Disqus - Latest Comments for sherro

Re: Niche Theory

sherro — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 07:06:05 -0000

Previously, I've drifted off-specialisation, but David's comment "Some unlucky species with highly seasonal determinants, or isolated non-climatic determinants, may be severely affected."

This is how I see the main consequence of whatever climate change there might be. As an extreme example, imagine migratory birds that have flown thousands of km to an island where they have bred as long as can be recorded. If, in one rare year, the island is iced over and they are unable to make nests, then climate will have impacted on a population. Extent of each unstated in this hypothetical.

Absolutely agree with ColinD that rate of adaptation and rate of environment change have to bear a special relationship before generalisations can be made. It seems that the time rate of adaptation, as a concept, has been steadily growing shorter in estimate as we derive info from DNA change rates, more field observation, more observers, etc., however imperfect these methods might be.

It's not hard to think of a lot of special cases such as Aust seeds that need fire to activate them. Again, I come back to the extinction list of Australian birds, where most had a range limited by the dimensions of small islands. There are many cases where climate is not a factor in species numbers.

Re: Australia's Government Debt

sherro — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 06:17:33 -0000

Here's some support for my line of thinking from a Reserve bank (temporary) member:From "The Age" 23 June 2010.

A PROMINENT university economist and member of the Reserve Bank board has delivered a scathing critique of Kevin Rudd's response to the global financial crisis, saying his government ''panicked'' and ''rammed through'' decisions fraught with risk.

Warwick McKibbin, of the Australian National University, accused the government of overspending on its stimulus package, and then coming up with ''a really badly designed resource tax'' to try to compensate.

And he described the government's planned $43 billion national broadband network as ''a gigantic white elephant waiting to happen''.

Professor McKibbin also took aim at fellow Reserve Bank board member and Treasury secretary Ken Henry, accusing him of not only failing to consult experts on economic issues.

Professor McKibbin, director of ANU's Research School of Economics, has told The Age he was stunned by Dr Henry's call this week for academics to ''put down their weapons'' and stop nitpicking over government proposals such at the emissions trading scheme.

''The ETS was a flawed scheme. Had the government got it through it would be dead by now because of the financial crisis,'' Professor McKibbin said. ''I have enormous respect for Ken Henry, but he can't believe that you should have consensus because it is better to have bad policy that everyone agrees with than eventually get good policy that will work.''

And in a damning assessment of the government's stimulus package, he said: ''It wasn't evidence-based policy, they panicked. They put the money into school buildings, they put it in insulation, they put it in stuff they could never reverse.

''The government rammed those decisions through the economy even though they were fraught with risk,'' Professor McKibbin said. ''No one was consulted about an alternative view, and if you did say anything you were attacked by the Treasurer and the Prime Minister in public.''

He also accused the government of overspending on the stimulus package and then deciding that ''because of politics they had to get their spending back so they could claim they had fiscal surplus - for which there is no economic basis, by the way.

''So they come up with a really badly designed resource tax to try and get the position to look good three years from now and, in the middle of a sovereign risk crisis, exposed the economy to a reassessment of sovereign risk.''

He said the recently released review of the tax system should have been independent of the Treasury and then critiqued by it and other economic agencies.

''Treasury, as far as I can tell, has become an arm of political policy,'' Professor McKibbin said. ''Historically they have always been the ones who have said 'wait a minute, this policy of subsidising green cars to try and save the constituents of a particular electorate is not a very sensible way to spend eight billion dollars'. You just don't see that now.

''You see Treasury officials producing what I consider to be fairly politically based evidence in support of a particular political policy, not economic policy.''

(Shortened by GHS)

Re: Niche Theory

sherro — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:50:53 -0000

This is drifting off a bit, but some theoreticians of species populations come back to the need to reproduce from the strongest male as one of the primary drivers. Therefore, another determinant of distribution over the globe might be the ability to mix and select.

There is a theory of optimal outreach, whereby it is recognised that breeding with others too close to family produces weak offspring, and likewise if the breeding is between distant parties that are developing (or have developed) into sub-species or similar, like the sterile mule case. There is theorised to be an optimum separation in both kinship and distance. I have not kept up with this and can report no measurements.

I'm thinking that in relation to David's comment that a single variable was often the best predictor, there could well be numerous effects of various weights that would be quite hard to model; so simplification to a single, useful predictor would be helpful.

