Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

Ah, the false "fair balance" myth.

Al Gore's movie is not without flaws and he as a person isn't perfect either, but that doesn't retract from the pretty steady climate science. Afaik the film doesn't get any major facts wrong.

Why are you so fixated on him anyway? He's not even a climate scientist. How is he relevant to scientific evidence? Maybe he persuaded the scientists to fabricate results? It starts sounding pretty incredible pretty soon.

I'm not a "religious believer in AGW", I just think that it is very likely to be true. (Due to the scientific evidence.) Maybe it's a religion to some, but it's not that to all.
Criticism of AGW has been mostly just real bad disinformation by interested parties.

The swindle movie of course is a bunch of fabricated and misquoted crap with doctored graphs. I haven't seen it, just read facts about it. It has lots of glaring errors.
http://www.jri.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=137&Itemid=83

Maybe it could be a drinking game subject though.

Posted by mz at May 14, 2007 07:04 AM

"Afaik the film doesn't get any major facts wrong."

Except for most of them like polar bears drowning and the 20 foot sea rise he projects for this century as well as most of the rest.

Posted by Mike Puckett at May 14, 2007 08:02 AM

It comes as no surprise that Wanliss is also a creationist. So yes, skepticism is important in science --- but not skepticism beyond reason. Evolution is as real as Cincinnati, and so is anthropogenic global warming.

(Also, yes, Wanliss has tenure, but it was no secret even before then that he is a conservative Christian. He is free to propagandize as he pleases in a course on science and politics.)

http://faculty.erau.edu/wanlib01/writing.dir/evolution.htm

Posted by at May 14, 2007 08:35 AM

Another aspect to all of this is ocean acidification.

Even if the global warming models are ALL wrong and human CO2 emissions have ZERO effect on increases in global temperature, increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are beginning to acidify the oceans and that may well threaten a number of vital food chains. (Less alkaline is a more accurate phrasing.)

Posted by Bill White at May 14, 2007 09:09 AM

Except for most of them like polar bears drowning and the 20 foot sea rise he projects for this century as well as most of the rest.

It's my understanding that AIT does not predict that a 20' sea level rise will occur this century.

Posted by Paul Dietz at May 14, 2007 11:05 AM

I haven't seen either film but I don't think you need to resort to religion to state unambiguously that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 150 years for which we have instrumental measurements is anthropogenic. It's also clear that the change is extraordinarily rapid, and that the increase in temperature is due to it. The science is quite solid on this point; I don't see why people still argue over it.

It might be fair to argue that it'll cost too much to fix the problem, or that it'll stop being a problem once we burn up the rest of the oil, or that because the planet has been both warmer and cooler in the past that it doesn't really matter that much - I don't agree with any of those points but it's possible to construct a case for them at least. But the increase in atmospheric CO2 is totally anthropogenic.

Posted by Jane Bernstein at May 14, 2007 11:37 AM

Of course I don't need to do that. That's why I didn't.

Posted by Rand Simberg at May 14, 2007 11:41 AM

Rand, I'm missing your point - you characterized "Anthropogenic Global Warming" (I assume that's what you mean by AGW) as a religion in your post. But it's not a religion, or a belief system, or anything other than science. Hence my remark.

Are you asserting that there's reason to believe that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is NOT due to human activity?

Posted by Jane Bernstein at May 14, 2007 11:52 AM

It's like showing a "moon landing is a hoax" documentary with lots of factual mistakes to people who really don't (yet, at least) know about the physics or history, and saying you're trying to educate them about NASA:s history and teach healthy scepticism.

It's irresponsible in an university course.

It'd be fine if they would analyze the claims a little better and examine them with some evidence (or would have that as homework), but this approach by Wanliss just seems to try to "muddle the waters".

A very thinly veiled attempt at trying to effect views by dishonesty.

Of course, as a general phenomenon, fearmongering wouldn't be profitable in political or business sense, it has probably always been to some parties and has been even used to start wars. Even Michael Moore agrees with Rand on this one!

Posted by mz at May 14, 2007 11:56 AM

Correction:
Of course, as a general phenomenon, fearmongering can be...

Posted by mz at May 14, 2007 11:58 AM

Rand, I'm missing your point - you characterized "Anthropogenic Global Warming" (I assume that's what you mean by AGW) as a religion in your post.

