Posted by Jack
C02 emissions are great for plants and trees, but not so great for our oceans. In fact ocean acidity has increased to a dangerous level that threatens our fragile eco system and bio diversity. The picture above is Beijing, China in winter. This is not fog…it’s smog and it’s not safe to go outside unless you wear some protection. I know, I was there and I assure you the air pollution is killing them and causing no end of health problems.
Recently the United Nations Environment Program and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) released a report at a conference in Korea, compiling studies on the impact of increased ocean acidification, caused by absorbing carbon dioxide, on the marine and coastal ecosystems. The report updated a 2009 report, since the amount of research into ocean acidification has grown, along with concerns about the effect it is having on marine organisms and the economies dependent on them.
The report finds that ocean acidification has increased about 26 percent in the past 200 years, absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon released
by human activity. “Ocean acidification is a direct result of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations due to the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, cement production and other human activities,” it says.
The problem with deforestation is two fold. It not only adds more burnt particulates and CO2, but it removes the very trees that can remove the C02 and produce oxygen. Considering that we depend on our oceans for a large part of our food supply, any damage we cause there will have a direct impact on our future survival. I’ve seen the ecological disaster followed when Fiji was stripped of it’s rain forest for the Teak, now the hill sides are barren and there is no rain. It completely changed the climate of Fiji and its almost impossible to restore a rainforest once its gone.
The first thing that should be done is an immediate moratorium on the rapid deforestation in our tropical zone by farmers and timber companies, even if it requires military intervention to stop the cutting and burning. This is a global disaster and there is no excuse for not doing something to stop it and begin repairing it.
If we are going to preserve our natural wonders, our ecology and our food source for future generations, we have to wise up. We must stop doing those things that literally are ruining the planet. Time is not on our side and if we don’t act, mother nature will. Then we’ll be the endangered species.
Thank you for posting this.
Think it’s cold back east now, it’s nothing compared to what’s coming this winter. It is still fall.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/weather-channel-co-founder-predicting-snowier-bitterly-colder?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=marketing&utm_term=facebook&utm_content=facebook&utm_campaign=n-bitter-winter
C02 emissions are great for plants and trees, but not so great for our oceans. In fact ocean acidity has increased to a dangerous level that threatens our fragile eco system and bio diversity. The picture above is Beijing, China in winter. This is not fog…it’s smog and it’s not safe to go outside unless you wear some protection.
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Actually, it is fog or smoke, or maybe particulates. One thing it is not is CO2, which is colorless and is sometimes called the invisible gas
Because Co2 is heavier than air and its water soluble when introduced into sea water it has an effect on the PH balance leading to higher acidity. CO2 emission are incorporated into what we generalized as [smog], although it is arguably one of the lesser evils in [smog] because CO2 serves plant life quite well. However, it seems to have a deleterious effect on ocean acidity which impacts the relatively fragile eco balance.
What we gain from CO2 feeding land born vegetation we unfortunately risk losing in sea life bio diversity…if CO2 rise too high. If there is a question here, then it must be what is too high? For that I have no answer. However, high concentrations of CO2 leading to high a pH (acidity) has reduced the production of oxygen by ocean vegetation. But, that pales in comparison to the negative impact on small sea creatures. Everything in our eco-system has to be in balance to work properly. At the current time the eco system is taking a lot of unnecessary abuse from CO2 (high acidity), or so science is reporting, and by all indications it looks like they are right. I’m far from an expert on our eco system, but the evidence that I have read seems fairly conclusive.
This might explain it better than I can: (Wikipedia) Ocean acidification is the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth’s oceans, caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. An estimated 30–40% of the carbon dioxide released by humans into the atmosphere dissolves into oceans, rivers and lakes. To achieve chemical equilibrium, some of it reacts with the water to form carbonic acid. Some of these extra carbonic acid molecules react with a water molecule to give a bicarbonate ion and a hydronium ion, thus increasing ocean “acidity” (H+ ion concentration). Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14, representing an increase of almost 30% in H+ ion concentration in the world’s oceans. Earth System Models project that within the last decade ocean acidity exceeded historical analogs and in combination with other ocean biogeochemical changes could undermine the functioning of marine ecosystems and many ocean goods and services.
Increasing acidity is thought to have a range of possibly harmful consequences, such as depressing metabolic rates and immune responses in some organisms, and causing coral bleaching. This also causes decreasing oxygen levels as it kill off algae.
