RealityQuest wrote:water vapor has a stronger greenhouse effect than co2 and the atmosphere has a much higher higher concentration of water vapor than co2. Since even the current elevated levels of co2 are minuscule compared to the normal levels of water vapor, it's difficult to confirm the significance of rising co2 levels and our part in producing it--especially since we know natural causes have increased co2 levels in the past.

Holy shit. Do you even bother to look up the facts before spouting the same old denier lies?

http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-v ... se-gas.htm

it's been suggested that a significant portion of the long-term temperature recording stations are located in areas that have become urbanized in the last 50-100 years. If that is the case, the well-documented heat island effect of cities (buildings, pavement, autos, etc) would seem to have come into play, possibly exaggerating the measured temperature increase. The question is whether that was adequately accounted for in the statistical evidence for a temperature rise.

Holy shit. Again. This is completely insane. Do you even fucking look up this stuff before posting it?

http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-h ... effect.htm

You say the science is so straightforward that anyone can understand it... No. It's not. I've waded through portions of the IPCC report and have read numerous articles (some scholarly) on both sides. You can continue to insult my IQ all you want, but it appears I can still hold down a decent job of some intellectual challenge and generally get by in life.

There are numerous excellent pages online that explain all of this in very simple terms. Try Skeptical Science, for example.

johnbrandt wrote:One is blamed immediately on Climate Change, the other is nothing, it's only an "air mass change".

Did you actually read and understand the articles? There's nothing contradictory or weird when comparing them. They are perfectly consistent. Of course, if you have no idea how this stuff works or are just insisting on denying the science, it might look weird.

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years.

Really? If you look at their graph, it must have stopped rising in 1960, 1970 and 1980 as well. Of course, this is just another case of dishonest cherry-picking as shown here.

You really should watch this video to educate yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luArwsZxHUs

And I won't back away from the statement that a lot of climate change proponents seem to project an image that they honestly believe that the Earth is finished with climate changes and is now a stable unchanging system.

Who? Please provide us with some examples.

And so what if some random guy is mistaken about something? That doesn't change the scientific facts.

You are grasping for straws. And obviously trolling. Why are you allowed to continue trolling?

Spearthrower wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:
?

It would be more helpful if you actually responded to what I posted. You've responded with a rhetorical question that doesn't convey any information, and a very general comment that could mean almost anything.

I would have thought it was perfectly transparent: the notion that pumping billions of tonnes into the atmosphere would not have extreme climatic effects is a non-sequitur.

You still aren't being very specific.

I don't understand. Water vapour is continually, dynamically entering and leaving the atmosphere. The amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is determined by the temperature. Warm air can hold more than cold air, so when air cools down, or when warm air meets cold air, water vapour precipitates back out of the atmosphere and falls as rain. This is completely different to the greenhouse gases we are worried about, which stay in the atmosphere for decades.

Please explain what is wrong with this. It may well be wrong. If so, I'd like to know what is wrong with it.

The trees in the amazon give off vast amounts of water vapour all the time. Is this acting as a greenhouse gas? Yes it is, but only for the brief time it remains in the atmosphere. The prevailing winds come in from the Atlantic, carrying water vapour which falls as rain in the far east of the amazon. Most is taken up by trees, and re-released into the atmosphere. It then blows a bit further west and the process repeats. Eventually it gets all the way to the Andes, falls as rain for the last time and starts its long journey back to the Atlantic. Take away the trees, and the amazon basin will become a desert.

Why should humans releasing excess water vapour be any different?

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:
?

It would be more helpful if you actually responded to what I posted. You've responded with a rhetorical question that doesn't convey any information, and a very general comment that could mean almost anything.

I would have thought it was perfectly transparent: the notion that pumping billions of tonnes into the atmosphere would not have extreme climatic effects is a non-sequitur.

You still aren't being very specific.

I don't understand. Water vapour is continually, dynamically entering and leaving the atmosphere. The amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is determined by the temperature. Warm air can hold more than cold air, so when air cools down, or when warm air meets cold air, water vapour precipitates back out of the atmosphere and falls as rain. This is completely different to the greenhouse gases we are worried about, which stay in the atmosphere for decades.

