So, what did happen to all that warmth?

Wow, this thread and the other similar thread have changed colors faster than a chameleon on a Chinese checker board. Just when I develop a rebuttal to one argument we have several new arguments, and hell, I just can't keep up which leads me to think that the strategy being used in these arguments is misdirection and I must say it is working as I am flustered.

We went from AGW to corn crops consuming more CO² than the trees in the rain forest, and on to the definition of carbon neutral, so on and etc...

I think I am going to have a carbon based drink.
And for the record, plants are producers in the eco-system and not consumers. Plants create food from CO² , water , minerals and sunlight. If left to their own design, they would not be harvested, hauled and refined, that is the consumers doing.

providing we can make enough bio fuel to run the machinery needed to make it too we are ok, this is a similar argument to the solar panels needing more power to make them that they produce. I'm no expert on bio fuels though, in any case when the whole world is growing corn for biofuel where do we grow our food ? goes back to the same old thing: there are too many people on the planet

there are too many people on the planet

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So what would you suggest what we do about that? Hmm...

the chinese came up with a good idea, here in the UK what with child benefit having children is a good money earner for some, naturally these grow up to be wasteful brats because all their pareants wanted was the money, they care little for educating their children.

'Carbon Neutral', nice catch phrase... We don't want to neutralize carbon, it's basic to all living things. Seems more like some of the perpetual motion schemes, since most every for of energy we use, requires us to put some energy in. Nothing is free on this world, well unless you are a friend of OBama... Carbon Neutral is just a term used to shoot down other people's arguments.

Corn is a rather fast growing plant, compared to most trees, so I have a hunch that it takes in quite a bit of CO2 from the atmosphere and soil. Maybe it doesn't balance out, but not much does.

HarveyH42 said:

'Carbon Neutral', nice catch phrase... We don't want to neutralize carbon, it's basic to all living things. Seems more like some of the perpetual motion schemes, since most every for of energy we use, requires us to put some energy in. Nothing is free on this world, well unless you are a friend of OBama... Carbon Neutral is just a term used to shoot down other people's arguments.

Corn is a rather fast growing plant, compared to most trees, so I have a hunch that it takes in quite a bit of CO2 from the atmosphere and soil. Maybe it doesn't balance out, but not much does.

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Corn is a C4 plant so it actually requires less CO² than it's leafy green woody counterparts. Much to the contrary of some of the post on this forum, trees do not absorb CO² in their woody parts, only the green leafy parts of the plant as this is where the tree performs respiration, ie. converts CO² into sugar and starch.

Okay, so I guess I did not have a point, but wanted to clarify a few misconceptions.

so where does the wood come from mike ? you know stuff moves around in trees like it does in our bodies although a lot slower

And for the record, plants are producers in the eco-system and not consumers. Plants create food from CO² , water , minerals and sunlight. If left to their own design, they would not be harvested, hauled and refined, that is the consumers doing.

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I am so glad someone finally caught that!

It absolutely amazes me how some people will get up tight up over something trivial and pointless yet completely ignore the obvious!

I have had more fun with these two treads lately than I ever have with helping anyone with electronics!

Keeping the global warming/climate change believers going in circles is almost too easy! I cant believe I actually got someone to argue trees VS corn and then say something like this

Does the farmer till the soil by hand? No he uses mechanized machinery which runs on diesel and emits CO2.
Is the fertilizer, which comes from Potash, mined by hand? Processed by hand? Carried by packhorse to the farm?
It is probably worse than just burning oil directly. Just a feel good idea to make us think something is being done. No they are not.
Does the farmer till the soil by hand? No he uses mechanized machinery which runs on diesel and emits CO2.
Is the fertilizer, which comes from Potash, mined by hand? Processed by hand? Carried by packhorse to the farm?
It is probably worse than just burning oil directly. Just a feel good idea to make us think something is being done. No they are not.
Does the farmer till the soil by hand? No he uses mechanized machinery which runs on diesel and emits CO2.
Is the fertilizer, which comes from Potash, mined by hand? Processed by hand? Carried by packhorse to the farm?
It is probably worse than just burning oil directly. Just a feel good idea to make us think something is being done.

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And then this revelation pretty much toped it all!

I work in an oil refinery myself,

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So of course bio based anything has to be as bad as petroleum based anything, some peoples jobs depend on everyone else thinking organic is is ultimately as bad or worse in the carbon cycle but not in fact neutral or positive.

