More CO2 discoveries

Physics Today ^ | August 2002 | Sarmianto and Gruber

[EdZ]

We have learned much about the workings of natural sinks like the oceans and terrestrial plants, but are just beginning to understand how their behavior might change as atmospheric CO2 concentrations rise.

Organic carbon buried in sediments as coal, natural gas, and oil over literally hundreds of millions of years is being consumed as a result of human activities and returned to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2) on a time scale of a few centuries... Because of anthropogenic emissions, atmospheric CO2 has climbed to levels that are presently more than 30% higher than before the industrial revolution,1,2 as seen in figure 2. Indeed, geochemical measurements made on ancient ocean sediments suggest that atmospheric CO2 levels over the past 20 million years were never as high as they are today.3

The increase in atmospheric CO2 has drawn a great deal of attention because of the impact it has on the trapping of long wavelength radiation emitted from Earth's surface. More than half of the increase in the direct trapping that has occurred since preindustrial times is attributed to CO2, with the rest coming from other gases such as methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons. The effect of this increased trapping on Earth's climate depends on a number of complex feedbacks. Nevertheless, the strong consensus of the scientific community is that the increased trapping will lead to global warming; it probably accounts for most of the 0.6 ± 0.2 °C warming that occurred during the last century.3 Humankind thus appears to be playing a significant role in altering Earth's climate.

[EdZ]

This may come as a shock to many Americans, but burning fossil fuels is causing atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase. If, after reading this article, you are still "skeptical" then do what any true skeptic would do and go to the library and find any book on the topic and learn about how measurements of isotopic ratios of carbon (a kind of radiocarbon dating) prove conclusively that most of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is coming from fossil fuels.

The above article also discusses how natural carbon sinks will respond to global climate change.

[GATOR NAVY]

This may come as a shock to many one-topic trolls, but it hasn't been proven conclusively that most of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is coming from fossil fuels.

http://www.junkscience.com/news/robinson.htm

http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba230.html

[babygene]

For those of you that think that a .6 degree C increase in temperature over the last 100 years matters a smidgen, move to a colder climate... I, for one, enjoy warmer temperatures.

If you really think the sky is falling, I assure you that everything will change in the next 100 years. We'll be fretting over where all of the CO2 went, and the up comming ice age.

[Prodigal Son]

Your point?

[CurlyDave]

EdZ, has been with us since April 24, 2003

it [CO2] probably accounts for most of the 0.6 ± 0.2 °C warming that occurred during the last century

This statement is where I depart from the article.

I have no disagreement that human activities have raised the CO2 level by a measurable amount, although I suspect that a full accounting for agriculture and animal husbandry as sources of greenhouse gasses would exonerate the much-maligned SUV as a primary culprit.

However a connection between greenhouse gases and global warming that fails to take into account the variation in the sun's energy output is fundamentally flawed.

It appears that the earth's surface has been both warmer and colder than it presently is in the past few thousand years. Any connection between these natural temperature variations and human activity is clearly erroneous.

Whether the current warming is caused by human activity or natural processes is not at all clear.

The concept of tying our economy in a knot on the basis of fragmentary information and quite possibly erroneous conclusions is the height of foolishness.

[SuziQ]

Bump for later homeschool reading!

[Iwentsouth]

I would like to know why there was an ice age when the atmosphere contained 16 times as much C02 as there is now.

[ancient_geezer]

. Indeed, geochemical measurements made on ancient ocean sediments suggest that atmospheric CO2 levels over the past 20 million years were never as high as they are today.

Why stop at 20 million years?

 

Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time 

Late Carboniferous to Early Permian time (315 mya -- 270 mya) is the only time period in the last 600 million years when both atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were as low as they are today (Quaternary Period ).

Temperature after C.R. Scotese
CO2 after R.A. Berner, 1994

•     There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today. For example, during the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 900 ppm or about 2.5 times higher than today. The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Ordovician Period, exceeding 6000 ppm -- more than 16 times higher than today.

•     The Carboniferous Period and the Ordovician Period were the only geological periods during the Paleozoic Era when global temperatures were as low as they are today.
  
