What Do We Think About Climate Change

Eddy,

The silliness of the 'long-lived' CO2 and the missing CO2 problem created by this fiction is one that is never broached by any of these geniuses. But an even more fundamental inconsistency lies beneath this one, which is the conundrum created by asserting that 'all or nearly all' of rising CO2 is anthropogenic and attempting to square that belief with Henry's Law.

A quick review is in order:

The warmers assert that the CO2 rise that has been observed is due all or mostly all to human emissions, mostly from burning fossil fuels. Forgetting for a moment that the isotopic mass-balance test refutes this assertion, we'll assume they are correct and see how the 'not enough fossil fuel on earth' problem arises as a corollary to a belief in this assertion of 'all or nearly all' attribution.

We know that in a closed pressure vessel partially filled with water and CO2, the water will quite readily absorb CO2, which will remain in solution with the water. Not all of the CO2 will be absorbed, as some will still remain in the space above the liquid. The amount that can be absorbed by the water is dependent on temperature.

At typical 'room temperatures' (25C), water will hold 50 times the CO2 which is in the space above the liquid in our closed system. If we add more gaseous CO2 to the space above the water, the water will absorb 49/50ths of the 'new' CO2, with only 1/50th remaining as gaseous CO2 in the space above the water. For this reason, you have to add a LOT of CO2 to change the concentration in the gas portion of our closed system.

The oceans and atmosphere behave exactly the same way. The oceans contain ~49/50ths of the CO2 that is contained within the closed system of our planet with its oceans and atmosphere. If we add additional CO2 to the atmosphere, then 49/50ths of that 'new' CO2 will be absorbed by the oceans. Only 1/50th of that new CO2 will remain behind in the atmosphere as CO2 gas. This is what Henry's Law is all about.

Now that we can all understand this, look what happens when we try to apply these concepts to the assertion that humans have caused all or nearly all of the observed CO2 rise by burning fossil fuel. The amount of observed CO2 rise (in tons) is comparable to the cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions (in tons), which is the primary reason that some people have erroneously concluded that human emissions are causing the rise.

But for that to be true, we would have to add 50 times as much CO2 to the atmosphere as the amount (in tons) which represents the rise, because all the rest, the other 49/50ths, is going to be absorbed by the oceans.

The thing is, we have a pretty good idea how much CO2 we have released in total over the years and it's nowhere near the amount (dictated by Henry's Law) that would need to be added to achieve the CO2 rise we observe. In fact, the amount needed exceeds the amount of CO2 that would be released if we burned all the world's known oil and gas reserves several times over!

Jimbo

 

Knut,
Oceans are essentially not acid but alkaline (pH 7.9 to 8.2). They can be temporarily and locally acid when excessive ammounts of CO2 are dissolved in water due to local circumstances, none of them being high athmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Submarine volcanoes are major contributors to dissolved oceanic CO2., wich does not bubble up to surface because of pressure and cold deep waters. Many mid oceanic ridge lavas are supersaturated in CO2.

Oceans are and have been alkaline for eons because all excesses in dissolved CO2 are, and always have been, eliminated by the forming of carbonate sediments which become carbonate rocks. The oceans are saturated with calcium carbonate to the depth of 4.8 km. Excesses of CO2 in water precipitates as calcium carbonate. Next mechanism to eliminate CO2 from oceans is releasing it to the athmosphere, in processes taking long periods of time and space.

Generally speaking, acidity is not the cause for corals damaging but changes in water temperature. Corals have thrieved at the Triasic, when athmospheric CO2 was 1000+ ppmv.

Perhaps you'll be interested in reading "Carbon dioxide and the oceans" Emeritus Professor Lance Endersbee, 2008 (http://www.atse.org.au/index.php?sectionid=1212)

Cheers,

 

We've covered all of this before, but it's like trying to tell them that they are in the wrong religion and should change. And these are the same guys that claim to want to discuss 'Only the science"

 

Some news on the latest shenanigans of the chicken little crowd from Jo Nova:

"There has been a change in direction by the alarmists, as shown by their new “Synthesis Report.” The independent scientists noticed it during the Wong-Fielding meeting.

The alarmists have abandoned air temperatures as a measure of global temperature, because the air temperature graphs are just too hard to argue with (like the second figure below, from the Skeptics Handbook). Instead they’ve switched to ocean temperatures, which they often disguise as ocean heat content (a huge number like 15×10²² Joules sounds much more scary than the warming it implies of 0.003° C/year).

All three pages of the Synthesis Report that deal with ‘evidence’ are about factors or trends that tell us nothing about whether or not the warming is due to carbon emissions. If God put the galaxy in a toaster, sea levels would rise, ocean heat content would increase, and ice would melt.



