I have a question about CO2

[Spud1k]

I have a friend who works as a climate modeler. He says he gave up debating deniers years ago when he realised that no matter what he said, he would never change their mind.

I'm with him on that one when it comes to anything more than the fundamentals. It always follows the same pattern; the denier keeps posing ill-informed questions until they force the non-denier to either admit there is some detail about the models that they don't know or there might be (oh noes!) some ambiguity in the results. They then treat that as some sort of victory when the reality is neither side is any more or less convinced by the others' argument.

Complete waste of time. It's the exact same routine as trying to force the NIST report down a 9/11 truther's throat.

 

[TrueSceptic]

And from Graeme Bird, in case any one is curious how he is going.

Don't worry. I'm still there. I've already posted a list of his erudite wit and my file is still growing.

 

[Cuddles]

There really is no middle ground when it comes to reality. Either something is right or it isn't. As can be clearly seen in this thread, the science says one thing, although there is plenty of debate about the exact details and especially the consequences. As has also been seen here, deniers like Mhaze and David Rodale happily lie as much as they can, and don't even care when their lies are clearly demonstrated for everyone to see, they simply move on to the next lie.

I rest my case.

Edit: And thanks Ocelot. Clearly you have more tolerance for stupidity than me.

 

[mhaze]

This is getting stupid. What you are trying to throw the full weight of your ignorance at happens to be a key field of study for micrometeorologists. Look up 'marine sensible heat fluxes' and come back when you've learned something.

No jive? Wait, no answer either. Ducking and dodging yet again.

 

[Spud1k]

No jive? Wait, no answer either. Ducking and dodging yet again.

If you'd posed a specific question it would have helped. Would this make you happy?

ETA: In case there are access problems, here's the abstract (Science 309(5732), 284-287, 2005, bolding mine):

A warming signal has penetrated into the world's oceans over the past 40 years. The signal is complex, with a vertical structure that varies widely by ocean; it cannot be explained by natural internal climate variability or solar and volcanic forcing, but is well simulated by two anthropogenically forced climate models. We conclude that it is of human origin, a conclusion robust to observational sampling and model differences. Changes in advection combine with surface forcing to give the overall warming pattern. The implications of this study suggest that society needs to seriously consider model predictions of future climate change.

 

[mhaze]

If you'd posed a specific question it would have helped. Would this make you happy?

ETA: In case there are access problems, here's the abstract (Science 309(5732), 284-287, 2005, bolding mine):

Not yet another "Believe the modelers" response as lame support of your claim that air warms the oceans? Don't like my simplifying assumptions? Shall we go for a slab ocean?

Wait, I get it...invoking model authority == no thinking.

Originally Posted by mhaze
So air heats the oceans?

The implications of a practical real world effect:

Can warm air significantly increase the heat content of the oceans?

• Time frame: 1 year, 10 years, 100 years.
• Average steady temperature difference due to Warmology hypothesized "greenhouse effect" = Air 0.5C warmer than ocean.
• disregard day vs night, winter vs summer
• let's say...0.1C increase in ocean average temp is "significant".

Under these real world scenarios can you support your claim?

(If you don't like the scenario, change it)

By the way, it's occurred to me that the trillions of dollars in cost for AGW CO2Control is a really good deal, since by IR warming oceans our amortized cost would only be a dollar per year.

No wait, you said conduction and convection worked too, but then you could not place simple estimates on yearly, decadal, centennial timeframes.

Does "air heat oceans" in billions of years instead of trillions?

 

[Spud1k]

Not yet another "Believe the modelers" response as lame support of your claim that air warms the oceans? Don't like my simplifying assumptions? Shall we go for a slab ocean?

Wait, I get it...invoking model authority == no thinking.

And the "don't believe the modellers" stock response is so much more thought out...

I reiterate, the oceans are warming up. (you can get your warming rates off that graph) Research has shown natural processes on their own can't explain it. The influence of GHGs on surface forcing (i.e. the interaction with the atmosphere) can. If you disagree, I suggest you find a paper that says otherwise.

 

[mhaze]

And the "don't believe the modellers" stock response is so much more thought out...

I reiterate, the oceans are warming up. (you can get your warming rates off that graph) Research has shown natural processes on their own can't explain it. The influence of GHGs on surface forcing (i.e. the interaction with the atmosphere) can. If you disagree, I suggest you find a paper that says otherwise.

Neither does your reiterating nor your graph support the assertion that "air warms the ocean", but note I have also NOT labeled it a fantastic claim.

I suggest you find a paper that says otherwise.

