What Do We Think About Climate Change

[Tcubed]

Besides if they are completely irrelevant you should answer them just for fun as they will obviously be of no threat to your climate theories.

[Jimbo1490]

CO2 lasts 5 or at most maybe 10 years in the atmosphere. It's 'origin' is therefore irrelevant to the discussion as any molecule of CO2 in the air at any given moment will have been recycled many times. The question is therefore arcane and irrelevant, unless of course you believe in such myths as a 200 year half-life of atmospheric CO2.

Jimbo

[Tcubed]

If it only 'lasts' 5 or ten years then where does it go or what does it become? Before our carbon inputs where did more come from to replenish the supplies?


Ok , and now what about question 1 ?

It was ; 1- What would happen to the earth's atmospheric composition if all life where to suddenly vanish, and why?

[Jimbo1490]

Who Cares????

[Tcubed]

" Who cares??? "

Well that is an admirably scientific approach.

I thought i was giving you an opportunity to demonstrate your understanding.

It turns out you either do not understand the most important fundamentals, or you would rather not go there as it may show some of your other assertions to be flawed.

" Who Cares???? "

I'll tell you who cares ; many millions of people who have opened their eyes and wonder what is in store for us.

[Jimbo1490]

You have, the floor; Oh do tell! Show us how the long ago past has any relevance to the significance of anthropogenic CO2 emissions and attribution thereof to the state of the current climate, which emissions are all of 60 years old! I'd simply love to hear!



Jimbo

[BillyDoc]

Don't bother T^3, Jimbo is obviously one who doesn't care.

[Jimbo1490]

Hey Billy,

Have you bothered to lift your tenny weeny little finger and 'click' on any of those presentations yet? I didn't think so

O but, HE CARES

Jimbo

[Tcubed]

Science's incompatible world views



The nineteenth century battles between science and religion succeeded in establishing Science as the prime source of knowledge. In these battles Earth and life sciences were united in their rejection of creationism. Perhaps because of this common cause, biologists and geologists never seemed to notice that their own views were insufficient when taken separately, and also contradictory. Hutton's unifying concept was lost in the fragmentation of science. As a result, two distinct and incompatible theories of evolution, Darwinism and geological evolution, became established and have existed separately from the middle of the last century until today. Let's look at the present day world views of the life and Earth scientists, and let me show you how far the Earth and life sciences have separated.

Biologists, although critical of Gaia theory, rarely comment on the Earth and the planets. Their view is normally through a microscope, not a telescope. They look at cells, genes and molecules, not planets. They are sometimes sufficiently irritated by Gaia theory to comment that the material conditions of the Earth were all explained completely by the abundance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air. That is how many biologists see the world today. (See Figure 1.) If they took the trouble to go back and read Huxley, they would be surprised to find he supported Hutton's view of the Earth as a superorganism.

Geochemists think otherwise. They know that the cycle of carbon dioxide between plants and animals, although large, is a "do nothing" cycle. Organisms alone do not set the level of carbon dioxide in the air, only accept what is there. Plants and animals must always, at steady state, exchange equal quantities of carbon dioxide.

Geochemists believe that their science explains it all. For example, the eminent geochemist H.D. Holland, in his book The Chemical Evolution of the Atmosphere and Oceans, said, "The regulation of the Earth's chemistry and climate can fully be described by geochemistry and geophysics alone. To geochemists there is only one source of carbon dioxide, volcanoes and only one sink for the gas, the weathering of calcium silicate rocks." (See Figure 2.)

In recent years scientists have felt uneasy about these two extreme views, and many have opted for the conglomerate science of biogeochemistry. Biogeochemistry is, in fact, a province occupied by geochemists who think that they can explain the world by including in their geochemical models boxes labeled These boxes represent living organisms as reservoirs, sources and sinks of chemicals. They are now finding that no matter how large and expensive the computers they use, nor how intricate they make these biogeochemical models, they fail to produce results that map onto the real world. Such models cannot properly account for the current low level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, nor the fact that oxygen remains constant at 21%. More seriously, these models, like those of population biology, are sometimes inherently unstable or prone to deterministic chaos.

