From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat Jun 30 2001 - 11:00:13 MDT
On Sat, 30 Jun 2001, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> I can say that one of the best means of doing so, if you actually think
> that CO2 is actually a threat to the climate (where the opinion among
> scientists working in the area have apparently voted 10 to 1 against,
> according to the petition signatures), [snip]
Mike, "scientists voting" doesn't mean anything if they aren't
reasonably informed about the topic. Arguing that we should accept
what "scientists say" is about the same as the public "voting" about
GMO based on the latest news report. I'm reasonably well informed
about a lot of things but got my eyebrows raised when I actually
investigated this problem in detail.
So I'm not going to let you get away with the statement.
As I discuss in my paper, the current atmosphereic CO2 levels
are 368 ppmv. The highest preveiously documented levels were
275 ppmv reached during the inter-glacial eras as documented
by the Vostok ice cores. We are *way* over the CO2 level
seen by the Earth in recent history. The fact that it is
continually increasing demonstrates clearly that existing
systems to absorb it cannot keep up with human activities.
Now, the only reason we haven't seen massive global warming
(IMO) is because the planet has a huge amount of thermal
inertia (mostly in the oceans I'd guess) and so global
warming accelerates very slowly.
So if *you* are going to make statements quoting the idea
that most scientists think CO2 is not a problem for the
climate, you should cite some reasons why *you* think
that is true rather than hiding behind the curtain the
scientists provide.
Truth or dare.
(The rest of your comment I pretty much agree with.)
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:08:22 MST