Guest post by Steve Goreham, Climate Science Coalition of America
In an address to Green Mountain College on May 15, Carol Browner, Director of Energy and Climate Change Policy, stated “The sooner the U.S. puts a cap on our dangerous carbon pollution, the sooner we can create a new generation of clean energy jobs here in America…” In July, 2009, President Obama lauded the “Cash for Clunkers” program, stating that the initiative “gives consumers a break, reduces dangerous carbon pollution, and our dependence on foreign oil…”
Unfortunately, our President is misinformed about carbon pollution.
The phrase “dangerous carbon pollution” has become standard propaganda from environmental groups.
An example is a May, 2010 press release from the World Wildlife Fund that called for “a science-based limit on dangerous carbon pollution that will send a strong signal to the private sector.” Environmentalists have successfully painted a picture of black particle emissions into the atmosphere. This misconception is being used to drive efforts for Cap & Trade legislation, renewable energy, and every sort of restriction on our light bulbs, vehicles, and houses—all in the misguided attempt to stop climate change.
Carbon is integral to our skin, our muscles, our bones, and throughout the body of each person. Carbon forms more than 20% of the human body by weight. We are full of this “dangerous carbon pollution” by natural metabolic processes.
It’s true that incomplete combustion emits carbon particles that can cause smoke and smog. But this particulate carbon pollution is well controlled by the Clean Air Act of 1970 and many other federal and state statutes.
According to Environmental Protection Agency data, U.S. air quality today is significantly better than it was in 1980. Since 1980, airborne concentration of carbon monoxide is down 79%, lead is down 92%, nitrogen dioxide is down 46%, ozone is down 25%, and sulfur dioxide is down 71%. Carbon particulates have been tracked for fewer years, but PM10 particulates are down 31% since 1990 and PM2.5 particulates are down 19% since 2000. Over the same period, electricity consumption from coal-fired power plants rose 72% and vehicle miles driven are up 91%. We do not need Cap & Trade, Renewable Portfolio Standards, or the California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32), to reduce carbon particulates.
Climatism! Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century’s Hottest Topic, Figure 78, data from EPA, 2006
The target of “dirty carbon pollution” propaganda is carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is an invisible, odorless, harmless gas. It does not cause smog or smoke. Humans breathe out 100 times the CO2 we breathe in, created as our body uses sugars. But since it’s tough to call an invisible gas “dirty,” Climatists use “carbon” instead. It’s as wrong as calling water “hydrogen” or salt “chlorine.” Compounds have totally different properties than their composing elements.
Not only is carbon dioxide not a pollutant, it’s essential for life. As pointed out by geologist Leighton Steward, carbon dioxide is green! Carbon dioxide is plant food. Increased atmospheric CO2 causes plants and trees to grow faster and larger, increase their root systems, and improve their resistance to drought, as documented by hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers. Carbon dioxide is the best compound that mankind could put into the atmosphere to grow the biosphere.
This “carbon pollution” nonsense is driven by Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate. In a debate at the Global Warming Forum at Purdue University on September 27, Dr. Susan Avery, President of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, was asked “What is the strongest empirical evidence that global warming is caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions rather than natural causes?” Neither Dr. Avery nor Dr. Robert Socolow of Princeton, who also presented, could provide an answer, except the ambiguous “There is lots of evidence.” In fact, Climatism is based largely on computer model projections. There is no empirical evidence that man-made greenhouse gases are the primary cause of global warming. According to Dr. Frederick Seitz, past President of the National Academy of Sciences, “Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.”
As Joanne Nova, Australian author, points out: “Everything on your dinner table—the meat, cheese, salad, bread, and soft drink—requires carbon dioxide to be there. For those of you who believe carbon dioxide is a pollutant, we have a special diet: water and salt.” So the next time you drink a beer or eat a meal, beware of that “dangerous carbon pollution.”
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of Climatism! Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century’s Hottest Topic.
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Zombie Drowned Polar Bear says:
October 10, 2010 at 10:06 am
“It’s goofy to think there is much gaseous migration over 4-5 miles up. Where and when you have to don a breathing apparatus when flying is at around 5 to 6 miles, folks, unless you fancy the idea of a stroke or other side effect of anoxia. Eight miles and you’re dead with your blood boiling and exploded eyeballs.”
I know. But the proponents of AGW assume that CO2 is randomly distributed all the way up into the stratosphere. I always wondered how the CO2 got up there when the O cannot get up there. According to Smoking Frog, there are these conveyor belts that conveniently distribute CO2 randomly in the atmosphere. I guess we can call this the “Conveyor Belts in the Sky” theory of CO2 distribution. My own guess is that everyone in climate science, even the good guys, are just relying on the randomness assumption when they calculate CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Climate science is truly in its infancy and every claim made by climate scienctists, except from what can be deduced from the characteristics of the CO2 molecule, go far beyond anything that is in the evidence. For example, at in recent times some climate scientists have argued that the oceans are absorbing a lot of CO2 and keeping us cool while other climate scientists have argued that the oceans are releasing CO2. In other words, they don’t have an experimental means to determine at the ocean surface which way the CO2 is flowing. How non-experimental can you be? This science is truly in its infancy and should not be used for any policy decision whatsoever.
