The pyramid of aluminum shown in the photograph figures greatly in our nation’s history. This once rare metal was so prized that it was placed into a national monument by a grateful nation. Can you guess where? Now, aluminum is so common, thanks to an electrical refining process and plentiful, cheap electricity, that we throw it away in soda cans.
Two seemingly unrelated events on opposite sides of the globe occurred this past week.
One was the closure of an aluminum plant in Montana, and the other is the president of a European metals association threatened to move production overseas citing environmental rules and energy costs escalating due to emissions trading schemes.
Both stories are presented below. At the end, is the story of our “Aluminum Pyramid”, now in a national monument.
Google Map of above is here
First, Montana.
How They Are Turning Off the Lights in America
On October 31, 2009, the once largest aluminum plant in the world will shut down. With it goes another American industry and more American jobs. The Columbia Falls Aluminum Company in Montana will shut down its aluminum production because it cannot purchase the necessary electrical power to continue its operations.
How did this happen in America? America was once the envy of the world in its industrial capability. America’s industrial capacity built America into the most productive nation the world had ever known. Its standard of living rose to levels never before accomplished. Its currency became valuable and powerful, allowing Americans to purchase imported goods at relatively cheap prices.
America grew because of innovation and hard work by the pioneers of the industrial revolution, and because America has vast natural resources. A great economy, as America once was, is founded on the ability to produce electrical energy at low cost. This ability has been extinguished. Why?
Columbia Falls Aluminum negotiated a contract with Bonneville Power Administration in 2006 for Bonneville to supply electrical power until September 30, 2011. But, responding to lawsuits, the 9th US Circuit Court ruled the contract was invalid because it was incompatible with the Northwest Power Act. Therefore, the combination of the Northwest Power Act and a US Circuit Court were the final villains that caused the shutdown of Columbia Falls Aluminum.
But the real reasons are much more complicated. Why was it not possible for Columbia Falls Aluminum to find sources of electricity other than Bonneville?
We need to look no further than the many environmental groups like the Sierra Club and to America’s elected officials who turned their backs on American citizens and in essence themselves, for they too are citizens of this country. These officials bought into the green agenda promoted by the heavily funded environmental groups. Caving to pressure, they passed laws and the environmental groups filed lawsuits that began turning off the lights in America. The dominos stated to fall.
They began stopping nuclear power plants in the 1970’s. They locked up much of our coal and oil resources with land laws. They passed tax credits, which forces taxpayers foot the bill for billionaire investors to save taxes by investing in less productive wind and solar energy projects.
In 1988, the Environmental Protection Agency called a meeting of atmospheric scientists and others with environmental interests. I remember well the meeting I attended in the San Francisco Bay Area. The meeting was in a theater-like lecture room with the seating curved to face the center stage and rising rapidly toward the back of the room. Attending were many atmospheric scientists whom I knew from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Stanford Research Institute and some local colleges.
The room became silent when a man walked up to the lectern. He told us that the next big national problem was global warming. He explained how human carbon dioxide emissions were trapping the earth’s radiation like a greenhouse and causing the atmosphere to heat beyond its normal temperature. He said this will lead to environmental disasters. He finished by saying the EPA will now concentrate its research funding toward quantifying the disasters that would be caused by our carbon dioxide.
The room was silent. I was the first to raise my hand to ask a question, “How can you defend your global warming hypothesis when you have omitted the effects of clouds which affect heat balance far more than carbon dioxide, and when your hypothesis contradicts the paper by Lee in the Journal of Applied Meteorology in 1972 that shows the atmosphere does not behave like a greenhouse?”
He answered me by saying, “You do not know what you are talking about. I know more about how the atmosphere works than you do.”
Not being one to drop out of a fight, I responded, “I know many of the atmospheric scientists in this room, and many others who are not present but I do not know you. What is your background and what makes you know so much more than me?”
He answered, “I know more than you because I am a lawyer and I work for the EPA.”
After the meeting, many of my atmospheric science friends who worked for public agencies thanked me for what I said, saying they would have liked to say the same thing but they feared for their jobs.
And that, my dear readers, is my recollection of that great day when a lawyer, acting as a scientist, working for the federal government, announced global warming.
Fast forward to today. The federal government is spending 1000 times more money to promote the global-warming charade than is available to those scientists who are arguing against it. Never before in history has it taken a massive publicity campaign to convince the public of a scientific truth. The only reason half the public thinks global warming may be true is the massive amount of money put into global-warming propaganda. The green eco-groups have their umbilical cords in the government’s tax funds. Aside from a few honest but duped scientists living on government money, the majority of the alarms about global warming – now called “climate change” because it’s no longer warming – come from those who have no professional training in atmospheric science. They are the environmentalists, the ecologists, the lawyers and the politicians. They are not the reliable atmospheric scientists whom I know.
