Climate change bust up: We'll launch our own damn satellites if Trump pulls plug – Gov Brown California Governor Jerry Brown promises that no matter how "absurd" the upcoming Republican presidential administration's response to climate-change science, the state of California will be ready with a robust response – with weapons ranging from satellites to databases to lawyers. Speaking at the American Geophysical Union's …
"The oceans can only become acidic if the earth runs out of rocks!"
Citation required. Take your time.
Reasons for this statement of yours being utter rubbish:
Most rocks in the ocean's floor are calcareous deposits. Guess what happens when you put calcareous rocks in acidic -i.e. containing lots of H2CO3- seawater. Nah, I'll save you the effort: part of the calcium combines with other elements and forms more stable salts that precipitate as solids. Therefore more CO2 than the amount 'neutralized' gets freed from said rocks. It's exactly the same process that shells and coral skeletons -also made of calcium carbonate- undergo. Lots of studies about this, some of them dated almost a century ago. Google them yourself, as I don't consider saving you from your ignorance one of my priorities.
"Most of those peer-reviewed studies were total rubbish where eg researchers chucked large doses of hydrochloric acid into the water to see how fish or coral reacted"
Bullshit. Such studies exist but are not a majority. The ones I'm talking about are the ones where water samples are taken, analysed, and the results correlated with the state of sea life and geological formations in the area. If you doubt this, google the relevant words and take a look at the first pages of results. Somehow I got this hunch that you won't do it, but will come back here to spew more BS instead.
"...peer review [...] is a crock."
Of course! Every scientific research should be reviewed and authorised by you and your pals instead. Much more unbiased than all those conspiring scientists, eh?
Asshat.
"Now I know you are a nutter!"
ROFLMAO
It's exactly the same process that shells and coral skeletons -also made of calcium carbonate- undergo.It's not actually. Shells do not form from minerals precipitated from the surrounding seawater (outside in); they form from the inside out. The internal pH of the shelly fauna is as affected by the pH of seawater as my wife's blood pH is affected by her rinsing her hair in vinegar. That is not at all.
It's also worth noting that there are many natural CO2 seeps that bubble a continuous stream of CO2 into the sea. They are surrounded by abundant sealife, including corals and shelly fauna.
CO2 Seep The article accompanying the image claims that the coccoliths are suffering from dissolved shells, but the abundance of coccoliths during the Paleocene-Eocene CO2 excursion never changed.
"The internal pH of the shelly fauna is as affected by the pH of seawater as my wife's blood pH is affected by her rinsing her hair in vinegar. That is not at all."
Yes, and as shelled fauna and coral polyps are immortal... oh, wait...
And of course what happens in the interface between the growing part of the shell and the seawater has no importance at all, eh?
And changing the water's pH absolutely doesn't affect the availability of nutrients for the shelled organisms or the abundance of minerals to be used when building the shell.
What's next? The world is a disc balanced on top of four reproductions of The Donald's hairdo?
Regarding the vinegar thingy, I'd suggest you this easy experiment: Fill a vat with warm salty water. Put you feet into the vat and let them there for half an hour or longer. See if there is any strange taste in your mouth. (hint: there will be)
You can replace the salt with a generous amount vinegar in the experiment, but don't sue me if your toenails fall off or dissolve. :-)
Oh dear! Did I really write all those words you are attributing to me? Or are you just making stuff up?
As it happens I perform the bath experiment a 3-4 times a week. I'm severely arthritic and bath salts help relieve the pain. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with CO2 dissolution in seawater.
Have you ever attempted to alter the pH of seawater with CO2? If you had, you would discover it doesn't work terribly well. Perhaps you should try reading and understanding the literature.
