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February 19, 2007 at 1:50 PM #45769February 19, 2007 at 1:56 PM #45771
Anonymous
GuestI’m very dismayed to see a huge amount of anti-scientific BS being pushed here. (Yes i’m a physicist but not in climate, though I am close with some who are).
Please, see http://www.realclimate.org for what actual climate scientists think. Despite the fact that 20 scientists wrote the IPCC report summary (though many more participated), the titanic majority (more like 98%-99%) of climate scientists agree with the essence of its conclusions. The primary arguments against it from some inside the climate community is that it is excessively conservative in that recent science shows the potential for biological/ecological ‘feedforwards’ which may suddenly increase warming or emission of greenhouse gases as temperature rises.
If it were otherwise, you’d see huge sessions at the American Geophysical Union with hundreds of participants arguing why it’s all BS. You don’t. You only see it in the political media. Now why is that?
“But what I do know is that the current antrogenic global warming is based on junk science and the amount of counter-evidence against it is quite abundant.”
This is simply and totally untrue.
The zeroth order bottom line is this:
1) increase in CO2 and greehouse gases has been measured, and is clearly due to human activities thanks to measurements.
2) increase in greenhouse effect in upper atmosphere is measured and is exactly as predicted.
This is not theory, these are observed facts.
It is hence physically impossible by the laws of physics for the climate not to change.
The solar output has been looked at very seriously over many years, and does NOT explain the current warming, nor will it do anything to counteract the increased warming which will come with increased greenhouse gases. Ockham’s razor isn’t as good as doing decades of quantitative science with physics and observations.
“The UN tries to pull a snowjob to get the masses to believe that man-made CO2 is causing global warming, despite ice-core readings showing that CO2 rise happens after temperature rise (sometimes as much as 800 years), and despite there is no physical proof that CO2 reflects infrared back to the surface.”
Again, this is unscientific BS. Firstly, the fact that ice-core readings show that CO2 rise happens after temperature rise does, in NO WAY, contradict the notion that CO2 emitted by humans will cause temperature rises. In the climate record of course there were natural astrophyiscal inputs (change in orbits) which started warming, and then as warming started, the effect of biological and physical processes further increased CO2 emissions from natural sources. This of course means that as we increase the temperature due to antropogenic greenhouse emissions the biosphere will respond as well and add to the CO2 we are putting in. Also the level of temperature changes in the record can’t be accounted for by astrophysical forcings only, and requires feedback from greenhouse and albedo.
Also if you were to follow the previous logic, that CO2 followed temperature and apply it to the current situation one woudl conclude that the tailpipes of cars don’t emit CO2 because they’re burning fossil fuel (contrary to reality) but that all that CO2 is magically being put back in the ground and all the other CO2 that we measure is being produced naturally in exactly the same amount (without mechanistic evidence). This is also wrong since the isotopic content of the CO2 observed now proves that a substantial amount of the excess comes from fossilized (dug up thanks to humans) and not geophysically recent sources.
What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?
How much of the recent CO2 increase is due to human activities?
The proof that CO2 re-emits infrared has been around for generations, it is based on lab physics, and has been of course observed precisely in the atmosphere for decades by satellites, aircraft and balloons.
“Some scientists even predict a return to colder temperatures by 2025.”
Who?
The IPCC was behind the deliberate manipulation of data to acheive what they wanted to show, an exponential rise in temperature in the last century (popularly known as the “hockey stick.”) Tree ring records that favored global warming were factored in the data, but magnified 370 times, while data that included the medieval warming period–which contradicted the agenda–was censored out. A later review found that with the tree ring data along with completely made-up (random) data still resulted in the hockey stick, hence proving nothing.
Untrue in all aspects.
1) the IPCC was not behind any manipulation, this was an independent study.
2) indepenent people have reproduced the original “hockey stick” results
3) the Medieval warm period was not global
4) the National Academy of science review on this verified most of the original conclusions.
5) enormous other evidence supports the conclusion independently.Temperature Variations in Past Centuries and the so-called "Hockey Stick"
False Claims by McIntyre and McKitrick regarding the Mann et al. (1998) reconstruction
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stickquot/Weren’t temperatures warmer than today during the “Medieval Warm Period”?
