We show that assemblage-averaged maximum body weight is expected to shrink by 14–24% globally from 2000 to 2050 under a high-emission scenario. About half of this shrinkage is due to change in distribution and abundance, the remainder to changes in physiology. The tropical and intermediate latitudinal areas will be heavily impacted, with an average reduction of more than 20%.
The units cancel. All you are left with is the ratio of two numbers. Latitude and altitude are common to both numerator and denominator and cancel out.
Rude, doncha think, to call this guy...ignorant?
That will get you an E, should you decide to follow community college studies on physics. Problems of that sort are created to catch bad students like you!
And you think that you make disappear your blunder by cancelling units? More of that "it has four legs, it barks, it shakes the tail and it hangs its tongue out when it's hot hence it is a parrot" of yours? C'mon Malcolm, even the housewives for whom you're pulling your act here are aware you only tried by this to distract attention from you not having the faintest idea about how rapidly CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is escalating!
That's why you're the perfect opponent here: you make a blunder and you make a fuss just to hide the blunder; you make another blunder ...
Which has been leading to competition between species that before wouldn't even meet. Of course the polar species, temperature stressed and running out of place to move to, will be going the way of the dodo.
That will get you an E, should you decide to follow community college studies on physics. Problems of that sort are created to catch bad students like you!
And you think that you make disappear your blunder by cancelling units?
I don't see any data on tree rings or O18 in the above, just more literary criticism. Go review a post-modern essay somewhere. You'd be good at that. The link gave atmospheric CO2 by weight. Fact.
Most of the atmosphere is within a few miles of the surface, so adjusting the weight calculation for altitude or latitude makes a difference smaller than the round-off error. Fact.
Other people doing these back-of-the-envelope calculations also ignore the distinction between weight and mass. In computing the ratio of total CO2 mass to emission CO2 mass per year or total CO2 weight to CO2 emissions by weight per year, yes, units cancel and you are left with a real number and units of years.
That's why you're the perfect opponent here: you make a blunder and you make a fuss just to hide the blunder; you make another blunder ...[/QUOTE]
And you also ignore than 1kg of CO2 weights 995 grams at 16km height on the equator, and 1003 grams sea level at the pole. It's not a "neeteepickie-pickie" (<---with strong Spanish accent) numeric thing, but your lack of acknowledgement of two different concepts, one of them suitable for the issue discussed and the other one not.
The units cancel. All you are left with is the ratio of two numbers. Latitude and altitude are common to both numerator and denominator and cancel out.
Rude, doncha think, to call this guy...
ignorant? Considering that we use units rounded to two significant digits, like5.3 x 10^18, don't you see that the difference between weight at r=4000 mi and r=4005mi or between 00 and 900N don't matter?
Go write a post-modern literary review somewhere. You'd be good at that.
I have to thank you for stating so clearly your utter ignorance on everything that matters to the AGW topic (logic, concepts, information and ways to deal with that) in a so eloquent and repetitive fashion. You are wrong about the same thing not only once but three or ten times. You are the dreamed opponent in this thread, one that shows a buffo way to defend the wrong side of it. To that effect you are extremely useful here and hereby you're welcome to go on with your posts.
Back to that particular post you quoted me on :
I also don't pretend to be an expert, but I do have an accurate assessment of my abilities, and can sanity check results that experts supply - if there is a vast difference, the error is still likely to be mine, but there wasn't in this case.
In another post I explained how I got the figure for mass of the atmosphere:
I'd already done a simplistic version of the maths earlier on in the thread:
Spoiler added for brevity
ETA: And my figures are in surprising agreement with Lolmiller's 46% getting into the atmosphere as this 5.6ppm per year is emissions, based on a really rough calculation where I did just use simple figures (I think I multiplied the surface area of the Earth by the mass of 32' (10m) of water over this area - to get the mass of the atmosphere because I could remember those figures, so didn't need to google.)
a. Mass of atmosphere: 5.3 x 10 ^18 kg. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/LouiseLiu.shtml
b. Total atmospheric CO2, by weight (percent): 0.046 % http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-composition-d_212.html
c. CO2 emissions, 2011. 34 x 10^12 kg.yr^-1 http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/2012/trends-in-global-co2-emissions-2012-report
Online calculator: http://web2.0calc.com/
Mass of atmospheric CO2= axb= (5.3 x 10 ^18 kg)x(4.6x10^-2)=2.438x10^17 kg.