Engineering policy is best dictated by engineers, not theoreticians who are not paying for any form of omissions and errors insurance whatsoever. Engineers are licenced and have to pay insurance much lie malpractice insurance for doctors so if they make a mistake and people get hurt they pay, and hard. Their rep and cred is on the line each and every working day in one of the most hard-ball professions in the world. If an engineer lies, he or she gets disbarred and goes to jail. If a scientist screws up or tells a whopper, he or she prevaricates and dithers and then goes back to the drawing board. Why Michael Mann and others can’t be nailed to the wall is they aren’t really licenced to do anything except provide theoretical scenarios which have no penalties for error attached whatsoever. They have no ante at the table of Life. They are kibitzers whose work may or may not be of immediate use or value except in and of itself. That once was the beauty of science: its total dispassion and freedom from vile economically preconceived resultant.
If anyone conclusively proves the climate scientists thus far to be wrong, they will just shrug and say, “Well. good. Let’s try this theory on, then.”
One of the first posters to this blog mentioned as climate research has no control benchmark, i.e., what would the world’s climate be like without humanity, there is therefore no way to validate anyone’s climate theory. Excellent point. Game over. :>p
Hal Lewis is right to do as he did. Watch what the next few weeks bring.
CO2 can without exaggeration be viewed as the material that gave rise to us all and keeps sustaining us. Our fundamental Progenitor and our permanent provider, you could say. Calling it a pollutant is a sign we have reached levels of blasphemy and desecration unthinkable only a few decades ago.
Primo Levi, a chemist, wrote a very readable “story of a carbon atom,” while detained in Auschwitz during WW2.
This is a brief excerpt from the part of the story when the atom whose “life” is being described becomes part of a CO2 molecule. (Before that, it had spent hundreds of millions of years in the form of limestone, from which it was finally freed in 1840 in a lime kiln, and then, “still firmly clinging to two of its three former oxygen companions,” went out the chimmney and began a new “tumultous existence.”) Levi makes a small aside at this point to comment on what he finds remarkable about CO2, and says the foollowing:
[…] “But there is more and worse, to our shame and that of our art. Carbon dioxide, that is, the aerial form of the carbon of which we have up till now spoken: this gas which constitutes the raw material of life, the permanent store upon which all that grows draws, and the ultimate destiny of all flesh, is not one of the principal components of air but rather a ridiculous remnant, an “impurity” thirty times less abundant than argon, which nobody even notices. The air contains 0.03 percent; if Italy was air, the only Italians fit to build life would be, for example, the fifteen thousand inhabitants of Milazzo in the province of Messina. This, on the human scale, is ironic acrobatics, a juggler’s trick, an incomprehensible display of omnipotence-arrogance, since from this ever renewed impurity of the air we come, we animals and we plants, and we the human species, with our four billion discordant opinions, our milleniums of history, our wars and shames, nobility and pride. In any event, our very presence on the planet becomes laughable in geometric terms: if all of humanity, about 250 million tons, were distributed in a layer of homogeneous thickness on all the emergent lands, the ‘stature of man’ would not be visible to the naked eye; the thickness one would obtain would be around sixteen thousandths of a millimeter.” […]
If anyone is interested in how real pollution looks like, watch this:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGfX6Eo5lsI&fs=1&hl=hu_HU]
Mars on Earth: Eco disaster in Hungary after red aluminum toxic sludge
In an industrial disaster 700,000 m3 of highly alkaline (pH 13, powerful lye) heavy metal laden red mud (waste product of aluminum manufacturing) flooded several towns, rivers and the countryside, seven killed, hundreds injured with next to lethal burns. Takes a year to clean up, for plant life if ever, several decades to recover, townships destroyed can never be rebuilt at the same place.
Liability insurance of the company responsible for it covers $50,000 in damages, its capital is also negligible compared to losses and expenses in life, health and property (up to a hundred million dollars). Therefore it will be payed for by taxpayers’ money, what else?
As soon as the stuff dries up, it turns into wind-blown fine powder, difficult not to inhale.
The problem with calling CO2 a pollutant just like any immediately dangerous stuff is it makes impossible to enact compulsory liability insurance policies covering all possible damages for corporations trading in potential pollutants.
This is why blurring the legal notion of “pollutant” by including harmless substances by sweeping generalizations is prime interest of corporate lobby groups.
Here, in Hungary we have 50,000,000 tons more of this mud stored in aging repositories, declared safe for the time being, nevertheless property prices in those areas are plummeting like stone.
Relief donations can be sent to:
National Saving Bank, Budapest
IBAN: HU7511702036-20707637-00000000
SWIFT: OTPVHUHB
Good grief, it’s really difficult to believe that those claiming measurements of CO2 are that is because the readings at Mauna Loa says they are..
Why would any scientists go to the worlds largest active volcano to measure man-made CO2? Not on that, but together with one of its neighbours, two of the worlds largest active volcanoes. Not only that, but on a volcano over a tremendously active hot spot, still creating the Hawaiian islands. N.o.t, but with a third volcano these three are all sitting on top of the same hot spot. N.o.t., but with all the accompanying vents and earthquakes, hundreds a year. N.o.t., but in a warm sea which dissolves CO2 and boosts it into the atmosphere to be blown about by winds. So why would a scientist go there to measure man-made CO2?
Why did this scientist go there? Because, most people were ignorant about Hawaii and after taking measurements for [i]less than two years [/i]he proclaimed he had found incontrovertible proof of a trend that atmospheric CO2 was increasing and, sadly, the rest is our miserable history where we are now teaching our children it is a poison and something to be feared. And AGW continues to promote that station as a pristine spot for measuring CO2.