Yes.

Are you asserting that there's reason to believe that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is NOT due to human activity?

No (though I wouldn't say that it's impossible--hence in part my skepticism). I'm not sure what the connection is between your first paragraph and your second one, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at May 14, 2007 12:44 PM

Btw, stable carbon isotopes pretty much nail the current CO2 increase as due to fossil fuel burning (with a minor contribution of biomass destruction). There are certainly areas of scientific uncertainty in the subject, but the source of the CO2 isn't one of them.

Posted by Paul Dietz at May 14, 2007 01:12 PM

I haven't got the URL to hand but there is a set of graphs showing northern and southern hemisphere lower and mid tropospheric temperatures since satellite measurements of atmospheric temperatures at all levels began in 1979. Funny thing is that the "global" warming since then seems to be confined to the Northern Hemisphere with the Southern showing no warming at all. CO2 is asserted to be well mixed and over time scales of years that appears to be true. So the increased CO2 appears to be causing no warming at all in the S.H.
Maybe the urban heat island effect is greater than we think and extends higher(believable due to convection)and the much larger extent of urbanisation in the N.H. is the cause. Who knows? However these measurements are a problem to be explained along with many others.

Interesting how Wanliss gets attacked here for being a creationist when what he says about how science works in the linked article seems quite reasonable.

The GCM's BTW don't even converge on the same temperature when no extra external forcings are present and there seems to be some doubt about what the starting temperature ought to be. They don't even converge at all. GIGO.

Yes, Jane Bernstein, there are measurements of CO2 going back 150 years. Both from ice cores and direct measurements at the time. They don't agree. They don't even come close.

Posted by Mike Borgelt at May 14, 2007 03:24 PM

"Another aspect to all of this is ocean acidification.

"Even if the global warming models are ALL wrong and human CO2 emissions have ZERO effect on increases in global temperature, increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are beginning to acidify the oceans and that may well threaten a number of vital food chains. (Less alkaline is a more accurate phrasing.)"

"Mid-Cretaceous CO2 levels were still significantly higher (2 to 3 times) than current concentration."

Gee Bill, how di the oceans ever survive the Cretacious peroid.

High levels of CO2 corellate geologically with epochs of reef building and ooolitic limestone deposits.

What does CO2 and dissolved calcium and or magnesium in seawater make?

Bueler? Bueler?

Also, they were even higher during the Carboniferous era (Pensylvanian and Missippian in the US)

Yet the Oceans thrived and literally the limestone building blocks of later mountain ranges were laid down!

Hmmm.......

Posted by Mike Puckett at May 14, 2007 03:40 PM

Hmm, link, Mike Borgelt?

http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/assessments/assess_98/fig1.gif

from
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/assessments/assess_98/sfctemp.html

Posted by mz at May 14, 2007 05:38 PM

Here is a URL for you, and even better a Quicktime movie:

http://geology.com/news/2006/12/global-warming-map-animation.html
http://geology.com/news/images/a10_1891_1997_6fps_800kbps_sor3.mov

It is true that there is more warming in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere. But there has been a general warming trend almost everywhere. Moreover, you might not expect identical changes in the two hemispheres, because their geography is completely different.

The data is fairly consistent. It doesn't support your propagandized position that the warming model is based on stupid misinterpretations.

Maybe the urban heat island effect is greater than we think

The story has nothing to do with urban heat islands, unless you think that Siberia and Northern Canada are choked with cities. You should study the quicktime movie carefully.

Interesting how Wanliss gets attacked here for being a creationist when what he says about how science works in the linked article seems quite reasonable.

Wanliss knows how to do good science (that's why he was hired), but he doesn't properly apply scientific standards outside of his own work in the area of space science. His remarks about evolutionary biology are laughable nonsense and his remarks about climatology are equally partisan. However, since he is trained in science, he is pretty good at perverting reasonable-sounding principles.

Posted by at May 14, 2007 07:59 PM

Gee Bill, how did the oceans ever survive the Cretacious peroid.

They survived with very different marine life than what is in the oceans now. Biology can make a lot of adaptations on a time scale of 100 million years. Doubling atmospheric CO2 in 100 years really yanks the rug out from under a lot of plants and animals, and a lot of human beings too.

