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Ocean Acidification

cpwill

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This guy says it's going to be the next Big Scary Thing That The Science Is Beyond Debate On And You Must Give Up Control Of Your Life (and lots of money in grants, of course) To Scientists In Order To Avoid.

it'd be interesting to see if he's correct, and if so how long it will take for that trend to blow over. methinks it will take less time than AGW.


Climate science has painted itself into a corner, seriously damaging the public’s faith in the field — as precious a commodity as there is in civil society. Like lab rats that will do anything to keep the cocaine flowing, climate scientists, universities, and federal laboratories are addicted to the public’s money.

The latest illustration of this sad new reality is the letter of resignation from the American Physical Society (APS) of one of the lions of science, Harold Lewis, emeritus professor at University of California–Santa Barbara.

In his letter, Lewis rightly states that it is the global-warming-research industry, “with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS with it like a rogue wave.” Specifically, Lewis objects to the heavy-handed way in which APS quashed and impeded any attempt to modify its outrageous 2007 “national policy” statement on climate change...

Computer models often predict doom and gloom, but APS ignores the fact that these models are failing. Only about 5 percent of hundreds of runs of these simulations predict the lack of a significant warming trend that has been observed in the last 14 years — even in the ClimategatedUniversity of East Anglia temperature history. In other words, the earth’s climate is behaving in a way that would normally compel scientists to reject, on statistical grounds, the hypothesis that these models are predictive.

APS isn’t interested in publicizing such details. Instead, it shakes the public down for even more money...

And why should APS say otherwise? What Lewis has uncovered is that climate scientists are behaving normally. They are responding to the incentives of financial and professional security and advancement.

The 1980s — the period in which global-warming money began to flow — saw the rise of scientists as environmental activists, hand in glove with the political process, soaring along with the fortunes of Al Gore, who very nearly rode his climate hysteria to the White House. The most prominent and clever of them all was the late Steven Schneider, a plasma physicist who wrote the book on how scientists can game policy and enrich themselves at the same time.

Schneider started his own refereed journal, Climatic Change... At the same time, he shamelessly promoted global-warming hysteria, exhorting his colleagues (over whom he held the power of a major journal editor) in Discover magazine in 1989 that:

we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see our world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we have to get some broad-based public support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. . . . Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

Schneider and his ilk got their way. An incredible outlay of money to academic researchers has ensued. And any incentive to write a paper describing the exaggeration of global warming all but disappeared — indeed, the disincentive to publish such a finding became, and remains, strong indeed. And so, APS has no incentive to do anything but flog global warming.

Professor Lewis is, of course, right, and so is Schneider: “We are not just scientist but human beings as well.” It is important that the public come to realize this.

People often ask me how to stop the hysteria. It’s simple: Stop feeding our addiction. How many of us were once wringing our hands over acid rain? When it finally became obvious that it, too, was real but overhyped by its proponents, the issue left the public consciousness.

The public can certainly make the same thing happen to global warming. But rest assured that scientists will find something else to worry you over.

P.S.: The next hysteria will be something called “ocean acidification.” Stay tuned.
 
Psshhh... No one likes the oceans anyway. Salinity is for losers. Fresh water is where it's at.
 
This guy's practically clairvoyant.

He successfully predicted the topic of ocean acidification would come up a mere seven years after the topic came up!

(September 2003, a paper on that very topic)

And what other scares are we talking about? Please tell me you mean acid rain and the ozone layer!
 
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yeah, but right now AGW is the sexy headliner; once that is finished being discredited, he's saying that's where the DoomSayers will be going.
 
yeah, but right now AGW is the sexy headliner; once that is finished being discredited, he's saying that's where the DoomSayers will be going.

Yeah, but he's a partisan hack who wouldn't know astronomy from astrology.
 
Yeah, but he's a partisan hack who wouldn't know astronomy from astrology.

Patrick J. Michaels is a Distinguished Senior Fellow in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. He is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. Michaels was also a research professor of Environmental Sciences at University of Virginia for thirty years. Michaels is a contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. His writing has been published in the major scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science, as well as in popular serials such as the Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, and Journal of Commerce. He was an author of the climate "paper of the year" awarded by the Association of American Geographers in 2004.....



:)
 
This guy says it's going to be the next Big Scary Thing That The Science Is Beyond Debate On And You Must Give Up Control Of Your Life (and lots of money in grants, of course) To Scientists In Order To Avoid.

it'd be interesting to see if he's correct, and if so how long it will take for that trend to blow over. methinks it will take less time than AGW.

I'm confused as to what exactly you're pissed off about. Are you saying that ocean acidification isn't real, because this one guy says so (and from the sound of it most environmental scientists disagree)? Or are you saying that even if it IS real and DOES pose a major threat to the environment, you just don't want government to intervene anyway?

I have no idea if ocean acidification is happening, as I haven't studied the evidence and haven't even heard much about it. And I highly doubt you do either. To just blatantly dismiss it as a fiction because of your political views completely goes against the scientific method.
 
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I'm continually perplexed at people who seem to think that there is some sort of pope or king of science.

One single scientist is not a spokesperson for the entire scientific community nor should their word, however educated and experienced, be substituted for the opinion of the scientific community. Tesla was a genius in his time but he had some extremely weird and unfeasible ideas, simply because someone is well-educated and intelligent doesnt preclude them being wrong.

