From the the “Children won’t know what weeds are (h/t to Dr. David Viner) and the we must make more CO2 to save the plants” department, comes this out of left field.
From the University of Georgia: Continued destruction of Earth’s plant life places humans in jeopardy, says UGA research
Athens, Ga. – Unless humans slow the destruction of Earth’s declining supply of plant life, civilization like it is now may become completely unsustainable, according to a paper published recently by University of Georgia researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“You can think of the Earth like a battery that has been charged very slowly over billions of years,” said the study’s lead author, John Schramski, an associate professor in UGA’s College of Engineering. “The sun’s energy is stored in plants and fossil fuels, but humans are draining energy much faster than it can be replenished.”
Earth was once a barren landscape devoid of life, he explained, and it was only after billions of years that simple organisms evolved the ability to transform the sun’s light into energy. This eventually led to an explosion of plant and animal life that bathed the planet with lush forests and extraordinarily diverse ecosystems.
The study’s calculations are grounded in the fundamental principles of thermodynamics, a branch of physics concerned with the relationship between heat and mechanical energy. Chemical energy is stored in plants, or biomass, which is used for food and fuel, but which is also destroyed to make room for agriculture and expanding cities.
Scientists estimate that the Earth contained approximately 1,000 billion tons of carbon in living biomass 2,000 years ago. Since that time, humans have reduced that amount by almost half. It is estimated that just over 10 percent of that biomass was destroyed in just the last century.
“If we don’t reverse this trend, we’ll eventually reach a point where the biomass battery discharges to a level at which Earth can no longer sustain us,” Schramski said.
Working with James H. Brown from the University of New Mexico, Schramski and UGA’s David Gattie, an associate professor in the College of Engineering, show that the vast majority of losses come from deforestation, hastened by the advent of large-scale mechanized farming and the need to feed a rapidly growing population. As more biomass is destroyed, the planet has less stored energy, which it needs to maintain Earth’s complex food webs and biogeochemical balances.
“As the planet becomes less hospitable and more people depend on fewer available energy options, their standard of living and very survival will become increasingly vulnerable to fluctuations, such as droughts, disease epidemics and social unrest,” Schramski said.
If human beings do not go extinct, and biomass drops below sustainable thresholds, the population will decline drastically, and people will be forced to return to life as hunter-gatherers or simple horticulturalists, according to the paper.
“I’m not an ardent environmentalist; my training and my scientific work are rooted in thermodynamics,” Schramski said. “These laws are absolute and incontrovertible; we have a limited amount of biomass energy available on the planet, and once it’s exhausted, there is absolutely nothing to replace it.”
Schramski and his collaborators are hopeful that recognition of the importance of biomass, elimination of its destruction and increased reliance on renewable energy will slow the steady march toward an uncertain future, but the measures required to stop that progression may have to be drastic.
“I call myself a realistic optimist,” Schramski said. “I’ve gone through these numbers countless times looking for some kind of mitigating factor that suggests we’re wrong, but I haven’t found it.”
###
The study, on “Human Domination of the Biosphere: Rapid Discharge of the Earth-Space Battery Foretells the Future of Humankind,” will be available online at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/recent the week of July 13.
Meanwhile, apparently unnoticed by these researchers, Earth’s Biosphere is booming (thanks to all that added CO2 from the industrial revolution).
Science at work.
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The problem is all those solar panels which are reducing the amount of photosynthesis. Scrap the solar panels and grow grass and trees instead. And use lots of nuclear power – fission and then fusion. Simple.
and coal and oil. We have an embarassment of riches.
All life is dependant of the amount of usable carbon in the carbon cycle.
Over the millennia, a large amount of carbon has been sequestered as coal and limestone.
Mining coal and fossil fuels replenishes carbon into the shorter term carbon cycle, making it usable for all life on Earth.
The planet’s biosphere thanks us. !