This is an extremely active CO2 producing area, above and below sea level. Mauna Loa has erupted some 33 times since the mid 1800’s, it last erupted in 1984 and is still going, on average it has lava flow once every four years. From memory, I think the station is at around eleven thousand feet, below all the activity from the volcano, and, Carbon Dioxide is heavier than air, 1.5 times heavier, it sinks through air, displacing it. (*)
What on earth are they measuring? It can’t be anything meaningful as ‘general background atmospheric CO2’, it simply can’t. The background CO2 is volcanic.
And now Keeling’s son oversees Mauna Loa and has global monopoly of providing CO2 data.
What has really begun to irk me in all this, is the loss of all sense of carbon dioxide as the essential food in the Carbon Life Cycle. We are Carbon Life Forms, we evolved from it, without it we would die. It feeds the plants for growth in photosynthesis, and in extracting this the plants put oxygen into our air (which they also breathe in at night as we do). We need to continue breathing in oxygen, to deliver oxygen to our blood we need some 6% of carbon dioxide in our lungs. We need it where the plants and animal life evolved in reponse to it being available (this isn’t going to be a statement on any evolution theory..), but, plants are ‘designed or evolved’ to take it in from the underside of their leaves, much good it would do them or us to have it out of reach miles up in the atmosphere..
Only those who have never been taught the Carbon Life Cycle can ask the question, ‘why aren’t we standing knee deep in it, if gases separate by weight?’
(*)Which is why carbon dioxide is dangerous in breweries, because it displaces oxygen and pools invisibly from the floor up, and also dangerous for those cleaning out the vats, also in mines and pits; it can suffocate. It is heavier than air, it can’t then rise up and diffuse into the air unless another force comes to move it, ventilation, fan.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/charles-david-keeling-496637.html
Monday, 27 June 2005
“There seems little doubt now that the so-called “Keeling curve”, plotting his data from the observatory on the top of Mauna Loa, an 11,000ft extinct volcano in Hawaii, will be one of the key images in human history, as recognisable and as full of instant meaning as the crucifix or the swastika.”
Hmm. I wonder why it wasn’t promoted with the energy of the Hockey Stick?
This is a really good article from The Air Vent about CO2 measurements. It appears that CO2 levels aren’t unprecedented at all over the last 200 years:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/historic-variations-in-co2-measurements
Scrolling through the comments above I see appeals to common sense, but nothing that goes back to the fundamentals. To me these are:
Coal is fossilsed vegetation
All the carbon that vegetation sequested must have been in atmospheric CO2 beforehand.
Growing conditions must then have been ideal or there would now be no coal.
Putting that carbon back where it came from can only result in better climatic conditions, not worse.
Or am I missing something?
Please be fair, this sign is not an eco scare. It’s apparently a warning sign for industrial environments. CO2 can be dangerous in high concentrations.
Myrrh says:
October 10, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Good grief, it’s really difficult to believe that those claiming measurements of CO2 are that is because the readings at Mauna Loa says they are..
Why would any scientists go to the worlds largest active volcano to measure man-made CO2? Not on that, but together with one of its neighbours, two of the worlds largest active volcanoes. Not only that, but on a volcano over a tremendously active hot spot, still creating the Hawaiian islands. N.o.t, but with a third volcano these three are all sitting on top of the same hot spot. N.o.t., but with all the accompanying vents and earthquakes, hundreds a year. N.o.t., but in a warm sea which dissolves CO2 and boosts it into the atmosphere to be blown about by winds. So why would a scientist go there to measure man-made CO2?
Why did this scientist go there? Because, most people were ignorant about Hawaii and after taking measurements for [i]less than two years [/i]he proclaimed he had found incontrovertible proof of a trend that atmospheric CO2 was increasing and, sadly, the rest is our miserable history where we are now teaching our children it is a poison and something to be feared. And AGW continues to promote that station as a pristine spot for measuring CO2.
This is an extremely active CO2 producing area, above and below sea level. Mauna Loa has erupted some 33 times since the mid 1800′s, it last erupted in 1984 and is still going, on average it has lava flow once every four years. From memory, I think the station is at around eleven thousand feet, below all the activity from the volcano, and, Carbon Dioxide is heavier than air, 1.5 times heavier, it sinks through air, displacing it. (*)
@Myrrh: Even here at WUWT it is acknowledged that the measurements at Mauna Loa are ok. Please read this guest post by Willis Eschenbach first, it will tell you exactly why they chose Mauna Loa as location to measure CO2: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/04/under-the-volcano-over-the-volcano/
Mike says: October 9, 2010 at 12:55 pm . . .“And climate change is about more than temperature. Droughts have pushed down global plant growth despite CO2 being plant food. Turns out plants gota’ drink too!
http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/plant-growth-decline-drought-0459/”
Mike, do you read and think through the articles you post. The article conceded that the analysis points to a mere 1% decline over ten years – due to droughts – while the previous gain was 6%. So no overall decline. Also, farmers would be amazed to learn that their crop yields are down in the last ten years – all that production increase must be imaginary bushels! In addition, please remember that in the ten years of a 1% decline, estimates of global mean temperatures actually declined a little. Finally, it doesn’t take much metrological study to see that the regional droughts are driven by decadal oscillations which have not been blamed on CO2.
I humbly submit my take on “Carbon Pollution”:
http://davesuncommonsense.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-is-carbon-pollution.html
Flavio, this the view I agree with as to why the location was chosen. This is an extremely active volcanic CO2 producing area, what one can guarantee by sticking a flask amongst such immense volcanic activity is abundant capture of CO2. That anyone can claim they have eliminated all volcanic activity from their samples is, I think, bordering on the miraculous. But Keeling obviously had miraculous scientific powers, it takes normal scientists years and years of measurements to establish trends, he did it in around 18 months. To choose this site to measure ‘man-made atmospheric’ CO2 is absurd, to continue promoting this as a pristine site to measure atmospheric man-made CO2 is disingenous.
