The Writing is on the Wall

On Mar 5, 2:53 pm, "Andy B." wrote:
wrote in message

oups.com...

On Mar 5, 2:17 pm, "Andy B." wrote:

Their claim is that it is not a stable self-regulating
system that necessarily returns to a comfortable
equilbrium. I don't see how you could have gotten
self-regulating out of this article.

The thing I'm trying to point out is that we've got somewhat conflicting
theories here. I'm not an expert in either one so am looking for some way to
reconcile them. The snowball earth theory states that things got too cold,
froze the earth over and greenhouse gasses saved us. CO2 levels and global
temp then decreased through natural processes and have been basically ever
since (even without the snowball earth thing everyone seems to agree that
CO2 levels were about 22 to 25x higher a long time ago)

On the other hand we've got a bunch of other scientists telling us that
there's no way to reverse the warming process we've begun and that it is
definitely a bad thing to get warmer.

Celebrity scientist death match I say...

I don't think you fully comprehended the issue of
different timescales. The snowball-earth stuff and
the long term decrease from high CO2 levels took
place (so far as we understand the details) over millions
of years. (Greenhouse warming didn't save us, because
there was no "us" - not just no humans, but nothing
more than some bacteria, single-celled organisms, and
Dick Clark.) Past natural climate variability such as
ice ages, interglacial periods, and links to natural, not
anthropogenic, CO2 are variations on timescales of 10,000-
100,000 years. The recent increase in anthropogenic CO2
and increase in temperature anomalies are on timescales
of a decade to a hundred or so years.

These are all climate, and all seem to have a CO2-temperature
link, but they are different processes and you can't expect
one mechanism that acts at a vastly different speed to
counteract or contradict another. Nobody says
that I don't have to worry about subsidence under my house
foundation, because new crust is upwelling from the mantle
at the juncture of tectonic plates and will gradually form
bedrock.

It's like the way that climate doesn't predict weather.
Long-term climate trends influence El Nino (one or two
year timescale) and the average of the weather
(itself varying on weeklong timescales) but you can't
use a 20-year climate trend to predict El Nino five years
out or the weather next month.

When people say there is no way to reverse the warming,
they are talking about 100-1000+ year timescales. I don't
think we really understand what drives the ~100,000 year
glacial/interglacial cycle, and it is possible that
even with human driven climate change, some very long
term process will bring the temperature down on a
timescale of tens of thousands of years. This will
not be very much comfort to our immediate descendants,
although I expect the roaches, beetles and Dick Clark
to make a good go of it.

Ben
RBR Dept. of Long-Term Planning

On Mar 5, 4:48 pm, "Tom Kunich" cyclintom@yahoo. com wrote:
wrote in message

oups.com...

On Mar 5, 12:27 pm, "Tom Kunich" cyclintom@yahoo. com wrote:
Actually you only need to read the actual postings to see that people
like
you attack first.

Tom Kunich never does anything wrong, just ask him.

The other guys are the bullies. When poor great big strong pugilistic-
with-an-assault-conviction Tom Kunich threatens someone who has, at
most, disagreed with him verbally, he's only protecting himself. And
so forth.

Actually, when some sniveling dog barks in my direction and runs away I just
like to bring it to everyone's attention. And of course you're sobrave.

That dork/dorklift thing cut pretty deep, didn't it, TK? Truth has a
way of doing that.

Run away? I'm still here. What-- six or seven years now.

Brave? How brave to you have to be to act like a jerk on a newsgroup?

Get some help, Kunich.

I don't need any help. You're the one crying.

"Tom Kunich never does anything wrong", above.

Ahh, yes, the stupid person's belief that they're going to use a real bomb
and not a dirty radiation device.

A roundhouse miss by the big guy. And some more playground name-
calling. Nyah, nyah!

TMI came real close to being another nuke plant disaster. But, hey,
anyone who objects to nuk-i-ler power plants on that basis is a
screaming pinko fairy LIBERAL, right, TK? --D-y

I do find it interesting that you don't know what happened at Three Mile
Island. I suppose that's just another demonstration of the sort of stupidity
that you think of as "normal".

Ah, another walk past the monkey cage on a brisk, sunny morning. Watch
out for the big ugly mean one! He's reaching for his ass!

