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Shingle
climber
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Feb 29, 2012 - 10:01am PT
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most sea life may be dead in 50 years.
Reference please?
I don't think even this rather alarming report http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/1806_IPSOshort.pdf goes nearly that far.
I find it hard to believe that sea life which has adapted to the extreme stressors to Earths climate occurring over hundreds of millions of years will not somehow adapt to the relatively minor changes being discussed here.
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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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Feb 29, 2012 - 11:28am PT
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I find it hard to believe that sea life which has adapted to the extreme stressors to Earths climate occurring over hundreds of millions of years will not somehow adapt to the relatively minor changes being discussed here.
Sorry, but marine life is not immune to massive stress events. At the time of the most recent mass-extinction (end of the Cretaceous period) 50% of marine genera (that's the category above species) went extinct.
GO
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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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Feb 29, 2012 - 11:58am PT
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Ed, I agree with most of the above, aside from this: Also, we infer that those past changes occurred over a time period which was relatively long and for which adaptation was possible.
It is harder to speak with as much certainty about older events, but my understanding is that there is pretty good consensus around the fact that the massive extinction at the end of the Cretaceous followed an impact with a large meteor. It's hard to imagine a causal event with a shorter time period than that!
GO
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Feb 29, 2012 - 12:03pm PT
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All marine life is unlikely to go soon, but we're already headed toward seas with less vertebrate life and more slime. Plenty of life still, but that won't be a happy transition for humans.
Marine ecosystems are stressed by other human activities (notably pollution and overfishing) besides climate change. But on that topic it's uncomfortable to see a recent paper in Geology presenting new evidence that global warming (greenhouse consequences of massive vulcanism) precipitated the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event -- considered to be the greatest ever, in which 70% of land species and 96% of marine species died. Vertebrates took 30 million years to recover.
"Climate warming in the latest Permian and the Permian–Triassic mass extinction", Joachimski et al. (2012)
High-resolution oxygen isotope records document the timing and magnitude of global warming across the Permian-Triassic (P-Tr) boundary. Oxygen isotope ratios measured on phosphate-bound oxygen in conodont apatite from the Meishan and Shangsi sections (South China) decrease by 2‰ in the latest Permian, translating into low-latitude surface water warming of 8 °C. The oxygen isotope shift coincides with the negative shift in carbon isotope ratios of carbonates, suggesting that the addition of isotopically light carbon to the ocean-atmosphere system by Siberian Traps volcanism and related processes resulted in higher greenhouse gas levels and global warming. The major temperature rise started immediately before the main extinction phase, with maximum and harmful temperatures documented in the latest Permian (Meishan: bed 27). The coincidence of climate warming and the main pulse of extinction suggest that global warming was one of the causes of the collapse of the marine and terrestrial ecosystems. In addition, very warm climate conditions in the Early Triassic may have played a major role in the delayed recovery in the aftermath of the Permian-Triassic crisis.
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/40/3/195.abstract
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Feb 29, 2012 - 01:01pm PT
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Today's LA Times:
Subterfuge vs. propaganda in global warming debate
Environmental advocate Peter Gleick's admission that he obtained Heartland Institute documents, including its plan to fight global warming policies, has the wrong side answering questions.
By Michael Hiltzik
February 29, 2012
Peter Gleick is about the last person you'd expect to put himself in the position to be labeled a thief, a faker, and a crook.
The recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant in 2003, as co-founder and president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute he's been one of our most sober and thoughtful environmental advocates and an indispensable voice for rational water policy in California and nationwide. I've seen him withstand a most obnoxious and fatuous interrogation by a brain-dead congressman with absolute equanimity.
So it was rather a surprise to read his recent confession to having obtained, by subterfuge, a sheaf of internal documents belonging to the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, a nest of global warming deniers and corporate anti-regulators, and making them public. The documents include a memo outlining Heartland's plan to fight global warming policies, which the organization says is a forgery, and papers detailing its 2012 budget and fundraising plans, whose authenticity Heartland doesn't dispute.
It's a sign of the emotions wrapped up in the global warming debate that Gleick should be apologizing for his actions today while the Heartland Institute stakes out the moral high ground.
Gleick has thrown himself at the mercy of the court of public opinion — he explained his action partially by his frustration with "often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated" attacks on climate science and scientists and has stepped down, at least temporarily, from the Pacific Institute.
But it's Heartland, which has tagged Gleick with the epithets above, that should be answering for its nearly three-decade history of corporate shilldom. In that time it has fought health and safety regulations on tobacco (with the financial assistance of Philip Morris), attacked evidence about acid rain as "flimflam" and the case against DDT as "scientific fraud." The theme of its 2009 environmental conference was "Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?"