Please explain what is wrong with this. It may well be wrong. If so, I'd like to know what is wrong with it.

Of course there's water vapour in the atmosphere: it's a reasonably large part of what forms it, the lower parts at least. I was expressly saying from the beginning that the artificial pumping of billions of tonnes of water vapour into the atmosphere (as we do with C02) would equally result in massive climatic changes. In fact, it is one of many proposals made as a last ditch means of dealing with climate change.

But here:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/featur ... rming.html

Increasing water vapor leads to warmer temperatures, which causes more water vapor to be absorbed into the air. Warming and water absorption increase in a spiraling cycle.

So now if you read back to my initial point:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/gener ... l#p1582515

Spearthrower wrote:

RealityQuest wrote:
1) water vapor has a stronger greenhouse effect than co2 and the atmosphere has a much higher higher concentration of water vapor than co2. Since even the current elevated levels of co2 are minuscule compared to the normal levels of water vapor, it's difficult to confirm the significance of rising co2 levels and our part in producing it--especially since we know natural causes have increased co2 levels in the past.

And if we were pumping billions of tonnes of water vapour into the air, then you'd have a point. There's a balance (of an oscillating sort) that has stablized over eons. In a short period of time, just a century or so, we've nearly doubled the CO2 ppm - had we done the same with water, we'd be having the same conversation. Further, you might want to take a look at the specific details of the interactions here. CO2 is particularly important because of the wavelengths of infrared radiation it absorbs and emits, so comparisons to water are really a non-sequitur.

You can see what I was saying.

It's a red herring to be talking about the quantities of water vapour in the atmosphere and its concentration comparative to CO2 when we're discussing CO2. Of course water vapour can also be considered, but it's not an either/or scenario. They are both greenhouse gases. The difference being, of course, that humans don't pump billions of tonnes of water vapour into the atmosphere.

Secondly, the original paragraph I replied to was factually incorrect: far smaller increases in CO2 have a much greater impact than water due to the wavelengths of infrared radiation it absorbs - this is an outright falsehood or error in the claim RealityQuest made. Also, the fact that there is comparatively MUCH less CO2 in the atmosphere suggests that a relatively small increase comparative to water vapour is going to have significantly larger effects.

In essence, I was merely pointing out the fallaciousness of the claims in that paragraph: it's a typical denialist position that appeals to nebulous concepts but isn't factually or logically consistent.

Spearthrower wrote: The difference being, of course, that humans don't pump billions of tonnes of water vapour into the atmosphere.

Of course we do! Burning fossil fuels produces water vapour.

CxHx + O2 = CO2 + H2O

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Spearthrower wrote: The difference being, of course, that humans don't pump billions of tonnes of water vapour into the atmosphere.

Of course we do! Burning fossil fuels produces water vapour.

CxHx + O2 = CO2 + H2O

Sorry, that was a really stupid thing of me to write. I even noticed it as I pressed submit, but I got a call at that moment.

I meant comparatively. If you consider the quantity of C02 in the atmosphere, and we pump out billions of tonnes extra, then correspondingly consider pumping equivalent amounts of water comparative to the existing amounts of water vapour in the atmosphere, the result would necessarily be a dramatic climatic change.

Spearthrower wrote:It's kind of difficult to quote your post RQ because of the formatting.

My apologies. Damn iPhone app.

Spearthrower wrote:Points to note though: the link you provided shows that, were we to piss about with the water vapour content of the atmosphere as we've been doing with CO2, it would have just as catastrophic effects. That's the problem with the thin blue line - it's extraordinarily fragile, and nigh on all the things that live within it are entirely reliant on it for their well-being. This is not something we have a right to gamble with.

I agree that no one has the right to gamble with the future well-being of the human race. But I think you walked past the point I was making. Over the past decade WV dropped by 10%. That doesn't fit with the models that assign a positive feedback correlation between the two.

Spearthrower wrote:As for measuring carbon - we don't need to go and check every factory, we can use numerous techniques to measure the ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere 200 years ago and then measure it now: necessarily, that shows the increase. Ice cores are one of many techniques that produces consilient data. Bubbles of air trapped in the ice are 'frozen' in time, so yes, perfectly measurable.