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/kilauea/
for map and info
Keeling began by cherry picking to get his base, claiming that he was picking for unpolluted by surroundings figures. By going to Hawaii and parking himself on the most active volcanic island there was one thing he was guaranteed to have, lots of CO2 to choose from. I don’t see any scientific integrity with his measurements, all they show is they could be made to fit his agenda to find rising amounts.
http://adognamedkyoto.blogspot.com/2007/03/becks-138-year-long-record-of.html
That these kept rising regardless of the cold decades last century is the reason you’ll get such explanations of the curve as here: http://openlearn.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=397988§ion=1.3.3
“The story of atmospheric CO2 in the last 50 years is a relentless rise derived from human use of hydrocarbons.. When Keeling first collected his CO2 data he travelled around making the measurements at widely spaced locations – but he saw that apart from the daily and seasonal variation caused by local plant photosynthesis and respiration the concentration was virtually the same wherever he measured it. Keeling quickly realised that this meant it was possible to measure the CO2 in one location, such as Mauna Loa, and it would be a reference point for the whole planet.”
And the best bit:
“After a few years of measurement Keeling must have been astonished to see CO2 levels rising so rapidly.”
Really? He was astonished? So am I. Marvellous really, how the ingenuity of man got these volcanoes to keep producing more and more CO2 every year. Or isn’t that what is meant here by man-made?
That’s from the Open University site.
I doubt that in the current academic climate they’d give you a degree if disagreeing with the above..
Theo Goodwin says:
October 10, 2010 at 7:26 am
Lindzen most emphatically denies that there is climate science beyond what has been deduced from the characteristics of the CO2 molecule, characteristics well known in 1860. He has written that a climate science based on tenths of a degree changes in temperature is nonsense.
No, you’re wrong. Climate science and “climate science based on tenths of a degree” are different things. Lindzen is certainly not denying that there is climate science.
Climate science is not only about “what has been deduced from the characteristics of the CO2 molecule.” Far from it!
Not even climate science and climate science based on the effects of CO2 are the same, but if they were, “based on tenths of a degree” would be wrong, because the greenhouse effect is supposed to be responsible for a difference of about 33 degrees C.
The relevant characteristics of “the CO2 molecule” were not “well known in 1860.” Spectrometry was too coarse to support a good estimate of how much of the greenhouse effect was due to CO2, and how much to water vapor, and there was no quantum theory on which to base a theoretical estimate.
Anthony,
Thank you for writing this article, you have documented my concerns about so called ‘carbon’ pollution accurately. I continually make this point in our local newspapers in Australia. The other point I try to make is that the very existence of the White Cliffs of Dover is visible evidence of millions of tonnes of CO2 locked up as calcium carbonate over millions of years as a result of skeletal remains of coccoliths, corals, sponges and other small creatures, all tax free, no expensive carbon sequestration needed. There is absolutely no need to tax Australians or anyone else to remove a pin point of CO2 from a room, a house, a city or a planet.
Theo Goodwin 10/10 7:32 AM
Smoking Frog writes:
“The atmospheric concentration of CO2 is pretty constant up to some tens of kilometers, then it declines.”
So, the CO2 from Detroit first goes up, through convection, and then some other convection takes it to Mauna Loa? So, because of seasonal change, there is a clear and detectable difference in flows, right? In summer, CO2 is blasting up from Detroit really fast and in winter it might not be moving upward at all, right? And I am sure that our excellent climate scientists have done the work to confirm their physical hypotheses which explain this behavior; using new physical hypotheses that are not merely deducible from the characteristics of the CO2 molecule.
That has nothing to do with what I said. I was answering Zombie Drowned Polar Bear, who claims that CO2 “falls flat to the ground.” You’re talking about “horizontal” distribution (latitudinal and longitudinal), not vertical distribution.
I was not even talking about the increase of concentration over time, nor about anthropogenic CO2 in particular, but you are.
The “Detroit” theory which you impute to me is nonsense, because natural emissions are more than 20 times anthropogenic emissions, so the seasonal variation is overwhelmingly due to vegetation.
Theo Goodwin 10/10 8:03 AM
Smoking Frog writes:
“Hasn’t it occurred to you to see whether CO2 concentration has been measured at various altitudes? It has!”
Measurement is not hypothesis. Measurement, if undertaken rigorously, can be used to confirm or disconfirm hypotheses. If you have measurements and no hypotheses, you have no science; that is, you are in the same boat as Mann, Jones, and friends.
Again, I was answering Zombie Drowned Polar Bear, who claims that CO2 “falls flat to the ground” and supports this by pointing out that a CO2-filled balloon falls to the ground. Elementary physics shows that to be nonsense, but measurements of the CO2 concentration at various altitudes would kill it completely. It is beyond believing that such measurements have not been performed. Your remarks above have absolutely nothing to do with this. Obviously, no hypothesis is needed to measure the concentration of CO2 at various altitudes.
Theo Goodwin 10/10 11:07 AM
Zombie Drowned Polar Bear says:
October 10, 2010 at 10:06 am
“It’s goofy to think there is much gaseous migration over 4-5 miles up. Where and when you have to don a breathing apparatus when flying is at around 5 to 6 miles, folks, unless you fancy the idea of a stroke or other side effect of anoxia. Eight miles and you’re dead with your blood boiling and exploded eyeballs.”
