ice is growing… whee!

"The oceans are collapsing"

Whatever that broad-gauged term means?

"Fisheries are vanishing"

Not vanishing, some have been depleted by overfishing, but that's not AGW, now is it?

"coarl reefs are bleeching out and dying."

Some have been stressed, and some have died, but that goes in cycles and has been for a long time.

Actually, overall ocean health is pretty good and the problems that are present and Man related are not AGW related.

"Along with global warming has been an increase acidification, which will be devistating to coral reefs."

False, this alleged "acidification" is another boogeman that doesn't hold up to close scrutiny.

For Crowell and others, this is really about the credibility of a segment of scientists. If they reality soaks in (no AGW) a lot of these guys stand to loose credibility and perhaps funding.

So, this goes back to "follow the money" and who gets to redistribute the wealth.

We could then proceed to consider forests. where in spite of the concern over rain forest destruction back in the 1980s the rate of deforestation has about doubled since then.

Some alarming articles have appearsed in the AAAS Science in the last couple of years on the alarming increase in H_2S producing bacteria on shorelines and estuaries. This can be considered with the evidence these bacilli appear to bloom during mass extinction periods. Yeah, is that another canary in the cage? Have we seen a number of canaries drop?

Global warming is just a planetary wide problem, and in some ways the flagship issue. We humans appear to be similar to the mold or bacteria that eats up the agar on the petrie dish — and then dies leaving behind a black crisp of waste. While we are at it you might want to check out Jerod Diamond's chilling essay "Easter's End."

LC

And who gets to "redistribute the wealth".

your name is aqua and you keep trying to let us know how bad things are in the oceans.

i respect that.

i remember reading somewhere that the overall level of marketable fish in the ocean has decreased by close to 90% in the last 100 years. i never bothered to verify that claim. the article also claims that most of us are simply unaware, due to the fact that the changes happened over the course of a few generations.

i live in a coastal community and i can certainly verify that in the last few decades, the number of fish around here has decreased by quite a large amount.

October 28th, 2009 at 4:43 am
Pvt.Pantzov Says:

the surface of the earth and atmosphere will continue to slowly heat as the sun ages. one day it'll get mighty warm around here.

Yeah in about 1,000,000,000 years.

By then the bacteria living in your armpits will probably have evolved into multi celled lifeforms.

So we do have lots of time to get on with the astronomy.

////////////////////

yeah. glad you got that one. your post does bring an interesting question to mind: since it will happen over such a long period of time, will life evolve alongside this gradual warming into a form that can survive at what would today be condsidered impossibly extreme temperatures? the time frame is (relatively) vast, so perhaps…

Well yeah, and we could have arguments on UT whether the sun is a huge ball of hydrogen with nuclear fusion, or whether a god named Helios rides across the sky, or that the Earth is flat and rides on a turtle, or geocentrism, or Descarte's vortex theory, or … .

LC

See where it says "('70s)" right next to "Global Ice Age". I put that there for a reason.

And the second part of your polite comment is incorrect. The Scientific Consensus in the Seventies was that we were heading into a man made ice age, brought about by particulate? pollution reducing sunlight at ground level and causing massive crop failures and starvation. And so on.

Lawrence B. Crowell –
What are you talking about? We want to hear all sides. There is passion on "both" sides and we want to hear all, don't we?.. I do..

sometimes the truth IS alarming. did that ever cross your mind?!

If you think your arguement has any weight, then tell me, why is there no global warming, what makes Nancy's data wrong….where's YOUR evidence!

"Your attacks at LC and Tacitus are mean and rabid"
But not your" science denying crazies" comment, right?

You guys are immersed in the Saul Alinsky scientific method. Those who disagree with you are crazy, ignorant, for sale to the highest bidder, not worthy of being heard.

I visit this site regularly and LC and Tacitus are the very worst offenders when it comes to personalizing issues. LC more than Tacitus, but still…

Any honest observer here would laugh at the idea that they have not used this site to attack those who question the Global Ice Age ('70s), Global Warming. then Global Climate Change, and now back to Global Warming again. All in insulting terms. I dare either one to deny that they have been insulting commenters here for years.

As Tacitus admits, he does, but "THEY HAVE IT COMING."

Save me the tears. I decide to inject the same kind of political snark into my post that LC has been dishing out for years and he whines about having the post removed. What a guy.

As for Palin, my views have nothing to do with gender. She can't hold a complete thought, let alone the highest office in the land.

LC

But not your dozens and dozens of political remarks, your snarky comments about people of religious faith, your sexist comments about Sarah Palin, your sarcastic remarks about conservative IQ and cognitive abilities. And on and on.

What a hypocrite.

By the way, what poltical party to this day honors the "former" West Virginia Grand Kleagle of the KKK, Robert Byrd, as their CURRENT senior U.S. Senator?

No surprise. It's the Democratic Party.

.