I remember one young scamp a few years ago postulating that the reason why Gaia invented man was so that he could retrieve all that trapped carbon that the biosphere so desperately needed.
Moderators: Don’t tell me that “scamp” put me in the moderation queue. Is your naughty word software really that pathetic?
Nope… “man” was the naughty word.
The sun’s energy is stored in plants and fossil fuels
=================
nonsense. there is a much, much bigger store of the sun’s energy along with most of the earth’s surface carbon stored in limestone and other rocks. Limestone is fossilized CO2 combined with the calcium dissolved in the ocean.
the only problem with limestone is that it takes even more energy to get the carbon and energy out. luckily plate tectonics carries the limestone into the earth, where it breaks down under heat and pressure, and reduces in the presence of water (steam) and iron to produce hydrocarbons.
these hydrocarbons then float up through the crust, where they get trapped on occasion under rock formations, where they build up ready for humans or micro-organisms to make use of. so yes, fossil fuels are made from fossils, they are made from fossilized CO2.
If what you say is true, why does every source of petroleum hydrocarbons contain biomarkers?
..
http://www.oiltracers.com/services/exploration-geochemistry/oil-biomarker-summary.aspx
If what you say is true, how do you explain the bio-markers in every source of crude oil ever produced?
..
http://www.oiltracers.com/services/exploration-geochemistry/oil-biomarker-summary.aspx
Joel D. Jackson : “If what you say is true, how do you explain the bio-markers in every source of crude oil ever produced?”
The hot deep biosphere. If Gold is correct, life started deep underground with thermophile bacteria feeding off the hydrocarbons
Nice hypothesis, now let’s find the evidence to make it into a theory.
Ron House.
..
The problem with Gold’s “theory” of thermophile bacteria is that it can’t explain the existence of porphyrins which are derived from chlorophyll in crude oil.
..
https://books.google.com/books?id=DXEhAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=chlorophyll+biomarker+crude+oil&source=bl&ots=D6QY8PLFJc&sig=RfAs8gY78-326fPCzfg0MTwvPgY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBmoVChMIq66qxoLcxgIVzrIeCh1t8ALK#v=onepage&q=chlorophyll%20biomarker%20crude%20oil&f=false
Back again with the silly stuff Joel?
Limestone is formed from the shells of tiny critters over millennia.
Ron House
…
The problem with Gold’s “theory” is it cannot explain the compounds derived from chlorophyll in crude oil. Remember, thermophilic bacteria don’t have chlorophyll
Where is this chlorophyll nonsense you are spouting Joel?
The paper you linked to does not mention it? Instead that paper lists many different sources of carbon and how the age and maturity of the source rock can be determined from the biomarkers. Nice paper, but it certainly isn’t what you are claiming.
Either you did not read the paper or you fail to comprehend the paper.
bio is bio, period.
#Joel D J.
The Russian discovery of abiotic petrolium in the Arctic held zero biomarkers. Look at the date of your reference it is probably pre the new discovery.
johnmarshall (July 15, 2015 at 3:38 am)
They’ve found abiotic oil? They’ve found oil with no biomarkers? Where?
I know the Russians are claiming the Kara Sea has more oil than the Gulf of Mexico. But I didn’t know it was abiotic oil. Frankly, I would have expected someone to mention it.
Do you have a reference for this extraordinary claim, please?
we don’t really know that our hydrocarbons are derived from fossils.
If what you say is true, then why do all coal deposits contain fossil plant-life? And coal deposits are closely linked with oil deposits, in similar formations and beds.
So coal is all firmly biotic, while oil is abiotic. Hmm, yes weee beliieeeve. We have the faaithhh.
Ralph
Here are some ‘abiotic’ plants in a coal seam. Yes, they happen to look like ferns but that is just coincidence – they are minerals that just happened to accumulate into patterns that look like ferns: /sarc
P.S. Is this abiotic business a backdoor pillar of Intelligent Design?
ralfellis, I’m not persuaded that Intelligent Design is necessary but there isn’t any evidence against it.