Taking one paper by one person and slamming it down on the table as proof that "the entire scientific community is wrong because THIS guy says so" is so ridiculous I find it difficult to take the person making the claim seriously. Is this a "if science is wrong about ocean acidification, they're wrong about global warming" kind of run?
 
I just saw this thread hanging out at the bottom of the page, I do not venture into this subforum all that often anymore, but I was discussing acidification as a tangential conversation in Deuce's empirical evidence for agw thread, and had posted a link there that would actually fit here much better.

If anyone wants to read more on the basics of ocean acidification here is a no nonsense -presented in lay terms- faq covering a decent amount of ground and touching on some of what is known (and not known - there is a TON that is unknown yet) that I highly recommend:

FAQs about ocean acidification : OCB-OA
 
I just saw this thread hanging out at the bottom of the page, I do not venture into this subforum all that often anymore, but I was discussing acidification as a tangential conversation in Deuce's empirical evidence for agw thread, and had posted a link there that would actually fit here much better.

Oh, yeah, like we should trust a duck on ocean acidification. I'm on to you, fresh water fowl.
 
Oh, yeah, like we should trust a duck on ocean acidification. I'm on to you, fresh water fowl.

Don't let the lame duck fool you, It's just there for the short term and accomplishes nothing, it will be over and gone in a few days. I have something a bit more marine lined up for its replacement. will I have more credibility then?
 
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This guy says it's going to be the next Big Scary Thing That The Science Is Beyond Debate On And You Must Give Up Control Of Your Life (and lots of money in grants, of course) To Scientists In Order To Avoid.

it'd be interesting to see if he's correct, and if so how long it will take for that trend to blow over. methinks it will take less time than AGW.


, seriously damaging the public’s faith in the field — as precious a commodity as there is in civil society. Like lab rats that will do anything to keep the cocaine flowing, climate scientists, universities, and federal laboratories are addicted to the public’s money.


You left out some of the meat of your own unwitting article.

"...But to a scientist, to declare that the planet is warming is like announcing that the sun will rise tomorrow. One fact of the matter is that we are still emerging from an ice age, as evinced by the massive glaciers and ice fields on Greenland. Ice ages are defined by large accretions of ice being displaced abnormally equatorward. Eventually, most of Greenland should look like Scotland, which suffered a similarly lingering glaciation from which it eventually escaped. The other fact is that we are putting carbon dioxide in the air and, everything else being equal (dangerous words in science), there should be some additional warming.

The important word is “some.” The real questions are, “how much, and how fast?”..."


A fact you/he should know about when 'Greenland looks like Scotalnd'.

"..Why does the Greenland Ice Sheet Matter?

The Greenland Ice Sheet blankets 81% of Greenland Island. This monstrous ice slab stretches 2,480 kilometers (1,540 miles) long and up to 750 kilometers (465 miles) wide. The ice sheet is so big it would stretch from Key West, Florida, to 100 miles beyond Portland, Maine, covering a swath as wide as from Washington, D.C., to Indianapolis, Indiana. It’s 80% as big as the entire United States east of the Mississippi River. It’s not only huge, it’s also thick—an average of 2.3 kilometers (1.6 miles) thick. It contains roughly 8% of all of Earth’s fresh water.

Greenland’s Ice Sheet matters for:

Sea level: As the Greenland Ice Sheet melts, sea level rises. It is a direct, proven effect. This is the biggest reason for concern over Greenland. Scientists estimate that if the entire ice sheet melted, sea level would rise 23 feet. Depending on how rapidly such a change occurred, it could be a global-scale catastrophe because nearly one-third of the world’s population livs in or near a coastal zone. The global impact of several billion refugees and the negative impacts on coastal economic activity would be staggering.

A sea level rise of only two to three feet—the high end of current plausible scenarios for the next 20 years—would create serious global problems: increased coastal erosion, salt water encroachment, loss of barrier formations (islands, sand bars, and reefs), and increased storm surge damage. Through the 1990s, sea level rose at a rate of about 3 millimeters per year. The rate crept up to almost 4 millimeters per year by the end of last decade. For historical perspective, sea level has risen more than 380 feet since the last ice age 18,000 years ago. That’s an average rate of 2.5 inches (10 centimeters) per decade, or 10 millimeters per year. However, most of that rise occurred as the ice age ended. Sea level has been relatively stable for the past several millennia.

Ocean circulation: Sea level rise is not the only effect of a melting Greenland Ice Sheet. If the Greenland Ice Sheet melts at a faster rate, it will spread a slick of fresh water on top of the heavier salt water of the North Atlantic. This change in salinity could depress the Gulf Stream and alter North Atlantic circulation patterns that control weather in Europe....

mpore at:
[url]http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Greenland/greenland_sidebar.php

Thus even as the planet warms.. it could get colder in many places abutting Melt zones and depending on say, the Gulf Stream, for it's warmth (UK etc).

And if Greenland melts IT'S 23 feet... it won't be alone as other Glacial areas, (poles etc) would likely contribute an equal amount or more.
Making the the US east coast, for just one, unviable.
As a NYC resident who lives app 10 ft above sea level.....
 
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