Notice how the graph above from the Synthesis Report that came out this month doesn’t include the last six years of data? Carrier pigeons from the remote worldwide network of Argo buoys make it back to base eventually, but the world’s leading team of climate researchers seem to have trouble googling “argo”. Not coincidentally, measurements of ocean heat capacity from 2003-2009 aren’t the numbers Team AGW were looking for. Indeed Craig Loehle has calculated the ocean has lost about 10% of the gain listed above since since 2003. (More info here).

It’s clear on the graph that the planet’s air barely counts (don’t mention the troposphere, or ‘hot spot’? What hot spot?). So now it “doesn’t matter” if air temperatures stay flat like this:



They’re right on one point: ocean heating trumps atmospheric heating for heat content. But how awkward for them that, with the new Argo data, no one can find any warming in the ocean either?

The new litany is that ocean temperatures are rising and rising fast. The evidence of the last five years contradicts them, so don’t look too closely; and don’t look from too far away either, or you won’t see the rise since 1960. But with the US climate bill and Copenhagen coming up, they only need to confound and confuse the issue for six months.

All the public education we did with air temperatures now starts all over again with ocean temperatures."

Jimbo

 

Attribute this genius to Iowahawk -



Virgin sacrifice amendment: sports trivia experts, Trekkies, medieval re-enacters fear worst

WASHINGTON - The President's landmark 'Cap and Trade' bill faces an uncertain fate this week, as congressional backers of the carbon-limiting legislation face mounting opposition from a myriad of interest groups angered by its controversial ritual virgin sacrifice provision.

"We are asking our members to send a strong message to Washington that this bill is wrong for America's energy future, and wrong for the virgin community," said Bret 'Aslan' Crawford, a spokesman for the Action Figure Collectors of America. "Power virgins, activate!"

The 87,492 page bill -- official designated as the American Patriotic Renewal Act of 2009 for Carbon Reduction, Energy Independence, Heathy Climate, Sustainable Job Growth, Adorable Puppies, and Earthly Paradise -- is a keystone in President Obama's first year legislative agenda, and was originally anticipated to get swift congressional passage. Instead, it faced a unexpectedly tough vote in the House last week after coal state Democrats complained it would place an unfair economic burden on their home districts.

"I am as interested in reversing global climate change as anyone, but I fail to see how increasing taxes and random machete attacks on Ohio coal producers alone will solve the problem," said Marcy Kaptur (D-OH). "Come on people, there are plenty of other industries who deserve machete attacks too."

In order to secure the votes of wavering Democrats, House leaders Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman inserted several last minute amendments to the legislation, including provisions for national oxygen rationing, witch burnings, dousings, and phrenology research. But the one that has seemingly stoked a grassroots backlash is the controversial Sexually Inexperienced Citizen Environmental Volunteer Amendment. The wording of the amendment calls for all American virgins over the age of 21 to register with the Selective Sacrifice Board, for possible use as victims in nationally televised vivisections intended to "supplicate the Earth-Spirits."

Reaction, in some quarters, was swift and harsh. Robert 'Shadowfyre' Jardocki of the Wizard and Warlocks Guild called it "an affront to all Virtual America, from Second Life to World of Warcraft," and vowed his group would cast the "most powerful lobbying spell the country has ever seen." Denise 'Lady Gwynnethynn' Kelly of the American Society of Renaissance Faire Royalty decried it as "a unconstitutional attack on our members and their ladies in-waiting." The National Association of Space Fantasists made an impassioned "call to light sabers," while the Brotherhood of Sports Bar Regulars vowed a "million replica jersey march" on Washington to stop its passage. Other groups uniting to oppose the bill include MENSA, the Society for the Identification of Motion Picture Continuity Problems, and the American Association of Anonymous Comment Thread Trolls.

"Congress and the Administration really stirred up a hornet's nest of virgins with this bill," said longtime Washington-watcher Michael Barone. "The response really caught them flat-footed. I don't think they realized just how adept the virgin community is at computers, and how much time they have between ComiCons or SpaceCons or whatever-cons. Instead of calling into sports radio shows, now they're calling the capitol switchboard."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) defended the bill, saying that "it is critical that we do something immediately to show we are serious about solving this climate crisis. Without burnt offerings of taxes and virgins, Gaia will smite us all in her angry burning wrath. So let me just say to the corporate and virgin special interest groups -- don't come crying to us in 400 years, when our temperatures are up almost 1 degree celsius."

Pelosi denied the bill was anti-consumer, pointing out it contains specific infrastructure and job creation funds. It specifies 500,000 unionized positions to construct a planned 300-foot tall National Eco Pyramid and Virgin Sacrifice Altar in Youngstown, Ohio, as well as funds to train over 20,000 youth volunteer earth-priests in live beating heart removal.

