Posted on 05/14/2013 5:15:51 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
According to data being gathered at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which has been monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1958, the CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere officially exceeded the 400 parts per million mark last week, a value not attained on Earth since humans were first human.
This ominous milestone comes at a time when the evidence that human activity is resulting in unprecedented climate change is now overwhelming. More important, perhaps, even if all greenhouse gas production ceased immediately, this elevated carbon dioxide level would persist in the atmosphere for thousands of years.
(snip)
So in addition to undertaking dramatic global efforts to reduce present and future CO2 emissions, we need a strategy for addressing the carbon already up there. Recently, a broad group of geologists, planetary scientists, climatologists, social scientists, and physicists convened at the Origins Project at Arizona State University, which I direct, to explore such strategies. ......
Extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, even with its current level of 400 ppm, is very different—and in some ways more difficult—than extracting it from flue gas, where the CO2 concentration is much greater. .... First, one removes CO2 from the air by using a sorbent, which is a material that can absorb gasses. Next, the CO2 has to be extracted from the sorbent and sequestered, presumably by pumping it deep underground at relatively high concentration or by binding it to minerals—a bit like how we handle nuclear waste. ...... At present, it is difficult to determine the cost of direct extraction.
(snip)
Given the risks of increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere, and the difficulty of slowing current production, at the very least some modest government R&D support of this important possible alternative seems appropriate right now to help safeguard our future.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Lawrence M. Krauss is Foundation Professor and Director of the Arizona State University Origins Project. His most recent book is A Universe from Nothing.
*Update, May 13, 2013: The 15 participants in the paper are Lawrence M. Krauss, Kip Hodges, Ariel Anbar, Arjun Helmsath, Sander Van der Leeuw, and Manfred Laubichler of Arizona State University; Wallace Broecker, Klaus S. Lackner, and Scott Barrett of Columbia University; Jeffrey Severinghaus and Ralph Keeling of University of California-San Diego; J. Michael Hall (NOAA, retired); James Anderson of Harvard University; Ray Piierrehumbert of the University of Chicago; and James Hansen (NASA, retired).
We’re all gonna’ die!
NOTHING is “enough” when you pretend to attack a nonexistent “problem”.
“We have to invest in technology to remove the CO2 already in the atmosphere.”
I have a prototype of this technology. It kinda resembles a tree but will cost taxpayers significantly more.
watch this testimony and decide for yourself
http://theolympiareport.com/wwu-scientist-debunks-lawmakers-myths-about-co2-climate-change/
LOL. I have a prototype too. Its a plastic bag you tie over your head to trap CO2 emissions. There are still a few minor kinks I have to work out of it though . . . . .
Reducing CO2 levels to per-industrial levels would reduce tree growth in the Northern hemisphere by 30% and farming yields by 12 to 13%.
CO2 is plant food.
February 2, 2007
Carbon dioxide is good
By Fred Hutchison
Letter to the Editor, The Columbus Dispatch
Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant or a greenhouse gas. It is a wholesome, naturally occurring, colorless and odorless gas. In fact, if carbon dioxide suddenly disappeared, at least 99% of the species on earth, including man, would die. Without carbon dioxide, there would be no photosynthesis of green plants, and without photosynthesis, we would have no oxygen to breathe and no food to eat.
Chemists tell us that carbon dioxide molecules retain heat a bit longer than does the nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the air. Chemists also tell us that if you combine gasses of different temperature, convection currents will equalize the temperature of the gas molecules. As the air cools during the night, the temperature of the nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules equalize. Therefore, the amount of heat released from the atmosphere into outer space during a twenty four hour cycle would be the same for nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide. Affect on global warming — zero.
Where does carbon dioxide gas in the air come from? 1) Oxidation of living and dead plant and animal life, 2) Volcanoes, and 3) Forest fires. The amount of carbon dioxide coming from industry is immaterial in comparison to these three sources.
