the "green movement" has become a harbour for all the malcontents who don't so much care about the environment as despise the society we live in. These people see global warming not as a problem, but as the solution: what will force society to change its ways.
Re:Hasn't been involved with Greenpeace since 1985 (Score:4, Interesting)
I despise the society we live in, you insensitive clod!
Re: (Score:2)
But greed inevitably involves the environment. Example: the gold rush, which ruined the pristine environment that had existed unchanged by the American Indians for centuries. Also logging, clearcutting all that priceless old growth for "plush" toilet paper, or other silly vain trifles.
Re: (Score:3)
Everybody loved Greenpeace when it was saving whales. Then it didn't just take a turn to the left, but to the radical anti-human left. Now it reflexively opposes anything that might promote humanity, like changing fuels from fossil to nuclear if, perchance, their own climate scenario were proved true.
This is interesting.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Though I do believe humans are doing a good job of trashing the environment, I have always felt like Global Warming was being used as a scare tactic, much like those "Repent and be saved!" guys that stand on street corners and preach about the end of days.
Is Global Warming happening now? Yep, it appears it is. Is mankind the only cause of this phenomenon? I'm not 100% sure on that, and if we don't keep looking to see what's really going on, we may be in for a rude awakening in the not too distant future. when though our best efforts at curbing carbon emmisions, we still end up screwed.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Pretty much my veiw point. Does human activity cause some manifestations in the weather that are excacerbated by current climate change, I'm sure it does. Is "global warming" 100% human caused, I doubt it very much. To many conflicting arguments as far as I can tell.
Re: (Score:2)
There's nothing stopping (and in fact, it seems almost a certainty) that Man-made Global Warming is real *and* is being used as a scare tactic by some people.
When billions are presented with the same crisis, you can expect there to be a multitude of different responses, including those who seek to capitalize upon it by denying its existence, and those seeking to capitalize upon it by promoting its existence.
In the last Ebola crisis, I'm certain there were people recruiting for their Church as a cure ("it's
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Please both Evolution and Newtonian mechanics are predictive, "Climate Science" is not. When or if it ever does become predictive then the science will be settled
Re: (Score:3)
Newtonian mechanics can't predict the time anomalies crucial to getting GPS to work.
Re:This is interesting.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Keeping adding the same energy to a system. Reduce energy going out. System warms up.
That's predictive and settled.
Re: (Score:3)
Why don't your cite the actual IPCC report that says that rather than some people spinning what it says?
Re: (Score:3)
Here it is with no spin. IPCC AR5 WG1 Chapter 9 - "Evaluation of Climate Models". [www.ipcc.ch] [PDF] Search for "Box 9.2 | Climate Models and the Hiatus in Global Mean Surface Warming of the Past 15 Years" and you get it straight from the horses mouth.
Re: (Score:3)
What is unpredictive with "climate change"?
Increase CO2 levels: global temperatures goes up, pretty simple to predict!
Re:This is interesting.... (Score:5, Informative)
except that is not what is happening.
Can you see the green line ?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl... [woodfortrees.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This stuff certainly IS up for debate. There's always a danger when it comes to a majority of scientists agreeing with something and then having government money, and special interests ram it down everyone's throats.
Look at what happened in the 70s with the damn low fat craze. Everyone went low fat and Type II diabetes has gone through the roof.
I'll stay a skeptic till there is irrefutable science. And don't bother posting any links, cause for every article yo find, I can find one with a dissenting opini
Re:This is interesting.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
There are a few reports that suggest that the ice caps on Mars are slowly receding too, so it may be in part due to changing solar activity.
If you're curious about possible solar activity, wouldn't it be smarter to look directly at the sun ?
http://www.skepticalscience.co... [skepticalscience.com]
Re:This is interesting.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I read the study on the Martian polar ice caps. I also read that all the planets in the inner solar system are heating up at the same rate. When you mention stuff like this, the Global Warming guys flip and jump down your throat that you can't use data from other planets to predict what's happening on Earth.
There was also a great article on how the polar ice caps are refreezing at the fastest rate ever.
