Open Thread Weekend

open_threadThis holiday weekend, be sure to remember the U.S. Memorial Day, which is Monday. I’m offline except maybe for some time tonight and tomorrow morning.

Feel free to discuss the usual topics at WUWT.

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May 26, 2014 1:54 am

This will be my second question (comment) for the weekend–I mean it o be a serious question, but the first got no answer as usual, so I do not have high hopes for this one–especially since it is almost 0400 local and I have been sipping quite a lot of cheap port…..
I would like to know an approximate relation between two numbers:
The first number is the sum of all GHGs (in tons) generated by burning stuff (wood, coal, oil, gas, other) including that incidental to windmills and nukes.
The second number is the sum of all GHGs (in tons) generated by rising bread, fermenting bear, wine and whiskey, undisturbed pea bogs, permafrost, animal digestive tracts, volcanoes, deep sea vents, and so on.

Keith Sketchley
May 26, 2014 11:19 am

Thanks GungaDin for pointing out that coal and oil are natural.
Even my good brother, who has tended to believe alarmists, has pointed that out.

Reply to  Keith Sketchley
May 26, 2014 1:06 pm

Coal and oil are natural. So are humans. We do not exist outside of nature. Nor is anything we do unnatural. Eg., NYC is the natural result of humans striving to promote their comfort and well-being, no less than bees in a hive or ants in a hill.

RACookPE1978
Editor
May 26, 2014 6:24 pm

comment image
An image of the Antarctic (er, Lake Superior) see ice for your viewing pleasure. 8<0
Warning: Beached whale alert.

May 26, 2014 6:58 pm

Two pretty random thoughts:
First, having experienced (I believe) bot old and new formats this weekend I’d like to state for the record that I prefer the old way–if, as is my wont, I visit several times an update cycle, the four top stories will as a maximum be interesting the first trip. (One of my continuing annoyances with “Facebook” is its refusal to leave my setting to “Most recent Stories” unmolested instead of setting things back to “Top stories” every time I look away.
You might be surprised at how seldom MY view of the top stores agrees with anybody else’s.
Second, I think it was here that I saw somebody talking (from a Malthusian Fallacy viewpoint) about Mather Gaia running out of molecular oxygen….
As in almost all possible topics, I am without certification here, but it seems reasonable-upon-inspection to me that there may well be a system-at-equilibrium here.
If we accept the usual beliefs (which I think I know to in error in the details) that plants use carbon dioxide, water, and Other Stuff to live and grow and conquer; and produce molecular oxygen, water, and Other Stuff (does that make water a catalyst?) Similarly, animals use molecular oxygen, water, and Other Stuff to live and grow and conquer; and produce carbon dioxide, water and Other Stuff.
So if there turns out to be a short-fall in molecular oxygen and an (relative) excess of carbon dioxide, the plants will thrive, and (or) the animals die off and equilibrium over the long haul will be preserved. And if there turns out to be a shortage of carbon dioxide…well, let’s leave that as a homework exercise.
It seems to me that the real worry vacuum has to do with “what if we run out of water, or Other Stuff?

May 27, 2014 11:44 am

Over at First Things, yesterday, I discovered an unusual piece about “spin” of all things as it promoted the 97 percent meme! http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/05/how-the-climate-debate-was-overtaken-by-spin
“the 97 percent or so of climate scientists who say we have a big manmade problem …”
I posted a link to the current article in WSJ by Roy Spencer. Quoted Richard Lindzen and John Christy. My posts were deleted. The moderator posted that posts about the 97 percent would be deleted. I asked why the censorship and am now blacklisted from First Things with which I have a long history of posting.

Reply to  Michael Snow
May 27, 2014 2:44 pm

This is a damned shame! I’ll double check when I get to that part of the daily reading list, but I think I read a couple of people at First Things.
I am really going to miss The Anchoress.

May 27, 2014 12:40 pm

Michael Snow,
That is despicable censorship. The alarmists cannot refute the science posted by skeptics, so their latest tactic is to censor it out of existence. Fortunately, that blog has little traffic, so they don’t matter.
But I was curious to see if they would censor a straightforward comment that cited a few facts. So I posted this comment there, verbatim:

The “carbon” scare should not be a conservative/liberal issue. Rather, scientific evidence should decide the facts.
CO2 [“carbon”] has been steadily rising. However, global temperature [T] has been flat to declining for many years now:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/trend
There was only a short term correlation between CO2 and T, between about 1978 – 1997. Since then, there has been no global warming. Any warming due to human CO2 emissions is too tiny to even measure. There are no empirical measurements that separate and quantify the degree of warming resulting from human emissions.
Finally, all available scientific evidence shows that the rise in CO2 has been:
1. Completely harmless, and
2. Beneficial to the biosphere
No one has been able to identify any global harm from anthropogenic CO2. Thus, CO2 is harmless. And the planet is measurably greening, due directly to the rise in beneficial CO2 — an airborne fertilizer.
The biosphere is currently starved of CO2, which has been up to twenty times higher in the past — during times when the planet teemed with life and diversity. More CO2 is better.
The ‘carbon’ scare is the basis for a UN-promoted global taxing agenda. It is a false alarm being sounded by governments, which are ravenous for the immense carbon taxes that could be raised.
But it is based on speculation and conjecture, not on measurable, testable scientific evidence. Because there is no such evidence. None. For all practical purposes, the rise in harmless, beneficial CO2 can be completely disregarded in all Policy discussions. It is simply not a problem.

I wrote nothing about “the 97%”. I only pointed out some facts.
Good thing I made a copy, because when I checked half an hour later, my comment had disappeared. The lawyer who runs the blog had censored it out of existence.
That is the tactic that the alarmist crowd has adopted: do not allow readers to see anything except their carbon scare Narrative. The erstwhile Soviets would have approved.

May 27, 2014 3:05 pm

No, The Anchoress is NOT on First Things (wonder why I thought that?) and I can’t find a place to complain about …oooh! Wait! The other blogs I was worried about are on First Thoughts! Not First Things.
Never mind.

May 27, 2014 5:42 pm

Larry, The Anchoress used to be on First Things but, maybe a year ago, she moved it to Patheos, (I think) First Thoughts is the primary blog on First Things, among other blogs.

Reply to  Michael Snow
May 27, 2014 6:01 pm

I am not sure if I am less-confused than I was, or more %^)
Thanks.