Greenpeace Co-founder is a Anthro climate change skeptic

[AncapFTW]

http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2015/03/20/why-i-am-climate-change-skeptic

[hannahbanana]

I'm reading his book, "Confessions of a Green Peace Dropout" right now. I haven't gotten to his section about anthro-climate change, but I'm really looking forward to it. He also talks about forestry and logging as sustainable energy as compared to solar/wind power, among other things.

[DaVinci]

I'm reading his book, "Confessions of a Green Peace Dropout" right now. I haven't gotten to his section about anthro-climate change, but I'm really looking forward to it. He also talks about forestry and logging as sustainable energy as compared to solar/wind power, among other things.

Did you ever finish that book?

[LovePrevails]

[hannahbanana]

Did you ever finish that book?

Not yet! It's tough reading books during the school year, it's a slow but sure sort of thing. I'll probably be able to get more headway on it now that summer break is here!

[A4E]

Are there really still people who think that the most important food for trees and plants is going to be our doom?

 

A person today who is able to use the internet has no excuse whatsoever to believe in this religion. Why even take the topic seriously. I spent/wasted alot of hours getting informed about it, but now those hours feel like I was trying to find out if computer games are real life or not.

 

Just stop taking it seriously imo.

[Merrifield]

I have not read the book but find it interesting to note that the project http://www.allowgoldenricenow.org that the author, Patrick Moore, is now involved with promotes genetically modified foods, which Greenpeace strongly opposes. This is quite a leap and given the association of his new venture with GM seed companies, I am suggesting that it is possible that he has sacrificed his principal for profit.

[green banana]

One has to wonder why none of the biochemical companies has come up with a product such as golden rice, when there is supposedly such a big demand for it.

[Merrifield]

Green banana, Monsanto company has developed and holds patents on golden rice.

[green banana]

I think that agrotech companies provided licenses for free to use their proprietary technology (at least that's what the golden rice initiiative claims)

"A licence to those technologies was obtained from Syngenta. The package contained proprietary technologies belonging not only to Syngenta but also to Bayer AG, Monsanto Co, Orynova BV, and Zeneca Mogen BV.These companies provided access to the required technologies free of charge, for humanitarian purposes."

http://www.goldenrice.org/Content1-Who/who4_IP.php

[Merrifield]

I think that agrotech companies provided licenses for free to use their proprietary technology (at least that's what the golden rice initiiative claims)

"A licence to those technologies was obtained from Syngenta. The package contained proprietary technologies belonging not only to Syngenta but also to Bayer AG, Monsanto Co, Orynova BV, and Zeneca Mogen BV.These companies provided access to the required technologies free of charge, for humanitarian purposes."

http://www.goldenrice.org/Content1-Who/who4_IP.php

Yes, my research uncovered similar results. The problems begin when the free license period runs out and the companies who patent the seeds begin selling the seed and restrictinng the farmer from saving seed for next seasons planting. This has happened in the U.S. and Canada with GM corn. Any farmer caught with the genetics of the GM seed in their fields will wind up in civil court. This seems in line with a capitalist model, but as any farmer can tell you corn pollinates by wind, through the air, and pollination can happen from fields miles apart. When the polen from a GM corn field travels on the wind to a field of Non-GM corn, cross polination occurs and the genetic makeup of the Non-GM corn is changed to now contain the genetics of the patented corn. This has resulted in burdensome civil lawsuits against farmers through no fault of their own.

[green banana]

"This has resulted in burdensome civil lawsuits against farmers through no fault of their own."

Yes, I read of those cases. I have a hard time imagining how those companies would survive in a free market. This leads to a very interesting question. Can you patent something that you have not created but discovered? While GMO organism fall under the homesteading principle, discovering something involves no creation per se. How can you own something you did not make?

[AncapFTW]

"This has resulted in burdensome civil lawsuits against farmers through no fault of their own."

 

Yes, I read of those cases. I have a hard time imagining how those companies would survive in a free market. This leads to a very interesting question. Can you patent something that you have not created but discovered? While GMO organism fall under the homesteading principle, discovering something involves no creation per se. How can you own something you did not make?

Isn't that the definition of homesteading?  After all, I didn't make land.  I don't make animals that I hunt.  I don't make the ore I pull out of the ground.

 

If it's GMO, then they put work into making it something different, the same as if I gathered sticks and catgut and made a bow.   If it isn't GMO, or they released it into the wild then discovered a useful crossbreed, then I'd say they can't own it outright,  just what they can gather of it.