Over the years its backers have included Exxon Mobil and the foundations of the Koch family and Richard Mellon Scaife. Its current agenda encompasses lobbying against insurance regulation, with funding from such insurance industry pillars as State Farm; cable and Internet regulation (support from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and other such companies); and healthcare reform (contributors have included Pfizer and Eli Lilly). It identifies its mission as promoting "free-market solutions to social and economic problems." You are free to interpret this theme as getting government off the backs of the people, so that big business can saddle up.
Global warming is one of those issues in which the natural complexity of the underlying science is exploited by well-funded, commercially self-interested obfuscators such as the oil and gas industry, the latters' goal being to discredit in the public mind what are in fact robust scientific conclusions. There can be few fields where more is at stake, given the likely impact on all of us of documented climate trends.
So let's take a look at what light is shed on the global warming debate by l'affaire Gleick.
To begin with, Gleick's disclosures have cornered Heartland into committing an act of spectacular hypocrisy. Ever since personal emails among climate scientists were abstracted from computers at Britain's University of East Anglia and made public in 2009 and 2011, Heartland has celebrated the breach, contending that the emails show the scientists conspiring to hide or misrepresent doubts about global warming. Yet the institute labels the release of its own internal documents "a flagrant violation of ethics."
Heartland tries to paper over this contradiction by tying the email releases to "a whistle-blower inside the University of East Anglia." The problem is that no one has ever identified the leaker, whether a whistle-blower or otherwise.
The school says its computers were hacked, and a police investigation is continuing in Britain. When I asked Heartland to defend its characterization, its spokesman remarked on the length of the police investigation and the absence of any charges or a confession. "If that doesn't point strongly to a legitimate internal whistle-blower, I don't know what does," he wrote me. Is this typical of the logical consistency of all Heartland's work?
The claim that the leaked emails showed scientists conspiring or misrepresenting their findings has been refuted by numerous official investigations, including a British parliamentary inquiry. The study by climate expert Michael Mann that was the topic of many of the emails, and which documented a sharp rise in global temperature in recent decades, was scrutinized in 2006 by the National Academy of Sciences, which endorsed its basic findings and the broader scientific consensus that the global warmth of the late 20th century was unprecedented over the previous millennium. In a nutshell, there's no scientific controversy that global warming exists and that human activities are irrefutably a leading cause of it.
That brings us back to the Heartland documents. It would be tragic if Gleick's effectiveness as an environmental advocate were sacrificed for what is, in truth, a meager haul. "There's not that much in the documents that we didn't already know or suspect," says Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at UC San Diego and coauthor of "Merchants of Doubt," a 2010 book documenting the efforts of Heartland and other sources to undermine scientific findings on environmental issues.
Much of the outrage over the Heartland documents has focused on their disclosure of the organization's plan to produce a grade-school curriculum casting doubt on the scientific consensus on global warming. A Heartland spokesman defended this project to me as an effort "to put more science into public schools, not less."
Yet criticizing Heartland for this strikes me as a waste of time. Propaganda is what Heartland does for a living; our obloquy should be reserved for any school board ignorant enough to accept a science curriculum from an industry-funded advocacy group.
Gleick's greatest gift to Heartland may be that the controversy has made it appear more relevant to the global warming debate than it really is. The documents themselves show Heartland struggling to raise money from conservative donors.
Heartland's biggest donor, an anonymous contributor whose millions have sometimes represented as much as 63% of its annual revenue, has advanced smaller amounts every year since 2008, falling below $1 million in 2011. (This is according to the fundraising document, the authenticity of which the institute doesn't dispute.) Heartland hopes to jack that up to $1.25 million this year, but it's unclear from its internal documents whether that number represents the donor's firm commitment or Heartland's wishful thinking. This year, for the first time, Heartland will mount a direct mail fundraising campaign, but the internal documents show that the campaign will cost more than $500,000 and operate at a loss for at least the first year.
The institute's total revenue has been dwindling since 2008, falling from $7.8 million that year to $4.6 million in 2011, according to annual tax returns it files publicly and to its internal budget document. The documents say Heartland plans to restore revenue all the way to $7.7 million this year, but they forecast success in its fundraising with a childlike optimism that makes your average high school pep rally sound like the last rites.
The ethics of Gleick's actions are a subject properly left to his organization's board and his God, not the sinners who have publicly weighed in on the matter, pro or con. If there's lasting damage from this episode, it comes from giving Oreskes' "merchants of doubt" another means of distracting policymakers from basing their work on firm scientific evidence rather than Heartland-style malarkey. To paraphrase the late novelist William Gaddis, obfuscation is "the one weapon stupidity's got against intelligence." The last thing the world needed was to give stupidity an opportunity to reload.
Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.
Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
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Could we be so lucky as to see the demise of Heartland?
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michaeld
Sport climber
Sacramento
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Feb 29, 2012 - 01:50pm PT
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This thread is a stress environment, sheesh. Can't you all just do your best to be eco-friendly hippies and stop arguing about who's better at googleing scientific articles?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Feb 29, 2012 - 01:52pm PT
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Dood, I'm not googling them.