TMI: "How many engineers* does it take to design a cooling system that
doesn't have a level reading?" I don't know what the punch line to
_that_ joke is, but there was a partial meltdown, with many expressing
surprise that the system cooled. There were two releases of
radioactive gas, one rated "serious". The local population was
evacuated. The "officials in charge" couldn't find their butts with
both hands swatting.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-co...mile-isle.html

"Blind luck" that TMI wasn't a Chernobyl. The reactor is shut down,
awaiting disassembly. That's "what happened" at TMI.

Sellafield.

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Reports...ccidents.shtml --D-y

On Mar 6, 8:40 am, " wrote:
On Mar 5, 4:48 pm, "Tom Kunich" cyclintom@yahoo. com wrote:



wrote in message

roups.com...

On Mar 5, 12:27 pm, "Tom Kunich" cyclintom@yahoo. com wrote:
Actually you only need to read the actual postings to see that people
like
you attack first.

Tom Kunich never does anything wrong, just ask him.

The other guys are the bullies. When poor great big strong pugilistic-
with-an-assault-conviction Tom Kunich threatens someone who has, at
most, disagreed with him verbally, he's only protecting himself. And
so forth.
Actually, when some sniveling dog barks in my direction and runs away I just
like to bring it to everyone's attention. And of course you're sobrave.

That dork/dorklift thing cut pretty deep, didn't it, TK? Truth has a
way of doing that.

Run away? I'm still here. What-- six or seven years now.

Brave? How brave to you have to be to act like a jerk on a newsgroup?

Get some help, Kunich.

I don't need any help. You're the one crying.

"Tom Kunich never does anything wrong", above.

Ahh, yes, the stupid person's belief that they're going to use a real bomb
and not a dirty radiation device.

A roundhouse miss by the big guy. And some more playground name-
calling. Nyah, nyah!



TMI came real close to being another nuke plant disaster. But, hey,
anyone who objects to nuk-i-ler power plants on that basis is a
screaming pinko fairy LIBERAL, right, TK? --D-y

I do find it interesting that you don't know what happened at Three Mile
Island. I suppose that's just another demonstration of the sort of stupidity
that you think of as "normal".

Ah, another walk past the monkey cage on a brisk, sunny morning. Watch
out for the big ugly mean one! He's reaching for his ass!

TMI: "How many engineers* does it take to design a cooling system that
doesn't have a level reading?" I don't know what the punch line to
_that_ joke is, but there was a partial meltdown, with many expressing
surprise that the system cooled. There were two releases of
radioactive gas, one rated "serious". The local population was
evacuated. The "officials in charge" couldn't find their butts with
both hands swatting.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-co...ets/3mile-isle....

"Blind luck" that TMI wasn't a Chernobyl. The reactor is shut down,
awaiting disassembly. That's "what happened" at TMI.

Sellafield.

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Reports...ccidents.shtml --D-y

Woof woof, yipe yipe, scrabble scrabble, TK?

--D-y

In article
,
"Andy B." wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...
On Mar 5, 2:17 pm, "Andy B." wrote:

Their claim is that it is not a stable self-regulating
system that necessarily returns to a comfortable
equilbrium. I don't see how you could have gotten
self-regulating out of this article.


The thing I'm trying to point out is that we've got somewhat conflicting
theories here. I'm not an expert in either one so am looking for some way to
reconcile them. The snowball earth theory states that things got too cold,
froze the earth over and greenhouse gasses saved us. CO2 levels and global
temp then decreased through natural processes and have been basically ever
since (even without the snowball earth thing everyone seems to agree that
CO2 levels were about 22 to 25x higher a long time ago)

On the other hand we've got a bunch of other scientists telling us that
there's no way to reverse the warming process we've begun and that it is
definitely a bad thing to get warmer.

Celebrity scientist death match I say...

Follow the money. He needs a long spoon who sups with the devil.

--
Michael Press

In article ,
William Asher wrote:

Gradually, critters then
turn this bicarbonate into sugar/protein/fat and calcite/whatever-the-hell-
they-make-into-shells and then it either goes back to make more white
cliffs somewhere or it can sink as organic matter and get cooked back into
hydrocarbons.

