I’ll be offline most of this weekend, as I got virtually no work done for myself this week thanks to the BEST “PR before peer review shenanigans” and the compliant cadre of barking media lapdogs that followed with tails-a-wagging looking for a sound bite.
Discuss topics on science, weather climate, etc here quietly amongst yourselves. don’t make me come back here.
Kev-in-Uk says:
October 22, 2011 at 4:26 pm
“Yes, and if otter17 makes the effort (as most of the skeptics have HAD to do themselves!) he/she should be encouraged.”
________________________
Ah, thanks. I used to be a climate contrarian of sorts back in high school when I had first heard about the issue mentioned. Without looking at much information, I just assumed that humans were far too small to do anything like global warming. In college, I read quite a bit more on the subject, and even more after getting a job. Also, in college at Ohio State, I recall hearing a bit about Dr. Lonnie Thompson and his work with glaciers. I do like a recent paper of his, which kind of sums up the science and is understandable to me.
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/TBA–LTonly.pdf
Anyway, I’m skimming through the primer now to get a grasp of how it is laid out.
BargHumer says:
October 22, 2011 at 10:52 am
BEST has put a gust of wind in ti the AGW sails but the hard facts havn’t changed.
——–
That’s correct. The hard facts have not changed. They just got harder.
There was already considersble evidence that UHI did not affect global temperature trends, now there is more evidence.
Maybe the reason why is that back in olden times people had fireplaces with chimneys that required the burning of a lot of wood and coal. These fires are not very efficient and so the wasted heat went up the flue and warmed nearby thermometers.
Plausible but unproven as a mechanism to explain the negative BEST result in UHI. So feel free to analyst the BEST data to see if makes sense. No more excuses about hard to get data or lies about the data being hidden.
otter17 says:
October 22, 2011 at 10:19 am
Say hypothetically that the CO2 emissions needed to be reduced down to zero by say 2050-2060 roughly. What would be the best policy, technology, and treaty measures to do so such that our livelihood, economy, etc remain productive/happy? Trying to do policy brainstorm, looking forward to suggestions.
Kill off everyone else? How about that? The rest would be happy…
Seriously, there is no way to prevent people using fire. Homo Sapiens is the only fire-tending animal, our very nature, our biology, our anatomy is defined by fire. Our ancestors started using it well before becoming fully human. Our enormous skull (housing a pretty able brain), devoid of powerful muscles and with diminished teeth would be impossible without it. With no fire we would starve to death in several months, because raw food in general is not for human consumption.
The human spirit itself is fire, and this fire is insatiable. It consumes knowledge, experiences and emits light, much light & warmth & love & creativity.
For policing CO₂ emissions is to police fire. Should you be successful in this endeavor, liver of Prometheus is eaten in vain while you are left with zombies, at best. Why to make Zeus happy? An ancient pagan deity of greatly reduced power, his utmost weapon, lightning being tamed and distributed to each and every household to do useful work there, making women free of backbreaking chores.
As for CO₂ levels 5 decades from now, take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Current concentration is somewhat below 400 ppmv, while the stuff is not toxic at all until ten thousand ppmv is exceeded. Quite some safety margin. From the geologic record we do know for sure that life on this globe has prospered tremendously under carbon dioxide concentrations ten times higher than we have today. In fact there is no economic way to pump that much of the substance into the atmosphere, because we are running out of easily accessible carbon based geofuels before that could happen.
At the same time carbon in its elementary form is not only fuel, but the best construction material imaginable. It is not mere happenstance that molecular nanotechnology of life is based on structures having carbon backbone. But we can do much better than that if we learn how to make self replicating programmable nanobots capable to construct diamondoid structures or intricate webs of carbon nanotubes coated with molecular instruments for any purpose according to design. As soon as it happens, a huge demand for carbon will emerge, and as we can learn from plants, the most accessible source is airborne CO₂. That is, in the long run, we are better to worry about CO₂ depletion of the atmosphere: simple economics dictates that it should be that way. We will have to develop procedures to replenish is, possibly using limestone as source. Admittedly, it would yield lime milk as a byproduct, which, if released to the environment in its unaltered form, could cause catastrophic ocean basification. But as I have already mentioned, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
You may also wonder what large scale energy source is available if carbon based geofuels are depleted. But that’s an easy one. We have this huge thermonuclear reactor nearby with its 383 yottawatt output and we don’t even know how to turn it off. It has enough fuel in it for billions of years. The only thing we need is a micron sized solar cell which does not produce electricity directly, but some not flammable, non-toxic energy rich substance like sugar using CO₂ and water and releasing O₂ into the environment, along with a fuel cell of the same size, producing electricity on demand by turning sugar and atmospheric oxygen into vapor and carbon dioxide. Pretty neat closed cycle, eh?