I don’t know why it is tempting for some to believe in some grand socialist conspiracy w.r.t. global warming. It’s far too esoteric for the usual lefty-radicals to “invent”.
The notion that it could seriously be an issue came about starting in the 1960’s when spacecraft started looking at atmospheres of other planets (Mars & Venus) and people had to figure out why the temperatures were as they were. This didn’t come from “hippies”, but serious scientists.
One of the most prominent is the founder of UCSD, Roger Revelle. And before you start spouting 1970’s “global cooling myth”, read this: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/
Scientists do not want to destroy capitalist civilization or any such nonsense, their work depends on it. If they are so intent on collectively lying and inventing problems for some kind of anti-progress goal, then why have major scientific studies concluded:
1) power line magnetic fields don’t cause cancer
2) cell phones probably don’t either
3) vaccines dont’ cause autismAny of these would be much better as generic ‘capitalist villians’ in a Leninist morality play.
I’m a scientist, and I have no desire for global warming to be a problem. But I see the facts and the conclusions
February 19, 2007 at 2:08 PM #45774Guest“Other problems with CO2 explanation: 1/2 of the warming in the last century occurred before the 1940’s, yet most of the CO2 emissions occurred after the 1940’s. So there’s a lack of correlation here: if CO2 is the cause, then what happened prior to 1940?.”
Because there are still natural fluctuations, the CO2 takes time to get in the atmosphere and have its effect and it persists, and what hence matters is the CUMULATIVE contributions. The previous logic is looking at the rate, when what matters is the integral, and we not only accumulating more, but accumulating more greenhouse gas at a faster and faster rate. Think about accelerating a car. If you foot is on the accelerator, do you think it’s a valid excuse to deny the present 80 mph speed is due to the engine output and think it’s just a strong wind gust based on the fact that 5 seconds ago your foot was on the accelerator too and you were only going 10 mph? That’s the same logic.
Also as industrialization proceeded there were lots of aerosol emissions (smog) which reduced some surface temperatures (at the cost of bad health and other problems), so as smog and other effects abated, and the cumulative greenhouse gas accumulated, we have now gone clearly outside the range of natural non-human fluctuations, which is why the real scientific community is quite convinced something is happening.
Real scientists have thought of all the possible complications, years and decades before any of the debunkers knew abou them. The effects have been investigated very thoroughly and seriously, and the current conclusion reflects those investigations.
“Other sources also tell me that temperature change grows logarithmically w.r.t. CO2 increase, meaning that the more CO2 we put out, the less of a difference it makes.”
But so what? Temperature might go up from 285 K to 290K
global average (remember physics works on Kelvin scale) with a doubling of CO2. So in the extremely broad physics sense it is correct.But, the compatibility of such climate with human civilization is quite narrow. 5 degrees (K or C) is the difference between now and the depths of the last of the ice age. During that time, glaciers were TWO MILES THICK in New York. We stand good chance of going into a Heat Age as hot above the norm of last 8,000 years of civilization as the Ice Age was below that norm. During the Ice Age there was neither agriculture nor literacy.
February 19, 2007 at 2:41 PM #45777sdnativeson
ParticipantGlobal Warming? thats soooo yesterday, theres a new fear factor, jump on the bandwagon! This is right up all the local physicists alleys.
February 19, 2007 at 2:48 PM #45776FutureSDguy
Participantkewp: “What I find hilarious about you nuts is you think you are the first person in history to ask this question.”
I never claimed I was the first person to ask it. I find it strange that this anomaly *hasn’t* helped to tame the global warming hype.
Getting your information solely from realclimate.org is a terrible mistake to make. That site is as biased as slashdot is in the computer industry. I do read that site, because there are going to be *some* good material, but the site is mainly about scare-mongering and maligning the characters of global warming skeptics.
I should have been clearer. Greenland always had glaciation, but the amount of non-iced over land during 1000-1200 enabled Vikings to settle it and grow food. The cooling that occurred afterward (The Maunder Minimum) forced the Vikings to flee. The point here is that there are dramatic changes in climate that happens on a sub-century scale, and to believe that the one happening now *has* to be man-made seems to gloss over historical parallels.