The problem here is that the people on the side of man-made global warming think every mention of the fact that this may be a natural phenomenon or just temporary automatically makes you some kind of industry shill. That is far from the case. I think it's the job of every scientist to continuously question and test. No one should assume man-made global warming is 100% truth at this point.
And I do agree that is distracting poeple from many other problems. I hear combating global warming all the time, but no one EVER talks about cleaning up the Great Pacific Garage Patch [wikipedia.org]. The average Global Warming advocate that would call you an industry shill, doesn't even know what the Garbage Patch is. Or they don't know that Wind Turbines for electricity production kill bats by the thousands. Or that the Toyota Prius battery factory in Canada is slowly destroying the environment around it.
When I mention any of this stuff, they get outraged, and continue to call me an industry shill. Which I am not. I'm trying to show them that Global Warming is NOT the greatest crisis to face mankind. Cause before that the greatest crisis was power lines causing cancer. And before that, it was acid rain. And before that was the Ozone Layer. Before that, a new ice age was coming. There's always some crisis out there that the media brings to the forefront. Global Warming is just the latest attempt to sensationalize headlines, use "carbon neutral" as a marketing term to sell products and keep you scared that this crisis is far worse than the last one that was supposed to wipe us out and didn't.
Re:This is interesting.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the reaction you might be getting is that many of these 'counter arguments' have been shown to be:
- outright fabrication
- cherry picking of data
- intentional misleading analysis
Things like the polar ice is a great example - there is a local phenomena of sea ice generation, but it doesn't refute the bigger picture of constant warming ocean and land temperatures. It is being studied by a number of teams, and will eventually expand our knowledge of the planet and its systems, but it doesn't change any of the argument to date.
I also want to say that you're not being terribly consistent when you complain others call you 'shill', and you then go on to give the 'sheeple' argument that society is being manipulated into a crisis mentality to simply sell some products. That's being hugely insulting and completely disingenuous to your skepticism. It shows the bias and lack of understanding you're investing into the sceptical position that you've decided to take.
You could take your ozone issue as an example - it wasn't just some crackpot genius marketing idea to sell new aerosol cans, it was a genuine issue that still effects everything everything in the lower southern hemisphere. It could have been catastrophic, but action was taken and the problem has stabilised (and begun to recover). I would also argue that most environmentalists are fully aware of issues like the Pacific Garbage Patch, and there are plenty of active campaigns to reduce waste in all forms. However, there is an element of relative urgency in all things, and just like you wouldn't complain to the doctor about the scratch on your arm when you need to be discussing your cancer treatment, plenty of people are naturally focusing on the perceived bigger environmental threat of global warming,
I think the main issue is what is "too high"? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's somewhat important to know how much is man-made vs natural (a question we are not very close to answering).
I think a way more important question though is, how much warming is too much? We know from historical temperature data that the warming we are supposed to see now in about 200 years, will be still a bit below the medieval warm period.
But if it continued beyond that, is there some point ay which we should consider drastic measures like climate engineering? I don't see a lot of studies that seem to be able to predict at all what happens as the climate gets slowly warmer over time (at least they have done a terrible job at predicting that so far).
We should not forget that the most dangerous thing of all would be to have the climate cooling, so to whatever degree man affects the climate, we should try to err on the side of warming. Energy is life, a frozen Earth is death for many.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you ever feel the need to examine why you so strongly want to disbelieve the theory?
Re:This is interesting.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't need to examine anytihng.
The theory, as put forth, does a relatively good job of explaining MOST of the things we are seeing at present. The model has some issues with the Mideval mini ice-age and the peroid of significantly reduced polar ice that happened after that. It did a horrible job of predicitng the polar ice refreezing that happened 2 or 3 years ago.
And right now, the theory is being used as an excuse for everything. We had a record hurrincane year 2 years ago. We actually went through the whole alphabet and then some. Scinetists were all over the news telling us this is a result of global warming, since the oceans are now warmer. They said it fit the model to a tee, and that it's just going to get worse from year out. Last year was the mildest hurricane season they had seen in a long time. Global Warming was being used by meteorologists as the cause for the polar vortexes that dropped temperatures down into the single and negative digits.