[green banana]

Homesteading either means you mark something unowned as yours or you work on something like a field and make it yours that way. What those companies try to do is to acquire licenses to something by describing it.

[AncapFTW]

Homesteading either means you mark something unowned as yours or you work on something like a field and make it yours that way. What those companies try to do is to acquire licenses to something by describing it.

Can you give me an example?  Do you mean trying to claim the offspring that results from breeding GMO plants with non-GMO plants?  That would be theirs, I guess, in the same way I own the puppies that result from a stray dog getting to my female dog.

[percentient]

He says some odd things in this article. Humans haven't saved the biosphere from imminent starvation and atmospheric CO2 has been much lower before, during glacial periods. With or without plants, CO2 will be taken out of the atmosphere chemically, and that's because over time there will be fewer volcanoes pumping it back up. That takes BILLIONS of years. Is he also worried about the sun exploding? It's going to happen.

 

"At 400 parts per million, all our food crops, forests, and natural ecosystems are still on a starvation diet for carbon dioxide" is also wrong, there are many ecosystems that barely care about increasing CO2 any more, like plankton in oceans, which are usually limited by nutrients. The benefit of more plant food can easily be offset by a slowdown in nutrient circulation.

 

The 18 year old pause is interesting, but isn't the time scale to invalidate predictions. Many climate models don't even try to resolve this kind of variation. Also, it doesn't look like 18 years to me

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Warming_since_1880_yearly.jpg

 

Edit: I intended to link this or something similar http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/10/17/1381976927298/IPCC-AR5-WG1-Box-3.1-Fig-1_450.jpg(total energy content)

 

I appreciate the conflict of interest stuff, but the emissions chapter is probably more wrong than right. I'm skeptical of this guy.

[AncapFTW]

He says some odd things in this article. Humans haven't saved the biosphere from imminent starvation and atmospheric CO2 has been much lower before, during glacial periods. With or without plants, CO2 will be taken out of the atmosphere chemically, and that's because over time there will be fewer volcanoes pumping it back up. That takes BILLIONS of years. Is he also worried about the sun exploding? It's going to happen.

 

"At 400 parts per million, all our food crops, forests, and natural ecosystems are still on a starvation diet for carbon dioxide" is also wrong, there are many ecosystems that barely care about increasing CO2 any more, like plankton in oceans, which are usually limited by nutrients. The benefit of more plant food can easily be offset by a slowdown in nutrient circulation.

 

The 18 year old pause is interesting, but isn't the time scale to invalidate predictions. Many climate models don't even try to resolve this kind of variation. Also, it doesn't look like 18 years to me

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Warming_since_1880_yearly.jpg

 

I appreciate the conflict of interest stuff, but the emissions chapter is probably more wrong than right. I'm skeptical of this guy.

Ok, so it was much lower before, during periods when there was mass extinction, possibly due to lack of CO2.  How does that invalidate what he's saying?  It's also been higher than it is now, during glacial periods, so the period wasn't necessarily due to low CO2 levels.

 

And what is removing the CO2 from the atmosphere without plants?  A decrease in the rate of input doesn't cause a decrease in level unless there is something removing it faster than it is being added.  Take Mars for example.  The atmosphere is 95% CO2, and that doesn't decrease because there is nothing to make it decrease.

 

Ok, so most of the ecosystem is starving, but not all of it.  That's not that big of a deal.  Also, wouldn't the added nutrients from the CO2 starved plant's eventual decay increase the nutrient level over time, as they convert nutrients into forms usable by the plankton?

 

The 18 year average is 0.0 degree C increase.  It increases a bit some years, and decreases others, with no net shift.  Many climate change models do try to make predictions based on such short time periods, like the ones that are being used to push climate change laws, so it is also relevant.

[green banana]

The main limiting factor in plant growth is not CO2, but bio-available Nitrogen. It is necessary for plant growth, since it is used to make Amino Acids. 

[percentient]

 

 

The point is that he says many things that are wrong.

 

CO2 makes an acid in rain water, dissolves rock, and makes sediments in the ocean. (It turns out plants are kind of involved here, too, I give you that.)

 

The word "starving" is the problem here. (I don't understand your nutrient speculation.)

