On Sep 21, 1:13 pm, "znoob" wrote:
"Trevor Wilson" wrote in message

...







"Peter Webb" wrote in message
u...

"Trevor Wilson" wrote in message
...

"znoob" wrote in ...

"mo" wrote in message
...

An exhaust stack rises through the steam of the Loy Yang B power
station in the Latrobe Valley, 150km east of Melbourne. Australians
have overtaken Americans as the world's biggest individual producers
of carbon dioxide, which is blamed for global warming, a risk
consultancy says.

Sorry, but CO2 is not a pollutant.
You know the world has gone crazy when one of the fundamental building
blocks of life is labelled as a pollutant.

**Tell you what, moron: Put yourself into a large container with around
10% CO2. I'll stay outside and we'll see who survives.

Idiot.

Put yourself in a large container with around 100% of H2O. I'll stay
outside and we'll see who survives.

Gee, I guess that proves water is a pollutant.

**Indeed it is, moron. Water, CO2, arsenic, lead. Lots of things, in
excessive quantities will act as pollutants.

So where are the "excessive quantities" of CO2 then?

A Carbon Dioxide Famine Is What We Have

Our atmosphere is STARVED of CO2!!

February 27 2009

Humans evolved when carbon dixoide levels were much higher than now, so what's
the panic?

Dr. William Happer, currently a professor of Physics at Princeton
University,

but clearly no kind of paleontologists or person learned in
biology ...


was once fired by Gore at the Department of Energy in 1993 for
disagreeing with the vice president on the effects of ozone to humans and
plant life, also disagrees with Gore's claim that manmade CO2 increases the
temperature of the earth and is a threat to mankind.

"Many people don't realize that over geological time, we're really in a CO2
famine now.

Happer, using the word "famine" treats CO2 as if it were, to quote the
denier meme "plant food". But CO2 is no more plant food than is
oxygen. Deprive a plant of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium,
and so forth and all the CO2 in the world won't make a scrap of
difference to its health, any more than humans, who need oxygen and
water to live will live without protein and carbohydrates.

Almost never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the
Holocene geologic epoch - 280 ppm- that's unheard of," Happer said. "Most of
the time, it's at least 1,000 ppm and it's been quite higher than that."


But not during any time when one could say that humans were evolving.

Happer said that when CO2 levels were higher - much higher than they are
now, the laws of nature still managed to function as we understand them
today.


Gosh ... really? Once upon a geological time, there was no oxygen, and
yet life evolved. What does Happer think of that?

"The earth was just fine in those times," Happer said. "You know, we evolved
as a species in those times, when CO2 levels were three or four times what
they are now.


That's simply wrong. The evolution of from monkeys about the size of
squirrels to apes that were in turn the ancestors of humans took place
during the Miocene era which is generaly reckoned to have started
abouut 23 million years ago.

Here's a comment on the period:

||||
The Miocene is characterized by a series of key climatic events that
led to the founding of the late Cenozoic icehouse mode and the dawn of
modern biota. The processes that caused these developments, and
particularly the role of atmospheric CO2 as a forcing factor, are
poorly understood. Here we present a CO2 record based on stomatal
frequency data from multiple tree species. Our data show striking CO2
fluctuations of ≈600–300 parts per million by volume (ppmv).. Periods
of low CO2 are contemporaneous with major glaciations, whereas
elevated CO2 of 500 ppmv coincides with the climatic optimum in the
Miocene. Our data point to a long-term coupling between atmospheric
CO2 and climate. Major changes in Miocene terrestrial ecosystems, such
as the expansion of grasslands and radiations among terrestrial
herbivores such as horses, can be linked to these marked fluctuations
in CO2.

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/2/449.abstract
|||

Here's another:

|||
The global expansion of C4 grasslands in the late Miocene has been
attributed to a large-scale decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide
(CO2) concentrations. This triggering mechanism is controversial, in
part because of a lack of direct evidence for change in the partial
pressure of CO2 (pCO2) and because other factors are also important
determinants in controlling plant-type distributions. Alkenone-based
pCO2 estimates for the late Miocene indicate that pCO2 increased from
14 to 9 million years ago and stabilized at preindustrial values by 9
million years ago. The estimates presented here provide no evidence
for major changes in pCO2 during the late Miocene. Thus, C4 plant
expansion was likely driven by additional factors, possibly a
tectonically related episode of enhanced low-latitude aridity or
changes in seasonal precipitation patterns on a global scale (or
both).

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten...t/285/5429/876

|||

So what this shows is almost the exact opposite of Happer's claim. The
most direct ancestors or humanity's ancestors evolved as CO2
concentrations *fell* and then stabilised at *pre-industrial* levels
(i.e not three or four times what today's levels are.) Interestingly,
it also shows that CO2 was positively correlated with temperature ...
but that it was during the period of cooling that humanity's ape-
ancestors developed.


And, the oceans were fine, plants grew, animals grew fine. So it's baffling
to me that, you know, we're so frightened of getting nowhere close to where
we started."


Happer is not so much *baffled* as *ignorant* or disingenuous. Happer
may be claiming that he is old enough to have survived the Paleocene-
Eocene Thermal Maximum of 55.8 million years ago, or he may just be a
moron and as to his breathless quoters, Blot and Bonzo ...

Prosimian? Posssibly.

Fran