As a rider, there are some plants that require a specified temperature range to breed at all. However, it is not my understanding that a change of one deg C in Springtime one year would have much of an effect. Go to 10 deg C and you might notice it.

Re: Extinction artifact in coarse scales

sherro — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 21:24:11 -0000

I'm not even sure what is meant by an optimal environment for a species/genus/whatever. It is likely that a species does best in a place where both the available benefits are maximised AND the threats are minimised. These can be mutually exclusive. e.g. a place of abundant food can also be a place of abundant predators. Are you aware of work showing that many communities live "on the fringe" of where they would like to be and are therefore resilient to location change? (I do not kow the answer. I'm merely using a bit of observation and logic, no formal studies I can quote).

There are numerous examples of creatures using much energy to gather food that is incrementally just able to support species existence, e.g. birds that fly huge distances to breed and feed, penguins that swim miles each day, wharfies spending a lot of effort to avoid work, etc.

Re: Australia's Government Debt

sherro — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 21:09:14 -0000

Alex, you asked about my comment -

"[i]t was not the stimulus that affected the economy in a positive way, it was the strength of mining exports...."

The proof is unravelling now, though it is not a hard math proof but a softer logical indication.

The Feds clearly need more money now to cover the excesses of the stimulus. If they have unlimited choice as to taxing this sector or that, why do they pick on the mining sector? Perhaps it's the only one that has some hope of continuing under a massive burden.

The mining sector was producing funds before the stimulus. Maybe it was generating at a rate that made the stimulus no more than political point scoring (in the sense, "we're on the ball, ready to do what other countries are doing, and just as fast").

Rio has had full page ads that it has reinvested in Australia more than it has earned in the last decade. I'd expect BHP-Billiton to be similar. We used to work on a job multiplier that each mining job supported 5-7 jobs elsewhere in the economy.

I am looking at evidence from the other direction. Would Australia have been badly impacted during the stimulus spending period if we had spent no stimulus at all? The country graphs from Prof Sinclair seem to say "Probably not".

Re: Species extinction by Johnstone

sherro — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 06:29:14 -0000

These fellows have a hard time even with the definition of "species". In my hobby of growing rare ornamental plants, my colleagues and I have obtained fertile, healthy crosses between not only species, but also genera. Maybe the classification was wrong (unlikely), but certainly the definition of a species as being distinct from a like entity with which it will not cross, is eminently disputable. Then when we come to sub-species and races, the water gets even muddier, and worse again when DNA fingerprinting challenges botanical or zoological features of differentiation.

It's the textbook example of the variable hiererarchical dendrogram. Who knows which one is right?

Likewise, the concept that a species extending its range is a sign that it is not due for endangerment can be challenged. (e.g. If it lives on a small island, it cannot change its range greatly). Most of us are familar with predator/prey mathematics, but they do not exclude the case where a predator, after expanding range, becomes extinct because its prey bucks the math and becomes more scarce or disappears completely, instead of increasing in the customary pattern.

It tests credibility that extinction could result from a change in century-long ambient temp of a few degrees, when the summer-winter and day-night changes are much larger.

But you know, I did hear a Tasmanian Devil cursing about the cold atop Mt Wellington one summer. I guess it died soon after.

Re: Problem 4: Why has certainty not improved

sherro — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 01:06:35 -0000

Cohenite, No apology is needed, none at all. Many of us look around for interesting blogs and I had not visited Deltoid for a while. It was interesting to do a brief plumb of the depth of knowledge.

It quite OK with me if doubters from either side get the straight answer to the straight question from the author of a referenced paper. That's how I came to have some interesting emails from Phil Jones from a few years back.

It's a pleasure to work with Niche Modeling because the ad homs are essentially nil.

A main point of my human body analogy is leading to triggers that cause changes in cyclicity rates. Obviously, in the global sense, Pinatubo was one. I suspect the modelling world to be missing others, less obvious ones.

Re: CSIRO Affair?

sherro — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 22:39:01 -0000

The annual wriggles in global atmospheric gases should yield to measurement of noble gases which are not commonly involved in biological activity.

In a quick look, I have found that most noble gases are superaturated, with the degree of saturation being seasonally dependent. They are thus easier to release into the air than if they were undersaturated.