This Abiotic Oil idea is far less credible.
Data indicates more liquid hydrocarbons on Saturn’s moon, Titan, than all of Earth. Hydrocarbons are abundant in space. Why would anyone think it surprising if abiotic oil was found on Earth?
Jtom
+10
It’s true that hydrocarbons have been found on Titan and elsewhere. However, there is nothing profound about this, since in their simplest form, it’s just one carbon atom. That’s why it’s called “Natural” gas. Ethane with 2 carbon atoms is also on Titan. To get longer chains implies a chemical process. It is theoretically possible for it to occur naturally, but as the chains get longer, it’s becomes more likely that life was involved. Life creates much more complicated molecules that are broken down to result in long hydrocarbon chains.
Petroleum is a mixture of different hydrocarbons, with the most common being alkanes. Alkanes generally have from 5 to 40 carbon atoms per molecule. The alkanes from pentane (C5H12) to octane (C8H18) are refined into gasoline, the ones from nonane (C9H20) to hexadecane (C16H34) into diesel fuel, kerosene and jet fuel. Alkanes with more than 16 carbon atoms can be refined into fuel oil and lubricating oil. At the heavier end of the range, paraffin wax is an alkane with approximately 25 carbon atoms, while asphalt has 35 and up.
Anyone claiming abiotic oil can’t point to Titan as an argument. You will have to come up with a natural chemical process that results in 40 carbon atoms.
I’m not sure what the point is? Is the agenda that oil is renewable? If so, it is anyways. We can make oil in real time from agricultural waste. No need to wait millions of years. We’ll never run out.
“The most complex molecules yet found in space have shown astronomers how such organic matter is created. The evidence points to a rare type of star as the origin for life’s building blocks. Two hydrocarbon molecules called anthracene and pyrene occur in a nebula called the Red Rectangle, 1000 light years from Earth, according to results presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. The two molecules contain 24 and 26 atoms respectively, making them about twice the size of the previous record holder, a molecular chain of 13 atoms. They are made of linked rings of carbon atoms, and belong to a class of molecules called polycyclic aromat
Reference https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/hydrocarbon-molecules-in-space.12375/”
Anyone believe we have found the longest natual hydrocarbon abiotic carbon chain? There are more things in heaven and earth tha Man has ever dreamed of.
“The earth was a barren place devoid of life”. After billions of years, simple organisms evolved. I just don’t get the bootstrap for life/evolution.
Darwin’s theory is the survival of the fittest, postulating the selection of the most adapted from a population of any given species. So, is it not a per-requisite for evolution that life already exists?
Egg, chicken, egg, omlette
Paul Mackey:
You ask:
No. Your question assumes there is only one mechanism of evolution (i.e. natural selection) but there are several. Importantly in the context of your question, there was random combination of chemicals until eventually – by chance – a self-replicating chemical compound existed and, as a result, species came into being.
Depending on your faith, either
(a) the entire process is not created
or
(b) a Creator established a universe with laws of chance that would eventually result in sentient creatures.
Science cannot determine which – if either – of these possibilities (a) or (b) is correct.
Richard
Nobody has a clear picture yet how the transition occurred from abiotic organic chemistry to life as we know it. The minimal requirement for selection to set in is some sort of self-replicating unit; that wouldn’t have to be life in the conventional sense but could just be a puddle containing some soup with organic molecules that catalyze their own or each others’ formation. However, again, there is no clear picture or working model of this process.
I agree with Richard that science can’t determine the role of a creator in this process. Personally, I don’t think the assumption of a supernatural creator is more compelling than that of a natural process that we don’t yet understand.
