Feeling the Heat: Climate Change

He left GP in 1986.... and has been controversial since then (your article).

 

"While the first of the glaciations that the team studied was probably triggered by nonvascular plants such as mosses and liverworts, the second ice age—the one that began around 445 million years ago—may have been brought on by the rise and spread of vascular plants. Spores from such plants, which aren't limited to permanently damp environments and therefore may have turned down Earth's thermostat even more than nonvascular plants did, show up in the fossil record about 450 million years ago. So, Retallack suggests, colonization of the land by vascular and nonvascular plants together may help explain the massive drawdown of CO2 that triggered the most recent and stronger of the two major glaciations that Lenton and his colleagues studied."

Very interesting reading indeed. Thanks for that link. It strikes me as waaaaay too speculative for Mr Ex-Green Peace (or anyone else) to waffle on about simultaneous CO2 levels and Ice Ages. This is obviously something needing far more research.

 

Important to note that only a little change is needed for an ice age...

The colder it gets the more snow falls...the more snow falls, the less the earth is heated, not only because of a covering, but the white reflects the sun's heat. So more snow falls...more earth gets covered and more light/heat reflected and so on...the REAL question is what reverses this process...

 

Good gracious, now it IS getting serious.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/climate-change-murder-rape

 

It also says he was a founder member who quit when the organisation lurched to the Left, and is only "controversial" because he doesn't parrot everything they say as being infallible gospel.
The watermelon analogy for Greenpeace didn't just magically appear out of nowhere.

 

The organisation Green Peace made its stand on Nuclear energy well long before he joined.

"He has advocated logging, claiming it actually causes reforestation, and attacked campaigners for fear-mongering over nuclear energy."

Suffering accusations of leftism is sort of inevitable for any organisation that strives to counter the overexploitation of natural resources of the planet.

 

When a founder member of an organisation says he left it because it was being hijacked by fanatics, that speaks volumes to me.
I tend to ignore unelected, unaccountable and unrepresentative "pressure groups" answerable to no-one but themselves. Especially when they turn into quasi-evangelistic ego trips.

 

Given his propensity for making unqualified statements that are unsupported by modern research (albeit yet incomplete), I'd say there's probably something mildly more than just that, that marks him as controversial.

 

Since he has a doctorate in Ecology, and comes from a family which earned its living in the logging industry, I think we can safely say he knows what he's talking about.

 

I, too, come from a family which earned its living in the logging industry. Does that also make me an expert on the conditions of the planet 450 million years ago?

That was the crux of the article, was it not?

I think we can safely say, that he didn't know what he was talking about.

 

Yea, he's only got a doctorate in Ecology. Surprised he's not managing the local branch of McDonalds...

 

Moore has given different accounts of the reasons for his departure. He has claimed, for instance, that he quit because 'in the mid-Eighties the ultraleftists and extremists took over'. But he has contradicted this by claiming that there were no indications of such problems with the organisation when he left, 'I had no idea that after I left in 1986 they [Greenpeace] would evolve into a band of scientific illiterates who use Gestapo tactics to silence people'. In fact, according to Greenpeace's Tamara Stark, Moore's exit from the organisation was 'not necessarily by his own choice'.

After leaving Greenpeace, Moore set up a fish farm, which failed, and in 1991 set up his own environmental consultancy, Greenspirit. This attracted controversy of its own. Around the same time, he became a full-time paid director and consultant for the British Columbia Forest Alliance. The Alliance, although presented as a 'citizens group', was the brainchild of PR firm Burson-Marsteller.The Alliance has a budget of around $2m derived mostly from the forest industry and its 170 or so corporate members, and it campaigns for clear-cutting.

Moore's activities on behalf of the Alliance have been extremely controversial. He claimed, for instance, that the World Wildlife Fund in some cases supported clear-cutting, provoking a furious response from Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, head of the forest programme of World Wide Fund for Nature International, who accused Moore of 'grossly misrepresenting' WWF's position, something WWF 'deplored'.



There's much. much more about Moore here:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/dec/02/sumatra-rainforest-destruction-patrick-moore



Yep, sure seems a true friend of re-forestation and ecological development for a sustainable world...

 

And what, exactly does that have to do with the conditions on the planet 450 million years ago, that we should take his statements at face value, no questions asked, especially considering his work seems to consist of being a PR-consultant for the logging industry? Considering he is still riding on the coattails of Green Peace (it's mentioned everywhere), in spite of leaving the organisation (for whatever reasons) some 28 years ago....

 

That seems to be the same premise the MMGW faithful work on, isn't it? "Don't-dare-question-us-we're-right-and-you're-only-a-pathetic-denier".
Nearly forgot-
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ecology
There were no organisms on the planet 450 million years ago? I beg to differ-
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130821170134.htm

 

And who still takes Monbiot -another middle class useful idiot on a permanent guilt trip because he wasn't old enough to be a hippy first time round- seriously?
Certainly not anyone outside the Metropolitan elite.

 

You really should go back and check what was said. Not only by me, but by the article you quoted.

No one said anything about NO organisms on Earth.

What was originally stated (by me, quoting from wikipedia):
450 million years ago, all known life was confined to the seas and oceans.

How you infer that there was NO organisms on Earth from that, is beyond my ken. Perhaps you would care to explain your logic.

It is precisely somewhere along this juncture (approx. 450 million years ago), as was previously explained in this very thread (By Biak, in post #702 on this very page), that the very first organisms made it to land: non-vascular and then vascular plants.

Your article (second paragraph):
"that major geological developments triggered evolutionary changes in the ancient seas, which were dominated by organisms such as brachiopods, corals, trilobites and crinoids."


A Brachiopod


A Coral


A trilobite


A Crinoid

All SEA living organisms.

Fourth paragraph, your article
"Scientists knew that there was a massive influx of invasive species into this ocean basin during this time period,..."

Sixth Paragraph, same article:
"Using the fossils of 53 species of brachiopods that dominated the Laurentian ecosystem,..."

7th Paragraph:
"Within the brachiopods, corals and cephalopods, for example..."
(A cephalopod)

SO you can "beg to differ" all you like, but it'd behoove you to actually understand what I wrote in the first place, in order to differ from what I stated...

 

Frantically waving hand... "Because, Al Gore?"