So, yeah, global warming has been well studied, but it's not the damn be-all, end-all for how this planet does shit. Everythig bad that happens on the planet is not the result of the CO2 levels in the air. And all the work you do to try and save our asses from rising temparatures will be meaningless when the Yellowstone Supervolcanoe erupts and takes out half the country, which "well established science" said should have erupted close to 20 years ago.
I was a research biologist for a number of years, and it sickens me how many people these days make the data fit the theory, rather than making the theory fit the data
Like I said in a previous post, infra-red imaging of the inner planets in our solar system shows them heating up at a rate similar to Earth. But, say that out loud and people like you friggin flip out.
Re: (Score:3)
It did a horrible job of predicitng the polar ice refreezing that happened 2 or 3 years ago.
Good, because if the models predicted events that did not happen, that would be a bad sign for them. The "polar ice refreezing" that you are refering to didn't happen. Polar ice did rebound from a record low, which it was widely expected to do. In fact, every record low polar ice year is followed by a few years that are higher than the record low before until we reach the next record low. However, the overall trend is still downward.
Global Warming was being used by meteorologists as the cause for the polar vortexes that dropped temperatures down into the single and negative digits.
From my understanding, that is correct. Warming in the arctic is chang
No need to know science ... (Score:5, Informative)
... follow the money.
Re:Going against consensus is scientific ... (Score:5, Informative)
To berate a person for wanting to investigate non-human causes is political, not scientific
Non-human causes have been investigated, and are still being investigated. Claiming that this is not the case, is simply lying or ignorance.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you have a reading comprehension problem? I made no such claim.
I was referring to the claim in the article, where he said: "[IPCC's] mandate is to consider only the human causes of global warming, not the many natural causes changing the climate for billions of years", which is simply not true. Possible non-human causes have been looked at, and quantified, and they come short of explaining the temperature rise.
Claims should be easily verified (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Was the level decreasing before the industrial revolution?
3) Is there a minimum level of CO2 plants need to grow and if so, what is it?
Re:Claims should be easily verified (Score:5, Informative)
1. Yep, the historic low was about 150 to 200 thousand yeas ago (the lowest was around 300 million years ago...give or take).
2. Yep, its been trending "down" that way for the last 600 million years. Nifty chart from the University of California [ucsd.edu]
3. They do, but it varies from plant to plant. During the late Pleistocene, CO2 concentrations were 25% to 50% lower than at present, declining to values of 180 ppm during glacial periods. Studies have been done on plants growing with less then 50ppm (to find fast growing breeds). I would say under 30ppm would be the breaking point but could be as low as 25ppm...or even 15 on some high altitude/slow growing tree strains like firs and redwoods (some plants can go much lower but only like 5% of the ones we know of).
Re: (Score:3)
Yay UCSD and Roger Revelle! More charts [ucsd.edu] of the Keeling Curve, which passed 400 three months ago. "1700 to Present" is my favorite.
I'm still totally amazed people can't look at a before and after of the summer ice in the Arctic or glaciers in Patagonia and Glacier National Park and make the leap that, "Okay, releasing carbon from long-dead dinosaurs in the form of petroleum and coal results in atmospheric carbon dioxide which warms and expands oceans and makes ice melt."
Okay, fine, here's a link to pictures [usgs.gov]
Re:Claims should be easily verified (Score:5, Informative)
Not historic (read on about low levels in the Wisconsin), but probably low in the Holocene. Part of the issue (and the reason for "probably") is that plant stoma give a different answer than ice cores. Both methods of determining Holocene CO_2 levels have their problems, but arguably the ice cores have more. Since it is low in the Holocene, yes, they were slowly descending. The climate was cooling, culminating in the Little Ice Age, which is still recorded as being very likely the coldest stretch in the last 11,000 years post the Younger Dryas. Since the ocean takes up more CO_2 as it cools, it is not implausible that CO_2 was as low as it had been for order of 12,000 years, BUT plant stoma show CO_2 level varying by almost an order of magnitude more than ice cores, and with a somewhat different mean behavior. So it is possible that it actually varies naturally on a century timescale by at least 30 or 40 ppm and it wasn't an actual low. Still, both are plausible and supported by evidence.