Nevertheless, our politicians have passed laws stating that carbon dioxide is bad. See California’s AB32 which is based upon science fiction. (For readers who take issue with me, I will be happy to destroy your arguments in another place. In this paper, we focus on the damage to America that is being caused by those promoting the global-warming fraud.)
In the year 2000, America planned 150 new coal-electric power plants. These power plants would have been “clean” by real standards but the Greens managed to have carbon dioxide defined legally as “dirty” and this new definition makes all emitters of carbon dioxide, including you, a threat to the planet. Therefore, using legal illogic, the Sierra Club stopped 82 of these planned power plants under Bush II and they expect it will be a slam-dunk to stop the rest under Obama.
And now you know the real reason the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company had to shut down. America stopped building new power plants a long time ago. There is now no other source where the company can buy energy. Our energy-producing capability is in a decline and it is taking America with it.
I used to belong to the Sierra Club in the 1960’s. It used to be a nice hiking club. In the late 1960’s the Sierra Club began turning its attention toward stopping nuclear power. Then I quit the Sierra Club. It continues to prosper from the many subscribers who think they are supporting a good cause. What they are really supporting is the destruction of America brick by brick. The Sierra Club and similar organizations are like watermelons – green on the outside, red on the inside. They are telling us we have no right to our own natural resources, and in doing so they are sinking America.
Inherent in ecology are three assumptions: “natural” conditions are optimal, climate is fragile, and human influences are bad. Physics makes no such assumptions. By assuming climate is fragile, the global warming supporters have assumed their conclusion. In fact, the climate is not fragile. It is stable. The non-adherence to physical logic in the global-warming camp is what makes many physical scientists say that global warming is a religion.
So we have a new age religion promoted by environmentalists, incorporated into our laws and brainwashed into our people that is now destroying America from the inside.
Like a vast ship, America is taking a long time to sink but each day it sinks a little further. The fearsome day awaits, when America, if not quickly recovered by its real citizens, will tilt its nose into the water to begin a rapid and final descent into oblivion … her many resources saved for whom?
Edwin X Berry, PhD [send him mail] is an atmospheric physicist and certified consulting meteorologist with Climate Physics, LLC in Montana. Visit his website.
Now, Europe
From Heliogenic Climate Change:
Economic death march in Europe
“European non-ferrous metals producers may move to countries where environmental legislation is less strict unless the impact of forthcoming measures is reduced, an industry spokesman said on Thursday.
Javier Targhetta, president of Eurometaux, said the industry was concerned over high and unpredictable power costs [and] the added cost of a new emissions trading scheme (ETS) in 2013 …
Targhetta was particularly concerned over what he said was the reluctance of utilities to sell power for terms of three years or more following deregulation for heavy users in Spain last year.
“This increases long-term insecurity and leads to a halt in investment. If we carry on like this, the industry is destined to disappear,” he said.
Eurometaux estimates a new phase of the ETS could hike its power costs by an unsustainable 150-200 million euros ($221.1-294.8 million), and may prompt “carbon leakage,” or relocation to countries where emission costs are low or nil.
“Carbon will still be produced, it will still be producing the greenhouse effect, but a European plant will have been lost,” Targhetta said.”
…
Electricity accounts for an average of 35 percent of production costs for non-ferrous metals — 60 percent for aluminum — and producers say big differences in policy between European countries and lack of interconnection make power more expensive.
Source: Reuters, “Europe metals producers warn of relocation”
Read the Eurometaux press release here (PDF)
About the “Aluminum Pyramid”, here it is being set:
From Wikipedia:
The building of the monument proceeded quickly after Congress had provided sufficient funding. In four years, it was finally completed, with the 100 ounce (2.85 kg) aluminum tip/lightning-rod being put in place on December 6, 1884. It was the largest single piece of aluminum cast at the time. In 1884 aluminum was as expensive as silver, both $1 per ounce.
Over time, however, the price of the metal dropped; the invention of the Hall-Héroult electric refining process in 1886 caused the high price of aluminum to permanently collapse. The monument opened to the public on October 9, 1888.
Still confused? It is the Washington monument.
Read the history of the aluminum cap here:
The Point of a Monument: A History of the Aluminum Cap of the Washington Monument
In re: question about the inscriptions on the photo of the capstone:
http://www.glasssteelandstone.com/BuildingDetail/353.php
Much has been written about the phrase “Laus Deo” appearing at the capstone of the Washington Monument. In fact, so much has been written that it’s taking on the appearance of an urban legend. While, technically, it is true that the Latin phrase meaning “Praise to God” is engraved at the top of the monument, it is disingenuous to state that fact without putting it into context: The phrase is just a very small part of a much larger series of engravings.
* The north side of the monument has this inscription:
Joint commission at setting of capstone.
Chester A. Arthur.
W.W. Corcoran, Chairman.
M.E. Bell.
Edward Clark.
John Newton.
Act of August 2, 1876.
