Guest Post by Barry Woods
All too often the ‘simple physics of CO2’ argument is presented to the public by the media, politicians, climate scientists and environmental advocacy groups, in a way that grossly simplifies the issue of the response in global temperature to increasing CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere.
An excellent response to the simple physics argument is to be found in the comments at Climate Etc (Professor Judith Curry’s blog)
In reality my feather blew up into a tree
“….. which is that since CO2 is a GHG it follows that increasing CO2 must increase the temperature (of something). No matter how many times we say that the climate is a system with complex non-linear feedbacks they still love this simple principle of physics.
This is because physics works by isolating simple situations from reality. That was the great discovery of physics, that if you simplified reality you could find simple laws. So far so good.
But as every engineer knows, these simple laws often do not work when reality gets messy, as it usually is. Simple physics says that if I drop a ball and a feather they will fall at the same rate.
In reality my feather blew up into a tree.
It is not that the simple law is false, just that there are a number of other simple laws opposing it. In the case of climate we don’t even know what some of these other laws are, so we can’t explain what we see. That is where we should be looking.”
The ‘do you deny the simple GHG physics’ argument is also often an attempt to portray anyone that asks reasonable scientific questions about AGW and the complexity of climate science, as some sort of an ‘anti-science’, ‘flat earther’ denier.
The realities and complexities and unknowns of climate science are described in the IPCC working Group 1 reports, but somehow get ‘lost in translation’ into the Summary for Policymakers, for example (and everyone knows very few politicians even read beyond the executive summary of anything).
IPCC (Chapter 14, 14.2.2.2, Working Group 1, The Scientific Basis)
Third Assessment Report: “In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
Time and time again the media and environment groups ignore this IPCC fact that the climate is a coupled nonlinear chaotic system and that the worst case scenarios of the computer model ‘projections’ or scenarios (because they know they cannot use the word prediction) latest example, 4C by 2060, are just one result of computer model ‘runs’ programmed with various extreme values of these assumptions.
The low-end ‘projections’ of temperature by model runs with other values and assumptions are ignored completely by CAGW advocates, the data output or projection of a computer model transmorphs into a scientific fact, the data output of a computer model becomes evidence of CAGW.
Climate Science is often portrayed to the public in simplistic terms as a mature science, narrowed down and focussed onto one primary factor – CO2, assuming all else to be equal, and not the possibilities in this type of system that varying one parameter alone, may vary other parameters in non-linear ways, even potentially flipping some from positive to negative feedback (or vice versa)
At the time of the Copenhagen Cop 15 Climate Conference, stunts on TV, rather than the discussion of uncertainties of ‘climate science’ were the order of the day.
The classic demonstration of the ‘do you deny the simple physics of CO2’ argument is a glass tube filled with CO2, heated and then the TV presenter or preferably a senior government scientist says ‘look it has warmed!’ –
As demonstrated by the BBC in their Newsnight program, Copenhagen Climate Conference time, the BBC’s apparent intellectual response to the climategate emails and documents. Watts Up With That, gave a critique of this particular type of TV experiment and CAGW PR.
I wonder what would have happened if a member of the audience had been able to question their methodology, or even ask simple questions like:
What is the percentage of CO2 in the jar?
ie total atmospheric is ~0.038%, what percentage is in the glass jar – 50% plus perhaps, or more?
[Corrected typo spotted in comments – 0.038% / 380 ppm]
If you were to mention that the CO2 effect is logarithmic, then you are likely to be labelled a ‘climate change sceptic’ or worse a ‘climate change denier’ by any passing MSM media TV presenter, environmentalist group or AGW consensus minded politician, and then they will simply stop listening, because you are obviously a fossil fuel funded denier, such has been the CAGW consensus PR.
I wonder if for a sceptical joke, someone could produce a spoof YouTube video of a feather and a cannon ball in a glass jar experiment (non evacuated) and the TV presenter could say to the audience:
“Proof – The Cannon Ball FALLS faster that the feather – Simple Physics clearly show this”
Someone in the audience could then ask, but you have air in the jar? and then get ridiculed by the group as an ‘anti-science’ denier, the scientist/presenter could even bring out the ‘No Pressure’ red button to use!
