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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (187698)	5/30/2006 11:28:39 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

And why have CO2 levels increased when, botanically speaking, CO2 is one of the major "fertilizers" for spurring plant growth? Because we are taking lots of CO2 which has been sequestered in oil and coal and are liberating it back to the atmosphere. That's our way; liberate places and things whether or not it's good for us to do it. Free the Indianapolis 500.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (187698)	5/31/2006 8:52:01 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

And what did you think about the article? I think that someone who states that the weather can't be predicted accurately in a two week period, should not be predicting hurricane count every year or predicting the the global climate will cool in 5-7 years. Does the earth have its cyclical warming periods, and that we're due for a cooling period soon? I'm not sure what soon means on a global scale. I can say with some certainty that in the northern hemisphere we are due for a cooling period this coming winter. That's soon. And why have CO2 levels increased when, botanically speaking, CO2 is one of the major "fertilizers" for spurring plant growth? Living in an apartment you may not be aware that one can overfertilize. Occasionally, some fertilizer may spill over my spreader and if I don't clean it up, the grass will certainly die. You may also be unaware that there isn't a lot of plant life in the upper atmosphere indicating that the global plant life isn't using up all the CO2 being produced. In addition, the recent warming is also increasing the growing season, with should be consuming more CO2, but atmospheric measurements of CO2 are increasing. Unless.. per chance, some other element is missing.. namely oceanic nutrients necessary to phytoplankton growth. I do consider phytoplankton a plant. A biologist might chew me out for that simplication in terminolgy, but I'll take a chance. Phytoplankton has been seen to be decreasing in some areas. The difficulty is that there are no historical measurments of phytoplankton cycles, if there are some. And no real infrastructure to measure phytoplankton growth/depletion on a global scale as there is with, e.g., temperature. I do understand that there are some efforts in estimating the overall global situation using marine life, but that's not as far along scientifically as other areas. We can take ice core samples and determine a lot of reliable information about global climate. Such does not exist with phytoplankton. Trying to assess phytoplankton's impact on CO2 levels is worthwhile and is a piece of the puzzle. We're also due for a pandemic. That could solve the problem. If enough people die, there will be all sorts of benefits. Housing prices will decline. Marine life will increase [lower demand for fish.] CO2 production will lower with fewer people driving. Oil reserves will last longer. Gas prices will decline. There are all sorts of environmental and economic benefits to a major pandemic. The old saying...Every cloud has a silver lining. jttmab