* The east side of the monument has this inscription:
Laus Deo
* The west side of the monument has this inscription:
Corner stone laid on bed of foundation July 4, 1848.
First stone at height of 152 feet laid August 7, 1880.
Capstone set December 6, 1884.
* The south side of the monument has this inscription:
Chief engineer and architect, Thos. Lincoln Casey, Colonel, Corps of Engineers.
Assistants: George W. Davis, Captain, 14th Infantry. Bernard R. Green, Civil Engineer.
Master Mechanic: P.H. McLaughlin.
_Jim (12:01:28) :
Mike Lorrey (02:36:32) :
…
Claire Wolfe said, in 1992 over the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents
“Was Claire Wolfe clairvoyant/could she see into the future?
(Mike, make a note, Waco happened in 1993, with the investigation beginning in 1992 under Bush I)
Was what Claire wrote in “Backwoods Magazine” or in an issue of “Outlaw Living”?”
LOL sorry you are correct, it was 1993. As I recall, I read about her recollecting saying that in a piece on her blog in 2003 or so… The earliest citation I can find in Google in June 9, 1999 on TheFiringLine.com forums:
“America is at that awkward stage.
It’s too late to work within the system,
but too early to start shooting the bastards.”
–Claire Wolfe
Used as someones sigline.
I suspect this is only because google isn’t much older than this citation… Wikipedia credits the line to her book “101 Things to Do Til The Revolution”, published in 1996. She also attributes it to the book as well on her blog site, so I suppose that is the correct date. I am not sure if the book is a compilation of articles published previously or not…
DeWitt Payne (08:39:00) :
If you have something to say then say it.
The minute you decide that others are beneath your contempt you are the problem.
R Dunn (06:11:25) :
IR emission from the colder upper atmosphere does not violate the second law of thermodynamics
If the claim was being made that the IR emissions from the colder upper atmosphere were raising the temperature of the surface then that would be a violation.
The IR emitted from above merely slows the cooling of the warmer lower layers and the surface.
John in Spain (04:21:12) :
jorgekafkazar (22:17:11) :
(Quote) ‘Ron: a search of the relevant document, which I believe is:
http://docs.house.gov/rules/health/111_ahcaa.pdf,
reveals that there is no “section 7203.” The number 7203 doesn’t even appear in the document. I suspect somebody has fallen victim to disinformation.’
http://docs.house.gov/rules/health/111_ahcaa.pdf
(unquote)
—————————————————–
“I hope Ron does not mind me jumping in here, but you will find section 7203 is related to “THE INTERNAL REVENUE CODE OF 1986″, not Health Bill H.R. 3962.”
Thanks, John in Spain. Quite so. The IRS Code is Title 26 USC § 7203. There is no reference to Title 26 USC § 7203 in HR 3962, thus the draconian measures cited by Ron appear to be disinformation on someone’s part. You find a lot of that kind of thing on the Internerd.
Quote: “Please state your case that CO2 drives the climate. I don’t want to hear that coal, cars, manufacturing, other CO2 producing wiggets are bad.
CO2 lags temperature, hockey stick is broken and up side down, the heat in the oceans ran off with the hot spot in the atmosphere and can’t be found.”
I could not, and would not dare to try. I am not a climatologist, nor even a physicist. Neither are you, I suspect. I’ll just say this. I have yet to read something that can convince me that we can change the composition of the atmosphere and not expect an impact on the climate. Yes, it is true that CO2 amounts to less than 1% of the atmosphere, but that is precisely why, given its major effect on the global temperature, doubling its amount (which we are on course to doing within the next few decades) seems like a crazy experiment to me. And if doubling it is not enough, should we go on and triple it? Just to see what’s happening then? I hear the science, and I can detect around me the signs that global warming is happening. Where I live, in PA, winters are not what they used to be. In Belgium, where I come from, it’s the same thing. I’ll admit that I don’t feel that summers are hotter, but winters are definitely warmer. Pictures of retreating glaciers all over the world are startling. Arctic summer ice will soon be a thing of the past (http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE59S3LT20091029?sp=true). Even if in the future science determines that after all it’s not truly caused by CO2, I don’t see the harm in shifting to a low carbon/sustainable economy. There are about 3 billions people in the world that are currently on a fast track to reach the standard of living that 1 billion people currently enjoy, and one does not need to be a brain surgeon to see where this is heading: conflicts and wars over dwindling finite resources, including fossil fuels. Caution is a conservative virtue, and I can’t fathom why conservatively minded people would edge their bets on unknown future solutions to resolve these predictable problems, unless their loathing of everything painted as “liberal” or their rage against a “socialist takeover” makes them lose their senses. The left has its crazies too. For similarly misguided sentiments (but against different targets, such as “big corporations”), they’re against progressive solutions, such as genetically modified food, vaccines, etc. It’s all completely ridiculous. The truth is that we will soon be 9 billions people on this earth, and that it increasingly feels crowded. Our societies are going to have to become a lot more sophisticated if we want to give everyone a fair living, and preserve the ability of future generations to do the same.