Here's an interesting paper published in Geochemistry, Geophysics,Geosystems : Species-specific responses of calcifying algae to changing seawater carbonate chemistry
AbstractUptake of half of the fossil fuel CO2 into the ocean causes gradual seawater acidification. This has been shown to slow down calcification of major calcifying groups, such as corals, foraminifera, and coccolithophores. Here we show that two of the most productive marine calcifying species, the coccolithophores Coccolithus pelagicus and Calcidiscus leptoporus, do not follow the CO2-related calcification response previously found. In batch culture experiments, particulate inorganic carbon (PIC) of C. leptoporus changes with increasing CO2 concentration in a nonlinear relationship. A PIC optimum curve is obtained, with a maximum value at present-day surface ocean pCO2 levels (∼360 ppm CO2). With particulate organic carbon (POC) remaining constant over the range of CO2 concentrations, the PIC/POC ratio also shows an optimum curve. In the C. pelagicus cultures, neither PIC nor POC changes significantly over the CO2 range tested, yielding a stable PIC/POC ratio. Since growth rate in both species did not change with pCO2, POC and PIC production show the same pattern as POC and PIC. The two investigated species respond differently to changes in the seawater carbonate chemistry, highlighting the need to consider species-specific effects when evaluating whole ecosystem responses. Changes of calcification rate (PIC production) were highly correlated to changes in coccolith morphology. Since our experimental results suggest altered coccolith morphology (at least in the case of C. leptoporus) in the geological past, coccoliths originating from sedimentary records of periods with different CO2 levels were analyzed. Analysis of sediment samples was performed on six cores obtained from locations well above the lysocline and covering a range of latitudes throughout the Atlantic Ocean. Scanning electron micrograph analysis of coccolith morphologies did not reveal any evidence for significant numbers of incomplete or malformed coccoliths of C. pelagicus and C. leptoporus in last glacial maximum and Holocene sediments. The discrepancy between experimental and geological results might be explained by adaptation to changing carbonate chemistry.
""Most of those peer-reviewed studies were total rubbish where eg researchers chucked large doses of hydrochloric acid into the water to see how fish or coral reacted"
Bullshit. Such studies exist but are not a majority. "
http://www.nature.com/news/crucial-ocean-acidification-models-come-up-short-1.18124
<i>Yet according to a survey published last month by marine scientist Christopher Cornwall, who studies ocean acidification at the University of Western Australia in Crawley, and ecologist Catriona Hurd of the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia, <b>most</b> reports of such laboratory experiments either used inappropriate methods or did not report their methods properly </i>
Notice where it says "MOST"
From the paper itself
<I>To assess the use of appropriate experimental design in ocean acidification research, 465 studies published between 1993 and 2014 were surveyed, focusing on the methods used to replicate experimental units. The proportion of studies that had interdependent or non-randomly interspersed treatment replicates, or did not report sufficient methodological details was 95%.</I>
95% were not fit for purpose
<I>In a comparable analysis, there was a significant decrease in the number of published studies that employed inappropriate chemical methods of manipulating seawater (i.e. acid–base only additions) from 21 to 3%, </I>
Coral is slow growing and although things have improved as recently as 2010 21% of studies were using "inappropriate chemical methods of manipulating seawater"
Kip Hansen covered this here https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/04/ocean-acidification-trying-to-get-the-science-right/
<I>Further, “the number of experimental units used per treatment in studies was low (mean = 2.0).” Think about that — imagine doing a medical study, an RCT, but using only 2 patients per cohort. Then consider that there are obvious co-confounders with the two patients, such as being siblings! No journal would touch the resultant paper – it would have no significance at all. Granted, one might get away with reporting it as a Case Study, but it would never be considered clinically important or predictive. And yet that is precisely the situation we find generally in OA research – very small numbers of experimental units poorly isolated, often with co-confounders that obfuscate or invalidate treatment effects.</I>
Note "No journal would touch the resultant paper – it would have no significance at all." and yet these papers got past peer review.
As I said you are a nutter!!!
ROFLMAO
"The bad news is that this carbon sink is already failing"
Even before that stage, our ability to put carbon into the atmosphere has been outrunning the sinks' ability to absorb it for some time. A reduction in sink capacity(*) isn't really proven at this point but it doesn't need to be if we keep emitting at current rates.
