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.
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carbon-based life form said:
January 7, 2011 at 8:48 pm
Mr. Greer,
aut disce aut discede
_____________
The problem, cblf, is that the “learning” of many on this site is composed of advancing logical fallacy arguments and of disparaging /disregarding the growing data-driven climate research conducted world-wide for the past several decades.
This classic s/b the banner image for Anthony’s site => http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6128/411/1600/situational%20science%20doonsbury.gif
Jack Greer sez:
“The AGW side is arguing to minimize the dangerous impact of human intervention on the Earth’s natural carbon cycles and by extension Earth’s climate.”
1) Dangerous? According to whom? The IPCC?
Peer reviewed science begs to differ.
2) Every entity (animate or inanimate) alters the environment. Why would you expect that Homo sapiens would be the only entities (animate or inanimate) not to alter the environment?
How, short of wiping out the entire species, do you propose to make Homo sapiens the ONLY entity (animate or inanimate) in the entire history of the known multiverse NOT to alter the environment?
Jack Greer says:
January 7, 2011 at 9:42 pm (Edit)
Amazing!
You actually found some fact-driven CAGW climate “science” out there? (Where was it? Who paid for it? What was it? Who actually did it? When was it done? Where was it reported?) I’ve been looking for fact-driven CAGW “science” for 16 years and haven’t found any yet from the “big-government” science propagandists.
/sarchasm – The gaping whole between a liberal and the truth.
Jack Greer,
Regarding your suggestion that:
“ This classic s/b the banner image for Anthony’s site => http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6128/411/1600/situational%20science%20doonsbury.gif ”
Scientists investigate evidence. Theologians (of the worst sort) identify heretics. Which, pray tell, are you?
Jack Greer says: January 7, 2011 at 9:09 pm
“……The AGW side is arguing to minimize the dangerous impact of human intervention on the Earth’s natural carbon cycles and by extension Earth’s climate…….”
Regarding this passage let me please ask you two simple questions:
1. What do you think are the “dangerous impact(s)”?
2. What method(s) do you envisage to “minimize” the impact(s)?
Joel Shore says:
January 7, 2011 at 6:29 pm (Edit)
(replying to TimM’s question)
TimM says:
Q) What percentage of the greenhouse effect can be attributed to water vapor?
I’ve asked that question for close to 10 years of all the pro and con AWG groups and scientists. The numbers I have got back are an unbelievable range. Between 65 and 98 are the numbers I’ve seen and been told (assuming they knew what it was of course).
I know it isn’t evenly distributed with near saturation at the equator and next to nil at the poles and yes different sizes of water vapor interact with different wavelengths to have different effects. Some give rise to clouds that block the solar heat, some trap. Is it 50-50? 70-30? 10-90? Nobody seems to know.
If our understanding of the largest GHG is so lacking anyone claiming to have figured climate out beyond debate is in a sever case of hubris.”
(Your “reply” started out ….)
While there may be some uncertainty in the number, the real reason for the range of answers is that
(1) it is not a well-defined question….
OK, I’ll bite. I’ll repeat the question exactly. Based on today’s conditions – without “removing” artificially ANYTHING or any unreal gasses from the atmosphere)
You want to tax our economy over 1.3 trillion dollars based on your theory of CAGW “science” – derived SOLELY from assumed values of CO2 so-called “forcings”.
To do this, “you” (collectively) have taxes us already some 80+ billion dollars for “research” into CAGW and CAGW theories and GCM modeling.
Exactly what are the percentages of total “greenhouse” effects of
1. CO2 – at each ten degrees of latitude from 0 through 90, at each season of the year.
2. Water vapor – at each ten degrees of latitude? At each time of year?
3. Clouds – also at each degree.
4. Droplets or spray.
5. Aerosols from human pollution. List this by years. Also say what your data sources are. NOT the results of back-fitting GCM model runs artificially forced to fit GISS temperatures.
6. Volcanic dust. This effect varies by year, so just list this value by year for the years of which you have real data.
There is no doubt in my mind that somewhere somebody it working in stem cell research to create a replicating CO2 eating life form and will plop an eyedropper full of these things into the fetid, oil befouled Gulf of Mexico where it will thrive and expand out into the Atlantic, doubling every 4 hours or so. In the wild, free of any known predators, it will suck up CO2 and sink to the ocean’s bottom with a thud and there joined by its clones by the billions, no, googlplexians. No CO2 molecule will be safe and before you can say WUWT, the CO2 levels will be but a memory and life, the great spoiler of Mother Earth, will be no more.
