[jeffreyH]

Here is one of the references from the way back machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20091008064436/http://www.ipsnews.net:80/news.asp?idnews=40021
Now that IS scary.

[Bored chemist]

When you say not least can you give a concrete figure as a percentage of the total causes. That would be impressive.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_with_coral_reefs

Why would it help?
Does it matter which particular cause is "the straw that breaks the camel's back"?
Or are you just trying to stall?

[jeffreyH]

The point is that humans are damaging the world far more quickly in ways that do not relate to climate change. Only they don't think it's their fault since it is climate change that is the bogey man.

[alancalverd]

Every living thing modifies its environment. That is essential to any definition of life, and a fact. Whether you consider that modification to be harmful is a matter of opinion, but it is clearly the case that at some point a closed environment will be modified to the extent that the plant or animal can no longer survive.   

[jeffreyH]

Ultimately the inability to sustain life may or may not be considered a negative. That depends upon philosophical outlook. The universe still carries on.

[Bored chemist]

The point is that humans are damaging the world far more quickly in ways that do not relate to climate change. Only they don't think it's their fault since it is climate change that is the bogey man.

What?
Have all the environmental campaign groups like Greenpeace have suddenly stopped worrying about pollution, plastic in the seas, whaling, mercury in fish unsustainable growth, nuclear power,  overfishingand so on?
When did that happen?
 OK, I just checked.
It seems your claim is bullshit.

[alancalverd]

We must be thankful for small mercies. Greenpeace got it wrong over mercury in fish (the tuna family have a naturally high mercury content - it's essential to their fast-muscle physiology), recycling of oil platforms (recycling on land leaves you with a lot of slightly (naturally) radioactive sludge that would be dispersed by sea creatures but is a bugger to handle in a scrapyard), nuclear power (the cleanest and least environmentally damaging  source of electricity we have), diesel cars (or was that petrol cars? the bogeyman changes every week) and just about everything else apart from nuclear weapon tests.  It is a recipient of funds from the European Union, the organisation that sterilised the North Sea fishing grounds.....Not a good example of scientific excellence or political integrity.

[timey]

Did anyone watch "Hacking the Planet" 'through the worm hole' - presented by Morgan Freeman?

I very much enjoyed the back to front greenhouse physics that use sea water and solar to produce fresh water to irrigate dessert conditions, the ocean sink hole to relocate the thermally heated sea water from surface to deeper levels to reduce hurricane formation, the idea of genetically modifying elephants with mammoth DNA to repopulate the Siberian tundra to reduce permafrost melt, and the genetic modification of mosquito males to reduce mosquito population and therefore reduce blood born diseases. (Although, to say so, I'm a bit dubious of genetic modification.  Both of the above being of far more noble intent than that of the spider-goat, but what if the mosquitoes are responsible for some kind of natural balance that is not entirely tangible to us at present?  Or perhaps this natural balance is tangible, but not acceptable to us?)

The current media highlights global warming as our present imminent danger, but is this just a distraction from what should really be concerning to us?  This being that a minority of people upon our planet are so heavily invested in the 'war machine' where people who are heavily invested will go to great lengths to protect that investment, and the protecting of those interests can only result in more war?
If it were not for the 'war machine' then a proportion of the pollution's that are of concern to the global warming conversationalist would be vastly reduced were production of the machines of war to cease.  Tax payers money could be relocated from this dismal appropriation of public expenditure to projects such as those mentioned above perhaps, and others of equally innovated thought process throughout the sciences.  Where the onus would be on improving the quality of our lives and the future of our planet, rather than destroying the quality of lives via wars that are clearly being precipitated and conducted in the interests of private financial gain, and funded by the unwitting, and if they were witting, the unwilling public.

[Bored chemist]

We must be thankful for small mercies. Greenpeace got it wrong over mercury in fish (the tuna family have a naturally high mercury content - it's essential to their fast-muscle physiology),

Got any evidence for that?
However, unlike Greenpeace, I'm not actually very worried  about mercury in ocean fish; I'm worried about mercury in people
And that's not something you can write off.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2687748/

[alancalverd]

Interesting. I recalled the "mercury essential to fast muscle" from stuff I read several years ago, when the Minimata  shambles was current news, but I can't find any reference to it on the first couple of pages of current Google hits, which are all about debating FDA recommendations on tuna consumption in pregnancy but don't discuss the high natural content of the metal in such fish. So either the original research was flawed, or it has become unfashionable!

Mercury toxicity in humans is interestingly paradoxical. Very odd stuff. 

[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

Tim, please provide peer reviewed literature that shows the resilience of mangroves to sustained flooding.

I can neither provide peer reviewed papers on that nor on the idea that water is wet.

Given that these plants live on coastlines where there is plentiful silt being washed about and deposited and in the Bay of Bengal at least you would generally expect that the deposition rates would be much higher than the lowest general figure of 2cm per monsoon for Bangladesh at points 10km away from the rivers the concept of

even a change of 15 cm by 2050 would cause irreparable damage to mangrove populations around the world.

is ludicrous beyond belief.