If these molecular machines are designed carefully, their quantum efficiency can be quite high. The only remaining task is to produce them en masse at low cost using self replicating molecular factories. With this technological outlook in mind you can surely see the present (tax payer financed) rush for solar energy is a bit premature.
Of course, we also have nuclear fission at hand. Not the old-fashioned unstable plants primarily designed to provide Plutonium for weapons, but some novel, inherently safe, sub-critical, self-terminating breeder type with passive cooling, possibly utilizing Thorium (which is five times more abundant than Uranium), burning out all the long half life isotopes from the fuel and not generating anything, even as an intermediate product, that could be used as a nuclear explosive. The waste from such a reactor does not have to be sequestered for eternity, just for several centuries before its radioactivity decreases to environmental levels. And, for a given amount of waste, one could extract a hundred times more energy.
It happens to be a fact of thermodynamics, that to enrich a substance which is scarce in nature, the energy needed is proportional to the logarithm of scarcity of that element, provided of course the technology applied operates close to the thermodynamic limit. But with advanced molecular nanotech it should be easy to construct such molecular sorters.
It means that even if all the rich ores containing fissionable material are depleted, we still have a virtually inexhaustible supply from poor sources, if energy is cheap. But the very inexhaustibility of fuel supply makes energy cheap enough to grant it, at least for the next several billion years.
Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
@ur momisugly Otter17
Hartmann, Kester Davies. Plant propagation Principles and Practices
1990
Pg 42
“Under conditions where CO2 is limiting the photosynthesis rate [at adequate light intensities and relatively high temperatures – about 29*C (85*F)] an increase in CO2 concentration, to between 1000ppm and 2400ppm, can be expected to result in an increase in photosynthesis, as much as 200 percent over the rate found at 300ppm”
Harmann, Kester Plant Propagation 4th edition 1983
Pg 46
I’ve been involved in glasshouse crop production for 50 years now, we routinely have 1500ppm up to 2400ppm in our production houses, and also the propagation tunnels. Production for tomatoes, cucumbers, capsicums would be 50% over that produced without CO2 enrichment.
mkurbo says:
October 22, 2011 at 1:00 pm
10 Steps to turning the American economic engine back on…
——
Better yet, stop fighting over the steering wheel.
Business will get moving again if you take away the uncertainty. A bunch of power crazed idealogues with over simplified ideas is doing a lot of damage.
otter17 says:
October 22, 2011 at 3:53 pm
Lucy Skywalker says:
October 22, 2011 at 3:20 pm
“Otter17, I think that what you need is a proper science education, to correct a deficit of which you are unaware.”
____________________
Ok, I’ll take a look at the primer some time. Do you link to peer-reviewed results like Skeptical Science does? Good citations and good sources make for good education, so if you have sources that conflict with Skeptical Science, that would be worth a look for sure.
OK, that got a laugh from me.
otter17 is just one more who has been suckered by Skeptical Science’s “peer-reviewed” science.
otter17 probably believes that if John Cook says “this is what a skeptic believes…”, then that is the skeptical position.
From the best I’ve determined, this is what most of both “skeptics” and “lukewarmers” believe:
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
Many here know where that statement originates, but the source of the phrase isn’t as important as is the general sentiment it portrays.
otter17 – if someone tells you either a “skeptic” or “lukewarmer” believes differently than that statement, you should question them for a direct source/link to exactly what that skeptic/lukewarmer is claiming. I know I haven’t read or heard every word that every skeptic/lukewarmer has written or said, but I am certain that much of what skeptics/lukewarmers are reported to believe, such as what Skeptical Science claims, is deliberately misleading and deceptive.
Oh, and for the record – I’m not sure one can either derail or hi-jack the “open thread” topic.
Party! Party! Weekend! Climate! Party!
Put forth the CO2 keg and sniff away.
