The Durban Game

Dave springer said:
“No, not yeast. The flute has more nucleation sites on the bottom of the glass due the way it is made (stem separately). Higher quality beer glasses have purposely made imperfections at the bottom in order to get the same visual effect in the bubbles”
Does this mean rocky seabeds cause more CO2 bubbles than sandy ones?

Jay,
Your presentation of what Dr. muller says is interesting. But it it based on flawed data. It shows Mankind’s emissions as reported by forms and reports to bureaucrats that reveal real what Man has emitted. It does not record what the countries in question emit or sequester though.
No matter how hard they try, the bureaucrats can’t get the Oak, Birch and Alder and their brethren to fill out forms revealing how much CO2 that they sequester. Nor can they get the corn and wheat fields to turn in thee paperwork about how much CO2 they have absorbed, either. IOW they don’t have double entry bookkeeping showing both debits AND credits.
FACT: per the peer reviewed and published results of groups of Scientists working at Princeton University, who measured the CO2 in the air as it traversed North America from seas to sea, that North America emits less than zero amounts of CO2. We absorb more then we emit.
Our forests, harvested for lumber and paper, grow and absorb CO2. Our farms grow food and fiber and to do that, the growing plants absorb CO2.
To a lesser degree South America does too, as does Australia. Eurasia and Africa are the CO2 emitters.In South America, the Amazon is a mature forest, merely replacing what grew before, and has died, but the population is smaller and Mankind are lesser emitters.
So they too are NET Carbon Dioxide Sinks.
We have met the Kyoto targets without accepting the Treaty. Even if there really were some validity to CAGW, which there most certainly is not, it is someone else’s problem, not ours! Our job is completed and done.

“Three quarters of the people in Mali live on less than $2 per day. You’ll likely have to notify them about how they’ve received so many things from the West, jobs and equipment and the like. They may not have noticed how fortunate they’ve been.”
The blame for this can hardly be placed at the footsteps of the “West.” The original poster’s point stands. They have received gifts from the western world in the form of knowledge that they probably would never have been able to accumulate themselves. What they do with it is up to them.
And this is the reality isn’t it? We are talking about a country with a class of people known as “the untouchables” – so you know the REAL problem runs very deep. Cultural and philosophical differences that cannot just be overcome through economic activity.
The truth being told, I don’t think it will ever change for the vast majority of these people – because their “world view” is substantially different from that of the West.
Ray Tomes makes a great point, many western countries had achieved good standards of living without a good deal of the things we have today and without global trade being what it is now. It’s *not* just “free enterprise” that is responsible for this.

Ray Tomes says:
November 9, 2011 at 3:43 pm
“Despite all of the above, it would be foolish to believe that human activity has or will have no effect on climate and humans need to tidy up their act.”
Says you. Pffffffffffffffffffffffft.
“Doing experiments on our environment that may cause disasters is insane.”
It may avert disaster too. Duh.
“Much of our production of CO2 is connected with making stuff that will not improve anyone’s health, welfare or happiness.”
Bullcrap. People do little to nothing that doesn’t have a purpose and that purpose is almost universally making someone happier, themselves or others. You don’t get to judge what makes someone else happy. Got it? Write that down.
“Human problems run very deep and connected with all sorts of mental impurities”
.You’d know, ya fruitloop.
“There is no easy answer.”
You don’t even know what the question is. None of us do.

[snip. Get the name right. ~dbs, mod.]
If you must know the person I was addressing that last sentence to is named Wilma and that’s the correct spelling. It’s my lost sister’s third cousin twice removed on her aunt’s side.

Ray Tomes says:
November 9, 2011 at 3:43 pm
“Too many replies to my replies to be able to address them all, but thanks. I want to say that I am a long time Greenie. I am also a scientist with no ties to any prejudices and have looked at the issue of AGW with an open mind. My conclusion is that most GW is caused by natural cycles (mainly solar).”
No argument there

The most important cycles (other than Milankovitch ones which affect longer term) are 2300 years, 208 years and about 50-60 years. The 208 year cycle was rising the entire 20th century and is now peaked out. The ~55 year cycle had peaks in ~1940 and ~1998 and so is also now falling. The 2300 year cycle has been and will be rising for hundreds of years.
I have examined the question of atmospheric CO2 and global temperature and find that there is evidence that temperature leads CO2 by 6 months. See http://cyclesresearchinstitute.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/which-causes-which-out-of-atmospheric-temperature-and-co2-content/