If you were wondering, I posted this GREEN article to show we at PS are individuals and we call them as we see them. Libby has a good point when talking about this subject and in the spirit of being fair and reasonable, when someone makes a good point that I can support I will back them, as I’m sure Tina would too. Just because it’s Libby who is always trashing what I say doesn’t make any difference. If she’s right, and I think in this case she is, then I owe it to you, her and myself to be intellectually honest and support her and put it out here for discussion.
move comment to correct article.
Shorter CNS: It’s cold in some places, therefore global averages don’t matter!
Thank you Soaps.
China is apparently more interested in arming themselves to the teeth, and stealing our technology to do it, than they are in cleaning up the air and “saving the planet.”
Our air is cleaner because we are already doing a good job cleaning the particulate matter and smoke from production and vehicle exhaust.
Revealed Chris: Hypocrite!
AGW zealots have been scaring people to death for decades saying global warming will result in much hotter summers.
Now that we’ve had record freezing and cold they switched the rhetoric to “climate change” and bully anyone who mentions unusually cold weather.
Ah, Soaps … an AmericanThinker.
You cannot separate the problems of CO2 pollution and smog, especially in China, where coal burning is a large source of both.
Now go read something about it that is not propaganda.
Tina: “Revealed Chris: Hypocrite!
AGW zealots have been scaring people to death for decades saying global warming will result in much hotter summers.
Now that we’ve had record freezing and cold they switched the rhetoric to “climate change” and bully anyone who mentions unusually cold weather.”
I’d say your understanding of the issues here are childlike, but that would be an insult to most children.
You are right that those who accept the theory of AGW have argued that global warming will result in hotter summers. But you seem to forget that these predictions have been entirely correct.
The unusually cold weather in some parts of the world has been accounted for and explained by NASA, NOAA, and other scientific bodies which have studied the issue far more than you are willing to.
There is no real difference between “climate change” and “global warming” in scientific circles; they are used interchangeably.
There was no hypocrisy in anything I wrote.
“China is apparently more interested in arming themselves to the teeth, and stealing our technology to do it, than they are in cleaning up the air and “saving the planet.”
Tina, don’t spout such hostilities. You should still remember this, from Bloomberg:
“China Environmental News, the newspaper of China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, recently published a behind-the-scenes look at how the capital pulled off its temporary smog-disappearance act. The solution was to enlist 434,000 cadres from Beijing and six nearby provinces. (A significant portion of the capital’s air pollution drifts from the emissions of factories and vehicles outside city limits.)
“During APEC, special holidays granted to local government officials and other workers in the region helped keep 11.7 million vehicles off the roads, significantly reducing auto emissions. Hundreds of construction sites, which stir up airborne particulate matter, were also shut down.
“Further details were obtained by the South China Morning Post: Roughly 10,000 factories in the region surrounding Beijing were shut during APEC; an additional 39,000 ran on reduced schedules to minimize pollution. Inspectors paid frequent visits to these factories, during both day and night, to ensure that the APEC guidelines were followed.”
That’s quite and effort right there, even if the results are only temporary … and the government knows that it has to make progress quickly toward a blue sky all the time, cause their educated city dwellers are REAL unhappy about this and plotting their escape.
Jack: “If you were wondering, I posted this GREEN article to show we at PS are individuals and we call them as we see them. Libby has a good point when talking about this subject and in the spirit of being fair and reasonable, when someone makes a good point that I can support I will back them, as I’m sure Tina would too. Just because it’s Libby who is always trashing what I say doesn’t make any difference. If she’s right, and I think in this case she is, then I owe it to you, her and myself to be intellectually honest and support her and put it out here for discussion.”
*wild applause*
Jack I respect your choice to print this article whether or not you agree with the contents and theory.
I do have a problem with this article and for the usual political reasons. I am in favor of conservation and doing everything we can reasonably do to prevent pollution and clean up our messes.
I am four square against using trumped up “crisis” to push a political agenda: usher in world-wide U.N. authority, creating U.S. legislation that picks winners and losers and creates excessive taxation and draconian regulation, redistributes wealth, supports untested technology, awards big grants only to scientists who tow the AGW line, puts people out of work unnecessarily, places our energy requirements in jeopardy, etc.