Plants get very sad (IIRC) at around 160 ppm, which is the level at which mass extinction of at least some kinds of plants becomes possible. During the last glaciation (the Wisconsin) the low-water CO_2 level was around 180 ppm, which is, in fact, really, really close to the critical point. Since carbon tends to be systematically removed from the environment by a variety of processes (such as shellfish growing their carbonate shells and a colder ocean absorbing more) we (the planetary ecosystem) might or might not have been in serious trouble in the next glacial episode. More than the trouble caused by the fact that there are all of these kilometer thick glaciers where things like New York and Montreal are today and the pretty serious effect of global cooling by 5 to 10 C in a stretch of time as short as a century, if we can believe parts of the fossil record and icepack cores from places like Greenland.
Finally, there is absolutely no doubt that plants are much happier with 400 ppm than they were at 280 or 300 or 320 ppm. Plants grow faster, are healthier, and are more productive at higher CO_2 levels. This is known both from lab work (greenhouses with controlled CO_2) and from observations of crop yields and tree growth rates in the real world. Plants would be happier still with 1000 ppm. Over almost all of the last 600 million years, atmospheric CO_2 has been anywhere from 1000 ppm to 7000 ppm. Levels as low as 300 ppm are extremely rare and yes, probably dangerous to the biosphere.
We will now return to your regularly scheduled rants about "warmists" and "deniers" and hatin' "C-AGW" without questioning the "C".
rgb
Re: (Score:3)
No CO2 has gone down to as low as 150ppm, 120ppm is considered a point of no return where sufficient amounts of plants die to trigger a mass extinction.
Climate Engineering (Score:4, Informative)
If we were to engage in climate engineering, warming things up and adding a little CO2 is exactly what we'd want to do.
It would increase the range of latitudes for food production and mitigate future ice ages, which are much more catastrophic than any effects from warming.
Re:Climate Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
However, at our stage of understanding the system, climate engineering is probably not such a good thing to be doing. The planet isn't an experiment that we can easily clean up after we make a mess. We can't 'nuke it from orbit' just to make sure.
That is a major issue with the carbon sequesters and everybody else. We're really running in the dark. We need to put quite a bit more energy (pun intended) into understanding the system before we blithely go and tinker with it (like we are doing at present).
Re: (Score:2)
It would increase the range of latitudes for food production and mitigate future ice ages, which are much more catastrophic than any effects from warming.
There was no imminent threat of an ice age. These things take thousands of years. And at the current rate of CO2 production, we can prevent an ice age in decades.
Re:Climate Engineering (Score:4, Insightful)
It would increase the range of latitudes for food production ... a thing that might destroy your own property or that of your children - and where you have full control about by reducing CO2 production - is less important than a thing that will happen in 100,000 years and you have no control about?
It would not. northern and southern latitudes unusable for food production have the dreaded polar day and polar night cycle.
It is irrelevant as it leaves a band of deserts closer to the equator anyway.
and mitigate future ice ages
Wow
Don't be trolled (Score:2)
incredulity != evidence (Score:5, Informative)
He laughably accuses scientists of being in the pay of vested interests all the while being a PR front for fossil fuel interests such as the Heartland Institute that published this very piece.
His 'argument' amounts to long debunked talking points.
He shows he hasn't read an IPCC report when he says IPCC will "consider only the human causes of global warming". IPCC outlines scientific consensus on all sources of climate change from solar cycles to milankovitch cycles.
He shows he hasn't looked at paleoclimate reconstructions which show that the Earth has been generally cooling for the last 8000 years and that the current temperatures are likely higher than at least the last couple thousand.
The rest of his argument boils down to simple incredulity, which is not very compelling.
Re: (Score:3)
He shows he hasn't read an IPCC report when he says IPCC will "consider only the human causes of global warming". IPCC outlines scientific consensus on all sources of climate change from solar cycles to milankovitch cycles.
