In Brief: The oceans are not acidic, and will not become acidic in the foreseeable future. Many of the fears and alarming scenarios are based on models. Many scary headlines are based on studies of extreme pH values beyond the range of anything realistic.
Incredibly, hundreds of studies show that for pH changes that we are likely to encounter in the next 100 years, there is arguably a net benefit to underwater life if the oceans became a little less alkaline.
Alarming fears about unrealistic ocean pH’s
“Some ocean pH’s studied were so extreme they are only seen on Star Trek”
Studies of how marine life copes with less alkaline conditions include many experiments with water at pH values in a range beyond anything that is likely on planet Earth — they go beyond the bounds of what’s possible. There are estimates that the pH of the ocean has shifted about 0.1 pH unit in the last 200 years, yet some studies consider the effects of water that is shifted by 2 or even 4 entire pH units. Four pH units means 10,000 fold change in the concentration of hydrogen ions). That’s a shift so large, it’s not going to occur in the next few thousand years, even under the worst of the worst case scenarios by the most sadistic models. Indeed, it’s virtually impossible for CO2 levels to rise high enough to effect that kind of change, even if we burned every last fossil, every tree, plant microbe, and vaporized life on earth. (Yet still someone thought it was worth studying what would happen if, hypothetically, that happened. Hmm.)
1103 studies on acidification say there’s no need to panic
CO2 science has an extraordinary data base of 1103 studies of the effects of “acidification” on marine life. They reason that any change beyond 0.5 pH units is “far far beyond the realms of reality” even if you are concerned about coral reefs in the year 2300 (see Tans 2009). Even the IPCC’s highest end “scenario A2” estimate predicts a peak change in the range of 0.6 units by 2300.
Many of the headlines forecasting “Death to Reefs” come from studies of ocean water at extreme pH’s that will never occur globally, and that are beyond even what the IPCC is forecasting. Some headlines come from studies of hydrothermal vents where CO2 bubbles up from the ocean floor. Not surprisingly they find changes to marine life near the vents, but then, the pH of these areas ranges right down to 2.8. They are an extreme environment, nothing like what we might expect to convert the worlds oceans too.
Marine life, quite happy about a bit more CO2?
Studies of growth, calcification, metabolism, fertility and survival show that, actually, if things were a little less alkaline, on average, marine life would benefit. There will be winners and losers, but on the whole, using those five measures of health, the reefs are more likely to have more life on and around them, than they are to shrink.
Figure 12. Percent change in the five measured life characteristics (calcification, metabolism, growth, fertility and survival) vs. decline of seawater pH from its present (control treatment) value to ending values extending up to the beginning pH value of "the warped world of the IPCC" for all individual data points falling within this pH decline range.
How can this be?
First, marine life evolved under conditions were most of the time the world was warmer and had more CO2 in the atmosphere than it does today. Second, like life above the water, life-below-water is based on carbon, and putting more carbon into the water is not necessarily a bad thing. That said, the dots in the graph above represent study results, and the ones below zero tell us there will be some losers, even though there will be more winners (above zer0). Thirdly, watch out for some of the more devastating headlines which also come from studies where researchers changed the pH by tossing hydrochloric acid into the tank. Chlorine, as they say, is not the same as the gas nature breathes — CO2. (The strange thing about the studies with hydrochloric acid, is that it doesn’t seem to be bad as we might have expected– nonetheless, it seems like a dubious practice to use in studying the health of corals.)
The Ocean Acidification Database is housed at CO2 science.
The graph above is just one of many on their results and conclusions page.
The bottom line:
Yes, we should watch and monitor the oceans careful. No, there is no chance the Great Barrier Reef will be gone in the next 100 years: 1103 studies show that if the worlds oceans were slightly less basic then marine life as a whole will be slightly more likely to grow, survive, and be fertile.
That doesn’t mean we should torch coal seams for the fun of it, but it does mean we can afford to hold off on the oceanic panic for a century or so while we figure out how to make solar and wind power work ( in the event that we might need them, and in the event that they might “work”).
The Science and Public Policy Institute has a PDF summary of the results and conclusions.
References:
The Ocean Acidification Database: CO2 Science.
Idso, C.D. 2009. CO2, Global Warming and Coral Reefs. Vales Lake Publishing, LLC, Pueblo West, Colorado, USA.
Tans, P. 2009. An accounting of the observed increase in oceanic and atmospheric CO2 and an outlook for the future. Oceanography 22: 26-35.
Ocean neutralization. That’s what I say…..
20
The oceans are a well-buffered solution in intimate contact with a relevant solid phase (CaCO3 – e.g. limestone). If you take a beaker (part-full) of seawater and add an acid …. the sky is falling, the sky is falling (Does ‘Wolf, wolf … ‘ sound any better?). Converting a bit of solid carbonate (CO3”) to soluble bicarbonate (HCO3’) is hardly an issue.
(FWIW, I am a chemist)
20
I should add:
A water chemist.
20
Yes it is a pity that there is not enough fish poop and not enough planckton skeletons. So how much CO2 do we need to add to solve this problem?
Fish Guts Explain Marine Carbon Cycle Mystery
ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2009)
Obviously the lack of fish poop and plankton were caused by the solar warming and humans over fishing(taking more fish than the CO2 we return earns).
“Why do warmer temperatures have a negative influence on phytoplankton growth?”
“Every day, more than 100 million tons of carbon dioxide are drawn from the atmosphere into the ocean by billions of microscopic ocean plants called phytoplankton during photosynthesis.”
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=7187
We had better get to work and pump out more of that lovely life giving gas.
More CO2 May Mean More Cooling Cloud Cover
10
Jo,
Great essay.
Respectfully,
[thanks] ED
10
If it’s our CO2 output into the atmosphere that’s causing ocean acidification you would expect the rivers and fresh water lakes to have similar acidification.
20
It amazes me how the eco alarmist keep recycling the same old discredited propaganda. Even more amazing is how the lame stream media keep regurgitating this swill. Most of the flora and fauna that lives in the oceans thrived when CO2 levels were much higher. If elevated CO2 levels caused the oceans to become acidic then life would have ceased to exist in the oceans millions of years ago. If that happened, life on Earth would be much different and we probably wouldn’t be here to debate the matter.
20
“eco alarmist keep recycling the same old discredited propaganda”
Yes, that is the way propaganda works.
And it has worked well!
How to combat it?
Perhaps with faith in spiritual teachings:
“Truth is victorious, never untruth.”
Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.6
Numerous Bible verses
Qur’an 17.85
10
Jo, Having worked at a sea water treatment plant I can say positively that a little less alkaline sea water would be of great benefit as the Microbes would be more active naturally.
Kneel.
10
Just watched a program on NHK world Japan (from Optus D2). The program showed how the optimum CO2 levels for growing “sea vegetables” need to be 60 times higher. The recommendation was that we treat CO2 as a “valuable resource” not a pollutant.
10
Ocean acidification (below a pH of neutral 7.0) can occur during times of extreme volcanic activity. (Deccan flats and other mass extinction events related to changes in planetary conditions.) In this case, sulfur oxides are spewed out and convert to sulfuric acid in the air and thence into the oceans. The aside is that when this occurs, there are also mass extinctions on the land, as the air is poisoned over large expanses.
CO2 generates carbonic acid which is hardly a problem as the sea water has bicarbonate buffers to handle the excess. We have naught to fear from CO2 and much to react to when we are presented with far-fetched scenarios and model-induced results.
10
“Ocean De-Alkalinisation” didn’t sound scary enough, apparently.
This is the only term for this that I reckon is correct.
Let’s not use their terms – “climate change” and “carbon footprint” – it demeans discussion, which is exactly why they choose these pathetic terms.
By not using spin words or oxymorons, I find people are more inclined to listen. To do otherwise, I reckon, is condescending.
10
Anybody read the rubbish espoused by Chris Langdon Ph.D.? According to Langdon the GBR is going to be decimated by de-alkanisation of the oceans. He uses an underwater CO2 seep off PNG to demonstrate his belief. I’d love for one of the sharp minds to critique his views contained in the interview with CORAL Magazine.
(Interview: CORAL Talks with Ocean Acidification Expert Dr. Chris Langdon, Ed Haag, CORAL Magazine July/August 2011)
10
Since the chemical reaction is:
ACID + BASE = SALT + WATER
the only two terms that would come anywhere near to being “scientific” would be:
oceanic saltification, or
oceanic dilution.
However, I don’t see a lot of potential for research funds in claiming the oceans are getting “saltier” – or “wetter”.
10
The claim that the CO2 in the atmosphere, which is supoposedly LONG LIVED and is going to raise global temperatures to undesirable levels, will AT THE SAME TIME acidify the oceans, is the most hairbrained of them all.
Which will it do, warm or acidify? It ain’t gunna do both.
The oceans are a nett sink of carbon. Always were, always will be.
The exchange between the oceans and the atmosphere happens from the top few hundred metres of the oceans (the mixed area). What ends up in the deep (that’s the other 4000 metres) for all intents and purposes may as well be treated as being permanently* removed from the carbon cycle.
* Permanent as in relation to our forseeable future, many millenia.
As a footnote, it is well worth considering that we know less about the ‘average pH’ of the oceans than we know about average global mean temperatures.
So when a climate scientist baffoon (hello Ove Hoeg Guldberg) makes claims about “Ocean Acidification”, you can safely assume the claim is a lie uttered for personal gain. It has nothing to do with reality, which is; WE KNOW BUGGER ALL.
10
Jo, it is “Assification”?
10
Nice to see a post about science on this site. It has been getting a little political of late …
10
Baa Humbug @13
Someone on this list referred to C)2 as the “Chuck Norris molecule”.
10
could we do this right from now on as it really is too simplistic and says nothing about the dynamics of the system? Try this
ACID + BASE SALT + WATER
where the relative magnitude of the arrows in each direction depends on a number of factors including temperature, how much of each component is in the system and the actual nature of the particular acid(s), base(s) and salt(s)
10
Gee Aye @ 17
“arrows” ???
“base salt” ?????
Wanna try again ??????
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10
Anyone spruiking ocean “acidification” has no respect for science whatsoever IMHO, and the whole non-issue can safely be given the title “The Last Refuge of the Desperate”. If our ecosystems were that delicate, and that there were no compensatory mechanisms at all, then life on this planet would not have lasted a millisecond, let alone millenia.
These bed wetters and hand wringers are really beyond the pale. Proof positive that humanity as a species has reached the apex of it’s progression, as clearly a form of madness and mass delusion has set in which has compromised any prospect of future human evolution. Perhaps Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke had it right in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ when they suggested that mankind required a profound (?cosmic, ? divine) evolutionary step to “supra-humanity” to cope with the overwhelming effects of technology and rapid progress to move beyond our current limitations steeped in our animal origins. I am at the point where I can safely say- “Bring it on !!”
