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TLP
climber
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Feb 15, 2014 - 12:51pm PT
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New, I did click one of your links, and it made it obvious there's no point in looking at the others. The most concise way to summarize its actual content is "we have zero idea how you might do this, and there might be huge problems from anything you try to do." Let's take just one whopper:
Carbon dioxide removal could be done by sucking it out of the air with structures called mechanical trees, A real tree, you know, one of those big green things, ALREADY absorbs CO2 extremely efficiently. (Note to deniers: you know that line about, how can CO2 that's present as only 400 ppm have such an effect on climate? Well, that same concentration - in fact, a much lower concentration was doing it pre-industrial emissions - supports the entire terrestrial ecosystem via the process of photosynthesis. How is that possible?)
And you really believe that engineers are going to be able to design a more efficient tree in a few decades, than evolution produced in some 400 million years? Wow.
Let's take the next part.
by fertilizing the deep ocean with it,
Obviously you have not heard that acidification of the oceans is a really bad thing for the marine ecosystem. Google that.
And onward:
or through a process called enhanced weathering. This involves digging up rocks that absorb carbon dioxide, pulverizing them and spreading them around. And how much of the precious land area of the earth are we going to cover with crushed rock, plus the overburden from the mining, and how is this going to be maintained? Bearing in mind that all that heavy equipment operation means a LOT of CO2 emissions just by itself.
It is hard to imagine that anyone who has thought about it at all could possibly imagine that it is a better idea to just spew all this CO2 into the air, then go re-extract it once it's diluted to 400 ppm, than it would be to get hold of it at the source. That would make some sense, and this would be a sensible way to spend some money that could come from a carbon tax on actual mitigation rather than just pissing the money away on somebody's pet highway. But do we ever get to talking sense? No, and we won't ever get to it as long as there is debate about the essence of the scientific reality.
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dirtbag
climber
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Feb 15, 2014 - 12:52pm PT
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NWO I think it was a "Luke I am your father reference"?
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raymond phule
climber
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Feb 15, 2014 - 01:00pm PT
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I didn't claim that at all, Raymond. I do claim however, that climate geo-engineering/chemtrails are for reals.
So what is a chemtrail according to you? Or in other words do you believe in the chemtrail conspiracy theory that floats around the internet?
edit: I ask because "chemtrails" exist all over the world and "chemtrails" follows all airplanes in the right weather conditions. How can this happen if chemtrails is due to geoenginnering without all airlines being involved in a conspiracy?
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dirtbag
climber
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Feb 15, 2014 - 01:21pm PT
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Ok. Now I'm reeeally done for today!
SUUUUURREEEE...that's what they all say! ;-)
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raymond phule
climber
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Feb 15, 2014 - 01:24pm PT
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Raymond.....Chemtrails to me is the spraying of chemicals (barium for one) into the sky to offset the harmful effects of global warming. Therefore, chemtrails is climate geo-engineering, as evidenced by the article.
Ok, makes sense. The follow up questions are now. Do you believe chemtrails exist today and how do we know if a control is a chemtrail?
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 15, 2014 - 01:32pm PT
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At the 2010 American Meteorological Association meeting it was revealed that aerosol geoengineering was applied to Hurricane Katrina to modify the intensity of the storm.
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dirtbag
climber
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Feb 15, 2014 - 01:36pm PT
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If it's published on the internet, it must be true.
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TLP
climber
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Feb 15, 2014 - 01:43pm PT
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GHG-induced (or, if you prefer, -enhanced) climate change is geoengineering too!! Only in a bad way. All that oxygen in the atmosphere, that's geoengineering too, only by plants. I find it totally baffling that on the one hand we have people coming up with all kinds of skepticism, based on the thinnest of scientific reasoning if any at all, about the climate data and modeling that we do have, many decades of really solid science, but on the other hand we have proposals to do the wildest imaginable global-scale experiments based upon a bit of hand waving.
It's a lot like saying, why are we going to all this trouble to have sewage treatment plants? Why not just dump all the raw sewage all over the land surface and into all the surface waters of the planet, then try some kooky experiments to see how to get the sh#t back out of the water? Or just spray a few quadrillion tons of antibiotics all over the plant and call it good?
This is one point I totally agree with The Chief: anybody who's thinking there's some neat technological fix that will just make everything OK again, you're totally dreaming. Start with something that's known to be feasible, like sequestering CO2 at point sources, and work out the bugs of just minimizing how fast we're making things worse, before you start fantasizing about something to reverse the process. The difficulties, costs, technological challenges, potential for political abuse, and possibility for gigantic unintended consequences are just huge. We know how to build seawalls and how not to build stuff in floodplains and low-lying coasts. How about we just do that, for starters? Any good reason other than somebody who wants the "freedom" to do whatever he/she wants on private property while expecting everybody else to cover the risk?
Edited to add: if the quote in Werner's post is accurate, gee, that worked really well, didn't it?
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 15, 2014 - 06:34pm PT
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You are all idiots. The Knights Templar are behind all of this.
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monolith
climber
SF bay area
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Feb 15, 2014 - 08:07pm PT
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LOL, Sketch is the thread hall monitor.
I'll be sure to check with Sketch on the next cartoon.
It's very important (at least to Sketch) that cartoons are not to be repeated, even unknowingly.
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dirtbag
climber
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Feb 16, 2014 - 10:55am PT
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Six of those folks regularly post here.
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monolith
climber
SF bay area
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Feb 16, 2014 - 11:35am PT
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Lollie
Social climber
I'm Lolli.
