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.
Leaving science in the hands of people such as Justin Gillis is analogous to leaving my credit card in the hands of a serial bank robber.
“The lack of even basic science education is mostly absent in the journalists in the MSM”
It’s actually far worse than that…
The so-called “leaders” within the so-called “profession” of so-called “journalism” openly promote the distortion of science “reporting” into purely political propaganda. And, the minions do as they are told.
Click here to see that even Slate.com recognizes this as a giant problem.
@-Colin says:
” 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. ”
It is undoubtedly variable over time, but as it IS cyclic, and has been ongoing for at least 2 billion years so it is clear that until tectonic process stop there will always be a proportion of the terrestrial carbon in CO2 atmospheric form. The tectonic rate is farely consistent over 100millions of year periods with a slow decrease, but if CO2 falls due to increased sequestration processes those are rate limited by the CO2 concentration so the minimum concentration is not zero.
If sequestration rates fall, or emission rates rise and CO2 increases significantly then the geochemical processes that sequester CO2 increase. Biological sequestration may also play a role, if the global warming from the increased CO2 does not cause an extinction event as in the PETM.