There is another way of looking at the Earth scientifically; that is to go back to James Hutton's physiological view. If we take the Earth to be a superorganism, then we would not expect an expert science of a part of the system, like biology or geochemistry, to be able to explain the whole system. If the Earth does resemble a living system, then such properties as climate and chemical composition require physiology for their explanation. Try asking a biologist or biochemist how our own internal temperature is kept close to 37C. You will find them unable to answer in terms of their science. Temperature regulation can only be properly explained by physiology, the systems science of the body.

I think that to explain the regulation of the climate and the chemical composition of the Earth also requires a physiological approach.

The above is an excerpt from http://www.unu.edu/unupress/lecture1.html
________________________________________________________________

In a nutshell, the carbon that makes up the physical mass of photosynthesizing life forms comes from the air. This is part of the carbon cycle. However there exists a net sink effect into the soil. This, over millions of years have ended accumulating into oil deposits.

So the answer to the question is, the carbon in petrofuels all originally came from the air.

This is the result of a very slow process that is crucial to maintaining atmospheric carbon at levels which are conducive to the proliferation of life on earth.

What we are doing now is undoing this process and putting it all back in the air at a rate somewhere between 10 000 and 1 000 000 times faster than it naturally accumulates.

Now it seems pretty self evident that this must have some kind of effect.

[BillyDoc]

An excellent explanation T^3! If I understand it correctly, organisms like phytoplankton, etc., produce tissue in the form of their own bodies using airborne CO2 to make this tissue (photosynthesis), either fall to the bottom of the ocean or get buried when they die, and slowly turn into coal or oil --- thus sequestering atmospheric CO2. This leaves an atmosphere we can live in. But now, the natural control systems that have been in place are being overwhelmed by the shear quantity of CO2 being released as is evident by the measurable increase in CO2 in both the atmosphere and the ocean.

Is that about right?

BillyDoc

[Tcubed]

That's about the shape of it. Although far more gets cycled around than gets sequestered, it is a process continually at work.

[Jimbo1490]

TTT,

This is all old stuff, covered way earlier in the thread. Now my post #2369 shows the latest carbon isotope balance data, which is the most trusted tool used to determine the provenance of nascent CO2.

Now you said:

"What we are doing now is undoing this process and putting it all back in the air at a rate somewhere between 10 000 and 1 000 000 times faster than it naturally accumulates."

This is a plausible hypothesis. It is also a TESTABLE hypothesis. If this were really true, then the carbon we find in nascent CO2 should conform to the carbon isotope balance of its provenance, in this case ancient CO2, which has experienced more isotopic decay.

If you would be honest enough to look at the most current data on this matter, you will see that this is NOT the case, The hypothesis your posited, though plausible, does NOT prove out; ancient carbon is NOT a major source of nascent CO2; therefore fossil fuels are not the major source of nascent CO2.

Jimbo

[Jimbo1490]

Originally Posted by BillyDoc

An excellent explanation T^3! But now, the natural control systems that have been in place are being overwhelmed by the shear quantity of CO2 being released as is evident by the measurable increase in CO2 in both the atmosphere and the ocean.

Is that about right?

BillyDoc

This is wrong! Incidental CO2, be it from anthropogenic sources or volcanism or forest fires or whatever, is ALWAYS swamped out by natural sources linked to ongoing biological processes. Look at the graphs I posted!

Jimbo

[Jimbo1490]

Here's another view:


"Using the radioactive decay equation for the lifetime of CO2 in air, we can calculate the masses of remaining CO2 from different reservoirs using isotopic mass balance; checking for match vs. air CO2 in December 1988: mass = 748 GT C; δ13C = -7.807 (Keeling et al. 1989)."


Now the oldest CO2 being considered here (mathematically, according to the accepted decay equations posted earlier in this presentation) is from the year 1750. I think we can reasonably expect that the CO2 from 10,000,000 years earlier will be at least an order of magnitude smaller yet

Jimbo

[Boston]

hey Jimmy the graph you posted pretty clearly shows that according to you at least that about fifty % of the atmospheric co2 comes from burning fossil fuels



there it is plain as day
big green smudge on the old graph
clearly says emissions
making up about fifty percent of the present ttl
and looky there
that big green boogey man starts rearing its ugly head about the time of the industrial revolution now doesnt it

notice the term cumulative next to the little green box in the key before you start squirming Jim

feel free to post some more graphs if you like
that last one was perfect