10
MV… thanks something disappeared… my arrows must be causing an issue with the tags
Please pretend that this is an arrow “{” [I edited “{” = “<" now JN]... and this is so important that it is worth repeating! could we do this right from now on as it really is too simplistic and says nothing about the dynamics of the system? Try this ACID + BASE <-> SALT + WATER
where the relative magnitude of the arrows in each direction depends on a number of factors including temperature, how much of each component is in the system and the actual nature of the particular acid(s), base(s) and salt(s)
This works in preview so now I hit the submit button
10
Winston
correct which is why I find the following quote from Jo frustrating and misleading (henceforth no more blue)
Studies of growth, calcification, metabolism, fertility and survival show that, actually, if things were a little less alkaline, on average, marine life would benefit.
A change is a change but saying that a change is “better” and that things benefit is a complete nonsense. Unless you have time travelling abilities you cannot know what is better. Maybe you can point to increased abundance but in reality the evolutionary trajectory in one scenario and another are different (not better or worse). Who knows whether the species that is becoming more abundant was actually adapting (via the genetic variation available to it) to the previous conditions in a way that would allow it to take advantage of the conditions better (that word again) than competing species.
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Scaper @ 14
That was awesome made my day 🙂
Say YES to en election now !!
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Gee Aye @ 20
Yes, you’re right, but only in the sense that I used the simplistic word “base”, instead of the more correct “alkali”, since we are talking about seawater: –
ACID + ALKALI —} SALT + WATER (to use your terminology for a one-way arrow)
To all intents and purposes these reactions are not reversible under “normal” conditions (as in seawater in the oceans), which is why they are referred to as “reactions of neutralisation”.
What can conceivably be made to occur in a lab between non-hydrogen acids, and non-alkaline bases really doesn’t have much to do with what happens naturally in the ocean.
10
Haven’t corals and most other sea critters successfully negotiated prolonged periods in the past when atmospheric CO2 concentration was at least two orders of magnitude greater than now?
10
Bob of Castlemaine @ 27
Yeah but that was atmospheric CO2, which is colourless, odourless, non-toxic plant food.
Now the coral is being threatened by man-made CO2, which, as everybody knows (just ask JuLIAR), is a filthy, disgusting, toxic poison manufactured (out of spite) by Australia’s top 500 “derdy polluders”.
10
Bob… the answer to this is no
Bob of Castlemaine:
September 30th, 2011 at 11:18 am
Haven’t corals and most other sea critters successfully negotiated prolonged periods in the past when atmospheric CO2 concentration was at least two orders of magnitude greater than now?
The answer to the following is yes
Haven’t corals and most other sea critters had ancestors that successfully negotiated prolonged periods in the past when atmospheric CO2 concentration was at least two orders of magnitude greater than now?
It is a big difference if the past you refer is not a few generations but is many thousands to millions.
10
Your problem is comparing conditions at particular pH, when the key thing is the impact on species of a transition from one state to another over a shorter period of time than is usual for marine life. The marine creatures we have are often highly specialised and have evolved to fit very niche positions where a change in a key parameter will result in it no longer being suited to the niche.
THese studies are like saying
1) in scenario A MattB has a bullet on the right hand side of his head
2) in scenario B MattB has a bullet on the left hand side of his head.
3) MattB is alive in both scenarios.
Therefore
4)MattB will be fine if I propel a bullet from the right hand side to the left hand side of his head with this Magnum 45.
10
Which seems more likely do you think, the pH of the oceans would change or fluctuate according to the vast outpourings of thousands upon thousands of underseas volcanoes and vents versus the effects of a tiny rise in atmospheric CO2 from a tiny 280 ppm to 380ppm, when we can’t even say what the “optimum” CO2 level in the atmosphere actually is? Are we to believe that the magma is pH neutral perhaps, or that outpourings are regulated by some sort of natural flow meter that keeps discharging at a constant rate unchanging over millennia? Honestly! They must be joking.
10
Ah MattB specialists and canalising selection…
the fate of the specialist is so often an evolutionary dead end (refs needed)… to generalise, specialists evolve from generalists and not the other way around. So whatever we do the specialists are doomed anyway!
Also, if we change the environment, with time, we’ll have a whole lot of new specialists! We are creating new species.
10
MattB
And according to your calculations, what order of magnitude change will occur, over what time frame are we talking (minutes, hours??), at what depth or depths of the ocean are you referring, what about estuaries, fresh water habitats (all subject to the same atmospheric conditions), etc etc. An utter nonsense and you know it, Matt.
I think if you propelled that particular bullet in the experiment you proposed, you would have a fairly good chance of not hitting anything too vital!
10
Hallelujah MV, come on into the light!!!
Arguable i think. Rate of change rather than just magnitude is a factor in any currently relevant discussions i’d think.
When backquoting comments, could we all indicate the comment number in order to make it easy to follow discussions. (e.g.MV says #28) thnx Mod oggi
10
Catamon… my comment was facetious.
10
Gee Aye @ 29 and MattB @ 30
I live on Bribie Island right on the Pumicestone Passage (feel free to google it).
Pumicestone Passage is a long, narrow, shallow, tidal waterway between the mainland and Bribie Island, and is mostly lined with mangroves.
The water depth, temperature, levels of dissolved CO2 and O2, and pH in the passage vary more in one twelve hour tidal period than “average” figures quoted in all your doomsday “scientific papers” for the last 100 years, plus their projections for the next 100 years combined.
It doesn’t seem to bother the fish.
10
Winston said:
Sorry my friend, they are dead serious. You can almost hear their fear as they speak. (the sky is falling the sky is falling)
10
Obviously the mechanism of homeostasis is a new concept to the post modern scientist.
10
MV… I know the area (lucky you) and I am sure that your observations are correct (although I’d love to know how you quantify levels of bother in fish) for those species… are you extrapolating to all ocean habitats and species?
With reference to your specific example, I think you will find that spawning behaviour is where the fish become highly selective and that successful fertilization and zygote growth happens in a much narrower niche. Some fish farmers in your area will be able to confirm or deny this.
Just to clarify also … just because I think that some of Jo’s post is deficient where it strays into an discussion of adaptive mechanisms does not mean I am taking an alarmist position. I just don’t think just-so stories are needed to make a strong statement about the bogus hyperbole associated with the oceans and CO2.
10
Winston @ 38
Obviously the mechanism of
homeostasisscience is a new concept to the post modern scientist.10
MV @20
Thanks for doing that. I hate to get involved with him – a waste of time.
The word “NITPICKER” comes to mind.
I asked him what he was doing on this blog site earlier and got a reply that was a load of rubbish.
Now he’s back Nitpicking but making no contribution to illuminating the topic: AGW.
10
snip (nil contribution)mod oggi
10
[snip .. a comment on a removed comment –JN]
10
MV @ 26
“”What can conceivably be made to occur in a lab between non-hydrogen acids, and non-alkaline bases really doesn’t have much to do with what happens naturally in the ocean.””
Isn’t REALITY wonderful.
Why do our resident Wordsmiths want to cover up reality.
Perhaps there is something embarrassing about it?
10
MaryFJohnston @ 44
Why do they miss such golden opportunities?
I mean, how on earth could I possibly know the changing temperature, CO2, O2 and pH levels in Pumicestone Passage on a daily basis?
We really DO deserve a better class of troll.
10
Hi MV… well if I am a troll I don’t fall for the usual troll bait. In my response to 36 I was trying to get some clarity of your point. If I were inclined to nitpick then I’d look at the detail.
BTW do you know of Malcolme Cox’s group’s research in the passage and on Bribie Island groundwater? Indeed pH levels do vary beyond considerably within small distances and time periods.
Let me repeat… because I disagree with Jo post on some points does not make me in agreement with doomsayers.
mods… my comment, as it responded to 42 at 43 is nil contribution too.
10
And of course who is one of the leaders in the Ocean Acidification push none other than our old mate Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg who just happens to be a member of the WWF’s Climate Witness Science Advisory Panel (SAP) what a coincidence.
10
Lol MV @ 36 – I near an estuary too and big wow every estuary on the planet has species that cope with tides, and changing salinity and temperatures. The point is they are adapted to this, not some other, situation. As Gee Aye says in 32 sure things will adapt, but it will take a long time. New species do not just pop up at the drop of a hat.
10
This is a nitpicking point… I don’t recommend this but if you can get a CO2 cylinder and have a quick sniff the released gas is not odorless. Not sure what is going on… maybe the receptors are detecting ions dissolved in the mucus?
10
Gee Aye:#42
September 30th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
I’ve also noticed many many people exhale CO2 with strong odour 🙂
10
Here comes the “ocean acidification” scam, watch out!
http://ilovecarbondioxide.com/2009/04/here-comes-ocean-acidification-scam.html
The Cancun Shuffle: Carbon Emissions and Ocean Acidification
http://ourmaninsichuan.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/the-cancun-shuffle-carbon-emissions-and-ocean-acidification/
10
Current marine species would seem to have lost their adaptive evolutionary capability if pH variation of the order of 3/5 of 5/8 of a poofteenth pose a problem.
The influence of the human finger prints on the CO2 must be worse than we thought?
10
We all really need to stop and take a deep breath before making wide ranging global lifestyle changes because “scientists say” we’re causing this change or that, which will adversely affect some life forms of this planet.
I’ve thought about how to exemplify this and the best I could come up with is as follows…
Imagine we’re studying the human species in order to ‘keep it’ just as we study the many species of this planet.
What we would come up with would be something like the following..
* Keep the temperature at a nice benign 22DegC at day time, with some cloud cover and low UV, gradually reducing to no less than 15DegC at night.
* A gentle 5mm or so of rain at night time.
* Feed it measured quantities of vegetables, roots, nuts and seeds.
* Make sure it excercises everyday.
* Turn out the lights at 10pm and back on at 6am to ensure 8 hrs sleep.
* Make sure it is stress and conflict free.
* Make sure it has ample ideal conditions for reproduction.
* Give it regular health and well being check-ups and monitor it constantly.
Although the above may seem to be ‘ideal’, there are more than 6 billion individual lines of empirical evidence that show none of the above list is essential or even (arguably) desirable. Variety is the spice of life etc.
So, might our activities shift ocean pH levels by 0.1 units in 200 years? It might, but we’re talking about life forms that have been around for a lot longer than our species. Some, like corals, have survived through catastrophic global and regional changes many times over.
Sure, study it, publish it in learned journals, but keep it where it belongs, in a niche interest area of academia. Not in our political arena, and certainly not in our taxation system.
10
Gee Aye: #32
September 30th, 2011 at 11:43 am
That is such a profound statement in the context of why we are all here on this blog.