Richard
C. The process was not created. But a force of intelligent design created sentient creatures. Call it GMO (God Modified Organism) Man. Afterall, are GMO crops the result of evolution or a manmade creation? Actually, that explanation would solve a lot of priblems in the creation concept. I doubt, though, that it’s any closer to the truth than any other ideas (can’t call some ‘theories’) we have on the subject. Anyone claiming to know the truth is worth avoiding discussing this with.
Good point Paul. The odds of chemical evolution resulting in the first minimal viable life form has been calculated as 1 in 10 ^ 41,000. The probabilistic resources of the universe has been calculated as 10 ^ 139 events. That’s why the believers in chance have shifted to an infinite number of universes.
There is no natural explanation for life. Let’s just leave it at that.
Anyone who thinks that science has demonstrated how life was created from inanimate soup does not under the level of complexity in the biochemistry of cells, IMO.
Some think because simple sugars, and amino acids, and micelles, and some other more complex molecular species can form spontaneously by abiotic processes, that this somehow demonstrates that life began by spontaneous generation.
There is no credible evidence that this can or did occur.
One clue will be if/when we find other life in the solar system, and how it does or does not relate to earthly life.
The discovery of life from beyond the solar system, and a similar analysis and comparison with the biochemistry of earthly life, stands a chance to be even more telling.
Some seem to think God is disproved by the unlikelihood of an old guy with a long beard living up in the clouds and keeping a close eye on people’s lives.
The truth is no one knows where the Universe came from, or where life came from, or where consciousness came from.
These are the fundamental mysteries, in my view, and science has shed zero light on any ultimate answers.
It has provided fodder for more and better questions.
Well said Menicholas.
I will say that science has shed some light on these mysteries, by clarifying the sheer scope. The cell was thought to be nothing 100 years ago, but has been slowly revealed by science to be an engineering marvel beyond human capability and understanding. A software – hardware system that automatically creates itself.
Yes, Darwin did not try to solve how life got started, but, assuming it did, how variation and adaptation happened. But things have moved on since 1859: in fact there’s a lot of interesting work being done on how life got started. The approach that I think is most fruitful, because they take seriously all of the kinetic and thermodynamic problems, as well as the question of containment, and make detailed, testable proposals, is that from the University of Glasgow team: http://www.gla.ac.uk/projects/originoflife/ . Mike Russell, one of the team’s members, is now at JPL, and you can find more recent stuff here: http://science.jpl.nasa.gov . Both sites include a large number of original articles published in scientific journals.
So… how in the world does tapping oil reservoirs – buried safely under teratons of rock, for the most part – affect the “Earth-space battery?” Does it periodically tap energy from those deep pools of oil and gas to keep the biosphere going?
Or are the authors completely, hilariously insane?
Haven’t you noticed the two really big cables buried underground that supply power to… the battery?
If you’ll check out your local power pole, there are three wires up there, and one connects to a wire that runs down the pole to a metal stake in the ground.
Coincidence? I think not.
Actually there are poles connected at each end of the Dynamo we call earth. Pretty sure there is a recharge station nearby, likely near the centre of the orbit.
Of course it is coincidence. The wires evolved over time as nature selected out the non grounded ones.
the latter
i think the PC term is …. sanity challenged.
I like bonkers.
Nutter… works for me.
I believe it is the latter …..last time I looked agriculture produces bio mass
Well where I live it is all over the news that we are going to have anew ice age by 2030 because the sun has “nodded off.”
One written source even said we were going to have a Maunder minimum.
I guess they just never heard that we already had that around 400 years ago.
So the MSM already as their new buzz word to replace MMCAGWCC.
Maunder minimums are the new thing that is caused by CO2. The sun gets bored to tears and “nods off.”
I believe Huffpoop and CNN both have the story; I even heard RL announcing it on the radio.
But so far it is being kept a secret from WUWT, because they don’t want to overload us with things to worry about.
So this is it folks; the sky is falling for real this time.
G << g
The Torygraph had that too. 15 years to the next Little Ice Age.
It was not to be taken uncritically.
