Never mind that in 2006 it was reported that levels of the second most important greenhouse gas, methane, have stabilized.
Scientists are now working to create a new “tootless” grass for bovine enjoyment which will help cut methane emissions from the bovine tailpipes. What next? A moratorium on baked beans at BBQs? Editing out that scene from Blazing Saddles so that school kids don’t get bad ideas that might harm the earth?
According to the Scientific American article: “During the two decades of measurements, methane underwent double-digit growth as a constituent of our atmosphere, rising from 1,520 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) in 1978 to 1,767 ppbv in 1998. But the most recent measurements have revealed that methane levels are barely rising anymore — and it is unclear why.”
From NewScientist: “Although this is good news, it does not mean that methane levels will not rise again, and that carbon dioxide remains the 800-pound gorilla of climate change.”
Indeed, methane has made a small uptick in the last year.
Actually, NewScientist is wrong. CO2 is not the biggest “gorilla” of greenhouse gas on planet earth. It’s water vapor. Our earth would be much colder without water vapor in the atmosphere…it would be much like Mars. I seem to recall seeing a figure for average global temperature of about -14°F with water vapor absent.
So many of the climate models focus solely on CO2, but they leave out water vapor as clouds in the equations, or assume water vapor is static.
CO2 is far from being the most potent greenhouse gas. Chloroflourocarbons (CFC’s) commonly used as refrigerants as far worse at trapping infra-red in our
atmosphere.
Of naturally created GHG’s, Methane is 23 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than CO2. Nitrous Oxide is even worse at 296. So far no emergency legislation has been authored to eliminate the effect of cows or dental surgeons. The Kyoto treaty does not address these other gases either.
Here is a gauge of various gases and their “GWP”:
Global Warming Potentials Of Gases
(100 Year Time Horizon)
GAS GWP
========================
Carbon dioxide (CO2) 1
Methane (CH4) 23
Nitrous oxide (N2O) 296
Hydrofluorocarbons
HFC-23 12,000
HFC-125 3,400
HFC-134a 1,300
HFC-143a 4,300
HFC-152a 120
HFC-227ea 3,500
HFC-43-10mee 1,500
Fully Fluorinated Gases
SF6 22,200
CF4 5,700
C2F6 11,900
C4F10 8,600
C6F14 9,000
The concept of the global warming potential (GWP) was developed to compare the ability of each greenhouse gas to trap heat in the atmosphere relative to another gas. In this case, CO2 is the reference gas. Methane, for example, has a GWP of 23 over a 100-year period. This means that on a kilogram for kilogram basis, methane is 23 times more potent than CO2 over a 100-year period.
The interesting thing here is that this stabilization of methane levels in our atmosphere happened all by itself, and the scientists are clearly baffled as to an explanation. But that doesn’t seem to phase anyone promoting research to prevent cow tooting.
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The IPCC positive feedback formula:
Increased CO2 (warming) –> increased water vapor (warming) –> decreased ice cover/albedo (warming) –> “tipping point” (runaway warming)
The AquaSat negative feedback observations:
Increased CO2 (warming) –> increased cloud cover/increased albedo (cooling), increased precipitation –> stabilized ice cover/albedo
The argument for CO2 is essentially this:
For thousands of years the temperature was perfectly stable (big, big lie) and when mankind came along and added 3% more CO2 into the atmosphere it tipped the balance into runaway global warming (also a big lie).
Actually water vapor can be a negative feedback (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071102152636.htm)
At Craig James’ blog (http://blogs.woodtv.com/?cat=11) he has an interesting post about water vapor.
So, the period of the dinosaurs lasted for 150 million years or so. How much Methane did the average dinosaur produce? A little bit more than cows I would deduce.
Waters primary function seems to be moving heat from the surface to further out in the atmosphere. The turbulent processes are what seems to make keep that surface temp relatively stable (day vs night). The vapor absorbs more heat, but the net probably isn’t a big deal. It’s probably like the nitrogen phase change on pluto making it 10C cooler than expected. If the water cycle doesn’t slow down, it won’t warm us up.
