From Reuters: The sky will soon be full, view it while you can.
“At present emissions levels, in less than 20 years the sky would effectively be full”
Analysis: Extreme steps needed to meet climate target
At present emissions levels, in less than 20 years the sky would effectively be full, meaning every extra tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted would have to be removed to stay within safer climate limits, one lead author says.
…
Other experts say it isn’t clear how far specific changes are the result of emissions or simply natural effects.
“There’s no final decision,” said the Potsdam Institute’s Vladimir Petoukhov.
For example, last week it emerged that Arctic sea ice this summer melted to a record low extent, or a close second. Natural weather effects partly explained the previous record in 2007, scientists say, and may help explain this year’s, said Petoukhov.
h/t to Tom Nelson
When one considers that fossil fuel use contributes about 1 percent of total global emissions from all sources, including natural (~96%), there would appear to be a very large buffer in the system that makes this short time period seem highly improbable if not laughable.
I found that article physically painful to read. Now that Reuters is fooled, just who are they trying to kid? In a couple of weeks this flotsam will be added to the frantic cut-and-paste blatherings of the blog commenters who come out to bash the skeptics. Please wake me when it’s over and we set about solving some real problems.
This sounds like a case of ‘Death by The Onion’, instead of Wikipedia!
That’s funny, I thought 350 was the magic number. Now they’re saying, what, 420 or 425 is the new magic limit? Must be goalpost moving time. Again.
I believe Lubos’ article on Le Chatelier’s principle and climate would be an interesting read for these people: http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/le-chateliers-principle-and-natures.html
Below are some paragraphs from this article.
“One possible way to describe Le Chatelier’s principle is to say that feedback mechanisms in stable systems are negative. When you add CO2, various processes that consume it (such as photosynthesis) become more frequent. So the ultimate increase in CO2 will be lower than if those processes didn’t exist. For the concentration of CO2, it is essentially a standard example of the principle in action. No one doubts it.
What about the clouds? Well, I think that the observations make it rather likely that the clouds are a stable system. For example, the temperature during the glaciation cycles never started to run out of control. It had the tendency to stay in a certain interval. If it is true that the responses of clouds on the external temperature and CO2 concentration were a good description of the effective laws of physics governing these processes, it follows that we deal with a stable system. Le Chatelier’s principle must apply and feedbacks must be negative.
But the idea that positive feedbacks dominate or that they are the ones who win at the end simply contradicts basic laws of thermodynamics.”
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
“Did you know that on the internet, an area the size of the UK is now devoted to climate change?”
We need a way to ‘Like’ individual comments, this one is going on my Facebook status
The earth is flat, if you sail too far west, you’ll sail off the edge. And from there, it’s turtles all the way down.
Not laughing is becoming quite difficult.
I suppose the sky could become saturated with CO2, in the sense that it becomes essentially opaque to the frequencies CO2 absorbs. but then any additional CO2 would have no further GHG effect, and so would not be a concern from an AGW point of view.
Something that crazy is almost as good as the video:
Maybe, as a result of the atmosphere being full, the Arctic Ocean will be covered with frozen CO2. Staggering possibility, since they’ll be able to point to that as an example of extreme drought: “Even the ice is dry!”.
Personally, I’d like to see it, especially in the summer when it would be sublime…
So the fuller the sky, the denser the air, the easier is to generate lift on aircraft…so Gore can reduce his carbon footprint.
(Disclaimer: Any faulty physics/logic/maths is merely the by-product of a malfunctioning local reality inhabited by the reader)
Its simple. They think we’re stupid. This should be fun.
Luboš Motl takes a surgeon knife to this …
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/09/ipcc-sky-will-be-full-in-20-years.html
Here is a great paragraph which I am still ROTFLMAO at …
Hehehe. 🙂 For the single-minded one-dimensional chicken-little alarmist out there, he is pointing out that high CO2 levels would lead to higher plant growth (greening, that’s good right?), which would be a ‘feedback’ of sorts which will increase the scrubbing of the naughty CO2 molecules. Think of it as another example of a natural braking mechanism, like Willis with the Thermostat Hypothesis and equatorial thunderstorms.
‘Instead of mopping up CO2, an alternative geo-engineering approach is to screen out sunlight, for example, by spraying sulphur into the upper atmosphere. This causes water droplets to form and create hazy clouds and is to be trialled by British engineers next month.
The problem is a threat of unforeseen consequences.
‘It’s not the same as just rewinding things back to where we were in terms of greenhouse gases. You’re doing another change which will potentially bring the temperature back but could lead to less rainfall,” said Reading University’s Peter Stott.’
This is perhaps the scariest part of the article. Messing with the atmosphere so we could have possibly less rainfall – I’m sure the people suffering in the Horn of Africa will be ecstatic to hear of such a development.
These people are becoming unhinged.
Kelvin Vaughan says:
September 21, 2011 at 7:27 am
I can see the Abominable Snowman on the south pole web cam!
If commieBob’s (6:26 am) quote of Roger Martin is correct [“Mem>the Republican faith-based right gets all sorts of power and authority from the overreaching and overstretching of the scientific left”] that would be the Obamanable Snowman on the south pole web cam that you see.
Fifty years ago I remember the weather in the UK being pretty much like it is now. So why should another 20 years make any difference?
“The sky is fulling! The sky is fulling!”
Clearly the man is barking mad, probably as much as that other Potsdam Institute nut case, Stefan Rahmsdorf.
And this bit from Reuters “…Arctic sea ice this summer melted to a record low extent, or a close second”. Or a close third, or fourth, or fifth. Just depends where you want to get your information from. They just chose known warmers NSIDC.
Dear Warm-mongers,
When the sky is ‘full,’ do I have to stop exhaling?
Or should every human only inhale?
Breathlessly Awating Your Reply,
Rick K
Alan D McIntire says:
September 21, 2011 at 5:37 am
My immediate response is, “Full of what?”
———————
If I recall, it’s already full (at 100%)
Let’s see its …..78% nitrogen
…..20% Oxygen
…… 2% Trace gasses (incl CO2)
That sounds full to me.
Tsk. Tsk. Ze amosphere is a gas. Put in more, ze sky will expand. I vill be able by fly my airship to ze Moon!
The left now forbids discussion of the details of climate dogma. Since “consensus” has been declared, the msm won’t cover any science that might question their fantasy. Climate hysteria has replaced communism in the left’s religion. The left believed no matter how many Stalin enslaved and slaughtered. Now the left has climate change magic so ethanol can starve the poor but who cares.
If the sky is full of CO2, won’t the excess just run off somewhere harmless?
At first I thought this post was about CO2 saturation, whereby the concentration of CO2 becomes high enough that all the IR in a particular wavelength is being absorbed, so that adding more CO2 does not increase the greenhouse effect. Is there any science to validate that hypothesis?
————————-
Let me give that quote a little help with a non-alarmist context:
“At present emissions levels, in less than 20 years the sky would effectively be full”, but not as full as during the dinosaur era of the Cretaceous period which was atmospherically a veritable wonderfully benevolent lifegiving hothouse. [bold words by JW]
John
You guys don’t understand how bad it is. We need to get it down below measurement detection levels. The plants will need to evolve to not need CO2, so will we. We can not be too careful. AND, some of you will need to do more than your share because I am not going to help.