BTW, I will agree with one of the points made earlier, which is that we need a lot of energy. Ultimately, lots of energy is essential to a sustainable economy, because (in addition to manufacturing and all the other needs) recycling raw materials uses a lot of it. I just think that it needs to come from other sources than fossil fuels. I’m not against nuclear power, but increasingly there seems to be solutions with renewables. Offshore wind and concentrated solar power (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/04/14/solar_electric_thermal/index.html) seem to hold great promises.
chmd:
Aside from the fact that CO2 [“carbon” to you] has negligible to zero effect on the climate, and the fact that almost all the tiny effect of CO2 already occurred in the first 20 ppm, even doubling CO2 from its current level [an extremely unlikely scenario] will not cause more than a fraction of a degree increase in temperature, you still say:
“Even if in the future science determines that after all it’s not truly caused by CO2, I don’t see the harm in shifting to a low carbon/sustainable economy.”
Do you see how completely illogical that statement is? You’re saying that even if CO2 is not the cause of a problem, we should still blame it for the problem. Particularly if blaming CO2 for a non-problem destroys our economy [including your job]. That is enormous ‘harm’ to the economy, wouldn’t you say?
Apparently you are not aware of the fact that CO2 has been more than twenty times higher in the geological past, with no ill effects on the planet. Or of the fact that the current increase in CO2 is almost all the result of natural processes, and not from human activity.
And our current economy is completely ‘sustainable’: it functions just fine, by providing all the necessities and luxuries that people want, without polluting the air and water; we’re not anything like mainland China, which always gets a free pass from the enviros.
You are correct in saying that we need a lot of energy. But windmills and solar will never come close to replacing fossil fuels and nuclear power, which are absolutely necessary to maintain our national wealth.
Finally, ‘retreating glaciers’ are always being blamed on CO2 by enviro propagandists. But that canard has been repeatedly debunked. Glacier advance and retreat is a function of precipitation [snow] at higher altitudes. If CO2 was the cause of glacier retreat, then all of the glaciers would be retreating.
But out of the planet’s 160,000 glaciers, some are always advancing and some are always retreating. Glaciers are one of the easiest things to cherry-pick, which is why the alarmist crowd likes to select a few retreating glaciers, and claim that those particular glaciers are representative of all glaciers, and that their cherry-picked retreating glaciers prove that a change in a tiny trace gas is the cause. Even you would have to admit that is simply bogus AGW propaganda.
Chmd,
You say you “I could not [state the case that CO2 drives the climate], and would not dare to try. I am not a climatologist, nor even a physicist. Neither are you, I suspect.”
But you see Chmd, if you do not dare to embrace the science, then on what premise can you argue that CO2 is dangerously warming the climate? Is this an appeal to authority? Many skeptics have started out from the alarmists position, but then have “dared” to look at the science, and what we have found has shocked us. We have “dared” to look behind the curtains and found the smoke and mirrors.
I could quote from among peer reviewed literature, papers by Lindzen, Pielke, Christy, Spencer, Eschenbach, Scafetta, Myhre, Akasofu, Douglass, McIntyre all of whom have robustly challenged the dogma of a few cloistered warmists. These are not “big oil shills” as some try to claim, nor are they nutters. They are all eminent climate scientists who are showing that observations do not support the hypothesis that CO2 is significantly warming the planet, a hypothesis that is predicated on the false premise that historical climate has remained fixed for millenia, in contradiction of overwhelming evidence that temperatures were warmer than today a thousand years ago. I could point to 200 more papers that show that the medieval warm period was real, global, and warmer than today – a mountain of evidence against the warmists broken hockey stick.
If you still do not “dare” to look behind the curtains, that is up to you, but please don’t dismiss the arguments of those courageous enough to do so.
chmd (22:33:17) :
‘Even if in the future science determines that after all it’s not truly caused by CO2, I don’t see the harm in shifting to a low carbon/sustainable economy. There are about 3 billions people in the world that are currently on a fast track to reach the standard of living that 1 billion people currently enjoy, and one does not need to be a brain surgeon to see where this is heading: conflicts and wars over dwindling finite resources, including fossil fuels.’
Just as I thought. The end justifies the means.
CO2 is currently at about 380 parts per million, which is 3.8 hundredths of one percent, .038%. That is a lot “less than 1%.” And the human contribution, from burning fossil fuels, making concrete, etc., is at most 5% of that, or .019%.
Considering that CO2 has been much greater in the geological past, with no detectible effects other than more luxuriant plant growth (CO2 is vital plant food), this contribution is trivial. And considering that no one has shown empirically that CO2 causes any warming whatsoever (it’s purely theoretical, and ‘confirmed’ only by models into which it is built as an assumption), continuing to burn fossil fuels hardly seems like much of a ‘crazy experiment’ to me.