House Energy Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) defended the bill's controversial 'virgin exclusions' rider, which specifies sacrificial exemptions for certain religious orders, members of Congress, and Keith Olbermann.

"The rider simply recognizes that virgin members of Congress are often so busy doing the work of the people that we have little opportunity for actual sexual intercourse," said Waxman. "For example, were I not focusing on this crucial legislation, I would totally be porking some sexy, sexy ladies. No, really, I'm serious. I would be. Stop laughing."

Bill co-sponsor Edward Markey (D-MA) said that even if enacted into law, the bill allows a 9 month grace period for current virgins to change their sacrifice eligibility status.

"Easy for him to say," complained Kevin Warren, a 34-year old Green Bay Packer fanatic from Fon du Lac, Wisconsin. "You try getting laid with a foam rubber cheese hat, green face paint and Favre jersey."

Whether Warren and other Virgin-Americans have the clout to scuttle the bill remains to be seen. It is scheduled for Senate deliberations as soon as the House Sergeant-at-Arms can locate a crane powerful enough to move the entire document to the Senate chamber. If passed there, it is expected to be quickly signed into law by President Obama.

Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs, himself a well-known virgin, sought to allay fears about the bill.

"Look, I know this bill has been the subject of wild rumors and speculation, but let's all just sit back and see how it plays out," said Gibbs. "The bottom line is that the virgin community has nothing to worry about. Believe me, if this thing passes, I promise everybody's going to get screwed."

July 01, Iowahawk

 

interesting reading

http://www.news24.com/Content/SciTe.../07-07-2009 09-07/New_El_Nino_threat_emerging

el nino coming??

 

Just jumped in to say that the North-East Passage might open up in a couple of weeks.. Got to hurry with my boat building, the short way to Tahiti is open soon

 

The insulation effect of CO2 (above 100 ppm concentration) is not important to earth's greenhouse effect. The net change in greenhouse budget directly attributable to recent changes in CO2 concentrations are trivial. This has all been covered about a dozen times in this thread. No credible scientific proof to the contrary has yet to be posted, because none exists.

The chart below illustrates that we are already at spectral saturation WRT CO2 concentration, and that additional CO2 just won't matter. All the 'refutations' of this principle are just rank speculation published in blogs, or unsubstantiated by ANY observed data. Among these are the 'stratified equilibrium' idea (Mikey Mann's virgin stratosphere) or the 'occasional alternate band absorption' idea, both posted to this thread in rebuttal to the well-proven science of radiative absorption described by the Beer-Lambert equation, illustrated in the graph below.



So to those that want to believe in either of these fringe science ideas, I put the question:

If these alternate understandings of why additional CO2 still matters are true or even plausible, then why doesn't the IPCC use any of them:?:

Instead, the IPCC uses the Beer-Lambert equation and therefore tacitly admits to the possibility of spectral saturation, since that is one of the consequences of the equation.

Instead, the IPCC conjures up its scary warming scenarios by assuming that small changes in CO2 concentration drive up water vapor concentration, forming a positive feedback between CO2 and water vapor. Observations by well-respected scientists publishing in major journals refute this, and there was only ever ONE paper that the IPCC relied on in support of this alleged strongly positive feedback coupling anyway, and that paper used modeled rather than observed data to support the assertion.

So again the challenge is presented:

Show us why additional CO2 matters.

Jimbo

 

Petr Chylek, Space and Remote Sensing Sciences, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico

Global Warming and the Greenland Ice Sheet, Climatic Change, 63, 201-221, 2004.

"The Greenland surface air temperature trends over the past 50 years do not show persistent warming, in contrast to global average surface air temperatures. The Greenland coastal stations temperature trends over the second half of the past century generally exhibit a cooling tendency with superimposed decadal scale oscillations related to the NAO. At the Greenland ice sheet summit, the temperature record shows a decrease in the summer average temperature at the rate of about 2.2« C/decade, suggesting that the Greenland ice sheet at high elevations does not follow the global warming trend either.

"A significant and rapid temperature increase was observed at all Greenland stations between 1920 and 1930. The average annual temperature rose between 2 and 4 «C in less than ten years. Since the change in anthropogenic production of greenhouses gases at that time was considerably lower than today, this rapid temperature increase suggests a large natural variability of the regional climate.

"High anticorrelations (r = -0.84 to -0.93) between the NAO index and the Greenland temperature records suggest a physical link between these processes. The recent negative shift of the NAO correlates with 1990s warming in Greenland. The NAO may play a crucial role in determining local Greenland climate during the 21st century; resulting in a local climate that may defy the global climate change. This possibility should be considered in models of ice sheet melt and future sea level rise. Forecasting changes in the NAO may be a primary factor in predicting the future Greenland ice sheet mass balance."

Jimbo

 

Now there you go again Jimbo, using unreliable evidence based on real observational data instead of trusting the climate models to do your thinking for you. Shame on you!