The evidence that petroleum is synthesized from organisms
falls well short of proof. _Nobody_ in a laboratory has
made petroleum from biological material. Given that all
the carbon on earth originates from interplanetary
material, the simplest explanation for petroleum is that
it is cooked up from the carbonaceous meteorites that
participated in the formation of planet Earth.

--
Michael Press

Michael Press wrote:

In article ,
William Asher wrote:

Gradually, critters then
turn this bicarbonate into sugar/protein/fat and
calcite/whatever-the-hell- they-make-into-shells and then it either
goes back to make more white cliffs somewhere or it can sink as
organic matter and get cooked back into hydrocarbons.

The evidence that petroleum is synthesized from organisms
falls well short of proof. _Nobody_ in a laboratory has
made petroleum from biological material. Given that all
the carbon on earth originates from interplanetary
material, the simplest explanation for petroleum is that
it is cooked up from the carbonaceous meteorites that
participated in the formation of planet Earth.


Yeah, well, everyone has an opinion.

I like this website a lot on the subject:

http://tinyurl.com/2raupq

And following that advice, if you dive into the literature on the subject
from that era (30's and 40's) you turn up nuggets like this:

The role of clays in the formation of petroleum in the earth's crust.
Frost, A. V. Uspekhi Khimii (1945), 14 501-9. CODEN: USKHAB ISSN:
0042-1308. Journal language unavailable. CAN 40:22976 AN 1946:22976
CAPLUS
Abstract: Previous theories of the origin of oil appear to be
unsatisfactory in that they do not account for possible catalytic action.
It is shown that clays in contact with various org. compds. are capable of
catalyzing at relatively low temps. the following reactions: chem.
dehydration of alcs. and ketones, polymerization, and disproportionation of
H by hydrogenation of lower olefins with the H lost by other constituents
of the material to form heavier compds. low in H, which are adsorbed by the
clay. Therefore it is quite probable that products of biochem. or alk.
decompn. of vegetable products can be converted to petroleum-like products
in the presence of sufficiently active clays, within the temp. range of
100-200°. A theory of the formation of petroleum deposits is formulated,
in which bacterial action is regarded to be the initial factor causing
decompn. of org. matter on the bottom of a sepd. portion of the sea in
conditions where contamination with H2S will eliminate fish and mollusks as
scavengers. In the second stage, after fats and cellulose have been
destroyed and the whole has been overlaid by a water-tight layer of clay
deposits, the action of bacteria continues in the presence of clay.
Velocity of catalytic decompn. is increased as the stratum sinks to greater
depth and its temp. rises to 100-150°, owing, in part, to the bacterial
action. Finally the clay, in contact with the fermented and hydrolyzed
vegetable and animal debris consisting of tars, acids, alcs., and ketones,
leads to formation of hydrocarbons which, provided the original source was
sufficiently large, constitute an oil deposit. 34 references.

You can also find references discussing the prevalence of porphyrins in
oil. It's hard to reconcile the presence of those structures without
invoking some original biological component to petroleum. I dunno, could
all be meteoric in origin. Meteoric origins don't explain tar sands, oil
shales, or coal though. Really, it's not like geologists have sat around
for over a hundred years with their thumbs up their asses, rocking back and
forth and drooling as they congratulate each other it's all worked out.

Everybody wants there to be geniuses out there, sticking it to the man.
It's all so romantic. My money for the next place this will happen in
science is subatomic particle theory rather than geophysics. Particle
physics all seems so contrived, complicated, and ad hoc, like the shells
within shells of the Ptolemaic solar system. Someone will come along, have
an "Aha!" moment, rationalize it, and nobody will like it very much at
first.

--
Bill Asher

William Asher wrote in
:

Someone
will come along, have an "Aha!" moment, rationalize it, and nobody
will like it very much at first.

Oh Lord! I imagine Kunich is reading that and nodding in agreement thinking
that is exactly what happens to him here every day.

NS

"Michael Press" wrote in message
...

The evidence that petroleum is synthesized from organisms
falls well short of proof. _Nobody_ in a laboratory has
made petroleum from biological material.


Have you checked with the LNDD Chatenay-Malabry?