“”””””….. “I’ve gone through these numbers countless times looking for some kind of mitigating factor that suggests we’re wrong, but I haven’t found it.”……””””””
Ah not to worry; there’s the out.
He just hasn’t found it yet.
For a while I was thinking he had proved it wasn’t there.
So move along; nothing to see here.
Apparently, he did not notice that 70% or so of Earth is covered with water and under the water there are algae, plankton and fish.
And, of course, humans are also biomass, and we also decay, we do not like to, but we also decay.
BTW, accordint to wikipedia. (I know, I know) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_%28ecology%29
Malthus did not like fish either. So it seems.
The authors are from UGA. Other than an occasional football star, what of note comes from UGA?
From what I can tell, the raw product used to make organic fertiliser.
Athens Greece has a lot of fools some pretending to be politicians of the socialist (or should that be communist) sort plus a lot of sheep that like the idea of handouts. Seems that applies in Athens Georgia.
Man! …what a whopper!
Filled with gruesome horror and it’s not even that time of year.
Should make great fodder for Hollywood SciFi. If they start filming now, it might be ready by Halloween.
See “Day After Tomorrow”. Been there done that. I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know if they blamed it on global warming or not. My son told me about it.
This is wrong on one count, possibly right on another.
Photosynthesis evolved billions of years ago (evidences by fossilized stromal mats and the geology of iron ore (rust) formation in aperiod that began about 2.4 billion years ago. Multicellular evoved in the preCambrian, after all the iron was oxidized and oxygen levels could begin to build in the atmosphere.
OTH, there are limits to natural (and to genetically engineered) photosynthetic efficiency, to arable land, and to many (but not all, from what is presently known) potential food crop yields including using GMO. More CO2 and longer temperate growing seasons both help, especialy with C3 photosynthesis pathway plants. The facts of the world given the nature of its landmasses, temperate zones, and rainfall patterns does place a vague upper ‘soft’ limit on ‘Gaia’s’ biomass carrying capacity for humans, no matter whether that biomass is fossilized, living, or GMO engineered. These issues are explored (and figurated) factually and visually in Gaia’s Limits. No Ehrlich catastrophies, but some glide paths to ‘sustainability’ are a lot less bumpy than others..
“””””…..but humans are draining energy much faster than it can be replenished.”…..””””
This statement is in direct conflict with the claim that we can supply all of man’s energy needs with just solar energy.
Either the total solar input is way more than our entire usage or way less, but it cannot be both.
Well spotted!
GS, it it depends on what ‘solar input’ is converted to. If the planet were completely covered by solar panels, then yes we would theoretically (ignoring transmission) have enough electricity–but no food. Or cover only deserts like the Sahara with solar. Then, ignoring transmission, we might have enough of both (a seriously bruted scenario). Ah, ignoring both cost and transmission.
Esay to invent fantasy worlds. Very hard to engineer them.
ristvan says” ” deserts like the Sahara with solar. Then, ignoring transmission, we might have enough”
…
The Sahara is 9,400,000 km².
..
To power the entire world, you need about 500,000 km² (Reference: http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127 )
…
So just using the Sahara would provide the world with about 18 times the current amount of energy we currently consume.
Joel, only during the day. The other hemisphere is going to be awful dark when the Sahara is in dark.
So just using the Sahara
====================
“just”? how long would it take a team of 1000 workers to install 9,400,000 km² of panels?
MarkW….please read the link and follow the mathematical calculations in it before you make such a foolish statement
…
..
ferdberple….. Solves the unemployment problem now doesn’t it?
COmpared to the claim that we can power the world with solar panels, any statement looks sane and rational.
MarkW…I never said “we can power the world with solar panels”
…
My point was to refute the statement made by ristvan.
Ristvan said ” If the planet were completely covered by solar panels, then yes we would theoretically (ignoring transmission) have enough electricity–but no food.”