 

Yes, the models overestimated warming, and this has been a source of a lot of discussion. To conclude that they failed is to miss the point, some variability you just can't predict even if you try. A paper on this topic:

 

http://www.blc.arizona.edu/courses/schaffer/182h/Climate/Reconciling%20Warming%20Trends.pdf

 

Also, oceanic heat content has been rising, so using surface temperature is misleading. 

 

One really has to delve deep into this stuff to have an opinion. The other option is to hand-wave about how CO2 is plant food... and that's fine, it's not a toxic pollutant -- but then I could just pull a similar appeal to intuition and say we've already emitted almost as much CO2 as there was in the preindustrial atmosphere, surely that must force radical changes in ecosystems that have adapted over millenia!

[AncapFTW]

One really has to delve deep into this stuff to have an opinion. The other option is to hand-wave about how CO2 is plant food... and that's fine, it's not a toxic pollutant -- but then I could just pull a similar appeal to intuition and say we've already emitted almost as much CO2 as there was in the preindustrial atmosphere, surely that must force radical changes in ecosystems that have adapted over millenia!

Translation: I know more about it than the guy in the video who has made a career out of it.

Translation: You and people like you are dismissing it out of hand because you don't want to see it my way.

Translation: But then, I could just make assumptions about the way nature works, and assume its all bad. 

And actually, ecosystems can adapt pretty quickly, and have many times in history.  In fact, they are always adapting to small changes.  Whether they have to adapt or not isn't an issue, whether it will lead to serious problems for the ecosystem as a whole or humanity is the issue.  He is merely pointing out that it will have huge benefits if it does happen the way they think it will, and that there are holes in their arguments.

[percentient]

So I've been known to be a wise-ass and give an impression that I know more than I do. However, it shouldn't be a secret that this guy is a speaker for money and whatever his scientific girth is, he's speaking in populism. So yeah, I probably know more than he does... that is if he really says what he thinks, because a lot of what he says is just irrelevant half-truths.

 

He didn't even co-found greenpeace as claimed, he was just an early board member (would they fabricate a letter from him? http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/history/Patrick-Moore-background-information/).

 

We could debate these notions of "CO2 good or bad" with Moore until the end of time (or at least until it goes under 150 ppm in two billion years). That really doesn't get us far in the ethics of greenhouse gas emissions. Did you know that too much oxygen is toxic for you?

 

I want to like him, we probably agree on environmentalism more often than not.

[AncapFTW]

"and whatever his scientific girth is, he's speaking in populism."

 

Taking the least popular position in an argument is populism?  Got it.

 

"Did you know that too much oxygen is toxic for you?"

 

And this has what to do with CO2 levels being able to increase an order of magnitude before they are even at proper levels for plants?

 

Also, the link doesn't work.

 

Can you show actual scientific evidence that he's wrong?  So far all we've got is a chart which backs up one of his claims.

[percentient]

His language is populism. Your language is snark.

 

I try to speak in logic.  For example, you can't argue that O2 is important for life, therefore more O2 is good. Equivalently for CO2. Moore says the Earth hasn't warmed in 18 years, but his own standards fail him -- there is no proof... only some surface datasets, that exclude the ocean, suggest it.

 

Link fixed.

[AncapFTW]

His language is populism. Your language is snark.

 

I try to speak in logic.  For example, you can't argue that O2 is important for life, therefore more O2 is good. Equivalently for CO2. Moore says the Earth hasn't warmed in 18 years, but his own standards fail him -- there is no proof... only some surface datasets, that exclude the ocean, suggest it.

 

Link fixed.

You use snark to accuse someone of being snarky.  Good job.

 

I am using logic.  Up to a point, more O2 can be beneficial to animals, but too much can also be harmful.  Same with CO2 and plants.  You are attempting a Reducto ad absurdum argument, by saying that if I breath pure oxygen at increased pressures I'll get health problems from it, but it fails because I'm not saying you need to increase levels that much, just a bit to re-balance things to a better level from the plant's point of view.

 

Look at it this way.  I say "you should drink more water, you're dehydrated."  You say "but you can die from drinking too much water, so that can't be true."  The fact that you can die from drinking too much water doesn't preclude the fact that a bit more water could have benefits.

[percentient]

Even the most staunch anti-capitalist alarmist-conservationist goes much further than "more CO2 could have benefits".

 

I think you're misreading both my language and arguments and maybe it's not your fault (entirely). I'm glad to engage in the science in some other context.