I agree that it's perfectly measurable in those terms. But human activity is only a small part of that net level. Those same bubbles show that co2 levels have been oscillating for millions of years quite apart from any human activity and we're not yet at the maximum level. Such persistent oscillation would seem to suggest some kind of balancing mechanism between co2 sources and co2 sinks. The question then would be whether our additional co2 contribution is enough to overwhelm the natural co2 sinks and prevent the next tipping point. Has anyone figured out what caused the tipping points before there was human activity?

Spearthrower wrote:Regarding the urban heat effect, I requested that you cite the source for your claim, not the IPCC account and the fact that you are not convinced by it. The reason I ask this is because I know where the data comes from on these, and that it's long since been addressed. The only place that seems to continue to spawn such claims is in the denialist literature, which includes Crichton's propaganda fictional novels.

I honestly don't remember the source, although I'm certain you would have considered it right-wing propaganda--and rightly so in all probability. I didn't hang a lot of weight on it.

Remember, UE referred to it first when trying to characterize a family member's argument. I was just trying to clarify the point, not advance the argument itself. I was surprised however, how weakly the IPCC report addressed it when you pressed me for a source. BTW what was the source for it along with the refutation?

Spearthrower wrote:Incidentally, who do you think would have more scientific authority with respect to the climate and climatic interactions? The TV weatherman, or the IPCC?

Since the effect of wind/calm on surface temperature is a local phenomena, I'd give a meteorologist quite a lot of authority. The ones I can recall mentioning it are all gung-ho on AGW. I was just curious about how the IPCC did the math in ruling UHI out as having any significant impact on the long term temperature record. I was puzzled by their assumption on the 270 locations given what I thought was common knowledge about wind vs calm. Here's a link showing I didn't just make it up. (seventh section, point 2-wind) http://theweatherwiz.com/school/chpt1a.htm

Here's a link, if I have time to read it, that might answer for me what the IPCC didn't. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI3730.1

RealityQuest wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:It's kind of difficult to quote your post RQ because of the formatting.

My apologies. Damn iPhone app.

Oh I didn't mean for you to apologize, I was apologizing for not being able to quote you properly.

RealityQuest wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:Points to note though: the link you provided shows that, were we to piss about with the water vapour content of the atmosphere as we've been doing with CO2, it would have just as catastrophic effects. That's the problem with the thin blue line - it's extraordinarily fragile, and nigh on all the things that live within it are entirely reliant on it for their well-being. This is not something we have a right to gamble with.

I agree that no one has the right to gamble with the future well-being of the human race. But I think you walked past the point I was making. Over the past decade WV dropped by 10%. That doesn't fit with the models that assign a positive feedback correlation between the two.

That's not what the article's talking about at all. For a start, it does not say that water vapour has dropped in the entire atmosphere by 10% in the last decade, it expressly talks about only one particular layer: that 10 miles and more above the surface. Secondly, it explains why the rate of temperature increase haven't followed the previous decades trends - look:

A 10 percent drop in water vapor ten miles above Earth’s surface has had a big impact on global warming, say researchers in a study published online January 28 in the journal Science. The findings might help explain why global surface temperatures have not risen as fast in the last ten years as they did in the 1980s and 1990s.

You've misread what it says.

RealityQuest wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:As for measuring carbon - we don't need to go and check every factory, we can use numerous techniques to measure the ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere 200 years ago and then measure it now: necessarily, that shows the increase. Ice cores are one of many techniques that produces consilient data. Bubbles of air trapped in the ice are 'frozen' in time, so yes, perfectly measurable.

I agree that it's perfectly measurable in those terms. But human activity is only a small part of that net level. Those same bubbles show that co2 levels have been oscillating for millions of years quite apart from any human activity and we're not yet at the maximum level.

Of course they do, and they show that process happening over millions of years too - they never once show that process happening over decades... until post-industrialization. I don't wish to make any accusations RQ, but you're throwing out the all too typical denialist spins. Everyone with half a clue on the topic is very well aware that the climate varies greatly over the history of the Earth. Likewise, anyone with half a clue on the topic is very well aware that these climatic changes happen over geological times, not the generation spans of human primates.

