Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Mikemcc]

Math fail. You didn’t convert your % to a decimal. Your reference for % CO2 is in the atmosphere is also WELL out of date. They say 300ppm, but the current number is a little over 390ppm

The mass of CO2 in the Earths atmosphere is ~3000 GT or 3X10^15 Kg. Tt’s fraction of the atmosphere is increasing at ~2-3 ppm each year due to human activity. That represents ~46% of fossil CO2 emission, the rest ends up in the oceans

This bares up with Professor Knorr's airborne fraction, that 43% of emissions remain in the atmosphere, the rest is absobed by the biosphere and the oceans. It has stayed relatively constant, indicating that the sinks aren't saturated... yet. It has been increasing at a rate of 0.7 +/-1.4% per decade.

 

[bobwtfomg]

Anybody want to check the work? Maybe I dropped couple powers of ten .

Maybe you knew you'd dropped a couple of powers of ten

 

[lomiller]

Thanks for the per cent correction. Where'd you get the CO2 by weight figure?

The same thing WD did, I scaled up your weight to current ppm and recalculated the result. I already knew mass of CO2 in the atmosphere was a few thousand Gt, so I could tell the answer was close but I cross checked with Wikipedia anyway.

 

[lomiller]

This bares up with Professor Knorr's airborne fraction, that 43% of emissions remain in the atmosphere, the rest is absobed by the biosphere and the oceans. It has stayed relatively constant, indicating that the sinks aren't saturated... yet. It has been increasing at a rate of 0.7 +/-1.4% per decade.

Yup.

I was getting the airborne fraction from memory, so your 43% figure is likely the more accurate number.

 

[CapelDodger]

Explain what? Ben's model mentioned inputs and insulation, as though all entries in the account are positive.

From BenBurch's "model" (it was actually an explanation)

"And then re-emits the IR in a random direction. Half will go up towards space, and half down towards the planet.

Since it it opaque to IR, it takes quite some time for energy to escape the system in this way"

What part of that do you not understand as negative? When the amount of energy escaping into space equals that coming in we have equilibrium, which is the limit. Credits and debits balance.

That implies that a candle across the room will heat an insulation-wrapped thermometer until the glass and mercury vaporize.

Since you base that on a misreading (or perhaps on not reading far enough) there's no need to address it. BenBurch explained the greenhouse effect simply and clearly. And you can't grasp it. It's surely time to stop trying and get onto things you maybe can grasp. Nothing scientific, it's simply not your thing.

Apparently, all Alec Cowan knows is post-moodern gibberish and ad hominem. Note that there was no ad hominem in my response to Ben.

You still haven't managed to grasp what ad hominem is; by now I think it's safe to assume you never will.

 

[CapelDodger]

Corals get around (as their reproductive strategy would suggest). Here.

I'm well aware of how most marine life propagates and my point still stands. If you can actually think there are Red Sea corals in the Pacific at any stage of life (let alone in the Caribbean) then we will never have a meeting of minds, but perhaps that's not what you mean? It's hard to tell.

Transplanting coral communities from one body of water to another is not going to work. Face the fact and move on, perhaps to why corals don't matter anyway. I can't remember ever needing one myself.

 

[CapelDodger]

We are a long way from a runaway greenhouse, and even if we burn all the fossil fuel we will not get that.

But if we turn all the limestone into cement as well we might be in with a shout .

Just so nobody thinks that is what I am suggesting will happen.

Heaven forbid.

 

[CapelDodger]

IOW It’s not that greenhouse gasses rely on the Earth not being a black body, rather, the Earth is not a black body because it has greenhouse gasses in its atmosphere. In the bigger scheme it’s still pretty close to a black body when compared to Venus.

My understanding is that Earth would be a black body if all our outgoing radiation came directly from the solid and liquid surface (ignoring reflected light, of course, which balances itself. Pre-emptive .), which would be the case with no greenhouse gasses. As it is some of the outgoings are from gasses, which are more constrained as to the wavelengths they can shed energy at. Hence the grey body.

Is that right, within reasonable error-bars? That's a general question; anyone can feel free to be brutally honest in their responses, I'm thick-skinned and would far rather be bruised and right in future than comfortable and wrong for ever.

 

[CapelDodger]

That's - how shall I put it - a rather simple model. Clouds are very dynamic, there are different types of clouds, they have different effects in different regions, they trap heat at low latitude, they increase albedo at high altitude, there's a whole lot more going on with clouds than your simple model allows for.

Heck, yeah.

One thing that's not going on with clouds over the last thirty years is a negative feedback stopping the warming we've seen. And it's been for at least thirty years that people have been speculating that they would do so, some even concocting elaborate hypotheses as to how it might happen. Lindzen's Iris has got to be twenty years old and excuses for the no-show have long run out.

None of these things that were supposed to stop what's happened from happening have been dropped from the denier handbook. Dyson wants airborne dust to be precisely factored in to climate models as if it's still 1988 while the big bad analogue model is demonstrating that it doesn't freakin' matter! It was arguably about models once, but it isn't any more.

Back in my younger days there was a popular saying : "We are the people our parents warned us against". This is the future that scientists warned people against.

 

[CapelDodger]

True, I should have said the greenhouse effect is a consequence of greenhouse gases allowing differential transmission of radiation depending on wavelength.

I wish I could have put it so succintly.

