Morano is calling this good news for the deniers?

Is he really that ignorant…

Go read the comments at Watts’ blog and you’ll see that for the most part they really *are* that ignorant, and those that try to set them straight are pretty much shouted down.

I think they’re fairly representative of the average RWingnut denialist.

As to whether or not Morano himself is that ignorant … well, I can’t imagine he would *intentionally* post a piece that warns people that things could be roughly twice as bad as thought. He had to believe it shows “CO2 is harmless!” just like the rest of the denialsphere…

I do think we must figure out a way to take carbon from the atmosphere, there is already too much, never mind we are constantly adding more.

At least, the US Congress has admitted, by a slim but vital majority, that we must do something about climate change. So don’t curl up and die quite yet!

Santa Rosa, California is where I live. Pretty weather today, a little hot but not bad. Barbecue sounds nice.

The Daily Kos piece seems to have slipped a decimal point, somewhere:

The transition from Paleocene to Eocene was so dramatic due to a large outgassing of methane clathrates. This ‘methane ice’ exists in cold, deep waters all over the globe and humans have recently begun trying to exploit it as a another fossil carbon source. Methane has the same amount of carbon in it as carbon dioxide, but it’s twenty times more powerful in terms of heat retention.

So here we are, currently kicking out about four gigatons more carbon annually due to fossil fuel usage than the Earth can uptake on its own, that’s double the estimated output of the clathrate outgassing event behind the PETM, and we’ve not yet triggered the conditions that’ll cause major clathrate outgassing.

He’s got it wrong by a factor of a thousand, I think, thank all the Gods. We’re tossing 4 more gigatons of carbon from fossil fuels per year into the atmosphere than the earth can take up on its own, that’s roughly right, I think. But the PETM dumped something like 4 thousand gigatons (3 or 4 trillion tons) of carbon from the methane hydrates into the atmosphere, I think that’s right. So the current situation doesn’t compare in size to the PETM, at least not yet.

So, we still have time to turn this thing around, and enjoy our own time, and eat some chicken. If we go to carbon negative technologies, we could even be back to normal in a few decades, if we hit it hard and fast, and convert every coal fired power plant on the planet to a carbon negative biomass plus sequestration power plant, I think. Unless we let it go too far, and the feedback processes get too out of control.

I’m trying to solve the personal problem of how I can enjoy life while admitting the reality of global warming. It’s such a depressing subject, I just want to curl up and die. But that won’t help the planet.

Can we fight global warming enthusiastically, productively, joyously, knowing that the end is not in sight, and looks pretty dark?

It seems possible if we get the technological details right to turn this problem around, and even have a good time doing it.

?

Sleep well Morano.

[JR: This statement is utterly false, as any reader can tell. I provided Morano's name -- but I don't link to his site. It ain't hard to find his piece on this.]

[snip]

I still would love to host a gigantic or even small summer barbeque for us faithful to the overlords of DOOM, later this summer srsly?

I can promise ya’ll delectable ribs and salads! Much better than that fuquetagd with his crummy greasy chicken!

http://www.dailykos.com/ story/ 2009/ 7/ 19/ 755099/ -Contemplating-Human-Extinction-(updated)

The comments! The links! (Start with the very first by
A Siegel, “OMFG Climate Models Might be Wrong!!!” an astute and even funny post about the study you referred to).
I’m going to be wallowing in this for countless hours. Maybe days. Maybe the rest of eternity, since there is only 5 4 3 2 1 years left…

I am so glad I had a nice picnic with my family today, under the speckled shade of pockmarked trees, where we enjoyed almost the very last of the fish ceviche, and gazpacho, and cheese from France transported at great carbon cost, and listened to beautiful music. Cherish the moments.

Carbon dioxide forcing alone insufficient to explain Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum warming

Richard E. Zeebe1, James C. Zachos2 & Gerald R. Dickens3

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The Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (about 55 Myr ago) represents a possible analogue for the future and thus may provide insight into climate system sensitivity and feedbacks (1, 2). The key feature of this event is the release of a large mass of 13C-depleted carbon into the carbon reservoirs at the Earth’s surface, although the source remains an open issue (3, 4). Concurrently, global surface temperatures rose by 5–9 °C within a few thousand years (5, 6, 7, 8, 9). Here we use published palaeorecords of deep-sea carbonate dissolution (10, 11, 12, 13, 14) and stable carbon isotope composition (10, 15, 16, 17) along with a carbon cycle model to constrain the initial carbon pulse to a magnitude of 3,000 Pg C or less, with an isotopic composition lighter than -50permil. As a result, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increased during the main event by less than about 70% compared with pre-event levels. At accepted values for the climate sensitivity to a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration1, this rise in CO2 can explain only between 1 and 3.5 °C of the warming inferred from proxy records. We conclude that in addition to direct CO2 forcing, other processes and/or feedbacks that are hitherto unknown must have caused a substantial portion of the warming during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. Once these processes have been identified, their potential effect on future climate change needs to be taken into account.

There were large amounts of C13 depleted carbon entering the atmosphere, they say.

They say that the source of that C13 depleted carbon is unknown, but one source that would fit the description is about three or four trillion tons of C13 depleted methane from the methane hydrates.

CO2 forcing alone is not sufficient to explain the temperature deviations, they say.

They are implying methane forcing, of course, and just using scientifically cautious terminology, I think. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, although it oxidizes into CO2 currently with a halflife of about 12 years, I think, being oxidized by the hydroxyl radical.

This all makes a consistent scenario, isotope ratios and all, with a mild to moderate methane catastrophe, sad to say. The webbook at killerinourmidst.com, also seems to make a consistent scenario for a more severe methane catastrophe, the Permain/Triassic mass extinction.

Oh, and production of hydrogen sulfide reduces hydroxyl radical concentrations in the atmosphere, and increases methane residence time in the atmosphere, another part of the methane catastrophe by methane hydrate release scenario.

Morano is calling this good news for the deniers?

Is he really that ignorant, or does he just want to confuse as many people as possible?