A paper in addition to the one already presented in this thread?

Let's define the process under discussion.

1. VR ---> ocean
2. ---> IR emission from ocean
3. ---> tropospheric hotspot absorbs IR
4. ---> IR re emission from tropospheric hotspot
5. ---> 1/2 of re emission goes downward
6. ---> small part makes it to surface, most is taken up by water vapor, clouds, microdroplets etc causing air to heat up.
7. Newly hotter air warms ocean.

Please correct this if I've made any error in item 1-7 in understanding "Enhanced greenhouse theory" and "Radiative imbalance" as they affect our newly minted ....

"Conduction & Conduction Not IR Re Radiation Side Effects of Greenhouse Hotspot Warms the Planet"

....theory under discussion.

A teensy problem with #7.

Hot air rises.

 

[Spud1k]

Neither does your reiterating nor your graph support the assertion that "air warms the ocean", but note I have also NOT labeled it a fantastic claim.

I suggest you find a paper that says otherwise.

A paper in addition to the one already presented in this thread?

The one that didn't attempt to attribute the warming of the oceans to anything?

Let's define the process under discussion.

1. VR ---> ocean
2. ---> IR emission from ocean
3. ---> tropospheric hotspot absorbs IR
4. ---> IR re emission from tropospheric hotspot
5. ---> 1/2 of re emission goes downward
6. ---> small part makes it to surface, most is taken up by water vapor, clouds, microdroplets etc causing air to heat up.
7. Newly hotter air warms ocean.

Please correct this if I've made any error in item 1-7 in understanding "Enhanced greenhouse theory" and "Radiative imbalance" as they affect our newly minted ....

I think we're the only ones left on this thread by now, but I'm in a good mood at the moment, so here goes...

1: Correct
2: Partly correct, but this is by no means the only way heat is transferred from the ocean to the atmosphere. Latent and sensible heat transfers are two biggies.
3: I sense a strawman trap here. If you mean GHGs absorb upwelling IR, then yes.
4 and 5: Dead wrong (as I've already tried to explain). GHGs absorbing upwelling radiation mainly warm the atmosphere locally, not reflect the energy back down.
6: Of what reflected IR there is (desert dust and low-level clouds are much more efficient reflectors of IR compared to CO2), most it will be absorbed by the surface of the ocean and converted to heat. The effects you describe are minor in the grand scheme of things.
7: Right... let's be clear about what the 'newly hotter air' is before I answer that one. An atmosphere with more GHGs in it will absorb more upwelling IR. It'll get warmer than it would have done without the enhanced GHGs, which in due course will either heat the ocean or become less efficient at cooling it (which are effectively the same thing, thermodynamically speaking). Note that the upwelling IR doesn't necessarily have to have originated from the ocean; the atmosphere is a good transporter of heat, so it can take warmth from over the land and transport it round the planet to wherever.

"Conduction & Conduction Not IR Re Radiation Side Effects of Greenhouse Hotspot Warms the Planet"

....theory under discussion.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Conduction, convection (which is what I think you meant to say) and IR radiation are all individual mechanisms that along with a gazillion others, make up the earth system. Our planet is complicated; get used to it.

A teensy problem with #7.

Hot air rises.

OK, honest question: Do you seriously think we hadn't thought of that?

Yes of course hot air rises. But it's not like it keeps rising until it gets to outer space or something. In most cases, air in the troposphere (the lowest layer of the atmosphere) rarely gets above the tropopause, which is because the air in the stratosphere is so much warmer thanks to the ozone layer.

So where does the heat in the air go? There are plenty of meteorological effects (way more than I'm prepared to list here) that can cause air to go up, down and wherever, that will eventually cause it to come into contact with surface again. And even before it does that, warm air aloft can prevent slightly cooler air below from rising upwards and therefore inhibiting convection, which means less cooling takes place at the surface. And this is of course without considering mixing and the fact that precipitation is also a good way of transferring heat from the atmosphere to the surface.

Bottom line is that as far as atmospheric heat is concerned, what goes up must come down.

 

[Spud1k]

"Conduction & Conduction Not IR Re Radiation Side Effects of Greenhouse Hotspot Warms the Planet"

I have to apologise. Upon a reread of your post, think I worked out what you meant by 'Re Radiation'. In which case, it's kinda sorta right plus the word convection and minus the 'hotspot' bit (the hotspots are a predicted side effect, not a key part of the process).

But FYI, this is not 'newly minted'. They founded this principle back in the sixties (IIRC). It's not our fault if the likes of you and DR don't understand it.

