--- On Sat, 11/28/09, Martin Tomasek <[email protected]> wrote:
Ah, the hunt is engaged! :~)
> I am interested in ecology and climatology, because some
> politicians want either to take my money or to hurt the
> nature
I might suggest it is worth being interested also because we live in the
climate and ecology so we have a direct interest in knowing how it works.
> by insane 'ecological' laws.
Now, that is a qualitative statement which should require the same scientific
rigor we require of any other such sweeping statement. If the ecological law
in question was, for example, to prohibit spraying atomized mercury into the
air outside day-care centers it would be hard to argue that it was insane.
Certainly there are many ecological laws that fall into that Zone of Sanity.
> It is possible if we exclude 'global climate'.
I don't find any reason to do so. Your examples indicate changes in proximity
to some area affecting that area, so it is only possible to assume that you
argue nothing but a matter of scale. Are you claiming to have personally
proven that environmental changes can only have impact over a given distance -
say over a hundred miles but not over a thousand miles? What do you base this
assumption on?
Further, there is a great deal of evidence that the earth has had a range of
different global climate conditions, from an oxygen-free atmosphere, to a
global coating of ice ("snowball earth") and a large number of ice ages where
there was no place left to have serious concern for heat stroke, the most
recent of those being 12,000 years ago.
The base assumption I read from your statements is that nature has some
"preferred" climate for the surface of the earth. This would require more
proof - and short of a theistic argument beg more frank credulity - than any
other alternative. Every evidence is that the surface of the earth is not the
one particular charmed natural artifact in the universe. Gases and liquids and
solids will interact here in the same pseudo-random fashion they do anywhere,
with whatever result physics dictates and with no regard to what humans find
survivable.
> But, speaking of 'greenhouse gases', human impact is minimal. I talked
> on this with geologist and with ecologist. CO2 produced by
> nature (mostly by volcanos) is about two ordes of magnitude higher
> than quantity produced by human. So, if anyone want to impact
> levels of CO2, he should ban volcanos. :-) And situation on methane is
> similar.
So, it is a matter of scale you are arguing, not a matter of capacity? If
mankind upped the output of carbon and became (by your numbers) only a single
order of magnitude less than all natural inputs then it would possibly make a
difference? Equal to all natural inputs? Double? The global climate might be
changed by human effort if we arranged for a large enough rock to fall to earth?
A more nuanced observation would be that there is no reason to believe that it
is necessary to equal all natural inputs into the atmosphere to have an impact
on it. Simply having an aggregate impact that is comparable to, for instance,
all North American volcanoes might be enough to alter the global climate on
aggregate. Raising or lowering the amount of a compound in a chemical mix by a
percentage point can, in fact, have dramatic effect. Raising or lowering your
guanine content by one percent could make you as easily a chimpanzee as a blob
of goo.
> There are sporadically happening events that cause change
> of climates globally. But I think this is not standard situation.
This is definitely the standard situation. The climate began with a heavy rain
of rocks and moons, settled into a few billion years of poisonous (by our
standards) gases, is in a brief hiatus of 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen and will
end as the outer shell of a dying red giant star. At any given moment along
the way the climate may be called upon to process the mass and energy of a
passing comet, which has measurable impact on every cubic inch of the global
biosphere every time it happens.
> You know, climate on whole earth is made of many local
> climates.
The existence of micro climates is not equal to the proof of non-existence of
macro climates.
> So you can measure global area represented by different
> climates, but averaging temperature over the areas (or globally) is
> quackery. Average global temperature has no meaning.
During the Snowball Earth stage the averaged temperature was below 0C and this
did in fact result in no place being above 0C, the Cretaceous hothouse (again,
relative to today) resulted in an average ocean-bottom temperature about 10C
greater than it is today (where the average is about 4C) and a complete lack of
icecaps. This did in fact affect climates everywhere on the earth.
> I assume it has some importance in politics, such as
> environmentalism, because it is scalar and can be
> presented in scary graphs.
"Just because two people disagree does not prove that either is correct."
The misuse of data does not prove that the data in question does not exist.
Whether some people have political motivations to show that Humans Are Bad And
Stupid (that, I believe, you and I agree some do) is immaterial to the question
of whether humans are capable of - and in fact potentially accomplishing -
global environmental change. Regardless of political leanings it is possible
to make some basic logical conclusions (i.e. if we infinitely double our carbon
output it will at some point matter) and make some irrefutable empirical
measurements (i.e. that particulate matter from Chinese coal-fired power plants
is increasingly thick in Californian air).
Whether or not the human-induced increase in atmospheric carbon is sufficient
to cause temperature shifts at this or another given point - and whether this
is even a good or bad thing - are more finely-tuned questions than most of the
tabloid-level public debate touches on. But it is certainly possible to
determine whether the earth has a static climate that is impervious to any
action by man or nature, and it most certainly is not.
-best
-chris
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