It’s dangerous stuff right, EPA and climate communist hippies says so, therefor it ought to be really cool to sniff it, right? (Submariners can’t join in the fun, what with they’ve obviously survived too dangerous levels of CO2 them in-pay-of-oil-baron-basterds, and by observations is so terribly old and outdated in climate science any ho’.)
CO2 is dangerous stuff, it makes Coca Cola steal it, mix with cola, and make pure water cold from the poor “boil”.
At least Bud the wiser delivers a buzz. :p
otter17 says:
October 22, 2011 at 4:43 pm
I do like a recent paper of his, which kind of sums up the science and is understandable to me.
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/TBA–LTonly.pdf
Anyway, I’m skimming through the primer now to get a grasp of how it is laid out.
============
I assume when you say, “I do like a recent paper of his”, that objectivity has left the realm, along with reason.
Berényi Péter says:
October 22, 2011 at 4:53 pm
For policing CO₂ emissions is to police fire. Should you be successful in this endeavor, liver of Prometheus is eaten in vain while you are left with zombies, at best.
Yes! A Zombie Apocalypse!
Is this a corollary to Godwin’s Law?
“If not Hitler, Zombies.”
🙂
In a word: Yes
In a word: No
[emphasis mine]
Among many, many other sources, see:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/21/happer-on-the-truth-about-greenhouse-gases/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/11/christy-attention-brought-by-climate-change-views-almost-a-drug/
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/PrimeronGlobalWarming.pdf
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/09/the-climate-engine/
http://www.iloveco2.org/2009/04/termites-emit-ten-times-more-co2-than.html
http://www.giurfa.com/gh_experiments.pdf
The answers to the questions you ask are there (or in other places you may discover), but you have to put forth the effort to find them.
If you are just trolling here to see what a stir you can cause, well don’t bother reading any of the sources cited.
otter17 says:
October 22, 2011 at 3:49 pm
“No, CO2 isn’t translucent to electromagnetic radiation in the visible spectrum (light that we see). It does have a property where it “blocks” electromagnetic radiation in some of the infrared spectrum. An object can lose heat via giving off infrared radiation, so if the CO2 blocks the infrared, it traps heat. So the theory goes to the best of my knowledge.”
Otter, CO2 does not only absorb IR but in equal measure re-emits it, see here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/co2-heats-the-atmosphere-a-counter-view/
So it works more like an IR redistributor.
and this; notice the last figure, showing how saturated the CO2 absorption band already is.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/15/9373/
Meaning that it’s a dense IR redistributing fog already (mean path length on the order of 20m on ground level); more CO2 will only shorten this path length slightly.
Brian H says:
October 22, 2011 at 3:23 pm
“Read otter17′s answers, and it’s obvious the goal is thread-jacking. In any case, the repetitious appeals to authority are tiresome.”
Open threads are fair game.
I think this qualifies for an Open Thread. And this is related.
The UN/IPCC is fabricating history, just like programmer Harry fabricated many years of temperature records, and like Hansen’s GISS routinely alters the past temperature record – always in a manner that is the most alarming to the public.
M A Vukcevic says
Great info as usual Vukcevic. You really have a talent for good graphs-keep them coming.
Another Open Thread contribution: click
DirkH says:
October 22, 2011 at 5:36 pm
“Otter, CO2 does not only absorb IR but in equal measure re-emits it, see here:”
I screwed up a word or two in my initial layman’s explanation of the theory. Nevertheless, I’ll see what the IR re-emitting property does in your link.
F. Ross says:
October 22, 2011 at 5:30 pm
“The answers to the questions you ask are there (or in other places you may discover), but you have to put forth the effort to find them. If you are just trolling here to see what a stir you can cause, well don’t bother reading any of the sources cited.”
____________
Generally, I like links to peer-review paper abstracts, but I can dig through the links for info, thanky. And if anything talk to Latitude about trolling. I was trying to calmly/rationally explain an analogy, and he just kept calling it stupid and laughing.
“Put forth the CO2 keg and sniff away.”
As a non-communist hippie, I have in fact done this. Brewing some beer I bottled too soon, and poured it back into the crock – having heard that CO2 had “interesting” effects, I took a couple deep breaths. Whoa! It’ll never catch on as a recreational drug – the suffocating sensation makes it unpleasant. Might be some use for “dry waterboarding” (you did not hear this from me). Definitely psychoactive.