 

[jimbob]

I have a question about CO2. Numbers in Global Warming are thrown about all over the place. P&T's show ******** says that humans contribute only 3% of CO2 of the total a year. I had heard another statement that it was around 14% (I can not cite this ... it is a number that stuck with me, I am sorry).

I know that it is difficult to say exactly what percent due to all the factors - do you count cows that humans are holding for food sources as human contribution or natural, etc - but what percent of the green house gasses do humans contribute and how was that number figured out?

Thank you.

My quick sums (reasoning below) say that at the moment each year humans emit about 1% of the total atmospheric CO2 into the atmosphere. This is pretty comparable with rate of rise in CO2

ETA: Given the uncertainties in my simplistic calculation, that is a pretty good correlation.



Here is my analysis (on a different forum, hidden for brevity)

Which of the following do you think is non-factual:

1. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.
2. Carbon dioxide is increasing.
3. The new carbon dioxide is from artificial* sources.

Well, I'd like to understand why academic climatologists are so confident about 3. We plainly don't know the mechanisms so thoroughly that we can conclude it can't be anything else.

Does it matter where the CO2 is comming from, we are releasing several PPM per decade of CO2 so reducing that will reduce the rate iof increase of CO2, whatever the cause is.

EDIT:

According to wiki: the total emissions are 27,245,758 thousand metric tonnes per year, a quick sum is that this is about 27-Gigatonnes of CO2 per year.

The atmosphere is about 5-Petatonnes so each year the emissions are about 27e9/5e15 tonnes, or about 5.6 ppm per year. In 2006 the CO2 levels were 381ppm according to the BBC.

The annual emissions are about 1% of the total level, which I'd regard as significant.

Furthermore, this increase happens to start around the industrial revolution, and it looks as though we are having th ehighest levels of atmospheric CO2 for over 400,000 years

Some later discussion (again hidden for brevity)

BEcause I thought that it also seemed to start about 1850 ( and it was hard to see on the graph originally posted)



Remember this is a log plot, so straight lines are constant ratio changes (horizontal is multiplying by 1 every decade and thus no change)

It does look as if 1850 is when it grows beyond the natural variation...

Original data from here:

You've got to watch your baseline though; using the graph's start time is artificial. If you say there's a permanent step change at 1600, or the period 1050-1600 is unusually high, then 1750 is a good takeff point and coincides with human emissions.

OK, I now found lake Vostok CO2 data (from here) and added that in, again on a log plot with the same scale. This might be dodgy, but they do tend to be similar at around -1k for the law dome data, and -2k for the vostok data. If this is the case,then this is outside the previous 400,000 years variation.





I am not an academic, like you I work as an engineer, and I tend to think like an engineer. I would like to have 95% confidence that a technical decision will be the right one before acting, but if the pros and cons are equal sometimes it is simply best to go with the course of action that is most probably correct.

If you then factor inrisks you might consider mitigation against unlikely events. I certainly consider what I can do to to mitigate the possible effects of something that has a 30% chance of occuring. (And far lower if the hazard is high enough)

 

[lomiller]

[*] ---> tropospheric hotspot absorbs IR

As you have been informed of repeatedly, the “tropospheric hotspot” (tropical tropospheric hotspot is a better description) has nothing to do with absorbed IR, it’s created by changes in the moist adiabatic lapse rate. (More evaporation means more heat carried upwards in the form of water vapor.) This occurs no matter what the cause of the warming.

[*] ---> 1/2 of re emission goes downward

CO2 that absorber an IR photon can lose that energy either by emitting a photon of the same wavelength in a random direction of by colliding with another atom. It’s only when you get to very high altitudes that re-mission of a photon becomes the dominate mode, at lower altitude (higher pressure) collision dominates.

 

[mhaze]

My quick sums (reasoning below) say that at the moment each year humans emit about 1% of the total atmospheric CO2 into the atmosphere. This is pretty comparable with rate of rise in CO2

ETA: Given the uncertainties in my simplistic calculation, that is a pretty good correlation.

No, rate of rise in CO2 is about half of estimated emissions.

 

[jimbob]

And did you see my caveats, and rough estimates?

I did a fag-packet calculation and quickly got up to at least 50% of the increase. I am not a climatologist, but this makes me think thay know what they are talking about for CO2.

It is far from the 3% quoted in the OP.

 

[Spud1k]

I did a fag-packet calculation...

Boy have I received some weird looks using that expression around Americans....

 

[jimbob]

It was deliberate...

