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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (187114)	5/23/2006 3:58:01 PM
From: CalculatedRisk	Respond to of 281500

Scientists have no chance against spin doctors, by David Bodanis, Commentary, Financial Times: news.ft.com Last week, touched by winning a science prize at the the UK’s Royal Society, I donated it to the family of David Kelly, the British scientist who committed suicide after governmental criticism associated with his research into weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Not everyone thinks mine was the right decision, on the grounds that science should not be sullied by bringing politics into it. From my years looking at the history of science, I do not agree. For science often leads to technologies that can undermine the established powers in society – and when those powers fight back, they fight to win. Sometimes that retaliation is deadly and scientists die for the truth. Soviet authorities of the 1930s, for example, hated biologists who pointed out that changing a plant’s environment did not alter its genetic nature. That truth undercut the authorities’ belief that by altering society, they would be able to create a new Marxist man in a single generation. If there were any exceptions to this idea at all ... then those opponents had to be crushed. Many were demoted; others were sent to prison, beaten or killed. George W.?Bush’s attitude to science is less deadly, of course, but similar in essence. The US president and many of his supporters know that if the public were to be convinced that present uses of coal and oil were putting the planet in grave danger, there would be an outcry... Two worlds are set on a collision course. One is the world of science... In that world, what counts is finding the truth and adjusting your actions – and, if need be, changing established industries – accordingly. But in the world of politics, what is most important is what you have previously decided you are going to hold to. Anyone who threatens those goals has to be blocked, for they get in the way of what you consider the greater good. Often that is for the best – just think of any political change or institution you especially like that had to be pushed through against strong opposition. The problem comes when the two worlds collide. For in the short-term, the world of politics almost always wins. Politicians are good at pressing the buttons of emotion, or group feeling, or character assassination, or selective evidence... Very few scientists can fight back. Although in their private lives they might be psychologically astute, their profession teaches them that arguments are ultimately won by appeals to the truth. That is their reflex: it is what they are habituated to do. Against spin doctors, leaked governmental whispers, smooth lobbyists and the like they have scarcely any defence. There is an added twist. These two worlds operate on different timescales. Scientists are exceptionally good at picking out small indicators of what is happening in the outside world, and accurately foretelling their consequences. That is the enormous power that centuries of development in instrumentation and analytic technique have given them. Politicians, however, naturally take more of the layman’s attitude, where only evidence that is large-scale and immediately obvious is truly important. In my books I have written about many people who, like Kelly, abided by the logic of science, confident that what they saw would be justified as time went on. Yet so often they crashed up against the very different world of politics and established power, and they ended up crushed by it...

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (187114)	5/23/2006 6:24:41 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Was Europe warmer or colder a thousand years ago than it is today?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (187114)	5/24/2006 12:14:51 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Climate change is here, it's scarier than we thought, we're causing it, and (especially in combination with other large-scale environmental and social problems) it's going to demand radical innovation and major reforms. It's not like it just started WR.. It's been going on for centuries, or even Tens of thousands of years (since the end of the last ice age). If we're dealing with reoccuring paleo-climatiological changes, they we really don't what kind of radical changes we're going to have to make, now do we? Scientists have long been warning that the world must cut back on greenhouse-gas emissions by as much as 70 percent, as soon as possible, if we're to have a fighting chance of stabilizing the climate. Well, I guess that means we'll have to start by killing off several billion methane and CO2 belching people (and their flatulant cattle herds)... Because Methane is 6 to 10 times as potent a green house gas as C02, and we're farting out oodles of it every day... And who's going to stabilize the volcanoes??.. or the methane hydrates that could be releasing from the ocean floors without our knowledge due to tectonic activities?? It might just be that the climatic "stability" that everyone talks about didn't take into account 6 Billion human beings, and their associated herd animals and