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Ed Mazza writes that Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says he loves Pope Francis, but he wants the pontiff to stop talking about climate change and "leave science to the scientists." Santorum's comments come as the Pope, who holds a degree as a chemical technician and worked as a chemist before turning to the priesthood, has become increasingly vocal about climate change. "The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists," says Santorum, "and focusing on what we're really good at, which is theology and morality, When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, I think the church is not as forceful and credible."
But Santorum's not a scientist either so using Santorum's own logic why is Santorum more qualified than the Pope to discuss climate change? "I guess the question would be, if he shouldn't talk about it, should you?" asked Chris Wallace of Fox News. "Politicians, whether we like it or not, people in government have to make decision with regard to public policy that affect American workers," answered Santorum, adding that while "the pope can talk about whatever he wants to talk about," he questions the Pope's use of his moral authority to combat the issue of climate change.. Santorum — a devout Catholic — disagrees with the Pope's stance that climate change is man-made and has often called climate science "political science," arguing that a scientific consensus on climate change underscores this point. "All of this certainty, which is what bothers me about the debate, the idea that science is settled," says Santorum. "Any time you hear a scientist say science is settled, that's political science, not real science."
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:39PM
What exactly are you basing that on?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:46PM
Venus has a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, adding CO2 will tend to make the Earth more like Venus. Whether the amounts we are talking about are sufficient to make a difference, I don't know.
What I worry is that there is some feedback that leads to more volcanic eruptions or other types of outgassing from the Earth that will thicken the atmosphere to the point it is a problem for us. I still wonder why the pictures of dinosaurs I looked at as a kid so often had erupting volcanoes in the background. A much thicker atmosphere back then would actually explain a lot (the dino blood pressure problem, etc).
(Score: 1) by ksarka on Tuesday June 09 2015, @08:29PM
Climate change is bad not because the constitution of atmosphere is changing; it's bad because the ice caps are melting, the temperature is increasing (at the moment it is balanced out by the heat absorption of melting ice, will rapidly bump up shortly), the oceans are getting more and more acidic (all calcite based structures are dissolving, the species depending on them for survival are dying out), the water levels are increasing (currently the fish are massively migrating north, Faroe islands had seen the biggest yield of fish ever in 2014), the land-based species are either migrating or dying out.
Oh, and CO2 does not do anything towards cloud formation. It's the particulate matter (some are good (like sulfur and ammonia based clouds), some are bad - soot is very efficient cloud formation agent, but it also tends to deposit quickly, covering everything with a dark coating, absorbing and capturing heat). I'm not gonna talk about weather extremes as a negative side of climate change -- I see it as if the planet is actively trying to fight the cancer that had spread on it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:28AM
Yes, as I mentioned I worry that something like this could lead to volcanic activity as all that mass is moved.
Albedo is the main negative feedback the system has to work with. Anything that pushes the energy density of the atmosphere too high will likely increase albedo in some way to bring us back to the equilibrium state. Unfortunately, we don't have enough understanding to make this quantitative but what else do you think the mechanism could be?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:30PM
And that equilibrium state will be at higher and higher temperatures as CO2 concentrations increase. You seem to be working with a definition of "equilibrium state" that suggests global temperatures won't change; today's thermal equilibrium state is not the same as it was in the past, and its not the same as it will be in the future either. The thermal equilibrium state is basically wherever heat radiation (loss to space) is maximized, as greenhouse gas concentrations increase, more heat remains trapped, allowing less to radiate to space, which brings the thermal equilibrium point higher and higher.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @05:07PM
I think this depends upon input energy from the sun, and mass of the atmosphere. The reason is that if you take the Magellan data [1] (It doesn't really matter which probe you use because Venus has an extremely stable and uniform atmosphere [2]) and apply the 1976 US standard atmosphere [3] you can get very close to the Venus pressure-temperature profile (and most of the deviation that is there is probably locally due to the clouds).
You can even use earth surface temperature/pressure (t0 and p0) and simply multiply by the ratio expected for the two planets with no atmosphere at all [4]: 1.176
So the three possible explanations I can think of are that
1) this is coincidental
2) there is no greenhouse effect as claimed in that link
3) there is an equilibrium state being maintained (eg if CO2 increases the heat held by the atmosphere the Venus system has compensated by increasing albedo with that worldwide layer of clouds)
In the latter case (my preferred explanation) sustained higher/lower temperatures in the past must be due to alterations in atmosphere thickness or output of the sun.
[1] http://pds-atmospheres.nmsu.edu/PDS/data/mg_2401/data/mgn_abs.dat [nmsu.edu]
[2] https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=7856&cid=194350 [soylentnews.org]
[3] https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2UKsBO-ZMVgQV83S2loaGs4dnc/edit?pli=1 [google.com]
[4] http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html [blogspot.com]