What Do We Think About Climate Change

[Jimbo1490]

Credible sources for what? The provenance of Realclimate.org? It's fairly well known. Go to the wayback machine and see when they began. Right AFTER the hockey stick debacle. Golly, what a coincidence

The data I posted on the relative greenhouse potential of CO2? Look at the sources yourself; DOE Oak Ridge Lab, The EPA. Their numbers look like those published by many others and are not even in question. Only question is still what conclusion to draw from the data. And the DOE and EPA both count themselves in the AGW alarm crowd, don't you know.

Maybe your are so incredulous because when you ACTUALLY LOOK AT THE NUMBERS, the whole thing does not look scary AT ALL, and you are having a hard time bringing your mind around to the conclusion that the AGW alarm crowd really is FULL OF **** and their arguments have little technical merit.

Again, what is this mystery process whereby CO2, a TRACE GAS, can leverage its meager intrinsic (and logarithmic) greenhouse potential to regulate the entire climate, so that modest changes in concentration can cause the climate to run away in a positive feedback loop? Increasing water vapor has its own negative feedback systems that are quite robust, after all. You've probably even heard of them; clouds and precipitation.

Jimbo

[bntii]

So you are unable to defend your position:

"CO2 was on the same trend BEFORE the industrial revolution, hundreds of years before in fact."

Since your own sources agree with the abundant evidence for significant anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2:

"During the past 50 years, atmospheric CO2 has increased by 22%. Much of that CO2 increase is attributable to the 6-fold increase in human use of hydrocarbon energy."

I would be willing to start discussing how this change in atmospheric chemistry caused by mans activities may be effecting climate.

[masalai]

Is this relevant? - - - - http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...section=justin
Greenhouse gas 4 times more than thought: study

Posted 3 hours 27 minutes ago

Levels of a powerful greenhouse gas are four times as high as previously thought, according to new measurements released on Thursday.

New analytical techniques show that about 5,400 metric tons of nitrogen trifluoride are in the atmosphere, with amounts increasing by about 11 per cent per year.

Ray Weiss of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, and colleagues said it had not been possible to accurately measure this gas before.

They said nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than an equal mass of carbon dioxide, although it does not yet contribute much to global warming.

Scientists estimate the gas contributes to just 0.15 per cent of total global warming.

Previous estimates had put levels of the gas at less than 1,200 metric tons in 2006.

Nitrogen trifluoride, a colorless, odorless, nonflammable gas, is used to etch silicon wafers and in some lasers.

Writing in Geophysical Research Letters, Weiss and colleagues said they analysed air samples gathered over the past 30 years under the NASA-funded Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment.

Weiss said nitrogen trifluoride needs to be regulated, as carbon dioxide is.

"From a climate perspective, there is a need to add nitrogen trifluoride to the suite of greenhouse gases whose production is inventoried and whose emissions are regulated under the Kyoto Protocol, thus providing meaningful incentives for its wise use," he said.

Michael Prather, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California at Irvine, noted nitrogen trifluoride is being used more commonly and predicted that more would be found in the atmosphere.

"It is now shown to be an important greenhouse gas," Mr Prather, who was not involved with the Scripps study, said in a statement. "Now we need to get hard numbers on how much is flowing through the system, from production to disposal."

[rwatson]

I just cant bring mysellf to read all the other posts - but I presume Methane (from landfill, grazing cattle etc) has been mentioned before?

It has a much bigger effect on the warming effect than CO2 has.

Its all academic anyway - if these gasses are going to do these bad things - we are stuffed. Its never going to be reduced in time -well, unless bird flu or something kicks in.

Especially now that the oceans are turning acidic and warm, the big dropoff in small marine organisms that sequester up to 40%
( http://www.aad.gov.au/asset/magazine...rbon_sinks.pdf )
of the worlds carbon are either being collected by Russion Krill trawlers, or dying off.

We are all going to a very warm place, we are doomed ... I tell you, doomed!!!! (insane cackle, exit stage right to mail chicken feathers to all parts of the world)

[masalai]

He he he ha ha ah ha ah - - cannot stop laughing - takes an Australian sense of humour.... to knock some of the pontificated stuffing around....

[Knut Sand]

Originally Posted by Jimbo1490

Knut, The rest of your analysis above is tragically flawed as it seems you've taken heat properties of liquid water and tried to apply them to water in a vapor form acting as a heat trap

What can I say? LOST!!!

Jimbo

You're a bit stubborn arn't you?
You stated that our activities in relation to the CO2 level didn't matter, that the impact our activities may have, was of little or no significance or something like that, You also linked to a site stating that the change in CO2 equaled something like 1,66 W/m2.

So I just took your numbers, to give a picture of the energy that little number due to the change in CO2 (from your site) actually have.