pets. Thus, it might be that nature is going to find a NEW equilibrium despite all the environmental good intentions you exhibit. Thus, I think we should be exploring deliberate terra forming.. There is already technology out there for creating C02 traps in the ocean, using Ferrous dust. It appears that the oceans are becoming increasing iron deficient (for whatever reason, including over-fishing). And without that iron, phytoplankton have a hard time growing. A quick chemical review: iron is only sparingly soluble in seawater, due to the formation of insoluble compounds with hydroxide ion (OH-), which is prevalent at the normal pH range of the surface ocean (approximately pH 8). But iron is also pervasive in the global environment (and ships and wires and numerous other equipment are made of steel, which obviously contains iron), so accurately determining iron concentrations in seawater required scrupulously clean laboratory work. Although Dr. John Martin became famous for proposing that iron acts as a limiting nutrient in oceanic waters, and also for theorizing that iron supply to the oceans could be related to climate change in Earth history, it was the accurate determination of the markedly low iron concentrations in seawater that allowed him to make these connections. Initial experiments onboard research vessels demonstrated that adding iron to seawater would enhance phytoplankton growth. But the real proof that iron was a limiting nutrient in the ocean required an in situ experiment: adding iron to seawater to see if phytoplankton growth in the ocean was enhanced. Two experiments near the Galapagos Islands in 1993 and 1995 demonstrated that phytoplankton growth was enhanced and also that the process could effect the concentration of dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2) in seawater, which could in turn lead to a reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere — the possible key to climate change disc.gsfc.nasa.gov tracer.env.uea.ac.uk Btw WR.. this "blooming" technology is relatively cheap.. (far cheaper than the economic consequences of Kyoto which doesn't even cover the major Asian polluters), and it's great for alleviating over-fishing of our oceans. The oceans, or more specifically, plankton and algae have always played a far greater role in moderating global CO2 levels than the forests and prairies, let alone the Rain Forest... And you're a scientist, right? You know that when there is more C02 in the air, it encourages plant growth... But if the nutrients that this plant life have become depleted (for whatever reason) you can have all the C02 you want, but plants will not respond. So IF, and JUST IF, John Martin was correct that depleting iron levels in the ocean might be responsible for its diminishing ability to compensate for higher atmospheric C02 levels, then the solution is pretty clear.. restore those iron levels to whatever the historical levels theoretically should have been and get the oceans to capture that excess CO2 and trap it. But since no one has monitored historical oceanic iron levels, or historical phytoplankton levels, no one knows what the levels should be... But the one thing about the solution.. if mother nature ain't providing the iron, then we're not likely to do anything that causes long-lasting consequences.. It's like a vitamin deficiency.. If you add too much, then change the formula until you get it right. The worst thing that happens is you "over-fertilize" and that can be resolved by not modering the amounts of iron augmentation. There's my proposal for global warming (and rising fish prices). And I hope John Martin receives a Nobel Price (posthumously) for his research. Hawk

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (187114)	5/24/2006 1:43:37 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Btw, there is STILL ROOM for debate on GW and IT'S CAUSES: Here's an interesting article linked to John Martin's research, that asserts that during the last Ice Age, windblown Iron dust "seeded" the Antarctic ocean creating large blooms of phytoplanton to the extent that it exacerbated the existing global cooling by pulling out extraordinary amounts of C02 and lowering the atmospheric temperature. Might it be possible that the planet has been merely regaining it PREVIOUS TEMPERATURE EQUILIBRIUM as Iron dust fertilization of the oceans has decreased and lowered the capacity of the ocean plant life to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere?? If so, then the previous period of relative "coolness" was a natural anomaly that correcting itself and restoring the previous "pre-ice age paleo-climatology. If this is the case, as can be rationally argued by the following evidence below, then the ONLY SOLUTION is to restore that previous iron balance in the oceans to preserve the climate of the past 6,000 years that permitted mankind to flourish as a species. Too bad that the scientific community, as well as the enviromentalists, are aghast at considering such an attempt to geo-engineer our climate: Scientists Say Iron Particles Cut World Heat -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A research team led by scientists at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has documented for the first time that an infusion of wind-blown iron particles in Antarctic