Well I am off to another day of moving snow with my petroleum powered tractors. SO by some peoples reasonings of association I guess that means that snow is part of the global CO2 problem too?

if we obtain fuel from living products like trees and plants we keep the carbon in a certain continuos cycle that works with the same quantity of carbon all the time.

thing is because there are so many people on the planrt and its so much cheaper at the moment we add carbon from fossil fuels so the carbon in the system is more than when you thought you could cope with just bio fuels and wood

Fossil fuels... Hmmm doesn't that imply that petroleum once came from living matter? We aren't creating anything new, just releasing the carbon that's been trapped underground for thousands of years, most likely from the last major ice age. I would then guess that only good things could come from bring it back into the environment. Any reason why we wouldn't want more plant life on this planet? Aren't there a lot of people starving to death everyday? Seems to me that we would have a much 'greener' planet, if the planet warms, ice melts, and an abundance of CO2.

Carbon is a very complex thing, CO2 being one of the most simplistic. Take a course in Organic Chemistry sometime. I'm usually pretty good in the sciences, but that one kicked my ass. There real is no way to sell me on this CO2 angle. We really should clean house, but we aren't going to change the way our planet works. We are just along for the ride. It's like a rental car, you can keep it clean or trash it, the car company still keeps the car in the end.

HarveyH42 said:

Fossil fuels... Hmmm doesn't that imply that petroleum once came from living matter? We aren't creating anything new, just releasing the carbon that's been trapped underground for thousands of years, most likely from the last major ice age. I would then guess that only good things could come from bring it back into the environment. Any reason why we wouldn't want more plant life on this planet? Aren't there a lot of people starving to death everyday? Seems to me that we would have a much 'greener' planet, if the planet warms, ice melts, and an abundance of CO2.

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Don't be silly ! as someone thats good at sience maybe you were good at natural history ? this planet was once much warmer, why ? because of all that CO2 that WAS in the air, it was absorbed by plants and animals, now we come and let it all out. You want more vegetation ? I suggest you knock your house down and let trees or whatever grow on it, oh and yea your wecome to the hot weather, hope you like anything going because it won't be what we call veg.

I've spent 15 years living in Italy, when i went there we had snow 3 maybe 4 times a year, last year there was no snow at all. The last three summers have gotten progressively hotter, oh I can deal with heat but when it is so hot you sweat simply laying down trying to sleep at midnight isn't that a tad too hot ? what happens when this sort of weather reaches further north ?

Go buy an air conditioner and kwichurbichin'

yea and the apce suit to go with it !

Thunderchild said:

Don't be silly ! as someone thats good at sience maybe you were good at natural history ? this planet was once much warmer, why ? because of all that CO2 that WAS in the air, it was absorbed by plants and animals, now we come and let it all out. You want more vegetation ? I suggest you knock your house down and let trees or whatever grow on it, oh and yea your wecome to the hot weather, hope you like anything going because it won't be what we call veg.

I've spent 15 years living in Italy, when i went there we had snow 3 maybe 4 times a year, last year there was no snow at all. The last three summers have gotten progressively hotter, oh I can deal with heat but when it is so hot you sweat simply laying down trying to sleep at midnight isn't that a tad too hot ? what happens when this sort of weather reaches further north ?

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It's not the heat, but the humidity. I've been living in Florida for the past 22 years, we've had snow maybe 3 times, but not cold enough to stick. It stats plenty hot at night during the summers, open a window, turn on a fan. Air condition is great. I grew up in Oregon, west side of Mt. Hood. Snow is only fun for about 20 minutes, after a week or two... Don't miss it at all, really looking forward to the climate change, and it's already warmer here, then you will likely see over there.

So, you are aware that there was more CO2 in the air, long before mankind started burning stuff. So how is it that CO2 is now such a bad thing, and we are to blame? The warm temperatures before the Ice age seem to do no harm, we survived just fine, both the extreme heat and cold. Pretty sure we'll ride it out just fine. Nothing stays the same for ever, you'll either adapt or die trying to fight it. I'd rather we spent our time and resource working on changes we can make, so things will be a little more pleasant for our kiddies.

Oh, it might get down to the upper 30s tonight, frost warnings in some areas, about as bad as it gets here. And remember, never run on ice, of that's right, you don't have to worry about that anymore...

tcmtech said:

So are you saying that all plant life now needs human farmers to make it grow? For my whole life I understood that nature does its thing with or without us.
Who planted the trees that where here before any of us?
Who planted the grass that was here before any of us?
Who planted everything that was here before us?
Please explain how it works in your reality?
I would like to know how all of the worlds farming practices are one big scam just used by the oil industry to make money.

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It was YOU who mentioned that biofuels were carbon neutral. You were particularly bullish on corn grown for this purpose. Or are you unable to read/remember/understand your own posts? :

Originally Posted by tcmtech **broken link removed**
I am surprised that no one popped up with the obvious part of Bio fuels and crop/natural organic growth CO2 numbers.
They are carbon neutral.