I noticed that methane concentrations were less than 2000 pp billion. That tells me that it doesn’t take much human activity to change it. I do know that there is much less methane flaring from oilfields today than 30 years ago. That could explain part of it (oilfield flaring is likely < 99% efficient, so some always escapes). Today, methane is not flared but captured for fuel and chemical use (methanol, urea, etc.). The other big source is coal mining. Could be a shift there regarding the type of mining and the type of coal (low sulfer coal, etc.) mined nowadays.
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“Scientists are now working to create a new “tootless” grass for bovine enjoyment which will help cut methane emissions from the bovine tailpipes.”
Eurocrats should love this. After banning GM ‘frankenfoods’ for people, we’ll now make ‘tootless’ grass for Bessie. Big Mac’s will never be the same.
(Andrew: are you sure this isn’t left over from the first of last month ?)
Hmmmmm they must have been humming as old rhyme my father used to say some years ago.
‘
Beans beans the musical fruit
the more you eat the more you toot,
the more you toot the better you feel,
let’s have more beans at every meal.
This study is getting very close to squat.
some one is getting desperate to find something to stay on top.
Bill Derryberry
It is still snowing here in Southern Montana. Kind of a late spring, reminiscent of the 1970’s.
Therefore the statement “carbon dioxide remains the 800-pound gorilla of climate change.” is technically correct, even though CO2 does not currently contribute as much to our planet’s current climate as water vapor does.
Wrong, Arch. The 800-pound gorilla of climate change is actually the sun. Doh.
I just love this title. But I am kinda confused with the tooting. The ScienceDaily article you linked just mentions the burbing of cows as the process that releases methane. This is ‘consistent with’ what my Swiss farming stepmom taught me about the four stomaches of a cow. In between the stomaches they gulp and chew the cud. Mooh.
And this is from your amazing link regarding the consequence of the prototype (burbless?) grass:
1)
This reminds me of an old Swiss story and movie about a cow that ate from a very special grass in a canyon. It didn’t produce any milk. And suddently it would produce by far more milk than the other cows. It thus became cow queen in a cow festival. When marching in on top of a parade, the cow collapsed and died – because of overfeeding and overmilking.
ATTN: Phil and Everbody!
For a detailed, step-by-step calculation of the contribution of water vapor to the greenhouse effect, GO:
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html.
Monte Hieb is a mine safety engineer and works for the W. Virgina Dept. of Mines, and knows about the chemistry and physics of gases. Use legal size paper if you want to print out this file for study. I highly recommend that you print out file so it is at hand for ready reference. As a matter of fact print out copies and send them to you Congressional and state representatives.
Also checkout some of the articles re global warming and climate change at this site. Be sure to take a quick look at the fossil pics. I could never quite figure out how these are found in underground coal mines in these mountains of solid rock.
Chris,
Coal seam methane extraction prior to mining the coal provides methane for fuel and chemical uses, reduces methane release during mining and reduces mining hazards. That’s a “threefer”!
There have also been major programs over the past 30 years to reduce leakage from the natural gas transmission and distribution systems in the US.
Also, venting natural gas once was common in the middle eastern oil fields; now, the market for LNG has changed that picture.
The reason water vapor is not included as a forcing factor is that the is no unifrom spatial and temporal distribution of water vapor in the atmosphere. The absolute amount water vapor per unit volume of the air fluctuates so rapidly that it would be extremely difficult to incorparate these variations into models.
As a matter of fact this also applies to CO2, but most modellers ignore this. They also use the wrong conc of CO2 in the initialization parameter. The actual conc or abs.amount of CO2 in real or ambient air at 15 deg C, 1 atm pressure and 1% abs humidity is about 366 ml/cu meter. The value for standard dry air is 388 ml/cu meter or ppmv.
The conc of CO2 in the atmosphere based air samples analyzed at Mauna Loa or any site is referenced to standard dry air, which is air at 273.2 K. and 1 atm. pressure and is comprised of nitrogen, oxygen and the inert gases.
In the tropics at 30 deg C and 1 atm. pressure with 4% abs humidity, the abs amount of CO2 is about 336 ml/cu meter but the rel conc would be still be 388 ppmv.