RealityQuest wrote:Such persistent oscillation would seem to suggest some kind of balancing mechanism between co2 sources and co2 sinks.

That suggests it's meant to be that way rather than just falling towards the most stable point. The fact that the oscillations will completely change the habitability of the planet for the life-forms residing on it is also somewhat problematic. It is, of course, entirely guaranteed that the Earth will survive whatever we do to it, but the question is whether it will still be habitable for us afterwards.

RealityQuest wrote: The question then would be whether our additional co2 contribution is enough to overwhelm the natural co2 sinks and prevent the next tipping point. Has anyone figured out what caused the tipping points before there was human activity?

There are so many, I don't have time (or the expertise) to list them, but they include freeing of oxygen, volcanism, varying solar rates, magnetic variances in the poles etc etc etc

One thing of extreme import though is the time scales of such events: none of them match the time scales associated with the anthropogenic rate of climate change. Therein lies the key.

RealityQuest wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:Regarding the urban heat effect, I requested that you cite the source for your claim, not the IPCC account and the fact that you are not convinced by it. The reason I ask this is because I know where the data comes from on these, and that it's long since been addressed. The only place that seems to continue to spawn such claims is in the denialist literature, which includes Crichton's propaganda fictional novels.

I honestly don't remember the source, although I'm certain you would have considered it right-wing propaganda--and rightly so in all probability. I didn't hang a lot of weight on it.

I'm not a very political person, so I don't care where the information comes from so much as whether it's aiming to acknowledge the facts or in denial of them. I just happen to have read Crichton's State of Fear (I think it was called) and decided to run some fact-checks. It was a heap of bullshit, pseudo presented as fact, in a fictional novel that was really more of a political manifesto than anything.

RealityQuest wrote:Remember, UE referred to it first when trying to characterize a family member's argument. I was just trying to clarify the point, not advance the argument itself. I was surprised however, how weakly the IPCC report addressed it when you pressed me for a source. BTW what was the source for it along with the refutation?

That's why I always ask for a source, because something that can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, and it saves me time from going and collating links.

RealityQuest wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:Incidentally, who do you think would have more scientific authority with respect to the climate and climatic interactions? The TV weatherman, or the IPCC?

Since the effect of wind/calm on surface temperature is a local phenomena, I'd give a meteorologist quite a lot of authority.

So the IPCC being a body of numerous meteorologists and other forms of climate experts, you'd place a higher weight on their authority?

RealityQuest wrote: The ones I can recall mentioning it are all gung-ho on AGW.

Have you considered whether that's because their professional expertise gives them sufficient understanding of the evidence to accept it as indisputable fact?

RealityQuest wrote: I was just curious about how the IPCC did the math in ruling UHI out as having any significant impact on the long term temperature record. I was puzzled by their assumption on the 270 locations given what I thought was common knowledge about wind vs calm. Here's a link showing I didn't just make it up. (seventh section, point 2-wind) Here's a link, if I have time to read it, that might answer for me what the IPCC didn't. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI3730.1

Yeah, a bit too much for me to process right now, I'm supposed to be writing a film damnit!

Spearthrower wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Spearthrower wrote: The difference being, of course, that humans don't pump billions of tonnes of water vapour into the atmosphere.

Of course we do! Burning fossil fuels produces water vapour.

CxHx + O2 = CO2 + H2O

Sorry, that was a really stupid thing of me to write. I even noticed it as I pressed submit, but I got a call at that moment.

I meant comparatively. If you consider the quantity of C02 in the atmosphere, and we pump out billions of tonnes extra, then correspondingly consider pumping equivalent amounts of water comparative to the existing amounts of water vapour in the atmosphere, the result would necessarily be a dramatic climatic change.

You still haven't explained what is wrong with my reason for rejecting this. Water vapour content of the atmosphere is limited by temperature. Any excess falls as rain. How much we pump into the atmosphere is irrelevant.

It's also transient as it drops out of play unlike other GHG.

