 | A new geothermal power station for Birdsville | The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | The Bullroarer - Friday 26th June 2009 |  |
10 comments on The Bullroarer - Friday 19th June 2009
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
10 comments on The Bullroarer - Friday 19th June 2009
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
User login
Contact
- anz at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Archives
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
GAIA Host Collective
Perhaps part of the answer can be found in this statement
Let's not make this an interdisciplinary slanging match but...
Some of us technically minded people adopt a very reductionist linear approach to nature. IE it's an "equation", the clockwork universe of Newton etc. This seems (I say seems) to be more prevalent among what might loosely be termed "engineers"... where a given input is expected to produce a given output a la "the equation" statement above.
This attitude may perhaps be further entrenched if one has a particular fatalistic religious outlook ... predestination/predetermination. The concept of certainty/perfection is in my experience much higher among this group - especially those with happy comfortable middle class lives. Stochastic behavior is unknown and distrusted. Statistics beyond putting a straight line thru 5 points (yes, I know...) is just guess work to them.
Thus perhaps Fielding looks at the selective data at an inappropriate time scale to the phenomena.. finds it doesn't fit with his mechanistic universe schema and rejects it.
"Geologists" I think fall into a different time scale trap. Their argument seems to be that high CO2 happened naturally in the past, therefore it is entirely consistent that it can happen again. However I have read more than one such piece in the popular press referring to geologic periods when either life didn't exist, or was just evolving. IE those periods, and the rates of change are often not relevant to now.
Let's not forget that it took main stream geology a long time to accept plate tectonics (and longer in the US) over the, what was it called ... dimpled apple theory?
Link
"Wrinkled Apple Skin", methinks.
Also your link above doesn't open for me, but here's a good short summary of the topic
http://geology.about.com/od/structureslandforms/a/mountainproblem.htm
The irony is that even today there's a huge argument going on concerning the underlying driving forces of plate tectonics - for example one geoscientist will argue that the Pacific will eventually close, while another will argue that the Atlantic will close first - and they can't both be right! This is a surprisingly big gap in our knowledge, considering that every Geology textbook now starts with a description of this stuff.
I find it ironic that Plimer, a man who was burnt trying to sue creationists is now chummy with a party, a large number of which probably are such believers!
Is it some kind of joke?
By which reasoning, since heart attacks existed before tobacco and burgers, smoking and eating lots of fried meat must be harmless :)
I point them to my article, "but global warming could be partly natural!"
As for high CO2 in the past, geologists have no excuse for this silliness, since they know about isotopes; the isotopic mix of carbon in fossil fuels is different to that occurring naturally in the atmosphere, from volcanoes, and so on. The extra carbon in the air matches perfectly the isotopes of fossil fuels. So the extra CO2 comes from fossil fuels. If they want to dispute that, they have to explain where it all went after we burned it.
I'm not sure if Fielding knows what an isotope is.
That leaves them disputing whether the extra CO2 causes warming. If they dispute that it does, they must explain why the naturally-occurring CO2 causes warming, but extra CO2 does not. Which of course they can't.
And that's where it gets technical, arguing about exactly how much more CO2 (and methane, nitrous oxides, etc) causes exactly how much more warming, and maybe this or that factor is more important. Which as you say, that's not a simple linear equation. It's a process, not an equation.
But like someone smoking and eating heaps of burgers, the general trends and probabilities of outcome are clear. We can't explain what happens to each and every cell, or predict the day of first heart attack... but we can say with certainty that it won't do the guy any good.
I don't think Fielding appreciates the complexity of it all. Which probably explains why he's an ex-engineer.
Oh well, at least we can bin him at the next election.