Geoff <geb...@yahoo.nospam.com> wrote:

the_blogologist wrote:

Aside from Geoff's excellent summary, something you should know is
that at the time all that CO2 was in the atmosphere (before and
during the Carboniferous, about 360 million years ago) sea levels
were much, much higher than they are now.

What, because they've found fish fossils on mountain tops? They don't
freekin know what it was like 360 million years ago.

Actually, we do.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm

ok, 800,000 years is considerably shorter than 360 million years, if you
can count. Since the ice is 800,000 years old, that pretty much proves
it ain't going to melt any time soon.

It's a lot of
theory and guess work, but scientists who claim to "know" tend to get
paid more than those with theories.

Well stand me up and knock me over with a feather. I had no idea we
scientists were as well paid as big oil shills. Who is it you think are
"those with theories".

al Gore and his buddies are talking about AGW spending programs in the
hundreds of billions. They stand to get rich on fixing a non-problem.

In fact, it was the sequestration of
all that CO2 in enormous forests that gave rise to all our fossil
fuels

Coal is from ancient marshes, oil is ancient lake or sea beds.
Obviously life was much more abundant then.

Really?!! One wonders how you come to that conclusion.

Where do you see vegetation growing to the extent that it could produce
the kind of thick layers of coal or sea sediment that can create oil?
More CO2 in the air, the faster plants grow. Greenhouses artificially
raise the CO2 level to make plants grow better.

(contrary to popular opinion, all the oil and gas we have was
already formed by the time there were dinosaurs. It's from plants.)
The point isn't that there were never high levels of CO2 before, or
even that there haven't been warm periods before. The point is that
by releasing so much CO2 in such a short time, we are bringing the
world environment back to a time when the planet was not nearly as
hospitable for human life and society as it was just 200 years ago.
Desertification of huge swaths of once-productive farmland,

Climate change occurs all the time. Drought comes and goes. Some
places get warmer and others get cooler.

Irrelevant strawman.

How so?

Over all, global
temperatures have risen 0.5 F, not even noticeable.

The change is over 1C, nearly 2F. Hardly insignificant.

Just keep fudging the numbers.

higher sea levels

Did you know the North Pole is 90% floating ice and averages 3 meters
thick, which means the entire thing could melt and it won't cause sea
levels to much at all.

So? The concern is not that arctic ice melt will raise sea levels. The
albedo delta is the concern such that open sea will create a feedback effect
that will contribute to warming on nearby Greenland (which has about 5-10%
of the Earth's ice) and globally on Antarctica (85-90% of the Earth's ice).

Antarctica is 46 F colder than the North Pole, so it's not going to
melt. Any pieces of Antarctica that break off and float away are
floating ice whose melting will not rise sea levels.

The South Pole is land based ice several
thousand feet thick, but it is 46 F colder than the north pole. Any
ice breaking off the south pole will be floating ice which can't
raise se levels by melting.

True, but that's not the whole story. The sea ice provides braking for
glaciers over land. Glacial melt and progression are accelerating in both
Greenland and Antarctica.

They have had some melting in Greenland. Antarctica only loses sea based
ice around it's edges which it regains every year, and melting sea based
ice doesn't affect sea levels at all.

And those "stranded polar bears" that
"might drown" that keep showing up on the nightly news, well polar
bears are excellent swimmers, routinely swimming 60 miles at a time
without a rest. They swim well enough to catch their food underwater,
even raising their young on ice floes.

Consider the ecosystem. Your analysis on every point so far is exceedingly
simplistic and displays a gross ignorance of current knowledge and science
in general.

Polar bears are BUILT for swimming:

".... a relatively small head and long, tapered body to streamline it
for swimming."

"A semi-aquatic marine mammal, the polar bear has adapted for life on a
combination of land, sea, and ice..."

"Polar bears are excellent swimmers and have been seen in open Arctic
waters as far as 60 miles from land. In some cases they spend half their
time on ice floes. Their 12 cm (5 in) layer of fat adds buoyancy in
addition to insulating them from the cold. Recently, polar bears in the
Arctic have undertaken longer than usual swims to find prey, resulting
in four recorded drownings in the unusually large ice pack regression of
2005."

"n a 2007 article, H. Sterling Burnett wrote, "Since the 1970s, while
much of the world was warming, polar bear numbers increased
dramatically, from roughly 5,000 to 25,000 bears"

A whopping 4 drownings out of 25,000 bears while the population
explodes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bears

inundating island nations like the Seychelles (did you see what
happened there when the tsunami hit?

I would think a tsunami happens just a little bit faster than sea
level rising from global warming. That's hardly a fair comparison.
You know the ocean tides are as high as 56 ft? Guess we'd better
destroy the moon. Oh wait, the sun also effects the tides, better
destroy get rid of that too.

