Tuesday, May 06, 2008

One Hour in AGW News


Anyone doubt there is sophisticated propaganda campaign in the media? Google News me this Batman: Results 1 - 10 of about 27,743 in the last hour for global-warming.

How fossil fuels killed the dinosaurs: … the asteroid hit oil or coal deposits when its impact made the 200km-wide Chicxulub Crater, just west of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. It struck with such force that the buried carbon liquefied, rocketed skyward, and formed tiny airborne beads that blanketed the planet in soot.

Researchers have previously suggested there were mass extinctions as global forest fires pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to cause a period of runaway global warming, or they spewed enough soot to block out the sun and kill off the plants on which herbivorous dinosaurs fed, starving the meat-eaters further up the food chain.

Well aerosol particulate COOLING is well understood from documented volcanic explosions. Block the sunshine and things get cold and cold suppresses life. If the dinosaurs, however, were killed by “a period of runaway global warming” we know the mammals survived it. Hey, aren’t we mammals?

Koalas threatened by climate change: "I'm sure we'll see koalas disappearing from their current range even though we don't see any change in tree species or structure of the forests." Prof Hume will present new research at a major science conference in Canberra today showing that increases in CO2 decrease levels of "good" nutrients and increase toxic nutrients in eucalypt leaves.

Hummm… What exactly is a “toxic nutrient”? By the way, how did those ancestral koalas survive that effectively instantaneous combustion generated increase in CO2 referenced above? Maybe they were hyper-fast evolvers with Lamarckian superpowers.

Planet may get too hot for tropical insects, warn scientists: Scientists say insects in the tropics are far more sensitive to temperature rises than those elsewhere. They predict it will be difficult for them to survive temperature rises of up to five degrees predicted by 2100.

OK. Bugs are fragile. Step on one and see how easy it is to extinct it. Still I think bugs may survive nights a few (unspecified) degrees warmer that normal. I’m sure the science writer-journalist of this piece understands the greenhouse effect delays cooling, so the effect produces warmer night time temperatures rather than more daytime heat.