Why don’t specialists survive? Because of change.
What is it we seem to have our knickers in a knot over at mo? Climate CHANGE.
Imagine the modern human in the era of the dinosaurs…
“Save the T-Rex”
“We are killing the friggasaurus”
“Shame on you, our grand children will never see a live shitasaurus”
Every age has its doomsayers. It’s just that they can communicate to the masses so much better these days.
Somethings NEVER CHANGE lol 🙂
10
Gee Aye @ 49:
I think you are right about that. I’ve never done that but I’m guessing a jet of CO2 would smell sharply acidic like vinegar. The CO2 dissolves in the moist nasal mucous like a mini ocean and creates carbonic acid, which may have a similar effect on smell receptors to vapours of acetic acid from vinegar or tiny amounts of citric acid from lemons.
You’ve discovered olfactory acidification. Contact Al Gore immediately. Add it to THE LIST!
And why stop there? Doesn’t this effect interfere with sensing other smells at the same time? Doesn’t this then mean all animals that rely on smell to survive will become endangered?
GLOBAL WARMING ENDANGERS AFRICAN ANTEATERS. GLOBAL WARMING STOPS BLOODHOUNDS FROM FIGHTING CRIME. GLOBAL WARMING KILLS THE MOOD IN INSECT ROMANCES.
It’s just too easy.
10
[…] Ocean Acidification — a little bit less alkalinity could be a good thing […]
10
Baa Humbug @ 53
“We are killing the friggasaurus”
What most saddens me is the thought that my grand children will never enjoy the blissful sight of a contented herd of friggasaurus feeding in the pristine bristle cone pine forest.
10
Any aquatic life form that dies off due to a drop of pH from 8.25 to 8.15 deserves to be bloody extinct. Serves it right.
10
Andrew Mcrae @ 54
Sounds like as good an explanation as any.
Another possibility could be that the energy of the expanding gases is converting some O2 near the nozzle to O3. Ozone has a distinct, pungent, acrid smell which is detectable even in minute quantities.
The advantage of your explanation, of course, is olfactory acidification. There HAS to be some fund money in there somewhere.
10
Video analysis and scene replication suggests that Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project fabricated their Climate 101 video “Simple Experiment”
http://74.6.147.41/search/srpcache?ei=UTF-8&p=Video+analysis+and+scene+replication+suggests+that+Al+Gore%E2%80%99s+Climate+Reality+Project+fabricated+their+Climate+101+video+%E2%80%9CSimple+Experiment%E2%80%9D&fr=yfp-t-501&u=http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=Video+analysis+and+scene+replication+suggests+that+Al+Gore%E2%80%99s+Climate+Reality+Project+fabricated+their+Climate+101+video+%E2%80%9CSimple+Experiment%E2%80%9D&d=27024837059414351&mkt=en-AU&setlang=en-AU&w=7f4dea49,6d4f8b2f&icp=1&.intl=au&sig=hLmXf9UPwgmVR_hJkd0SuA–
10
Hi MV
I can’t hold out any longer.
I assumed from your comment that you had made up the water data about the flush tidal system.
There is no need to feel guilty about this, climatologists do it all the time.
When reading the bit quoted at 44 I focused on the Lab vs Nature concept but when I read your 45 I went back to read it again.
So can you expand a bit on your chemical species here “non-hydrogen acids, and non-alkaline bases”?
??
10
Andrew and MV
Sounds suspiciously like snouts in the trough to me.
10
Labor and friends long for 1984….
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/labor_and_friends_long_for_1984/
10
Winston @ 59
Snout in the trough?
Moi?
I’m truly cut.
10
MattB #48
No, it takes between four to seven generations before accumulated adaptions result in what can be called a new species that is fully adapted to a new environment. The simpler the organism, the faster the rate of adaption. For Humans therefore, any change that occurs over a period of a hundred and fifty, to two hundred years could be adapted to.
You could double or perhaps even triple carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and as long as the rate of change is slow enough, humans will adapt. They may end up totally unlike us. But the line of ancestry will still be there, and they might well think of themselves as human, and think of us as pre-human. And who would say that they were wrong to do so?
10
MFJ @ 58
No, actually, I didn’t “make up” the tidal stuff.
I was just trawling for trolls.
Waaay back many moons ago there was a “scientific consensus” between the CSIRO, the BoM and even Professor Flim Flannery, that it was never, ever going to rain in SE QLD again. This was, of course, due to “climate change”.
Flim Flannery even went as far as to say that even if it DID somehow rain, the water wouldn’t make it to the dams cos the ground would be so parched from unending drought that the water would just evaporate.
This was all before QLD turned into a lake at the beginning of this year, of course, which was also caused by “climate change”. This is also, by the way, the “scientific consensus” of the CSIRO, the BoM and Flim Flannery, which goes to prove that “scientific consensus” is ALWAYS right.
Anyway cos it was never going to rain again, the gubmint decided to build a few
white elephantsdesalination plants.One was planned for right here on Bribie Island, and we had a research team here and the whole island divided into two hostile tribes: the “YEAH – local employment” tribe, and the “NIMBY” tribe.
The YEAH’s and the NIMBY’s declared war on each other and both tribes attempted to batter the other to death with “the facts” as faithfully supplied to both camps via the local newspaper as released by the research people.
Consequently anybody with even a passing interest was able to become fully knowledgeable on the most intimate details of Pumicestone Passage.
.
Then it rained.
10
Try running that line to anyone from W.A.
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Catamon @ 63
Actually Cat, though I live in QLD by choice, I am WA born and bred.
Most of my family, and my wife’s, are still in Perth; we visit often, and I do a lot of work there (and the rest of WA).
In fact, amongst other things, one of my last major projects in Perth was writing the commissioning procedures for the very same desalination plant of which you now speak.
.
All of which has as much to do with sub-tropical SE QLD as your comment.
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Gee Aye @ 29 does FUD—
Bob of Castlemaine asks… “Haven’t corals and most other sea critters had ancestors that successfully negotiated prolonged periods in the past when atmospheric CO2 concentration was at least two orders of magnitude greater than now?”
Gee’s answer— “It is a big difference if the past you refer is not a few generations but is many thousands to millions.”
BZZZZZT. Epic Fail.
Ocean life that evolved to adapt to past conditions that are no longer present still have that latent genetic material (now probably dormant) in their DNA. Should conditions shift back towards the conditions for which this genetic information evolved in the first place it’s a pretty simple matter for natural selection to turn said latent genes back on, rather than have to discover new adaptions from total scratch.
One of the most invidious Green myths is the self-serving portrait of natural ecosystems as incredibly weak and fragile static objects that need a government program to insulate them from the rigours of existence—you know, like Pink Bats for nature—when, in fact, most ecosystems are at their core robust survivors of millions of years of the worst that, uh, nature could throw at them. Too be sure, humans can and have altered most ecosystems on the planet, but the death of nature has been greatly exaggerated.
btw…Not that any of this line of argument is relevant, as the links Jo points to offer substantial evidence that the alkalinity of the Earth’s ocean is not changing rapidly nor is it likely to in the future.
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MattB@48
Isn’t it great that so many highly qualified authorities on evolutionary biology hang out on Jo’s blog?
MattB, please present the relevant qualification you possess for making any kind of assertion about the rate at which evolution occurs. Other than the fact that you live NEAR an estuary.
Actually, we would have been more impressed if you said that you lived IN an estuary as a Moreton Bay Bug and had interviewed your cephalopod friends who are to a squid all fierce supporters of Gillard’s carbon tax.
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I’m sure CO2Science will also consider the impact on the food chains should a species collapse. Right??
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wes george @69 :
I swear I have read of a lab study which actually performed this test with CO2
acidificationpH reduction on some form of microscopic carbonate shelled ocean critters. I have been looking for the paper since then and haven’t found it.What they found was that when CO2 bubbled through the tank decreased the pH, the species of critter that is most abundant in the ocean today couldn’t handle it, and its population in the water sample decreased. BUT, there is some other similar species from the same family which also lives in the oceans but as a minority, and with higher CO2 it actually bloomed and took over to become the dominant species. This is probably evidence that the carbonate shelled organisms that evolved in the high CO2 atmosphere of a 100My ago are still surviving today, just waiting for the next carbon bus to come along.
Not only are there dormant genes, but there’s dormant specialist species too.
Warmists will probably think I’m making this up, but honestly, I read it somewhere about 6 months ago and I would link to it if I could find it. It’s only one species though, which is why I didn’t include it in my submission to the committee. Instead I used the same multi species meta-study that Jo showed above, and that exact chart actually. I’d like to think there was some inspirational causal connection there. 😉
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Ah, Blimey, glad you showed up, mate.
As a true cephalopod in the H P Lovecraft tradition, perhaps you could supply us with some EVIDENCE rather than just vague hand—oh, excuse me—tentacle, waving.
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Andrew @ 72
I haven’t seen that paper but it fits in with everything else I have read. The pH of the oceans is hardly uniform as even no less an authority than Matt B admits. We would expect a vast reserve of genetic information stored across all kind of specifically adapted species in hundred of niches to be available as conditions naturally and inevitably change.
Did I say changing conditions?
What really is stupid, given the fact we live in an age that totally groks nonlinear complex system evolution is the Green idea that nature is this static object that must be protected from change.
The Greens claim they want to “Stop Climate Change,” but that’s saying they want to stop evolution. Hello? It’s Green Creationism. Only they think they’re the God. It’s probably the most ignorantly sanctimonious, and regressive idea of our age. The climate changes by definition, there is no more hope of stoping the climate from change than there is stopping the Earth from rotating around the sun.
But it’s all a moot point. The rate of climate change, and by proxy, pH change in the oceans today is well with in the envelope of historical rates of change during the Holocene. See Jo’s link for details.
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When Giaever resigned from the US Physics society(however described- I can’t be bothered to look it all up) a week or so back he commented on what a nonsense it is to reduce the entire world to an average temperature. The same needs to be said about the pH of the world’s waters. A statistical nightmare or statistical nonsense?
It is only in the last 30 years that electronic instruments have even been available to enable reasonably consistent pH readings.(Be that all as it may, when I was a boy, if you bubbled CO2 through limewater CaCo3 precipitated out. Where do the warmists thhink marine organisms get their shell material?)
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Blimey @71 among others
Isn’t it intriguing that all those wetting themselves over a subtle change in ocean pH causing “species collapse”, are those who most ardently believe in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution as a set in concrete law of nature, yet when environments change then suddenly evolution is a weak or non existent force that can be overwhelmed by the slightest tweak in nature’s delicate balance. Doesn’t that seem a trifle contradictory there? The clown fish are not the only ones going deaf, dumb and/or blind as a result of ocean acidification, IMO.