Will the last living thing please turn out the light.
I’m curious if Justin Gillis is familiar with the mechanism of CO2 removal from the atmosphere; I’m even more curious if one took a randomly selected group of 100 people how many would be able to give the correct answer about the fate of the “pollutant” CO2 once it is released into the atmosphere.
When I first saw the ban dihydrogen monoxide petition I couldn’t believe that anyone would be stupid enough to sign it but unfortunately verified the veracity of the internet published experimental findings when I asked a few “environmentally conscious” patients about what they thought of the chemical dihydrogen monoxide. Is chemistry still taught in high school? I now use a simple test to determine whether or not to take on a patient who is into “alternative” medicine by asking them if they think that synthetic vitamin C is the same as “natural” vitamin C. If they vigorously insist that the synthetic version is a poisonous chemical just put out to enrich the capitalist chemical companies, I suggest they look for a different physician. They would likely be at home with the Australian doctors for the environment (thanks for that informative but depressing link Ray). None of these chemophobic patients seem to be familiar with the work of Friedrich Wohler and I get blank expressions when I mention his name.
ICE-9 reminded me of polywater which was a major topic in the journal Science during the 1970’s. There was a fear that if polywater got out of the lab the oceans would solidify and all life on earth would end. Even then I couldn’t understand why a supposedly ultra-stable H2O polymer hadn’t formed prior to this given the myriad of H2O-H2O collisions that had formed in the worlds oceans over the past few billion years. Eventually polywater turned out to be an artifact of H2O and silica reacting in the micropipettes in which it was formed.
Stability of sea levels has been extraordinary in recent times and can be seen at places like L’anse aux meadows in Newfoundland where the Vikings established a settlement 1000 or so years ago. My father was involved in looking at the geomorphology of the site (I envied him for visiting every remote national park in Canada and once there traveling extensively by helicopter to do “ground verification” of what he saw on aerial photographs and Landsat images) and he commented that the sea level in 1977 appeared to be the same as it was when the Vikings first came there. Thus, it appears that cyclic changes in sea level over the last millenium are the norm rather than a steady rise. I don’t know what the post-glacial rebound was like in northern Newfoundland as I presume this area was covered in ice 20,000 years ago. The fact that anyone would even consider settling at the northern tip of Newfoundland suggests a far warmer climate at the time which would imply a much higher sea level if the CAGW theorists are to be believed.
SBVOR
No, you’re being obtuse, and condescending at that.
We can’t “measure” gases in the atmosphere on the Earth millions or hundreds of millions of years before our species existed. We can estimate them based on models, or “revised models”, as in the link you provided.
And your link to the Wikipedia article on measurement is completely beside the point, and doesn’t do anything to support your contention anyway.
Read the abstract of the paper you linked to. It isn’t about “measuring” atmospheric CO2 levels. It is about REVISING a previous model and how the new model agrees better with others’ “estimates”. It may be a great model, but it isn’t a measurement. Sure, it is BASED ON other things we can actually measure, and from there they infer and deduce to arrive at their estimate of atmospheric CO2 in prior periods.
But that isn’t the same thing at all.
It’s similar in principle to Mann’s tree-ring data and resulting model. He didn’t “measure” the temperature 100s and 1000s of years ago. He used proxy data to made an educated guess. And even where we measure content content to estimate previous years’ atmospheric CO2 levels, we measure trapped bits of carbon, plant growth remnants, etc. — not the atmosphere.
“Since life on this planet evolved when CO2 levels were measured in the thousands ppm… .”
Further, if you want to be technical, my quip was linguistic and as much to do with verb tenses as anything. Clearly there was no one “measuring” anything back then that we are aware of.
Why you are making a mountain out of a molehill (awrongly too), out of a light-hearted quip about some imprecise (and therefore humourous) wording is a mystery to me, and I presume to most people here.
mariwarcwm brings up the issue of the cholesterol hypothesis which I think is instructive in how science works (and doesn’t work). If the moderator agrees, I’ll briefly outline how I think that the cholesterol hypothesis is an example of medical misadventure but with a fortuitous happy ending.