Now, for the further education of Climate Science amateurs (like myself), the topic of this post is the solubility of CO2 in water. Ever noticed how cola, uncapped, tastes flat when you take it out of the refrigerator, and as it warms up, it tastes more fizzly? There’s a reason for this, and the same phenomena applies in the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and the temperature of the ocean: the colder the ocean is, the more CO2 is it is able to dissolve and hold. Read: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/CO2.htm
The natural question that should arise as a consequence of reading this is: what warms the ocean in the first place?
Sunlight. There are two other minor factors that come to mind: geothermal energy, and energy absorbed and reemitted as infrared radiation by greenhouse gasses (yes, that’s what you guys are going to jump on). For an accessment of just how strong this latter effect is on ocean temperatures, read http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/ocean.html (skip down to How Oceans Get Warm.) If you consider the fact that 95% of greenhouse gasses is water vapor, the proportional contribution to CO2 becomes very very small.
So if sunlight is what primarily drives ocean temperature, it stands to reason that the sun is responsible for the long-term variations that we’re seeing.
February 19, 2007 at 3:04 PM #45778Participant(dup post)
February 19, 2007 at 3:15 PM #45779ParticipantDrChaos, your scientific arguments looks reasonable and it passes the sniff test, but the underlying problem I have with what you said is that there’s no hard evidence of anything you stated. It’s the usual hand-waving and assumptions where absense of hard evidence falls into favor of anthropogenic warming.
“Real scientists have thought of all the possible complications, years and decades before any of the debunkers knew abou them. The effects have been investigated very thoroughly and seriously, and the current conclusion reflects those investigations. ”
I wholeheartedly disagree with you on that. Climate science is full of controversy and misrepresentations. The largest trend I seem to notice is that the younger scientists, the one who enter the field with an environmentalist agenda, are contradicting the older generation of climatologists, who only had the agenda of understanding climate.
If something is true, then it should withstand the test of time and the scrutiny of skeptics whose interests are not anti-environmental, but rather for rigorous adherence to sound scientific methology.
As far as the logarithmic growth of CO2, I was hasty in formulating a reply. My point really was that IPCC predictions of future temperature assumes a linear relationship in increases CO2 versus increases in temperature, leading to overly-high estimates of 5.8 C warmth. But having said that, my faith in the IPCC in having any kind of accurate model that relates CO2 to temperature is very low, because it is based on exaggerated assumptions about the warming-capacity of CO2 in the first place. The correlation between CO2 and temperature (which can be adequately explaned by oceanic chemistry) was taken to be a causal one when it came time to create computer models.
(As a humorous aside, it has been found that pirates cause global warming: http://www.venganza.org/piratesarecool4.jpg).
February 19, 2007 at 3:36 PM #45782Guest“Now, for the further education of Climate Science amateurs (like myself), the topic of this post is the solubility of CO2 in water. Ever noticed how cola, uncapped, tastes flat when you take it out of the refrigerator, and as it warms up, it tastes more fizzly? There’s a reason for this, and the same phenomena applies in the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and the temperature of the ocean: the colder the ocean is, the more CO2 is it is able to dissolve and hold. Read: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/CO2.htm
The natural question that should arise as a consequence of reading this is: what warms the ocean in the first place?”
The solubility of CO2 in water is well known and included in climate physics. The consequences of this are these:
1) Currently, some of the anthropogenically emitted CO2 is being absorbed by the oceans. As the ocean solubility of CO2 starts to be saturated, this means that that an even larger fraction of the CO2 that humans emit will make its way into the atmosphere, hence the risks to the global warming are to the upside.
2) The ocean will get more acidic and this may start to greatly upset some of the biological balances and ecosystems if shells of invertebrates and coral reefs are unable to form.
“But having said that, my faith in the IPCC in having any kind of accurate model that relates CO2 to temperature is very low, because it is based on exaggerated assumptions about the warming-capacity of CO2 in the first place.
1) The IPCC does not ‘have’ any model; individual and teams of climate scientists have many different models.
2) What ‘exaggerations of the warming capacity of CO2’ are there? The inputs are the observed CO2 concentrations and the observed atmospheric emissivities, which are rock-solid experimental results.
“The correlation between CO2 and temperature (which can be adequately explaned by oceanic chemistry) was taken to be a causal one when it came time to create computer models.”
