[Bioconversion] Conserve -- Even the Air Force Wants to Cut Oil's Role

[Geoff Thomas]

Hi Dave, yes to a certain degree by using the now common term deniers there will be of course an
increase in the polarising, but no where near that of your supporter Thomas Pirotte, who talks of
slavery and hunger.
It is interesting that people like me, whom have been working against global warming for 32 years
and always described as "lunatic fringe, drug crazed hippies, kool aid fools, green fanatics" and
lots of other non complimentary put downs, suddenly find ourselves holding the respectable view.
Don't think for a moment I am fooled, public opinion is very fickle and can often be manipulated
by the media.
So after years of media supremacy and cultural hegemony the climate deniers suddenly find
themselves as desirable as last weeks fish, tough titties, that stuff is just not important, what
is important is dealing with the causes of global warming, - even if it were, somehow, against 
all the odds not 100% correct, the risk of ignoring and doing nothing is just too high.
I appreciate what you say about an almost religious belief, and I also know that institutions are
hard to change, but in this case the boot is on the other foot, suddenly the institutions have
changed, and it is now the hard row to hoe to disprove the global warming evidence.
Well you won't do that by quoting Tropospheric cooling, that was disproved in the late nineties,
- follow this link,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements
and if you had gone to my suggested climate skeptics link you would have realised that the little
ice age statement  was not correct either, so if you are 10 years behind in research review, it
is not surprising you have found no link between carbon dioxide concentrations and climate
forcing as there is a ton of stuff out there, but you are not wanting to find it.
It is also important to understand that Al Gore's stuff on sea level rise does not originate with
him, he is simply publicising what is already known, - the West Antarctic Ice Shield, WAIS, is a
huge quantity of in places over a mile high ice sitting on the ocean bed and three small islands,
it is a left over from the last ice age and amazing it did not melt before, it certainly did in
the Pleistocene, see article,
http://www.empower.iig.com.au/Wais/Scherer1998.pdf
and that huge area of ice is already starting to collapse, it contains enough water to raise sea
levels between 5 and 6 metres, so Al Gore is not being an extremist.
The first bit of WAIS, the Antarctic peninsular, has already collapsed, and did it very suddenly,
years ago now, and the ice shield stopping the Pine Creek and Thwaites Glaciers, which drain a
third of the WAIS, (into the Amundsen sea) is also starting to seriously weaken, the fresh water
outflow from that is believed to be one third of the current world sea level rise, - still
fortunately small but just in those 2 glaciers there is potentially 2 metres of sea level rise,
and because it is all open to the sea, unlike Greenland and the East Antarctic Ice Shield, only a
slight increase in sea temperature could bring about a very swift collapse.
We are playing with very big stakes here, one would have to have extremely strong and provable
evidence to discount these possible ( I would say probable, but that is just my
opinion)consequences.
And just on a commonsense level, throwing all that carbon that was buried in the Pleistocene and
previous warm times back into the atmosphere has got to have a possibility of re-creating the
warm times when it was in the atmosphere, the situation that more and more scientists and others
are coming to that conclusion as well is more than just interesting.
Bioconversion offers a strong tool for us to help address this problem so deserves every support.
Cheers,
Geoff Thomas.

