Rush Limbaugh cited one of my discoveries on his show

sealover wrote:
Government environmental regulators mandated "pH adjustment" of a very large volume of dredged sediments that had been exposed to oxidation in a storage area. This environmental chemotherapy was required because a scientifically illiterate individual believed they were "toxic".

sealover wrote:

After all, the sediments were strongly acidic. The pH was often as low as 4. They must be toxic, right?

They needed to be detoxified.

Beet lime, a highly soluble form of calcium carbon was applied liberally. The liming requirements were enormous. The target pH had to be at least 6.5.

sealover wrote:

The solubility of soil organic matter is highly pH dependent - more soluble at higher pH. Liming released a whole lot of soil organic matter into soluble form.

sealover wrote:

When the organic-carbon rich soil solution leached down into the low oxygen zone, the giant dose of organic carbon started a feeding frenzy.

sealover wrote:

Reductive dissolution of ferric-iron-bound arsenic by bacteria that consumed that organic carbon caused groundwater arsenic to increase 500%.

sealover wrote:

And the paranoid regulator thought the landowner illegally dumped arsenic herbicide and would have to be taken to the cleaners to clean it up.

Through an agonizing process, regulators were finally persuaded that there was no liability. Perhaps the fact that they were the ones who mandated the environmental chemotherapy had something to do with it.

sealover wrote:

But nobody wanted to talk about groundwater arsenic after that.

As part of an unbelievably expensive required investigation, more than 300 monitoring wells were installed and sampled for regular testing throughout a sub sea level (leveed off) delta island.

An enormous data set had already been collected, reports had been filed, and the regulators were satisfied that all was well.

That was all before I got there.

The people who prepared the reports excluded virtually all the data from the wells with highest arsenic.

Statisticians saw way too much variability within those wells and followed the official method for excluding the data based on its high variability.

That's seasonal variability for you.

So, buried deep in the appendix of the report was the complete original data set showing the exceptionally high arsenic. But none of that got into the main body of the report.

Years later, the botched "pH adjustment" brought arsenic to attention.

sealover wrote:

We had an incredible data set I could have published, just from the report for bureaucratic paperwork. The correlation between dissolved organic carbon and arsenic was highly significant. Nobody ever published that before. It was a chance to make an important contribution to science, with implications for environmental management and public health.

I didn't even have to go to the field or lab. All the data, methodology, etc. was already handed complete on a silver platter.

But it would have revealed too many controversial issues.

Nobody wanted that data or those findings to see the light of day in a scientific journal.

sealover wrote:

When my report was finally filed as a Technical Memorandum, it was years after the dust had settled. Even then a NEW paranoid regulator was sure that this was a major scandal. Just getting official approval for the Technical Memorandum was going to be over his dead body. He looked everywhere for evidence of the conspiracy and cover up and finally had to be overruled.

By then, biogeochemical discovery had gone stale. Others beat me to the punch publishing the correlation between dissolved organic carbon and arsenic release.

Im a BM wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:

sealover wrote:Others beat me to the punch publishing the correlation between dissolved organic carbon and arsenic release.

I haven't heard of them either.

IBdaMann, of course you haven't heard about the kind of science that can only be found in obscure, "shitrags" such as the journal Nature.

Im a BM wrote:
Right now, this thread shows 10,891 "views".

Im a BM wrote:
Things have changed since you slithered away from climate-debate.com

Im a BM wrote:
I predict that under the new viewership regime, this thread will pick up hundreds of more views, perhaps by tomorrow.

Im a BM wrote:
My "library" has been discovered!

Im a BM wrote:
And they can check out your more than 15,000 posts while they visit.

Im a BM wrote:
You'll be glad you made the extra effort when you wrote them, now that people not indigenous to the rabbit hole/echo chamber are finally seeing them.

Into the Night wrote:

sealover wrote:
If you ever read a scientific paper about ocean acidification with actual data for alkalinity, it reveals two things:

You can't acidify an alkaline.

sealover wrote:
1. "Total alkalinity" is the simplest measure. Total acid neutralizing capacity from ALL anions capable of accepting a proton. It can be measured by simple titration, measuring how much acid can be added to the solution before it reaches the designated "endpoint" or hits the designated "inflection point". In the data tables it is often abbreviated as ALK total, or something similar.