They want to scare you, don’t you see? Scared people can be manipulated and herded, maybe into ‘global governance’.
/Mr Lynn
Mr Lynn,
Your calculation 5% of 0.038% should be 0.0019% not 0.019%.
As you correctly point out however, burning fossil fuels is not an experiment. To refer to the life blood of civilization in this way is to trivialize the problem. It is the same sort of nonsense as when people talk about being “addicted to oil” (or is it only foreign oil that counts as an addiction?) It’s all rhetoric and sophistry, designed to replace reasoned argument with snappy sound bites for the credulous.
The common thread in the statements above is the belief that CO2 is not a problem, because it’s too small in quantity, or has been much higher in the past, etc. I would normally have no reason to believe differently (i.e., it’s “common sense” that something that’s only 380ppm in the air would not have a major impact), except that the vast majority of scientists tell me otherwise, and convincingly so. I have encountered the objections raised here, and investigated them in order to form my opinion, only to seem them debunked to orbit. At the end of the day, we all have to separate the wheat from the chaff, and make a choice as to whom we believe. Trust in contrarians like those mentioned here, instead of in the mainstream scientists, is generally accompanied with what seems to me like paranoid fixations (Al Gore, the UN, a take over by green commies, greatest hoax in history, etc.). It’s as if those beliefs have to be supported by other (sinister) factors in order to be, well, believable. Sorry, but I don’t buy it. Science has a good track record of adopting out of the mainstream ideas, *if* they can stand on their own merit and prove successful. It may take some time and encounter resistance, but the best ideas eventually win. Ask Einstein or Niels Bohr, (or Fred Hoyle for that matter).
In the meantime, we need to do something. There are plenty of low hanging fruits to pick first, before we commit to large scale infrastructure changes, starting with efficiency and the reduction of waste.
chmd,
You label scientific skepticism as a “belief”, despite the complete lack of any empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that CO2 causes catastrophic AGW [CAGW]. But scientific skepticism does not operate on beliefs, like the purveyors of catastrophic AGW do. Skeptics simply say, “Prove it.” Or at least provide solid, empirical evidence to support the CO2=CAGW conjecture. But there is no real world, empirically measurable evidence of a global temperature rise attributable to human emitted carbon dioxide. There are human programmed computer models, and erudite opinions. But there is no measurable, empirical evidence.
If you want skeptics to accept your hypothesis, then you need to provide some solid, real world, verifiable and reproducible evidence that shows a direct correlation between a rise in CO2 and a subsequent rise in global temperatures. Since global temperatures have been flat to declining for most of the past decade, good luck with that.
Regarding CO2 causing CAGW, you say:
It sounds like you’ve been listening to the self-reinforcing echo chamber realclimate. They are the real contrarians. They refuse to engage in any neutral, moderated debate, and they censor opposing points of view. That’s not science, that is political activism. The fact that the planet is falsifying their CAGW alarmism is enough for most folks. Why do you believe the rent-seeking grant hogs at realclimate, over what planet Earth is clearly telling you?
Your claim regarding “mainstream” scientists is also completely wrong. For one example, more than 31,000 U.S. scientists have already signed the OISM Petition, which states:
Dr Frederick Seitz, past President of the National Academy of Sciences, wrote the petition’s cover letter. You can not get more ‘mainstream’ than Dr Seitz. Yet you futilely attempt to marginalize the tens of thousands of scientists who signed that statement. Compare that number with the fewer than a hundred political appointees who put together the UN/IPCC’s Assessment Reports, and you will begin to understand where the true scientific “consensus” exists.
And we do not, in your words, “need to do something.” Even the Hero of the Alarmists, Al Gore, has now backed away from his claim that CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming. Gore has his finger to the wind. He understands that the only “evidence” that CO2 will cause CAGW comes from always-inaccurate computer models, and from grant-seeking authors who get papers published that cite other like-minded grant seeking authors, in a self-confirming circular argument. But none of that is empirical evidence. Real world evidence is raw data, none of which supports the CO2=CAGW claim — and their putative ‘evidence’ is routinely withheld. They are saying in effect: “Trust us.” But their mounting dishonesty makes that impossible. We need to see their claimed evidence.
The alarmist crowd always turns the Scientific Method on its head, by trying to convince folks that it is skeptical scientists who have something to prove or disprove. But the Scientific Method says that skeptical scientists [which includes all honest scientists] have nothing to prove. Skeptics only ask for solid, verifiable evidence sufficient to falsify any proposed hypothesis.
According to the Scientific Method, it is those purveying the CO2=CAGW conjecture who have the burden of showing that it explains reality better than the long accepted theory of natural climate variability. They have failed to do so. The fact that climate alarmists reject the Scientific Method means that they are political advocates first, and mendacious scientists second.
The demonizing of a tiny trace gas, which is entirely beneficial and necessary to life, is all about money and control, my friend. But if you have solid empirical, reproducible and measurable evidence that CO2 will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe, by all means, post it here. You will be the first to have done so.