See
http://i260.photobucket.com...
from

http://www.whoi.edu/cms/fil...

This and other work indicate that the ocean/atmosphere interface has varying gas fluxes with seasons; and that one inportant effect is shallow bubble formation, with release to air increasing during turbulence.

I followed this line after reading Steve Short's memory jogger below, that methane was supersaturated in oceans.

The nice figure that I seek is a graph similar to the ML CO2 graph over the years, but plotting Argon instead. If Argon goes up and down like CO2 and methane each year, we can discount some mechanisms as implausible. Anyone seen one?

Re: CSIRO Affair?

sherro — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 01:27:16 -0000

From "The Age" Melbourne, June 3, 2010, p 17, on Cape Grim weather station.

"Cape Grim has developed a name for its ground breaking work on methane. CSIRO scientists were the first to show that, after plateauing for a decade as former Soviet states acted to reduce massive leaks from natural gas plants, methane levels have started to rise in the past couple of years due to a surge in emissions from natural wetlands, including melting Arctic permafrost."

Here is graph of methane variation with time at Cape Grim ex Tom Quirk:

http://www.quadrant.org.au/...

Questions:

(1) Why does the graph not start at year 1981, when measurements started?

(2) Why is there an annual variation whose peak-peak magnitude stays about the same, if the Russian pipeline leaks were not cyclic also? Should there not be a textural change as one source ceases input?

(3) Is the melting of the Tunda (a seasonal event on the other end of the globe) able to preserve its seasonal pattern as the methane, often described like CO2 as "well mixed," travels vast distances? The maxima occur about Cape Grim Springtime, for some reason. What is that reason?

(4) Is it not more likely that the peaks and troughs are related to events close to Cape Grim? Otherwise, they would surely be more smeared.

(5) If there are indeed local events that change methane concentration cyclically annually near Cape Grim, are there longer periods of cyclicity that also change the concentration.

(6) Is is correct to assert that the Cape Grim air is unaffected by growing material, because there's some of it in the ocean between Africa and Tasmania. Enough, I'd suggest, to require factoring into the balance equations.

(7) Some mileage is being estracted from the uptick in the last 2 years. Is it scientific to ascribe significance to a change from 1740 to 1750 parts per billion by volume, that is, 10 parts per trillion, surely at the limits of instumentation and sampling errors. Classically trained chemists would be aghast. I am.

Re: CSIRO Affair?

sherro — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 07:36:23 -0000

In casae you missed it, here is the ABC rebuttal of methane plateaux at Cape Grim:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/...

New greenhouse gases accumulating 'rapidly'
By environment reporter Sarah Clarke

Updated Thu Jun 3, 2010 9:04am AEST

It is windy, cold and isolated. Cape Grim is at the most north-west point in Tasmania.

It is also home to some of the cleanest air on the planet and for that reason, it is the most important air measuring station in the southern hemisphere.

The Cape Grim research station, perched on the cliffs overlooking the Southern Ocean, is recording the most precise account of the earth's changing atmosphere.

But it is not all good news - over the last 12 months scientists have identified two potent greenhouse gases that are accelerating rapidly.

Paul Fraser from the CSIRO has been coming to the station since it opened in 1976 and he says that over the last 30 years, carbon dioxide levels have increased by 15 per cent.

"Almost entirely that increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is due to fossil fuels and that's entirely man-made," he said.

In fact, 40 different types of greenhouse gases are measured at Cape Grim.

But it is two new gases recently identified that are accelerating rapidly.

One, nitrogen trifluoride, is used in the manufacture of plasma televisions. The other is sulphuryl fluoride, a fumigant used on crops.

Mr Fraser says in the long-term, the two gases will have climate-warming potential.

"I think they're rising at between 5 and 10 per cent per year so they're jumping up quite rapidly from virtually zero concentrations not long ago," he said.

Clean air

The site was chosen because of its remote position and the persistent westerly winds.

The manager of the Cape Grim station, Sam Cleland, says the air measured by the station is very clean.

"The air that arrives here for a lot of the time has just travelled over the Southern Ocean," he said.

"There's no factory nearby, there's nothing that might put local contaminants into the atmosphere, so what we measure here is a base state of the global atmosphere."

Australia's greenhouse gases are measured and fed into a global database monitoring the earth's changing atmosphere.