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Psilocyborg
climber
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Feb 29, 2012 - 02:29pm PT
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Im so damn cynical these days, the argument of if co2 emmisions by humans is altering global temps boils down to who do you believe.
Everyone has an agenda. Everyone is full if sh#t these days....who do you trust?
Humans have evolved millions of years with this planet. Our destruction might actually be a good thing, much like a forest fire. Humans decide what is good and bad, mother earth just is.
I am confident in mother earth. No amount of nuclear bombs can touch it. Look at the history if the earth, the extinsion of the dinsaurs. Life lives on.
Bottom line is there is huge sums of money to be made from green retrofits. HUGE. People are greedy. Anywhere where there is billions of dollars shuffling hands you have to question.
As always the truth im sure lies in the middle. We need to be clean and recycle. Just dont feed into the bullshit about how all sea life is gonna die. Life will always live on. Perhaps human pollution will stregnthen the earth, like our own immune system. Perhaps its bad to not pollute. Point is, we just dont know enough, but as usual silly humans think we know whats best.
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Psilocyborg
climber
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Feb 29, 2012 - 02:39pm PT
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If humans evolved from bacteria, so did our greedy ego. Just makes you wonder what nature really intended....
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Feb 29, 2012 - 05:16pm PT
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It's NOT really about the extinction of humans or other life forms, unless you are talking about hundreds or thousands of years from now.
It's a question of econommics, at least in the next 100 years. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If we reduce greenhouse gas emissions now (e.g. drive cars that get 35 mpg instead of 15 mpg) it is much cheaper and easier than dealing with the aftermath of rising ocean levels, crop failures, disease, etc.
But who stands to win or lose by preventing it. That's what you really need to look at. Big oil doesn't want you to cut your oil consumption, and they don't care about small islands going under water.
I read an article that portrayed Heartland as a VICTIM LOL! The company that made money sowing the seeds of doubt that cigarettes can cause cancer, now makes money sowing the seeds of doubt that AGW is happening.
Look at the money and motivation of the various sides, the "warmist" side pales in comparison to the deniers.
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Psilocyborg
climber
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Feb 29, 2012 - 05:40pm PT
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An old example is freon. The research has been called into question long after DuPont raked it in after legislation was passed.
Science can fool people just like religion. Perhaps cheap freon is the devil, but it just makes you wonder when money is made hand over fist.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Feb 29, 2012 - 05:50pm PT
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There is No Money to be made by being a believer in GCC
Thats pure BS
So how did Al Gore get the money for his multi-multi-million$$ mansions? Royalties from inventing the Internet?
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Feb 29, 2012 - 06:11pm PT
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Al got his dough from his daddies oil ventures...
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Feb 29, 2012 - 06:50pm PT
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Take the blinders off Dr. F.
Climate Change industry:
http://www.climatechangebusiness.com/industry_segments
http://www.climatechangebusiness.com/first_annual_overview_climate_change_industry
In the hundreds of billions dollars. (This includes not just scientists/educators and Al Gore types like the deniers want you to believe, but alternative energy providers, etc.)
But of course the oil industry is about $4 TRILLION!
So there's much more money on the "deniers" side. And you also have to look at the type of people. Many people who work in climate change are motivated by protecting the planet, while many people in oil want big bucks.
You'd be more effective fighting the problems of this world if you see reality instead of black and white.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 29, 2012 - 09:04pm PT
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[I know, late to the party ...]
We're just not too worried about it. Capice?
-- blahblah
Say blahblah, where do you live?
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Shingle
climber
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. . . question what is true
Questioning 'what is true' is what defines science.
When we want others to stop questioning, we are no longer being scientists.
I may have been a bit overly hyperbolic
Exactly. Why the need to be hyperbolic at all? This is where you start to lose the persuasive argument.
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Shingle
climber
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At the time of the most recent mass-extinction (end of the Cretaceous period) 50% of marine genera (that's the category above species) went extinct.
GO
So it is your theory that climate change in the next 50 years (causing an end to 'most sea life') will be a far more significant event than the Cretaceous mass extinction event (only 50% loss of sea life)?
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Bob Harrington
climber
Bishop, California
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For a good read on the link between mass extinctions and global warming, check out Under a Green Sky, by Peter Ward.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Shingle:
Why the need to be hyperbolic at all? This is where you start to lose the persuasive argument.
I believe that. But it kinda looks like you don't, when your next post is a straw-man hyperbole:
So it is your theory that climate change in the next 50 years (causing an end to 'most sea life') will be a far more significant event than the Cretaceous mass extinction event (only 50% loss of sea life)?
GO did not advance that theory.
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Shingle
climber
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True - I suppose this has become a house of straw since GO said
marine life is not immune to massive stress events
and that was not my argument either.
In fact, one could say that indescriminate use of the terms 'skeptic' or 'denier' to those asking questions or challenging models pose their own strawman premise.
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