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Spearthrower wrote: The difference being, of course, that humans don't pump billions of tonnes of water vapour into the atmosphere.

Of course we do! Burning fossil fuels produces water vapour.

CxHx + O2 = CO2 + H2O

Sorry, that was a really stupid thing of me to write. I even noticed it as I pressed submit, but I got a call at that moment.

I meant comparatively. If you consider the quantity of C02 in the atmosphere, and we pump out billions of tonnes extra, then correspondingly consider pumping equivalent amounts of water comparative to the existing amounts of water vapour in the atmosphere, the result would necessarily be a dramatic climatic change.

You still haven't explained what is wrong with my reason for rejecting this. Water vapour content of the atmosphere is limited by temperature. Any excess falls as rain. How much we pump into the atmosphere is irrelevant.

Actually, I did by reference: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/featur ... rming.html

Andrew Dessler and colleagues from Texas A&M University in College Station confirmed that the heat-amplifying effect of water vapor is potent enough to double the climate warming caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The answer can be found by estimating the magnitude of water vapor feedback. Increasing water vapor leads to warmer temperatures, which causes more water vapor to be absorbed into the air. Warming and water absorption increase in a spiraling cycle.

"This study confirms that what was predicted by the models is really happening in the atmosphere," said Eric Fetzer, an atmospheric scientist who works with AIRS data at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Water vapor is the big player in the atmosphere as far as climate is concerned."

It's not true that 'any excess falls as rain' because the very fact of there being more water vapour in the atmosphere would cause temperatures to rise and consequently permit more water vapour to be absorbed, and if we were pumping relatively massive amounts into the atmosphere, it would have a dramatic effect on the climate.

Again, I made this point quite clearly at the outset, UE.

Macdoc wrote:It's also transient as it drops out of play unlike other GHG.

Again, that's unfortunately not true. It appears to be a common misunderstanding.

Incidentally, it's hypothesized that this is the reason for Venus' extreme greenhouse atmosphere. Too tired to go find a paper now, but the wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere ... #Evolution

Through studies of the present cloud structure and geology of the surface combined with the fact that the luminosity of the Sun has increased by 25% since around 3.8 billion years ago,[44] it is thought that the atmosphere of Venus up to around 4 billion years ago was more like that of Planet Earth with liquid water on the surface. The runaway greenhouse effect may have been caused by the evaporation of the surface water and the rise of the levels of greenhouse gases that followed. Venus's atmosphere has therefore received a great deal of attention from those studying climate change on Earth.[7]

It should be noted that Krasting back in 1988 (yes I know it's an old paper, but it seems to be the definitive research on this matter) has modelled the system and concluded that it's extremely unlikely that the Earth can ever undergo a runaway greenhouse effect like Venus. ** note that this conclusion only holds until the Sun's luminosity starts to drastically increase in a billion years or so **.

From the paper:

A one-dimensional climate model is used to study the response of an Earth-like atmosphere to large increases in solar flux. For fully saturated, cloud-free conditions, *the critical solar flux at which a runaway greenhouse occurs, that is, the oceans evaporate entirely, is found to be 1.4 times the present flux at Earth's orbit** (S0). This value is close to the flux expected at Venus' orbit early in solar system history. It is nearly independent of the amount of CO2 present in the atmosphere, but is sensitive to the H2O absorption coefficient in the 8- to 12-μm window region. Clouds should tend to depress the surface temperature on a warm, moist planet; thus, Venus may originally have had oceans if its initial water endowment was close to that of Earth. It lost them early in its history, however, because of rapid photodissociation of water vapor followed by escape of hydrogen to space. The critical solar flux above which water is rapidly lost could be as low as 1.1S0. The surface temperature of a runaway greenhouse atmosphere containing a full ocean's worth of water would have been in excess of 1500°K—above the solidus for silicate rocks. The presence of such a steam atmosphere during accretion may have significantly influenced the early thermal evolution of both Earth and Venus.