The simple and not so simple physics of a number of climate parameters, are programmed into the climate computer models. Many of these parameters, it is acknowledged, are not completely understood or that there is serious contentious debate about in the scientific literature. ie aerosols, clouds, solar pacific and atlantic oscillations, volcanoes, etc,etc
Engineers (or economists now, perhaps) will advice climate scientists, model are not reality, reality is often more complicated than any computer model. Take a step back, view with hindsight with respect to risk in the financial markets. At the trouble the cream of the last few decades of science graduates – turned computer modellers – left the world’s economy in, following the modelling of credit risk amongst many other economic assumptions.
Next time anyone starts on about the simple physics of CO2, remember the feather and a cannon ball in a very large glass jar analogy, or for the classically motivated, atop the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Politicians could lay trillion-dollar bets, and dozens of competing scientific groups (publically funded) could even attempt to write a computer models to predict when and where the feather would land…………
Thanks again to Anthony for the opportunity to write at Watts Up With That again. There is a little more about me here.
Or maybe you could stop by at my new blog, I hope that the Watts Up With That regulars like the name.
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Water vapour is lighter than air and rises, gases which are warm become less dense and rise, weather is tracked by knowing this.
Generally moist air is warm air, so it’s warm, moist air that does the rising and creates cumulus clouds, thunderstorms etc. If that were not the case you’d never see fog – water vapor would be rising, the fog would evaporate and that vapor would follow.
I was going to figure out the density of saturated air at 10C and 20C (and the 10C air warmed to 20C), but just don’t have time today. It’s not that hard, you can get some data at http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-vapor-saturation-pressure-air-d_689.html. Basically figure the average molecular weight of the air, then given pressure and temperature, you can figure out the density.
Note that when water vapor rises, it drags along nearly all the other gases it’s mixed with – remember my mention about viscosity. That and convection and advection helps keeping things well mixed.
In other words, we’ve been wasting our time trying to help you understand this? Physical science is built on a mathematical foundation. Nothing we’ve talked about above if outside of high school math and science (well 1960s math and science before people started working in feelings and scores based on self esteem instead of learning). If you refuse to learn/remember that, we can find better things to do with our time.
By the way, just to clarify my last post: I am generally talking about volume fractions of the various gases. Of course, in absolute terms, all gases decrease in absolute concentration with height just because the atmosphere itself becomes thinner as we go up.
Myrrh: I also second Ric Werme’s last paragraph. It is find to be ignorant of math (which, as Ric notes, is the underlying language of the physical sciences), but what is not so good is when, despite this ignorance, you still feel that you are qualified to state that the entire scientific community is wrong on some basic point of physical science. With ignorance of something should come some sense of humility too.
Well, here we can see being played out exactly the point made by the opening post..
The mistake you’re making is that you think you have something to teach me.
I’ve already been through the arguments you’re making. My objection was not having a description in English, with or without the maths. I think this is why you appear to not be hearing what I’m saying. I’m still waiting from an answer from, collective, you, since George hasn’t answered my question (at the time of posting this). I’ve noticed someone else getting the point I was making in asking it..
My objective here, is to show that observable scientific and common sense fact falsifies the AGW claims that CO2 diffuses into the atmosphere to become well-mixed and that it can stay up in the atmosphere for hundreds and thousands of years. Both these statements are claimed to be real by AGWScience. Contrary to all well known physics of CO2.
What I am doing here is, trying, to explain what I have found is the reasoning behind these absurd claims by AGWScience. What I have found: is that an ideal gas law has been applied directly to explain CO2’s behaviour in the atmosphere, which it is not fit to do, and it, AGWS, has no sense, whatsoever, of what it means for a molecule to be heavier or lighter than air.
Since all physical observation and RealScience knowledge has already established what CO2 can and can’t do with respect to these claims from AGWScience, because its properties are known and how it interacts with the properties of other gases in the atmosphere is know, AGWScience on this is already falsified. You might well call it “basic science”, but you’re unable to explain it in real basic science.