Honestly, there's a whole chapter on it [www.ipcc.ch]. He could have figured this just by reading the headers.
Re: (Score:2)
Patrick Moore shows he knows little of science when he says "There is no scientific proof
there is no such thing as "Scientific proof".
so, ummm yeah?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Merchants of Doubt (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
For a majority of the Cenozoic there have been no polar ice caps (and life went on).
And sea level was about 100 m higher than now.
global warming is not a grave threat to the planet
Agreed. The planet will be fine. It's the people that will be fucked.
Re: (Score:3)
Good for what kind of life? (Score:2)
Gazzilions of years ago or whenever it was, when the oil we use now was floating around in the form of giant mats of algae, some belching deadly hydrogen sulfide as they decompose, there was a lot more life on the planet. But do we really want to live on a world choked with so much scum? Over time, that algae turned to oil and the carbon really was sequestered -- but now we're putting it all back into circulation -- I suppose it could become more animals, more corn, more people, but it could also become m
Re: (Score:2)
Greenpeace vs. Science (Score:2, Interesting)
The biggest danger to science is not the US GOP. It's not even the states of Kansas or Texas. Or even Arkansas. It is Greenpeace.
Greenpeace vs. Biology: Species are static in their description vs. species change over time.
Greenpeace vs. Physics: Long half-life is more dangerous vs. short half-life emits more radiation over time.
Greenpeace vs. Chemistry: Chemicals are bad vs. Everything you eat is a chemical.
Greenpeace vs. Environmentalism: Spotted Owls only nest in old growth forests vs. they nest anywhere
Golden Rice (Score:5, Insightful)
Moore breaks with what might be expected of a Greenpeace founder as well in that he is currently chair of Allow Golden Rice.
Well, while he is wrong about climate change, his stance on Golden Rice is pretty well on. We know it works, we know it is safe, Greenpeace still opposes it because they know damned well that their cries of genetic engineering being a dangerous horrible thing that you should totally give them loads of cash to fight are going to look a bit silly when it is saving the lives of thousands of children. It's despicable that they are willing to allow unnecessary death and human suffering in developing countries just to further their careers as professional activists. They're no different than anti-vaxxers who bring back vaccine preventable disease, not in my book. I don't agree with Moore's stance on climate change, but at least he's doing good on this front to bring attention to the harm Greenpeace and other anti-science groups are doing.
Re: (Score:3)
I can't tell if you're trolling or not but enough people do believe that keeping people impoverished and hungry is somehow good for them, and that it is somehow ethical to sit idly by and watch and do nothing while people starve just for being born in the wrong part of the planet. It's completely idiotic of course. Everywhere we see a reduction in poverty and increases in the standard of living we see lower birthrates. Do you really think we are going to bring about a greater human development index with
ain't nothing but a lying shill (Score:2)
Basic biology what? (Score:2)
The science behind what he's saying isn't really adding up. While there's naturally studies on both sides, this study indicates greater CO2 levels can inhibit growth http://news.stanford.edu/pr/02... [stanford.edu]
Moreover, methane is significantly more responsible for global climate change because it traps 100 times more heat than CO2. http://www.onegreenplanet.org/... [onegreenplanet.org]
not really. NPK fertilizer., Haber process. (Score:2)
Our crop are starved from other stuff than carbon. if carbon was the problem only, we would put carbon in our fertilizer. But we don't what provocated an explosion of food production was not the CO2 increase during industrial revolution up to today, but NPK fertilizer (nitroge
Why does everyone forget about pollution? (Score:3)
I'm still of the opinion that we're dumping too much CO2 in to the air. Although I know that scientists make mistakes, scientific knowledge is never 100% perfect, and that science is a system of incrementally improving our knowledge, I'm not a science skeptic. Climate scientsts are better experts on this topic than I am, science is highly competitive (remember, they all compete for a very limited supply of grant money, so one scientists's failure is another's success, so they want to overturn each other's ideas), and peer-review is effective much more than it is ineffective.