…
All I did was to show how foolish his statement was. Theoretically if we had 500,000 km² panes, we’d have not only enough power for everything, there would be plenty of land left over for growing food.
Joel,
I looked at the calcs.
I didn’t see any discussion about peak requirements.
I don’t design electrical systems, but when I design water systems the peak demand (per plumbing code requirements) is huge. When I can avoid the regulatory crap and I just design for efficiency I use a peaking factor of about 12 for a small system.
What peaking factor do you suggest for a large electrical system as associated with solar panels only? What level of redundancy should be used? Do you live in Colorado? Are you taking advantage of the recent regulatory changes there?
DonM….
…
Yes, there was no discussion of ” peak requirements”
…
I guess you missed the forest while examining the trees.
…
The calculations are for the total global </b BTU consumption of all forms of energy. Not only electricity, but also for transportation and heat.
…
The whole point being is that the entire global consumption of energy is equivalent to the amount of solar energy falling on half a million square kilometers. That area is about 5% of the area of the Sahara desert.
I think Joel said just the Sahara, would supply 18 times the world’s total energy.
Last time I checked, the world spends on average about half the time in the dark, and half in the light. So Joel’s number says just in daylight the Sahara provides nine times the entire world’s 24 hour energy needs.
I wasn’t going to do the areal calculation myself but I figured somebody would.
And I would trust Joel’s calculation.
Now my seat of the pants hip shoot would have said; yes there’s plenty of energy in daytime sunlight; not so much at night.
Now I think a solar powered aeroplane just flew from Japan to Hawaii, of maybe halfway to Hawaii in five days or so.
Lindbergh flew to Paris in about 30-33 hours or so, maybe 80 years ago.
So we don’t need fossil fuels to fly anymore.
But you will need five spare days to fly from coast to coast on that business trip; (maybe to line up a new Federal grant.)
g
Also with transmission lines over the north pole a la R Buckminster Fuller, you don’t really have a peaking problem any more. We use theirs while they are sleeping, and verse vicea.
g
No tradeoff needed. We can have solar And plants!
http://www.rockyhigh66.org/stuff/solar_panels_05.jpg
Just think, all the UN folk of whatever stripe will no longer be able to fly to exotic places for confabs. In other words, it will never come to pass.
What does the ability of what 1000 workers can achieve have to do with anything?
How long would it take 1000 people to grow all the food the world uses?
Talk about a straw man!
I read somewhere, that using hydroponics and grow lights, all of the world’s food supply could be grown in a cube 1 mile square.
The world could easily support 2 to 3 times it’s current population. Which really doesn’t matter because the world’s population is going to peak in the next 15 to 30 years, and then start falling.
This seems rather dubious. Think of how many square miles of farmland there are in the US alone.
Even stacked up, if the levels were only 5 feet high, then that would be about 1000 square miles.
Equivalent to an area about 33 miles on a side. Or one or two counties in Iowa. And 1000 plots in a cube only one mile high seems pretty darn unlikely, and the corn would be real short!
Stromatolite mats at least 3.2 and likely 3.5 bya. Therefore “one”, not “several” billion years to photosynthesis. Niggling in this context but very interesting in that they represent fairly evolved colonial bacteria that beg a much earlier date for life…somewhere.
Last time I checked, grass and food crops had a higher storage capacity for CO2 then forest and rain forest, so what’s the fuss???
We need to cover all that stuff with solar panels. That’s why these clowns are worried about all the bare dirt.
😉
Grass has a short life span as it ends up going up in smoke.
Then it’s replaced by more grass.
Popular stuff I guess !
George, you’re on a roll. At least one person is getting your jokes.
ok, I got it…
Humans destroyed “biomass”…..which released “carbon”…..
500 billion tons of “carbon”….50 billion tons of “carbon” in the last century
Well thank God they invented the ball point…cause that’s one hell of a lot of carbon
At least Athens gave us the B52’s………
John Schramski appears to be an Environmental Engineer. Having worked with some Environmental Engineers, they all appear to suffer from a certain amount of reality dissonance.
