Global warming first: oxygen involved!
Richard Treadgold | March 3, 2010
A story in the NZ Herald a few days ago talked about giant Antarctic icebergs:
A massive iceberg struck Antarctica, dislodging another giant block of ice from a glacier, Australian and French scientists said.
The end of the mighty Mertz Glacier had been repeatedly hammered by the 97-kilometre-long iceberg as it moved in the ocean currents. Note that there’s no mention of global warming to explain this “breakup” of ice.
This event was driven entirely by mechanical forces …
… until the final paragraph, when the article talks about oxygen levels and quotes “a leading climate expert”, Steve Rintoul:
Oxygen levels being fed into the world’s ocean currents are now changing “and the overturning circulation currents will respond to that change,” Rintoul said. Observing what happens “will … allow us to improve predictions of future climate change.”
One wonders whether Rintoul is accurately quoted.
It is understandable that the overturning circulation might transport water of differing oxygen levels around the oceans, but it is incredible that differing oxygen levels might affect the overturning circulation.
I do not understand how observing the effects of oxygen on the overturning circulation might have any effect on our predictions of “climate change”, much less allow us to improve them.
Further explanation is required, and it ought to have been obtained by our beloved Herald before publication of this nonsense.
Was this just another reprint from the parent paper “The Independent”?
Relief is in sight. After 21 loss-making years, and being on the block forever, the Independent has finally been sold to a Russian billionaire.
A news item today tells us that Russia plans to use its vast coal reserves for generating electricity, in place of natural gas. This is because it has billions of last-century carbon credits from the collapse of Soviet industry, and wants to obtain the higher gas prices available in Western Europe. Europe has stopped using its coal because of global warming.
I think we can guess the Russian owner will be keen to keep up the newspaper’s rabid stance on AGW. But the Independent won’t be able to force the Herald to reprint its rubbish, in future.