Yearly CO2 emissions as a fraction of total atmospheric CO2 mass = (3.4x10^13 kg. yr^-1) /(2.438x10^17 kg.)=1.394538 x10^-4 yr^-1 or ~ 1.4x10^-4yr^-1
Number of years to double atmospheric CO2 = (1/1.4)x10^4yr.=0.7142857x10^4.. or about 7000 years.
That's without any natural biological sequestration.
Anybody want to check the work? Maybe I dropped couple powers of ten or multiplied when I should have divided.
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
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.
I am a semiconductor engineer, and some time ago, I decided to investigate this, and see whether the simple statistical tools I would use to assess how a process is running could be applied to the data from weather. These tools are used in what is called "Statistical Process Control", and a very good introduction can be found on this NIST website:
I have had a similar discussion on the badscience.net website about this, and on this website too:
My analysis and reasoning that led me to conclude that the climate in the region with the longest history of measurements is warmer than in any other period for which measurements exist (which is back to 1690).
You say deniers, I say alarmist. I see no data that shows that we change the climate any more so than it changed before people were around. We haven't made an ice age, or warmed to that extent.
I like the environment just as much as then next guy and conserve as I can.
People who speak of imminent doom are religious zealots wherever you find them. Period.
There is evidence that the climate is changing, and it is warming at an increasing rate. Your claims about global data isn't really valid for the longest running dataset: the Central England temperature series, that is based on measurements since 1690. It shows unequivocally that England is warmer now than it has been in the last three hundred years. It also says that it is getting still warmer.
I started looking at this data because I wanted to make my own mind up, and to see if the data was clear to me. I have used statistical process control techniques in my work, so I thought it would be interesting to analyse this data as if it were a device parameter running on a particular process. The signal is very strong, especially compared to the sort of data that I am used to in work.
Why does it matter if we are changing the climate or of it is natural variation?
Is the climate changing? The cusum says that England is getting warmer. It also says that the rate of change is increasing. The global data also supports this.
Is this bad? Well probably for crops, especially if repeated globally.
Is there a model that explains this? (well yes) but isn't this irrelevant?
Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? Well it absorbs IR, and atmospheric physicists say it is. They say that increasing CO2 woulld make the world warmer. Do we care if the warming is natural or artificial, if we can reduce it (or reduce our addition to it) and we accept that its effects would be bad?
If you want to know how to interpret the cusum, it is hidden in the spoiler below:
Cusums are used in certain types of statistical process control systems, and are very good at spotting when (noisy) processes are drifting from their target values. You decide on the target value (sometimes, but not always, the long term average) and then subtract this from each data point. This gives you the difference (or "Delta") above or below the target that each data point is. The cusum is the sum of all the deltas including the current data point. This is an integration and so removes noise from the signal.
To compare the process to the target, you then look at the gradients: horizontal will mean that it is running at target, upwards means above target, and downwards below target. An increase in steepness means that the process is moving further away from target, i.e. the process is still changing:
If the slope is such that there is an increase of 100 units in 100 readings, then the process is running at about 1 unit higher than the target, if it is 200 units lower in 100 readings then it is running at 2 units beow target etc.
Below I have annotated my cusum to show the different situations, and the increases in temperature:
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.
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)
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.
Ah well only possibly. If (for example) change in agriculture is changing vegetation types and so albido and water vapour levels, and CO2 is responding to the temperature rise, then we'll be spending money on the wrong thing and still have a disaster on our hands.
But martin, my fag-packet calculations confirm what I am told. I too can see lots of other potentially confounding factors, which are pretty complex and which is why there are departments of artmpospheric and climatological science.
In several situations the argument *seems* to me to be:
1) The simple model, based rough estimats and simple maths broadly agrees with the IPCC.
2) Ah, but that is only a simple model, what about more complex features which *might* change the story.
To which the answer is that they might indeed, which is why there are scientific papers discussing the features of the models or the data.
If the simplistic treatment disagreed with the acknowledged experts, then I might profitably try looking to see if I could understand why, and be a little more sceptical of their claims.
My simplistic analyses do broadly agree with the acknowledged experts, whilst the possible confounding factors are precisely the sort of confounding factors that I have seen acknowledged in discussing these models. This leads me to the conclusion that the experts aren't missing a trick, and they are probably correct, because they are already attempting to assess the magnitude and direction of these effects.
Remember I do not consider myself to have the ability to second guess the atmospheric physics departments of multiple universities (I have a day job already, and can only spend a few hours on this).
Because of this I can only do simple analyses, which I did, because I had heard there was a controversy.
When I did these simple sanity checks, they supported the IPCC statements and not the people who claimed that there was no problem.