Most people, like 100%, haven’t got the foggest idea what 388 ppmv means. This improper use of rel conc of CO2 in climate models is a fatal flaw, and this is why the mid-troposphere is not warming according to model predictions, er, projections.
Now it has been known for quite sometime (since ca 2003) that there is no unifrom spatial and temporal distribution of CO2 in the atmosphere. Go over to ESL and locate images from the AQUA-AIRS satellites. And watch the video of the changing CO2 conc especially over the continents.
Don’t happen to have the links, but I will find them and post them here.
For more info about standard dry air, GO: http://www.uigi.com.air.html
I can’t believe anyone is having a cow about this still. This whole exaggerated threat of gastric bovine methane (from their burps is all rather dumb. For starters total heads of cattle in the USA roughly equal 17th c bison population (100 million).
If methane’s really a threat, which at the moment is a 58 ppm CO2 equivalent (hey, anyone know what the CH3 IR absorption curve is like?) then the biggest potential source of it is the boreal tundra permafrost which is being progressively thawed by soot deposition. This is what V. Ramanathan & C. Zender have told everyone who’ll listen: Mitigate the soot ASAP and you can buy some time. And my guess is that in the interim, as soot levels fell, we’d also acquire a fair amt of improved science that’d ease the worries about CO2.
BTW the country with the biggest cattle population is India, with 400 mil. Bad, evil India. They need to stop having sacred cows… or plow-pulling oxen Convert to industrial, diesel (soot spewing) sacred agricultural machinery now!
Here is a good table already made for us!!
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
Covers percentages of gases, including water vapor, and their relative effect.
Also includes data on natural/man made percentages.
Check out Ad Hoc Hypothesis in Wikipedia … he he.
Harold Pierce Jr said: “The reason water vapor is not included as a forcing factor is that the is no unifrom spatial and temporal distribution of water vapor in the atmosphere. The absolute amount water vapor per unit volume of the air fluctuates so rapidly that it would be extremely difficult to incorparate these variations into models.”
Actually Harold, the reason the IPCC doesn’t include it is because “since it’s not man made, it’s irrelevant.”
I’ve been attempting to write an article on the role of water vapor for “The Mysterious Climate Project” but continually run into a brick wall over all the different numbers floating around due to it being a “moving target” as you suggested. As most know, water comes in the solid form (ice), the liquid form, and as vapor. Unfortunately, water in the atmosphere can morph between all three depending on conditions.
According to Atmospheric Physicist Fred Singer, I should use a figure of 95% for water’s role in the overall scheme of things… and after much research into other’s papers (including “Water Vapor Rules”), I think I’ll go with that number.
By the way, have you ever wondered why the Pogies assigned “1” to the GWP of CO2? The short answer is if they assigned it to water, CO2 low number would be a laughing stock by comparison (my theory)!
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
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KuhnKat (07:29:17) wrote :
“Here is a good table already made for us!!…”
LOL, I guess it is made for you if you are prone to believe propaganda because you like its sound rather than questioning it.
Let’s check out Singer’s claim to 95% of the GHG effect being attributed to water vapor; he is very clear about his sources:
a) Can’t access this paper from 1993.
***********
b),http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Reference_Docs/PMichaels_Jun98.pdf
This is a policy statement and not a peer reviewed paper. It can get away with saying anything that sounds good. The 95% statement is made but it is unsubstantiated as to where it came from. In the same paragraph it makes the long disproved “saturated gas argument” that claims that because the H2O absorption spectrum largely overlaps with the CO2 absorption spectrum therefore CO2 is inconsequential.
**************
b) http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/302/5651/1719
This is viewpoint piece in Science.
I quote from the first line:
“Modern climate change is dominated by human influences, which are now large enough to exceed the bounds of natural variability.”
Second paragraph:
“Various atmospheric gases contribute to the greenhouse effect, whose impact in clear skies is 60% from water vapor, 25% from carbon dioxide, 8% from ozone, and the rest from trace gases including methane and nitrous oxide (1).”
Source (1) is
J. T. Kiehl and Kevin E. Trenberth 97 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Available here:
http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/spring04/atmo451b/pdf/RadiationBudget.pdf
They state that H2O vapor is responsible for 60% of the warming in a clear sky. (table 3)
Singer gets an A+ for creative writing on this one.
