[extropy-chat] Alleged Climate Collapse

Robert J. Bradbury bradbury at aeiveos.com
Mon Feb 23 16:54:20 UTC 2004


On Mon, 23 Feb 2004, Mike Lorrey wrote:

> The diesel impact is NOT global.

You have to be careful about this Mike -- some atmospheric soot may
end up in the arctic, will impact snow reflectance and therefore
alter arctic heating/radiation patterns.  However soot that is
brought down by rain into the oceans is much more mobile.  You
have to keep in mind that the oceans are starved for carbon --
any being brought down from the atmosphere is likely to be consumed
by the microorganisms which in turn may alter food webs all over
the globe.

> The tropical and equatorial regions are not warming.

Again I would say this isn't quite clear.  I would say that
the massive amount of forest removal taking place in the Amazon
and Indonesia may not have clear impacts now.  But you are
changing the reflectance, CO2 and water cycles of a significant
fraction of the equatorial regions -- one can expect that the
effects on climate will not be insignificant.

(Note -- As I have stated in the past -- due to nanotechnology
development I view the whole debate on global warming due to
CO2 production as silly -- the problem we are going to have is
a CO2 shortage because people will grab CO2 out of the atmosphere
because it is a relatively cheap resource from which to mine carbon.)

Robert





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