That you and anybody who has either thought about it or watched any documentary about such places knows that they live in the tidal zone to a wide range of depths, 6feet++++, and are obviously subject to the full force of storms etc can be taken in by obvious drivel like this shows how much you are emotionally attacked to your guilt complex.

[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

On this one I have to support Tim.
http://outreach.stakeholderforum.org/index.php/previous-editions/cop-19/190-cop19day3-disasters-security-loss-and-damage/1572-how-mangroves-help-in-reducing-flooding-and-coastal-erosion

Thank you.

Not all understanding of the world is via peer reviewed papers.

[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

Here is one of the references from the way back machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20091008064436/http://www.ipsnews.net:80/news.asp?idnews=40021
Now that IS scary.

I wonder how they managed to survive in all those periods when the CO2 level was far higher than that?

[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

The point is that humans are damaging the world far more quickly in ways that do not relate to climate change. Only they don't think it's their fault since it is climate change that is the bogey man.

Yes.

The obsession with CO2 is stopping any progres on real concearns with things that actually have negative impacts.

[Bored chemist]

The point is that humans are damaging the world far more quickly in ways that do not relate to climate change. Only they don't think it's their fault since it is climate change that is the bogey man.

Yes.

The obsession with CO2 is stopping any progres on real concearns with things that actually have negative impacts.

So, the whaling is still going on. the clean air acts have been repealed, nobody just banned  the use of plastic microbeads, the ozone  depleting CFCs are still in fashion, solar and wind power are not being introduced and so on.

Try to make your nonsense less obvious next time.

[Bored chemist]

Here is one of the references from the way back machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20091008064436/http://www.ipsnews.net:80/news.asp?idnews=40021
Now that IS scary.

I wonder how they managed to survive in all those periods when the CO2 level was far higher than that?

The times when the record shows that the sun wasn't so hot?

[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

The point is that humans are damaging the world far more quickly in ways that do not relate to climate change. Only they don't think it's their fault since it is climate change that is the bogey man.

Yes.

The obsession with CO2 is stopping any progres on real concearns with things that actually have negative impacts.

So, the whaling is still going on. the clean air acts have been repealed, nobody just banned  the use of plastic microbeads, the ozone  depleting CFCs are still in fashion, solar and wind power are not being introduced and so on.

Try to make your nonsense less obvious next time.

Millions de each year as a result of using food as fuel.

Thousands of deaths in the UK are linked to diesel from cars, I don't know to what extent this is hype or true.

The proper sorting out of fish stock protection is left on the back burner to pander to the anti-CO2 madness.

Rain forrests are cut down to farm sugar to make petrol and diesel.

How much progress do you think would be made if we stopped barking up the wrong tree?

[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

Here is one of the references from the way back machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20091008064436/http://www.ipsnews.net:80/news.asp?idnews=40021
Now that IS scary.

I wonder how they managed to survive in all those periods when the CO2 level was far higher than that?

The times when the record shows that the sun wasn't so hot?

Yes. When the coral grew happily with temperatures higher than today and much higher levels of CO2.

So we can agree that ideas that CO2 at less than 1% are fine for corral then and the paper is as right as the one on Mangrove trees being killed off by a 6 inch sea level rise over 30 years.

[jeffreyH]

The point is that humans are damaging the world far more quickly in ways that do not relate to climate change. Only they don't think it's their fault since it is climate change that is the bogey man.

What?
Have all the environmental campaign groups like Greenpeace have suddenly stopped worrying about pollution, plastic in the seas, whaling, mercury in fish unsustainable growth, nuclear power,  overfishingand so on?
When did that happen?
 OK, I just checked.
It seems your claim is bullshit.

I am just resigned to the fact that our species has an overblown opinion of itself. We aren't special. We are actually quite insignificant. As a species we are also just plain dumb. The games that we play are a nonsense. Like children who have wandered away from the grown ups.

[alancalverd]

Thousands of deaths in the UK are linked to diesel from cars, I don't know to what extent this is hype or true.

since the number of deaths from non-cancer respiratory disease seems to decrease each year, despite an ageing population, the "link" seems to exist only in the deranged minds of politicians and this year's tree huggers (previous generations thought diesel was good).

The proper sorting out of fish stock protection is left on the back burner to pander to the anti-CO2 madness.

Fish stock protection is anathema  to the European Union, which is about market price protection. The annual argument between fisheries scientists and the EU fishing lobby always results in a "compromise" brokered by the corrupt Commission. As any sane member of this forum knows, you can't "compromise" with science. The Norwegian government, meanwhile, sets total catch quotas based on actual and predicted stocks and insists that you sell everything you catch, so the market price isn't protected but the  fish are. And CO2 doesn't come into it.

Rain forrests are cut down to farm sugar to make petrol and diesel.

Not sure what the point is here. Rain forests don't feed many people, but sugar, petrol and diesel do.