waters triggered a population explosion of marine plants that may have significantly reduced the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in earth's atmosphere during the ice age. The research, reported in the Dec. 14 issue of Nature, confirms the principles underlying the "iron hypothesis," first postulated by the late John Martin of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in the late 1980s. Building on earlier theories, Martin suggested that a dustier ice-age world naturally fertilized Antarctic Ocean regions that are starved for iron today. He became controversial for speculating that fertilizing the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica with iron could stimulate a "biological pump" of microscopic marine plants, which would draw large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the deep ocean, counteracting the buildup of a greenhouse gas that threatens to warm the planet. But until now, no evidence existed to confirm that Antarctic blooms ever occurred--even though Antarctic ice cores showed that earth's atmosphere had high levels of iron-rich particles and low levels of carbon dioxide during the last ice age between about 75,000 and 12,000 years ago. Now a seven-member team of scientists studying the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean reported in Nature that large quantities of organic matter fell from the ocean surface to the seafloor during the ice age. The scientists used a new method to track blooms of marine plants by measuring naturally occurring radioactive isotopes, whose levels rise in the sediments when more organic matter fell to the ocean bottom. During the ice age, the presence of large ice sheets lowered global sea levels and vast tracts of now-submerged land at the southern tip of South America became exposed. Strong, prevailing winds blew particles of soil from this land to the Southern Ocean. The particles were rich in iron that plants need for many biological reactions. The research was conducted by Niraj Kumar, Robert Anderson, Richard Mortlock and Philip Froelich, at Lamont-Doherty, Columbia's earth science research institute in Palisades, N.Y., and by Peter Kubik, Beate Dittrich-Hannen and Martin Suter, at the Institute for Particle Physics of ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. Scientists have noted blooms in modern times in small areas near the edges of oceans where winds, rivers or currents provide a steady supply of iron. Last year, an experiment to enrich a 20-square-miles patch of the Pacific with iron also demonstrated that iron fertilization could stimulate the productivity of oceanic plants. The new research by the Lamont-Doherty/ETH team documents for the first time that the iron fertilization scenario did occur on a large scale during the ice age in the Southern Ocean. Writing in Nature, the team said: "Our results demonstrate that the biogeochemical principles embodied within Martin's 'iron hypothesis' find validation in nature." When the Southern Ocean received a sustained supply of wind-blown iron, they said, "the result was an explosion of biological productivity" that eventually sent large amounts of organic matter, including carbon, down to the depths. However, the team also found that the ice-age blooms did not spread throughout the Southern Ocean, as Martin had originally theorized, and therefore less carbon dioxide was taken out of the atmosphere than he had postulated. The scientists estimated that the Antarctic blooms accounted for no more than one-fifth to one-third of the 30 percent reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide during the ice age. Previous research failed to recognize the enhanced fertility of the ice-age Southern Ocean. Earlier studies evaluated past changes in the burial in seafloor sediments of opal, a form of silica used by plants to build their shells, which sank to the ocean bottom. They assumed that more marine plants blooming near the sunlit ocean surface would produce more shell material in the sediments below. But such records are hard to interpret because nearly all of the shell materials are "remineralized," or re-dissolved in seawater, before they are ever buried. The new results from the Columbia/ETH team show explicitly that the burial rate of this shell material in Southern Ocean sediments failed to record reliably past changes in the ocean's biological productivity. In the new research, the scientists used a newly developed approach to measure past changes in the rain of organic material from ocean's surface to the seafloor. They analyzed six Southern Ocean sediment cores from Lamont-Doherty's world-renowned repository of ocean sediment cores, the world's largest. The research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. columbia.edu I think the theory has considerable merit, WR.. And it should not be ignored as a major causitive effect for GW. Nor should the findings be ignored as a possible "band-aid" approach to reducign C02 levels, until such time that we can get a handle of the entire science behind what's causing GW.. I still believe that increased biological methane production by humans and their herd animals are a major source of RECENT greenhouse gas production. Adding to this is volcanology and emmissions from fossil fuels and other sources. Hawk