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Feb 16, 2014 - 11:40am PT
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"But wait! I hear you cry, perhaps the NSF poll was flawed? Perhaps the poll sample was too small? Sadly not. The NSF poll, which is used to gauge U.S. scientific literacy every year, surveyed 2,200 people who were asked 10 questions about physical and biological sciences. On average, the score was 6.5 out of 10 -- barely a passing grade. But for me personally, the fact that 26 percent of the respondents were unaware the Earth revolves around the sun shocked me to the core."
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monolith
climber
SF bay area
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Feb 16, 2014 - 11:48am PT
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LOL, you are making sh#t up again, eh Sketch?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Feb 16, 2014 - 12:03pm PT
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1 in 4 Americans unaware that Earth circles Sun This is one of about 11 "science literacy" questions that have been asked repeatedly over the years on the NSF-supported General Social Survey (GSS). A few years ago I did some work with these literacy questions. Below is a list, together with the percent correct on the 2010 GSS:
1. The center of the Earth is very hot. (True/False/Don’t Know) 82%
2. All radioactivity is man-made. (True/False/Don’t Know) 67%
3. It is the father’s gene that decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl. (True/False/Don’t Know) 58%
4. Lasers work by focusing sound waves. (True/False/Don’t Know) 50%
5. Electrons are smaller than atoms. (True/False/Don’t Know) 52%
6. Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria. (True/False/Don’t Know) 49%
7. The universe began with a huge explosion. (True/False/Don’t Know) 39%
8. The continents on which we live have been moving their locations for millions of years and will continue to move in the future. (True/False/Don’t Know) 80%
9. Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals. (True/False/Don’t Know) 47%
10. Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth? 75%
11. How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun: one day, one month, or one year? 52%
Mean percent correct on 2010 GSS: 59%
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Feb 16, 2014 - 12:12pm PT
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On the GSS as on this thread, science literacy correlates with concern about the impacts of climate change. For example, bar heights in the graphs below show response percentages to one question about northern ice melting, and another question about reserving the Antarctic for science -- in relation to the number of science literacy questions (0-11 scale) or polar knowledge questions (0-5) people got right.
Figure 7. Percentage who are bothered “a great deal” if northern ice melts, and percentage who support reserving Antarctica for science, by polar knowledge score (0–5 answers correct) and science literacy score (0–11 correct). These graphs depict pooled responses from 2006 (cross-section and panel) and 2010 (cross-section only) samples (n = 2,559).
Here is a similar graph with two other climate-concern questions.
Figure 8. Percentage who would be bothered “a great deal” if rising sea levels flood coastal areas, or if polar bears were to become extinct, by polar knowledge score (0–5 answers correct) and science literacy score (0–11 correct). These graphs depict pooled responses from 2006 (cross-section and panel) and 2010 (cross-section only) samples (combined n = 2,559).
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HSRV
Mountain climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Feb 16, 2014 - 12:16pm PT
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Is anyone involved in this thread privy to the "findings" that there was a 220-year mega-drought in what we now call California during the Medieval period in Europe, and that Lake Tahoe's level fell over 200 feet from its present average annual level, and that trees actually took root at that lower level and their drowned stumps have been found 200 feet below the current level and radio-carbon dated to the Medieval period?
I found this scientific report in a Google search but I've been unable to find any supporting/corroborating and/or contravening reports.
If this is in fact true that there was a 220-year mega-drought over 1,000 years ago it casts serious doubt on AGW forcing. Tahoe was apparently not the only Sierra lake greatly impacted by that mega-drought. The field evidence points to just about every Sierra lake having dried up and that California's rivers became trickles for decades.
Of course "we" know that ocean currents (PDO and others) drive weather and determine long-range climate fluctuations, and there's absolutely no reason to believe that California's long-range weather patterns are fixed in stone. There's no reason to think that another multi-decade mega-drought cannot occur, AGW or no AGW. Imagine if you dare what would happen in this state that has 90% more people than it should have if another mega-drought develops and the annual precipitation rates here fall to levels that can only support 10% or less of today's California population. Are the other 49 states ready for a deluge of 30-million-plus drought emigrants from this state?
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HSRV
Mountain climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Feb 16, 2014 - 12:35pm PT
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No garden path, Bruce, just an open-minded person here, never slave to orthodoxy from any quarter. The question is an honest question: Was there a pre-industrial age 220-year mega-drought in California? That very long and detailed research paper presented by a large team of scientists in various related fields says there was. I just have been unable to find any other studies that affirm or dispute the conclusions of the report.
And it's not Harold Stevie Ray Vaughn, it's Hot Steve "Rasputin" Vole.
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HSRV
Mountain climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Feb 16, 2014 - 12:56pm PT
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The problem I see with the AGW debate -- and yes, it is still a legitimate debate because no linear relationship has ever been demonstrated -- is the reciprocal ad hominem dismissal of one another's opposing positions. The instant one attacks another person's character in what should be an atmosphere (no pun intended but I'll take credit) of open-minded free exchange of ideas, then those resorting to the character attacks lose all credibility even if their position possesses some objective fact.
In 2009 when I submitted an article questioning AGW's forcing intensity (not questioning CO2 as a greenhouse gas) to a leading newspaper, the editor called me and though he freely professed his ignorance in any science, he said, and I quote him verbatim, "Right-wing global warming deniers like you should be silenced by any means possible." I had to roar in laughter as I enlightened him to my decades as a very liberal environmental activist with a degree in engineering.
AGW has become the new religion, and woe be it to anyone -- especially liberal environmentalists -- who dare utter anything deemed heresy to the "faith".
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