I know. But the proponents of AGW assume that CO2 is randomly distributed all the way up into the stratosphere. I always wondered how the CO2 got up there when the O cannot get up there. According to Smoking Frog, there are these conveyor belts that conveniently distribute CO2 randomly in the atmosphere.
I see that you answer Zombie Drowned Polar Bear as irrelevantly as you answer me. Why aren’t you telling him that the concentration of a gas, and the amount of that gas, are entirely different things? His remarks clearly show that he does not know it. Oh, wait, maybe you don’t know it, either. I don’t know why else you’d say that oxygen “cannot get up there.”
As for what you say about me, I certainly do not claim that CO2 is vertically randomly distributed in the atmosphere, except, approximately so to a pretty high altitude. With the horizontal distribution, you are missing the fact that the increase over pre-industrial times is what matters for the question of CO2-caused AGW. The fact that there are higher concentrations in cities and some other places is immaterial for this.
You and Zombie are both missing the fact that if CO2 were strongly concentrated at a low altitude, the greenhouse effect would be stronger, not weaker. In effect, you both are arguing against your own position.
I resent being made to look like a non-skeptic, but I think it’s necessary to rebut absurd “skeptic” arguments, because they make the skeptics look bad.
Re height – I looked at the page Flavio linked to and wrote a post on it, my connection wonky and I lost it.
Gist of it, the paragraph describing the collection doesn’t show any logic in collection. They assume that CO2 above a certain level is volcanic and adjust their figures to suit. The difference in collection height between that which is deemed to be volcanic because on the ground and the highest collection point is only 27 metres.
It says that the ground is considered to be the volcanic because this shows higher amounts than 380 ppm and is more variable, and so they take measurements from the two heights above, 7 and 27 metres and if they match and if not more than 380 ppm they call it man-made – that CO2 is considerably heavier than air an sinks is not included in their explanation. They say that having come thousands of miles over pristine ocean and falling thousands of feet from the sky the measurements at the two heights as above show ‘global CO2’. The station is well below the top of the volcano (and increased air traffic doesn’t appear to have been included). How can that possibly differentiate between ‘global CO2’ and volcanic in less than a 30 metre span?
The explanation then links to a page with a week in Wisconsin forest in July 99. The difference in height of collection points is far greater, from 11 metres to 396. And that shows a definite lessening of CO2 the higher up the collection point, July is quite active, and the bottom collection points go off the graph on some days. Must be a volcano tucked away near the collection point. This too must include ‘global CO2’ but not mentioned.
If anyone can explain to me how ‘global CO2’ can be differentiated from volcanic at Mauna Loa, please do. I can’t see even a smidgin of scientific rationality in the method of collection, but then I’m not a scientist so maybe I’m missing something.
Myrrh 10/12 5:57 AM
It says that the ground is considered to be the volcanic because this shows higher amounts than 380 ppm and is more variable, and so they take measurements from the two heights above, 7 and 27 metres and if they match and if not more than 380 ppm they call it man-made – that CO2 is considerably heavier than air an sinks is not included in their explanation. They say that having come thousands of miles over pristine ocean and falling thousands of feet from the sky the measurements at the two heights as above show ‘global CO2′. The station is well below the top of the volcano (and increased air traffic doesn’t appear to have been included). How can that possibly differentiate between ‘global CO2′ and volcanic in less than a 30 metre span?
It’s not supposed to. The article doesn’t say it’s supposed to. The important thing is that the elevation of the observatory is about 11,000 feet. Despite that, there are, at times, and at times of day, variations due to local CO2, and they are removed by statistical methods. This works if local CO2 is significantly less steady than “background CO2,” and that appears to be true.
Myrhh:
See other measurements of CO2 from around 100 sites worldwide:
http://www.carbontracker.eu/co2timeseries.php#imagetable
You will note that they are all pretty much the same.
Smoking Frog, what the article says is this in answering objections:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/04/under-the-volcano-over-the-volcano/
“1. – As you can imagine from Fig.2, the CO2 measurements are taken only at night. Thus they are measuring descending air that is coming from thousands of feet aloft. This air has traveled across half of the Pacific Ocean, so it is far from any man-made CO2 sources. And as a result, it is very representative of the global background CO2 levels. That’s why Keeling chose the site.”
OK, I don’t know if that is how the wind works on that mountain, but if it is then: Firstly, all the CO2 produced lower down, from the ocean, the thousands of earthquakes a year, the hot spot, the vegetation, the traffic, the people, the barbeques, the whatever, have all spent the day rising with the wind up the mountain, and, that doesn’t yet include the active volcanoes on the island higher, around 2.5 thousand feet, than the station also adding their CO2 thousands of feet up in the atmosphere. Mauna Loa around 2.5 thousand ft higher than the station. So all this, from one of the main dramatic volcanic spots on earth is going up into the atmosphere with the warm air and water vapour, lighter than air, and winds rising thousands of feet above the station, Fig 2.
Secondly, what airplane traffic there was when Keeling began his experiments I don’t know, but from figures I saw somewhere that has risen steeply from 1984, there is CO2 coming down from those planes that is indistinguisable from this so called ‘global CO2’.