Oops! That human contribution is even more trivial!
/Mr Lynn
Eric A (15:31:51) :
Eric, I’m afraid you didn’t look back far enough. As a Montanan, I’m especially bitter about electricity deregulation. There has always been more than enough power in Montana for Montanans. Before 2000, Montana Power was a regulated power company that produced power for much less than current rates.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/06/60minutes/main539719.shtml
After deregulation, Montana Power company’s executives and a a few political turncoats (Marc Racicot) cashed in and permanently damaged economics in the state.
I’m still waiting for “Market Economics” to start paying us back on that one. It’s been about 10 years now.
Lets look at 2 gases
a poison – Hydrogen Sulphide H2S
And a benificial to all life nutrient – CO2
H2S
http://www.drthrasher.org/toxicology_of_hydrogen_sulfide.html
10 ppm
Beginning of Eye Irritation
50-100 ppm
Slight conjunctivitis and respiratory tract irritation after one hour
100 ppm
Coughing, eye irritation, loss of sense of smell after 2-15 minutes. Altered respiration, pain the eyes, and drowsiness after 15-30 minutes followed by throat irritation after one hour. Several hours exposure results in gradual increase in severity of symptoms and death may occur within the next 48 hours.
200-300 ppm
Marked conjunctivitis and respiratory tract irritation after one hour exposure.
500-700 ppm
Loss of consciousness and possibly death in 30 minutes to one hour of exposure.
700-1000 ppm
Rapid unconsciousness, cessation of respiration, and death
1000-2000 ppm
Unconsciousness at once, with early cessation of respiration and death in a few minutes. Death may occur if individual is removed to fresh air at once.
The most dangerous aspect of hydrogen sulfide results from olfactory accomodation and/or olfactory paralysis. This means that the individual can accomodate to the odor and is not able to detect the presence of the chemical after a short period of time. Olfactory paralysis occurs in workers who are exposed to 150 ppm or greater. This occurs rapidly, leaving the worker defenseless. Unconsciousness and death has been recorded following prolonged exposure at 50 ppm.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10998771
There were 80 fatalities from hydrogen sulfide in 57 incidents, with 19 fatalities and 36 injuries among coworkers attempting to rescue fallen workers.
CO2
Carbon dioxide is an asphyxiant. It initially stimulates respiration and then causes respiratory depression.
High concentrations result in narcosis. Symptoms in humans are as follows:
EFFECT: CONCENTRATION:
Breathing rate increases slightly. 1% (10,000ppm)
Breathing rate increases to 50% above normal level. Prolonged
exposure can cause headache, tiredness.
2%
Breathing increases to twice normal rate and becomes labored. Weak
narcotic effect. Impaired hearing, headache, increased blood pressure
and pulse rate.
3%
Breathing increases to approximately four times normal rate, symptoms
of intoxication become evident, and slight choking may be felt.
4 – 5%
Characteristic sharp odor noticeable. Very labored breathing,
headache, visual impairment, and ringing in the ears. Judgment may be
impaired, followed within minutes by loss of consciousness.
5 – 10%
Unconsciousness occurs more rapidly above 10% level. Prolonged
exposure to high concentrations may eventually result in death from
asphyxiation.
10 – 100%
http://yarchive.net/med/co2_poisoning.html
All true, but the subjective distress is almost entirely caused by
the high CO2. Humans don’t have good hypoxia sensors, and people have
walked into nitrogen filled rooms and died, before they even realized
there was anything wrong. You can breathe into a closed circuit which
takes out the CO2 until you pass out from hypoxia, without much
discomfort at all. On the other hand, in a submarine or someplace
where CO2 is building up but there’s plenty of oxygen, it’s intensely
uncomfortable, and feels like dying. So does breathing that 5% CO2 95%
O2 medical mix they treat CO victims with.
And when the CO2 hits about 7% to 10% of your ambient air, you DO
die. Even if the rest is O2. It’s CO2 narcosis, and it shuts you
down. 5% CO2 is about 40 Torr, your normal blood level. So if you
breath that, you go up to 80 Torr, enough to black you out unless you
hyperventilate. Double your minute volume and you can get down to 60
Torr, but you feel crumby. At 10% there’s no way to keep below about
90 Torr, and (unless you’re a chronic COPD patient who’s used to high
CO2s and has a high bicarb and other compensatory mechanisms) you black
out. Then quit hyperventilating. Then quit breathing entirely.
http://www.therhondda.co.uk/gases/carbon_dioxide.html
included to show that the combined effects of carbon dioxide and a shortage of oxygen are much more intense than either of the two conditions alone,
So firstly it is not benign above 50,000ppm
Secondly it is not poisonous but it kills:
deaths :
Look up “choke damp” in mines
look up lake nyos 2000 deaths / lake monoun 37 deaths
So please cut the stuff about how CO2 is the stuff of life.
chmd (22:33:17)
“In Belgium, where I come from, … winters are definitely warmer.”