This differs from many other studies blogged about at WUWT. Maybe you can get a guest post? Seriously, I’d like to see it.
“Despite all of the above, it would be foolish to believe that human activity has or will have no effect on climate and humans need to tidy up their act.”
Are we talking beliefs or facts here? Regardless, most skeptics will likely agree with the opinion that human activities have some effect on climate. The questions are what effects? And how much effect? Is it better to mitigate or adapt? And what are the unintended consequences of our actions to stop those changes?
If we’re discussing CO2, the observed effects appear negligible and current atmospheric levels and rates of emissions. Land use changes appear to have an underestimated effect on climate. But land use changes are local and regional, and station siting is poor. The warming attributed the GHG emissions may be caused by local land-use changes and the effect exaggerated by bad data, poor modeling and bad analysis.
“Doing experiments on our environment that may cause disasters is insane. Much of our production of CO2 is connected with making stuff that will not improve anyone’s health, welfare or happiness.”
Really? How much? And what stuff? Do we need a Health, Welfare and Happiness Panel to determine what stuff should and should not be manufactured and purchased?
“Human problems run very deep and connected with all sorts of mental impurities.”
The Soviets used to believe that people could be perfected by perfecting society. They believed people are victims of their environment and circumstances. Crime, greed, sloth, mental illness, etc, could all be eliminated if people were conditioned properly. This is still a popular idea with many collectivists, statists, elitists and academics.
Besides, if think you mean impurities of our precious bodily fluids.
“There is no easy answer.”
That’s not a question.

Chuck Nolan says:
November 9, 2011 at 12:42 pm
“Dave, the internet sure makes it hard to lie.
And please don’t get me started with child labor in developing countries which is mostly beneficial.”
Oh please do get started defending child labor in communist China. Is the reason you don’t want to because it’s so hard for you to lie on the internet?

Willis Eschenbach says:
November 9, 2011 at 11:37 am
“I doubt that the Chinese dam and power plant building went up by that much in 2008-2010, but I’m happy for you to surprise me. My guess? Total Chinese expenditures on dams and coal plants represent less than one percent of their GDP … but like I said, I’m happy to be proven wrong.”
You’re so far from happy to be proven wrong you’ll go to any length or means necessary to avoid even the appearance of it.
You need to read more and write less. China famously undertook building the largest dam in the world in the past decade, the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. Dams and power plants are metaphors for industrialization. China is industrializing on a huge scale after literally thousands of years of avoiding it. Enquriing minds might wonder why this is happening at this point in its history. Maybe all the people just woke up one day and said hey, wouldn’t it be great if we abandoned the pastoral lives we’ve been happy to lead for 4000 years and sat around in factories sewing sneakers and soldering parts into car radios? Warning: “sneakers and car radios” are metaphors representing international trade goods.
Your knee jerked predicatably when I quoted an article in Earth Magazine. Funny reaction for an earth-baby LSD-dropping war-protesting surfer/hitchhiker still carrying a guitar and thumbing rides as a senior citizen. But I digress. Maybe Money might be more up your alley.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/26/news/international/china_energy_efficiency/index.htm
Why China is an energy consumption hog
By Steve Hargreaves, senior writerNovember 29, 2010: 5:38 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Over the next 15 years China is expected to build the equivalent of New York City — 10 times over.
That’s a lot of concrete and steel, and it goes a long way to explaining why the country is using so much energy.
Email Print CommentRoads, bridges, rail lines, skyscrapers and factories take tons of concrete, steel, chemicals and glass.
“They are building massive amounts of infrastructure,” said Lynn Price, a scientist in the China Energy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy research lab. “It takes incredible amounts of these energy-intensive commodities.”
Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency said China surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest consumer of energy. The news was somewhat surprising.
While China does have four times as many people, its economy is only a third the size. So where is all that energy going?
Statistics from the DOE show it is China’s industrial production, not its 1.3 billion people, that is using all this fuel. Sure, the Chinese are driving more cars and using more electricity but that’s a drop in the bucket, relatively speaking.

My emphasis. Any question about the source (US Department of Energy) or what is meant by “a drop in the bucket”?
Now the question for you to answer for yourself is what value bridges, skyscrapers, rail lines, and factories have to a billion people who just want to live in peace in small villages raising their own food and children (whatever number they choose to have) and worshipping in their traditional manner – in short living the lives they and their ancestors have been living for thousands of years. What interest do they have in the infrastructure of the industrialized world? Or maybe they don’t have any interest and it’s the unelected communist f*cking government of China that has the interest. Try to think about it a little bit, for a change, before responding.

Dave Springer says:
November 10, 2011 at 6:12 am
More Soylent Green! says:
November 9, 2011 at 12:35 pm
“Slightly OT, but are you aware that President Barrack H. Obama never signed the Kyoto Protocol Treaty?”
The senate has to ratify any treaty before it goes to POTUS for signing into law. No president has even submitted it to the senate for consideration. Prior to negotiation of the it the senate passed a resolution saying the U.S. should not sign any treaty that failed to include binding targets for both developing and industrialized nations alike or anything that “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.”
It takes a 66% super-majority in the senate to ratify a treaty. There’s zero chance of that ever happening with Kyoto. Obama submitting it for ratification would be nothing more than a gesture. I’m not sure why he doesn’t make the gesture though.

Dave,
You probably recognize that I’m just parroting the nonsensical criticism the greens and progressives made of GWB and using that to point out the double standard.