> By positing those who are skeptics as "deniers" you immediately
> emotionalize the issue.
>
> An extremely good resource is the Cambridge Conference Network
> newsletter, which contains articles and commentary on all sides of the
> issue.
>
> One problem in the discussion is that there are actually very few
> scientists actually qualified to discuss climate change. For example,
> there are only about 80 individuals in the U.S. (and a similar number
> elsewhere worldwide) who actually have Ph.D. degrees in climatology.
> Quite a few of these, in fact, are people much more skeptical than you
> may imagine.
>
> "Global Warming" is presently very much in the status of a
> religion--we are asked to accept much by faith that cannot be
> conclusively proven, and even that subject to other factors that may
> in fact describe the problem far better.
>
> I have found no links between carbon concentrations and warming, for
> example. In fact, rising carbon levels generally come after
> significant warming measurements, not before. The only direct
> correlations that have been found thus far are between sunspot
> activity and warming, from what I can determine.
>
> However, intelligent discussion of these issues is very hard to find
> on most fora. Many people simply accept what they are told is
> "scientific consensus" as some sort of holy writ without challenge.
> That, I'm afraid, is not scientific method.
>
> My position is simple: I don't accept at face value many
> unsubstantiated claims--especially the hysterical ones such as Al
> Gore's over the top predictions based upon nothing I can find except
> his own investments in carbon offset brokers. His dire warnings of
> "twenty foot sea level rises" for example far exceed even the most
> pessimistic forecasts of those who are proposing global warming
> catastrophe--by a factor of ten or more, in fact.
>
> David
>
>
>
> On 6/19/07, Geoff  Thomas <wind at iig.com.au> wrote:
>> hi David, I have found having a debate on Global Warming on sites that are mainly composed of
>> people interested in doing something about it to be usually quite destructive, people get
>> upset,
>> as their good work is dismissed, global climate deniers have a strong emotional attachment to
>> denying, so as your arguments are the usual ones, I would suggest visiting a site,
>> http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-to-talk-to-global-warming-sceptic.html
>> then after that if you still felt you had a case, rather than burden everyone with it, perhaps
>> you could post a site where your point of view was argued and anyone interested could look at
>> both sites and make up their own minds without hysterical stuff coming our way.
>> Just a suggestion.
>> Cheers,
>> Geoff Thomas.
>>
>> > In my study thus far, I find the evidence of Man's contribution to
>> > global warming far from a sure thing if we are to take the more
>> > hysterical pronouncements as representing any sort of true scientific
>> > consensus.
>> >
>> > To me, a far more compelling case can be made regarding solar activity
>> > as the primary driver in climate change, as the world continues to
>> > warm up from the Little Ice Age--a warming which has been proceeding
>> > for about three centuries now.
>> >
>> > Personally, I am quite willing to accept that human activity may play
>> > a part--but by no means a critical one in that process.
>> >
>> > If we were to accept that we must take immediate corrective action, I
>> > would suggest that carbon dioxide is by far not the most pressing
>> > concern. By far the most prevalent "greenhouse gas" is water vapor,
>> > and the impact of methane is on a volumetric basis far more serious
>> > than that of CO2.
>> >
>> > If, then, we were to seek to have the maximum impact upon the
>> > greenhouse effect, it would make far more sense for humans to go vegan
>> > and dispense with all those nasty methane-producing meat animals as
>> > well as the 80% of grain production (consuming fossil fuels for
>> > farming, processing and transport) which goes to feed those animals.
>> >
>> > However, the greenhouse effect itself is somewhat suspect as usually
>> > presented. If it were a major driver of climate change, for example,
>> > we would expect temperatures in the troposphere to be far warmer than
>> > they appear to be. This, in turn, would lessen the difference in
>> > temperatures between the ground and the atmosphere, which would also
>> > lessen the severity of hurricanes and typhoons...quite the opposite of
>> > the doomsayers.
>> >
>> > I am against squandering petroleum resources but not because of global
>> > warming fear. I simply don't think that is the highest and best use of
>> > it, and that increasingly costly supply will continue to be a problem
>> > until it is exhausted. Burning petroleum simply seems the worst use of
>> > a diminishing resource.
>> >
>> > I am extremely interested in bioremediation in sewage treatment that
>> > also will create biomass for generation of fuels. That seems to me to
>> > be a far better approach than the mechanical one used in most places
>> > today.
>> >
>> > David
>> >
>> > On 6/19/07, Philip Anderson <solarphil at comcast.net> wrote:
>> >> In response to Geoff's discussion of the carbon cycle and renewable energy:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Some factors I like to consider in the issues of the carbon cycle -both
>> >> natural and human-induced- is time travel and overpopulation:
>> >>
>> >> >   It's the ancient carbon from fossil fuels -which has no natural place in
>> >> today's world- which that is overwhelming the biosphere which is made to
>> >> handle today's carbon.
>> >>
>> >> >   And overpopulation (in addition to our naive use of fossil fuels) is
>> >> reducing the biosphere's machinery for handling both the ancient carbon and
>> >> today's carbon, through our destruction of the green mantle, and further
>> >> exacerbated by too many of us doing this.
>> >>
>> >
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>>
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