I don’t know what you are trying to say here but I’ll guess: you think there is external warming due to secular changes in solar energy input which is causing oceans to emit dissolved CO2 which is contributing to current observed CO2 levels.
This is wrong.
1) there is not an abnormal change in current solar insolation.
2) Oceans are currently sinks of CO2, not sources.
3) Isotopic studies show that the CO2 increase in the atmosphere is due to release of long-fossilized carbon (i.e. fossil fuels), not recently (e.g. less than 10,000 years) fixed carbon which woudl result from most natural processes.
4) It is an observable fact of human machinery that they emit greenhouse gases and the quantity can be estimated, and the magnitude is more than enough to explain the current geophysically abnormal concentration of greenhouse gases.
The causal relationship between CO2 and temperature is indirect but present through the greenhouse effect of increased IR emissivity in the upper atmosphere.
Of course water vapor is major, but this is a response rather than a forcing because of two fundamental facts:
1) the amount of water in the oceans is so huge that it is in equilibrium, and human effects are tiny at a global scale
2) the timescale of water vapor in the atmosphere is a couple of weeks, as opposed to hundreds to thousands of years for greenhouse gases.
So the response of water vapor is of course critical to quantifying the response to other inputs (and has been there all along in the models) but is already included in the physics of the climate community.
The presence of the oceans also brings up a point which ought to be understood as well. The oceans have a very large heat capacity, as is well known that climates near the sea are more moderate than inland ones. The global oceans in depth of course have a large effect. Hence, given past anthropogenic CO2 emissions (now taking into effect cumulative integrals) towards the beginning of an external warming, you would expect the temperature to not change that much because of the large heat capacity of the oceans. And so with continued warming you would expect a delayed effect on the observed temperature with increased warming flux. As global oceans get warmer (so that the heat sink effect is less), and with continued increase in heat flux input due to the anthropogenic greenhouse forcing which is an integral of a secularly increasing quantity, you will expect a further accelerating upwards curve of temperature. Hence this is why the observed temperature has only just now extended up beyond any historical record despite 100+ years of greenhouse emissions, and it is why the predictions show a much much larger rise to come soon. The effects so far have certainly not been catastrophic, but there is very good reason to think that the effect will be rapidly accelerating in magnitude.
Really, all these problems have been looked at for decades, and experimentally. There is now a scientific consensus which is very strong because the now extant evidence supports it.
February 19, 2007 at 3:56 PM #45783ParticipantOn point2). I think you’re trying to say that oceans don’t create CO2, but that is not my claim (the biology in the oceans might, but not the chemistry of the ocean itself). The level of CO2 absorption from the atmosphere depends on temperature, and when temperature trends warmer, CO2 is re-released.
Would you agree that IF the ocean received more solar energy, then less CO2 would be absorbed, hence a rise in atmospheric CO2 levels would occur?
What is your explanation of the correlation between sunspots and global temperatures? (Review with http://capnbob.us/blog/?p=610).
By the way, half of your energy in typing (very eloquent, I’ll admit) would be saved if you recognized that I don’t dispute that temperatures are increasing. It might even cause the catastrophic results that you say. It’s the role of CO2 in this that I’m disputing.
February 19, 2007 at 3:56 PM #45784Guest“So if sunlight is what primarily drives ocean temperature, it stands to reason that the sun is responsible for the long-term variations that we’re seeing.”
This is wrong.
Of course solar input is pretty damn critical in driving the temperature because otherwise we’d be at 3K equilibrium with the cosmic background radiation, and we’d have liquid helium lakes.
What matters is whether fluctuations in the solar output is responsible for the long-term variations and current unambiguous a-historical warming trend that we’ve observed.
Of course there are solar fluctuations (primarily sunspot cycle) which are observed and they do result in climate changes. But over the recent few decades of instrumental recordings the solar output has oscillated and shows no sufficiently explanatory trend, yet temperature does, and the temperature rise per year itself is increasing wtih time.
There is some signficant uncertainty in past paleoclimate solar output, and no denial of the obvious influence that the solar insolation must have on climate.
Nevertheless the existence of solar input and fluctuations does nothing to negate the known physics of the greenhouse effect.