"We're the best-placed site in the Southern Hemisphere to measure what happens in the Southern Hemisphere," Mr Cleland said.

"As a consequence we've developed a record that's invaluable to the world community for gaining an understanding of what's in the atmosphere."

Every day, a group of scientists take samples of air and feed them into an archive that holds 2,000-year-old records of greenhouse gases.

Re: Problem 4: Why has certainty not improved

sherro — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 05:12:51 -0000

The more you write, the more comfort I find in the analogue I mentioned before about the human body.The cyclicities of heart rate and respiration rate can occur at different frequencies, sometimes one changing alone, sometimes both changing at the same time but to various extent (as when exertion increases). To take the analogy further, unless there is a shock like a wound with loss of blood ot loss of a lung, an increase in heart rate or respiration rate or both can lead to an increase in body temperature, which in turn can activate a feedback by perspiration. The onset of perspiration can be unpredictable or at least require some prior conditions and it interacts with data external to the body (like ambient air temperature and humidity).

If you accept this analogy as a partial explanation of system complexity, you can see that although the system can, in theory, be modelled, there are many inputs that need measurement and some might not have been measured in the past - e.g. the type of clothing being worn. The external factors, if not adequately known or recognised, can make the modelling not only wrong, but impossible.

Have we reached the impossible realisation stage in global climate models? I suspect it is starting to dawn.

Re: CSIRO Affair?

sherro — Mon, 31 May 2010 07:22:24 -0000

Nick Stokes takes exception to interpretation:

"The first graph in section 4 was subsequently modified in the report, and Paul Fraser, the Chief Research Scientist said: ...."

The chief research scientist for the paper in this sentence was Paul Fraser. Try scanning it thus:

" ... the report, and Paul Fraser, the lab technician, ... "

Is your quibble about capitalisation of title? He is now described as "Stream Leader". Not so long ago he might have been a "Principal Research Scientist" by title.

Really Nick, this is not a site for quibbling about the title designations of CSIRO officers. That's nit picking for no apparent gain.

Re: Celestial Origins of Climate Oscillations

sherro — Sat, 29 May 2010 06:09:09 -0000

David, The harmonics might be weird, but I would have thought them rather easy to put numbers on. There are not many physical laws to consider.

(Aside. I once read of some bells found in Yunnan, China. They were made a few hundred years BC as I recall. They had gold inserts with instructions on how to use them. When cleaned up and tested, surprise - the scale of notes was the same as we use today for pianos so presumably the harmonics were similar too. This means nothing to this debate but it's interesting).

The problem with planetary motion is quantifying the effects on mother Earth. I've not read a lot on the topic to get a feel for the order of magnitude of effects, nor do I think I know of all the effects.

In analogy, I think of a human body that has a cyclicity in heartbeat rate and another in respiration rate. On the face of it, one might not think they are dependent, but clearly they are related (look at exertion effects). Under different forcings they can vary alone or loosely together. Under extreme forcings they can go to zero together. My twisted mind sees various orbital mechanisms operating on the Earth with something of that type of separation of effect. So it's one thing to predict orbits (+/- NEOs) but another to quantify what they do to earth.

Re: Celestial Origins of Climate Oscillations

sherro — Thu, 27 May 2010 05:19:20 -0000

One can look for a similar mechanism elsewhere, to show the hypothesis can be valid. Then one can do the calculations to see if the effect is significant on Earth. This way -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
The orbits of Io, Europa, and Ganymede, some of the largest satellites in the Solar System, form a pattern known as a Laplace resonance; for every four orbits that Io makes around Jupiter, Europa makes exactly two orbits and Ganymede makes exactly one. This resonance causes the gravitational effects of the three large moons to distort their orbits into elliptical shapes, since each moon receives an extra tug from its neighbors at the same point in every orbit it makes. The tidal force from Jupiter, on the other hand, works to circularize their orbits.

The eccentricity of their orbits causes regular flexing of the three moons' shapes, with Jupiter's gravity stretching them out as they approach it and allowing them to spring back to more spherical shapes as they swing away. This tidal flexing heats the moons' interiors by friction. This is seen most dramatically in the extraordinary volcanic activity of innermost Io (which is subject to the strongest tidal forces), and to a lesser degree in the geological youth of Europa's surface (indicating recent resurfacing of the moon's exterior).