Thirdly, CO2 is heavier than air, unless that ‘pristine wind which has traveled across half of the Pacific Ocean actually decides to stop and let the CO2 sink over the measuring station, any CO2 it is carrying will continue to be carried right past it, without unloading. Does it stop at night when they’re measuring? It still can’t be distinguished from that produced on Hawaii alone and that doesn’t include that produced by all the islands’ activities in the warm waters and land.
“2. This seems like an insuperable objection. I mean, Mauna Loa is in fact an active volcan that is outgassing CO2. How do they avoid that?
the answer lies in the fact that the volcanic gasses are very rich in CO2. At night, they are trapped in a thin layer near the ground by a temperature inversion.
To detect the difference between volcanic and background CO2, the measurements are taken simultaneously from tall towers and from near the ground, at intervals throughout the night. Background CO2 levels will be around 380 ppmv (these days), will be steady, and will identical at the top and bottom of the towers. Volcanic gasses, on the other hand, will be well above 380 ppmv, will be variable, and will be greater near the ground than at the top of the towers.
this allows the scientists to distinguish reliably between volcanic and background CO2 levels. Here is a description of the process:
Air samples at Mauna Loa are collected continuously from air intakes at the top of four 7-m towers and one 27-m tower.”
So, these volcanic gasses are trapped in a thin layer on the ground… Whatever that means. And so, they recognise this because it is heavy in CO2, and variable, and therefore they can discount it because it is deemed volcanic. Instead they take measurements from a scant 21ft and 81 ft above this concentrated layer.
There is no logical way they can differentiate the volcanic production of CO2 from this ‘global CO2’, let alone all that produced by life on the island including from planes. All they are showing through their night of measuring, is how much CO2 is displacing air to come down from the atmosphere and pool on the ground around the station.
To posit that they can differentiate between volcanic CO2 and this ‘global CO2’ is nonsense. That they posit they can do it in a span of 60ft is irrational.
So how do they do it? As described, they first decide what ppm is volcanic, and then take readings and exclude any that don’t fit in with their predetermined idea of what ‘background global CO2’ should be.
This is simply not rational scientific method, is it?
This confirms why Keeling went there, he had plenty of CO2 to play with. And if you explore the background to his choosing this ‘global CO2 level’, you’ll see he first cherry picks to establish it. This is how he came to conclude after only 18 months that he’d established there was a global trend.
And to top it all, the article says in answering 4 re Beck’s measurements. “I do believe them.. with a caveat. I think that the Beck date is accurate, but that it is not measuring the background CO2. CO2 measurements need to be done very carefully, in selected locations, to avoid contamination from a host of natural CO2 sources. These sources include industry, automobiles, fires, soil, plants, the list is long.”
But all these also exist on Hawaii and yet he excludes from his host of contaminations the much greater contamination of the atmosphere which is drenched in CO2 production from the vast activity on this hot spot creating volcanic islands!
There’s a link from the page when talking about plant production of CO2, a week in the life of a forest in Wisconsin, ah, can’t find it, I thought it was on the page linked ‘description’. I recall it being a much longer page, but I could be wrong. But anyway, the CO2 levels in a week July 99 showed dramatic off the graph levels of CO2 on a couple of days on the lowest measurement point, 11 metres, over 500 ppm and a lot of variability, and the highest point, 386 metres, around 335-340 ppm on, I think, four of the days. Winter week in January the measurements all points were more or less the same, I can’t recall exactly, I think around 345-350. How does this not include ‘global CO2’? Do we have to deduct ‘global CO2’ to get the levels the forest is producing on its own?
I’m sorry, I can’t take this Mauna Loa data seriously as scientific method. That the article then says this is confirmed by the other data from their stations is also then meaningless, and, that these are in the control of his son makes the whole system suspect anyway.
And re your comment in an earlier post. That Carbon Dioxide being heavier than air will be in greater amounts lower down in our atmosphere does not mean that it will therefore trap more heat and so proving that it is ‘well-mixed’ in higher levels. Carbon Dioxide as many explantions already in the system show, has no ability to keep warming up beyond a certain point, in concentrated amounts it might add a degree or so, but, it also has no practical ability to retain ‘heat’. With a co-efficient of less than 1 it immediately releases any IR it has, and in normal thermodynamics this is from higher to lower temperatures, and heat rises. This is not about a test tube measurement, of concentrated CO2, this is about atmospheric CO2, and that is a trace gas subject to the variety of interactions in air.
If doubling CO2 meant rising temperatures to the degree claimed for it in the atmosphere where it is mere trace would it then keep a body warm in a cold room from all the air expelled in breathing where it is much more highly concentrated?
Found it again. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html#variations
So correction, tower 396 metres and ‘off the chart’ 400+ Lovely graph, but still. If there is no ‘base background global CO2 well-mixed’ included, these show that even a typical forest produces high and variable levels of CO in active summer and still consistently higher than the assumed ‘level of CO2 before the Industrial Revolution’ in winter.
If the ‘background global CO2’ is removed from the graph, this forest is starving to death, actually, dead.
Myrrh
I don’t think it’s true that measurements are “taken only at night”:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html
That text says that both the upslope and the downslope winds can be contaminated by local CO2. Also look at Fig 3.
You say that the wind would have to stop to allow CO2 to fall thousands of feet onto the station. Well, it doesn’t have to fall. No one is claiming that the concentration of CO2 is higher at high altitude. You talk about “unloading,” as if there were one or a series of shipments of CO2 at high altitude that would have to be unloaded onto the station. That’s not true. There’s a continuous stream of the stuff, and it’s continually getting mixed up with the air below, no matter where you are. If there were individual shipments, and they were unloaded onto the station, this would make the CO2 concentration at the station greater than background concentration (or what you call “global CO2”).