Hey Janice,
“…worked with SOME …, they ALL appear to suffer….”
The logic doesn’t make sense to me, although the conclusion certainly appears reasonable (from my experience). Being one of them, I can’t argue that I don’t suffer from a CERTAIN AMOUNT of reality dissonance.
Hey Don,
Sorry that I confused you so much, but I’m used to that happening while talking with Environmental Engineers. “I worked with some Environmental Engineers. All of those I have worked with appeared to suffer from a certain amount of reality dissonance.” You are right, Don, that does read better. I will mark you down as being an Environmental Engineer with a certain amount of reality resonance.
What happened to Pliny ??
Have to agree with Rush Limbaugh on this one, “Universities have become holding facilities for the insane.”
Not doing a very good job. The insanity is leaking out all over everything.
Well that’s where the 65% of US Physics PhDs who never ever get a real permanent job in their specialty, end up, on staff or as post doc fellows and fellowesses, of course plus the other 57 recognized genera. Hermaphrodites don’t fit into any of those catalogs, but then they are totally self contained.
They could start saving plants by shutting down the Drax power plant.
Plus 1. Hhow insane is that. (drax )Doea the public even know, or care
I just had a brilliant idea. Why not convert Drax to burning coal?
That would immediately save an awful lot of trees. And, as a bonus, it would help to make the planet greener.
Seriously, Drax is a perfect example of how green fantasies end up destroying the environment.
Chris
We will end up with a monospecies of plant….
I for one welcome my new plant overlords..
.
Looks like quite possibly the best movie ever made!
The Triffids are bummed out ’cause they can’t join the groovy dance party, plus they are high on too much CO2.
Ken,
There actually is a CO2 connection. The initial 15 secs shows bubbling that its clearly due to dry ice under some liquid.
TYoke,
Oh hell and I thought that was our new plant overlords just photosynthesising and producing oxygen for us so they can continue their parasitic feeding.
P.S. I wish to repeat that I welcome our new plant overlords. I might have a place in the new order.
As a dedicated couch potato, I would fit in nicely.
and I really got hot when I saw Janette Scott fight a Triffid that spits poison and kills….
…because there is no biomass in agricultural and urban environments, I’m left to assume…
Stupidier and stupidier and stupidier. Is there no end to stupid? I wish someone who come up with a cure for stupid – they would make a fortune.
Stupid folks don’t know they are stupid, by definition, since they are stupid, so no one would take the cure.
There was a recent comment somewhere about taxing “stupid”. That would be a better money maker than a cure.
“Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
Research the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Wait! Wait!
How come we Yanks are cutting down trees and using some for lumber and the rest for “pellets” we ship to Great Britain to burn in stoves?
I am missing something on this cycle.
Down here in the southeast U.S. we grow trees for wood. Yeah, they capture and sequester the evil carbon gas and provide lottsa oxygen, but in 15 years or so can provide 2 x 4 lumber, plywood veneer, charcoal briquettes, paper, pellets to ship to the Motherland, and so forth. Guess we just don’t get it.
Gums opines….
NASA research is showing an increase of NPP and an expansion of rain forest area – in those places where humans aren’t chopping it down to grow bio fuel crops that is…
Those pellets don’t all go to GB. I incinerate around 5 ton or so to heat my house here in the US and happen to know of many others who do likewise..
Isn’t agriculture creating biomass? What, it doesn’t count if we eat it? Did they count all of the biomass in the oceans? These people need glass bellybuttons to see where they are going. Photosynthesis goes on, assuming we don’t run out of CO2.
I am gobsmacked at the utter stupidity of this one. Earth as a battery, oh my God.
