Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (21830)	6/4/2008 2:13:01 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36917

I suspect it's only wishful thinking on my part. <At least you understand that CO2 does in fact help warm the planet. > Rumour has it that it does so and since it seems to do more than oxygen, which is the alternative, it seems likely to be a better insulator than oxygen, even though convection on a grand scale moves vast amounts of energy from low to high altitudes. So, radiant heat absorbed by CO2 at low altitudes is soon convected up towards where it can radiate outwards. I'd have to check up on the processes more carefully than I have done so far. But wishful thinking is okay by me in some instances. I certainly don't think that having CO2 in the atmosphere instead of oxygen causes MORE energy to escape, which would certainly worry me. So wishful thinking in this case is harmless. There isn't much evidence so far that all the extra CO2 is warming us up, so if we weren't also getting all the benefit from the vast carbon burning industry, it would be a questionable way of avoiding reversion to the mean of the ice age. It does concern me that if asked to prove that the CO2 is helping keep us warm, I couldn't actually say just how it is doing so. But many things in life are mysteries to me. I'm happy to just accept that it is doing a bit, albeit not very much. Only 0.7 degrees after a century of vast effort in carbon production and combustion. If it isn't actually causing warming, at least we aren't getting colder. Mqurice

To: neolib who wrote (21830)	6/4/2008 3:14:12 AM
From: DavesM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

You know, Maurice has a point. Carbon is essential to life (as much as nitrogen, hydrogen or oxygen), and the easiest way to get it is through plant respiration. For the last 500 million years or so, atmospheric CO2 concentration on the earth has gone up and down - but have trended down. Maurice's view of Man's place is a little different than yours - more heroic and, naturally poetic. When the great dinosaurs roamed the earth: The earth was warmer, more wet, the atmosphere was more dense, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was much(, much,) higher and the sun had a lower output. As great prehistoric forests captured CO2, many got buried and became great coal deposits - trapping carbon the forests pulled from the atmosphere for millions of years. As the eons passed, more and more carbon got pulled from the atmosphere by plants (trapped by the earth in seams of coal and oil), and the earth got progressively cooler - despite increased solar output. Eventually the earth reached the present period (Quaternary), where CO2 concentrations reached such low levels, that the earth spends 80% to 90% of the time in ice age (where virtually all of Canada and much of the American Midwest is under glacier). Then comes Modern man. Cooking man. Man who's niche is the use of fire. Man who will burn just about anything as fuel - from the fat of marine mammals, to dried dung. Man who will cut walrus fat for fuel. Man who will pick up feces (dry it) and use it for fuel. Man who will cut down a trees for fuel. Man who spades peat for fuel. Man who dig holes in the ground looking for coal to burn. Man who drills pipes deep into the earth for oil and gas to burn. I think Maurice is saying that, as man freed combustible Carbon molecules from their their earthly tombs - burning and liberating them back to the atmosphere (from which they originally came). The earth warmed freeing the other required ingredient for life...water (and through plants, hydrogen and oxygen). Maurice's Gaia needed something to free essential building blocks of life: Carbon (from its earthly tomb), and water (from its ice/glacial tomb). If I read Maurice correctly, he believes Man evolved to save the earth from becoming just another iceball in space. LOL, a somewhat different type of "intelligent design". It's not my view, but I like it - as a story. p.s. re: "the planet certainly was pretty nice for our species by the time they hoved into view, thanks largely to prior species making it so." Not really. I believe I read that during the last Ice Age, humans were only a few thousand individuals for quite a while. Not incompatible for human life, but not exactly "nice".

To: neolib who wrote (21830)	6/4/2008 11:31:29 AM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

to the never ending lying sack of shit neolib. you have to be an idiot or a lying sack of shit to make this statement. At least you understand that CO2 does in fact help warm the planet. A step in the right direction. Mind trying to convince Watson of his folly? You lie over and over or are simply to stupid to see the full depth of truth I always attempt to express in my posts. As a never ending idiot and or lying sack of shit you cannot ever see beyond an idiot's one sentence at a time comprehension or as a purposeful lying sack shit tactician.