The added factor of the risk of a few gigatonnes of methane burping out off the north coast of Siberia(**) thanks to incursions of warm water into the arctic ocean shouldn't be discounted. What's allegedly come out already is probably enough to account for the "mystery methane level increases" that have been recently reported (and blamed on farming) as methane watching satellite instruments haven't been looking that far north(***)
(*)An "Anoxic event."
(**) Leptav Sea methane emissions.(****)
(***) They are now, but the instrumentation has an extremely hard job seeing methane emisions on water (not enough contrast)
(****) Some US researchers are actively poo-poohing these reports, because there's no easy way of verifying Russian reports(+) - but they're also trying to discourage anyone looking to see if they can be verified.
(+) Russia makes life hard for its own scientists, let alone foreign ones wanting to come and verify observations and the researcher's reports are accused of being extreme exaggerations.
causing the oceans to acidify very noticeably, as proved by many -scientific, peer reviewed- studies.Acidify: "To make acid or sour. Chem. To convert into an acid by combination with any substance."
The oceans are everywhere pH 8.2. To qualify as acidic, the pH would need to be less than 7. pH greater than 7 is basic. And that's basic chemistry I learnt in secondary school.
It's only in your tiny mind that people actually deny that the climate changes. What people deny is the accuracy of the climate models and the prophets of doom.
There's going to be a paper published in the not-too-distant future demonstrating exactly what's wrong with the models and proving that climate sensitivity to CO2 isn't a massive issue.
I'm sure there will be a place in Trump's USA for some scientists to continue studying the climate. However, what they won't be doing is spending billions on supercomputers and engaging in extreme Marxist political advocacy designed to crash the western economies.
All sensible people will rejoice and look forward to their tax money being spent on things which really matter to them. Obviously, dumocrats will continue to whine and expect the sky to fall on their heads.
Ah, "dumocrats!" What wit! What brilliance! What fine analytical excellence exposing "extreme Marxist political advocacy!"
Asshat ...
Oh, and we look forward to the "paper published in the not-too-distant future demonstrating exactly what's wrong with the models and proving that climate sensitivity to CO2 isn't a massive issue." Written by a member of the Heartland Institute, perhaps?
I find it impossible to imagine people dumber than dumocrats. They voted for a mass murdering, criminal, hypocritical, rape accomplice, lying, alleged child molester and evident psychopath with a chronic neurological condition that may well kill her within the four year presidential term.
It's obvious the science is wrong because the models are complete bullshit. Someone has figured out the mistake and it'll be published soon at which point Trump will most probably close NASA;).
Enjoy your delusion for the last few months it'll have.
Please, sir, just go away. Go away. And, might I humbly request, go away quickly. There are other websites that I do believe at which you might find more comfort and cursor: Breitbart? Infowars? World News Daily? The Daily Caller?
You'll be happier there amongst your science-denying peers, those of the "Don't blind me with facts 'n' data!" ilk. And we'll all be happier when you focus your energies there, seeing as how we won't have to deal with you hateful simplicity anymore, and you won't have to deal with our pointing out such silliness as, "It's obvious the science is wrong because the models are complete bullshit."
Silly, silly man ...
G'bye. Be well. And don't forget to write when you find work ...
It seems that climate scientists borrowed feedback math from electronic network analysis without really understanding it. Silly billies. Hopefully, they will all be summarily dismissed at the very least or held criminally responsible for the mess they've made. Those guys are the congenital liars. My biggest congential problem is a having an enormous cock.
"I'm sure there will be a place in Trump's USA for some scientists to continue studying the climate. However, what they won't be doing is spending billions on supercomputers and engaging in extreme Marxist political advocacy designed to crash the western economies."
^ It is actually depressing to see such anti-science, political and economic ignorance on public display in one place for all to see. When scientifically literate Republicans and Christian Evangelists accept the reality of climate change then that is a clear indication that something really is happening and that something has got to be done about it. It is not a matter of the end of Western market economies but just of tweaking them in the right way to move smoothly without undue disruption to a sustainable low carbon economy.
"The physics wasn't as solid as you seem to think" - Denialist Coward
Says the scientific illiterate.