In the end either we do something about our energy/entropy situation on this planet or we don't. Biological evolution in the end cares little if we collapse into extinction because of our exuberant consumption of the planet's resources and end up drowning in our wastes. It is a maxim that any species of life influences its environment, which adjusts accordingly to attenuate any overgrowth of that species. The same applies for Homo sapiens. It should take little to see that our massive mining and dumping (including putting CO_2 in the air) activities must have some impact, and in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics this is increasing entropy of the planetary biosphere. Once entropy reaches a maximum point that is equilibrium, and in biology equilibrium is the same as death.

If people fail to see this, or refuse to acknowledge at least the plausibility of this, then yes I will say they are either ignorant or stupid. For S = entropy it is a simple fact that dS/dt >= 0, and anyone who denies this is living in an intellectual dark age.

As for politics, which is to my mind a form of secularized religion, in the end our choice amounts to sanity or insanity. It matters little right now whether Democrats were the party of Jim Crow Dixiecrats, who the GOP snatched up in Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” BTW, 50 years ago. What matters is that we get people who have some shred of sanity and realism and who pilot this troubled ship in some way which conforms to reason — at least some bit of reason. As I see it the Republicans are the Party of lunatocracy, and we got eight years of this just recently — along with two wars. I will make no bones about this, Bush was a delusional madman and Cheney a psychopath, along with a cadre of madmen and thugs like Rumsfeld and Rove. At least if nothing else that is over. Hey and besides, Steven Chu is Secretary of Energy, a Nobelist in physics and someone who can work to put things on some basis of reality. If we throw Obama out and put Palin in, and this seems to be what GOP’ers are working towards, then we will be back to lunatocracy. It is appalling that bellicose demagogues like Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Dobbs are becoming the ideological voice of this nation. If this is where we are going then maybe it is best to spend one’s days questing for the bottom of whiskey bottles.:-)

Sorry for the politics, it really is not appropriate here, but this topic seems to bring it on. I suppose this strikes a raw nerve in the same way that Anaconda gets Crumb on his high horse. For the most part the science is in. The avenue of escape where the QGW-deniers will win the day is very narrow and closing up fast. Them’s just the way it is. Denialism is then becoming a program of disinformation and lies.

Lawrence B. Crowell

Tacitus lies. I clearly stated my reason for asking the question. In fact, the usual suspects immediately verified my reason by stating that Nancy shouldn't post any dissenting news or opinion because " the debate is over". Great scientific method, boys. But still Acticus claims " no evidence whatsover". No shame.

"…there is only one side doing the foaming. Yeah, my comments are heavy on the sarcasm and disdain…. I believe it is well deserved."

Laugh out loud. Again, no shame. "Yeah, I foam at the mouth, but only the other guy is a mouth foamer."

And LC is the biggest hypocrite of all. He can't talk about an issue without adding in his juvenile assertions that "the other" is ignorant and simple minded. He even goes after Sarah Palin in this comment thread as a dimwit when his idea of a genius can't even keep track of how many states there are in the Union (it's 50, Obama). Our Idiot-in-Chief even admitted that he dragged his children to a racist church for years and only picked up on the pastor's hatemongering after twenty years of admiring him.

And let's not forget that Mr. Crowell votes Democrat, the Party of Slavery and Jim Crow. The party of Margaret Sanger, the famous founder of Planned Parenthood who warned white Democrats about the danger of "defective races" overwhelming all her white friends.

Good company for some, not for Republicans who fought against the Democratic racists.

Lets get back to astronomy…

But first, this thought: "Remove Thy sandals, for thou art standing on Holy ground."

This does involve politics (note the number of posts to see evidence of that), and it means we will have to change things. Conservatives rarely like change of this sort, for it means an economic adjustment. Many conservatives don't like to change how they think as well — and that is where it gets strange. So of late we have had tea bag parties and some right winged vitriole against healthcare reform, global warming, and immigrants.

We are in a time where we will find out whether science and reason will guide policy and public opinion, or whether overweight yelling windbags on radio/TV media will fill that role.

LC

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=dead+zones+in+the+ocean&aq=0&aqi=g10&oq=Dead+zones&fp=8ec9ea851cee2c5b

I am PARTICULARLY concerned with the West Coast of the US… I am a recreational shore fisherman, I've fished for more than 40 years. There USED to be fish. Today? There aren't any…. Deep trawlers strip mining the bottom and Long Liners taking out the middle and top.. They've just about got them all! When WHAM! Pollution from overpopulation finishes the deed?

Nancy posts one news story on this site related to global warming — the first one she's posted on the subject in weeks, if not months. I certainly can't remember the last one, and I read almost all of them.

The topic isn't even that controversial — it simply refutes the denier's claims that there is a statistically significant cooling trend. That's absolutely correct — it's far too soon to make that claim based on the evidence so far, even if it turns out to be true.

And what does Nancy get for her troubles? She's immediately accused of being a propagandist for GW (based on no evidence whatsoever) and another says he's quitting the site because he's fed up of the constant politics and religion on the site — er? based on what??

And if you look through the rest of the comments, there is only one side doing the foaming. Yeah, my comments are heavy on the sarcasm and disdain, but given the knee-jerk reaction from the deniers to a single article about GW on a site that posts hundreds of astronomy articles a month, I believe it is well deserved.