From the ground and ocean’s point of view, both are inputs of electromagnetic radiation. If you believe in the warming power of one, you have to believe in the warming power of the other, and both have been measured experimentally. One of them has a secular trend over contemporary civilization and there is very good reason to believe it will accelerate, and the other does not, and there is no reason to believe it will do anything differently. If the Sun suddenly decides to get hotter unexpectedly this means that the risks of human greenhouse gas emissions are even greater than supposed!
There is no controversy that there is a natural greenhouse effect, because otherwise the Earth would be a frozen snowball at this radius from the Sun.
Consider that the surface temperature of Venus is hotter than that of Mercury despite the fact that it’s farther away and hence the solar flux is lower.
Why?
February 19, 2007 at 4:07 PM #45785Participant“There is no controversy that there is a natural greenhouse effect, because otherwise the Earth would be a frozen snowball at this radius from the Sun.”
Of course not. Without the greenhouse effect, the earth would be -18 C (by one estimate), too cold for life to evolve. Don’t oversimplify my assertions here. The crux of this debate is whether man-made CO2 is causing the sea-level to rise, polar bears to die, and all kinds of other problems. There is ample evidence that CO2 *cannot* cause the kind of temperature changes that are claimed by IPCC.
“Consider that the surface temperature of Venus is hotter than that of Mercury despite the fact that it’s farther away and hence the solar flux is lower.”
Venus’ surface is hot due to atmospheric pressure (rather than greenhouse effect, which was once supposed). The Earth is the same way: something like 1 deg C for every 100 m? You can’t argue any clean relationship between AU distance and temperature without taking the composition of atmospheres in account.
February 19, 2007 at 4:07 PM #457861jrp1
ParticipantFirst off: The scientific method does not mean continually repeating something as fact, and then coming up with a disaster scenario for emphasis (to get people motivated without thinking it through). Scientific method entails forming a hypothesis and then testing it.
Thanks for the education. Indeed, only one of the points that I labeled fact was a hypothesis (the explanation why CO2 typically lags temperature in natural ice-age cycle), the others are all extremely well supported by evidence. Which fact do you not agree with?
Second: The use of the term disbelivers/naysayers is highly loaded. It presupposes that the supposition is true without proving it. It also attempts to shut down all discussion (in violation of the scientific method). This is the reason I personally call the groups “pro” and either “anti or con”, and I get specific to “man made CO2 induced global warming”, as opposed to “global warming”.
A very large majority of climate scientists believe “man made CO2 induced global warming” is occurring. Because the majority of skeptics who don’t believe in “man made CO2 induced global warming” don’t have any formal training or experience in climate science, and prefer to believe that climate scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy to hide the truth, and tend to uncritically repeat bogus information they read on junkscience.com, I call them naysayers. I think calling them skeptics gives them too much credibility. But if you prefer I’ll call them skeptics … I’ll also start calling people who believe the Earth is flat “Spherical Earth Skeptics” too. Seriously, there are still big uncertainties, but to state that AGW is a hoax, or that thousands of climate scientists don’t know what they are talking about, but you do is retarded.
Ok, now to the more major points: Lets take on the Vostok-ice-core: Take a look at the graph indicated, remember that it reads right to left (not left to right in time.. see scale on bottom).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
There was a real rise in CO2 before temperature occurred 350K years ago (remember right to left). The interesting part is the temperature correlation to particulate matter (dust). It is stated higher dust levels are believed to be caused by cold dry periods, but this in part is already known to be false. Higher particulate levels are already known to reduce global temperature (see temperature results after volcanic eruptions – global dimming). One of the biggest problems is discerning the temperature of the earth over the same period. Most methods have been proven to be horribly inaccurate. I would like to know how they came up with the temperatures.How is it known to be false? First of all, colder worlds are drier worlds, hence dust is less likely to be washed out of the atmosphere. Secondly, since sea level drops during cold periods, there is more newly exposed land to provide dust to the atmosphere. Also, dust (and aerosols) can be either warming or cooling depending on their composition, their residence time in the atmosphere, and how high they are in the atmosphere. Finally, stable oxygen isotopes are a good measure of paleo-temperature. What is your definition and your reference for stating that it is horribly inaccurate?
