What Do We Think About Climate Change

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

 

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

 

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
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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.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

anyone else notice a slight flaw in this

again a basic misinterpretation of the data
take another look at the graph and see if you can tell what it says
also check the rise in fossil fuel based co2

 

No, dude
That's not really accurate. Look at the second and third graphs to get a better understanding of what's going on. Keep in mind that the IPCC says that all or nearly all of the rise from their fabled pre-industrial baseline of 280ppm is due to anthropogenic sources. Now when you look at the graph #1 above (the one you re-posted) CO2 starts at the more plausible 400 ppm and goes up to 500 ppm. At the end of the graph, where you interpreted that 50% is anthropogenic, CO2 has risen to 500 ppm. Are you saying that absent anthropogenic CO2, atmospheric CO2 would have fallen down to 250ppm? You can't be saying that, that would be silly. So what we are seeing is a drift in the isotopic balance due to anthropogenic emissions. I alluded to this waaaaay earlier in the thread, back before page 75, how the misinterpretation of isotopic balance data, coupled with an unrealistic number for pre-industrial baseline has led people astray.

The fact that CO2 levels are rising while our emissions are THREE orders of magnitude smaller than present emissions proves that this observed increase in atmospheric CO2 must be natural, but the isotopic balance change is anthropogenic. Or are you now saying that even if we cut our carbon missions to 1/1000 of present, atmospheric CO2 would still rise? You can't be saying that, either. That would be even more silly Here we are back to the 'threshold of significance' discussion. Where's Thomas?

Jimbo

 

Dude,

In the last graph, fossil fuel CO2 is the little part from 30 to about 50. Misinterpretation of the graph, indeed!

Jimbo

 

green part
cumulative
check the key
the purple part is yearly

this graph proves you are wrong

busted

 

Cumulative, meaning what?

 

Proponents of humans as creators of "global warming" are more emotional than factual. At the same time that they state that humans caused a huge change in climate, they claim the Earth is millions of years old with various geological eras. The planet went through tropical and glacial periods without the intervention of humans. Do they really claim all those processes dissapeared when humans entered the Universe?