I live in Antwerp, still in Belgium last time I looked. Last winter was unusually cold – several subzero spells including one a month long. The lake near our flats froze solid for several weeks, people were ice skating on it, a rare event.
It was getting warmer till about 2004, now its getting colder, due to natural ocean-driven cycles (various Atlantic and Pacific decadal oscillations).
I agree its worrying in principle that CO2 may have been significantly increased by fossil fuel burning (although even this is disputed scientifically – ocean temperature change and volcanic activity are other possible culprits). However the scientific case for late 20th century warming to be CO2-related and thus anthropogenic is very weak indeed.
And higher CO2 might even have positives – faster plant growth for example. (The idea that marine corals are damaged by current CO2-related ocean acidification is falsified by the flourishing of corals in previous geological periods with much higher atmospheric CO2 than today.)
Consider also – the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere is due to the activity if living organisms, changing a reducing atmosphere to an oxygen rich atmosphere 2 billion years ago. Not such a bad thing as it turned out.
Cooling toward glaciation is what we should really be worried about, climate-wise, not warming.
Smokey (01:07:29) :
Apparently you are not aware of the fact that CO2 has been more than twenty times higher in the geological past, with no ill effects on the planet. Or of the fact that the current increase in CO2 is almost all the result of natural processes, and not from human activity
This value for CO2 in the past is of course produced by a simulation (geocarb3) and I thought you did not believe in any climate simulations?
Assuming CO2 was this high with no detriment to the planet, then perhaps you would also acccept the change in sea levels accompanying these levels of CO2?
I think you will find most warmists do not expect the world to end if the CO2 level doubles. Certainly, what I expect is simply climate change – some hotter some cooler some drier, some wetter locations in the world coupled with more extreme weather.
A couple of deg C rise will not be disastrous for some of the world but unfortunately the ice caps on Greenland for example will shrink and the sea levels will rise.
A few metres rise will cause many western locations to hit problems – remember it is not just the simple rise but also the increased erosion caused by sea hitting normally unexposed land. If the rise is similar to the periods in prehistory you seem to lust after then western civilisation we wish to preserve will be all but destroyed (again life will not extinct, the world will still be here).
A further point is of course all those nuclear reactors providing nearly free electricity will all be submerged (they are usually built close to sea level for cooling water). Sizewell B’s idyllic sea front location:
http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/5627/sizewelbam4.jpg
Smokey,
You have answered chmd’s post eloquently. I would add that the biggest victory of the alarmists movement is to convince the world that their view represents the consensus of mainstream science. They have been so utterly successful that this has become a truism. Nobody in their right mind would question that would they?
Well, let’s try. The IPCC claims that 3,800 scientists agreed on the CAGW position. However, many have been counted twice or more as lead authors, contributors and reviewers, so the figure is actually 2,500 individuals. But the vast number have nothing to do with greenhouse gases. The number of authors that contributed to chapter 9 number only 53. Think about that number for a moment. There are only 53 scientists who have written papers that the IPCC referenced in chapter 9 to support their case. There are easily that number of scientists who do not take the same view and have contributed to contrary papers that have never been cited in the IPCC report because it does not support their hypothesis.
So far there are 6 problems with the CO2 hypothesis that have not been resolved:
1) Lack of accumulation of joules of heat in the oceans since 2003.
2) Lack of mid tropical troposphere hotspot
3) Confirmed existence of prior warm periods supporting the null hypothesis of natural variability.
4) Lack of correlation between sea surface temperatures and outgoing radiation as measured by Lindzen and Choi.
5) Over reliance on unsupported positive feedbacks in the climate models
6) Poor correlation between CO2 levels and average global temps.
This is common knowledge and the warmists have no answer, or at best resort to arm waving appeals to “heat in the pipeline” etc.
Call me a skeptic.
bill,
I don’t know what your point is. So CO2 is toxic at 2% . Are you suggesting that such a level could exist as even a remote possibility?
Even oxygen is toxic at about 1.8 bar and as any diver knows, nitrogen becomes toxic around 6 bar. And yes, CO2 underpins the entire ecosystem, so technically, it is the stuff of life, as is nitrogen and oxygen.
BTW, if CO2 is as dangerous as you claim, then the last thing we should be trying to do is concentrate it into its pure form and inject into the ground.
bill,
“A few metres rise will cause many western locations to hit problems”
Where did the figure of a few metres rise come from? The IPCC predicts a rise of between 18cm and 59cm by 2100. And since AR4 was published, new research has shown the rate of sea level rise to be falling, so the lower estimate seems the more likely.
http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/files/Cazenave_et_al_GPC_2008.pdf
But why let facts spoil a good yarn?
bill:
“This value for CO2 in the past is of course produced by a simulation (geocarb3) and I thought you did not believe in any climate simulations?”