Posted by at May 14, 2007 08:04 PM

Rand, the connection between my first paragraph and my second one, above, is that when you call Anthropogenic Global Warming a religion, you belittle the science. Of course you can be skeptical about any given scientific claim.. my question about the atmospheric CO2 was meant to isolate which particular part of the science was unconvincing to you.

As Paul Dietz observed, above, the isotope ratio data makes it utterly unambiguous that the increase in the last 150 years from 280 to nearly 400 ppm of atmospheric CO2 is entirely due to human burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Given the amount of fossil fuels we have burned (and it's straightforward to estimate the quantity based on historical economic data) it's a wonder the concentration isn't higher. The Earth has a robust mechanism for absorbing CO2, and we're overwhelming it. The isotope ration data is as close to a smoking gun as you get in climate science.

For perspective, we now have more CO2 in the atmosphere than we have in the last 650,000 years. And we did it in an eyeblink, since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

So the question becomes, "How much does this matter?" and now you're into talking about climate models and instrumental data. But every piece of actual scientific evidence that I've seen or read suggests that the global mean temperature is sensitive to increases in atmospheric CO2. How sensitive? Debatable, but most likely macroscopically significant.

Skepticism is fine, and keeping an open mind. I try to do so myself. It took me a long time to understand, for example, that the water vapor greenhouse effect was more of a feedback mechanism than a forcing mechanism - but once I understood how it worked it all made sense to me.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to accept the broad conclusions of a line of enquiry while still reserving one's judgment about this or that detail of the science underneath it. Ascribing the judgment that Anthropogenic Global Warming is a significant effect and should be dealt with to "religion" is to argue that such judgment is not based on science, on reason, on evidence, and on fact, when at least in my case, it is.

It also belittles religion, but that's a different conversation.

Posted by Jane Bernstein at May 14, 2007 08:43 PM

mz, Oh goody. Quote the 1998 El Nino year. What happened since then?
The animation is pretty but note how the temperature is unknown in large parts of the world in 1891-1900. Large parts Antarctica seem to have cooled since though. This is of course consistent with forcing by increased long wave radiation from increased amounts of CO2 over the whole planet, isn't it? Note also the overall anomaly goes from -.21 to +.48 deg C. A massive 0.69 deg C. Without detail as to how this was done and more importantly, error bars, this is about as useful as a Bugs Bunny cartoon. There is considerable debate about the details of this though, including more than you wanted to know about thermometers etc. Heck, I'm even personally responsible for part of the historical surface temperature record for 3 years in one geographical location. Also tells us nothing about why the warming occurred.
The whole AGW thing hinges on: There is more CO2 due to burning of fossil fuels, the very small temperature increase due to the increased CO2 is amplified by more water vapour to be large temperature changes and the GCMs show this. Of course the GCM's are tuned to show this as they can't do the physics of condensation and cloud formation properly, so , sorry, I don't buy it.

Posted by Mike Borgelt at May 14, 2007 09:24 PM

Large parts Antarctica seem to have cooled since though. This is of course consistent with forcing by increased long wave radiation from increased amounts of CO2 over the whole planet, isn't it?

It isn't necessarily inconsistent, because for instance the wind patterns over Antarctica may have changed.

You should think of the atmosphere as a bowl of soup. The statement is that the heat balance of the whole soup is changing to make it hotter than before. That does not necessarily mean that every vegetable in the soup is heated more, because the heat distribution could also change.

Beyond that, you should consider your own position in this. You first said that the whole southern hemisphere cooled down, and maybe the answer was urban heat islands. Then you abandoned both of those and came up with a new grab of arguments. It's as if you are a defense lawyer for the coal industry. This is no way to learn the science.

Posted by at May 15, 2007 12:39 AM

Rand, the connection between my first paragraph and my second one, above, is that when you call Anthropogenic Global Warming a religion, you belittle the science.

No, I don't. I belittle the people who attempt to hijack the science, worshiping Saint Al, crying "We're all gonna die!" while insisting that we redeem ourselves and immediately change our life styles and wreck the economy for their newfound faith.

Posted by Rand Simberg at May 15, 2007 05:32 AM

Then you abandoned both of those and came up with a new grab of arguments.