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That’s called “losing biodiversity” which is NOT a good thing.
Having a species dominate others is NOT a good thing.
http://www.necn.com/Boston/Business/2009/12/02/Giant-jellyfish-threaten/1259755229.html
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Rereke Whakaaro:
September 30th, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Hi.. Rereke, Where did you get these figures from? They are very interesting in that, for strong selection and controlled populations, substantial genetic shifts can occur but I’ve never heard of actual speciation occurring in such a time (generation) frame.
Can you define what you mean by “accumulated adaptations” and who (what research) has observed and quantified “fully adapted”. I’m pretty sure that this has not been done even for bacteria.
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wes george:
September 30th, 2011 at 7:28 pm
looks like you are demanding that we be authorities before making comments on anything Wes. I’m an authority on this and that and I am sure you are too. So what? What is your argument regarding evolutionary responses?
PS Semelparity is my favourite thing about squid. They’d rule the world if their brains had a bit more time to grow
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MFJ @ 61
Apologies MFJ – I answered the first bit of your query then got caught up in dinner and a movie.
I have made no bones about the fact that I find the term “ocean acidification” irksome, and have commented to that effect many times. Invariably I quote the schoolboy chemistry maxim:
ACID + BASE = SALT + WATER
Which, for all “natural” reactions (such as one might find in relation to seawater), is the simple truth of the matter. To be more blunt, to all intents and purposes, it is really a one-way reaction (a neutralisation reaction):
ACID + BASE —-} SALT + WATER
Then, about six months ago, pedants – like Gee Aye above – started to make a big thing about the fact that, with certain obscure substances (a fact they never mention – and certainly not relevant to seawater), combined under certain controlled circumstances – like in a lab or an industrial process (another fact they never mention – and certainly not relevant to seawater)- the process is reversible with the application or removal of heat and/or pressure, as required.
I think maybe John Cook possibly wrote an article on Septic Science. That would explain the similarity in all the pedant posts – although I’ve never bothered checking.
Be that as it may, once I looked into the matter, it turned out to be true. Sort-of. Not that it has anything remotely to do with chemical reactions in seawater. It turns out there is a school of thought labelled “The Lewis Definition” of acid-base reactions to take into account acid-base like reactions that don’t involve a hydrogen proton donation, or acceptance (hydroxide receptor).
As it turns out I have actually worked with this principle though I had no idea at the time that it was even remotely associated with:
ACID + BASE {—–) SALT + WATER
That was in the industrial recovery of H+ ions for the manufacture of Ammonia. However, since the processes involved require temperatures in excess of 500 degrees C at pressures in excess of 8,000 PSI, I’m pretty sure they are not going to show up in seawater anytime soon.
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I’m an authority on nothing, but a student of everything. Or as Richard Feynman said:
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”
My “argument regarding evolutionary response” is that we overestimate our power both to destroy and rescue nature. Not that we have little effect on nature, but that 1. We are part of nature so the distinction is an absurd delusion and 2. We have no hope of consciously directing evolution in one direction or another because the geo-physiology of Earth is so nonlinear as to be impossible to control, even assuming we had the power to do so.
For God’s sake, we cannot even direct the affairs of the human condition so that some billion or so of us at any time aren’t in danger of starving to death! Yet we some how imagine parliament can pass a law to command fine weather for our children????? Hello? That’s just bloody cultural senility.
Which brings us to another great stupidity of Green Mythology. Not only do Greens believe that natural systems are static fragile objects like crystals, but that human perturbations to the biosphere have absolutely linear effects, directly leading to zero sum outcomes. But nothing could be further from the truth when dealing with a nonlinear complex system far from thermodynamic equilibrium. The biosphere system that has survived for a BILLION years is more “wise” than we have imagine.
We might be the second most significant event that has ever happened to planet Earth. But where the Greens say the glass is half empty I see the cup overflowing like a fountain. Where the Greens see us as murderers of the Earth, I see us as the incarnation of the Great Mother herself giving birth to things barely even yet imagined.
Evolution happens. And no one can ever control it. Nor should any honest or curious person want to do so.
Richard Feynman again:
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Blimey @77
Reading your statement above, about the fact that there are winners and losers in nature, has led me to the conclusion that there is some ‘biodiversity’ we could stand to lose!
Cheers.
NicG.
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Its interesting to read the OP on this thread, and look at some of the referenced stuff.
@ the CO2 science page linked they state:
OK, and thats where the grey range on the graph in the OP comes from.
But when you go to the actual paper,
http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/22-4_tans.pdf
rather than the CO2 Science linked take on it you see that in Tans paper the actual range of maximum pH decline thats quoted is from figure 5 and its about 0.2 to 0.28 by AD 2100.
Why is this so?? Seems to be a bit of a misquotation to me? And why?
Its still lower than the 0.4 value calculated by Feely et al that they seems to be rubbishing though not by nearly as much??
Tans 2009 is an interesting paper overall, and covers other concepts than ocean acidification.
But having read it i wonder why it would be quoted by an AGW skeptic site at all when the
authors include statements like:
I mean they seem to like Tans calculations and consider him credible??
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They do studies by tossing hydrochloric acid into the tank until the pH is what they’d expect from more CO2? Really? And these people call themselves scientists? If that’s true it’s a new low.
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catamon: #83
September 30th, 2011 at 11:33 pm
“I mean they seem to like Tans calculations and consider him credible??”
catamon, you cited the money quote. Researchers need to bow before the CAGW cult to recive further funding. If they don’t… well, just look at Lomborg.
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Some people might, but bubbling CO2 through the water column while monitoring pH is probably the better practice.
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Nah, the whole tone of the paper was pretty consistent. They probably just put some REALLY obvious lines like that is so that skeptics wouldn’t be tempted to misquote them.
Look how well that worked.
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Winston says:
Yes I believe in evolution and gravity.
Fossil evidence shows that species are most likely to become extinct during rapid climate change. If your environment changes faster than the rate of adaptation can keep up with, the species ceases to exist.
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Blimy, I don’t BELIEVE IN evolution or gravity.
I simply accept them as very useful EVIDENCE-BASED cognitive frameworks for advancing our understanding of how nature works. If (or more likely when) new frameworks based on new evidence emerge which more accurately predict the functioning of nature, I’ll eagerly migrate to those new paradigmS. And that’s easy to do because I am not motivated by faith, but curiosity.
Your problem is that you believe in transitory cognitive paradigms which are rapidly evolving and so your faith is misplaced. What one should properly “believe in” are things like, say, that your mother loves you or that your children are good and deserve the best you can give them. Or maybe you might believe in God or that Australia is a great nation
Obviously, if you BELIEVE IN something it’s much more difficult to convert to a new more useful paradigm. And that’s why no matter how much evidence is presented to you that your faith in CAGW is flawed and incurious, you’ll never convert. You simply confuse science with faith, as something to believe in, to fight for, to ignore and disparage all evidence to the contrary as heresy.
So, if you want to better appropriate scientific sounding language to cloak your secular faith in CAGW here’s a tip, dude:
Never, ever say you “believe in” a scientific theory, because you out yourself as scientifically illiterate.
Only a religious zealot BELIEVES in any notional description of nature. A rational thinking person finds a particular scientific construction “persuasive” or “highly useful” or the “most accurate description we current have,” but he no more BELIEVES in evolution or gravity than he does unicorns.
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Yes, during times of rapid climate change the pace of natural selection accelerates creating both winners and losers.
The whole problem with the CAGW argument is that WE ARE NOT IN A PERIOD OF RAPID CLIMATE CHANGE, relative to even only the last couple of thousand years, much less, when measured against rates of change with occurred in the early parts of the Holocene. In fact, the rate of climate change since 1998 is virtually ZERO.
Even the IPCC agrees that climate has warmed by only 0.7c in the last hundred years. Going in and out of the LIA and MWP rates of warming and cooling of 0.7c a DECADE may have occurred, dude.
The myth that we are experiencing rapid climate change is one of the most invidious of all Green conceits. One they accept with unquestioning medieval faith and repeat like a Gregorian chant. But repetition doesn’t make it true.
The only thing changing rapidly is the science of climatology and the species most in danger of future extinction are the CAGW faithful.
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catamon says:
Yes I noticed that too. I suspect Jo is jealous of those conducting real science instead of just blogging political views.
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Blimey – Go on, point us to some real science …
… first time for everything ….
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catamon:
Looks like you’re right. Somebody must have mistaken the values that Tans’ figure 5 gives for 2500 for values for 2100, is my assumption.
So, at least warmist scientists have expanded their prophecies from 100 years to 500 years… Looks like warmism makes great progress.
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Well spotted DirkH! Thanks for that.
I had a look back at the graph in the OP with the greyed out area for the pH values given in Tans paper.
I would say that they are actually deliberatley misrepresenting Tans paper.
They clearly state that the drop in pH will only be between 0.09 and 0.17 up to 2100,
and they mention the 2100 date a couple of times.
They also state:
It’s the statement about long term recovery that i think is the giveaway for this being deliberate. They are clearly aware of the timescale and that the plot dips a lot, for a long time below where they would like people to think it does.
Notice, in their link to their summary of Tans piece, they dont reproduce that figure, and only show one scenario on the figure they do include, which is “adapted” from Tans?
Very dodgey populist pseudo science aimed at at audience with set preconceptions.
Probably not a site i would take at face value in the future.
Mistakes are human, Deception is for lowlives with an agenda.
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Wow, the more I actually look at the pages from CO2 Science, the more dodgey it gets.
Have a sqizz at:
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V13/N17/EDIT.php
In their figure 1, they show an “adapted” version of Tans plot for CO2 levels vs fossil fuel emissions.
In their text they say:
But, in Tans paper, his figure actually shows 2 scenario’s, with the other, quite plausible and reasoned
one, showing CO2 peaking @ a touch over 600ppm just after 2100 and dropping back by 2500 to about 430ppm.
It’s actually those 2 scenarios that are the basis for the upper and lower bounds for pH change in the later figure of Tan’s so misused by CO2 Science. But no mention of them here?
Skipping through the orchard on a quest for selective incompleteness maybe??
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From my “Glossary of Global Warming and Climate Terms”
Ocean acidity – Ocean alkalinity
Increasing acidity – Reducing alkalinity
Low pH sea-water – Sea-water with hydrochloric acid added
High pH sea-water- Sea-water with no hydrochloric acid added
High morbidity – Little buggers don’t like hydrochloric acid
No further comment needed, I think.
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Blimey @77
Dying from malaria from mosquitos is a good thing? Tigers eating people in their own homes ia a good thing? Mountain lions killing joggers is a good thing?
You have a weird sense of what is good.
