Readers please note the story I ran earlier: NOAA: “the atmosphere’s self-cleaning capacity is rather stable”
This story talks about the ability of hydroxyl radicals in the free atmosphere to break down pollutants, and how there seems to be a stability in the levels globally, something understood for the first time. All good news.
Now read what this New York Times reporter, Assistant Business Editor Justin Gillis, bemoans in his story here:
A Steady Dose of Atmospheric Detergent
He writes:
Unfortunately, the most important greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is not one of those broken down by the hydroxyl radical.
Zounds!
Mr. Gillis, let’s say such a thing magically did occur naturally, or someone creates a synthetic catalyst that performs the job and releases enough of it into the atmosphere in some geoengineering scheme to start dissipating CO2 in the atmosphere.
- What would happen if we rid the Earth of CO2 ?
- Or more technically, what would happen if this process scavenged CO2 down to 150 parts per million (or lower) globally?
If you can answer these questions, you might then understand why I am giving your statement the high praise of this regular feature.
This WUWT post on CO2 has a clue for you. I offer it as a path to enlightenment.
While you are at it, you might also like to address this story you did on sea level rise:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/science/earth/14ice.html
Gillis writes:
As a result of recent calculations that take the changes into account, many scientists now say that sea level is likely to rise perhaps three feet by 2100 — an increase that, should it come to pass, would pose a threat to coastal regions the world over.
And the calculations suggest that the rise could conceivably exceed six feet, which would put thousands of square miles of the American coastline under water and would probably displace tens of millions of people in Asia.
This is the graph of satellite measured sea level rise from the University of Colorado:
Note the rate of 3.1 millimeters per year.
Note this simple calculation:
2100 – 2011 = 89 years left to the end of the century
89 x 3.1mm = 275.9 mm call it 276mm
276 mm = .906 feet conversion done here
.906 feet is over 3 times less than 3 feet, and over 6 times less than 6 feet
Even if the rate of sea level rise accelerated (as some claim it will) and doubled, we still would not reach 3 feet. It would have to more than triple the current rate.
Many projections by various models predict the rise of sea level:
Note the trend of the observations line from 1950 to 2000, if you follow the linear trend, it will end up somewhere between 20 and 30 cm by the year 2100. The graph above is from Wikipedia’s “global warming art” which for some reason doesn’t show the observations back that far.
Let’s call it 30 centimeters. So 30 cm converted to feet is:
30 centimeters = 0.984251969 feet
Still far shy of 3 feet.
I hope this clears things up for you. If not, there’s much more here.
I’m sure he also signed the petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide.
James Sexton says
Right James -I was really amused and even had my wifey take a look and even she (who really could care less) thought he was ignorant.
Back in May, a National Academy of Sciences report said…
6.5 ft is 1981 mm.
Sea level would have to rise at an average rate of 22 mm/yr from now until 2100 in order to achieve a 6.5 ft rise by 2100. During the Holocene transgression (15 kya to 10 kya) sea level rose at an average annual rate of ~14 mm/yr.
Here are the top ten decades of sea level rise (mm/yr) since 1700…
1804-1813 12.75
1803-1812 10.67
1728-1737 10.30
1789-1798 8.38
1842-1851 7.87
1858-1867 7.82
1788-1797 7.72
1861-1870 7.66
1808-1817 7.58
1785-1794 7.18
None of those 10-yr periods has come anywhere close to 22 mm/yr… And all of those periods occurred long before man started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
Here are the top ten decades (mm/yr) from 1950-2002…
1989-1998 4.66
1990-1999 3.95
1991-2000 3.86
1956-1965 3.79
1986-1995 3.78
1974-1983 3.71
1952-1961 3.65
1993-2002 3.63
1988-1997 3.44
1975-1984 3.30
Sea level data from 1700-2002 from:
“Recent global sea level acceleration started %over 200 years ago?”,
Jevrejeva, S., J. C. Moore, A. Grinsted, and P. L. Woodworth (2008),
Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L08715, doi:10.1029/2008GL033611.
maybe we should let the AGW crowd in on the new form of ice that stays frozen at Room Temperature! Let’s replace all ice with Ice-9! Paradise on Earth!
