What Do We Think About Climate Change

This paper could make interesting reading:

Global warming and carbon dioxide through sciences

Georgios A. Florides, a, and Paul Christodoulidesa
Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Cyprus University of Technology, P.O. Box 50329, 3603 Limassol, Cyprus

Received 17 March 2008; accepted 15 July 2008. Available online 28 August 2008.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...serid=10&md5=2e90dc45045602747169a50c8694f629

Abstract
Increased atmospheric CO2-concentration is widely being considered as the main driving factor that causes the phenomenon of global warming. This paper attempts to shed more light on the role of atmospheric CO2 in relation to temperature-increase and, more generally, in relation to Earth's life through the geological aeons, based on a review-assessment of existing related studies. It is pointed out that there has been a debate on the accuracy of temperature reconstructions as well as on the exact impact that CO2 has on global warming. Moreover, using three independent sets of data (collected from ice-cores and chemistry) we perform a specific regression analysis which concludes that forecasts about the correlation between CO2-concentration and temperature rely heavily on the choice of data used, and one cannot be positive that indeed such a correlation exists (for chemistry data) or even, if existing (for ice-cores data), whether it leads to a “severe” or a “gentle” global warming. A very recent development on the greenhouse phenomenon is a validated adiabatic model, based on laws of physics, forecasting a maximum temperature-increase of 0.01–0.03 °C for a value doubling the present concentration of atmospheric CO2. Through a further review of related studies and facts from disciplines like biology and geology, where CO2-change is viewed from a different perspective, it is suggested that CO2-change is not necessarily always a negative factor for the environment. In fact it is shown that CO2-increase has stimulated the growth of plants, while the CO2-change history has altered the physiology of plants. Moreover, data from palaeoclimatology show that the CO2-content in the atmosphere is at a minimum in this geological aeon. Finally it is stressed that the understanding of the functioning of Earth's complex climate system (especially for water, solar radiation and so forth) is still poor and, hence, scientific knowledge is not at a level to give definite and precise answers for the causes of global warming.

(Bolded is mine)

 

Free copy of the paper here........................

http://bp.snu.ac.kr/lecture/presentation/허민재.pdf

 

Here we go again:

We know that the energy which strikes the surface of the earth is very nearly equal to the energy which the surface emits. There’s heat from the core, chemical energy released and not much else that we can think of that throw it a tiny bit out of balance, but these effects are very small in comparison to the total wattage from the sun. Therefore the area under the energy-vs-wavelength transformed version of the incoming-outcoming curves is practically equal for all intents and purposes.

Now have a look at the attached graph showing several GHG gasses absorption bands, superimposed with Earth Planck absorption at in-out radiation.

The peak of the outgoing radiation lands almost perfectly on top of a CO2 spike. Incoming light goes right through the CO2, outgoing light get’s absorbed and re-emitted. So yes, CO2 causes some warming (none of the AGW sceptics have never denied that).

The question focuses on whether CO2 in the atmosphere is a dominant, or “only-if” radiative-balance gas, and the answer to the first is rather clearly “no”. The detailed support for this statement takes the argument into radiative behavior, including the analytical solution of the Schuster–Schwarzschild Integral Equation of Transfer that governs radiative exchange.

The central point is that the major absorbing gas in the atmosphere is water, not CO2, and although CO2 is the only other significant atmospheric absorbing gas, it is still only a minor contributor because of its relatively low concentration. The radiative absorption “cross sections” for water and CO2 are so similar that their relative influence depends primarily on their relative concentrations. Indeed, although water actually absorbs more strongly, for many engineering calculations the concentrations of the two gases are added, and the mixture is treated as a single gas.

In the atmosphere, the molar concentration of CO2 is in the range of 350–400 ppm. Water, on the other hand, has a very large variation but, using the “60/60” (60% relative humidity [RH] at 60 °F) value as an average, then from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers standard psychrometric chart, the weight ratio of water to (dry) air is ~0.0065, or roughly 10,500 ppm. Compared with CO2, this puts water, on average, at 25–30 times the (molar) concentration of the CO2, but it can range from a 1:1 ratio to >100:1.

Even closer focus on water is given by solution of the Schuster–Schwarzschild equation applied to the U.S. Standard Atmosphere profiles for the variation of temperature, pressure, and air density with elevation (Essenhigh, 1967). The results show that the average absorption coefficient obtained for the atmosphere closely corresponds to that for the 5.6–7.6-µm water radiation band, when water is in the concentration range 60–80% RH—on target for atmospheric conditions. The absorption coefficient is 1–2 orders of magnitude higher than the coefficient values for the CO2 bands at a concentration of 400 ppm. This would seem to eliminate CO2 and thus provide closure to that argument.

This overall position can be summarized by saying that water accounts, on average, for >95% of the radiative absorption. And, because of the variation in the absorption due to water variation, anything future increases in CO2 might do, water will already have done.