When I was a resident I was asked by one of the clinical pharmacologists to dig up material against the cholesterol hypothesis in a debate this physician was having with the head of the lipid clinic. With the typical over-enthusiasm of that time I dug into the literature and found that the cholesterol hypothesis stood on very shaky ground. The classic experiment that was taught to medical students was the feeding of cholesterol enriched food to rabbits who rapidly developed severe atherosclerosis. Also, familial hypercholesterolemia was known to cause premature atherosclerosis but in this group of patients cholesterol levels are 3 to 4 times normal.
What I ran into was the intriguing work of Kilmer McCulley who hypothesized that perhaps oxidized cholesterol was the culprit in the rabbit experiments. Cholesterol preparations that were used contained about 1% of cholesterol-epoxide. McCulley purified the cholesterol for the rabbit feed and minimized the amount of cholesterol epoxide and the rabbits no longer developed atherosclerosis. McCulley was able to create atherosclerosis in rabbits by feeding them with meat and went on to develop the homocysteine hypothesis of atherosclerosis which I believe is valid but unfortunately there are no patentable molecules that perform better than cheap folic acid and B12.
Also at that time a study involving cholesterol lowering with fibrates showed a decrease in heart disease deaths but an increased overall mortality as a result of suicide, homicide and MVA’s. It was quite interesting when I discussed this study with cardiologists 16 years ago who were adamant that these were spurious results even though psychiatric research subsequently showed that violent criminals had lower cholesterol than non-violent criminals. There is a clear link between cholesterol levels and violence but it is one of the relationships that’s statistically significant but not clinically significant. Interestingly, as mariwarcwm noted, there is a U shaped relationship between cholesterol and mortality with low cholesterol levels being associated with increased risk of dying. How many of these people have hematologic malignancies (which can lower cholesterol) is unknown.
Given my literature research, I was quite suspicious of the HMGCoA inhibitor drugs (statins) when they came out but as study after study demonstrated decreases in all cause mortality, even in primary prevention trials, I decided to take another look at this class of drugs and what I found had nothing to do with cholesterol. What statin drugs do is to prevent prenylation of proteins which affect a number of surface membrane receptors that result in growth of smooth muscle cells. They also enhance the function of endothelial cells which line the arteries and which malfunction in coronary artery disease. They also dramatically reduce the levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) which is a more significant risk factor than cholesterol. If one had to chose only two biochemical markers to measure in a patient to assess their heart disease risk HDL cholesterol and high-sensitivity CRP would be the markers to measure. Incidentally, statins also lower cholesterol and this is the least important function that they perform. Oxidized LDL is immunogenic and causes the production of anti-phospholipid antibodies which are associated with thrombosis (I’m not sure how strong this data is but it ties in nicely with increasing auto-immunity that one gets with aging). The only reason I measure cholesterol in patients on statins is to adjust the dose of the statin that they’re taking.
So statin drugs do work, but they’re analogous to Ignaz Semmelweis’s work to reduce the incidence of purpureal fever in maternity hospitals by insisting that physicians wash their hands in chlorine water before delivering babies. The reason Semmelweis used chlorine water (this was before bacteria were discovered) was because it was most effective in reducing the “cadaverous smell” that he assumed was somehow associated with purpureal fever. Pasteur eventually showed why Semmelweis’s method worked but Semmelweis achieved his fame only in posterity.
One of the most gratifying experiences I’ve had was to sit in on a talk to doctors given by a cardiologist, with whom I’d had numerous arguments about cholesterol during my resident days, which was entitled “Everything you’ve learned about cholesterol was wrong”. So the drug companies got lucky with statin drugs which are a highly profitable product for them and work for reasons unrelated to cholesterol. It was instructive seeing how “dissidents” are treated in medicine as there were some cardiologists I haven’t spoken to since I voiced my doubts about the cholesterol hypothesis. My guess is that if one polled 100 random GP’s, one would find that 90% of them would give the obsolete answer about why statins reduce heart disease as I find to my dismay when I talk to my colleagues about statins and endothelial function and CRP. At least science in this area is advancing albeit very slowly. I wish the same could be said for climate science.
The problem with these loons is that they are putting out this crap to the unsuspecting public who in many cases believe what they read in the newspapers.
You don’t even want to imagine what CO2 would be broken down to i.e. what the resulting molecules of the chemical reaction would be, is het suggesting that methane or charcoal and water would be pouring down from the skies? This is really funny!
“Colin says:
January 7, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Latitude: the reason that CO2 is dropping permanently over geologic time is that the bulk of the planet’s original inventory of CO2 is locked up in limestone. The cold water reaction process of combining CO2 + basaltic rock to form limestone and sand is a permanent one. At some point the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will drop below 80 ppm, and plant life except for some grasses will no longer exist.