  To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age, with CO2 concentrations nearly 15 times higher than today-- 5500 ppm. According to greenhouse theory, Earth should have been exceedingly hot. Instead, global temperatures were no warmer than today. Clearly, other factors besides atmospheric carbon influence earth temperatures and global warming.

 

But the the lack of a cause effect nexus from CO2 to temperature is abit of concern too!

CO2-Temperature Correlations

• "(1) correlation does not prove causation, (2) cause must precede effect, and (3) when attempting to evaluate claims of causal relationships between different parameters, it is important to have as much data as possible in order to weed out spurious correlations.
  
  ***
  
  Consider, for example, the study of Fischer et al. (1999), who examined trends of atmospheric CO2 and air temperature derived from Antarctic ice core data that extended back in time a quarter of a million years.  Over this extended period, the three most dramatic warming events experienced on earth were those associated with the terminations of the last three ice ages; and for each of these climatic transitions, earth's air temperature rose well in advance of any increase in atmospheric CO2.  In fact, the air's CO2 content did not begin to rise until 400 to 1,000 years after the planet began to warm.  Such findings have been corroborated by Mudelsee (2001), who examined the leads/lags of atmospheric CO2 concentration and air temperature over an even longer time period, finding that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration lagged behind variations in air temperature by 1,300 to 5,000 years over the past 420,000 years."

[ see also: Indermuhle et al. (2000), Monnin et al. (2001), Yokoyama et al. (2000), Clark and Mix (2000) ]

• "Other studies periodically demonstrate a complete uncoupling of CO2 and temperature "

[see: Petit et al. (1999), Staufer et al. (1998), Cheddadi et al., (1998), Raymo et al., 1998, Pagani et al. (1999), Pearson and Palmer (1999), Pearson and Palmer, (2000) ]

• "Considered in their entirety, these several results present a truly chaotic picture with respect to any possible effect that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have on global temperature.  Clearly, atmospheric CO2 is not the all-important driver of global climate change the climate alarmists make it out to be."

 

The increase in atmospheric CO2 has drawn a great deal of attention because of the impact it has on the trapping of long wavelength radiation emitted from Earth's surface.

 

Mankind's impact is only 0.28% of Total Greenhouse effect

" There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "

Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal

The reality is a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration over current levels, that the IPCC "story line" pretends, even if true, could not induce significant temperature change whatever its source.

A Lukewarm Greenhouse
"The average warming predicted by the six methods for a doubling of CO2, is only +0.2 degC."

Climate Catastrophe, A spectroscopic Artifact?

"It is hardly to be expected that for CO2 doubling an increment of IR absorption at the 15 µm edges by 0.17% can cause any significant global warming or even a climate catastrophe.

The radiative forcing for doubling can be calculated by using this figure. If we allocate an absorption of 32 W/m² [14] over 180º steradiant to the total integral (area) of the n3 band as observed from satellite measurements (Hanel et al., 1971) and applied to a standard atmosphere, and take an increment of 0.17%, the absorption is 0.054 W/m² - and not 4.3 W/m².

This is roughly 80 times less than IPCC's radiative forcing.

If we allocate 7.2 degC as greenhouse effect for the present CO2 (as asserted by Kondratjew and Moskalenko in J.T. Houghton's book The Global Climate [14]), the doubling effect should be 0.17% which is 0.012 degC only. If we take 1/80 of the 1.2 degC that result from Stefan-Boltzmann's law with a radiative forcing of 4.3 W/m², we get a similar value of 0.015 degC."

 

---

 

Nevertheless, the strong consensus of the scientific community is that the increased trapping will lead to global warming;

Consensus, maybe among the Political Science community.

Those actually within the applied sciences dealing with facts instead of imagination, seem to have a somewhat different view of things:

Petition Project: http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm

During the past 2 years, more than 17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed the Global Warming Petition.

Specifically declaring:

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

Signers of this petition so far include 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists (select this link for a listing of these individuals) who are especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth's atmosphere and climate.