Joel says: No, you are arguing with me, George E. Smith, Ric Werme, PhilC, and Werner Brozek. We are not generally a group of people who all agree on issues related to AGW, but we all agree that you are wrong on this point because it is not really an issue of AGE but an issue of basic science.
OK, let’s get this straight. You are all agreed with these two claims from AGWScience about CO2, which are the subject I have chosen to post on, are basic science, what I call here RealScience, in contrast to AGWScience?
So, you are agreeing with my original protagonist in my thought experiment as I gave above, that CO2 having pooled on the floor in a room will diffuse into the atmosphere, the air in the room, to become completely well-mixed, without any work being done on it?
You are agreeing that CO2, regardless that it is 1.5 times heavier than air, stays up in the air for hundreds and thousands of years, accumulating? – All of you?
(1) CO2 does not have significant variation with height, except that very near the ground it can be locally higher than the value generally quoted because of nearby sources.
Proof? Note, it is for you to show proof, this is against the known property of CO2 which says because it is heavier than air it displaces air, therefore, will always tend to sink. AIRS data says you’re wrong. AIRS says quite categorically that Carbon Dioxide is not, contrary to their expectation (from this AGWScience assumption I take it), at all well mixed in the atmosphere. What do you have that disproves AIRS?
(2) For H2O, the behavior is generally the opposite of what your hypothesis predicts. I.e., there is more H2O vapor near the ground and less as you go up. The reasons for this are a combination of where the sources are (near the ground) and the fact that H2O is a condensable gas, meaning that it doesn’t stay in the atmosphere long enough to become well-mixed and, in particular, at higher altitudes where the air is colder, the saturation concentration is lower which limits the concentrations at higher altitudes.
My point in mentioning water vapour was to establish that the RealScience fact that gases have weight and act accordingly, water vapour being lighter than air is bouyant in air. Significantly lighter than air. An atomic weight of 18 compared with the nitrogen at 28 and oxygen 32 which makes up the bulk of air. Gases lighter than air will rise and those heavier than air will sink, displacing air. If you put some water in an open glass at room temperature it will evaporate, might take a few days, but because water vapour is lighter than air that’s what it does.
In that, however, is an important caveat, water acts completely differently to other liquids in the changes to solids or gaseous states, the more solid it gets by getting colder the less dense it becomes, as ice, it expands. Wet air is less dense than dry air. Water vapour as it rises into the atmosphere to eventually form clouds becomes less dense and expands as it cools, eventually displacing the oxygen and nitrogen and on reaching 100% humidity as it gets cold enough, is then ready to condense into drops of water or into ice crystals and, allowing for dust etc., will form clouds.
You are saying there is more water vapour near the ground and less as you go up, that there is less saturation the colder and higher, but because of the peculiar property of water, it does the opposite. In this cycle of evaporation and condensation because of this property of water to become less dense as water vapour and the colder it is, even at ‘room’ temperatures becoming water vapour, as it rises higher into colder regions it continues to get less dense displacing air.
To form clouds humidification may eventually bring the air in a given area to saturation. (i.e.) relative humidity reaches 100 percent. Usually a little more humidification is required taking the relative humidity to over 100%, this is known as the state of supersaturation needed to form cloud.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_does_water_vapour_turn_back_into_water
(3) There is no appreciable change in the fractions of O2 vs N2 as you go up in the atmosphere.
I don’t now recall at what point Nitrogen begins to move away from Oxygen, some 3% lighter, but as they are near enough the same weight we can take it for the purposes of this discussion that when other gases displace this mixture by being lighter like Methane or Water Vapour or heavier like Carbon Dioxide, we’re talking about these as the Air/Atmosphere, not to get any more distracted from the points I’m trying to make.
And, not to get any further in weather, (Ric Werme) there are other factors at play also in getting water vapour into the cooler heights, heat, wind and so on, I only brought it in as an example of gases lighter than air, and, because it is relevant to the points I’m making.