 

[mhaze]

And did you see my caveats, and rough estimates? I did a fag-packet calculation and quickly got up to at least 50% of the increase. I am not a climatologist, but this makes me think thay know what they are talking about for CO2. It is far from the 3% quoted in the OP.

Ok, here is Mauna Loa CO2 data, looks like 381 ppm (2005) 305 ppm (1957) some 48 years, 76 ppm increase or about 1.5 ppm per year. Considering net increase 100% from man, we then have...

1.5 ppm / 381 ppm = 0.4% per year increase in total CO2 fraction of atmosphere

One must take issue with statements that each year humans emit about 1% or 3% or 5.6% of the CO2 in the atmosphere.

You seem to imply

2005 - 381
2006 - 385
2007 - 389
etc

actually it is close to

2005 - 381
2006 - 382.5
2007 - 384
2008 - 385.5
etc

From the OP, yes, the correct numbers are quite different than the 3% -

Numbers in Global Warming are thrown about all over the place. P&T's show ******** says that humans contribute only 3% of CO2 of the total a year. I had heard another statement that it was around 14% (I can not cite this ... it is a number that stuck with me, I am sorry).

 

[jimbob]

Here is what I said:

According to wiki: the total emissions are 27,245,758 thousand metric tonnes per year, a quick sum is that this is about 27-Gigatonnes of CO2 per year.

The atmosphere is about 5-Petatonnes so each year the emissions are about 27e9/5e15 tonnes, or about 5.6 ppm per year. In 2006 the CO2 levels were 381ppm according to the BBC.

The annual emissions are about 1% of the total level, which I'd regard as significant.

(this is 5.6 ppm per year by mass).

As you well know, there are both postive feedback loops, and negative feedback loops. Positive feedback loops could include increased loss of peat bogs, negative feedback loops could include increased uptake of CO₂ by plants.

27Gigatonnes/5Petatonnes is a signifcant annual increase.

I was basing it on the BBC story I linked to (here)

BBC News has learned the latest data shows CO2 levels now stand at 381 parts per million (ppm) - 100ppm above the pre-industrial average.

The research indicates that 2005 saw one of the largest increases on record - a rise of 2.6ppm.

I wanted to see whether the emissions were significant, and I'd say that they were.


I don't pretend that this is an advanced analysis, but it is the sort of analysis that can be performed by laypeople.

I would consider this as an exercise in critical thinking, and also in realising the difference between a blind guess, a "back of the envelope" (is that better spud1K?) calculation and proper science.

I have neither the time, nor resources to try second-guessing the entire scientific effort of climatologists. I can however do some quick checking to see if their headline statements, based on their detailed analysesm, tacks up with my simplistic estimates.

Science is complex, as a (numerate) layperson, in my free time, I am not going to be able to perform more than a fraction of the analyses that a single PhD student in this subject would.

That doesn't mean that I have to take what I am told on trust, but that if I think I can perform anything other than very basic sanity checking, I am deluding myself.

 

[Spud1k]

is that better spud1K?

Please don't think I was criticisng you; I had to train myself to stop using that expression. If anything, I think you deserve a compliment for sticking to your guns, so don't let me of anyone stop you.

 

[mhaze]

Here is what I said:

(this is 5.6 ppm per year by mass).

As you well know, there are both postive feedback loops, and negative feedback loops. Positive feedback loops could include increased loss of peat bogs, negative feedback loops could include increased uptake of CO₂ by plants.

27Gigatonnes/5Petatonnes is a signifcant annual increase.

I was basing it on the BBC story I linked to (here)



I wanted to see whether the emissions were significant, and I'd say that they were.


I don't pretend that this is an advanced analysis, but it is the sort of analysis that can be performed by laypeople.

I would consider this as an exercise in critical thinking, and also in realising the difference between a blind guess, a "back of the envelope" (is that better spud1K?) calculation and proper science.

I have neither the time, nor resources to try second-guessing the entire scientific effort of climatologists. I can however do some quick checking to see if their headline statements, based on their detailed analysesm, tacks up with my simplistic estimates.

Science is complex, as a (numerate) layperson, in my free time, I am not going to be able to perform more than a fraction of the analyses that a single PhD student in this subject would.

That doesn't mean that I have to take what I am told on trust, but that if I think I can perform anything other than very basic sanity checking, I am deluding myself.

As you can see from the actual data, there is no change in trend and no visual difference between 2005 and other years. There was some kind of a hyped up story from the BBC on this topic in 2005, yes. Wait....in 2008 the trendline is dropping precipitously....there may be a dramaticly lower CO2 amount for 2008!

Never mind, that doesn't make a sensational headline...