Signers of this petition also include 5,017 scientists whose fields of specialization in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences (select this link for a listing of these individuals) make them especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide upon the Earth's plant and animal life.

Nearly all of the initial 17,100 scientist signers have technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data, and many are trained in related fields.

[GATOR NAVY]

Thanks, a.g., that's the link I wanted to post but couldn't find it.

[ancient_geezer]

atmospheric CO2 levels over the past 20 million years were never as high as they are today.

Of course the altenative question becomes, why were temperatures higher than they are today during those same last 20 million years? Even within the last 700 thousand years. Note as well that CO2 tends to change after the change in temperature starts, both rising and falling.

 

[ancient_geezer]

 

[ancient_geezer]

Always happy to oblige :O)

[ancient_geezer]

This may come as a shock to many Americans, but burning fossil fuels is causing atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase.

Fossil fuels release less than 4% of the total CO2 coming from other sources, and once more:

Mankind's impact is only 0.28% of Total Greenhouse effect

" There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "

Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal

CO2 is great for growing more forests and reclaiming deserts:

Greenhouse Gas Might Green Up The Desert;
Weizmann Institute

Seems the more gets pumped in the greener it gets, sinking Carbon out of the atmosphere more rapidly, seems the Global Warming folks always want to ignore the benefits and the sinks, concentrating more on sources for political kick.

Climatic temperature change OTOH generally gives rise to changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration through changes of biomass, warming of ocean with release of CO2 from solution with rising temperatures.

Contemporary Climate Change

6.4.1.1. Sources of Atmospheric CO2

Sources of atmospheric CO2 can today be divided into two groups: natural and anthropogenic. Natural sources include the respiration of animals (60Gt per annum) and the surface ocean (90Gt per annum) (Schimel et al., 1995). Anthropogenic sources include the combustion of fossil fuels (power stations and transport) and cement production (5.5Gt per annum)and land-use changes (mainly deforestation) (1.6Gt per annum)

6.4.1.2. Sinks of Atmospheric CO2

The surface ocean also acts as a natural sink for atmospheric CO2, with an annual removal flux of 92Gt carbon. The interaction of CO2 between atmosphere and surface ocean was more fully addressed in section 5.3.1.2 (Equations 14 to 17). The other major natural sink is the primary productivity of land vegetation (photosynthesis), which sequesters 61.4Gt carbon every year (Schimel et al., 1995). The regrowth of Northern Hemisphere forests represents the only major anthropogenic sink of atmospheric CO2, although enhanced fertilisation effects due to elevated CO2 concentrations and other climatic feedbacks have also been considered.

[ancient_geezer]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[mikegi]

This may come as a shock to many Americans...

This may come as a shock to many Global Warming hucksters but your fearless leader, James Hansen, has decided that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels ARE NOT the primary cause of global warming:

This scenario derives from our interpretation that observed global warming has been caused mainly by non-CO2 GHGs.

Carping about CO2 from fossil fuels is, like, soooooo 1990s.

[Maelstrom]

Bump the poor soul for later home SCHOOLING...unless you're teaching how to identify flawed scientific claims.

[facedown]

Point, set and match.

[aruanan]

Stop trolling, Eddie; it's getting old and you've already started looking more than silly. The current increase in atmospheric CO2 antedated the Industrial Revolution. The anthropogenic portion of the increase since the Industrial Revolution is a minor portion of the total. A major cause is release of methane from methane hydrates that collect on ocean bottoms and in permafrost. In other places that are too warm to form these hydrates, the methane just percolates to the surface, enters the atmosphere, and is oxidized, producing CO2. The major portion of all atmospheric CO2 has come from such outgassing and oxidation. The amount of plant food liberated through burning of so-called fossil fuels is minuscule compared to all the CO2 dissolved in water and trapped in carbonate rocks.

[aruanan]

I have no disagreement that human activities have raised the CO2 level by a measurable amount,

Except that given all the variables, the portion of the temperature increase caused by human activity is indistinguishable from background. The portion of the increase due to solar activity, the major portion, though, is undeniable.

[aruanan]

Why stop at 20 million years?

Because science gets in the way of their politics.