[Coral-List] Alert Diver Article on proposed coral listing

Tue May 14 12:18:23 EDT 2013

A note about the cooling scare of the 1970s:  I remember it well.  That was 35 years ago.  We have much better instruments, longer time series, new theories and models.  Scientific understanding of both natural and man-made environmental processes are much better now.  We hardly even had computers back then, and hardly any satellite data.  Diving and coral reef science was new back them.  There were only 3.5 billion people on Earth back then.  Coastal developments was seen as a good thing back then.  We are in a different world now, and we know that burning of 100s of millions of years of accumulated fossil fuels for all of the various uses over the past 150 years, plus deforestation, plus local and regional pollution, feedback loops such as melting of glaciers and ice caps, smog, airplane contrails, etc are messing up air and water quality, and changing the heat balance of the Earth.  To me the doubters just don't want to face reality because they don't want to consider the tough choices that need to be made to try to halt the process let alone reverse it.

*************************************************************************
Dr. Alina M. Szmant
Professor of Marine Biology
Center for Marine Science and Dept of Biology and Marine Biology
University of North Carolina Wilmington
5600 Marvin Moss Ln
Wilmington NC 28409 USA
tel:  910-962-2362  fax: 910-962-2410  cell: 910-200-3913
http://people.uncw.edu/szmanta
*******************************************************

-----Original Message-----
From: coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov [mailto:coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov] On Behalf Of Jay Burkos
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 8:27 AM
To: Ulf Erlingsson
Cc: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov list
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Alert Diver Article on proposed coral listing

Hi everyone,

Nice to see a number of great responses.   Some of us are very
skeptical of "man-made" global warming.  We're not morons, Republican
stooges, etc.   we are the same people who shook our heads at the
global cooling ruckus of the 1970's.

Should we treat our planet with more care?  Yes.   But is the solution
launching a micro-mirror shield to block sunlight as some warming fanatics proclaimed, or dumbing tons of iron into the ocean as another
already did?   No.   That's insane...and dangerous.

Can we start with solutions that address the problems in our nation?
I spoke about exhaust issues earlier and received an assortment of answers - some sarcastic because I have the gall to question man-made
warming.    Others very informative.   Thanks!   But warming, though
the modern scientific snake oil, doesn't address many other problems.
 Biodiversity, violations of CITES, agricultural run-off, invasive species (crown of thorns, zebra mussels, lion-fish), over fishing, destructive shrimp fishing practices, and drift nets all contribute
massively to the decimation of species, reefs and our oceans.   Those
problems have directly identifiable solutions.  Their effects are directly correlated to a specific human action.

Rather than investing billions into taxation and GW work, I'd love to see coalitions of serious scientists attacking these all too destructive practices.  You won't see doubt from anyone, and there will be measurable success.

Sent from my iPhone

On May 14, 2013, at 6:29, Ulf Erlingsson <ceo at lindorm.com> wrote:

> Carbonic acid comes from CO2 and in Europe all new cars now have to be declared as to how much CO2 they emit per kilometer.
>
> However, I think the OP's point was that if acidification is a bigger issue than temperature, then the debate should focus on acidification and not on temperature.
>
> Having said that, I think the point about running out of fossil fuel is very valid, and I can't understand why the public opinion seems so oblivious to that threat.
>
> Ulf Erlingsson
>
> On 2013-05-13, at 12:29, Eugene Shinn wrote:
>
>> "Buffering acid in car exhaust won't change anything"...The high 
>> level
>> CO2 (.004%) in the atmosphere/ocean will remain for 50 to 100 years. 
>> We will run out of fossil fuel by then anyway. Gene
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>> No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
>> ------------------------------------ 
>> -----------------------------------
>> E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
>> University of South Florida
>> College of Marine Science Room 221A
>> 140 Seventh Avenue South
>> St. Petersburg, FL 33701
>> <eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
>> Tel 727 553-1158
>> ---------------------------------- 
>> -----------------------------------
>>
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