Forth: I, personally, find it insulting that those who disagree with the forced consensus that man made CO2 is the cause of current global warming are immediately labeled as ‘industry puppets’. This again, is the use of inflammatory words to try to prove ones case by default. Since people brought up the issue of $10,000 offering by the oil industry, I would also like to counter with the Heinz award going to James Hansen for work on global warming..(Hansen is very strong advocate for humans as being the cause).. Heinz awards are unrestricted cash amounts up to $250,000.
http://www.heinzawards.net/recipients.asp?action=detail&recipientID=9Whoopdeedo. Hansen was offered the award based on a lifetime of scientific, peer-reviewed work. Nobody offered him $250k upfront to refute the “science” of the oil companies. And the award is not specifically targeted at global warming research. I wonder why Exxon didn’t offer anybody that deal: 1) work for 30+ years in obscurity, 2) while being bullied by political bosses, and 3) then maybe, just maybe, we will give you $250,000 (or $8300 per year!).
I also throw into the mix, Branson (Virgin Airlines) throwing some $25Million for solutions to sequestering C02.
So what? Branson is offering money for a specific engineering task, not for undermining the poor Exxon scientists.
To the unproven claims that Bush is suppressing pro human caused global warming statements, I again bring up Hansen who works for NOAA (a governmental body). I also bring up as counter:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14924286/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,99627,00.htmlWhat does this have to do with the fact that Bush political appointees edited EPA, NOAA and NASA documents to remove references to Anthrogenic Global Warming (http://tinyurl.com/dulcq). Or that political managers have attempted to muzzle US government scientists at climate conferences? The fact that California sues car-makers or a federal agency has nothing to do with the fact that Bush has tried hard to suppress the science. California knows how much it has to lose if snowpack in the sierras decreases. I’d sue, too, out of economic self-interest.
Lawsuits are the opposite of giving money (they take money away from someone.. even just to defend oneself and come out even). Point summary: The pro global warming camp have proven themselves to be more aggressive financially than the con, the pro camp likes to hold out the simple 10K.. but compared to the awards and lawsuits being brought about.. and the scale of these.. the pro human cause global warming camp have proven the opposite to be true. Just leave the scientists alone and let them do their work in peace, whether they are pro or con. They know how to debate science, politicians and flamboyant CEOs don’t.
Sure. And almost all of the scientists are telling you that AGW is a real and growing problem. So you prove my point.
Fifth; Since people have brought up the IPCC.. I will now point to where they are going to ‘re-write’ science:
http://www.ipcc.ch/about/app-a.pdf
search on grammatical (should end up being on page 4 of 15). Quoted:“Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter.”
Is that how we conduct science? If the research is not consistent with the intended summary, change the research papers to put them in line? This is not exactly the behavior of a responsible scientific body. Summaries should always be derived from the underlying research, not the other way around.
Misleading. Working Group 1 (which reviewed the scientific basis for climate cange) included 600 co-authors, over 600 expert reviewers, government reviewers. The fact that they came to a consensus is in itself remarkable. The fact that rules were put in place such that the conclusions in working group 1’s report was not open to further debate is obvious. After five years of work, it needed to be published. New data and new conclusions will be discussed ad nausium for the next report (5 years hence). AGW skeptics can, do and will make their voice heard. There have been four assessment reports. The scientific case and consensus have only gotten stronger through time.
Sixth: of 1jrp1 analogy, that is just plain ridiculous; What about the actual happening with respect the MTBE? We now have a carcinogen in our water supply because of the eco mandate for oxygenated fuel. This stuff does not go away, and is not going to break down for a considerable amount of time. Don’t even try to say that it was forced by the oil companies. It wasn’t. They don’t like the stuff. It is a ether, and a super solvent. That means that it dissolves the seals in the fuel processing plants (driving up the oil companies costs and causing plant fires), and you know they don’t like things that drive up their costs. Summary: doing something, just to prevent what is perceived as a problem, may be much worse than doing nothing at all until the full/real truth is figured out
Agreed some solutions are worse than the problems, this is not one of those situations.
Of the 186 billion tons of CO2 that enter earth’s atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth’s oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.
CO2 that goes into the atmosphere does not stay there but is continually recycled by terrestrial plant life and earth’s oceans.