The sudden shift to “acid oceans” as the next big threat has a familiar ring. When lies have been exposed in the past our focus has been shifted. We started with the crisis of a coming ice age, shifted to ozone hole, shifted again to the dying Amazon forest, shifted again to global warming, shifted again to climate change, and now the big scare is acidic oceans. At every turn a dramatic upgrade in government control occurred and piles of cash advanced toward environmentalists and their causes. In Europe (clean) nuclear energy plants were shut down in favor of alternatives and the cost of energy shot up…older people and children actually froze to death because people couldn’t pay the bill. That represents knee jerk response to a “crisis” that didn’t materialize and hasn’t materialized. The Amazon was supposedly going to become a desert before Bill Clinton left office. Insanity!
Headlines:
March 10, 2009 Guardian “Carbon emissions creating acidic oceans not seen since dinosaurs”
September 2012 Washington Post, “Ocean acidification emerges as new climate threat”
November 2012 – Seattle Times, “Wash. panel presses for action on ocean acidity”
Referring again to Dan McGrath, globalclimatescam.com, who offers food for thought.
Before we go off half cocked and create another new government department, billions in research grants and a ton of new regulation and taxes it would be wise to pause…and follow the research conducted by cooler heads. In case you need direction the political environmental zealots insist the science is settled…science is NEVER settled.
The cooler heads are labeled “deniers” and “liars” in the traditional progressive Alinsky strategy of isolating, discrediting, and demeaning people and speech.
Keeping it simple…The scientific method is : “the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world.”
Also worth noting are the common mistakes made by scientists:
We’ve had quite a lot of that going on over the last 30 or so years. Political bias too!
Tina, “I am in favor of conservation and doing everything we can reasonably do to prevent pollution and clean up our messes.” That sums it up for me too and I agree there science here is built on a lot of models and assumptions. China and India are huge polluters and need to clean up their act.
Yes they do, and Jack, they sure don’t need to be subsidized by us, especially China.
Tina: “usher in world-wide U.N. authority”
So your entire opposition to acknowledging science is based on tin-foil hat conspiracy theories.
Obviously.
Chris, thanks for the wild applause, but its really not deserved. I’m only doing what I’m supposed to do if I’m to be an honest broker and call them as I see them. “To thyne own self be true.” Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 78–82 : )
Speaking of tin-foil hat conspiracy theories, I’ve noticed that this site and the conservative media in general have been pretty quiet about Benghazi lately.
I can’t imagine why that is:
“WASHINGTON (AP) — A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees.
Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, intelligence about who carried it out and why was contradictory, the report found. That led Susan Rice, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to inaccurately assert that the attack had evolved from a protest, when in fact there had been no protest. But it was intelligence analysts, not political appointees, who made the wrong call, the committee found. The report did not conclude that Rice or any other government official acted in bad faith or intentionally misled the American people.
The House Intelligence Committee report was released with little fanfare on the Friday before Thanksgiving week. Many of its findings echo those of six previous investigations by various congressional committees and a State Department panel. The eighth Benghazi investigation is being carried out by a House Select Committee appointed in May…”
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ecc3a300383445d5a90dd6ca764c9e15/house-intel-panel-debunks-many-benghazi-theories
No, they won’t be putting that front and center.
… six previous investigations …
The next time one of these clowns brings up wasteful government spending … I’m gonna pound ’em with this!
How many freakin’ millions were spent gratifying their freakin’ bigoted idiocy (and certain tainted politicians’ tainted ambitions)?
Ah, the drink!
Chris: “So your entire opposition to acknowledging science is based on tin-foil hat conspiracy theories.”
Chris reducing my position to a progressive #12 means you are just desperate, disrespectful, and arrogant.
“I can’t imagine why that is,” he said with a smirk!
When an administration fails to anticipate and properly plan for a probable attack and then sits on its hands for 19 hours while people are dying and then chooses the least likely scenario to float to the public to save the President before an election there won’t be much to investigate at the top, especially when they easily control the narrative.
But the report did not provide a clean slate for this administration:
This is one report by one committee. We have yet to hear from the Select Committee headed by Trey Gowdy:
More here:
The response was not delayed, according to the report, but there are a lot of dead Americans whose families wish there had been a plan in place for swift response…there was not! I guess you could call that a non-failure. Given what they knew about the goings on in the area I think its a major failure.
This is not over by any stretch of the imagination. The Intelligence committee giving the CIA a thumbs up…imagine that!
Wait till Hillary runs…this report didn’t do her any favors!
Libby: “How many freakin’ millions were spent…”
Oh put a cork in it.
I give you Solyndra, Gruber, all of the ACA development and promotion and then the endless repairs and fixes, departmental excursions to expensive resorts, or here…try try these lovely reports from FrontPage Magazine:
Then there are the months long hearings before the news cameras daily to smear the good name of Clarence Thomas…on trumped up phony charges made by lying radical feminist women.