There exists a model involving orbits, resonances, heating, cyclicities. Others can do the sums as to whether it happens on Earth. Maybe that's what is behind the paywall.

( Only partially related - Has anyone published a magnitude for frictional heat generated by wind blowing over land and water and for water moving over ocean floors?)

Re: No Clue on Global Warming and El Nino

sherro — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:36:58 -0000

Thanks Cohenite. I realised rainfall was a noisy complication, but also that there was a possibility that cloud cover related to relative humidy, that related to the weight of the air column, that related to barometric pressure. I'll read Susan's paper, to be better informed.

There seems to be a congruence of thinking that some cycles are dominated by cloud extent, complicated by cloud height & type. One would think however that clouds needed a minimum RH to form and that there was a chance it would show up as pressure. Otherwise, whay causes baro pressure variation? Is it because atmospheric thickness (weight) is influenced by wave-type behavior so the tropopause wanders up and down in sympathy?

Re: Numeracy Rules the RSPT!

sherro — Tue, 25 May 2010 05:36:55 -0000

There is a definitional problem with "finite resources". For a nominated material, like iron ore, there is commonly a continuum of deposits from very rich to very poor. The classifaction at a given time depends on the nature of competing resources. The early Pilbara discoveries turned the best working deposits then known to medium quality. Next, quality interacts with price as demand and scarcity enter the equation so the resource is seldom finite, just uneconomic.

Elsewhere I questioned if people demanding to share in the mining of "our" minerals had a similar legitimate demand to share in the wealth owned by large property holders in the Sydney Central Business District. That is a finite resource, it had little value until developed and it also belongs to the people. So where is the difference?

The important point is that those who create the wealth spend it to benefit the country. The present problem is that taxing the income leads to government expenditures that are often unwise, inefficient or just plain rorts. I'm sure that many people imagine that mining industry leaders have secret Swiss bank accounts with huge deposits of the "peoples' money". I don't know of any.

Re: No Clue on Global Warming and El Nino

sherro — Tue, 25 May 2010 05:22:22 -0000

An uninformed question, but if the water content of the atmosphere increases systematically with time from Clausius-Clapeyron or whatever, should not the global pattern of atmospheric pressure change? In all of the recreational reading I have done on climate change, I find it strange that barometric pressure, which has ofen been recorded over long terms, is scarcely analysed. Is there a fundamental objection to its analysis? Not a trick question, just that I do not know why.

Re: Numeracy Rules the RSPT!

sherro — Mon, 24 May 2010 19:30:22 -0000

Last night on ABC TV, Prof Marcia Langton, sometimes labelled as an Aboriginal activist, expressed dismay at the proposed supertax. Her theme was that miners already do a great deal to help her people and that they could do less if overtaxed. I take this as a sign that there is widespread opposition, not just the usual divisions into ideologies or political patterns.

The bleating that "the minerals belong to the people, who are entitled to a fair share" is becoming tired. What of the farming harvest from the land, which takes away from it just as surely as taking minerals? What of the use of communal water, which belongs to all the people? The reality is that there is no minerals value-added to a piece of land hosting undiscovered ore. It takes people with capital, skill and courage to reveal this hidden wealth and they are entitled to a concept of ownership for their efforts. The general populace did not emplace the deposits - Nature did - and they did not discover them - the companies did.

Time for a property rights approach.

Re: Blood in the Water

sherro — Mon, 24 May 2010 19:19:19 -0000

Last night I attended live the ABC QandA, which has lengthy discussion on the role of government. The take home message for me was that the line has been blurred between "Government funds" and "taxpayers' funds".

This hospital funding is a classic case of the Federal Government assuming the funds are theirs. It s misuse is close to blackmail.

Personally, I am becoming tired of the lack of discipline of governments ats all levels, extending their functions beyond those intended. They seem to assume that they can spend taxpayers' funs more wisely than the taxpayers can. This can result in misuse that is close to criminal.

In the shakeout, I hope that funding for science research can see again the growth of corporate centres, like 3M, Dow-Corning, Bell Labs and so on. I think it unhealthy if governments capture the national research effort and use it for control.

Re: Hauser's Law in Application

sherro — Sun, 16 May 2010 20:16:34 -0000

Sharing between States. Do we rearrange taxes so hydro power rich States pay hydro-poor states? Once you start on the slippery slope, where does it end?

