According to wikipedia, CO2 has an atmospheric lifetime of thousands of years, vs 12 years for methane, and 120 years for NOx. NOx has 1/1000th the concentration of CO2, and 10th the lifetime. Therefore in absolute terms, a much smaller effect than CO2.

NOx is also a major problem in the Los Angeles basin, where its a component of smog.

Except for local effects, I dont see atmospheric NOx as much of a problem. As I live in the Los Angeles basin, its a daily worry.

That Dan is clearly some kind of right wing psycho looking for liberals to pick a fight with. Since he can’t get Paul Krugman to take interest in a low-life like him, he’s chosen you as his proxy. Flattering in a way I am sure he does not intend.

I see no point in debating with someone who has indicted me (at least according to his own value system) in the absence of facts.

I am not about to argue my politics, particularly since they are not a focus of this blog. Nevertheless, some minor but indicative examples of how knee-jerk your assumptions are: per your initial charges, I have never used the word hegemon, not do I have the slightest interest in either O’Reilly or Olbermann.

It shows how deeply prejudiced you are that you assume, nay insist, that I adhere to your stereotype of a liberal profile and would carry myself differently in my private life than I do in my blog.

I refer you to this comment which I posted earlier in the week.

I welcome people taking issue with my ideas but slurs on the person who gives you a space in which to comment are not permitted. This one fell in the gratuitously ungrateful category, as opposed to the slobbering at the mouth sort.

Right now, someone is reading this and saying to themselves “What does he mean, being an asshole?” If you wondered that to yourself, well the odds strongly favor that you yourself have sphincter-like qualities. Thus, you should consider it likely that you will be banned as a rectoid from posting comments sometime in the near future.

I never stated that your blog is filled with posts about Palestine, being pro-choice or many of the other incendiary issues of the day. You completely missed my point by responding as if I did.

On the contrary, my point is that your blog DOES NOT dwell on these issues (thankfully), but nevertheless, I have “little doubt” as to where you stand on them (not so thankfully).

Now I’m the first to agree with you—I should have no intellectual justification for drawing a line from heightened regulation of Wall Street to Palestine. Your blog, after all, doesn’t explicitly go there.

Yet…I have “little doubt” as to where you stand on all Left/Right issues of the day.

And don’t give me that blather that you deviate from the stereotype because you “don’t support homeowner rescues”—as if this is a bulwark in the Stereotyped Leftist Line. There’s plenty of room on the left to oppose homeowner rescues. And besides, most of your antipathy on this issue goes to the disgust at bailing out Wall Street–which simply allows for a homeowner rescue by extension.

Don’t you find such linear, conditioned predictability the least bit interesting?

I do. And this is why I inserted the “over-intellectualism” in my earlier response: I am not saying, “Oh, Yves, you do too good of a job—it’s beyond my ken—so I’m just going to go and watch TV.”

No, Yves, I’m saying—-You think you are thinking, but you’re not. You think you are bringing erudition to these complex issues, but really it’s all just obfuscation. You’re on an intellectual I-V, forcefed what to think, believe and ultimately write–and you don’t even know it.

You, like Paul Krugman—or as you write with playground-like familiarity, “Krugman”—blindly adhere to the Lefty/Righty Playbooks with their pre-programmed scripts.

I’m not projecting anything on to you, Yves. Obviously, I struck some chord within…or more accurately, tripped a wire within…to get such a strongly worded response penned by you— on a Saturday evening no less. Evidently, your emotions overwhelmed your reasoning, because your response was completely off point.

Finally, if I’m wrong—and you
you don’t toe the Leftist Company Line on a recognized Left/Right controversy—what might that deviation be?

With linear predictably, I can already read your response: Something to the effect that it is “none of my business”. Fair enough—but why the reluctance to share? A reader has a legitimate concern: This is, in fact, a Leftist Blog cloaked in intellectualism. Why not ease the concern? Why, instead, do you tell me to just go watch TV–when you can simply dispel the claim by stating one—just one touchstone issue of the day to which you are right of center—with the caveat that you’ll never discuss it again? You’ll be able to show that you are not an automoton with a kick-ass financial vocabulary, but a legitimate open-minded thinker? C’mon, Yves, Krugman will understand.

I too believe our much loved blogger Yves dropped the ball on this article. However this is just one inferior post in a blog full of great posts. We can’t expect our blogger to be a master of science as well!

After all we wouldn’t be commenting here and visiting this site if we didn’t find it informative.

My attitude to this article is best summerised by uber_snotling’s comment:

“Climate change is a big problem, but this kind of reporting is what gives the denialists so much red meat to chew on.”

If you are going to claim this blog has an ideological bias, I suggest you get your facts right. Your charges are remarkably inaccurate.

