Just another Reality-based bubble in the foam of the multiverse.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Apocalypse wow

When the self proclaimed experts get their facts wrong, it's no wonder people just have a hard time understanding what to think.

It's hard to take professional bloviators seriously. So let me engage in some amateur bloviating. Although, unlike President Gore, I actually have a professional degree in a biological science.

Fact: carbon dioxide pollution damages the environment above and beyond global warming. Think acidification of the oceans. Think destruction of global fisheries, and coral reefs, and interuption of the role of the oceans as a sink for carbon emissions that will only accelerate the damage.

Fact: greenhouse effects due to carbon dioxide are dangerous depending on what the Sun is doing. During active solar years, you have things like Katrina and the endless parade of hurricanes we saw every summer in the first half of this decade. But we've had an abnormally extended solar minimum for the last 3 years- and no real hurricanes to hit the United States to speak of this year.

Hypothesis: the greenhouse effect of the current high carbon dioxide atmosphere might drown the coasts in normal years of solar activity but block the development Ice Ages during extended quiet times for the sun. That is one awful tradeoff. It is no justification for the carbon emissions of industrial socieies. High CO2 is dangerous. It should be controlled and lowered through biogenic fixation.

Think trees.

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