What is important here about Water Vapour with relationship to CO2 staying up in the atmosphere for hundreds and thousands of years, as per the AGWScience claim, is that Carbon Dioxide dissolves in cool water. Therefore, to spell it out, Carbon Dioxide comes down with rain. Every time it rains. That’s why rain is always slightly acidic.
p.s. ..gases which are warm become less dense and rise,
So is Carbon Dioxide staying up in the atmosphere for hundreds and thousands of years because it’s always, everywhere “well-mixed in the atmosphere”, warm enough to cause it to rise and stay up there? Is this the explanation for CO2 “accumulating in the atmosphere”?
Myrrh;
Your POV is good, but there are slips. Water does not evaporate because it is light; it evaporates because individual molecules are accelerated (heated) by Brownian motion enough to break free of surface tension.
And of course the CO2 does not rise differentially because it is heated; it is necessarily at exactly the same temp as the air that surrounds it. Heating expands all and lifts all together.
Mixing occurs when mechanical work is done, by a wind or convection (which causes a form of wind), etc. In a still room gases are fluids, and separate.
Myrrh says:
Yes…basically. However, diffusion is a slow process so if you are really successful in preventing any convective or advective effects, it might take a while to mix. The reason why the mixed state is favored is because a system does not really try to minimize its energy, but rather something called its free energy…There is a contribution from what is called “entropy” and that term favors mixing (at any non-zero absolute temperature). See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmholtz_free_energy
Yes.
There AIRS data shows that the CO2 is quite well-mixed, as do the land measurements of CO2 at various sites around the world (Mauna Lao, Antarctica, …) There are some small variations on the order of several ppm due to the distribution of sources and sinks but these variations are of little relevance.
Ethyl alcohol is heavier than air. If you put it out at room temperature, do you predict that it will not evaporate?
Brian H says:
I don’t think this last sentence is true. Assuming I did the calculation right, in a still room at room temperature, CO2 still would not separate because the entropy of mixing contribution to the free energy is much larger than the gravitational energy term favoring separation. (Perhaps the more accurate statement would be that the gradient in CO2 concentration with height in equilibrium is so small that the difference in concentration between the ceiling and the floor will be negligible.) What is true is that if a lot of CO2 is released at a low altitude and the room is really still enough to prevent much advection or convection, then the process of diffusion may be slow enough that it takes a long time for the CO2 to mix well with the rest of the gases.
Thank you Brian (aka… sorry, brainstorm)
Water does not evaporate because it is light; it evaporates because individual molecules are accelerated (heated) by Brownian motion enough to break free of surface tension.
OK, is this because of the same nanometre/millimetre distinction made in the link I gave above? (In the example of cologne in air, coloured liquid added to fluid.)
How would that be if the liquid was heavier than air? In other words, does it only have this effect at the surface because water vapour is lighter than air?
I’ve noticed before that alchohol is given as an example of heavier than air by AGW, and so given as proof for Brownian motion in alchohol evaporation, but, I found that they were using number in its liquid form, which like water is heavier than air, when I found that ethanol as gas is lighter than air number. But I didn’t explore it more than this. (And so not really sure of all the forms and names).
And of course the CO2 does not rise differentially because it is heated; it is necessarily at the exactly the same temp as the air that surrounds it. Heating expands all and lifts all together.
So what does this mean if CO2 is well-mixed in the atmosphere and accumulating for hundreds and thousands of years? That heat is well-mixed in the atmosphere or that CO2 creates its own heat environment regardless of the temperature of the atmosphere it is in? (I only offered this as a suggestion as an alternative for AGW explanation as the Brownian diffusion is limited.., from the mention of heated gases rising, just trying to be helpful).
Mixing occurs when mechanical work is done, by a wind or convection (which causes a form of wind), etc. In a still room gases are fluids, and separate.
So how did it get to this state that a PhD in physics who teaches and examines on ideal gas laws insists that without any work being done the CO2 will diffuse into the air of the room? Again trying to be helpful, I wondered if something else was in play. Perhaps the CO2 grabbed a couple of the nitrogen or oxgen molecules around it as if balloons and so lifted itself into the atmosphere to become well-mixed, sticking onto them with a bit of blue tack perhaps. When I said that well-known real science said CO2 displaced air, he, having reluctantly admitted that CO2 pooled, (and then deleted the post where he said it didn’t after I had given real world information) said that CO2 pooled because it was in the volume of air and so pulling all down with it. From then, once it had pooled on the floor in this heavier volume, the Brownian motion would take effect and CO2 would rapidly diffuse throughout the room. I can’t now recall which of us inspired the other..