2,56 e 22 Joule/ Year? (Was it that high? I'll check) Does that sound like a high number? I Used the evaporation example just to show that actually that amount of energy in fact can do (and probably does) something to affect our way of living:
Increase the water vapour in the atmosphere, more clouds, ok, well have it your way, increase the greenhouse gas (water wapour).

So I think....
The change in heatinput caused by the change in CO2, will affect the sea, in its liquid state. Therfore i still believe it pretty correct to use the properties for water.

(and of course, it will also heat the sea, reducing again the evaporation, but again; I used to give a number to the amount of energy a little no of that size actually represents).

I just used it to get a size of the effect the difference in CO2 has to the atmosphere. And even 10% of that again will probably have something to say, can we affect to that level? I have quite frankly no idea.

"tragically flawed" well, I admit that any simplification will reduce the credibility to any calculation, but we have to start somewhere, don't we? A fullsized calculation....puuuhh. Anyway I believe it a bigger flaw to jump on a high horse and state that what we do doesn't matter. I also believe that simplified calculations like that can show us that something is moving, wether we like it or not, wether we can affect it or not... I generally just think we should be a bit more careful, we know what we have, and most of us like it pretty much so. There's no or little use stating that there was global warming for 7000 years (or something) ago, and then we had no human produced CO2 either. Because I'm not shure if I would have enjoyed the weather at that time, And I don't know anybody that was around at that time either...

"What can I say? LOST!!!" At least I try to steer my decisions. So far I've not seen that from you... Picking up somthing from the net and throwing it at me as facts? You're not steering, you're probably steered...

Ay there's the rub...
The question we should maybe ask us is: who is steering?
Here in our part of the world, our ears are filled with:
Turn of the lights.
Insulate your house.
Buy a new environmently friendly car.
Install heat exchangers.
buy buy...

No; reduce your consumption....

[Knut Sand]

Originally Posted by Jimbo1490

Knut,

If you can't accept the simple, well established scientific fact that water vapor is a greenhouse gas, and BY FAR the most important greenhouse gas for planet Earth, then I just can't discuss this any further with you, for you are LOST, and I'm not your GPS.

As I stated, I do not question that the water vapor does have the ability to act like a greenhouse gas. But in my opinion, a bit uncertain of how to put it; It's a secondary gas, something must change or happen (normally or not) in order for that to get the ability to be a gas to consider. And we need it, we just don't want it to change completely.

So, well, if I'm putting my attention to gases we actually can do something about, what's wrong with that? By now you probably should have realized i'm not quite alone...

[Knut Sand]

Originally Posted by Jimbo1490

Knut was attempting to model the greenhouse capacity of atmospheric water vapor a heat problem (Q=MC x DeltaT) but using the heat properties of liquid water. This is wrong on at least two different levels, maybe three if I think about it. You might think my post on the Campos Basin oil find is a flawed analysis, but Knut's rambling takes flawed to a whole other plane

Jimbo

Since you're Locked on this target, I just thought that I should be so kind to point out the fact that I was NOT attempting to model the greenhouse capacity of atmospheric water vapor a heat problem.
Grow a brain! (Since you have set the level at this altitude, I should probably respond like that )

I was only trying to put a number to what a change in CO2 (numbers from site, linked to by you) and the corresponding change in 1,66 W/m2 is capable to do. Put a better number on the amount of energy. I still believe the assumptions are pretty correct ( As I said what this energy can do...). And also; due to this; I do not believe that we, and our possible actions doesn't matter.

[Jimbo1490]

Knut,

The real 'rub' is that you were asking totally wrong questions about the problem, and then patting yourself on the back for a clever analysis of that question, when the answer was *completely* irrelevant!

Allow me to explain.

You took the fraction of the solar budget attributed to the increase in atmospheric CO2 (so and so W/M^2) and then calculated the amount of water that would be expected to evaporate from the addition of this amount of heat energy. Then you concluded something like "I can see that increased atmospheric CO2 can increase atmospheric water vapor concentration, thereby accelerating the greenhouse effect." Thus what you are asserting in a nutshell is a (positive) feedback loop between CO2 concentration and water vapor concentration.

The BIG problem with this analysis is that since CO2 is a relatively weak greenhouse gas, it cannot increase water vapor concentration by greenhouse heating (the method you supposed in your analysis) more than water vapor itself can, since water vapor is so much more effective as a greenhouse gas. Yet water vapor does not participate in a positive feedback loop with itself; there are very robust negative feedback loops that dominate the water vapor cycle that prevent water vapor from accumulating in the atmosphere. When water vapor concentration climbs, clouds and precipitation act to mitigate the additional heating that would otherwise result. These mechanisms have to cope constantly with huge daily influxes of water vapor into the atmosphere, much, much larger than the increase that could be attributed to recent increases in CO2.