That all being said, a perhaps a more accessible issue people should be talking about is all the other crap we're dumping into the air *besides* the CO2. We're poisoning ourselves. And besides the air, what about junk we're putting into our bodies from other sources, like pesticides, BPA, and all manner of other harmful chemicals?
Ok, so maybe global warming is something that will only kill our great-great-great-grandkids, and we don't care about them. What about the stuff that's killing us right now?
Blessing and a curse? (Score:4, Interesting)
1) I'm glad he came forward as a "semi-credible" skeptic. It's time we get someone "on the other side" who will attempt to use gray matter to ponder the mysteries of global warming. Of course, he's a political activist and therefore probably has burned up most of his gray matter and left holes by now, but he poses questions that need to be addressed.
2) Has anyone noticed that there's probably twice as many global warming skeptics that don't even know what it means, but side with the "Right" because they would die before siding with the "Left". I know people who believe strongly that it's Jesus's will that we have this issue and therefore when eggheaded lefties contradict that, it must be gods will to disagree. There need to be people trying to actually ask and answer questions who don't think in terms of "If we evolved from the monkeys why are there still monkey then?".
3) People will side with this guy. He's an egghead they agree with. Let's raise him up as a major scientific leader. Let's not bash him or attack him. Let's reason with him and show his new groupies that we don't have to make this a political left and right thing. It can be more reasonable than that. This is something that should rise above political interests and be delt with.
4) I am not a climate change skeptic.... I believe that since the beginning of time, there has never been a constant climate. I believe it's always changing. I believe we're hellbent on proving that we were right all along and that this chemical or that one must be the specific reason for the climate change. I am inclined to agree with the research I've read in the direction that suggests that CO2 is in fact the primary cause. I however also believe that it seems a little too easy and too obvious. I'm thinking
5) We have far bigger problems than CO2 right now. We have things like fracking. Don't get me wrong... global warming is very very very dangerous... but I see drinking water as being far more important short term. Do I think we should stop working on climate change? NO!!! We need to address this. We should have trillions of dollars of tax money going into fixing this. But we need to get the damn research done to prove that intentionally attacking the Earth's mantle and intentionally destabilizing it by intentionally cracking it to force it to bleed oil has to stop. I have never in my life dreamed of anything that sounds so impressively stupid as this. The U.S. is in a damn near perpetual clean water shortage in areas where 50+ million people live and now we're destroying even more clean water reserves. This is clearly a problem we can address and we don't. Why the hell isn't fracking a major item on the presidential election agenda?
I think I love this guy. I am so happy he's there and now let's use him for all he's worth. Let's stop attacking him and instead talk with him. Maybe his believers who have raised him to messianic status will follow him because they finally have "a credible scientist" to listen to. Let's educate him so he can educate his people.
Let's lead by example, not by insult.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
why didn't you suggest this graph instead?
http://data.remss.com/msu/graphics/C12/plots/RSS_TS_channel_C12_Global_Land_And_Sea_v03_3.short.png
which actually suggests a trending downward?
Re: (Score:2)
That one only shows five years.
Re: (Score:3)
Because there's no such thing as a 4 year climate "trend". At those time scales, you're staring at noise.
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite. You can show that 30 year intervals have statistically significant trends.
Re: (Score:3)
Right, maybe we should burn him at the stake for heresy!
You true believers have absolutely no idea how foolish you come across.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
How does this ex-greenpeace guy feel about begley? Does he write him checks now?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
As opposed to the checks given to IPCC by government (you know... the people who kill people for a living).
The IPCC runs an annual budget of $7 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, making the United States a major benefactor for its global warming agenda. [cnsnews.com]
That's pretty much chump change in today's world.
Re: (Score:3)
The guy has been sold out. Climate skeptics are mostly sold out people or illiterate people. There argument is as illogical as the argument of any religious fanatic.
-- "Earth has been warming very gradually for 300 years"
The warming data clearly indicates that rate of temperature of last 50 years is far higher than any other period in history
-- Increase in CO2 in atmosphere directly correlates net fossil fuel burned
-- All computer models including from climate skeptics show that earth will warm with increas