You are talking as if “global CO2” were something like an exotic imported good that looked different from local CO2. It’s not. It doesn’t matter whether any given molecule is “local” or “global.” No one could tell the difference. What matters is that the CO2 concentration varies with local CO2. The text says that they don’t count measurements that are not steady within less than one part per million over a period of several hours.
You quote the Eschenbach article (WattsUpWithThat) as saying that, at night, volcanic gases are trapped in a very thin layer near the ground. That doesn’t completely gibe with what the NOAA document (URL above) says. It says that the downslope wind (which occurs at night) is sometimes contaminated with CO2 from the volcanic crater above the station, and it says that this is exhibited by “high variability” of the concentration measured at the station.
The NOAA document does not say anything about relying on towers at different heights to distinguish “local” from “background.” It mentions only one tower, and it says the purpose is to eliminate influence from CO2 generated at the station.
I’m very reluctant to say that Mr. Eschenbach got things wrong, but it does look that way to me.
And re your comment in an earlier post. That Carbon Dioxide being heavier than air will be in greater amounts lower down in our atmosphere does not mean that it will therefore trap more heat and so proving that it is ‘well-mixed’ in higher levels. Carbon Dioxide as many explantions already in the system show, has no ability to keep warming up beyond a certain point, in concentrated amounts it might add a degree or so, but, it also has no practical ability to retain ‘heat’. With a co-efficient of less than 1 it immediately releases any IR it has, and in normal thermodynamics this is from higher to lower temperatures, and heat rises. This is not about a test tube measurement, of concentrated CO2, this is about atmospheric CO2, and that is a trace gas subject to the variety of interactions in air.
Your sentence beginning “That carbon dioxide being heavier…” is not true. Global warming is a matter of heating some lower altitudes and cooling some higher altitudes. If the CO2 were more concentrated at a lower altitude, this would make the difference greater.
The specific heat of CO2 is irrelevant. We’re talking about radiation, not conduction, and the CO2 doesn’t have to get especially warm to cause the greenhouse effect. The air at altitude, including the CO2, is cooler than the air at the surface, not warmer.
It’s not true that CO2 has “no ability to keep warming up beyond a certain point.” (Put it in an oven and see what it does.) You seems to be confused about the fact that it has no ability to increase the greenhouse effect beyond a certain point. That’s because there’s only so much outgoing infrared radiation for it to intercept.
If doubling CO2 meant rising temperatures to the degree claimed for it in the atmosphere where it is mere trace would it then keep a body warm in a cold room from all the air expelled in breathing where it is much more highly concentrated?
No, that’s nonsense. There might be a tiny “greenhouse effect,” but it would not be due to the specific heat of CO2. Anyway, what do you have in mind with “the degree claimed for it”?
“Normal thermodynamics” has to do with conduction. A cooler object can’t heat up a warmer object by conduction. That has nothing to do with whether a cooler object can “re-radiate” infrared that the warmer object radiates.
How do you explain the fact that there are no AGW-skeptic scientists, or virtually none, who deny the existence of the greenhouse effect? For example, Lindzen and Spencer. Do you think they’re dupes?
Smoking Frog
“The NOAA document does not say anything about relying on towers at different heights ..” It doesn’t give the details on that page, I took his report to be from first hand observation.
“I don’t think it’s true that measurements are taken only at night”
I think he’s right, measurements are taken throughout the day, but the measurements for ‘background CO2’ are taken at night, which is when they have the downslope winds supposedly carrying this. “The selection to minimize this potential non-backround [upwind] bias takes place as part of step 4. At night the flow is often downslope, bringing background air. However, that air is sometimes contaminated by CO2 emissions from the crater of Mauna Loa. As the air meanders down the slope that situation is charcterized by high variability of the CO2 mole fraction. …
4. In keeping with the requirement that CO2 in background air should be steady, we apply a general “outlier rejection” step, in which we fit a curve to the preliminary daily means for each day calculated from the hours surviving step 1 and 2, and not including times with upslope winds.”
“Well, it doesn’t have to fall. No one is claiming that the concentration of CO2 is higher at high altitude.”
Not what I was saying. This station is supposed to measure ‘global CO2’ which it claims comes in from pristine winds thousands of feet up which have come half way across the Pacific. This is how it’s sold to us to prove what a wonderful place this is for measuring CO2, we’re told that it’s because of this and the station’s position high on a ‘mountain’, that accurate measurements of ‘global CO2’ are possible. This wind is thus imagined to be from the description to not be the same as that which goes up the mountain in the morning and comes down at night, which is local. What they are actually measuring is the latter, the local wind, as they describe it, and picture on that page. So, what we’re told is that this spot was chosen for its pristine ‘global wind’ travelling across half the Pacific ocean before it reaches the station. What we’re seeing explained is how they measure the local wind, which spent a considerable amount of time going up the mountain first.
To imagine that one can separate that local upwind from itself coming back down the mountain is absurd. What they are saying is that what comes down the mountain is all ‘this background global from thousands of feet high pristine winds from across the Pacific’ and not the local wind anymore.
They say the only possible ‘contamination’ then in this comes from the Mauna Loa crater above the station, which they discount whenever they have variable and high measurements of CO2. They look for a consistent measurement below what they have already decided is an amount indicative of this volcanic imput.