I have found it fascinating to explore these two claims. He also went into a long explanation of why CO2 was a toxic gas.. Pity this generation of school children with teachers like this.
No. Electrostatic forces attract molecules at the liquid surface towards others below them. If the molecule undergoes a collision and acquires enough energy to break free it will pass into the vapor. The probability of undergoing such a collision increases with the temperature.
Here is a somewhat whimsical take on all this.
Brownian motion is something a bit different. It describes the motion of a particle in a liquid composed of molecules that are much smaller than the particle, for example, a piece of pollen in water, or a dust mote in air. In the case of evaporation the size of the molecule being kicked into the vapor phase is the same as all the other molecules in the liquid.
Myrrh;
Whole bunch mash-mooshin’ goin’ on there.
Lead and mercury can be boiled and evaporated. With very unpleasant results.
Molecular weight has importance only when not overwhelmed by heat and circulation effects; it always has an influence, but it is usually not dominant in the atmosphere.
ER;
You are correct, of course. I was using Brownian Motion as a shorthand reference to the results of random variations in the impacts suffered by individual molecules, which was a shortening too far.
I really don’t understand why so much emphasis is given to wind. After reading a post from Ric I had to get ready to go out. I glanced out of the window and noticed that none of the trees were moving in my garden or of my neighbours, or those edging the fields beyond. I looked further over more fields into the distance to the hills and I couldn’t see any moving – though those in greater distance might have been and I couldn’t see them clearly. Even the evergreen leylandii in my garden with those sensitive little bits at the top which catch any breeze, not any part of them moving. It was very still (and coldish). About 10 minutes later I got into my car and drove off, having first checked all around to see if there was an breeze, none. I drove to the village and all along the road looked at the trees, none moving. I got to the village, no movement in the trees around the village square, I bought a few things and drove back, still no movement of any trees, I checked again closely once I had parked back in my drive; all was still still. Half an hour or so of close observation, and I randomly checked through to the evening, nothing. The next day there was a very slight breeze, a tiny bit of movement in the evergreens, otherwise still, still.
My last post on this, a mix on wind and weight, and apologies, it jumps about a little…
The Atmosphere
If helium floats in air, why don’t the other gases in the atmosphere separate by weight, too? Air is made of oxygen and nitrogen with a little carbon dioxide and other trace gases. This mix is maintained because nitrogen is only slightly less dense than oxygen. Air is about 21 percent oxygen and 78 percent nitrogen; therefore, pure oxygen will sink slowly in air until the gases eventually mix and spread out.
The velocity distribution of gases is continuous. Because there is so much nitrogen, there will be plenty of its molecules moving too slow to bounce themselves above all the heavier oxygen molecules.
Helium’s molecular weight, however, is too light for the sort of overlap seen between oxygen and nitrogen.
http://www.ehow.com/about_5444386_helium-balloon-rise.html
Carbon dioxide is one and half times heavier than air, it displaces air, so the overlap existing between nitrogen and oxygen non-existant too. It naturally sinks through air. That’s how it is always described, because of countless observations. It’s not always windy. It’s not always warm. CO2 is always heavy. Air is a gas, an ocean of air around and above us, with weight exerting about 15lb/inch on us, subject to gravity – the molecular weight of molecules is very relevant and must be taken into account re carbon dioxide. Our atmosphere is not a washing machine set on a permanent spin cycle, and we don’t live in a closed test tube.
“Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a gas, heavier than air, so that it tends to accumulate in depressions not exposed to winds, especially where there are natural springs of this gas from the soil.” Aldo Bonincontro on helium.com
CO2 does not rise readily into the atmosphere without wind.