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It has long been known that the amount of melatonin (a hormone secreted by the pineal gland) is in inverse proportion to the amount of sunlight received by the retina of the eye. The more light received, the darker the skin colour.
Some studies conducted (in the late 1990’s) on multigenerational families of West Indian origin, many with four generations still living, showed that moving to a higher latitude, that has less intensity of sunlight, has a multigenerational impact on the ratio in base skin pigmentation to the level of melatonin present. The latest generation tend to have Caribbean features, and white (but non-freckled) skin.
What this tells us is that species adapt to changing circumstances, and do so over very short time scales (less than 100 years in this study).
Evolution happens – evolution happens quickly – and there is therefore no “ideal” static position for anything in nature.
Those who think that nature has a natural state of equilibrium are probably suffering from a lack of breadth in their span of knowledge.
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Hi MV @ 80
So you weren’t taking the mickey out of them in the way I thought and the chemical entities referred to actually can be produced under industrial conditions but not B likely in nature!
Thanks.
I have heard some say that Quantum Theory is wrong and has been replaced by some new idea and it seems that the “non acidic acids and non basic bases” (as I would see them) are about as relevant to this blog as The Replacement for Quantum Theory.
I’ve just got back from buying the papers and listened to an interview on BBC 1.
Three world leaders of environmental groups were being interviewed.
All three had African voices and represented WWF, Greepiece and the other one (sorry Alz strikes).
It seems that the Anthropometric GW thing is out of control and we white people are not sending enough cash to Africa to halt AGW.
I nearly threw up when they admitted that they were raking in a cool $500 millions USD between them.
Apparently the $500 mill is just enough to fix one poor country and rid it of AGW.
Global Warming = Social Justice to them but I’m not convinced the poor of Africa ever see the results of Western donations to these funds.
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Rereke Whakaaro:
Liked 96
Interesting.
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@ 93
We have a description of fortune telling without rigorous science.
Nobody with any scientific Nous would try to predict what world CO2 levels are going to be in 90 years time.
They don’t have enough knowledge of all factors to do it.
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Wes
Liked 81
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MV @ 66
and “Then it rained.”
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Slightly off topic but worth a read. Another nail “in you know what ‘
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/30/congratulations-to-alan-carlin-on-vindication/
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Rereke Whakaaro: that’s the case against the use of sun glasses. I’ve never worn sunglasses because they make the body think it’s in the dark and there is no UV therefore no melatonin is produced. I’d like to see research that relates the increase in skin cancer to the increase in sunglasses. 🙂
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Blimey at 88
Never heard of Punctuated Equilibrium. No one on even the warmist side is suggesting the pH of sea water is dropping to under 7 any time soon, at least as the result of slow incremental rises in pCO2, are they? If they were then evolutionary processes might possibly be compromised, but the only way that would happen is by cataclysmic sudden events, like large asteroids hitting the Earth or massive suboceanic volcanic eruptions on massive scales Deccan traps style, not due to minor fluctuations in trace atmospheric gas changes in linear fashion, gradually occurring with compensatory buffering of said oceans whose volumes are incomparably vast enough to “cope” with such a “shock” of this proportion. Again, I say, you have to be kidding. Next you’ll be telling me that if enough fleas are on an elephants hide, they could pick it up and carry it! Perhaps the problem with all warmists is that they have no sense of the proportion, so they are afraid of even the tiniest ripple in their world suddenly turning into a tsunami.
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Mary Johnston,
Have no fear. These have no noticable chance of being anything but rip-off artists.
We need to start acting in our own interest in the developed world or we’ll be bankrupted by these thieves. Where do you think a lot of your carbon tax dollars will end up?
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Rereke Whakaaro@96
I think that statement is only correct if the individual believes that nature has a static equilibrium rather than an adaptive equilibrium. I think it more accurate to say that nature has a natural state of equilibrium for a given set of conditions, but is able through evolutionary change and behavioural change to adapt to variances in these parameters and establish a new equlibrium. Species that fail to or are incapable of further evolutionary of behavioural adaptation become extinct. It should also be noted that no matter how highly developed the ability to adapt through evolutionary or behavioural change, it is the rate of change in the prevailing conditions that has the greatest effect on the survival of a species.
I think the problem with the people you describe is not a lack of breadth in their thinking, rather than a lack of application or complexity in their thinking.
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Keep saying it in these crazy debates- anyone keeping marine fish in an aquarium can verify or disprove all these things for themselves.
The health of marine organisms like, say, corals, is much more complex in some respects than the simplistic greens argument would have people believe.
But that really is the key phrase in all of this- the greens and other socialist propagandists want people to believe in something- as if in a cult, critical thinking turned off- rather than trust but verify.
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PaulM @106
Is adaption in the evolutionary sense relevant to human domination of the planet? Surely the reality is that we humans because of our unique intellectual characteristics and the consequent technologies we have and are in the process of developing (including genetic manipulation) can and do by pass evolutionary “inevitability”.
Of course the ecology in balance philosophy is naive in that it fails to recognise that modern societies live successfully and comfortably in vast cities that have no need to pay even lip service to the natural environment for their survival.
The Blimey’s of this world are misfits in modern society and if they are serious in their ideas, are throwbacks to ancient, nomadic, undeveloped societies and as such have no useful ideas to offer modern societies which are structured on different premises.
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Rereke @96
my earlier question was about speciation(you stated 5 to 7 generations) not just shift in proportions of adaptive alleles in different populations. By the way, one generation is enough for this.
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Llew Jones @ 108
I consider the ability of humans to reason and understand complex systems as an evolutionary change that has allowed us to develop the ability to make and use tools. It is this ability to make and use tools that have allowed us as a species to develop technology to adapt to our ever changing world. This is part (though only a small part) of the behavioural adaptation of which I spoke. Our unique intellectual characteristics, is in my opinion the highest level of evolutionary adaptation a species can attain and has led to us becoming the pre-emminant species on the planet, and the only species capable of extending or securing the survival of other species. We are the pre-emminent evolutionary change on this planet but are still only capable of dominating our local environment, we don’t yet have the knowledge or technology to dominate the planet, as evidenced by the number of lives lost each year to the vagaries of our ever changing world.
I don’t agree with the term evolutionary inevitability, as it implies that that the ultimate state of evolution is in fact extinction, I prefer to think that evoultion to a stage where you can create and use technology to prevent extinction of your own and other species is the ultimate state of evolution. More importantly, I think the biological aspects are only one aspect of evolution, when you are talking about the evolution of sentient beings that are inherently communal in nature. I think you also need to put equal weight on the intellectual and societal evolution of the species to be on the path to a fuller understanding of how a species has evolved and the potential it has for further and future evolution. In essence I think of evolution as a series of levels that can be attained by a species, and that within each level of evolution there a many aspects that can change that will allow or exclude the species from attaining the ultimate level of evolutionary petential.
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Wes George… our genes don’t contain dormant adaptive variation. It doesn’t mean that there is no adaptive capacity to change, but it doesn’t happen because of some sort of sleeping genes left over from adaptation to previous environments. Perhaps you’d like to reveal how you know this and I’ll help you with some experiments and we can share the nobel prize.
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Gee Aye @ 111
Maybe we do carry the ability to overcome CAGW very quickly!
Splice the genes for intelligence into all the warministers and then we have solved the problem!
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dave @ 112
A very adaptive solution there but there is some doubt as to whether the appropriate allele for gullibility could be switched off in enough of them to make it work.
Still it’s worth ago.
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MFJ @ 113
Maybe a “Switch Off Allele for Gullibility” could be stitched to CO2 and forced inhalation introduced?
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Gee Aye:
September 30th, 2011 at 11:34 am
Bob… the answer to this is no
Bob of Castlemaine:
September 30th, 2011 at 11:18 am
Haven’t corals and most other sea critters successfully negotiated prolonged periods in the past when atmospheric CO2 concentration was at least two orders of magnitude greater than now?
The answer to the following is yes
Haven’t corals and most other sea critters had ancestors that successfully negotiated prolonged periods in the past when atmospheric CO2 concentration was at least two orders of magnitude greater than now?
It is a big difference if the past you refer is not a few generations but is many thousands to millions.
=====================================
I’ve been propagating small polyp stony corals in artificial captive environments for over 20 years and I can assure you that the adaptation to changes in conditions of water chemistry are relatively rapid. I can also assure you that these corals are amazingly tolerant of variable pH conditions as low as 7.5 up to 8.5.
Ocean acidification … pffst! 🙂
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janama: #103
Hey, what a great idea! Would you like to partner with me to present a funding proposal to investigate the impacts of wearing sunglasses on climate change and the detrimental impacts on Human life expectancy?
We could make a fortune, and possibly even end up as contributing authors in a future IPCCC Climate Assessment! Ooh, fame and fortune.
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For those who are interested in this poll on Bolt:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/thedrum/polls/
Ocean acidification is another bit of AGW stupidity for various reasons already discussed above; one aspect overlooked is subduction; as the plates pass each other one is pushed into the mantle taking with it water and dissolved CO2 in calcite form which is deposited in vast quantities onto the mantle; it is this process which has removed most of the CO2 from the atmosphere over the eons. The quantities involved in this process dwarf mankind’s piddling contributions. All the alarmists should go and take a hot salt bath to calm their fevered imaginations.
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Streetcred: #115
Nice one!
I do love it when somebody says, “Well stuff your hypothesis, I have empirical results, that demonstrate a different conclusion”.
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cohenite: #117
One of the partners in my business is a geologist. She has been pointing this out since the whole “ocean acidification” meme started. The really sad thing is that nobody wants to know. Nobody wants to listen, Nobody wants the truth.
The vicarious thrill of thinking that the-world-as-we-know-it might be ending in our lifetimes, is a much stronger influence.
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I’ll just put myself out there and say that ocean de-alkalinisation won’t make it very far into the public sphere.
Over the coming months and years people will have real problems to deal with courtesy of the incompetance of our academics, leaders and wall street types.
I reckon that the real concerns will take precedance over some bunnys scare for funding programme.
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#117
Cohenite,
Given that subduction is a fiction, this explanation is pure fantasy. Mind you it is a widely held belief, so it will be interesting if the global warmers start refuting subduction in order to counter this argument. It helps to realise that the same mindset behind plate tectonics is driving CAGW.
There is solid data i the peer reviewed scientific literature showing plate tectonics and subduction to be false plenty of papers here
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Most of the excess CO2 is found in the vast deposits of dolomite (Ca-Mg-CO3) but no one knows how these deposits/sediments are formed. They are not being formed today, I may add.
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Jo,
Have you noticed that science has not included a loss of a single drop of water off of this planet?
Interesting thing with salt is that it is burnable and salt mines are aware that a fire is unlikely due to the high temperature it would take to ignite, yet they still have precautions.
