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Maldives Government Holds Undersea Cabinet Meeting
Hugh Pickens writes "The president of the Maldives and 11 ministers, decked out in scuba gear, held a cabinet meeting 4m underwater to highlight the threat of global warming to the low-lying Indian Ocean nation. While officials said the event itself was light-hearted, the idea is to focus on the plight of the Maldives, where rising sea levels threaten to make the nation uninhabitable by the end of the century. President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet spent half an hour on the sea bed, communicating with white boards and hand signals and signed a document calling for global cuts in carbon emissions. The Maldives has already begun to divert a portion of the country's billion-dollar annual tourist revenue to buy a new homeland as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees. Emerging out of the water, a dripping President Nasheed removed his mask to answer questions from reporters and photographers crowded around on the shore. 'We are trying to send a message to the world about what is happening and what would happen to the Maldives if climate change isn't checked,' he said, bobbing around in the water with his team of ministers. 'If the Maldives is not saved, today we do not feel there is much chance for the rest of the world.'"
No, I think he's suggesting that there is no catastrophe. The Maldives are 1 metre above sea-level because they are coral atolls. When the sea-levels rise (as they have done in the past, the coral simply grows upwards - when the sea-level falls, the coral erodes, leaving them constantly about a metre above sea-level.
Its the same with coral atolls everywhere.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Your source sucks.
Here's a better one.
The catastrophe is not for nature, it's for man.
P.S. Corals worldwide are dying. The two culprits fingered so far are rising oceanic acidity (caused by excessive atmospheric CO2 being gas-exchang'd right into the ocean) and human herpes simplex viruses, which apparently kill off some of the important organisms responsible for helping to build and maintain coral.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Under what mathematical law does the fact that two graphs don't look the same mean that they are not related? This is really sad: Experts spend years analyzing the data, come to an extremely complicated conclusion based on mountains of evidence, and then someone who has not the slightest fucking clue about science or mathematics walks in and says "But those graphs look different!" and decides those experts are all wrong. And worse, other people who share this guy's lack of clue believe his argument because it's the only one simple enough for them to understand.
Roughly speaking, more CO2 in the atmosphere causes the temperature to rise faster, and yearly CO2 emissions are adding to what is already there. So the CO2 emissions graph is something like the second derivative of the temperature graph. That means that if we keep emitting CO2 at a constant rate (flat graph) then temperatures will rise faster and faster over time (quadratic curve). Yeah, the graphs don't look the same, but they are related. (And in reality it's much more complicated than this.)
Corals grow within very narrow limits of temperature, irradiance, salinity, pH and turbidity; all variables which are influenced by climate and weather. More CO2 means more acidic ocean water, which would retard coral growth. Warmer oceans would also reduce carbonate ion saturation, having the same effect.
The Ocean is not becomming "more acidic". It's still very alkaline.
The car is not going slower, it's going 200 mph! Or in other words, you're an ass. Is this the kind of thing you bring up in ordinary conversation? You must be a hit at parties. I'd hit you twice.
You should say "over the very brief period of time we've been testing the PH of the ocean with any degree of accuracy, it's alkalinity has decreased by a very small amount. We have no way of knowing whether or not this is a natural cycle, or whether or not the measurements we take today, with different instruments from yester-year, account for the difference;
This is extremely disingenuous. It's the same retarded argument as "even though we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we put out ten times more CO2 than volcanism every year, and we know volcanism to be a major driver of global CO2, we don't believe that there is a greenhouse effect, and by the way global temperatures have only risen a little over one degree, that's a tiny shift!" But it's a fucking stupid statement because 99% of everything interesting on the planet occurs in a narrow temperature range, and by the same token, the ocean functions in a very small Ph range.
in any case, we're pretty sure life in the Ocean will adapt to such a small change with relative ease,
You are either ignorant or outright lying, since we know that small shifts in Ph have severe ramifications for much ocean life, including all marine mammals, and especially including coral reefs (where most of the ocean's diversity is) and algae (where most of the world's oxygen comes from.) Why don't you stop spreading the lies of the deniers? We're not even in Egypt... although, come to mention it, have you seen the Nile?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
While coral does grow like that, upwards in times of higher sea level, they are unable to do so unless the atoll is covered with water. Coral grows on top of an existing coral base, not from the base. There are islands in the West Indies that have coral terraces gaining heights of 60 or 70 meters above sea level. They are not being pushed up, the sea level has dropped by that much since the first (top level) terrace was formed. Kind of puts things in perspective, i.e. how low sea level actually is today.
There is no link that says that we put out 10 times as much CO2 as volcanoes, because that statement is wrong, but not in the way that you think. The difference is much, much higher.
A 1991 study[1] put the annual volcanic contribution of atmospheric CO2 at 4E12 mol/year, or 176 million tons. Annual worldwide carbon dioxide emissions are around 27 billion metric tons; the US power industry alone produces more than 2.4 billion tons.[2] The factor between worldwide volcanic and human emissions of CO2 is actually around 150.
[1] Gerlach, T.M., 1991, Present-day CO2 emissions from volcanoes: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (EOS))
[2] http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.