Below 500 meters, we are in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer. The winds in the atmosphere get obstructed by hill, building, and by the friction of moving over the ground, and hence slow down, and also become turbulent, in this region. This is where we see most of the gusts, tornadoes, rain, snow, etc. Above this, and below 11,000 meters, is the Troposphere. Most of the “weather” occurs in this region, though some thunderstorms rise as high as 18,000 meters. http://www.adl.gatech.edu/classes/dci/atmos/dci04.html
CO2 does not rise readily in the atmosphere without wind to stir it up, most of what is produced is produced around ground level and from a very few sources higher up, such as Mauna Loa, the station at 11,150 ft is within that first 500 metres. Wind in this level is highly variable, like heat.
Is there actually any such creature as “background” CO2? AIRS says not. What we really have is heavier than air CO2 wafted around pretty much locally when the wind is blowing and sinking when it isn’t, and, thinning out as it goes higher where it has a natural affinity with water in the earth’s real washing machine, cleaning the atmosphere of dust, when it comes down with the rain.
There’s a comparison over same four days Luxembourg and Mauna Loa in post 21 on: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Measuring-CO2-levels-from-the-volcano-at-Mauna-Loa.html
The Luxembourg, I think it’s set in a forest, shows a distinct pattern of wind speed to levels of CO2, and much as AGW goes to great effort to discount these as not “background”, these levels (note the different scales on the two graphs), actually do show the real CO2 acting in character. Whenever the wind is speedy the CO2 levels drop, with little or no wind CO2 levels rocket. When it’s not windy, molecular weight dominates.
Why CO2 is heavier and why it’s got this natural affinity to merge with water, I don’t know, but because of it and the action of winds, CO2 gets to plants which are in greater density nearer the ground where its needed. And so the beginning of the Carbon Life Cycle, in which etc.
Last bit.
Re above in the description of molecules, that so close in weight and that nitrogen is moving too slow to bounce itself above the heavier oxygen which is always sinking slowly down.
Although some from AGWScience use turbulence to claim CO2 is well mixed, (though as I understand it, there is a distinct pattern of winds which do not cross hemispheres and only mix a bit at the tropics), most repeat that molecules are moving at great speeds in empty space and so diffuse thoroughly in the atmosphere by ideal gas descriptions, which gives a totally unrealistic picture of our atmosphere. With the consequent loss of the atmosphere as being as an ocean of air above us, a tangible something.
From:
http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/01/sound-waves.html
For a drawing of how sound waves move through air.
Note that air molecules do not actually travel from the loudspeaker to the ear (that would be wind). Each individual molecule only moves a small distance as it vibrates, but it causes the adjacent molecules to vibrate in a rippling effect all the way to the ear.
The molecules only move a small distance.
It is in this environment that oxygen is always slowly sinking, and nitrogen moves slowly with not enough energy to bounce above it, because too close in weight. In this carbon dioxide, like oxygen, is always sinking, but sinking faster. Wind is air on the move, there just isn’t enough wind in the world to keep CO2 moving to mix thoroughly throughout the atmosphere. It might well pick up a load of CO2 at x and dump it somewhere else, but the ideas of “well-mixed” and “background” as homogenous whole are just so contrary to real life conditions.
From: http://www.ehow.com/about_5127612_do-sound-waves-travel.html
Time to Put the Toys Away
For sound to travel, it needs a medium that contains molecules. It can be water, steel, concrete, anything that has molecules close enough to one another that they can vibrate and transmit the sound. In fact, the closer the molecules are bunched, the faster the sound travels. That’s why when you put your ear to a railroad track you can hear it coming long before you hear it’s a noise in the air. Steel molecules are packed much more tightly than air molecules. That is also why there is no sound in space. The molecules in space are so far apart that when one of them near a vibration starts dancing the noise jig, it has no other molecules to pass the vibrations to. In essence, there is no medium through which sound waves can travel.
p.s. I can’t quite make out the wind speed on the Luxembourg graphs, is that miles per second?
Myrrh;
Your obsession is getting the best of you. The word “well” is indeed given far more weight and credence than it deserves in Climatology. But CO2 is well-enough mixed to be present throughout the atmosphere, though far from strictly evenly spread. Did you know, e.g., that plants exhale CO2 in the dark, just like animals? In forests or cornfields, the CO2 drops in the day, and rises at night. Winds spread it around, and turbulence and stormcells etc. mix it vertically. Enough. Not perfectly.