Yes, CO2 is recycled (on a time scale of 100s of years). Yes. The natural fluxes of CO2 are much larger than the anthropogenic fluxes. However, the natural input was almost exactly balanced with the natural output – before the industrial revolution the net flux to the atmosphere was very close to zero. Now, we are adding 6 billion tons a year from fossil fuels, of which 3 billion tons is being taken up by the natural world, and 3 billion tons is remaining in the atmosphere. We know that man is too blame for the current rise because; 1) CO2 is rising 50-fold faster than at any time previously in the last 650k years, and 2) the age of the radiocarbon in the atmosphere indicates that there is a large amount of very old carbon entering the atmosphere (fossil fuels).
CO2 is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen as a waste product. Humans and animals breathe oxygen and emit CO2 as a waste product. Carbon dioxide is a nutrient to plant life, and is an essential gas not a pollutant. All life on earth is carbon-based and CO2 is an essential ingredient. When plant-growers want to stimulate plant growth, they introduce more carbon dioxide (to the greenhouse).
Wow. You sure know a lot of neat stuff! Still has nothing to do whether the CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere is raising the temperature. Oh, BTW, terrestial plants in natural ecosystems are mostly nitrogen limited, so increasing CO2 won’t increase carbon uptake. That greening of the earth argument does not hold water.
At 360+/- parts per million CO2 is a minor constituent of earth’s atmosphere, less than 4/100ths of 1% of all gases present. (This is why kewp’s experiment at http://www.chemsoc.org/networks/LearnNet/jesei/co2green/home.htm is a flawed example (the sample of C02 gas was 1,000,000ppm not 360ppm). In addition, the setup is flawed (lamp output is not guaranteed to be the same(should use same lamp with an apparatis setup forcing same distance, same type of glass). I also have problems with the ‘typical results. From time sample 2 to time sample 3, air shows a rapid drop in temperature.. even under continuous IR input?? somethings goofy here!! and also contradicts kewp’s earlier assertion that CO2 reflects.. kewp, it absorbs and then re-emits.. and it is very band (wavelength) specific. In addition, light transitioning phase changes refracts, not reflects.. big difference) Absorption is done in many ways: energies of ionization (moving an electron to an outer orbit), translational/rotational/vibration between chemical bonds of carbon and oxygen atoms as well as translational (brownian motion) of the whole.
Gobbedlygook. What’s your point exactly? Seems like you are admitting that CO2 absorbs IR, which supports the idea that extra CO2 would lead to increased warming.
And now the link:
http://freenet-homepage.de/klima/indexe.htm
This paper does not detail the effect of evaporation and condensation of water. When water evaporates, it takes 1000 Calories to accomplish this (vs 1 Calorie to heat one degree Celcius). To condense, that heat has to be given up. Gaseous water has a very light atomic weight (approx 10) compared to oxygen gass(02 = 16) nitrogen (N2 = 14) Carbon Dioxide (C02 = 22). This means that when condensation occurs, it will likely be in the upper atmosphere (troposphere?). When gaseous water condenses to a vapor, its global warming feedback goes from a postive feedback to a negative feedback. It is also a very strong heat/thermal energy transport mechanism.Hmmm. Let’s say lots of words! The gist of the linked rambling is that “Backradiation of the heat radiation outgoing from the earth’s surface would only be possible by reflection, similarly to the effect of aluminium foil under roof insulation,” and because hot air rises thermal transfer is only one direction. Well, shoot, I guess I’m not too smart, but I’m pretty sure that IR can be absorbed and then re-emitted by CO2 molecules in a random direction (half of which is towards the ground). Also, by this logic, the temperature structure of the atmosphere is impossible. It should be -50C at the surface and +25C at the tropopause. Let me get my parka. Duh. Of course there is convection and mixing going on all the time (if there weren’t, Earth’s surface would be much hotter), but because of gravity (disclaimer: gravity is just a theory!) there is a higher gas density at the surface than at altitude. Local heating due to absorption of incoming solar radiation and outgoing IR is much higher at the surface. Because the timescale of absorption and emission is so much faster than the mixing rate (e.g. convection), much of the heat is slowed in its transfer out of the atmosphere, which is why we don’t freeze to death, which is the basis of the greenhouse effect.