Re: Hauser's Law in Application

sherro — Sun, 16 May 2010 07:36:11 -0000

Hauser's principle has a distortion because the taxers can adjust rates to ensure that the outcome is on a target, however selected. Those who actually do the productive work that creates new-found wealth, like the miners, have little say about the tax rate.

I had rather hoped against hope that Henry would go back to basics and identify those taxes appropriate for a Federal government with a constitution. Such functions, as we are taught, should be those that are more effectively performed collectively than individually, such as the armed services, diplomacy and some aspects of international trade.

The overall tax rate can thus be reduced by removal of taxes that are not properly the in the efficient domain of the Feds. Under the present arrangement, there is an inhernent assumption that the taxers are more adept at spending money wisely than are the people who create it. This is plainly stupid.

Another anomaly needing correction is the oft-quoted assertion that the minerals belong to the people and they should share in the proceeds of mineral sales. I spent several weeks with some QCs a few years ago, drafting a Bill for consideration by Parliament. Its key plank was that nobody owned undiscovered minerals, but that ownership of the minerals was to be vested in the discoverers, after compensation was paid to the land owner who might have been, for example, running a farm.

It is not a given that people who have not lifted a finger to help find a mine should be beneficiaries of part of the profits from that mine. In nay case, in Australia, ownership of most minerals is currently by the States, not the Commonwealth.

So yes, it is an intellectual mind game, but the dice are loaded unfairly.

Re: Watt's Tour and the Day of the Week Effect

sherro — Mon, 10 May 2010 23:55:51 -0000

Canberra? Atypical, since they work all through every night burning fossil fuel and Midnight Oil.

Re: Watt's Tour and the Day of the Week Effect

sherro — Mon, 10 May 2010 04:51:12 -0000

Using the BoM temperature record in 2008, I sorted Alice Springs into days of the week and looked at the standard deviations of Tmax and Tmin respectively. I did not keep enough significant figs in my record of the means, but there might be a bit of info in the SD columns.

If anything is truly abnormal (and I doubt it), it looks like Saturday is the odd man out, maybe due to the tendency to have a bash at at the local on Sat night and a hangover that can last until sometime on Sunday after the readings are taken (or are late from a sleep-in).

SUMMARY DAYS OF THE WEEK 1904 TO 2008
Tmax Tmin SDmax SDmin
MOND 28.3 12.8 7.31 7.32
TUES 28.2 12.9 7.187 7.264
WED 28.2 12.8 7.254 7.255
THURS 28.2 12.8 7.301 7.265
FRID 28.2 12.9 7.38 7.246
SAT 28.2 12.8 7.415 7.3
SUN 28.3 12.8 7.34 7.271

Re: Great Barrier Reef Legislation 2009

sherro — Wed, 05 May 2010 19:43:57 -0000

Sinikal

Agree re costs. The biggest problem we had was getting farmers to buy fertilizer. One guy insisted on buying urea, rich in nitrogen, when he had a likely phosphate deficiency (there is only a little nitrogen in diammonium phosphate) because a truck full cost more and must therefore be better, cheaper to transport by the tonne.

Marine Science people might argue the following, but it is a matter of degree. The phosphate in cow poo is mostly recycled year after year. Phosphate needs replacing because the animal product for consumption (meat, milk) takes phosphate off the farm and that can't go on forever. Hence blood and bone is reapplied, not a complete solution to the problem, but a good way to handle process waste so long as transport costs do not kill it. That's why a more concentrated form like triple super is often preferred, lower transport costs. Maybe the eagerly-awaited hybrid electric road train will ameliorate.

If calcium phosphate does reach the sea, it's rather insoluble. It does add calcium, which is one of the worries of those who say that ocean acidification depletes the sea of calcium needed for shell building. But I doubt if it's a significant mechanism, too small a quantity.

If you wish to read some enthusiastic 2010 literature about ocean acidification, try this bit by Richard Feely of Oak Ridge -

http://www.tos.org/oceanogr...

As expected, there is a lot of arm waving about possible projected future disasters, many computer simulations and not much actual measured data of possible confounding factors.

Re: Great Barrier Reef Legislation 2009

sherro — Wed, 05 May 2010 19:10:46 -0000

Need an elementary class myself in thoughtful ytpos and attaching the correct URL.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...