There are hollows in Africa near outgassing sites where small children occasionally suffocate; I can’t quite recall the term, starts with “m” and has a couple of “u’s” in it. 😉
So CO2 does sometimes, in adequate concentration, behave like the heavy gas you describe. But clearly the surface of the Earth is not layered with it.
What’s your point, again?
My obsession? Hmm. Compared with what? The reams and reams and reams on practically countless sites; on IR, on temperature, on, heck, just look at what’s covered on this site. I write a few posts in an appropriate discussion of my look into two claims made by AGW, which have been mainly ignored, and I am being obsessive?
There are two aspects to my posts, that AGWScience is absurd and being taught in schools, and that because of this, those so taught have no concept of, no feel for, the real world around them. So I found for example that Brownian motion is cited to prove that CO2 is well-mixed in the atmosphere and ideal gas law to prove that the atmosphere is empty space with molecules bouncing off each other travelling at great speeds and not interacting with each other, and, staying up for hundreds and thousands of years regardless of weight and gravity and so on, accumulating.
Why does AGW need to twist science to say this? Without ‘well-mixed and accumulating’ they would have no ‘blanket’ building up to their imagined ‘dangerous’ levels.. (*) And, because this conjours up a picture of the atmosphere utterly weird and through the looking glass by having to jettison the actual properties of CO2 and other molecules in our real life atmosphere, there’s a whole generation who don’t question it being called toxic because they have lost touch with the carbon life cycle. Forests become ‘sinks’ for carbon dioxide, as if something only of use to take it out of the atmosphere because it’s dangerous to life.
You mention that plants also breathe out CO2, yes.., I know that well. But those taught ‘global warming’ are taught that its production in the atmosphere is from burning fossil fuels and destruction of these sinks in deforestation, they’re steered away from exploring more. Why is the latter a problem? If forests are cut down than that is saving them breathing it all back into the atmosphere.. The AGWScience becomes so convoluted with strange ideas that it’s a mine field to pick one’s way through.
(*) John Houghton of the Hadley Centre http://iopscience.iop.org/0034-4885/68/6/RO2 from a link here: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/teach/module_home/px272
‘Global warming’ is a phrase that refers to the effect on the climate of human activities, in particular the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) and large-scale deforestation, which cause emisssions to the atmosphere of large amounts of ‘grenhouse gases’, of which the most important is carbon dioxide. Such gases absorb infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface and act as blankets over the surface keeping it warmer than it would otherwise be. Associated with this warming are changes of climate. The basic science of the ‘greenhouse effect’ that leads to the warming is well understood.
Unfortunately, this “basic science” he refers to is AGWScience, with no relation to the real world or real science in it.
When I say CO2 is heavier than air and displaces it, as is bog standard knowledge still with those who use this knowledge, real miners and brewers, I get ‘pooh pooh, then the atmosphere would layer and CO2 would be in a layer at the ground and we’d all die’; and am given examples of ‘dry ice brought into room temperature, as on a stage, see how it diffuses into the atmosphere’, (would any one here care to say what is actually happening?).
This AGWScience is simply stupid, and AGW’s are taught to believe it isn’t. To the extent that adult ‘qualified’ AGW scientists on hearing that their science is questioned have gone into a mine to prove that methane having gathered in the ceiling will, because of AGWgas laws, diffuse back into the atmosphere of the mine. They’re so totally brainwashed with this junk science, they really think it’s real. I care about this.
I’ve lost count of those who have been shocked to find that CO2 is food for plants and that without it we couldn’t breathe, that CO2 needs to be, is essential to be, at plant level. That the atmosphere is an entity where molecules do not move at these amazing speeds through empty space…, so the example of how sound travels. I think it’s worth my time and effort to post what I have found out about this deranged AGWScience’s corruption of real world science. Because the Carbon Cycle of Life is missing from their lives.