2. When alkalinity is further characterized, the most common designations are

total inorganic carbon alkalinity = (bicarbonate alkalinity + carbonate alkalinity)

the table will say something like ALK inorg C, ALK HCO3, ALK CO3

3. They will always measure total alkalinity. They will often segregate inorganic carbon alkalinity. They will sometimes even segregate (phosphate + borate +...)

4. And now they are finally segregating ORGANIC ALKALINITY. ALK org

In the past they always had total alkalinity and they often had inorganic carbon alkalinity. They usually just left the difference as other alkalinity of undesignated origin. They used to assume that the difference was just the sum of oxyanions and it would be ridiculous to measure them individually.

Now they know that more often than not, that undesignated origin alkalinity was usually comprised more of ORANIC alkalinity than it was of the other oxyanions.

I won't bother trying to explain the "unit error" again. But alkalinity really is reported in units that have name and meaning, and its not "pH".

Unit error.

sealover wrote:
I won't bother trying to explain what it means that alkalinity is "operationally defined" in chemical analysis.

Maybe I should, but with a different chemical.

Lignin is a major, non-carbohydrate component of plant tissue.

Lignin is a carbohydrate.

sealover wrote:
Lignin is not easy to measure.

Easy. Weigh it.

sealover wrote:
It's measurement was historically operationally defined as "acid detergent" lignin. The final step in the extraction was with a very strongly acidic detergent.

Guess you never could figure out how a paper mill works. They don't use acid.

sealover wrote:
When you took the final residue that was insoluble in acid detergent, you called it "lignin". It was operationally defined. As such, the units had to be some sort of "equivalents" you could related to a known pure lignin standard.

There is no 'lignin standard'. Buzzword fallacy.

sealover wrote:
The amount of "lignin" in the residue you extracted with acid detergent was "equivalent" to some amount of pure lignin standard.

When it got easier and easier to characterize with NMR, people found that much of what was in their "lignin" residue was not lignin at all. Many times it had as much tannin as lignin, if not more.

The disadvantage of operationally defined lignin was that the operation extracted more than just lignin.

Any questions?

Lignin isn't 'operationally defined'. Lignin simply is.

sealover wrote:
Let me rephrase that.

Any meaningful questions about the actual science?

No science here...move along...move along...

sealover wrote:
...deleted spam and whining...

Into the Night wrote:

sealover wrote:
What Rush Limbaugh Said on RECORD!

I do not speak for Rush Limbaugh.

I do not HAVE TO. He spoke about it just fine for himself.

You are speaking for Rush Limbaugh right now, dumbass.

sealover wrote:
There was buzz in the scientific community about a new article in Nature.

Science isn't a community or a magazine.

sealover wrote:
Rush didn't provide the volume number or pages, but he named the journal as "Nature".

He wanted to play up that is was perhaps in a tie for the world's most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal, and the article supported the Rush Limbaugh Paradigm.

You see, in those rare cases when they believe that science is on their side, suddenly scientists become credible after all.

Like when they correctly measured surface temperatures in the year following the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. But ONLY during THAT year.

I dare suggest that either Rush Limbaugh or Ronald Reagan could have bested either of you in a scientific "debate".

Science isn't a debate.
Science isn't any scientist or group of scientists. It isn't even people at all.

Science is a set of falsifiable theories.

sealover wrote:
Is it possible you don't know how to find an article published in Nature?

Science isn't a magazine. False authority fallacy.

sealover wrote:
Is it possible you know how to find it easily enough, you just have no idea whatsoever what all those gibber babble buzzwords mean?

They are meaningless.

sealover wrote:
Tough to offer plausible criticism of what you can't begin to understand.

I don't blame you for being afraid to say anything about my pubs.

They are not your magazine. You are a nothing.

sealover wrote:
It would expose your ignorance too readily.

Let's pretend that there is no way to look up an article in Nature if one only knows the year, title, volume number and pages.

My failure to post a "link" means I lose by default, right?

Come on!

This is your chance to play debate with a REAL SCIENTIST!

Science is not a magazine. False authority fallacy. True Scotsman fallacy. Buzzword fallacy.

Im a BM wrote:
...deleted whining and spam...
And the so-called "scientific" journal, Nature, where two of my discoveries were published is just a "shit rag".

I guess I'll never be REAL "scientist"...

After all, there is NO SUCH THING as "biogeochemistry".

"Your religion is stupid." - IBdaMann

sealover wrote:
Rush Limbaugh ...deleted spam...

Into the Night wrote:

sealover wrote:
Rush Limbaugh ...deleted spam...

Stop spamming. RAAA.