The blogprof highlights a story from the BBC that casts doubt on the theory of man-made global warming. Clownfish, the tropical species featured in the film Finding Nemo, tend to lose their hearing in more acidic water, and the oceans have been absorbing greater amounts of CO2, thus increasing their acidity, the story reports. The blogprof responds:
Now, what interested me about the article the most is the above argument is a tacit admission that any extra CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t stay in the atmosphere but is rather absorbed by various surfaces and media including the ocean. This undermines the alarmists claim that extra CO2 produced by man remains in the atmosphere and causes global warming. you cannot have both. Either the extra CO2 remains in the atmosphere or it does not. It turns out that the acidification of the oceans is more backed by science than non-existent global warming: News: CO2 levels in atmosphere haven’t changed in at least 150 years
Read more here. (Hat tip: Tom Nelson)
A couple of thoughts...
The graph in the linked article is only through 1960. What has happened since then?
"This undermines the alarmists claim that extra CO2 produced by man remains in the atmosphere and causes global warming. you cannot have both. Either the extra CO2 remains in the atmosphere or it does not."
That is amazingly simplistic and lazy thinking. Some CO2 remains in the atmosphere and some is absorbed by trees and oceans. It is not a matter of either or. It would be strange if rising atmospheric CO2 levels did not lead to increased absorbtion of CO2 into the oceans. But CO2 absorbtion by oceans is obviously not total or there would be NO atmospheric CO2.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe amount of CO2 that dissolved in the oceans and the amount that remains in the atmosphere is governed by a concept called partial pressure (you can search Wikipedia on that term). To put it simply, the ratio of the amount that is dissolved to the amount that remains is dependent on the total amount present and the temperature of the oceans. Colder water can contain more dissolved gas than warmer water can.
A Caltech scientist who I spoke to a few years ago stated that roughly 80% of the CO2 is dissolved in the oceans, and that the historical record going back over hundreds of thousands of years shows that when the oceans start to warm, the amount of atmospheric CO2 shows an increase with about a 400 to 800 year lag time. That is, the CO2 increase follows the temperature increase by 4 to 8 hundred years. When the oceans cool, the atmospheric CO2 level drop.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseProbably a dumb question but...Does anyone know if there is a total, finite amount of CO2 in the Earth's system? I ask because I've always wondered where the CO2 "went" in previous decreases shown in the climate record. Which then makes me wonder, absent man's involvement, what has made CO2 levels flucuate in the past?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe earth is not a closed system in the thermodynamic sense. Additional mass is added by meteorites, and is both added and lost due to the effect of the solar wind on the upper atmosphere. But for the purposes of your question, it's pretty close to a constant. When CO2 levels have declined in the past, the majority of the decline has probably been from it dissolving in the oceans, with a lesser part of the decline accounted for by intake by plants. Temperature increases (possibly from increased solar energy output or variations in the Earth's orbit or rotation) cause the CO2 to come out of the ocean, and of course fires and volcanoes also add to atmospheric CO2.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is totally bogus. The blogprof text makes reference to Knorr's paper in GPL but the graph is from a much discredited "study" by Beck. Further, the premise that CO2 levels haven't changed in 150 years is based on the Beck paper. Knorr's paper found a steady increase.
Why don't you do some real research before you publish this trash.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm sorry, but I have to ask. How do you test a clownfishes hearing? Do they put little headphones on them? Wave your right fin when you hear a sound in your right gill...
I'll go back to my corner now...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf the CO2 stored in fossil fuels was all released, there would be quite an uptick in atmospheric CO2 for awhile, but much of that would be eventually absorbed by the oceans and life in them would probably change - not be destroyed, but changed. Same as on the surface, planet would get warmer which in the aggregate would be better for humans. A warmer planet by definition means the planet isn't colder - and we should fear, and I mean this seriously, fear a cooling planet. The "natural" universal tempurature equilibrium hovers around absolute zero. Space is damned cold and any heat that the planet has is continuously radiating off except for the protective coating of atmosphere keeping the heat in, or on. If humans desire to, or even think they can manipulate the protective atmosphere, they should do so with an eye toward making it slightly more insulative and not less.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUnfortunately we have been doing a good job of that. The small rise in temperature translates to an enormous amount of energy. Remember the temperature of the entire earth has gone up. That is a lot of mass. That massive increase in energy causes the range of temperatures to get wider. The average changes very little but the variations get bigger. Noticed that we have had "100 year storms" in 3 of the last 5 years? That energy must dissipate some how and large storms are one way that happens. Those dam conservative scientists told us global warming would not affect us but would only rune the earth for our grand kids. But they lied, it is actually already effecting us!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGlobal warming itself is amazingly simplistic thinking. . . .
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