Which means that Life itself is missing. The energy exchange from plants converting CO2 as food into sugars, etc. and producing all the oxygen in our air, and from plants spreading out to all life from this – bacteria and funghi, insects, us; and back again. AGW ignores this, living in a flat two dimensional world of energy exchange, without this life which would stretch the line into a triangle. I’ve seen a few posts getting the same reply as I’ve had when I mention higher CO2 are beneficial for plant growth, ‘But, it’s been shown that large levels can be toxic for some plants’. A reply for every point it seems, ignoring the larger concept of natural life being described, to be replaced with some off the shelf AGW convoluted response actually irrelevant to the principle, a straw man argument.
So back to the layering.
So CO2 does sometimes, in adequate concentration, behave like a heavy gas you describe. But clearly the surface of the Earth is not layered with it.
So, like my original physics PhD, it’s quantity which makes it act like this.. How? Does it jump on all the nitrogen and oxygen molecules and pull these down with them? Or is it only in bulk that they become heavy enough to break through the nitrogen and oxygen mix?
Each molecule is heavier than the air of nitrogen and oxygen it is in, it displaces air. that phrase is bog standard description in real science for heavier than air molecules. As in the description I linked above, oxygen is always slowly sinking, carbon dioxide is even heavier, it is always sinking because wherever it is it always tends to displace air and head for the ground. To sink to where plants can eat it, and so the cycle continues.
It is very much noticeable in bulk in some situations, venting from the earth as in Cameroon lakes (Nyas and Monoun – Nyas in ’86 was particularly deadly, and the layer high; a man standing and still able to breathe above the layer didn’t notice at first that his wife on a bed on the ground near him had died, quickly and silently). It displaces oxygen and in large enough amounts this kills, brewers and miners understand this danger. If you ever think of brewing your own beer.. It is invisible.
Winds spread it around, and turbulence and stormcells etc. mix it vertically. Enough. Not perfectly.
No life in that description. ‘Perfectly’ is only to fit in with what AGW says about it.
In real life, ‘perfectly’ is for it stay at ground and bio level and so continue to feed the cycle. Up in the air ‘well-mixed if not quite perfectly’ does nothing for life if plants can’t get enough for them not to struggle to survive.
But, we do have it nearly perfectly for them, amounts could be higher and they would be more drought resistant and healthier. As it is, most CO2 is produced at the ground level of our atmosphere, and being heavier than air will be most concentrated at lower levels. That is the norm. Trees breathing it out add to that as it sinks to the ground. The carbon dioxide which winds carry further will come down when the wind stops blowing, lucky the plants waiting for it, and, because carbon dioxide has a special affinity with water, it readily joins to water in the atmosphere, dew, rain, again bringing it down to earth. Plants in transpiration taking in carbon dioxide exchange it for water, again adding water to their immediate atmosphere. Water sinks into the ground and also evaporates, water evaporates from 0 to 100 degrees C. It’s practically always evaporating around plants, where any carbon dioxide joined to it will be released, again to the plants most immediate to it, and warmth and breezes speed up that process, taking it up into the trees which, as general rule all plants, take in the carbon dioxide from the underside of their leaves, that’s were the stomata are. (Water lilies have stomata on the top of their leaves, for example of exceptions.) Plants did no evolve to take it in from above, in some strange ‘well-mixed atmosphere where it accumulates’, mostly out of reach..
In that other discussion about Mauna Loa I gave a link to the earlier records of CO2. Because of this AGWScience ‘well-mixed throughout the atmosphere, accumulating’, regardles of carbon dioxide’s place and role in the Carbon Life Cycle, of which we are all an intrinsic part, these records are dismissed as ‘local’, and of no importance, pollution even. Because promoting this nonsense of ‘well-mixed/accumulating throughout the whole atmosphere’, AGW has to dismiss the relevance of these. But its well-mixed/accumulating/all atmosphere is what is nonsense here. Carbon dioxide by it very nature, its properties and place and interactions in our Carbon Cycle of Life, is bound to be found in greater quantities lower down in the bio levels.
AGW ‘background’ is what CO2 has escaped this, temporarily, because by its very nature carbon dioxide will always gravitate downwards. What does escape higher than plants can use immediately, will come down with the rain. All the interactions are interlinked for life as we know it. That’s wonderful. AGW, whatever it is, is not Natural Science.
Junk it, that’s all it fit for.