Yes, this is a great symptom of denialism, showing what John McCarthy called 'lawyers's science'. You start with the position you want to prove, and search for evidence, however thin or dubious, to support it. The result is the jumping from one easily debunked argument to another.

The surprising thing is the persons exhibiting this behavior often don't allow themselves to realize what they are doing.

Posted by Paul Dietz at May 15, 2007 06:26 AM

Gee Bill, how [did] the oceans ever survive the Cretacious peroid.

This is a good question. The answer is that, over the long term (thousands of years), ocean pH is buffered by dissolution of calcium carbonate.

We are currently releasing CO2 so fast that this mechanism will be overwhelmed. In thousands of years, it will cause most of the released CO2 to be absorbed into the oceans (and then, after an even longer time, positive ions released by weathing of silicates will allow the CO2 to be redeposited as carbonates).

Posted by Paul Dietz at May 15, 2007 06:32 AM

Rand, do you mean that you believe that anthropogenic global warming is likely true?

What do you think should be done?

Is advocating any action religious? Or just drastic action? You could be a little more clear in your blurbs.

And so far, it's been the denialists who have tried to hijack the science the most. Some exaggeration tales in newspapers about impending methane fireballs in Siberia have happened, yes (which climate scientists have disapproved of too!), but the majority of bad reporting has been just denialist disinformation. Fox, TCS...

You sure don't belittle those denialists, like the people who made "the great global warming swindle", Inhofe, or any of your commenters spewing the debunked myths. No, you just complain and complain about Gore ad infinitum, lumping into the same paragraph always an implying remark that AGW is just a religion.

Posted by mz at May 15, 2007 07:48 AM

I get a little uncomfortable with the use of the word "denier" for people who are opposed to the science or policy regarding climate change because of Holocaust issues, anti-semitism, and the usual cultural stuff I carry around as a Jew. This is, if I'm honest with myself, one of the reasons that religious imagery in this context troubles me.

But I'm forced to conclude that it isn't that Rand doesn't like the science, it's that he doesn't like the people who like the science.

Posted by Jane Bernstein at May 15, 2007 09:50 AM

No, Jane, I don't like the people who use their (mis)interpretation of the science to advance their own politicoreligious collectivist agenda, that they couldn't achieve by other means after the Soviet Union collapsed and Marxism was largely discredited.

Posted by Rand Simberg at May 15, 2007 09:57 AM

I was educated, as a matter of rhetoric, to argue against an opponent's reasoning, then data, and then motives. I fear you may have reversed the order on this topic, Rand.

Posted by Jane Bernstein at May 15, 2007 10:21 AM

You start with the position you want to prove, and search for evidence, however thin or dubious, to support it.

Yep, that's AGW to a tee.

Posted by Mac at May 15, 2007 10:25 AM

There are plenty of arguments against the reasoning, Jane. I am simply pointing out those with clearly bad motives, because their reasoning (e.g., Kyoto) is specious and/or hysterical. I suppose that they could be hysterical and specious without bad motives, but when I see the things they are arguing for, for little good reason, it's hard to come up with any explanation other than motive and agenda.

Posted by Rand Simberg at May 15, 2007 10:26 AM

No , mz, I didn't say the southern hemisphere had cooled. I said there had been no warming since 1979 when satellite temperature measurements started.
Here's another interesting paper:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/pastandfuture2.pdf
This contains the graphs of NH vs SH temperatures since 1979. It is referenced too. No sleazy cherry picking of unusually warm El Nino years. You can see 1998 in there though.
I was taught that science works by falsifying hypotheses. The AGW hypothesis is that humans are burning fossil fuels which increases the CO2 in the atmosphere which causes a small amount of overall warming which then amplifies as a result of the increased water vapour. I, along with many others, am simply pointing out data that is inconsistent with this hypothesis.
There are other explanations for the small observed temperature changes. They may not be particularly significant on the global scale and are likely to be swamped on the regional scale by land use changes(large scale tree clearing) building of large cities(UHI and albedo change)
I think I understand the atmosphere better than you do after training as a meteorologist(a degree in physics or maths was a pre requisite)and over 3300 hours in sailplanes and light aircraft.