The facts are simple. Long wave radiation is absorbed by CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, and re-radiated in a random direction - 50% of the time with a downward directional component.
This makes the movement of that long wave radiation a random walk, and the statistics of random walks is well known.
So unless you are going to invalidate the last 200 years of science, your childish pronouncements are not going to be realised.
On the other hand if you think that you are going to invalidate the last 200 years of science developed by literally millions of experts, then you have some serious mental illness and need to get some psychiatric help.
Indeed it is pejorative and provoking. There are many of us who know there's climate change and warming going on. We're not sure of the reasons though due to too much screaming, urinating contests and manipulation of the data by both sides. The jury is out on why.
Having said that.. I'm all for nuke fusion/fission plants to generate power. It's the smart thing although maybe not politically correct thing to do.
I am happy enough to believe that there are gasses that manage to stop some heat being lost, I also suspect that as the earth warms it will lose heat more rapidly to the relative cold space, no idea and frankly little interest in the over all balance and whether we end up 20 degrees warmer next year.
What I know is that all the major governments are actually doing is to use it as an excuse to add even more to my already ridiculous tax bill. They are NOT fixing the roads, not removing road blocks, not helping with sensible alternative transports (fireless steam, compressed air and the likes) but are wasting time and effort on the impractical and useless (electric cars that will require 3 or 4 charging stations each, more rare earth metals than the earth possesses and will never manage to 'refuel' in a sensible time), not forcing people to allow for home working (no taxing my fuel and taxing my car, taxing my parking space while there is no public transport means I get a choice work or not, rather than a chance to save time, effort and money doing my job from home....... and the company that says I must be in the office so I can communicate effectively is the same one that happily offshored the jobs of most of my colleagues because of course I can run my project with people in 12 different countries, even though I obviously need to do that from the office because phoning from 15 miles down the road isnt possible.....
"I also suspect that as the earth warms it will lose heat more rapidly to the relative cold space,"
The relative change in planetary heat vs space is a tiny fraction of 1% (you need to refer it on the Kelvin scale). A warming capable of obliterating life on earth would result in a very tiny increased reradiation rate into space, so your suspicion is mostly wishful thinking.
The basic — and may I repeat that? thanks: "basic, basic, basic, basic" — and irrefutable physics behind the blockage, absorption, and re-radiation of long-wave radiation by large, active molecules such as CO2, CH4, N2O, and the like, and how that blockage and re-radiation warms the troposphere, surface, and ocean in quite easily measurable and quantifiable amounts while concomitantly and measurably cooling the stratosphere, have been well-demonstrated for many decades.But that is not climate. Climate is the "Condition (of a region or country) in relation to prevailing atmospheric phenomena, as temperature, dryness or humidity, wind, clearness or dullness of sky, etc., esp. as these affect human, animal, or vegetable life."
To which end we have the most widely used climate classification system: Köppen climate classification. Here is the current map.
Please tell me which of these Köppen climate zones have changed over the last century and provide evidence for your assertion. Calling me a "climate denialist" doesn't cut the mustard. Especially since my understanding of climate (obtained at Big School) is that Earth's climates were different 6,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago etc.
Until you provide the evidence I will continue to believe that "Deniers" is a "pejorative" term.
"Please tell me which of these Köppen climate zones have changed over the last century and provide evidence for your assertion. Calling me a "climate denialist" doesn't cut the mustard. Especially since my understanding of climate (obtained at Big School) is that Earth's climates were different 6,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago etc.
Until you provide the evidence I will continue to believe that "Deniers" is a "pejorative" term."
How about you please stop posting your total anti-science BS on this technology website instead? If you really want to know and understand what's going on then all you have to do is read the information supplied by major national science academies such as the USA's National Academy of Sciences or the UK's Royal Society since they are composed of the very best scientists that this planet has.
How about you please stop posting your total anti-science BS on this technology website instead?M. C. Peel (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), B. L. Finlayson (School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), and T. A. McMahon (The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) are the authors of Updated world map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification published in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. What precisely makes referring to the work of scientists published in an academic scientific journal "anti-science bullshit"? What makes reading "information" from the NAS and RS preferable to taking undergraduate classes that cover climatology? Do you attain to a degree by reading "information"? When I studied biology, physics and chemistry in the 1960s, was that anti-science too?