February 19, 2007 at 5:07 PM #45789ParticipantThanks ucodegen. I think 1jrp1 is being quite arrogant, with so-called “Facts” (CO2 and temperature are not tightly correlative, notably in the past 50 years, e.g. 1945 to 1975 cooling period). His “Facts” are case of crying wolf. And I sense so much fear in him, of me, and of independent thought.
Yeah. I’m afraid of your independent (read regurgitated) thought. I’m afraid of it because you try to falsely convey there is no consensus within the scientific community that AGW is real and getting worse.
Edit after research. Here’s the fantastically tight correlation between CO2 and temperature:
1880-1945: +.4 C
1945-1975: -.1 C
1971-present: +.3 C
total warming since 1880: +.6 CIf man starting spewing out most of the CO2 after World War II, why is most of the warming prior to it? Why did it get colder after World War II?
See kewp’s response about short term fluctuations. More generally, the correlation over the last 650K years is very, very solid. Stock traders would sell their grandmother to have that kind of predictive power.
The asteroid analogy is weak. The trajectory of an asteroid is easily computed using Newtonian physics. There will be error, but that error is quantifiable based on measurement error, and not based on assumptions (i.e. plugging in unknown variables). We know positions of satellites billions of miles away to the meter. The current state of climate science is that the ability to know future climate is very very weak–do we know what the temperature will be 50 years from now? Hell no.
The point of the analogy is that you, without any training or education in the field, are second guessing thousands of trained scientists, and thus misleading even more ignorant people than yourself (is that even possible?) that AGW is just a hoax, that we should just ignore the problem despite the alarm bells.
I may not be a climate scientist, but I do have analytical thinking skills and I apply them when I read. And you are an arrogant twit. Why do i say this? Because you claim to know the truth better than me, and resort to insults when someone disagrees with you. I doubt you have read both sides like I have–I know the Kool Aid you’re drinking, trust me.
If you were to say: “A majority of professionally trained people, many of whom are smarter than me by a country mile, are telling us that we are risking a climate catastrophe if we continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere. But, instead, I prefer to believe a vanishingly small handful of “skeptics” and a small army of paid industry lobbyists that there is nothing to worry about” then I wouldn’t try to argue with you. But in fact you don’t even allow for the possibility that you are completely and utterly wrong, and that your righteous fight against the AGW hoax is confusing the issue and wasting precious time. Whose the arrogant twit? Mmmm…Kool Aid tastes good, don’t it?
I know I’m beating a dead horse here, but darnit, you just won’t stay down.
February 19, 2007 at 5:13 PM #45790Guest“Venus’ surface is hot due to atmospheric pressure (rather than greenhouse effect, which was once supposed).”
Huh? So if Venus’ atmosphere was replaced by Argon or Nitrogen at the same pressure it would be at the same temperature?
Such a notion is just plain false.
“The Earth is the same way: something like 1 deg C for every 100 m?”
“You can’t argue any clean relationship between AU distance and temperature without taking the composition of atmospheres in account.”
Of course. One essential aspect of these is the radiative transfer.
February 19, 2007 at 5:54 PM #45791Participant“Huh? So if Venus’ atmosphere was replaced by Argon or Nitrogen at the same pressure it would be at the same temperature?”
No, it would be at a different pressure due to different densities, and as a consequence, a different temperature.
In general, I see how aghast some of you are that I dare challenge “scientific establishment.” I understand that. Remember, it wasn’t long ago when the favorite scare was that there was going to be another ice age due to CO2. I think it’s better to question prevailing science in this case, especially when it comes to the IPCC which is policy-driven, not truth-driven.
“See kewp’s response about short term fluctuations. More generally, the correlation over the last 650K years is very, very solid.”
Yes, very solid in favor of temperature rising before CO2 does. This supports the theory that the ocean is absorbing less of it due to temperature.
My point was that in the past 120 years, CO2 has risen monotonically, but temperature has not; most of the temperature rise occurred before the bulk of CO2 occurred. This greatly weakens AGW, and the best hand-wave that you can do about it is to say “well, it’s a delayed action.” This is not hard evidence. I find it funny how AGW supporters choose time frames that suit them. Give them 8000 years of cycical evidence (that what is happening today happened before), they reject it. Give them 30 years of cyclical evidence (it got cooler then), they reject it. But how about exactly since 1942, now they’re convinced that man is the culprit.
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