How about the oldest salt mine is in a high elevation with a time of only a billion years and the rest are younger. So where did the salt come from?
If calculated by water loss, that would take 1.25mm/10,000 years to be at that height.
Yet science fluffs it off as theory of “rise of landmass”.
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The “estimated” reduction in ocean pH of 0.1 units relies on a single measurement made over 200 years ago. About that time Horatio Nelson was expiring on HMS Victory, and James Watt was still resisting the development of high-pressure steam engines. We are thus asked to believe that at that time, pH could be measured to an accuracy of less than 0.1 units, and that the value obtained was representative of global ocean pH.
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Damn Louis, I knew you’d pick me up!
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I’m coming to the view that block quote blue is ugly but threaded comments are coming.
Nothing you said I disagree with and nothing you said negates what I said.
Please elaborate if my interpretation is wrong.
Do people here know the difference between speciation and adaptive change using existing genetic variation?
They are very different.
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Cohenite,
🙂
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Rereke I am still interested in what you meant in 65
No, it takes between four to seven generations before accumulated adaptions result in what can be called a new species that is fully adapted to a new environment.
what is your source for this statement?
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O/T
Had to rush off to Andorra for reasons I won’t go into, but it meant I had another opportunity to witness the grand windmills of Catalan.
To my shock and surprise they were moving for the first time since I first spotted them years ago … well two were moving, and two others seemed to be moving very, very slowly. The rest (at least 50 of them) were perfectly stationary.
Remarkable stuff this renewable energy… I shall check them out on the return trip Thursday.
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Generally speaking, to be of the same species as another creature, you must be able to have fertile offspring with it. Beyond that, the word doesn’t really have a useful scientific meaning. ‘Speciation’ is the process of two (or more) groups of creatures that could mate with one another losing that ability.
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Um, Louis, Do you believe that the earth is ~6000 years old?
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Um Tristan, define “year”.
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Catamon @ 83, 92, & 93:
Firstly, thank you for pointing out this mistake in CO2Science’s article. We must have truth in science and science reporting if we are to be on the same page, let alone make progress in resolution.
The more conservative of Tans’ two scenarios would appear from the graph to indeed be at least -0.21 by year 2070. So CO2Science have definitely misquoted Pieter Tans.
I noticed that after you pointed out this egregious error amidst CO2Science’s ostensibly unswaying accuracy that nobody else argued the point, everybody just silently downvoted you, perhaps in the hope your upsetting message would just disappear, and everyone went back to talking about politics and sunglasses. I bet you thought you were on a winner.
Secondly, if CO2Science are so deceptive, please explain why the range of results they presented included a pH decline worse than any that Tans ever considered even in his most catastrophic emissions profile.
I’m not holding my breath.
As for Tans’ catastrophic interpretations, let me school you in the scientific art of walking the fine line between ignoring one’s own results and upsetting the funding bodies. It is called Climate Disruption Doublethink.
Tans
When writing an equation for pH reduction, Tans says:
Whoah whoah whoah there Mr Tans! Hold on a doublethinkin’ minute.
There’s only one carbonate ion involved in this equilibrium, and it’s HCO3-, the concentration of which you just told me will change by so little in the environment under study that your own research shows it is so insignificant in the pH equation that it can be entirely omitted when calculating the doomsday in figure 5.
At this point I invite our actual qualified resident chemist lurkers to de-cloak and comment on this apparent logical hole in Tann’s reasoning, which seems big enough to drive a reef through.
The closest that Tans comes to admitting this is all a bit of a ghost train ride is that the chance of catastrophic climate change is depending on a subjective assessment of what might constitute “catastrophic.”
Tans is hardly the first scientist to skip to the beat of the funding drum, nor will he be the last.
Kirkby
Take Jasper Kirkby from CERN for example. In 2009 he presented a 1 hour lecture on the role of cosmic rays in altering the climate. For the first 52 minutes he barely mentioned the CERN CLOUD experiment that he was running, instead showing slide after slide of empirical evidence establishing a long term multi million year history of correlations between rainfall, temperature, and cosmic ray flux.
At the 27 minute mark he points out that in the very long term there is virtually no correlation at all between CO2 and average temperature, but a very close correlation between cosmic ray flux and the occurrence of ice ages.
At the 35 minute mark he displays another scientist’s work showing the monotonous 1.7mm per year rise in sea level, and then shows the amazing correlation between yearly rate of sea level rise and the annual sunspot count. It is obviously suggestive of a causal connection. Kirkby then remarks “It’s very interesting, in this paper [about sea level], there isn’t anywhere a single mention of the sun, and to me it’s absolutely incredible that he can publish this data, and for there to be no comment – even to rule it out should be mentioned.” Is that so, Mr Kirkby? Don’t you remember what happened the last time you spoke your mind about this? Instant castigation and sent to the funding freezer for 8 years.
Fast forward to 2011 and the CERN CLOUD experiment has produced its first results showing unambiguously that cosmic rays do indeed ramp up creation of ionic cloud seed particles by a factor of “more than 10”, consistent with all previous paleoclimatology and other short term lab tests. Separate atmospheric observations from the Czech Republic and around the world show big cosmic ray decreases have warmed temperatures locally wherever they occur, fully supporting the Svensmark hypothesis that cosmic rays influence the climate on every scale. It seems like a shoo-in.
So of course, the authority leans on Kirkby:
Then Kirkby is interviewed for an article in no less than Nature, the warminista’s Bible:
For an old guy, Kirkby can flip a 180 like Tony Hawk.
The data tells you what is really happening. The scientists’ descriptions tell you what is fashionable.
Cherries
As for cherry picking we can all do that easily, as you would surely know. Whilst you were picking nits from the silver back of science you may have purposefully skipped past this little turd in Tans’ ointment:
The sad prediction that seems increasingly difficult for anyone to refute is that conventional oil is now on the way out, and when the dodgy black pudding known as tar sand is the only meal left in the larder, the resulting economic crunch will depress demand for all other forms of fossil fuels, thus making future carbon emissions self-limiting “even without climate considerations”.
Perhaps for people like you the plight of industrial civilisation is the cherry.
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You can take a breath now if you like.
From the language used in the CO2Science page, its pretty obvious that they include it so as to be able to rubbish it.
They basically present their misrepresentation of Tans “range” as a credible base, so they can place that in contrast with the “warped World of the IPPC” and Feeley et al,’s work. They could still have made the same contrast without misrepresenting Tan, so why they did it this way i dont know.
Certainly the OP homed in very fast on the broad range of pH used in the various studies and took a derisory tone on the matter.
As far as CO2 Science’s treatment of the subject, you get idiots and erudition in every walk of life i suppose, and I’m finding that dipping into AWG skepticism / conspiracy theory is an interesting study on the ratio’s of same. Ahh, where are the Lone Gunmen when you need them huh??
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A year is the length of time it takes for one the earth to orbit the sun.
For people who believe the earth is 6000 years old, the year 5000 BC predates the existence of Earth.
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Gee Aye: #128
In a word, “Gone”
Let me explain. My company has access to a number of Lexis databases. Some time ago, I was supporting a research initiative on the topic of “sustainable harvesting of pelagic fish stocks”. One particular search pulled up several papers around identification of species and subspecies. My comment was based on the content of one of those papers (peer reviewed, of course).
Since the search result was not directly relevant to the topic of my immediate research I filed the “interesting statistic” in my brain, but did not keep a reference to the actual paper (or the search that actually exposed it, for that matter).
I would be happy to attempt to find this paper again, if you wished, but you would need to let me know your mailing address so I could send you a formal proposal and terms of contract.
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Rereke Whakaaro: @ 136
Well done.
Sometimes we get into discussions that focus too finely on detail relating to AGW seemingly led there by AGW – Warmer Advocats.
This is one of them because as you and many others are aware, the science does not require further examination to help us clearly see the effect of Atm CO2 on ocean life forms.
As to the number of iterations required to achieve “absolute” evolutionary status in a new situation, who really cares or needs to care. The Primary issue is this: that the adapted species is reproducing and can it keep on reproducing in that niche.
You might wait forever for the “perfect” adaptation or speciation.
Speciation is the warmer tag – ploy used to count the death of species so they can show “scientifically” how evil and polluting we have been — Oh the Guilt —
The beauty of nature is that despite our outward similarity (within each species ) there is an amazing amount of redundant or superfluous genetic material carried within the group, it’s just that not everyone carries exactly the same mix.
Each individual in a species carries slightly different – or unique bits of genetic code so that under evolutionary pressure a few of the group will have the genetic solution to surviving the new conditions. Sadly the rest die.
Any how , back on topic.
Well done.
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Hi Andrew @ 133
Your comment that “”everybody just silently downvoted you, perhaps in the hope your upsetting message would just disappear”” could have an alternate interpretation.
I don’t read Catamon because after a scan of a few of his posts I categorized him as Skip.
Nor do I bother giving him the thumbs down.
My point is, and this is for Gee (his mate) who always asks for the point, the thumb count may not have been a comment on the science but on the reliability of the author?
Maybe.
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MaryFJohnston: #137
Thank you Mary.
I was aware of that, but did not rise to the bait. I have better things to do than score hypothetical points.
However another interesting thing I remember from the “Gone” paper, was that it made the point that it is often hard to classify the boundaries between subspecies. There are obvious differences, when viewed at a point in time, but it is almost impossible to say when and how a lot of those differences appeared. I was left with the thought that, if applied to primates, it could be hard to identify “the missing link”, because there may not actually have been one. Just musing …
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Tristan: #135
Ah, so this would be different to a galactic year, then?
Or a year on Alpha Centauri?
Or even an earth-year for an observer who was travelling close to the speed of light?
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Rereke Whakaaro: @ 139
Interesting points. Are two birds of the same origin different subspecies because they have different beak colour or slightly different body colours?
“”it could be hard to identify “the missing link”, because there may not actually have been one””
Yeah. Evolution is mostly boring and incremental but there are exceptions like our most recent loss about 30,000 years back when Neanderthal went extinct.
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Rereke…defining sepcies, sub-species, populations, locally adapted populations etc etc is a long debate for another forum. However in all these definitions I have not seen anything where two species arise from one in the space of a few generations (referring here to species where two sexes are required to produce offspring).
Pelagic fish variation -specifically harvested stocks – is an area in which I have researched, specifically on genetic responses to fishing pressure. I am well aware of the literature on the speed and magnitude of phenotypic and genotypic changes that occur in fish stocks in response to selective pressures (e.g net types) so please send me the paper. My email is on my profile at this site http://geeaye.blogspot.com/
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Mary… avian biologists love splitting and lumping – some species have been the subject of many many papers doing little else but argue about whether they are species. One person’s significant and defining variation is another person’s typical within species variation.