False analogy, these cycles are well known and predictable.

Just think of all the people displaced by ocean tides!!

It would have been much less
terrible if sea levels hadn't risen dramatically), increased
intensity of storms leading to more loss of life and shipping at
sea, fewer but more intense bouts of precipitation leading to
flooding

haha. A warmer planet causes MORE evaporation which causes MORE
rainfall, not less. It also causes more snow at the poles. More CO2
causes MORE plants to grow, not more "Desertification". The cause of a
desert is much more complex than a simple temperature rise.

There are local implications for global climate change. They include, among
others, cooling, desertification, increased precipitation and decreased
precipitation. Vintners in France are enjoying the warming. Not so much joy
in the Canary Islands, sub-Saharan Africa, etc.

and loss of crops and more severe forest and brush fires...the list
goes on and on.

oh please. These things have been going on forever. You really
believe a 0.5 F increase in temperature has any noticeable effect on
weather?

Yes. Again wrong number.

Sure the planet will be a more dramatic place to live, but
natural disasters are not most peoples' idea of fun.

Global temperatures have risen 0.5 F over the last century, and the
temperature rise doesn't even coincide with the rise in CO2 levels.

Again wrong number and the increase is lockstep with atmospheric CO2
concentration.

http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications/warming_earth/images/F
ig2-CO2-Temp.jpg

Looks like an increase of temperature is causing a higher CO2 level.

Meanwhile, the federal debt has risen 3 trillion in 7 years.

One wonders why you would muddy the waters with this rambling aside.

Because Gore wants to spend HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS on AGW, and a crashing
dollar is more of a threat than a 3 inch rise in sea levels.

Yet al Gore and his buddies are talking about global warming projects in
the hundreds of billions.

Cite.

These are the programs they're talking about:

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8595/globalwarmingtb2.jpg

News article(s) about it:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/6369971.stm

Documentary that goes with this article: 60 minhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=286000425078890061

Exposed: Climate of Fear 42 minhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2951065823736508883

Global Warming Doomsday Called Off 44 min.http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3309910462407994295

Plus, it's a hit on big oil, and we know how the mainstream hates big
oil, probably because it's not in the same group of super rich who
control the mainstream media.

Geoff <gebobs@yahoo.nospam.com> wrote:

the_blogologist wrote:

Aside from Geoff's excellent summary, something you should know is
that at the time all that CO2 was in the atmosphere (before and
during the Carboniferous, about 360 million years ago) sea levels
were much, much higher than they are now.

What, because they've found fish fossils on mountain tops? They
don't freekin know what it was like 360 million years ago.

Actually, we do.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm

ok, 800,000 years is considerably shorter than 360 million years

, if
you can count. Since the ice is 800,000 years old, that pretty much
proves it ain't going to melt any time soon.

It's a lot of
theory and guess work, but scientists who claim to "know" tend to
get paid more than those with theories.

Well stand me up and knock me over with a feather. I had no idea we
scientists were as well paid as big oil shills. Who is it you think
are "those with theories".

al Gore and his buddies are talking about AGW spending programs in the
hundreds of billions. They stand to get rich on fixing a non-problem.

In fact, it was the sequestration of
all that CO2 in enormous forests that gave rise to all our fossil
fuels

Coal is from ancient marshes, oil is ancient lake or sea beds.
Obviously life was much more abundant then.

Really?!! One wonders how you come to that conclusion.

Where do you see vegetation growing to the extent that it could
produce the kind of thick layers of coal or sea sediment that can
create oil?

More CO2 in the air, the faster plants grow.

Greenhouses
artificially raise the CO2 level to make plants grow better.

(contrary to popular opinion, all the oil and gas we have was
already formed by the time there were dinosaurs. It's from plants.)
The point isn't that there were never high levels of CO2 before, or
even that there haven't been warm periods before. The point is that
by releasing so much CO2 in such a short time, we are bringing the
world environment back to a time when the planet was not nearly as
hospitable for human life and society as it was just 200 years ago.
Desertification of huge swaths of once-productive farmland,

Climate change occurs all the time. Drought comes and goes. Some
places get warmer and others get cooler.

Irrelevant strawman.

How so?

Over all, global
temperatures have risen 0.5 F, not even noticeable.

The change is over 1C, nearly 2F. Hardly insignificant.

Just keep fudging the numbers.

higher sea levels

Did you know the North Pole is 90% floating ice and averages 3
meters thick, which means the entire thing could melt and it won't
cause sea levels to much at all.

So? The concern is not that arctic ice melt will raise sea levels.
The albedo delta is the concern such that open sea will create a
feedback effect that will contribute to warming on nearby Greenland
(which has about 5-10% of the Earth's ice) and glob