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Prehistoric men made it through all of the temperature ups and downs without indoor climate control. Well, they did have fire and could strip down nekkid without anyone fainting in disbelief so I guess they sorta had primitive climate control

We'll be just fine. Hell, we've got plans to put manned outposts on Mars eventually. And we're griping about a degree or two C increase in mean temperatures? Put it in perspective.

Put this in perspective as well. The extremes in temperature on Earth range from extremely cold, like -50 degrees C or thereabouts in polar regions, to very hot in desert and tropical regions, like upwards of 50 C...approximately a 100 degree span of global extremes. How, for logic's sake, can we be disturbed by a .6 degree shift in mean temperatures in 150 years? That is roughly a half percent change overall. Why are people fooled into believing this is out of the natural cycle? It doesn't add up.

ke5frf said:

How, for logic's sake, can we be disturbed by a .6 degree shift in mean temperatures in 150 years?

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Because 150 years is a very short time for a 0.6 degree change in average global temperature. How does 1500 years and 6 degrees sound? 15,000 yrs and 60 degrees?

kchriste said:

Because 150 years is a very short time for a 0.6 degree change in average global temperature. How does 1500 years and 6 degrees sound? 15,000 yrs and 60 degrees?

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Based on what? Tree ring proxies? Debunked. We have no reliable temperature record from pre-19th century. None. As far as we know the temperature has cycled PRECISELY a degree C or so every few centuries since the last ice age. There is absolutely, positively, Zero, Zilch, Nada by way of solid scientific evidence that says otherwise. IPCC Hockey Stick graph? Debunked. They didn't even use it in the last assessment report. Global temperatures the last decade? Flatlined or trending slightly downward. Winter of 2008 and 2009 as cold as its been since the early 90s. Yet, CO2 has steadily risen in the atmosphere.

Quit defecating on science. Science is about testable, reproduceable data. We are a world of loony toon flakes if we fall for believing that 1 degree C resolution in temperature correlations can be deduced from proxies. It is a sham, a fraud, scientific dogma run amok. I'm all for energy conservation. Really, I AM!!! But you have to realize this little niche of "science" called climatology is way in over its head in its own BS and they keep digging themselves deeper in it.

There are way too many reputable scientists, their numbers growing daily since the Climategate scandal came into light, who are now questioning the data...based on the EVIDENCE that the CRU cooked the books and grafted unrelated DIVERGING records to get the picture they wanted everyone to see. Strong evidence that they intentionally have rewritten history (Medieval Warm Period)...History that was considered common "textbook" knowledge 25 years ago. Indeed, I remember classroom studies about this period in elementary school...Discussions of the Vikings and European harvests and population booms etc. But since the IPCC and Micheal Mann took over the "science", the whole period has been rewritten as a regional "anomaly". They forget that the other cultures were experiencing flourishing conditions in Asia, Central, and South America during the same time period.

Its a bunch of bunk. No, I'm not calling the reality that the world is getting warmer "bunk". I'm talking about the myth that gullible hand-wringers who believe anything a "scientist" says that a half degree fluctuation or trend in temperature in 150 years is out of the ordinary. That is pure, unadulterated BUNK. And when we experience another LIA (Little Ice Age), and the temperature drops back to pre 1850 temps, and people are literally freezing to death due to lack of preperation and infrastructure...we'll see how "abnormal" it is.

It was YOU who mentioned that biofuels were carbon neutral. You were particularly bullish on corn grown for this purpose. Or are you unable to read/remember/understand your own posts? :

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Actually I only used corn because it was referenced in post 108 and went from there. All I did was do a quick online search to see what numbers it had and compared those estimates against what estimates are for typical forest and woodland areas in a relative time and area comparison then posted them. Nothing more.

Organic based fuels are typically considered carbon neutral because what carbon that went into them while growing comes back out when and if processed. The annual net gain is zero. How and what other fuel or carbon source that may be used or applied during the planting, harvesting, and processing is not part of the actual crops personal carbon cycle or foot print rather its an add on.

That goes along with my comment about moving snow today as well. Snow is basicaly carbon neutral but yet if you still apply the same logic that you did to how crops are processed and that a carbon based fuel is used to do the work of that moving then by your reasoning snow also has a negative carbon impact rating as well being large amounts of fuel get used in the moving of it.

ke5frf said:

Based on what? Tree ring proxies? Debunked.

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What about ice core samples? Now don't tell me it all melted in the past like TCMTECH tried. We know about Oetzi, the prehistoric man frozen in a glacier for the last 5,300 years and who was discovered in 1991. Or the mammoth named Dima which died apx 40,000 years ago, and did not thaw out and rot away.