Is the earth warming? Yes, the earth is recovering from the “Little Ice Age.” We have enjoyed two centuries of intermittent recovery from the bitter cold which the American Founding Fathers suffered through. However, the warming earth has not yet reached the temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period or the Roman Warm Period. Northern Europe enjoyed bumper crops during the Medieval Warm Period, the population tripled and European civilization revived. Europe had suffering a Dark Age during a time of cooling but civilization revived late in the subsequent warming phase. When a new cycle of global cooling began in the fourteenth century, the mild, relatively stable weather of Europe during the Medieval Warm Period gave way to fierce storms, flooding and famine.
© Fred Hutchison
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/hutchison/070202
CO2 is Green... and Green is Good!
More CO2 in the air means more plant growth.
Earth’s current atmospheric CO2 concentration is almost 390 parts per million (ppm). Adding another 300 ppm of CO2 to the air has been shown by literally thousands of experiments to greatly increase the growth or biomass production of nearly all plants. This growth stimulation occurs because CO2 is one of the two raw materials (the other being water) that are required for photosynthesis. Hence, CO2 is actually the “food” that sustains essentially all plants on the face of the earth, as well as those in the sea. And the more CO2 they “eat” (absorb from the air or water), the bigger and better they grow (see table below).
http://www.plantsneedco2.org/default.aspx?MenuItemID=103
You and I can collaborate on such prototype.
I’ll give it a good name, God tree, and we can apply for grants.
The reprt of 400 ppm CO2 concentration is yet another fraudulent report Slate and the MSM failed to report when it was retracted as an error.
Premature 400 PPM fail-a-bration
Posted on May 13, 2013 by Anthony Watts
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/13/premature-400-ppm-fail-a-bration/
True, but irrelevant. 1 and 3 are part of the carbon cycle, by which carbon goes in and out of the atmosphere but the total in the ecosystem does not change significantly.
Very much like the hydrologic cycle, by which water changes phase and location but not in quantity.
Fossil fuels are ancient parts of the carbon cycle that got isolated from the ecosystem. When they are burned they increase the total of carbon, not just move it around. Even a slow, gradual increase in a constituent of the atmosphere may eventually result in a significant effect.
There are lots of good arguments for why the "global warming" thing is exaggerated, but this isn't one of them.
I explained this to some graduate students in agriculture. I illustrated this by saying that it is a common practice to fill a green house with c02 to simulate plant growth. They said that proved their point as they wouldn’t want to be in that green house. I shook my head............
That is the key unproven assumption. No one knows how much is too much and when the effects of human activity may cause real global consequences. All we have are a bunch of computer models made by bombastic scientists, claiming that the end is near.
The other poster was noting that human addition of CO2 to the atmosphere is trivial in magnitude compared to natural sources. That is a true statement.
So the hydrocarbons in the ground are not part of the ecosystem. How did they get isolated? They were once part of the living flora or fauna that got buried. In geologic time they were certainly part of the ecosystem. We, through their conversion, are bringing them back.
In the distant past CO2 levels have been orders of magnitude higher than today and yet life survived and we are all here.
Hydrocarbons like methane are found in distant heavenly bodies. How did they get there? Methane is a much more powerful green house gas than CO2 and there is a moon out there with a methane atmosphere.
Green house gases are part of the natural universe, and the atmospheric processes here on earth have adjusted to that without our intervention.
The last time CO2 was above the 400ppm mark was ... during the years between 1936 and 1948.
Source: http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf
I agree we don’t fully understand the process. There are no doubt both positive and negative feedback effects and we don’t known which are which.
However, if I have a “churning” of 1T tons of carbon in and out of the atmosphere every year, to pick an arbitrary number, it makes no difference in the concentration. We change the location but not the amount.
Adding a net 1B tons (arbitrary figure) by burning fossil fuels, while an insignificant amount compared to that being churned, is nevertheless significant because it increases the total. Whether that is significant for temperature over the long run remains to be determined, as will whether the effects will on net be positive or negative.
But that the concentration is increasing cannot be effectively disputed, not that the primary cause of the increase is the burning of fossil fuels.
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