Yes, I am a fan of regulation. That’s because I worked in the securities industry in the 1980s and it functioned much better then than it does now. And the participants still made way way more than average workers. Even John Whitehead, the former head of Goldman Sachs, hardly a right-winger, has decried current industry practice loud and clear. The Founding Fathers believed in checks and balances. Big business has become a fifth estate. If there were a better way to contain it than regulation, I’m all ears.

There is not a single mention on this blog of O’Reilly or Olbermann. Your project your assumptions on to me. The ONLY mentions of the phrase “pro-choice” are in two posts, each in quotes from other sources on Republican party strategy. I do have one commentor who regularly notes that our environmental problems are really population problems, I sometimes weigh to say I agree, but I have never advocated a particularly course of action in terms of what to do about it.

Similarly, the ONLY mention of Palestine comes in a quote today from the Guardian that mentions that US policy is strongly pro-Israel. That is a fact.

And I don’t know where you get that nonsense about white guilt from. I’ve never discussed race relations. One post mention that blacks were more likely to be given subprime loans than whites given the same credit profile. That’s been widely discussed, particularly since it violates laws barring discrimination in lending. Do you consider any mention of discrimination to be tantamount to white guilt? That’s a very peculiar reasoning process.

You seem to be conflating my blog with liberal political blogs. Aside from regulating financial services and the problems created by growing income inequality, this blog almost NEVER talks about politics. I don’t regard it as my beat.

And as for allegedly adhering strictly to your stereotyped leftist line, this blog has been consistently opposed to homeowner rescues.

As for “overly intellectual” I take it you prefer what, simplictic? Devoid of facts? That is about the weakest criticism I can imagine. “Gee, you do too good a job, so I don’t like what you write.” If you want to support mediocrity elsewhere, be my guest. The TV is full of garbage that is popular.

Just as no one can make you read a newspaper or magazine you don’t like, no one is making you read this blog. If you don’t like it, go somewhere else.

The reason I took the report seriously is that it ran in Science, which I understand to be fairly rigorous for magazine that aims at a broad audience. If these concerns are confirmed by further study, we’ll hear more about it, if not, this will have proven to be a vein of thought that dies a quick death.

One of my goals with this blog is to report on things that appear to be getting insufficient media attention relative to their apparent importance. When I stray into areas like science, I run the risk of getting it wrong.

You present us with an intellectual blog, but the more I read it, the more apparent it becomes: You try too hard.

Everything is over-intellectualized. Then, too many readers respond with “one-up” responses…contributing not a lot to the discourse, but seeming damn smart while doing so.

So what does all this have to do with nitrogen?

Too much gas, that’s what.

Yves, there is no real intellectual treatment of an issue if you simply toe the leftist line on every one of them. I’ve read over many of your past posts in the topics section….not once do you deviate…at least that I could see.

I have little doubt that in addition to wanting more regulation of financial institutions, you “know” global warming is caused by man; you are pro-choice; you think O’Reilly is the anti-Christ and that Olbermann is “objective”; Palestinans are victims, and Israelis war criminals; you take the notion of white guilt seriously; religion is for the feeble-minded; and you use the word—”hegemon”—a lot.

I’m not saying any one of these positions is right or wrong. I’m simply agreeing with Emerson and his point about little minds, foolish consistency and hobgoblins.

Of course, most people consistently hold these same positions (and the opposites–also with the same foolish consistency), but too many simply are not thinking for themselves. They toe the company line…be it on the left or right.

Here’s a topic for you to over-intellectualize: Why the high correlation between, for example, a belief in the global warming hypothesis and being pro-choice (or the belief that global warming is a croc and abortion is “murder”, if you choose). Rationally speaking, and seperated from the BS that passes as political discource, what does one have to do with the other?

I’ve no problem with a person on the left or right following his or her brethren….but if you are going to follow –on all issues—then spare us the over-intellectualized blog trumpeting reason and rational inquiry.

A bloated blovation of a blog. Too much nitrogen, perhaps?

I love the blog, but I am not a big fan of breathless environmental doom-mongering. Nitrogen may be a big deal for water deposition, but it is a very smal part of our climate problem.

CO2 is currently at 380 ppm or so in the atmosphere, up from 270 or so in pre-industrial times. N2O is currently around 310 ppb in the atmosphere, up from 280 ppb in pre-industrial times. N2O is more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 by that factor of 296, but its concentration is more than a factor of 1000 less in the atmosphere. Moreover, it is increasing less rapidly than CO2 due to anthropogenic emissions.

We’ve known about nitrogen problems for years, and this study is just changing some of our estimates of the magnitudes involved.

Climate change is a big problem, but this kind of reporting is what gives the denialists so much red meat to chew on.