 

well i think you elaberation on a truth no one wonts to here is fearless and i for one think that like always we also find out after the fact that what was told to us was wrong even after they sore it to be true it takes guts to stand out on a limb my hats off to you pericles

 

I'd suggest suggestions made with 0 records of the suggested area suck.. To make a suggestion with far superior suckifence I'd suggest the writer should pour a drink, put some ice in it, and suggest that the fridge is getting colder

 

Suckifence!

 

then Ild have to suggest reading back a little

97% is a number found by several poles being quoted in the text
its all in there if you want to actually go back and learn about it, its fully substantiated in the literature presented
the only challenge to the figure ( petty as it was ) is that its not qualified by saying 97% of climate scientists
course we are talking climate science so it would seem kinda obvious in any scientific discussion about consensus to be discussing the specific scientists
at least to folks who make it a habit to have scientific discussions
I suppose to folks who are unfamiliar with science might need some qualifications
thing is
this isnt a scientific conversation or that would have been far to obvious to require qualification we would have also stuck to science and not industry spin by industry pundits published in industry rags by industry representatives
course that was my bad
I thought we would be considering the science and not the spin

Jim
we always went round and round on the life span on Co2 and I notice you still cling to your belief its got some five minutes in the atmosphere before it magically gets recycled

maybe you can give me a detailed explanation of the differences in isotopic signatures delineating the major components of atmospheric Co2 using established science
without including obvious spin sources
would be interesting to read what you come up with

I been keeping up and the thread has gotten pretty boring without anyone challenging the industry reps and pundits to detail there version of the science
or are we going to play the old
refuse to discuss basic science
game
I notice there is a distinct lack of quoted science
whats up with that

speaking of which
Knut
whats up with the hermit crabs in NF
have you been to several areas and found them to be missing in both locals
have you written to the local fish and wildlife and reported it
is there a marine biology research station handy I were you are I can contact
I am most curious to inquire about it

G
how you been
your last concerning coral reef degradation and its caused was interesting
yes temp is a primary factor in coral decline
interesting you mention warming mate
pollution is another huge contributor as is invasive species
Culpera for instance in the Med
but
your assertion that PH has little to do with the decline of corals today is slightly misleading
yes millions of years ago and through an equal number of years to adapt to varying conditions PH changes were tolerable to various coral species ( at that time )
however
thats if you give em a few million years to adapt
if you dont
they die off
just like they are today
when faced with similar variations but in an accelerated time frame



since we are not having as much a conversation about science as opinion so Ill feel free to include an editorial piece that seems to cover the issues you raised well enough

if you want to check it out yourself its at
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20060914-9999-lz1c14acid.html

a portion explains the graphs presented

ok
thats it for me for a while
other than to drop in and check Jims reply
speaking of which how you been Jim
did you ever try any buffalo like I suggested
dam tasty stuff

best
B

 

Again Boston the bully misrepresents the 97% number. 97% agree in both polls mentioned that the climate is changing, not that humans are causing the climate change. In one of the polls he is fond of misrepresenting, 54% agreed that the climate change could be within natural variation. Then Boston again slanders any and all who disagree as industry spin hacks. Why should those who live off the government grant tit be given more credibility than those who actually work for a living? The oil industry will make money regardless of the trend in government regulations, the KoolAid cult of the AGW religion will be out of a job if the public learns the truth of their deceptions and social engineering agenda. There has been plenty of science quoted and referred to in the thread lately, just that none of it agrees with Bostons view point. Boston likes to throw rocks at those who don't have credentials, but yet we don't know what his are, all we have are his own attempts at self promotion, and a bunch of name dropping references. The bottom line is, temperatures are not rising out of line with with historical trends, in fact they have been dropping for almost a decade. There is no proof that atmospheric CO causes warming, only models based on back fillled data and deliberately distorted research. The oceans are not rising at a level that is not consistent with historical observational data, nor is there any evidence that CO2 levels are behind that. There is no hot spot in the troposhere, a sure sign of warming, except one produced by a computer model. The Antartic ice shelf is increasing in weight, despite the collaspe of the pennisular shelf caused by volcanic activity. The polar ice cap is back to its 1989 level. Temperature levels have been higher in the past when human activity could not have possibly caused it. CO2 levels were four times higher and the planet slipped into an ice age. The list of real vs. manufactured evidence that climate change is not out of line with historical variations is endless, while the evidence of AGW is slim at best, and for the most part conjecture arrived at with the use of computer models that couldn't predict a flood in the middle of one. This junk science is promoted by left wing social engineers and their cronies who live like parasites off government grants and university endowment money and by left wing politicians who pander to panic and class warfare. They see AGW as their means to impose a Zero Growth enconomic and social system on the human race.