An "old" Arctic Ocean model

One postulated driver, or mechanism, developed some 40 years ago to account for the “million-year” temperature oscillations, is best known as the “Arctic Ocean” model (Calder, N. 1974). According to this model, the temperature variations are driven by an oscillating ice cap in the northern polar regions. The crucial element in the conceptual formulation of this mechanism was the realization that such a massive ice cap could not have developed, and then continued to expand through that development, unless there was a major source of moisture close by to supply, maintain, and extend the cap. The only possible moisture source was then identified as the Arctic Ocean, which, therefore, had to be open—not frozen over—during the development of the ice ages. It then closed again, interrupting the moisture supply by freezing over.

So the model we now have is that if the Arctic Ocean is frozen over, as is the case today, the existing ice cap is not being replenished and must shrink, as it is doing today. As it does so, the Earth can absorb more of the Sun’s radiation and therefore will heat up—global warming—as it is doing today, so long as the Arctic Ocean is closed. When it is warm enough for the ocean to open, which oceanographic (and media) reports say is evidently happening right now, then the ice cap can begin to re-form.

As it expands, the ice increasingly reflects the incoming (shorter-wave) radiation from the sun, so that the atmosphere cools at first. But then, the expanding ice cap reduces the radiative (longer-wave) loss from the Earth, acting as an insulator, so that the Earth below cools more slowly and can keep the ocean open as the ice cap expands. This generates “out-of-sync” oscillations between atmosphere and Earth. The Arctic Ocean “trip” behavior at the temperature extremes, allowing essentially discontinuous change in direction of the temperature, is identified as a bifurcation system with potential for analysis as such. The suggested trip times for the change are interesting: They were originally estimated at about 500 years, then reduced to 50 years and, most recently, down to 5 years (Calder, N. 1974). So, if the ocean is opening right now, we could possibly start to see the temperature reversal under way in about 10 years. (So about today, as this was proposed by Essenhigh in 2001)

Cheers.

P.S.
Searching for supporting info for this post, I have found this on-line book, I want to share:

Chemistry of the Environment
Bailey, Clark, Ferris, Krause, Strong. harcourt/Academic Press. 2002.
http://books.google.es/books?id=GK_...achine; Viking Press: New York, 1974.&f=false

 

Thanks Ed. I'm not allowed give you rep points, which I would have done gladly, sorry.

 

Reading the just above mentioned paper, I would like to take the opportunity to highlight (again!) the real meaning of the four glacial–interglacial cycles CO2-temperature relationship, stubborngly ignored or denied by The Weasel here.

"Fischer et al. (1999), examined contemporaneous records of atmospheric CO2- concentration and temperature derived from Antarctic ice-cores that extended back in time through the last three glacial–interglacial transitions. Their conclusionwas that atmospheric CO2-concentrations show a similar increase for all three terminations, connected to a climate-driven net transfer of carbon from the ocean to the atmosphereThe CO2-concentration rise lags temperature change by 400 to 1000 years during all three glacial–interglacial transitions, hence, indicating that the relationship between temperature and CO2 appears to be the exact reverse of what is assumed to be in the conventional climate model studies. As is readily evident in natural processes temperature rises first, followed by an increase in atmospheric CO2.

A similar analysis was performed by Caillon et al. (2003), for air bubbles in the Vostok core during Termination III (240,000 years before present), measuring the isotopic composition of argon. The sequence of events during Termination III suggests that the CO2- increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 600 to 1000 years and preceded the northern hemisphere deglaciation.

The above-mentioned studies imply, therefore, that an initial temperature trigger (as small changes in the Earth's orbit, for instance) results in a release of CO2 from natural reservoirs, like the ocean, to the atmosphere with a time-lag of several centuries."

(Bolded is mine)

Cited:
Fischer H, Wahlen M, Smith J, Mastroianni D, Deck B. Ice core records of atmospheric CO2 around the last three glacial terminations. Science 1999;283:1712–4. Godlewski E. Abhangigkeit der Starkebildung in den Chlorophyllkornern von dem Kohlensauregehalt. Flora 1873;31:378–83.

Caillon N, Severinghaus JP, Jouzel J, Barnola JM, Kang J, Lipenkov VY. Timing of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature changes across termination III. Sience 2003;299(5613):1728–31.

 

Can you tell me where did I distort the facts, please? I just informed about more than one hundred of of studies confirming the MWP around the world (among them the Grosjean et al. one), showing mean global temperatures in many cases as high as today (if not higher). Period.

And about the "rapid warming" thing, I would like to refer you to my post 7517: It's only a matter of how we choose the period of time. The GWA crowd (leaded by the "Scientist" here) refer to the 1970-2000 period to support the "rapid" concept. Why that precise period? Why not the last 150 years? Why not the last 12000? Why not 1900-1940? Why not 2000-2010? Why not for around 8000 years ago when the rate of rising of temperature for a whole 300 years period was faster than the one for the period 1970-2000?