You misrepresent my post. Re-framing the argument is a favorite tactic of alarmists.
I stated that there is no empirical evidence for catastrophic AGW [CAGW]. But there is plenty of empirical evidence for fluctuating CO2 levels, such as the Vostok ice cores [and as you can see, rises in CO2 follow rises in temperature].
Furthermore, the fact that sea levels are rising much less than the average since the LIA has been repeatedly verified here. As CO2 levels increase, the sea level rise has decreased, negating your scary prediction of a giant sea level rise. [Nice picture, though. And note that Al Gore’s latest mansion is even closer to the water.]
Your hand-wringing cut ‘n’ paste regarding the lethality of CO2 is so completely unrelated to AGW that it should be ignored. But I’ll help you understand:
You exhale about 40,000 ppm of CO2 with each breath. [Contrast that with the alarmism over less than 390 ppm of atmospheric CO2.] But when someone is given mouth to mouth CPR, that 40,000 ppm of CO2 does no damage at all.
My boy was in the Navy for six years, serving on a nuclear attack sub. CO2 levels below 5,000 ppmv are routinely considered safe — and sometimes the submarine stayed submerged for months at a time.
Your alarmism over CO2 levels that are high enough to cause asphyxiation have no place in a discussion about atmospheric trace gas levels. But when that’s the argument you’ve got, I guess that’s the argument you have to go with.
In truth, CO2 is just as necessary to life on Earth as H2O. You can drown in water, and you can suffocate in CO2. But that has nothing to do with the CO2=CAGW claim, or with *very* slowly rising sea levels.
If rising CO2 caused abnormally rising sea levels, we would see it in the raw data, since CO2 has been rising for more than a century. But the data falsifies that alarming claim. So you can relax.
bill (10:30:22) :
Lets look at 2 gases
a poison – Hydrogen Sulphide H2S
And a benificial to all life nutrient – CO2
Bill, you have just got to be kidding me. That is just the most ridiculous analogy I’ve seen in a long time. Too much of anything will cause major problems or death. Lets start with a room full of nitrogen, or a room full of hydrogen, or maybe we should just fill the room full of H2O.
Someday you are going to have to look at life in terms of the positive not the negative. We are not doing damage to the earth, we are merely living on it. It is much bigger than we are and it can look after itself. Start to think in terms that chemicals have given you the quality of life that you currently enjoy now. You concentrate far too much on the dark side.
Bill is ignorant. You are wasting your time trying to argue with a non-sentient follower of a Southern televangelist bible thumper. His ersatz Druid religion provides him all the dogma that his little mind can possibly ingest.
Notice how he trots out his list of eco-catastrophes, non of which are catastrophes at all. Indeed outside of Chernobyl direct environs, I can’t think of a single place that is a catastrophe. And that problem is a problem because it was created by the evil prophets of his Druid religion, Socialist bureaucrats.
Eventually when the Ukraine is wealthier, Chernobyl will be cleaned up, the Transuranics actinide burned, and the fission byproducts allowed to decay to background levels in a hundred years, in a designed for the purpose repository. For now we accept that the Ad hoc repository is doing the job.
The only world-wide eco-catastrophe was the Plant strangulation of the Pre-Cambrian explosion. Bill is so ignorant he doesn’t list it because he doesn’t know of it; as I am sure the Gorebull knot head doesn’t know of it either. Since teh knotheads Science training is non-exsitent too.
Plants altered the composition of the atmosphere. They ate-out most of the atmospheric CO2 which was as much as 25% of the atmosphere until there was only a trace amount of that nutritious gas remaining. The Plants at the same time excreted and liberated vast amounts of this corrosive gas called free Oxygen. That made it possible to destroy vast areas of plant life in conflagrations called “Forest fires”. It also led to a rise in life forms that thrived on the corrosive gas.
CO2 reductions stunted plant growth to the level we see today from the previous luxuriant levels once common. The Plant’s eco-catastrophe unleashed a new life form which lives on devouring and destroying plant life. The Plants I assume called them ultimately evil. We call them animals; and from our animal point of view that wasn’t a catastrophe at all.
Bill said “So please cut the stuff about how CO2 is the stuff of life.”
Bill you said this after a very long post showing the “dangers” of absurd levels of CO2. By this logic water is also not the “stuff of life” as if you inhale to much you will drown.
Really, I am sorry, but a long pointless post it was.
Wow, so little time and so much to say. This site never disappoints me. I usually drop by to learn something heady about science. Today, I learned. Oddly, there wasn’t much science that hasn’t been stated repeatedly here. Some of the things I learned today reading this article and subsequent posts: teh = the, except angrier. Factual discovery is almost impossible without Google. And the most amazing discovery is how literally ignorant(not the insulting kind) are people in regard to energy production, price, availability, distribution, consumption and the effects the laws we are attempting to pass on previously mentioned aspects. PLEASE EDUCATE YOURSELVES!!! bbl