Soren wrote on Oct 15^th, 2011 at 7:40am:


Let me explain to the others:

Soren's Law: If a parameter is in small proportions relative to the whole then it automatically becomes insignificant. 

That was the crux of your argument. There was no more substance to it than that.

CO2 - small proportions. 
ricin - small proportions

As you can see, Soren's law applies to both.

Emma wrote on Oct 14^th, 2011 at 11:02pm:


It's always from a position of ignorance. Nobody has yet done any academic study that shows evidence that CO2 is not a Greenhouse gas, or even an insignificant one.

To claim that the atmospheric CO2 is an insignificant greenhouse gas is a sign of ignorance on a monumental scale. It is unfounded hogwash.

muso wrote on Oct 15^th, 2011 at 2:02pm:



Certainly not first.

Mars has an atmophere of 95% CO2. It's freezing. Not effective enough, evidently.

Emma wrote on Oct 14^th, 2011 at 10:29pm:



Dispell the confusion, then, sage. Rolling your eyes is an argument only with your husband.

Soren wrote on Oct 15^th, 2011 at 8:18pm:


You're not thinking this through. It amazes me that you can be conned by that.  As I said before, the warming effect of CO2 works in conjunction with water vapour. There is a comparatively huge quantity of water vapour in the atmosphere on Earth, but practically nil on Mars. If you dropped out all the water in the Martian atmosphere it would form a layer of ice just 100 microns thick planet-wide. In contrast, the Earth has an average of 0.8% water in its atmosphere.

In terms of partial pressure, that would equate to more than the total surface atmospheric pressure on Mars. The Martian atmosphere is also considerably shallower (fewer kilometers deep) that that of the Earth. Path length is important when it comes to the greenhouse effect.

There is actually a Greenhouse effect on Mars. It raises the temperature by about 5 degrees C.   It's about the expected value taking into account the fact that it has a surface  atmospheric pressure around 0.7 percent that of the Earth, and the fact that it's further from the Sun. The Earth receives about double (2.33) the Solar radiation received by Mars per unit area.

I like the KISS principle, but I prefer to take the approach, Keep It Simple Smart.  The above explanation is about as simple as you can get without changing the "smart" to "stupid".

Stating that Mars has 95% CO2 in its atmosphere compared to Earth's 0.039% is simplifying a bit too much - in order to con the gullible.  

Quote:
- Good start. Try second.  - On Mars of course, atmospheric dust has the greatest effect on warming.

Yeah, how about that. Clever, but as usual, not smart enough.

The global atmosphere is not getting 0.039% of CO2, as in your silly attempt at cleverness with salt. The atmosphere already has most of that CO2 - there wouldn't be life in the planet without it.


So, your reputation for crap analogies is undiminished. WHat makes me furrow the old brow is that as a scientist you could be such a blunderbuss. But I guess that's par for the course when you are up on the climate science.

muso wrote on Oct 16^th, 2011 at 2:43pm:



Don't glide over that, it's a central point.

Soren's law is that IN THE CONTEXT of a complexity that is not well-understood, blaming or expecting catastrophy on the basis of 0.0275% increase in anything is a severe case of baseless overconfidence (a.k.a. stupidity).

http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/10478008/global-warming-blamed-for-smal...

From the mighty polar bear to the tiny house sparrow, many of Earth's species appear to be shrinking in size, a new study reports - and its authors think that's probably due to global warming.

But other experts say that conclusion goes too far, blaming global warming for what may be natural changes.

The new research was published online on Sunday in the journal, Nature Climate Change.

It's based on a review of other studies and found that 38of 85 animal and plant species showed a documented reduction in size over decades, including a type of Scottish sheep that is five per cent smaller than in 1985.

Those studies looked at species over different time periods and in varying numbers.

The shrinking specimens, according to the study, include cotton, corn, strawberries, bay scallops, shrimp, crayfish, carp, Atlantic salmon, herring, frogs, toads, iguanas, hooded robins, red-billed gulls, California squirrels, lynx and wood rats.

Two years ago, Scottish researchers made news with the shrinking sheep study.

Several studies have shown that polar bears, which rely on sea ice during the summer, also are not as big.

And this latest study said the house sparrow's weight has dropped by one-seventh from 1950 to 1990.

A bird called the graceful warbler showed a 26 per cent weight drop during the same time period.

"There is a trend in a number of organisms across the board, from plants to big vertebrates, getting smaller," said study co-author Jennifer Sheridan, a biology researcher at the University of Alabama. "The theory is as things get warmer they don't need to grow as large."

Most of these animals are cold-blooded, so the warmer the weather the faster their metabolism is and the more calories they burn, Sheridan said. There's a biological law, called Bergmann's rule, that says that as it gets colder, animals get bigger.

This is the unwritten flip side of it, she said.

But Yoram Yom-Tov, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University whose studies Sheridan used in her research, said many species are shrinking, and you can't blame global warming exclusively.

"Changes in body size are a normal phenomenon," Yom-Tov wrote in an email. "When conditions are favourable, they increase in size or reproduce at higher rates, and when conditions are deteriorating, they do the opposite. I think that most species will adapt to climate change and survive. No need for alarm."
And Stanford biologist Terry Root, an expert in climate change, said the study's conclusions "seem kind of far-fetched"