The question you have to ask yourself, if you want to use your brains, is: Rapid compared with what?

See again: http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/op...bout-climate-change-21390-203.html#post346294

 

Your cost estimate for wind power is too high. Where did you get it? Perhaps your figures are from a quarter century ago, in which case they would be about right, but it does not reflect current costs. Here is a different estimate of wind energy costs (source, American Wind Energy Association, http://www.awea.org/faq/wwt_costs.html#How much does wind energy cost):

"...-of-the-art wind power plants can generate electricity for less than 5 cents/kWh with the Production Tax Credit in many parts of the U.S., a price that is competitive with new coal- or gas-fired power plants."

With respect to the Production Tax Credit (PTC) I have quoted above, it currently runs at about 2 cents per kilowatt hour. This is certainly a significant amount , but not an overwhelming amount of money. The purpose of the PTC is to ostensibly level the playing field for wind energy producers and to provide an incentive for a developing industry.

"Level the playing field" means that it compensates for the fact that the other energy producers also receive subsidies and have received them for many decades, and these subsidies are not small by any stretch of the imagination. I suspect that the PTC may actually overcompensate, but it is hard to know because no one has yet come up with a reliable and widely accepted number as to how big the subsidies for the energy industry are. In fact, there is no widely agreed upon definition of what constitutes a subsidy. For example, would you count a research project on coal liquifaction funded by the government as a subsidy for the coal industry? I would, because it is the coal industry who ultimately stand to receive an economic benefit from the research, but someone else might not count it as a subsidy because the industry does not actually receive a cash payment for the research progam (assuming, for example, that the research project was carried on at a university or national laboratory). Another example is federal assistance for victims of black lung disease. Is that a subsidy (because it takes that economic burden of caring for black lung victims off the coal companies) or is it not a subsidy (because the coal companies do not receive a cash payment from the government)?

This whole question of how big are the energy subsidies is a huge and difficult one. Recent estimates have run from $16.6 billion to $100 billion per year, depending on who made the estimate and what factors were defined as subsidies (source: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/republican/energy-subsidies-0312).

Likewise, the estimates of how the subsidy pie is divided vary a lot, depending on who is doing the counting and what is counted. For example, one source estimates that between 2002 and 2008, fossils collected $72.5 billion and renewables $28.9 billion. Another estimate concluded that fossils are collecting about 33% of the subsidies, with renewables (nominally including ethanol) collecting about 29%. Another study put the numbers as follows: fossils getting ~67 percent, nuclear 12.4 percent, ethanol 7.6 percent, other renewables 7.5 percent, conservation 2.1 percent, misc. 4.2 percent.

The take home message about subsidies is that no one knows the true numbers, but they are huge, and no matter how you count it or who does the counting, fossil fuels are getting the lion's share.

Now, addressing your point about reserve capacity to deal with fluctuations in wind power, we already have a lot of reserve capacity built into the system in the form of existing power plants and power redistribution capabilities built into the grid. In addition, a study prepared by GE for THE NEW YORK STATE ENERGY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY has pointed out that day ahead prediction strategies (both with regard to weather and to electrical demand) can drastically reduce the costs arising from fluctuations in available wind power (source: http://www.nyserda.org/publications/wind_integration_report.pdf).

 

Sea level for the 20th century: more data cherrypicking

The first attached figure shows cumulative sea level change over the last 100 years, which has shown not increasing trend for the whole 20th century:
“Decadal Rates of Sea Level Change During the Twentieth Century” Simon Holgate, Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, Liverpool, UK [http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Holgate/sealevel_change_poster_holgate.pdf]

From there:
“The mean rate for the twentieth century calculated in this way is 1.67±0.04 mm/yr. The first half of the century (1904-1953) had a slightly higher rate (1.91±0.14 mm/yr) in comparison with the second half of the century (1.42±0.14 mm/yr 1954-2003).”

Note: The rising rate has been LOWER for the second half of the century, when most of the antropogenic CO2 was emmited and temperatures suffered the RAPID increase of 1970-2000.

The also "rapid" sea level increase some alarmists point out to support AGW is as well a matter of cherrypicking data, as usual. They choose the period 1993-2009 to that end. See second attached figure.

Once again, why not 2003-2009, instead?

The third attached figure is sea level record from 1900 to 2002 showing the point used by the alarmists to cherrypick the period. [http://www.wamis.org/agm/meetings/rsama08/S304-Shum_Global_Sea_Level_Rise.pdf]

 

It is already well known that water accounts for more of the greenhouse effect than CO2, so you are not really telling us anything new here. What is unclear to me at this point is whether water vapor is adequately included in computational modeling studies on climate change. I would be astonished if it were not. After all, contrary to what some of you think, most scientists are not idiots who are likely to overlook an obviously large effect. However this question of whether water vapor is adequately included in the models is something that should be considered.