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Gee Aye @ 142
For someone who takes pride in being specific I think you have not lived up to your own advertising.
He offered to discuss a contract for the interaction if I remember correctly – not to send details of the paper until terms had been arranged.
Or can’t I read proper.
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Gee Aye: #142
I will type this slowly: I do not have the paper to send to you, nor do I have a reference to the paper to send to you. It was not apropos to the subject of our research, so I did not waste the disk space by saving it.
However, I am required to, and did, read every paper that comes up on a search (online) to judge whether or not it might be appropriate, and having an eidetic memory when it comes to patterns in information, I can sometimes surface interesting facts, with significant accuracy, when given the right stimulus. In this case the interesting pattern had little to do with assessing fish stocks (pelagic or otherwise) but in the speed of evolution of a species (of worm, I think) that lives on pelagic seamounts.
Given that information, perhaps you could find the paper for yourself? I am sure that WWF would have a copy in their library; which would save you the cost of the search.
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Tristan @ 131
No.
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From 143
Mention of “”splitting and lumping”” in the evolutionary reproductive context.
Didn’t you mean “”spitting and #umping”” ??
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Louis Hissink: #121
Louis,
I showed the paper(s) at the reference you gave to the partner I mentioned, and she leapt upon them with glee.
Perhaps it’s a Geology thing?
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Rereke @ 148
Did she now, well,that’s interesting, because quite a few geologists are starting to question some of the basic assumptions in our science. Tristan @ 131 seems to confuse Ussher’s date of the creation of the present “world” with the age of the earth itself; it’s a common error, and stems mainly when a particular culture or people start their calendar. Mind you something globally did happen ~ 10,000 years ago ~ some of us estimate the solar wind was some 10 x stronger and persistent for hundred of years, producing fantastic plasma shapes in the southern sky’s, observable to humanity at the time who also carved their impressions as the millions of petroglyphs over the world. For many peoples their world did start ~ 6000 years ago, but the earth already existed. (It helps to realise that neo-evolution is simply creationism stretched over a long period of time, with both starting from nothing, and evolving into the present, whether incrementally or instantly; reality might be completely different, however).
But geology ignores this recent activity because of Lyell’s (and his successors) stretching of geological time, disconnecting most things causally. I’have had a run-in with Megan Clark decades ago over this when I remarked that the Cretaceous kimberlite event (a global one) only made sense if it were temporally and spatially coincident with the K-T event and the associated mass species extinction. Main stream geology rejects past catastrophic events but in the same breath has no problem believing in a future one, CAGW. That they don’t see the irony in this is the problem.
What is really interesting are some of the heresies written about human history for the last couple of thousand years. Now there is an intriguing article in the latest Quadrant Magazine by Paul Monk on “Learning to see the Gorilla” which starts to explain things I had sort of concluded were settled. Keith Windschuttle, for example, has demonstrated how Aboriginal history was falsified by the current crop of academics, especially the lefties, in his Fabrication of Aboriginal History series, but I noticed the dilemma whether those historians did it on purpose (willing falsification) or whether that it was how they actually understood the past from an incomplete understanding of the past; Monk’s essay sheds light on this issue, and could be equally applied to the political machinations of Lyell and the Whigs two centuries ago in the UK when they utterly transformed geological thinking.
There is a startling view that the Romans were mining iron ore in Scotland as well, and it adds a new dimension to the notion of the Roman Warm period. Unfortunately I don’t have the resources to study this at leisure so I’ll focus on a more specific area that I’m familiar with.
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I have access to University library facilities so no problem looking for worms on sea mounts. Any memory of authors or title? cheers.
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Mary @ 147
No.
“Those who make many species are the splitters, and those who make few are the lumpers.”
– Charles Darwin
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Tristan, I decided not to take you up on a biblical version of creation. I don’t think it would be worth my time.
Has a “year” always been the same length of time?
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Louis, what is neo-evolution?
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Louis Hissink:
Seen this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJfBSc6e7QQ
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Tristan, the latest incarnation of Darwinism, as expressed by Dawkins for example. Both Creationism and Neo-Evolution assume a zero starting point but go down different routes to the present. Both are deductions from a fictitious premise, and are thus also fictional.
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Louis: Hissink: #149
Thanks Louis, I’ll pass that on.
I might even get her to comment here (although she has other forums {fora?}, where she participates).
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Siliggy @ # 154
No, not that specific video but I’m quite familiar with the earth expansion hypothesis – problem is that it’s also problematical based on the same assumption that the plate tectonicists make, that the oceans are essentially Jurassic in age. Dredging of the ocean floors etc as published in various papers at the link I previously have, show the existence of continental rocks etc. Earth expansion has one fatal flaw – mass creation internally to cause the expansion, but that idea developed from expanding universe ideas, and that is as problematical an idea as earth expansion. I did toy with the idea that magma fractionation could over time, increase the earth’s volume by more dense primal rocks fractionating to less dense daughter rocks could provide the volume increase but this idea fell on the discovery of the continental rocks in the ocean basins. Seismic tomography has scuttled subduction in any case, so the main problem is explaining the oceanic depressions. I have some tentative ideas but these are too wild to even introduce here as there would be far too much cognitive dissonance. Heck we haven’t got the last 2000 years right, so getting the last 65 million is a move too soon under the present paradigm.
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Well good for you. Perhaps you might learn to read by osmosis then.
But I am not sure what we can do to improve your memory.
With some prompting, you might recall I said:
Now, since you have access to University library facilities, I infer that you are either an Academic, or a Student, or a Librarian, or the Janitor. So I will ask you a question:
Which is more important: To understand each item of information in the context of how it is related to all other information you have acquired, on any topic; to understand enough about the information to be able to identify, locate, and extract information from an authoritative reference source, as and when it is required; or be able to find and quote references to information, within a given ontology, that support your preferred opinion on a debatable point?
There is no “wrong” answer, but I will be interesting in knowing your preference.
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So what is your alternative, Louis?
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MaryFJ @ 141
That is amazing actually, to think there were two humanoid descendants of apes running around the same areas just 30,000BP. I’ve heard the (rather flattering) theory that physically inferior humans out-competed the tough neanderthals or hunted them to extinction by using our superior brains. Of course a lab coat would say that.
Have you also heard the hypothesis that the gene for red hair is inherited from Neanderthals due to a few “cross breeding incidents” in the recent past? Is this even possible if they were truly different species, or is it more likely to be from a common ancestor like a proto-chimp?
Is it just made up to have a go at gingers and Scots? Only I thought this was from mtDNA studies.
Then there’s the homo floriensis “hobbits” in Indonesia. Allegedly only a few thousand years old. Skeleton fragments kept locked away in jakarta after the discovery. I wonder why.
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The theory of gravity has the fatal flaw that it needs free energy. For two masses to accelerate toward each other requires energy. Where does it come from? The theory that the two masses are pushed together by the vector sum imbalance of all external radiation influences does not require free energy as the source is inherent in the theory. This theory too has a fatal flaw. It needs all planets to be growing as they absorb incoming mass and energy. The two fatal flaws nicely deal with each other and provide a mechanism and source for abiotic hydrocarbon energy etc. They also hand in hand solve BobC’s too many “ring-of-fire” solar eclipses problem.
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Tristan,
My alternative is that the universe seems to have always existed, that life does as well, and that life, as we observe it, in the here and now, assumes forms and expressions compatible with the current physical conditions on earth. It’s an extension of David Bohm’s idea of there being an implicate and explicate order in the universe as described in lay terms by Michael Talbot in his “Holographic Universe” book summarising (circa 1992) the scientific understanding at the time . I have no idea what the future holds either. And no I don’t have a biblical world view, nor a Darwinian one either.
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Siliggy,
Correct and Newton always insisted that his equations described the motion of the bodies, not the root cause of that motion.
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Tristan,
in addition as geological conditions change on the earth, or I should say geophysical conditions change, then new forms of live appear while older forms incompatible with the new conditions die out, but it seems that life, like the universe, might have always existed.
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Rereke @158
I would love just to be able understand
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and to type
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rereke … I also don’t think that pronouncements indicate knowledge or thinking or linking. Take university access for instance. You list some groups of people who represent a tiny proportion of those with access to the full University library facilities but state your list as though it is exhaustive.
The others include alumni (i.e. anyone who has studied or worked at the university… ever), affiliates (industry and government people who interact with the university in a business or research level) and anyone who asks nicely. Yes, anyone can have access.
So I prefer to bumble my way through things and not assume that I can successfully relate everything I know to everything else I know.
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Louis Hissink, your posts are most annoying.
They, more than any other, remind me of how little I know, & I am all ready too aware of how little time there is to learn all I’d like to know.
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Has been @# 168
Why thank you, and I also commend Paul Monk’s excellent essay in the latest Quadrant Magazine on “Learning to see the Gorilla”; the implications of his ideas are quite humbling, apart from reminding me of Talbolt’s Holographic Universe book describing Karl Pribrams research, for example. Also reminded me of the biologist Lyall Watson’s later books, in which he describes some extraordinary personal experiences during a stay in Indonesia. I keep forgetting how far we have drifted off from reality and think that what we think is reality. As the Indian sage, K. Krishnamurti, put it, it’s the constant chatter of our internal mind that masks an inner reality that some of us get a glimpse of. Enough, I start to waffle.
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Andrew McRae: @ 160
Hi Andrew, it is amazing when you think about it.
Who knows about the red hair but the whole question of whether they cross bred is fascinating.
I heard that Neanderthals were well adapted, see nose shape and body hair, to the cold and could live further north than their lighter framed cousins.
This super adaptation probably didn’t stand them well later in warmer locations.
They had huge brains and there was a suggestion that poor birth-rate from the complications of the large relative head worked against them.
Whatever, when they were eventually forced south they did not compete well and the last known habitat was near Gibraltar I think maybe 35,000 years back.
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When two magnets accelerate together you have exactly the same problem.
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Tel #171,
Slight addition – magnets also repel, while gravity doesn’t.
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I’ve been catching up by reading all comments since my last post at #54.
All very interesting, but what about the topic at hand? OCEAN ACIDIFICATION.
Surely there are AGW proponents who wish to punch holes in the sceptic position on OA. Or is that it, we’ve all come to the conclusion that OA is just another alarmist bullshit for nefarious reasons?
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Sigh. 31 557 600 SI seconds where an SI second is related to some radiation interval of caesium.
I don’t know who Ussher is. I’m talking about a literal interpretation of genesis.
I see. Well, actually, I don’t. I’ll stick with the explanation that makes falsifiable predictions.
I’ll pay attention to string ‘theory’ when it starts making predictions we can test. Until then it’s waffle.
how do new forms of life appear?
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Sorry, would love to but don’t know jack about OA.