So, oh, and when they do refer to the upwind the mention it gets as a description is that it has CO2 extracted already by the vegetation further down and they’re on a lava field with no vegetation. But, what they are actually measuring is the local wind coming back down the mountain and that local wind is in warm CO2 releasing waters among volcanic islands with thousands of earthquakes a year, etc.
There is no way they can tell the source of CO2 in what the wind is bringing down at night in this supposed ‘background only downwind/trade wind’, it’s only masquerading as that.
Which, as you say, of course gets all mixed up with the local wind. By ‘unloading’ I was being a bit sarky, from the picture they give of this ‘pristine wind’ downloading its CO2 into their measuring pots as if they could really tell where the CO2 came from. It isn’t possible that they can tell where their ‘steady CO2’ comes from. It’s a sleight of hand.
All that this ‘steady CO2’ is, is the figure they have decided is not the ‘variable volcanic CO2’ in the down-mountain wind.
This is not science. This is, pick a number and exclude the numbers you don’t like and adjust to show an ever increasing amount year on year.
The explanation of how they do this and their reasoning is really complete and utter nonsense. Don’t you agree?
Page on Hawaii weather system http://www.hawaiiweathertoday.com/?page_id=20
“Your sentence beginning “That carbon dioxide being heavier..” is not true. Global warming is a matter of heating some lower altitudes and cooling some higher altitudes. If the CO2 were more concentrated at a lower altitude, this would make the difference greater.”
Yep, according to AGW’s falsified hypothesis that carbon dioxide raises global temperatures and more carbon dioxide raises it more. Which is why I put it like that, that since it is a real scientific fact that carbon dioxide is heavier than air and so more apt to be concentrated at lower levels and there isn’t a greater temperature difference..
But please, it is actually true that CO2 is heavier than air, one and a half times heavier than air. It displaces air and sinks. In real physical science. Blow up a balloon, it sinks. Fill a balloon with helium, it floats up. Real gases have real weight.
“The specific heat of CO2 is irrelevant. We’re talking about radiation, not conduction, and the CO2 doesn’t have to get especially warm to cause the greenhouse effect. The air at latitude, including the CO2, is cooler than the air at the surface, not warmer.
? Radiation is a way of transferring heat energy. Air isn’t always cooler higher up than at the surface, ‘hot air rises’. As air, a gas, heats up it becomes less dense than the colder air around it, and the colder air being thus now heavier sinks underneath the lighter hotter air, this is convection. And as it loses heat it cools and so sinks, the convection current in heated liquids and gases. Conduction relates to solids.
So I think it is relevant. Radiation is just the means of transferring heat energy, a cold CO2 molecule has no heat to transfer and won’t be radiating. When it does pick up IR it doesn’t keep hold of it, because its capacity to hold heat is less than 1 it loses any it’s picked up practically instantly. And heat energy transfer from a hotter body to a colder applies. If you switch on an infrared heater you’ll feel the heat radiating from it, if you switch it off it stops radiating, cold it has no heat energy to radiate.
I’m really not at all sure what you’re saying here. If “CO2 at latitude is cooler than at the surface” are you saying it is not radiating? So that applies at any level in the atmosphere, whenever the CO2 is cold.
“It’s not true that CO2 has “no ability to keep warming up beyond a certain point”.” (Put it in an oven and see what it does.) You seem to be confused about the fact that it has no ability to increase the greenhouse effect beyond a certain point.”
Yes, that was what I meant, I tend to use ‘warming’ as shorthand for the AGW global warming attributed to CO2. I should have marked it out as I’ve just done, or written the sentence better..
Re my: “If doubling CO2 meant rising temperatures to the degree claimed for it etc.”
You replied: “No, that’s nonsense. There might be a tiny “greenhouse effect,” but it would not be due to the specific heat of CO2. Anyway, what do you have in mind with “the degree claimed for it”?
Why nonsense? AGW says that CO2 raises the temperature in the atmosphere, globally. The atmosphere in my room is cold, it’s -10 degrees C, it is 10′ cube. I am the only hot body in it. I am radiating IR quite well having stoked up on a bacon and banana butty and mug of hot sugared tea. I have the windows and doors closed, there is no external air coming in. I keep breathing out CO2 raising the ppm considerably. Which would come first – the extra CO2 I’m generating by breathing will raise the temperature in my room until I’m comfy or I die from suffocation and stop breathing? What happens if I die of cold first? Will the room full of CO2 continue to radiate raising the temperature although it will, alas, be too late for me?
As for what I have in mind for ‘degree claimed for it’, that changes so often putting an actual figure on it is pointless. It’s like the claim, ‘CO2 stays up in the atmosphere for X years is well known’ – since there are no actual data corroborating any of the claims, for whatever length of time stated, I’ve been reduced to saying something along the lines, ‘for hundreds and thousands of years’. Made up figures have this elusive quality when arguing against AGW claims.. You tell me what you think it is and we’ll take it from there.
“How do you explain the fact that there are no AGW-skeptic scientists, or virtually none, who deny the existence of the greenhouse effect? For example, Lindzen and Spencer. Do you think they’re dupes?
Well, I have to say I don’t really know what they mean by it, I haven’t studied their views on this particular aspect. I know that there’s a general idea that CO2 has a ‘saturation point’ above which ‘doubling’ of CO2 does not mean ‘doubling of temperature’, and several times I’ve seen the figure given as doubling now would raise global temps around 1 degree and that’s its limit, but, that’s not my interest here. I can’t see how it can do that either in the scheme of our global atmosphere in our real physical world.
Perhaps it would help if you gave an explanation of how you understand it?