*******************************
c) http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/environment/appd_d.html
This is an article from the DOE from 14 years ago. It cites few sources (one of which is a textbook from 1950). Although it does make the 95% claim, it is clear that this value is for the troposphere only. It also makes the statement that “Carbon dioxide adds 12 percent to radiation trapping which is less than the contribution from either water vapor or clouds”.
This is a very dated statement and only someone desperate for a source would cite it; particularly since it (once again) does not back up Singer’s 95%claim.
**************************
d) Personal Communication– Dr. Richard S. Lindzen
‘nuff said.
e) http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010405M
This reproduction of a talk given to businessmen in 2004. No sources are cited other than Mauna Loa and Vostok data and the empty claim that: “At present there have been literally hundreds of studies carried out showing a similar correlation” [concerning sun spots and global mean SST]. I don’t even see the 95% claim made in the talk. (maybe it is there I honestly did not look very hard).
f) http://www.ecoenquirer.com/EPA-water-vapor.htm
This curious and undated document also does not support the 95% claim (it states 90% but makes no claim to a source.) I’m not sure who was being facetious here; the reporter or the EPA. (Did this really happen?)
*********************
g) Air and Water Issues
I can’t access this document. But they apparently cite Lomborg and refer to GHGs as “satanic”.
***************************
h) http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/ci/31/special/may01_viewpoint.html
This opinion piece cites no source other than personal opinion for it’s >95% claim.
i) http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Reference_Docs/sci_and_techn-glacial_expansion_03-04.pdf
This obscure magazine article cites no source for its claim that water vapor is responsible for 96-99% of GHG effect.
There you go. Out of 7 sources I can trace not one scientifically backs up his claim that 95% of the GHG effect is from H2O and a couple of them contradict it.
New Scientist has a definite pro-AGW bias, as has been pointed out by its former editor Nigel Calder. It’s no surprise really that they would downplay water vapour and the sun, and focus on methane and CO2.
Just thinking about bovine methane emissions. Is there any way these could be tapped on an industrial scale as a form of biofuel?
Another kind of “wind farm” perhaps?
RE: Monte Hieb’s Calculations
I went over his article and calculations, and I couldn’t find the conc of water vapor he used. However, his calculation are correct if you set the conc of water vapor at 1% or 10,000 ml /cu meter. This is mean global average conc in the atmosphere.
If we make the zero order approximation that water vapor and CO2 absorb the same amounts of IR per molecule, then contribution of water vapor to the greenhouse effect is: % contibution = 10, 000 ml/10,000+380 x100 = 96.3.
In the tropics with 5% water (i.e., 100% rel hum at 30-35 deg C), water’s contribution to the greenhouse effect is 99.3% since the amount of CO2 is 366 ml/cu meter.
Water’s contribution is actually much higher because water molecules absorbs IR much more efficiently than CO2 because it has permanent electric dipole and CO2 does not. IR cannot be absorbed by a molecule unless there is change in the electric dipole moment. CO2 is a weak absorber of IR becuse its transient electric dipole is generated by collisions with nirogen and oxygen and this process is dependent upon pressure and temperature.
Molecules that absorb IR DO NOT re-emit this radiation due to the high rate of collision deactivation of the excited states with nitrogen and oxygen. This process is called radiative transfer.
Yikes! The Sun has started to shine here in Metro Vancouver, and I now have no excuses (i.e., rain) for not mowing the grass.
I’ll get back to you with some ref’s.
My new invention to control that cow’s emanations:
It’s the Bovine Utensil to Trap and Treat Potentially Lethal and Unhealthy Gases. The commercial name? That’s what acronyms are for: The ButtPlug.
Can you imagine the sales pitch?
Protect the Earth now! Insert a ButtPlug in your cows!
In our news today;
“AUSTRALIAN agricultural output will double over the next 40 years, with climate change predicted to increase, rather than hinder, the level of production.
A recent spate of reports forecasting the decline of Australian agriculture because of climate change have greatly exaggerated, and even completely misreported the threat of global warming, according to senior rural industry figures. ”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23681267-11949,00.html