I could go on for hours. But since when has a progressive EVER cared about spending anyway!
Tina: “When an administration fails to anticipate and properly plan for a probable attack and then sits on its hands for 19 hours while people are dying and then chooses the least likely scenario to float to the public to save the President before an election there won’t be much to investigate at the top, especially when they easily control the narrative. ”
But Tina…none of that happened…except in your imagination. The fact that you are still claiming this stuff happened shows that you are impervious to evidence.
“This is one report by one committee.”
No, it’s six reports by six committees. This one was run by Republicans. Can you read?
Chris “none of that happened”?
How do you notice when good plans were not in place?
People that should not have died end up dead. Stupid cover stories are floated to the American people.
Spontaneous protesters do not have armed rocket launchers launchers hidden in their robes, nor are their leaders members of terrorist organizations. The video scenario was the least important factor and it was floated as the only important factor.
You are gullible.
Tina: “Chris “none of that happened”?
How do you notice when good plans were not in place?”
This is what you said originally:
“When an administration fails to anticipate and properly plan for a probable attack”
But as I just showed you, the GOP report–along with six others–concluded that the administration had no reason to believe that the likelihood of an attack was “probable.” There was “no specific warning” that an attack was going to happen during that period of time.
The report did find, in agreement with the six other reports, that the compound should have been better protected, and faulted the State Department for not adequately responding to requests for more security. The administration deserves criticism for that…what it does not deserve is over-the-top, selective, partisan scandal-mongering. If you really believed that failing to properly secure a diplomatic compound is such a scandal, then you would have sunk your claws into Reagan and Bush just as much if not more as you are doing to Obama. There were many more embassy attacks (on actual embassies, unlike Benghazi) which resulted in many more lives lost during their administrations. No one called for impeachment. You can’t tell me that there were no security failures in those cases.
“Stupid cover stories are floated to the American people.”
Again, as the GOP report–and six others–have shown, there was no “cover story.” The information about the video came from the intelligence community. And it has been largely validated since–more than one suspect in the attack has now said that they were motivated by the video. News reporters on the ground at the time said that the attackers claimed to be motivated by the video. In dozens of other Muslim cities that very day, fanatics were protesting and rioting over the video. What more evidence do you need that the administration had good reason to believe the attackers were motivated by the video?
The only thing Rice really got wrong was that there was a protest before the attack, but again, that came from the intelligence community, and again, that’s not a scandal.
Your theory that the administration spun the story to influence the election continues to make no sense. Obama called it an “act of terror” the day after, and a couple weeks after said that they had gotten the “spontaneous protest” thing wrong–what difference would it have made to the election if the video had never been mentioned? Easy answer: none, since Obama won by a fair margin anyway. He won despite Republicans’ efforts to accuse Obama of lying and pushing a false narrative, accusations that were reported on quite often in the weeks prior to the election. Obama is above all a savvy politician–It would have made no sense for him to tell this particular lie. He had nothing to gain and a lot to lose.
There was no attempt by the Obama administration to use this to influence the election, because it did not and could not influence the election. Only Republicans tried to use Benghazi to influence the election, and you failed.
“The video scenario was the least important factor and it was floated as the only important factor.”
No one ever said it was the “only importance factor.” You really damage your credibility when you make things up.
There is no more evidence I can show you at this point to convince you that there was no conspiracy here. If you still believe there was, you’re a conspiracy nut.
Mr. Dismissive strikes again!
The Federalist, “20 Ways Media Completely Misread Congress Weak-sauce Benghazi Report”
Senator Lindsey Graham, “I think the report is full of Crap!”
Paul Mirrengoff of Powerline says the report was “fair,” however:
Susan Rice said on Sunday it was the reason…she did not say there were others. The video story was reported over and over as if it were the only reason…so too the “protester” part of it.
Back on point, AGW believers should read this:
Computer modeling to prove (create a cause) what you want to propose and promote is not how its done. Deciding the ocean is becoming acidic due to C02 as a means of further promoting the cause is not how its done.
I find it amazing that you seem to think seven bipartisan investigations are meritless, but you are on pins and needles to see what an aggressively, transparently partisan investigation finds.
No, actually, it’s not amazing at all. It’s entirely predictable. You are a partisan hack who lives on a diet of information given to you by partisan hacks. You have no appreciation for or ability to evaluate objective evidence. You believe only what you want to hear.