 

[CapelDodger]

I mentioned one, biological sequestration. I didn't forget others. I just provide a starting point with some solid numbers (if you trust the sources and my calculations). Bilolgical sequestration would have a damping effect on CO2 levels. Warming of ocean water has several effects in different directions (outgassing of dissolved CO2, water vapor, clouds, biomass increase).

None of them are working to stop the tangible change, are they?

There's something strange in the Vostok ice core record. It looks like atmospheric CO2 reaches a peak late in the interglacial, but not at the end.

There's something strange in the Arctic right now, but fair enough, let's consider how things were at Vostok late in a previous interglacial but not at the end.

The forcing for glaciations is orbital variations, the Milankovich Cycles. CO₂ is a feedback in that process. That means that it has a certain lag behind the forcing, since no response is instantaneous. So it can be expected to peak late but then decline before the dramatic transition to a glaciation forced by those inexorable orbital variations.

 

[Reality Check]

What do you think will happen to Foraminifera due to global warning

...
Anybody want to check the work?

Your work is invalid because you have not included every effect that is included in climate models.
Your work is even more invalid because it has little to do with the question !

Originally Posted by Reality Check
a) I can pick any number - Wow !

Ok: A doubling of CO2 every decade!
ETA: More serously use the A1 scenerio which roughly 400 ppm of CO2 tday to 650 ppm of C02 in 2100. Your calculations based on this will be interesting .
​

The question is
What do you think will happen to Foraminifera when CO2 changes over decades?
You asked for the rate of CO2 increase. I thus gave you a number from IPCC AR4. You then wasted your time with the above calculation.

Read the post:
Malcolm Kirkpatrick: Species of Foraminifera could not adapt to CO2 changes that took millions thousands of years (Global temperatures rose by about 6 °C (11 °F) over a period of approximately 20,000 years - strange that you did not catch that mistake, Malcolm Kirkpatrick!) to happen.

FYI: CO2 is really a stand-in for temperature since we do not (AFAIK) have any measurements of CO2 for the PETM or PT events. Today we have a global temperature that is predicted to rise to 6 °C over a couple of centuries or even decades:
Best estimate for a "high scenario"[13] is 4.0 °C with a likely range of 2.4 to 6.4 °C.

Better language for the question is then:
Malcolm Kirkpatrick: Species of Foraminifera could not adapt to temperature changes that took thousands of years.
What do you think will happen to Foraminifera when similar temperature changes take place over a couple of centuries or even decades?
Revised question from 10th September 2012
17 days and counting.

 

[CapelDodger]

It has stayed relatively constant, indicating that the sinks aren't saturated... yet.

"The neighbours haven't called the cops yet, let's turn it up a notch "

It's not so much about saturation as about getting somebody increasingly reluctant to put up with much more of it.

 

[CapelDodger]

Anybody want to check the work? Maybe I dropped couple powers of ten or multiplied when I should have divided.

You'd still be one ahead of Spencer and Christy, who actually confused addition and subtraction in their UAH temperature calculation (as was discovered when they very reluctantly handed over some of their code) and it had a dramatic effect on their results. Not orders of magnitude, obviously, but dramatic all the same. Enough to bring them in line with everybody else instead of much cooler.

Nobody knows how the UAH record is calculated these days because it's constantly being re-tuned to accomodate incoming real-world data and still come up with a fantasy low-sensitivity result. Their fantasy has long passed the far-fetched threshold but they stick with their beliefs and their sense of mission.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Another source for high-school and first year college practise of critical thinking related to math, statistics and physics. Tisdale's take on Trenberth and Fasulo paper (2012):



Just another case of "half a trunk and a leg is not an elephant" but it doesn't cease to amaze me how much this is resorted to, so it's important to practice it in class to develop "antibodies".

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

that's mass, not weight.

It's weight. You look like a reflexive critic.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I'm well aware of how most marine life propagates and my point still stands. If you can actually think there are Red Sea corals in the Pacific at any stage of life (let alone in the Caribbean) then we will never have a meeting of minds, but perhaps that's not what you mean? It's hard to tell.

Transplanting coral communities from one body of water to another is not going to work. Face the fact and move on, perhaps to why corals don't matter anyway. I can't remember ever needing one myself.

The link indicates that table coral (Acropora) survives in Pacific waters around Midway and in the Red Sea.

 

[jimbob]

It's weight. You look like a reflexive critic.

Nope, engineering toolbox is incorrect in this.

If part of the air was accelerating, say in "wind" then its weight will alterETA:is subject to change. Its mass would not.

In orbit, people are weightless, they are not massless.

The kilogram is a unit of mass, not weight; the Newton is a unit of weight.

 

[aleCcowaN]

It's weight. You look like a reflexive critic.

Don't insist. It's mass.

You look like an irreflexive poster.

 

[Mikemcc]

The link indicates that table coral (Acropora) survives in Pacific waters around Midway and in the Red Sea.

And you are still ignoring the science.

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1674.html

Despite the inclusion of optimistic scenarios concerning rates of evolutionary adaptation, our results confirm that coral reef ecosystems face considerable challenges under even an ambitious mitigation scenario that constrains global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial temperatures. Our projections suggest that most coral reefs will experience extensive degradation over the next few decades given the present behaviour of corals to thermal stress10, 37. To protect at least 50% of the coral reef cells, global mean temperature change would have to be limited to 1.2 °C (1.1–1.4 °C), especially given the lack of evidence that corals can evolve significantly on decadal timescales and under continually escalating thermal stress. There is little doubt from our analysis that coral reefs will no longer be prominent within coastal ecosystems if global average temperatures exceed 2 °C above the pre-industrial period.