(Anyone foolish enough to try this – do NOT suck it straight out of a compressed tank! Freeze your lungs! Blow it into a garbage bag first and suck it from there… or brew some beer…)
Love, Peace, and Happiness,
Frank
u.k.(us) says:
October 22, 2011 at 5:27 pm
“I assume when you say, “I do like a recent paper of his”, that objectivity has left the realm, along with reason.”
___________________
Have you read the paper? If not, you cannot in good faith just blindly accuse me that my objectivity and/or reason have left me. If so, then ok that is your opinion.
Dirk H’s point applies so as to make this video completely off the mark. Ink absorbs light and does not reradiate it. To do an analogous experiment, you would need to drop tiny mirrors or shiny spheres into the water and try to shine a flashlight through it.
But even that would miss the mark as the scattering to the sides would be measured as “lost”. The water would need to be miles thick and infinitely wide and the light source would need to be infinitely wide too. Even that wouldn’t exactly replicate the effect of the atmosphere covering a sphere, but it would be pretty close (except that CO2 only scatters some portions of IR, not the whole range).
The absolutely absorptive nature of ink is NOT analogous to the scattering of IR by CO2. The video is misleading. I wonder if the presenter really thinks CO2 absorbs IR the way ink absorbs light.
u.k.(us) says:
October 22, 2011 at 3:33 pm
R. Gates says:
October 22, 2011 at 3:15 pm
=======
OMG, does this mean the sun won’t shine anymore.
Or is it just a really bad analogy.
You can do better, I know you can.
I’ve seen it.
———
As CO2 is mostly transparent to the wavelengths of sunlight, no matter how high the CO2 levels go, we would not be in danger of blocking out sunlight. The ink example simple shows visually what we can’t see in term of the effects of something at low ppm. I would of course expect certain skeptics to refuse to grasp this analogy.
JohnWho says:
October 22, 2011 at 5:17 pm
OK, that got a laugh from me.
“otter17 is just one more who has been suckered by Skeptical Science’s “peer-reviewed” science.
otter17 probably believes that if John Cook says “this is what a skeptic believes…”, then that is the skeptical position.”
___________________________
Well, what I meant was that Skeptical Science provides links to a lot of peer-reviewed papers when they make a posting, which tends to lend more credibility. Obviously, Skep Sci on its own isn’t a peer reviewed journal, and of course conduct due diligence to check out the peer reviewed papers cited to see if the conclusions in the papers match Skep Sci’s conclusions.
Oh, and I don’t believe that the official contrarian position is what Skeptical Science says. Skep Sci provides citations when they quote a contrarian argument. Check out this example. It has an example quote from the BBC at the top and some links to peer-reviewed papers scattered throughout the body text (from journals like Science, Journal of Climate, etc).
http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-advanced.htm
otter17 the problem with peer reviewed is just what all the recent kerfuffle is about when it comes to climate science peer review is broken and until total transparency is coming forth from the warmist camp anything “peer reviewed” will be correctly viewed with suspicion and hefty doses of salt it has been shown that the CRU and others have worked to destroy anything they view as nonconformist before it can get published “even if I have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” how then can you be so set on that system as giving anything worthwhile. also was Newton peer reviewed in his day? just askin.
Frederick,
Of course the presenter doesn’t think that CO2 acts like ink. He is simply making the point that you cannot say outright, “such a small proportion of something cannot be significant”. When you have gotten over that prejudice, to see what effect atmospheric CO2 does have, you run the numbers. The numbers say that doubling of CO2 causes about a 1 degree C rise in temperature (the numbers do not say that the effect is saturated). But the numbers also say that as the teemperature goes up, water vapour increases, which makes the temperature go up some more, giving a total effect of something like 3 degrees C per doubling of CO2, with some degree of uncertainty.
Have a great weekend,
John
otter17 says:
October 22, 2011 at 7:21 pm
JohnWho says:
October 22, 2011 at 5:17 pm
OK, that got a laugh from me.
“otter17 is just one more who has been suckered by Skeptical Science’s “peer-reviewed” science.
otter17 probably believes that if John Cook says “this is what a skeptic believes…”, then that is the skeptical position.”
___________________________
Well, what I meant was that Skeptical Science provides links to a lot of peer-reviewed papers when they make a posting,…
That is the “hook” that “Captain” Cook uses on the unsuspecting.
See PaulID’s post above.