It comes as a bit of a shock to realize that the life cycle of our planet is about 90 per cent completed. Photosynthesis will no longer be possible at about the same time as the world’s oceans boil off. This all happens about 200-300 million years from now. Putting CO2 back in the atmosphere is something that we can do, though probably not to any significant degree, but the eventual loss of most of the world’s water inventory is not preventable.”
I assume you are talking about the luminosity increase of the Sun on its way to becoming a Red Giant causing true global warming. Firstly this assumes that the Sun is a main sequence star and not an exotic neutron star/iron core emitting hydrogen and helium as Dr. Oliver Manuel suggests. Secondly we could put lenses at the Earth Sun Lagrange Points or heat absorbing particles in the Sun’s atmosphere to fight this warming effect. If the Sun is a main sequence star then in 5 billion years Earth would be swallowed up but I doubt man cannot delay his demise on it until then using technology. Anyway we would all probably be on a terraformed Mars by then.
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20031002191731data_trunc_sys.shtml
http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/6791
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technovel_sunshade_061111.html
Other than that Mankind’s most immediate climate problem over the next thousands of years is mitigating the effects of the next Glacial Period of this current Ice Age. Any CO2 AGW will be helpful in that regard although I doubt that its effect will be as great as it needs to be to prevent it all together unfortunately. If only the CO2 Alarmists were right ;-).
@- Christoph Dollis says:
“And even where we measure content content to estimate previous years’ atmospheric CO2 levels, we measure trapped bits of carbon, plant growth remnants, etc. — not the atmosphere.”
The same objection applies to current measurements.
CO2 levels are not measured directly but are inferred from changes in the intensity of a laser and a (quantum) model of photon absorption.
Temperature from thermometers is a proxy measure from the level of a material in a tube and a mathematical model of thermal expansion in liquids.
“Further, if you want to be technical, my quip was linguistic and as much to do with verb tenses as anything. Clearly there was no one “measuring” anything back then that we are aware of.”
At the risk of being pedantic your quip was then based on ignoring the fact that the construction ‘were measured in… (units)’ has a established history of usage as an indicator of the MAGNITUDE of a quantity in the past when actual measurement was not done. For instance historians may write of the response times of the Roman Empire to civil unrest were measured in days…. as opposed to weeks or hours.
When the grammatical construction – “(parameter x) were measured in (unit y)” in a situation where it is evident from the context that no contemporaneous measurement was made and only the magnitude of the measurement is given, no actual figure, then most readers would conclude that the knowledge we have of the magnitude of the value was being communicated not the act of measurement.
All y’all are bein a little rough on Justin. When he was named a Knight Fellow at MIT for 2004-2005 it was said that “Gillis plans to use the year to shore up his understanding of basic biology, focusing on stem cells, cloning, gene therapy and other socially and politically contentious applications.” So, it could be that ol boy, outa Georgia, via DC to the NYT, is writing not out of ignorance, but to persuade the ignorant. He’s clearly not ignorant of the agenda he supports.
Chris H
I couldn’t agree with you more about Geoffrey Lean of the Telegraph. Last year he made a hopeless howler about climate sensitivity and Arrhenius – 6 deg. C !!! He never did publish a correction even though I sent him chapter and verse. I then complained to the editor who said it was in Lean’s court.
I agree with mariwarcwm (January 7, 2011 at 3:02 pm that 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 reviewed Malcolm Kendrick’s book ‘The Great Cholesterol Con’ 5 years ago for the Bristol Mechi website whose book confirmed mariwarcwm’s opinion.
I am a long time retired GP (now 90) who agreed with Dr Kendrick that the medical profession were foolish (to put it mildly) to be considering prescribing statins to everyone over 50. Events since have confirmed that side effects are far more common than originally believed. Adding iatrogenic disease (caused by medical treatment) is not a good idea as I explain in a new edition of Enjoy Eating Less published by Lulu.com of Raleigh North Carolina.