We need to have a monthly contest, with real voting and so on, to elect the stupidest paper, statement, or whatever from the alarmist side. Then once each year pick one of the 12 to be the yearly winner. I suggest the yearly winner should somehow be timed to coincide with April Fool’s Day.
I love that idea Mark…..Anthony?
[Et two .. oh forteen, Brutus? .mod]
Et a couple myself.
Pretty darn good; tastes just like chicken !
g
Mod. + ∞
🙂
*Tee hee*
“Earth as a battery, oh my God. ”
Well in a way it is.
It has lots of stored energy in the form of coal and oil.
And it isn’t worth anything if you don’t use it.
A “Carbon Sink” battery?
with a prize, of course –
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/skepcup.jpg?w=482&h=495
Peak biomass! Or maybe it’s peak stupidity.
I wish it were peak stupidity. I think stupidity will rise for many more years.
forecasting a Paris Peak
One Texas legislator, reacting to a fellow legislator’s speech: “When stupidity gets to $40 a barrel, I want drilling rights to that man’s head!”
Well the amount of stupid certainly seems unprecedented.
I read it twice, mainly to try and understand what the hell they’re talking about: they use a strange language indeed. To me, they sound like ice-holes : the “Schramski ice-hole”, the “Gattie ice-hole” and the “Brown ice-hole”.
Ah well, I can only suppose that their language is the kind that will suck in large GRAVY TRAIN PAYMENTS from the tax-payers: why else would these people write such drivel ? Seems like the lunatics are in charge of the EPA asylum AND they get paid too !
Maybe we should just kick them in the “ice-hole”.
Burning the deuterium in the oceans would give us 10 trillion more years at current world energy consumption rates.
Yeah, and then what do we do, huh?
;o)
Well, Then it’ll have to be He3.
We’re going to have to wait until the Glatun wander by to get our hands on annie plants.
What’s your process for burning all that deuterium ?? Would you use 18 O or 16 O for maximum effect ??
Doesn’t matter, it’s the ohh ohh, that provides the real power.
Its the D+D fusion reaction, has nothing to do with O
Doesn’t all such nonsense remind you of how a religion spreads itself into many various sects, all based on some fixed assumption? These particular ravings aren’t even the logical, intelligent consequences following the underlying assumption (i.e. CO2 caused run-away global warming) – so I suspect Schramski’s IQ isn’t on the Einstein level. It is really only worth a laugh – thanks, Anthony).
Soooo….instead of burning wood we should be burning coal and oil? We should clear land to grow edible plants?
Is this a “We’re all gonna die and it’s our fault!” fallback position?
Did these guys even talk to the guys in the Agriculture and Agronomy Depts.?
I was going to ask the same thing. I find his claims and reasonings bizarrely ignorant of basic botany, biology, and chemistry.
I agree. I am not even going to begin to criticize this paper, because it is not even stupid.
I question the source and accuracy ot their data. It seems to me that carbon is a constant which moves from organic to inorganic and back with ease and that the Earth on balance receives more energy and mass than it loses. Every where on Earth evidence of early life is buried below later life. Egypt contains pyramids below the sand. This planet has to be growing as we have more incoming than outgoing mass and energy.
Max
But, but… if we burn down all the trees and plants then we’ll release enormous amounts of CO2 which will feed all those starving plants, right?!?? We can save the world!
P.S. I’m working on getting that published in the pal-reviewed literature. I’ll need some coauthors; any volunteers? It will help if you’re fond of hallucinogens, have shared the Nobel Peace prize with Al Gore, and enjoy hitting yourself in the head with a hammer because it feels good when you stop. Oh, and you must be depressed; really, really depressed.
Battery, schmattery! I say we drill a hole to the center of the earth and pump in a buncha heavy water to act as a neutron moderator for the radioactive elements down there. Then we will have a built-in nuclear reactor!
Compared to these clowns, the average ‘climate scientist’ is a beacon of sanity.
Well, at least they didn’t mention unicorns.
Peak waffle.