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Tristan @131,
So I get all the way down here and find, as I expected, that your question to Louis,
is a complete non sequitur to anything Louis said.
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If there’s a way something can go wrong then it will.
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Louis Hissink @121,
Thanks for the link to something that challenges current orthodoxy. I’m not qualified to judge what the better theory is but I find it curious that earthquake activity correlates with solar cycles. Sounds like something well worth investigating.
Unfortunately once a theory gets established it becomes gospel truth and isn’t ever challenged. A lot of things could use a good thorough reevaluation from scratch.
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and
You clever people ask good questions. Makes for a pleasant change to be asked questions that show show an understanding.
When magnets interact there are permanent changes according to the material properties and the associated hysteresis curves.
When magnetic fields are changed by interaction there are electrostatic field changes at 90 degrees according to Flemming’s left and right rules.
So the problem is not “exactly the same”.
How is this for an attempt to climb out of the hole you have me in?
Think of a sail boat tacking against the wind to move in any direction regardless of the direction the wind blows. The magnetic and electrostatic fields would via polarisation cause some direction to be formed from the random incoming radiations between the magnets. This like the sail boat now gives the magnets the ability to tack off or on to each other. The energy is coming from the external radiations but being re directed into a loop through both so that they then tack off the loop direction.
Now my question: what is the equal and opposite reaction for the action of attractive gravity?
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Silligy 179
Interesting analogy.
Can’t claim to “see” it all but can see there are possibilities in your outline.
Now for “”what is the equal and opposite reaction for the action of attractive gravity?.
Acceleration is involved but I suspect that is not the answer ???????/
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Siliggy @179,
Anyone who ever played tug-of-war as kid can answer this one.
If one body, A, pushes against another body, B, then B pushes back at A does it not?
If A pulls at B then B pulls back at A, does it not?
The source of the force is immaterial in both cases.
Roy
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Roy Hogue:
October 3rd, 2011 at 6:48 am
I meant the action that provides the energy.
With the rope opposite force for A is a push against the ground. The opposite force for B is a push against the ground. So what does gravity push against to propel A toward B?
this is a different question to “where does the energy come from?”.
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Siliggy @ 182,
That gravity pulls is obvious. Newtonian physics apply. The action of the force was your question as I understood it. 🙂
Can you rephrase your question so I can fully evaluate it? And mind you. I’m not the expert that some of you are so If your real question leaves me stumped I’ll just have to say so.
PS:
My tug-of-war example is valid. Even if one side simply gives up from the start and just hangs onto the rope, allowing the other side to drag it over the line laying on the ground, that losing team exerts a force against the rope equal to the force the winning team puts on it from the other side. Newton’s equal and opposite reaction requirement says nothing about energy in and of itself.
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That gravity does not need to exist is obvious! It could exist but i do not see a need or an energy source.
Any two objects in space will be pushed together from the external radiations that hit them or anything that passes right through and only weakly interacts with them. There is no need for that free energy attractive magic to exist at all if the external force is large enough. As Louis said in post 163 “Newton always insisted that his equations described the motion of the bodies, not the root cause of that motion.”
However if the force is external our planet must be growing and/or gaining energy.
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Roy,
The link of earthquakes to the solar activity is indeed worth following up – especially if earthquakes are interpreted as subterranean lightning discharges though I can’t see how this mechanism can cause abrupt changes in crustal elevation. However if the late Tommy Gold is right, that there is a deep hot biosphere, coupled with the Ukrainian-Russian theory of deep abiotic oil, then maybe earthquakes could be due to the sudden release of pent up hydrocarbon gases – though then the electrical connection becomes problematical. Makes me wonder what we are missing in terms of the gorilla in the room type of thing. I am wondering whether there is any cyclical connection between solar activity and volcanic eruptions as well. I am aware that Piers Corbyn has noted some relationship between solar activity an earthquakes using his research methods which include a lunar effect on the earth’s magnetosphere. At the moment it’s limited to speculation.
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Siliggy,
I’m not sure you asked the right question. The minute one introduces electromagnetic forces in addition to gravitational ones, one has a problem – EM forces are 10^39 greater in magnitude than the gravitational one, and it can be deemed to be zero in this case. The issue then simplifies to using electromagnetics to explain celestial motion.
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Tristan,
String theory? I never raised that idea, you did. String theory is a mathematical contrivance with no analog in physical reality. As for the stringy nature of the universe, this can be readily explained as Birkeland currents.
As for the competing ideas of Darwinism (in its many variants) and Creationism, biblical type, these are opposite sides of the same coin; my allusion to Bohm was to introduce a third possibility. This seems to have spooked you.
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Tristan,
You don’t know who Ussher is? The Bishop of Armagh who asserted that the Diety created all in the year 4004 BC. Helps to know your topic. As for how new life forms appear, I have no idea, and neither does any one else I might add. This is the problem but I suspect taking note of Paul Monk’s ideas on cognition, and others who are actively researching this area seems a useful thing to do. One also needs to account for the Oriental assertion that all reality is an illusion, and some of the references I mention examine this aspect.
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hi Louis
The Paul Monk article is relevant because it starts us on the road to understanding how “Man Made Global Warming” has gotten so much traction.
The human brain is an a amazing piece of equipment which Interprets Reality for the sole purpose (that may be a bit too strong given we also show altruism) of preserving the body carrying it.
Association with others is a form of self protection that is very adaptive and necessarily overrides scientific truth as shown in the case we are studying, AGW.
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Yes agreed. Roy gave a good answer to a bad question. I will stew for a few weeks on a revised question.
Baa asked a better question:”but what about the topic at hand? OCEAN ACIDIFICATION.”
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Louis Hissink @157 and others – if you like unconventional theories about the Earth’s tectonic positions and the like, try this.
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Siliggy,
May I propose an example of an equal and opposite reaction situation caused by, in this case, gravity, where no energy is expended?
A rock sits on the ground. It pushes against the Earth with a force equal to its weight. The Earth pushes back at the rock with an equal force; otherwise the rock would fall right through the surface. The force in each direction is provided by gravity yet no energy is involved since neither does any work on the other. Furthermore, this situation continues in perpetuity unless something disturbs it.
This seems as valid a case as a rocket engine lifting the Space Shuttle off the launch pad.
What am I missing here that requires energy in order to have an equal and opposite reaction?
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Hmm our other posts are gone?
The energy used to not move a rock is zero which by a strange coincidence exactly balances with the energy required to not move a rocket. Once the rocket moves then the the huge amount of energy required to over balance the NOT free energy from gravity becomes obvious.
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My bad, Talbot mentioned supersymmetry which my brain associates with string theory, even though that’s not necessarily the case.
Creationism and evolutionary theory aren’t opposites. One is a mythopoeic explanation for all of reality, the other is a scientific explanation for the diversity of life. They’re both falsifiable. Let me know when you debunk evolutionary theory.
I’m not particularly spooked by the nth crackpot theory on these boards. Truly they abound :p
Oh right. I rarely remember who it was who said something.
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Tristan
I don’t have to debunk it, it already was by others. It’s a consensus hypothesis.
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Truthseeker @# 190
I vaguely recall reading that site some time ago. My explanation falls into the plasma physics area as enumerated by AJ Peratt, Veschuur, Lerner, Alfven etc. The link you gave explains it in terms of geological uniformism coupled with Gouldian punctuations. Gould was partially heading in the right direction but never unshackled himself from the Lyellian chains he was intellectually stifled with.
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Louis Hissink – I read your reply and nodded sagely at the screen to give the (false) impression that I actually knew the first thing about what you were referring to.
Since I live in a geological stable location, I figure that geology is not something I have to concern myself with in my lifetime and if it is, there is nothing I can do about it anyway.
I am sure it is a fascinating science though.
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Truthseeker,
Unfortunately I’m paid to find mines and that means getting the geology right, otherwise I’m out of a job. My geological heterodoxy derives from having to accept Aboriginal stories about geological events they could not possibly have knowledge of according to the ruling paradigm. This was later substantiated by others who recounted other anachronistic Aboriginal stories and knowledge contradicting existing assumptions. Most dismiss those stories and knowledge as superstitious native myths and/or over excited explanations for more mundane phenomena. But some of us categorise these Aboriginal accounts as primary human observations in need of scientific explanation, and when existing theories can’t some of us assume that this is because our own understanding is incomplete. The alternative is to dismiss the Aboriginal accounts (and that applies to all Aboriginal peoples on the various continents) as mythical nonsense, and those who do have ceased being scientific. This mindset dominates institutionalised science, and is the main reason CAGW has so much support by governments.
The other bit of luck was being involved in diamond exploration (for De Beers) and having to figure out how these rare rocks (Kimberlites) were formed and how to find them. But when Aboriginal people describe something that was supposed to have happened 1,100 million years ago, one can react scientifically or not. Pseudoscientists seek refuge in their established dogmas.
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Louis – using human observation over established dogma? Well done!
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The oceans will become more basic due to global warming. According to Henry’s Law CO2 becomes less soluble as temperatures rise.
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The sea surface temperatures seem to be getting colder:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/wksst.for
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Perhaps this “acidification” hoax is a backup hoax incase the warming one fails.
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I can’t understand why anyone would think there is a missing hotspot when NASA’s Terra satellite suggests heat lost to space has been significantly understated. Heck… even that is not surprising. What does hot air naturally do? It rises… and the rest is common sense, right? Q.E.D.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110729031754.htm
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So how can it be lost to space without being missing?
Surely the problem then lies with those who predicted that there would be a hotspot and not those who correctly point out it is not there.
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#192
There is hope for Tristan.
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someone debunked evolutionary theory?
dammit out of a job
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Evolution is so clever it smells of intelligent design. I would expect the creator to be proud of evolution.
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we’ll wait for the evidence together. A creator who planted the evidence (evolution) and waited for its creations to discover the mechanism (natural selection).
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Truthseeker says
Sure. Here I look at CO2Science’s papers and I provide a list of dozens they choose to ignore.
://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/nova-on-acid/
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Blimey – much better. Question asked, question answered with references. Now for extra bonus points you can perform the same test by test analysis that has been done by CO2Science and see if the actual results show anything that is significantly different. Science is done by results, not abstracts. Given that funding was provided to find a problem, the papers’ abstracts (and presumably the summarised conclusions) all find the said problem because they are the only bits that the bureaucrats that hand out the money may actually read. If this type of detailed analysis is not within your resources or skill set, you can at least send an email to CO2Science with the list of papers you have found and give them a chance to update their database (since they seem to have both the resources and skill set).
I would have posted a comment on your website, but my computer modelling showed that adding one comment to zero comments is an infinite increase and could have caused Catastrophic And Graphic Website collapse.
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This article is an excellent debunking of the “Acidification” of the Oceans I have read.
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