If you head on over to Skeptical Science, they have a nice layman's summary (I can't find the direct link to this anymore, it appears as if the page was edited since I copied it to a discussion on another forum):

On present-day Earth, a “cold trap” limits significant amounts of water vapor from reaching the high atmosphere, so its fate is ultimately to condense and precipitate out. In a runaway scenario, this “cold trap” is broken and the atmosphere is moist even into the stratosphere. This allows energetic UV radiation to break up H2O and allow for significant hydrogen loss to space, which explains the loss of water over time on Venus.

You can check out the graphs, but the final conclusion is:

Note the traditional runaway greenhouse threshold is largely independent of CO2 (figure 2 & 4; also see Krasting 1988), since the IR opacity is swamped by the water vapor effect. This makes it very difficult to justify concerns over an anthropogenic-induced runaway.

It doesn't invalidate anyone's post, just interesting really.

Macdoc wrote:
It's also transient as it drops out of play unlike other GHG.

spearthrower claimed
Again, that's unfortunately not true. It appears to be a common misunderstanding

.

oh?

The other factor to consider is that water is evaporated from the land and sea and falls as rain or snow all the time. Thus the amount held in the atmosphere as water vapour varies greatly in just hours and days as result of the prevailing weather in any location. So even though water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas, it is relatively short-lived.

On the other hand, CO2 is removed from the air by natural geological-scale processes and these take a long time to work. Consequently CO2 stays in our atmosphere for years and even centuries. A small additional amount has a much more long-term effect.

shortlived....transient....
water vapor is a magnifier for other GHG
CO2 is effectively permanent from a human time frame.
Merthane while more powerful has a shorter life span in the atmosphere...

Just A Theory wrote:

It doesn't invalidate anyone's post, just interesting really.

It is indeed, however I was thinking of a paper from just 3 or 4 years ago that presents a model that arrives at completely the opposite scenario. I'll have to try to find it, but don't have uni account access for at least another month!

are you withdrawing your claim?

Macdoc wrote:
It's also transient as it drops out of play unlike other GHG.

spearthrower claimed
Again, that's unfortunately not true. It appears to be a common misunderstanding

.

Macdoc wrote:are you withdrawing your claim?

Macdoc wrote:
It's also transient as it drops out of play unlike other GHG.

spearthrower claimed
Again, that's unfortunately not true. It appears to be a common misunderstanding

.

No, of course I am not. Your scenario is not consistent with mine where we actively pump extra billions of tonnes of water vapour into the atmosphere. In a normal situation, your explanation is correct, but it completely fails to take into account what i was actually talking about. Further, the links I've provided give ample support for what I was saying.

What links.?
I don't think you understand the process at all.

The other factor to consider is that water is evaporated from the land and sea and falls as rain or snow all the time. Thus the amount held in the atmosphere as water vapour varies greatly in just hours and days as result of the prevailing weather in any location. So even though water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas, it is relatively short-lived.

this is a founding principle that water vapour is a feedback and transient.

Water vapour: feedback or forcing?
Filed under: Climate modelling Climate Science FAQ Greenhouse gases — gavin @ 6 April 2005 - ()
Whenever three or more contrarians are gathered together, one will inevitably claim that water vapour is being unjustly neglected by ‘IPCC’ scientists. “Why isn’t water vapour acknowledged as a greenhouse gas?”, “Why does anyone even care about the other greenhouse gases since water vapour is 98% of the effect?”, “Why isn’t water vapour included in climate models?”, “Why isn’t included on the forcings bar charts?” etc. Any mainstream scientist present will trot out the standard response that water vapour is indeed an important greenhouse gas, it is included in all climate models, but it is a feedback and not a forcing. From personal experience, I am aware that these distinctions are not clear to many, and so here is a more in-depth response (see also this other attempt).

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... r-forcing/

what is a common misconception is that it is not....are you going to argue with Gavin on this??

Water vapour is NOT a forcing - it is a feedback and it is transient.
There is only one scenario that is could be used as a forcing and that is by way of cloud ships to shift the albedo temporarily and because they are persistent in funding the cloud formation overcome the transient nature.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/enviro ... rming.html

Your stance is nonsensical and misleading to readers. You made a condescending general claim that is wrong. If you have a specific scenario in mind then modify the claim to that scenario and make the appropriate clarifications and acknowledge your error in generalizing and the well supported validity of my original statement.