By the way, you say that water vapor accounts for 95% of the greenhouse effect. Where did you get that figure? The real figure depends somewhat on how you do the accounting but is probably closer to 70%. If you remove water vapor from the atmosphere without changing any other parameter then the amount of radiation trapping would drop from 100% (for all sources) to 64%. In other words, removing water vapor would only decrease the amount of radiation trapping by 36%. On the other hand, if you were to remove CO2 entirely without touching any other variable you would decrease the amount of radiation trapping by 12%. By this accounting water vapor accounts for about three times as much of the greenhouse effect as CO2. Removing clouds without touching any other parameter would drop the amount of radiation trapping by about 14%, or in other words pretty close to the same effect as removing CO2. (reference: Ramanathan and Coakley, Rev. Geophys and Space Phys., 16 465 (1978)). One thing you need to watch out for is non-linearity, ie. you can't just add up the raw numbers for the separate components and assume that you will get the total.

Clarifying remark added later: My understanding of the data is that the 100% referred to in the previous paragraph refers to 100% of the amount of radiation actually trapped, not necessarily 100% of the amount of radiation emitted from the surface of the earth.

 

Since one cannot pick an infinite time interval, for obvious reasons, one must pick a finite time interval. Since the time interval must be finite, any time interval chosen for an analysis will be susceptible to the accusation of "cherry picking." What cherries would you care to pick, or in other words, what period of time do you think is appropriate for the analysis?

 

Some discussion on ocean warming...........

http://joannenova.com.au/2010/06/the-deep-oceans-drive-the-atmosphere/

 

I'm not going to play the where did you get that number game after I already posted one source Alan. There is no real number on the cost of wind power that is less that quadruple the cost of the most expensive fossil fuel. The 5 cents per kw is pure fantasy. A local property tax incentive is not the same as a massive nationwide taxpayer contribution for expensive electricity that we have no proven need for. As far as reserve capacity goes you misunderstood completely. Coal plants don't operate well as anything other than optimum and doing a cold start takes several hours. The bulk of the reserve capacity is in coal plants. The peak power or quick start plants are almost all ng turbine. The only realistic spinning reserve for quick start is ng turbines, double the cost of coal. Another big issue for wind power is the actual footprint of the turbines and transmission costs. The generating cost is just on part of the price of electricity, the farther the juice has to travel the higher the end cost. Since wind power requires huge tracts of land it obviously is not going to be in metropolitan areas, thus the transmission cost to those areas will be much higher that say a coal plant in Manhattan delivering power to Manhattan. The necessary land for even a small capacity is enormous compared to any other source. The 2 peak power plants here in Wallingford Ct. have a total footprint of less than 5 acres yet produce far more that the Cape Wind project will for a quarter of the over all cost and a fraction of the space. Please don't try to pretend that wind or solar can ever be a primary source when in your heart as a scientist you know that they cannot. The subsidy game has gotten quite entertaining since "greenies" have been trying to convince folks that "alternative" sources are not over double the cost by contrivance and torturous mathematics yet end up with the answer you candidly admitted, you don't know. If there were a proven reason to embark on this Carrollesque adventure than perhaps it would be worth it, but there is not that reason so why bother.


Wind power, regardless of how much more than double the cost of fossil, cannot be a primary source, period.

 

Another source on the cost of wind power in Great Britain.............

http://www.windaction.org/news/24110

 

It all depends on what you mean by "a primary source". If you mean that wind power will not be the source of the majority of our electrical power, then I agree with you.

If you mean that wind power cannot contribute a significant fraction of our electrical power, then your comment has already been proven false in some parts of the world.

My guess is that it would be feasible to provide something on the order of 10-20% of the electrical power in the US, or in other words somewhere between half as much and a similar amount of the power supplied by nuclear power in the US. This level has already been achieved in some parts of the world. (By the way, the nuclear power industry was started via an enormous governmental subsidy, wasn't it?)

As to reserve capacity, which was also mentioned somewhere in your post, some other types of electrical power generation technologies have the opposite problem to wind energy. Nuclear plants for example need to run pretty much flat out, so they are unable to adjust easily to fluctuating demand. You yourself have already made a similar point about coal fired power plants, i.e. they don't take kindly to adjustments in load requirements. I agree that gas turbines are good for adjusting to fluctuating demand. If I am not mistaken I believe that hydroelectric plants are also not too bad in that regard.

What this means is that a power grid needs to have several different kinds of power plants if it is going to operate most efficiently.

 

You claimed that wind power costs 34-42 cents per kw, plus another 16-20 per kw for spinning reserve. I repeat, what was the source of your numbers?