Posted by Mike Borgelt at May 15, 2007 01:41 PM

My mind about AGW is not made up. However, I do think it worthwhile to reduce dependence on petroleum from unstable parts of the world. This is as much of a threat to continued economic growth as any kind of "emissions" limits would be.

I would say bin any kind of regulatory approach and, instead, have a series of X-Prizes for the development of new sources of energy to obsolete the use of fossil fuels. Another reason why any kind of regulation is unnecessary is that the whole silicon valley entrepreneur/venture capital scene is now getting into the development of new energy technologies. This should be more than sufficient to deal with any kind of excess green house gases that we might be producing. If the silicon valley effect is as successful with new energy as it was in developing semiconductors and computers, we've got nothing to worry about.

Besides, why would anyone right in the head think that politicians and bureaucrats can solve a problem better than engineers and entreprenuers?

Posted by Kurt9 at May 15, 2007 02:57 PM

Ah, a paper published in Energy & Environment :) (which is said not to be a peer reviewed journal and has hosted numerous error-full papers before).

The hemispherical temp graph data is from here (or that is mentioned in the end references list, there is no source mentioned at the graph):
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2
And that shows a warming trend for the southern hemisphere, it's smaller than for the north but nevertheless shows. I don't have any decent programs here but my battling with openoffice yielded the following graph
http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/7537/tlg01lq8.png
(G=global H=northern I=southern hemisphere)
I can't calculate it with the software I have here, but the original data source has this as the bottommost line:
DECADAL TREND= 0.145 0.216 0.074

So 0.074 degrees per decade for the southern hemisphere, so 0.2 degrees from 1979 to now. Not as much as in the northern hemisphere, but some still.
The readme at the data site says there was some error (a satellite had a malfunction but the editor had deleted a healthy satellite's data instead), it's possible that Archibald used that flawed data.

(The rest of the paper has some curiosities, like using five cherry picked closely spaced US measuring posts for global temperature.)

Btw, in my previous post, I'm sorry that I picked a graph that ended in 1998. It was the first I came across, since you didn't provide any links. It's longer trends anyway we're talking about here.

Posted by mz at May 15, 2007 03:50 PM

Ah, my mistake, Energy & Environment does seem to have a review process, I just don't know what it is like.

Posted by mz at May 15, 2007 03:56 PM

which is said not to be a peer reviewed journal and has hosted numerous error-full papers before

Nice ad hominem.

You know, I have seen time and aagin the same arguments come up against anthropoegenic global warming, only to be followed by those who have accepted AGW vociferously complaining that those arguments "have already been debunked". I have yet to see them actually *be* debunked however, only the *claim* that they had been debunked.

Perhaps if I hold my breath waiting for the actual debunking to take place, then I won't release so much CO2 into the world...

Posted by Ed Minchau at May 15, 2007 10:54 PM

Ed, you're making yourself ridiculous.

You claimed that CO2 is from the oceans, released by warming, and not by humans.
The isotope ratios and oil and coal consumption statistics show otherwise. Myth debunked.

I see you didn't look other parts of my arguments against Mike and the paper he quoted and just claimed "ad hominem". It is just a fact, E&E is a crappy journal because they publish crappy papers that have lots of mistakes. Is that ad hominem to say so? Oh my.

Posted by mz at May 16, 2007 02:33 AM

So 0.074 degrees per decade for the southern hemisphere, so 0.2 degrees from 1979 to now. Not as much as in the northern hemisphere, but some still.

And the dynamic (vs. equilibrium) climate models predict the southern hemisphere will warm more slowly than the northern, due to the greater capacity of the oceans there to soak up heat. So there's nothing here inconsistent with AGW, the usual (and by now expected) denialist misrepresentations notwithstanding.

Posted by Paul Dietz at May 16, 2007 09:59 AM

Is that ad hominem to say so?

Yes, it is. If you find yourself attacking the messenger rather than the message, then you are indulging in the ad hominem logical fallacy.

The isotope ratios and oil and coal consumption statistics show otherwise. Myth debunked.

SHOW me. Don't just say this is so. Prove it; at the very least provide me with a link so that I know you are not making this up out of whole cloth.

Posted by Ed Minchau at May 16, 2007 10:23 AM

SHOW me. Don't just say this is so.

