Re: [Phys-l] Climate Change - Is it Controversial?

[Jack Uretsky <jlu@hep.anl.gov>]

I am responding to what I am hearing as a misconception in Robert 
Carlson's postings.  It is a good teaching practice, IMO, to avoid 
assuming that my listeners have the same understandings that I have.
	This is a physics <teacheer's> net, nicht wwahr?
					Regards,
						Ja

On Thu, 12 Mar 2009, Brian Whatcott wrote:

> This note of Jack's seems surprizing.  A non-sequitur, on the face of it.
> Nobody argues against the fact that the materials we have been burning
> in great profusion since the bar sinister scion of the Earl of Dudley
> opened up his estate to open face coal mining and roasting and iron ore
> mining, kicking off the Industrial Revolution, were biogenic. The
> rhetorical question, can non-biogenic (hydro)carbon sources burn, is
> hardly worthy of our time, or is it?
>
> Brian W
>
> Jack Uretsky wrote:
> > What makes you think that carbon has to be part of a biosystem in order to
> > combine with oxygen (burn)?  Burning is only a question of whether a
> > substance's combination with oxygen is exothermic or endothermic.
> >  			Regards,
> >  				Jack
> >
> > On Wed, 11 Mar 2009, Robert Carlson wrote:
> >
> > > My point is that coal and petroleum, being biofuels, were once part of Earth's biosystem.  The carbon in them has been removed from the biosystem and is no longer available to the biosystem as a renewable energy source.  So, perhaps they should be burned and returned to the biosystem.
>
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