This is not an argument from authority: Any moderately numerate person should be able to follow my reasoning, and I would like to know how this could come up with any other answer.
Of course it is possible to say that there might be confounding factors in such a complex system, but this is why you need proper models. We would have to be very lucky for all the confounding factors to be acting agaist there being anthropogenic global warming
And I am not acctually that interested if global warming is anthropogenic or natural.
CO2 emissions would add to the warming effect, and global warming will have many bad consequences, just due to changes in weather patterns and movement of fertile zones (especially across country boundries with the additional dnagers of war).
In such a situation, acting to militate against these effects is sound practice whether global warming is natural of artificial.
ETA: And my figures are in surprising agreement with Lolmiller's 46% getting into the atmosphere as this 5.6ppm per year is emissions, based on a really rough calculation where I did just use simple figures (I think I multiplied the surface area of the Earth by the mass of 32' (10m) of water over this area - to get the mass of the atmosphere because I could remember those figures, so didn't need to google.)
Er: why are you invoking me, and that particular post?1
And my figures are in surprising agreement with Lolmiller's 46% getting into the atmosphere as this 5.6ppm per year is emissions, based on a really rough calculation where I did just use simple figures (I think I multiplied the surface area of the Earth by the mass of 32' (10m) of water over this area - to get the mass of the atmosphere because I could remember those figures, so didn't need to google.)
1. Why? I wanted to see if our resident post-modern philosopher of rhetoric applies the standards of criticism to people on his side of the issue as to people on the other side.
2. One of the sources I read for estimates of the total mass of the atmosphere used the same technique. 14 lbs/in2 x (4)(3.14)x(r2) where r is the radius of the Earth, rounded to the nearest 10 km. (they used kilos per square meter). Sure the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, and the surface isn't smooth. But yearly natural CO2 emissions and yearly human CO2 emissions vary by so much that precision in the total atmosphere mass (or weight) is a waste of effort. No calculation is more exact than its least precise factor. I expect most of you understand this.
1. Why? I wanted to see if our resident post-modern philosopher of rhetoric applies the standards of criticism to people on his side of the issue as to people on the other side.
2. One of the sources I read for estimates of the total mass of the atmosphere used the same technique. 14 lbs/in2 x (4)(3.14)x(r2) where r is the radius of the Earth, rounded to the nearest 10 km. (they used kilos per square meter). Sure the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, and the surface isn't smooth. But yearly natural CO2 emissions and yearly human CO2 emissions vary by so much that precision in the total atmosphere mass (or weight) is a waste of effort. No calculation is more exact than its least precise factor. I expect most of you understand this.
I was also working with the correct units, and was performing a sanity check. My sums came out as roughly equivalent to the accepted ones. Your initial sums were a factor of 100 out.
I didn't pull you up on using the term "weight" until you started defending its use. It is simply wrong, but understandably wrong.
I'm afraid that a lot of your statements do show some fundamental misunderstanding about how various natural systems work. Some of this would be obvious to you if you lived elsewhere on the Earth.
For example, I live near a limestone area and can see how carbonic acid in rainfall has dissolved this limestone, which means that I can instantly see that increasing the level of carbonic acid in the ocean would cause a problem for corals etc.
ETA: I understand that the 2010 eruptions at Eyjafjallajökull actually reduced the CO2 emissions, because the reduction in human emissions from grounded aircraft was larger than the volcanic emissions. To me this is pretty scary. Humans are now one of the most significant geological influences on many continents.
I didn't pull you up on using the term "weight" until you started defending its use. It is simply wrong, but understandably wrong.
I'm afraid that a lot of your statements do show some fundamental misunderstanding about how various natural systems work. Some of this would be obvious to you if you lived elsewhere on the Earth.
Conflating mass and weight is analogous to the following:
For example, if you were baking, and the recipe called for "5-cm of salt" it would be wrong, but one could guess that they meant 5cm3 or a teaspoon.
ETA: if it was an online discussion about baking and the person then insisted it was not supposed to be "a teaspoon" but actually "5-cm of salt" that the recipe called for, then they would begin to look a bit silly.
ETA: I understand that the 2010 eruptions at Eyjafjallajökull actually reduced the CO2 emissions, because the reduction in human emissions from grounded aircraft was larger than the volcanic emissions. To me this is pretty scary. Humans are now one of the most significant geological influences on many continents.
it also pretty comphrensively demolished one of the older denialist memes that volcanic activity contributed more to atmospheric CO2 than human emissions (there's actually greater than 100 times more human emissions!)