We've more than explained the reason. It's not our job to fill your information baby bottle. At some point, your laziness to look things up becomes an obvious defense mechanism to avoid confronting truths you don't like.

Having said that, look at the recently released full IPCC report, chapter 2, page 133, and follow the references therein. The report also discusses the measurement of atmosphere O2, which is decreasing even faster than CO2 is increasing (but which is much harder to measure, since the relative change in O2 concentration is much smaller). This shows by another route that the CO2 from oxidation of biomass and fossil fuels is being partially sequestered in the ocean.

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html

If you find yourself attacking the messenger rather than the message,

In the real world, ad hominum reasoning is not only ok, it's absolutely essential to the function of science.

The reason is that noone -- no scientist, no politician or policymaker, no layman -- can hope to personally examine more than a tiny fraction of the evidence, or even reasoning, behind most scientific results. As a result, one has to depend on the judgment of others. Calibrating those others involves reasoning about them as information-providers, which is essentially an ad hominem process. Basically, can you trust them? Have they shown they can deliver believable information, or are their opinions likely (by experience) to be flawed?

Posted by Paul Dietz at May 16, 2007 11:25 AM

In the real world, ad hominem is still a logical fallacy. I mean, if I simply dismiss the IPCC report because the UN is a completely corrupt organization looking to ram though whatever measure they can to steal money from the West to give to thugs and despots, then I wouldn't accept anything that the IPCC has to say. Thanks for providing a link though.

Posted by Ed Minchau at May 16, 2007 09:26 PM

The link should have said page 139, not 133. Sorry for the typo. See also figure 2.3 on page 138, which shows delta-13C and delta-O data.

Posted by Paul Dietz at May 17, 2007 08:40 AM

If a process has produced a major number of faulty products before and nothing is changed in the process, one should not expect it to suddenly improve to the level of a process that normally produces working products.
So it is not unreasonable to also look at the track record of a source. (This means both the quality of the journal and the quality of other claims in the paper.)

Of course, one should mainly address the claims of the paper (and Mike) that are in discussion directly, which I did too.

And of course, you didn't even talk about those points. Which isn't a surprise really. The previous sentence is an admitted ad hominem.

Also, it's not just about IPCC, it's about multiple toughly reviewed scientific journals where the articles have appeared. There Archibald's paper would not get through because of big mistakes. (Of course, some people have delusions of grandeur thinking they are Galileo, persecuted when going against the establishment, when in fact they are just wrong.)

Posted by mz at May 18, 2007 02:40 AM

And finally of course a lot is traceable to ordinary grade school mathematics which you can verify yourself.

Mass of earth's atmosphere is supposed to be about 5e18 kg.
CO2 is currently at about 400 ppm or 4e-4 parts so there is 20e14 = 2e15 kg of CO2 in the atmosphere. (?)

Oil consumption is 80 million barrels per day. 365 days per year and about 100 kg carbon per barrel yields 3e12 kg carbon per year. When it's burned to CO2, the mass about triples. So about 1e13 kg of CO2 per year from oil alone, 2 ppm per year.

It'd take 200 years to double CO2 from current levels to 800 ppm with current oil burning alone with this very rough estimate.

Coal also gives CO2. 5.3 billion tonnes annually of coal. If one assumes it has 4e12 kg of C, it means 1e13 kg of CO2, same as oil. 2 ppm per year.

Down to 100 years, from 400 ppm to 800 ppm. 40 ppm per decade. At current consumption rate. If coal and oil use rise, then it's faster. It was 300 ppm in the fifties.

Then there's wood burning, and peat.

There are of course sinks like the ocean which then again reduce the CO2 increase rate. The ocean sink's ability to absorb decreases with increasing temperature though, which is dangerous.

I hope I didn't do any big mistakes. Note everything's just rounded to one significant digit. Of course the rate of doubling sounds long since we are at an already elevated level of 400 ppm.

Posted by mz at May 18, 2007 03:16 AM

The ocean sink's ability to absorb decreases with increasing temperature though, which is dangerous.

It will eventually become less absorptive even at constant temperature, for purely chemical reasons.

Posted by Paul Dietz at May 18, 2007 12:31 PM

Isotope evidence is linked here:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/03/09/its-a-gas/

Posted by Michael Tobis at June 17, 2007 12:33 PM

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