So the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere is governed by a 'set point' around which it oscillates very little, having strong negative feedback mechanisms in place that make this so. Even the AGW alarmists recognize this, and they are NOT asserting as you did that CO2 participates in a simple positive feedback loop with water vapor because that's simply not plausible.

But what they ARE saying is that by some unknown process, CO2 can somehow reset the 'set point' for water vapor in the atmosphere. This is quite a different thing than your simplified analysis since the negative feedback mechanisms that govern the water vapor concentrations would still be operative, it's just that they would then cause water vapor concentrations to oscillate around a new higher set point, which would in turn result in more greenhouse heating and higher temperatures.

This is what I was referring to in an earlier post as a "complex Rube Goldberg process" that the AGW alarm crowd keeps searching for to prove that CO2 could somehow leverage its tiny intrinsic (and logarithmic) greenhouse potential to in effect govern the temperature of the whole atmosphere.

But in order to believe this, we first have to believe that CO2 can accumulate in the atmosphere to start up the process. In order to get to that point we have to ignore the fact that, like the situation with water vapor, there are robust negative feedback mechanisms (fluxes) in place that prevent this from happening.

First the terrestrial plant biomass is known to consume CO2 in proportion to the concentration available; when more is available, the plant biomass consumes more, fixing all that surplus carbon by turning it into sugars, starches and cellulose though accelerated plant growth. This is a well documented phenomena, but one that is not well modeled in the current climate models and largely ignored by the AGW alarm crowd.

But the even bigger flux is the colder parts of the ocean which uptakes CO2, transporting it to warmer parts of the ocean, where it is again released. During the transit period, which lasts some number of years, pelagic plant biomass consumes the dissolved CO2 fixing the carbon. The plants are in turn consumed by oceanic fauna which release the CO2 though respiration. The uptake and release are somewhat in balance; when the oceans are colder, the uptake is greater than the release. When the oceans warm up, the releases outpace the uptake. Thus the ocean temperature establishes the set point for atmospheric carbon concentrations. This in turn explains very nicely why the recent increases in atmospheric CO2 lag the observed increase in temperature by a few hundred years; it takes the ocean several hundred years to warm up.

The exact 'how' and 'why' we are warming up is still unknown, but it's far more plausible to look toward the solar influence for the answer. But hey, nobody's gonna get elected that way, and that's ultimately what AGW alarmism is all about

All the above has been referenced in earlier posts; just go back and read.

Jimbo

[Pericles]

Jim,

Congratulations. I take my hat off to you for managing to untangle Knut's post and then being able to formulate such a cogent, reasoned and best of all, absolutely truthful and honest answer, to his muddled thinking. How can he not see the error of his ways now, but we shall know more when he replies?

I hope he will admit he is now no longer sitting on the fence, but has climbed over to join the rest of us in debunking the "CO2 is a pollutant" scam. How can he not, but "there's nought to queer as folk" and nothing surprises me nowadays about the comfort blankets people carry around in their heads? To be able to accept a new idea, first it's necessary to let go of an old one.

Best wishes,

Perry

[masalai]

Bugger, and I was thinking we were getting close to proving black=white or should it be warming = cooling...

[Pericles]

Brian,

What do you do for fun in Buderim? Here we are, Jimbo and others including me, offering lessons in mathematics and logic to the insanely innumerate and you are behaving like the class clown.

Sit down boy and behave, or by the gods, I'll have the skin of your back. You can take that look of your face as well boy! I know dumb insolence when I see it! Return to your desk this instant!

Sound familiar? It does to me! I can still hear the priests screaming at me.

Best o' luck,

Perry

[masalai]

Hi Pericles, this must be the consequence of a totally obedient childhood (Lord Fauntleroy had nothing on me) - - Now in my second childhood, I am catching up with all that I missed.... I went to a "state" school and churched under the tutelage of a "fire & brimstone" Scotsman for one hour on Sundays... Really quite a benign environment... We would chase the Catholic girls, knowing that they could "sin" on Saturday night, confess & say several "hail Marys" ready to sin the next weekend... - - either they lied or the priest got some hot stories....

It is so tedious, waiting for houses to sell / market to recover to match my pricing / needs so I can get my dream yacht sorted... Technology has not matured sufficiently for pricing to come down for electric drive system so the auxiliary may have to be normal diesel.... for http://www.boboramdesign.com.au/39-c/ in a motor-sailor version with the forward cockpit and a pair of genoa (no main sail or boom), different underwater shape - somewhat like the C10 in my gallery or the underwater lines aft of this "Streaky Bay" http://www.boboramdesign.com.au/36-s...-bay-for-sale/ ...

[Pericles]

Then, smooth seas and may the wind be always at your back!

Perry

PS

Coming to a port near you, well, Melbourne anyway.

http://www.petegoss.com/

[Fanie]

PS

Coming to a port near you, well, Melbourne anyway.

Eh Pericles, drop by here too man, we're just on the oposite bank