It is folly to make sweeping dismissals of the effects of carbon emissions on our planet by labeling scientists concerns as “religious”. Seems like the flip-side of calling something Creation Science – ie; dismissing science as religion vs. lauding religion or blind faith as science. If one needs to ridicule scientists . . . and therefore science itself . . . in order to make a “scientific” point, it seems like a self-defeating argument. Perhaps that is because the writer is a self-proclaimed “researcher” and not a scientist?

Regardless – this ideology is a demonstrably false characterization of environmentalism as whole in order to render any argument against our impact on the earth as irrelevant. We are being asked to believe that climate scientists and environmentalists believe somehow that we should never have advanced beyond the stone age – never built a dam, tilled a field, cut down a tree, burned a lump of coal or petroleum or killed a beast for food – is patently absurd and an insult to the sensibilities of any intelligent reader.

More to the point, however, pointing out possible benefits of an increase in Carbon in an effort to dismiss it’s detrimental effects does not erase our responsibility to fully address the negatives, particularly if those negatives could well surpass the positives. If I throw raw sewage in my backyard the plant-life would love it I’m sure. That doesn’t mean I should dismiss the horrible public health issues that would arise.

The point is not that all effects of greenhouse gases are bad, or that none of the increases in CO2 are offset by adjustments in nature, but that there will certainly be some negative effects brought about by the huge increases in CO2 that eventually build up in the atmosphere. It is our responsibility to realistically assess the negative impacts of our collective actions, even if such analysis is painful and difficult. If we don’t know BOTH the negative and positive impacts of our actions then we have not examined the issue completely.

Should we just sit back and see what happens and not worry about rising sea-levels and large disruptions and changes in world weather patterns? Already we are seeing near-disasterous disruptions in the world supply of rice due to historic droughts in Australia which are almost certainly due to the effects of man-made climate change. Do rising levels of plankton offset the inability of thousands of impoverished families to put food on the table?

Kevin B makes the point: “If our intelligence and ingenuity allow us to cope with change then we should use them. That’s what they evolved for.”

Yes Kevin that is true, but we should use our intelligence to manage change before we have to use our intelligence to have to COPE with it. I’m not sure we have evolved to be as intelligent as we need to be to overcome our impulse to wish away a problem that is staring us in the face until it hits over the head.

It looks to me like the benefits, even if we believe the warming claims (or perhaps especially if we believe warming claims), would far outweigh the risk of harm. I have seen claims that it would not be a benefit but upon investigation so far have found those claims to be without merit. Jenn above implies more ocean sensitivity to pH than the paleo record seems to indicate yet I think that is one of the better arguments I’ve seen. Looks to me like about 1000 ppm would be beneficial.

Citing the USGS model PHREEQC:
CO2 @ 450 ppm would cause a pH of 8.16
Calcite SI would change from 0.73 to 0.68
Aragonite SI would change from 0.58 to 0.53.

CO2 @ 780 ppm would cause a pH of 7.94
Calcite SI of 0.48
Aragonite SI of 0.34

Short points out that the Eocene saw CO2 levels as high as 780 ppm, and yet somehow most of the coral species in the seas survived to this day.

But one notable thing I do not see discussed is surface pH changes from sulfates falling into the oceans. The amount of aerosols falling into the Pacific born by westerlies should be significant, considering the findings that even V. Ramanathan cites 40 percent of the temperature anomalies as being from tropospheric soot.

And just as his recent findings on tropospheric soot’s net heating effect raise the prospect CO2 has been modeled to take more than its share of blame for surface temperature anomalies (Ramanathan mentions there’s a masking effect at TOS while there’s intensified heating at the surface from tropospheric soot+sulfates), I really have to wonder if measured changes in ocean surface pH have been partially misascribed to CO2 when sulfates and nitrates in water become sulfuric and nitric acid, far more acidic than carbonic acid.

I warned you not to mix drinks.

Thanks for the figures but I still don’t know how this much carbon relates to the total tonnage of the entire atmosphere. For example, if the entire earth’s atmosphere is 1,000,000 BMT then the +3.1 BMTC each year that gets added is like peeing in the ocean.

So increased CO2 leading to increased ocean PH leading to the death of shell-based organisms is completely baseless.