I was therefore interested in the comments of Boris Gimbarzevsky (January 7, 2011 at 11:20 pm) who found that the cholesterol hypothesis stood on very shaky ground. As the moderator permitted him to outline how he thought that the cholesterol hypothesis is an example of medical misadventure but with a fortuitous happy ending, I should like to add a further comment: He ends his piece:
“It was instructive seeing how “dissidents” are treated in medicine as there were some cardiologists I haven’t spoken to since I voiced my doubts about the cholesterol hypothesis. My guess is that if one polled 100 random GP’s, one would find that 90% of them would give the obsolete answer about why statins reduce heart disease as I find to my dismay when I talk to my colleagues about statins and endothelial function and CRP. At least science in this area is advancing albeit very slowly. I wish the same could be said for climate science. “
I have been surprised to learn how many of my relatives, friends and colleagues have been advised to take statins merely because their cholesterol levels were believed to be too high, and how much better most of them felt when they stopped taking them. At my age I am unable to take action in this field but suggest that readers of this blog should investigate Spacedoc website where Dr Kendrick and many others outline the problems and how they can be dealt with.
Alick Dowling
Christoph Dollis sez:
“you’re being obtuse, and condescending at that”
Actually, I’m just being factual. And, the fact is that instrumental measurement and proxy measurement are both subsets of the broader term measurement.
Flawed as his yardstick was, Michael Mann did indeed use tree rings as a means of temperature measurement. Any scientist understands that. And, I would wager that Izen is a scientist.
Mr. Dollis, in the future, I suggest you be more careful when choosing how to express your own condescension — that’s really what motivated me.
Mas, no it doesn’t depend upon that. The sun has been heating up since it was formed. Today the sun is about 30% hotter than it was during the Jurassic. The reason is the accumulation of fusion products in the sun. These impurities require a higher temperature to maintain fusion, hence the sun heats up over time.
The effect of the sun’s heating is to heighten the troposphere over time. Water molecules rise to the top of the troposphere where they can be dissociated by solar radiation. The oxygen is retained in the atmosphere and the hydrogen is vented into space. The current rate of water loss is about 1 mm/millenium or something like that, which is supplemented by new water from volcanic activity. However, when the troposphere rises above much of the earth’s magnetic field, the rate of water loss will increase by somewhere between three and five orders of magnitude, meaning that the oceans will boil off in something on the order of 1-10 million years or so.
At the current theorized rate of solar heating, this effect takes place about 200-300 million years from now. However, the sun’s conversion into a red giant when it falls off the main sequence will not happen for at least a billion years.
@-Colin says:
“Latitude: the reason that CO2 is dropping permanently over geologic time is that the bulk of the planet’s original inventory of CO2 is locked up in limestone. The cold water reaction process of combining CO2 + basaltic rock to form limestone and sand is a permanent one.”
No it isn’t unless you are proposing that tectonic and volcanic processes are going to cease. Plate tectonics recycles the sequestered carbon in limestone releasing back into the atmosphere.
The atmospheric sequestration of CO2 as carbonate rock is rate limited by the concentration. If the level of CO2 drops to be a significant constraint on photosynthetic productivity it also becomes a significant constraint on the biological path of carbonate sequestration.
Meanwhile tectonic processes will subduct the limestone rock and then the CO2 is released back to the atmosphere by volcanism.
Although at a rate two orders of magnitude slower than the present anthropogenic additions.
SBVOR:
“Mr. Dollis, in the future, I suggest you be more careful when choosing how to express your own condescension — that’s really what motivated me.”
Look, you humourless person. That wasn’t condescension: It was a quip.
And the phrase, “I guess that one flew over your head,” referring to a joke isn’t an insult. That’s why Smokey’s next comment began with:
Go on arguing with yourself about a harmless joke based on ambiguous phrasing of a few words. I’m done with it. Have at her.
[reply with html tags closed]
SBVOR:
“Mr. Dollis, in the future, I suggest you be more careful when choosing how to express your own condescension — that’s really what motivated me.”
Look, you humourless person. That wasn’t condescension: It was a quip.
And the phrase, “I guess that one flew over your head,” referring to a joke isn’t an insult. That’s why Smokey’s next comment began with:
Go on arguing with yourself about a harmless joke based on ambiguous phrasing of a few words. I’m done with it. Have at her.
Christoph Dollis,
Nobody can say you’re not consistent.
Izen, it’s a question of the relative rate of formation of limestone vs. release of CO2 via subduction and volcanism. I don’t have any quantification for that. Do you? Is quantification of this even possible to any degree of precision?
No, Dr., “the lack … is mostly absent” is false. The lack is mostly present. And “the lack … is … even rarer among politicians” is also false. It’s more common.
I know, double negatives are VEWY confusin’.
😀