The IEA sid that we emitted 31.6Gt CO2 last year (Link), so with a 43% airbourne fraction, that means that we added another 2.7ppm CO2 last year. If we carry on at that rate we would achieve the first doubling point (560ppm) in 62 years, it's a shame we're not even staying at that rate, this means it will be achieved even earlier.
Bear in mind that we are only seeing the effects of what we did 40 years ago, the rabbit hole has still got a long way to go...
I can read. It said "weight". Also, since units cancel, the difference doesn't matter.
You not knowing common courtesy: fact. Knock off the personal abuse,
Conflating mass and weight is analogous to the following:
For example, if you were baking, and the recipe called for "5-cm of salt" it would be wrong, but one could guess that they meant 5cm3 or a teaspoon.
ETA: if it was an online discussion about baking and the person then insisted it was not supposed to be "a teaspoon" but actually "5-cm of salt" that the recipe called for, then they would begin to look a bit silly.
I was not "conflating". I reported the description from the site.
The analogy does not apply. In our calculation units cancel and (total atmospheric CO2 by weight)/(total emissions by weight per year) and (total atmospheric CO2 mass) / (CO2 emission mass per year) gives a real number with units of years (and the same number, if the input numbers were correct). Adjustments for latitude and altitude will make less difference than measurement errors in assays of atmospheric gas composition.
Other people doing these back-of-the-envelope calculations also ignore the distinction between weight and mass. In computing the ratio of total CO2 mass to emission CO2 mass per year or total CO2 weight to CO2 emissions by weight per year, yes, units cancel and you are left with a real number and units of years.
How does it weight a kg of CO2 placed in the exact barycentre of the Earth?
Mixing up weight with mass is either a high-school level mistake or a wink to a not very educated public on part of the press. You seem to match both criteria, as it is implied in your insistence about "cancellations of units" and "significant digits" on a much simpler case of wrong conceptualization. The simple fact you repeat a mistake you read is eloquent.
I can read. It said "weight". Also, since units cancel, the difference doesn't matter.
You not knowing common courtesy: fact. Knock off the personal abuse,
Engineering Toolbox was wrong to use the term weight, when they should have used mass. You were wrong to argue the toss about that. With the levels of precision that we are talking about you are correct that it wouldn't change the figures significantly. Can't we now please forget this and get back to discussing climate?
Where did this post-modern whatever BS enter the discussion? It's OT, un-important and irrelevant at best, abusive at worst.
Malcolm, are you ever going to address any of the questions that have been posed to you? RC has repreated posted his. I have asked for a response from you concerning the study that I linked to (post 6280), concerning the vulnerability of coral reefs to temperature change.
I am now tending to think that you have some experience in politics (probably at regional level) because of your undisputed ability to dodge giving a direct answer.
I was not "conflating". I reported the description from the site.
The analogy does not apply. In our calculation units cancel and (total atmospheric CO2 by weight)/(total emissions by weight per year) and (total atmospheric CO2 mass) / (CO2 emission mass per year) gives a real number with units of years (and the same number, if the input numbers were correct). Adjustments for latitude and altitude will make less difference than measurement errors in assays of atmospheric gas composition.
It doesn't cancel because the weight of something distributed planet-wide is not under the evenly effect of the same gravitation. That's the formal part of it. That's elemental. You missed. You fabricate a justification to save your skin.
Weight is fundamentally meaningless in this scenario because what matters is the quantity of matter expressed as CO2, the number of moles so to speak, and not at all any force exerted over that mass, which doesn't change for instance the radiative forcing of it. That's the essential part of it. That's conceptual. You missed. You fabricate a justification to save your skin.
It all started with you not understanding why 390 ppm volume were not 390 ppm in "weight". Dozens, surely more than a hundred posts later, you're still not getting it -or simply not admitting it-.
Can't we now please forget this and get back to discussing climate?1Where did this post-modern whatever BS enter the discussion? It's OT, un-important and irrelevant at best, abusive at worst.2Malcolm, are you ever going to address any of the questions that have been posed to you? RC has repreated posted his. I have asked for a response from you concerning the study that I linked to (post 6280), concerning the vulnerability of coral reefs to temperature change.3I am now tending to think that you have some experience in politics (probably at regional level) because of your undisputed ability to dodge giving a direct answer.4
1. Good idea.
2. It's my response to Alex Cowan's strident po-mo criticism of style over any contribution of substance.
3. Maybe if there were fewer distractions of the vacuous sort we've addresses in the last twenty or so posts.
4. You said something about "discussion climate"? I tend to think...well, let's discuss climate and not your manners.
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