Well, this does go to prove one thing – you do not have to have a brain to be a reporter.
Do people really forget those simple science lessons in elementary school where people and animals breath in oxygen and breath out CO2 while plants take in CO2 and spit out oxygen during photosynthesis?
I know today’s kids probably get the “green” version of this now, but those of us who attended school before the environmentalist days surely remember, I hope.
tetris , the vaccine thing wasn’t only scientific fraud. According to the article in the “The Australian” newspaper yesterday the guy was taking money to promote something he knew to be untrue. This seems to me to be ordinary criminal fraud and given the unnecessary deaths that have occurred a long jail sentence would be in order although I think we could learn something from the Chinese here (take him into the alley and put a bullet in his brain).
Hydroxyl atoms cannot do the job of removing the co2. I suggest that a great deal of grant monies should be allocated to some sort of automatic system designed to remove this “deadly” gas. Say, um, something that will be solar powered, robust, self replicating and have clean end products. Maybe such things such as sugars and starches and cellulose could be made from that offending product of combustion. I feel that a grant, say in the 8 figure area per annum should be sufficient. Just sign a cheque please.
To your calculations, Anthony, I add this: A three foot rise in sea level by 2100 would require more than a 15-sigma increase above the observed rate, according to the U of Colorado chart information. Gillis’s article is a perfect example of yellow journalism feeding AGW hysteria, with no scientific basis in fact.
James Sexton says:
January 7, 2011 at 10:36 am
Articles like this always make me wonder. Do people like Mr. Gillis know we use his serious articles for our amusement? Obviously, some do, such a Craven. But in general, I’m forced to wonder. It doesn’t seem to slow their idiocy one bit. Can it be that they don’t know thousands of people today will wander by WUWT and watch us have fun at Mr. Gillis’ expense?
He doesn’t care what the unwashed trash in flyover country think, he is writing for the “right” people.
I left the Times a comment when I saw a comment saying someone should go live next to a Chinese coal plant, like CO2 is a poison or something. As someone who grew up near coal plants, I pointed out that CO2 levels in an office environment like the NY Times are typically 600 to 800 ppm, vastly higher than what you get even working next to a coal plant.
Re: “.906 feet is over 3 times less than 3 feet, and over 6 times less than 6 feet’
A minor point: it is impossible for anything to be more than one time less. At that point it will have vanished. More correctly, 0.906 feet is less than one-third of 3 feet and less than one-sixth of 6 feet (or, more than two-thirds less than 3 feet, etc.).
IanM
Yet another example of the old saying about journalists.
“The truth only exists to be raped”
“Unfortunately, the most important greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is not one of those broken down by the hydroxyl radical.”
How unfortunate indeed. Anthony, thanks for the Friday evening laugh!
Fortunately for us CO2 is an extremely reactive gas, as much or more so than many chlorine based compounds. That is why there is so much life on Earth. And it allows morons to continue to flourish.
On an unrelated note, I am hypothesizing that the majority, if not all, of the recent biological kills are because of extreme cold, decadal in some cases.
“Unfortunately, the most important greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is not one of those broken down by the hydroxyl radical.”
Plants eat it though.
Christoph Dollis asks:
“Who was doing the measuring?”
Answer: lots of scientists. Here is one example: click [click in image to embiggen]
There is an interesting parallel between the vilification of CO2, a basic requirement for life as we know it on Earth at present, and the vilification of cholesterol, which is fundamentally essential to the running of a healthy body.
I have been reading ‘The Great Cholesterol Con’ by Malcolm Kendrick. Kendrick is up there with the heroes of AGW scepticism and for the same reason: he is intelligent and knows his science and he is bravely standing out from the crowd. It turns out that a low level of cholesterol in a body is as undesirable as a a low level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Cholesterol and Kendrick have no Anthony Watts running a blog drawing attention to the facts. CO2 and cholesterol both have opposition from large vested interests to contend with.