Here you have the temperature variations over the last 22000 years: https://xkcd.com/1732/ :-)
Seriously; glaciers _are_ retreating just about everywhere (and at an accelerating rate), and Arctic sea-ice is diminishing.
I am sure you will get your rethinking of climate zones.
Seriously; glaciers _are_ retreating just about everywhere (and at an accelerating rate), and Arctic sea-ice is diminishing.I M Bahuguna et al studied changes to 2,000 glaciers throughout the Himalayas between 2001 and 2011. They concluded that 1,700 were stable, showing the same surface area and no change of direction. 248 glaciers exhibited a retreat, and 18 an advance. Are the Himalayan glaciers retreating?
Isn't it funny how them who get their "science" from The Grauniad and The Daily Fail call those of us who actually read the literature "anti-science"?
doesnt composting also release co2?
One thing we dont do that might be sensible... burn methane, waste and other decomposing stuff in power stations instead of the fossil fuels. As I understand methane is 'worse' than co2 for its capacity to warm so decomposing the methane to the slightly less bad co2 might be at least a start, lots of other things decompose (rotting paper, wood, food, people...) giving off all sorts. OK it doesnt stop producing co2 but turns the equation total warming = effects of methane + effects of fossil fuel burning + effects of decomposition to a more manageable warming = effects of burning rubbish
Burning rubbish can be done... the Danes do it now and the Victorian engineers in Cambridge did it 100+ years ago when they wanted to get the turds out of the Cambridge streets
... and an inventor, scientist, philanthropist to the city of Metropolis, and one of the most intelligent people in the world.
So, no contest there, really. Although I'm open to being surprised; after all who can tell just what really is under that all that orange, well I hesitate to call it hair. Not holding my breath, though.
There are quite a few. My favorite is Fort Ord:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Ord
It has the (Mazda-branded) Laguna Seca racetrack on premise and can be converted to a launch site with minimal funding.
Mather is too close to populations for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mather_Air_Force_Base
Same for Moffett: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moffett_Federal_Airfield
And the always rockin' Edwards AFB the popular place to land space shuttles and other land-able spacecraft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwards_Air_Force_Base
And many more that I'm too lazy to look up! :)
"how Moonbeam is going to keep the satellite over California at all times"
Nice soundbit. Incredibly stupid, also. If you really think that global climate research can be carried out by studying only California, you probably should watch again Sesame Street, several times in a row.
And even if you wanted a satellite to study only California -e.g. to obtain data about fires, surface temperatures, humidity and plant coverage in said State- there are two revolutionary, never carried out before, state of the art concepts that you may not be aware of. Namely, Geostationary satellites and satellite constellations. This may look like Science Fiction to you and many of your fellow deniers, but strong evidence suggests it's perfectly doable. ;-)
"Mephistro, was your sense of humour surgically removed at birth?"
I reckon that there are online discussions -often related to religion, ideology, race and lately also climate- where jokes can be taken as statements of fact by some of the less intellectually gifted readers, and, alas, cause said readers to take very bad decisions. As an example: The supposed support of Pope Francis for the Trump presidential campaign, which even being clearly a hoax has probably given Trumpf a few hundreds or even thousands of votes. ;-)
> "I reckon that there are online discussions -often related to religion, ideology, race and lately also climate- where jokes can be taken as statements of fact by some of the less intellectually gifted readers, and, alas, cause said readers to take very bad decisions."
@Mephistro, I joked about California having a satellite in orbit only over one state. Your worry that innocents might take this seriously and make bad decisions is touching, but misplaced. Just like your sense of humour. ;-/
There are launch sites for hire outside the US too. The same deregulation and chaos used to make Billionaires Great Again would also make it hard to keep track of what California is up to. California depends on the weather being as it is so they won't hesitate to fight industrial activity that may change it.
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