In article ,
William Asher wrote:

Michael Press wrote:

In article ,
William Asher wrote:

Gradually, critters then
turn this bicarbonate into sugar/protein/fat and
calcite/whatever-the-hell- they-make-into-shells and then it either
goes back to make more white cliffs somewhere or it can sink as
organic matter and get cooked back into hydrocarbons.

The evidence that petroleum is synthesized from organisms
falls well short of proof. _Nobody_ in a laboratory has
made petroleum from biological material. Given that all
the carbon on earth originates from interplanetary
material, the simplest explanation for petroleum is that
it is cooked up from the carbonaceous meteorites that
participated in the formation of planet Earth.


Yeah, well, everyone has an opinion.

I like this website a lot on the subject:

http://tinyurl.com/2raupq

And following that advice, if you dive into the literature on the subject
from that era (30's and 40's) you turn up nuggets like this:

The role of clays in the formation of petroleum in the earth's crust.
Frost, A. V. Uspekhi Khimii (1945), 14 501-9. CODEN: USKHAB ISSN:
0042-1308. Journal language unavailable. CAN 40:22976 AN 1946:22976
CAPLUS
Abstract: Previous theories of the origin of oil appear to be
unsatisfactory in that they do not account for possible catalytic action.
It is shown that clays in contact with various org. compds. are capable of
catalyzing at relatively low temps. the following reactions: chem.
dehydration of alcs. and ketones, polymerization, and disproportionation of
H by hydrogenation of lower olefins with the H lost by other constituents
of the material to form heavier compds. low in H, which are adsorbed by the
clay. Therefore it is quite probable that products of biochem. or alk.
decompn. of vegetable products can be converted to petroleum-like products
in the presence of sufficiently active clays, within the temp. range of
100-200°. A theory of the formation of petroleum deposits is formulated,
in which bacterial action is regarded to be the initial factor causing
decompn. of org. matter on the bottom of a sepd. portion of the sea in
conditions where contamination with H2S will eliminate fish and mollusks as
scavengers. In the second stage, after fats and cellulose have been
destroyed and the whole has been overlaid by a water-tight layer of clay
deposits, the action of bacteria continues in the presence of clay.
Velocity of catalytic decompn. is increased as the stratum sinks to greater
depth and its temp. rises to 100-150°, owing, in part, to the bacterial
action. Finally the clay, in contact with the fermented and hydrolyzed
vegetable and animal debris consisting of tars, acids, alcs., and ketones,
leads to formation of hydrocarbons which, provided the original source was
sufficiently large, constitute an oil deposit. 34 references.

You can also find references discussing the prevalence of porphyrins in
oil. It's hard to reconcile the presence of those structures without
invoking some original biological component to petroleum. I dunno, could
all be meteoric in origin. Meteoric origins don't explain tar sands, oil
shales, or coal though. Really, it's not like geologists have sat around
for over a hundred years with their thumbs up their asses, rocking back and
forth and drooling as they congratulate each other it's all worked out.

Everybody wants there to be geniuses out there, sticking it to the man.
It's all so romantic. My money for the next place this will happen in
science is subatomic particle theory rather than geophysics. Particle
physics all seems so contrived, complicated, and ad hoc, like the shells
within shells of the Ptolemaic solar system. Someone will come along, have
an "Aha!" moment, rationalize it, and nobody will like it very much at
first.

This is a more complicated theory. I am not dismissive.
Nevertheless I want to see them do it in a laboratory
with exogenous material, not some synthetic,
labyrinthine, activated catalyst.

The porphyrins can come from methane eating bacteria;
the methane being coincident with the formation of
planet Earth. Coal has different varieties: lignite,
bitumen, and anthracite. Lignite is probably pure
biologic, but is found only at the surface. Anthracite
is likely the end product of methane reduction by
bacteria. Can the vinyl be explained with the biogenic
theory?

--
Michael Press

On Mar 8, 11:35 am, William Asher wrote:

...I dunno, could
all be meteoric in origin. Meteoric origins don't explain tar sands, oil
shales, or coal though. Really, it's not like geologists have sat around
for over a hundred years with their thumbs up their asses, rocking back and
forth and drooling as they congratulate each other it's all worked out.

Who gives a crap where it came from? My concern is that it is just
sitting there and all the while polluting the ground. Let's get it up
in the air where it belongs!