Cholesterol even has the same name changes: first the damage was caused by cholesterol, then it was the ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol, which changed to ‘oxidised’ LDL. In the meantime just as with CO2, no one can explain the exact mechanism by which the damage is caused to the human heart, or how catastrophic warming can be produced from so little CO2.
And both have a religious following – eat low fat yoghurt and mind your carbon footprint is repeated like the Lord’s prayer by the likes of Mr Gilles the world over and both appear unassailable.
Writing as a former journalist: We don’t do science questions — basic or otherwise.
“I long ago came to the conclusion that editors chose health correspondents …”
Indeed. I recall seeing KMBC-TV’s “health correspondent” do a story in which she had raw beef and chicken side by side on the same plate with one another. No one who knows proper food safety rules would do that. Any time you handle uncooked poultry, you must assume it’s infected with salmonella, and immediately wash your hands and any utensils you’ve touched to the meat before allowing them near other foods.
I figure if you can’t get basic stuff like that right, you don’t know WTF you’re talking about.
jorgekafkazar says:
January 7, 2011 at 11:41 am
Curiousgeorge says: “Justin is good with weasel words, I’ll give him that: perhaps, conceivably, suggest, and so on.”
To revise an old GE motto:
“At the NY Times, weasel words are our most important product.”
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It’s come full circle:
“White House Official: Obama To Visit GE’s Birthplace”
http://news.morningstar.com/newsnet/ViewNews.aspx?article=/DJ/201101071404DOWJONESDJONLINE000443_univ.xml
Smokey, it flew right over your head. I’ll correct the original statement so you can contrast:
My reply was mere humour: a quip.
Christoph Dollis:
Oh, OK, I get it now.
Ha-ha!
Except, you didn’t strike through in your original comment like you did here.
Don’t worry, suppliers of Climate Science™ to the masses. The UK government is rushing to protect you.
Britain Vows To Change ‘Embarrassing’ Libel Law
LONDON January 7, 2011, 11:53 am ET
It’s from NPR (National People’s Radio) so you know it’s good and true. Okay, it’s actually an AP (Associated Propaganda) piece, thus it’s double-plus good and true.
I emphasized some good parts:
Now where have I heard that language before? Concerning Climate Scientists™ complaining about the onerous burdens they face and the problems with getting their message out? Perhaps it was in some emails…
So as things stand now, the (C)AGW purveyors who have been screaming about Climate Change™ “deniers” and Big Oil-funded blogging campaigns, could be in big trouble after (C)AGW gets revealed as a sham (from the start?) that was “sexed up” relentlessly for the financial and political gains of individuals and Green groups, who were pushing and publishing exaggerated hyperbole and “untruths” even after better scientific research revealed those claims as (highly) inaccurate?
Well then, good thing the UK government will be acting to prevent that mess from happening. Everyone from the Met Office to the University of East Anglia to the BBC can now breath easier. And soon the UK will once again have robust scientific debate, now that the (C)AGW proponents will no longer have to prove what they are saying is true. You know, like they have been proving all along, demonstrating how everything they say and publish comes from irrefutable Peer-Reviewed™ Settled Science™, as we’ve come to expect.
I even doubt the “Sea Level Projections” graph suggesting a monotonous change in coming decades, in view of the 100-year plus observation of sea level trend around Japan, as measured by our MET Agency:
APACHEWHOKNOWS says:
January 7, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Question:
Under the current conditions in the U.S. House, Senate and with Obama as President how long will Harry Reid etal be able to keep Yucca Mountain Nuke waste facility closed.
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While the climate(sorry) in Congress has changed significantly, its incredibly difficult to reverse the regulatory obstacles. Even if the House passes a law removing some, Dems still hold the majority in the Senate, and Reid is still the leader. And even if it were to pass the Senate, Obama still holds veto power, there isn’t enough votes to override any veto.
But I’m with you, the responsibility needs to be placed. Right now, and for some time, a significant body on both sides of the aisle say they are for advancing nuclear power, yet, nothing happens. There simply hasn’t been significant movement. Its a bit maddening. Right now, its estimated 20 years to take a nuke plant from conception to reality. I don’t think our grid has that much time anymore.