With the possibility of the coldest Super Bowl ever coming this week, this story about CO2 concentration seemed appropriate.
Ryan Scott Welch writes:
Anthony as you know, many people don’t know much about the earth’s atmosphere. For example, when questioned about how much CO2 is in our atmosphere most people give me a guess of somewhere between 30% and 70%. When I tell them that CO2 is only 0.04% or really about 395 ppm (parts per million) they generally look at me as if I was speaking some kind of foreign language. The layman simply cannot convert 0.04% of the atmosphere or 395 ppm into anything they can picture or relate to. In searching for some way to help the layman to understand the earth’s atmosphere, CO2, and the human contribution to atmospheric CO2, I came upon the idea of relating a sample of the atmosphere to something that nearly every person has seen, a football stadium.
So, instead of talking about ppm atmosphere, I talk about seats in a stadium. I put together a presentation using football stadium analogy and it goes something like this.
How much atmospheric CO2 is from human activity? If a football stadium represented a sample of our atmosphere, how many seats would be human caused CO2? The Dallas Cowboys Stadium seats 100,000 for special events.
Each seat represents one molecule of gas in our atmosphere.
Nitrogen is 78% of the atmosphere, Oxygen is 21%, and Argon is 0.9% giving you a total of 99.9% of the atmosphere.
So, where is the CO2? CO2 is a trace gas that is only 0.04% of the atmosphere which in this sample = 40 seats.
But of the 40 seats, or parts per 100,000 of CO2 in the atmosphere, 25 were already in the atmosphere before humans relied on hydrocarbon fuels (coal, gas and oil) leaving 15 seats.
And since humans only contribute 3% of all CO2 emitted into the atmosphere each year (97% is from nature), the human contribution is 3% of the 15 remaining seats in our sample. 3% of 15 is 0.45.
So in our stadium sample of 100,000 seats the human contribution of CO2 is less than half of one seat. That is less than one half of one seat from 100,000 seats in a Dallas Stadium sized sample of our atmosphere is human caused CO2.
[NOTE: per Dr. Robert Brown’s comment pointing out an oversight, this half-seat visualization analogy is on a PER YEAR basis, not a total basis – Anthony]
Here is my presentation uploaded on slideshare.net
http://www.slideshare.net/ryanswelch/how-much-atmospheric-co2-is-from-human-activity-23514995
REFERENCES:
Mauna Loa CO2 data: ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_mm_mlo.txt
Wigley, T.M.L., 1983 “The pre-industrial carbon dioxide level.” Climatic Change 5, 315-320 (lowest value of 250 ppm used)
Increasing Atmospheric CO2: Manmade…or Natural? January 21st, 2009 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/increasing-atmospheric-co2-manmade%E2%80%A6or-natural/
Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System, Geocraft, http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
The Carbon Cycle, the Ocean, and the Iron Hypothesis, Figure based on Sabine et al 2004, Texas A&M University http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/carboncycle.htm
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Ferdinand:
Thankyou for “trying another way” but I said I would ‘give you the last word’ and I have provided my evidence and argument so people can assess that against your evidence and argument.
As I see it, the difference between our positions is demonstrated by your statement saying
“There is no natural reason for a change in equilibrium, except a temperature change. That is hardly of effect in the past decades or millennium (the MWP-LIA difference is only 6 ppmv). The equilibrium level of CO2 at the current temperature still is around 290 ppmv. That we are far above that equilibrium is caused by the human emissions.”
Whereas I say
There is no KNOWN reason for THE change in equilibrium, IT MAY BE THE temperature change FROM THE LIA. That is NOT ASSESSABLE FOR past decades or millennium (the SMOOTHED ICE CORE DATA INDICATES MWP-LIA difference is only 6 ppmv BUT THE STOMATA DATA SHOWS MUCH HIGHER CHANGE). The equilibrium level of CO2 at the current temperature still is NOT KNOWN. That we are far above that equilibrium is IS SUGGESTED BY SOME.
Richard
Ryan Scott Welch says:
January 29, 2014 at 6:53 pm
No, that’s not the only reason that it seems to you that the human concentration of atmospheric CO2 in my presentation is tiny. I understand your post. You’ve picked a metaphor for how much CO2 humans are responsible for in the air, and an easily understood one. The reason your answer of the human contribution so tiny is that it is WRONG. It has nothing to do with 100,000 versus a million.
OK, fair enough. However, you still made a huge mistake, one that totally negated your interesting metaphor.
BZZZZZT!!! If you’ve been reading WUWT daily, you should know better than to make some kind of bogus handwaving accusation against me without quoting my words. I just checked. I do not find any example of me saying that you purposely misrepresenting anything …
Take a deep breath, my friend, I said no such thing. This is why I ask very forcefully for people to QUOTE MY WORDS, to avoid just this kind of misunderstanding.
w.
The Pompous Git says:
January 29, 2014 at 10:56 pm
Thanks for tracking that down, Git, very interesting stuff. Looks like I should stick to cyanide in the future …
w.
richardscourtney says:
January 30, 2014 at 10:26 am
One small addition:
That we are far above that equilibrium is IS SUGGESTED BY SOME.
If the CO2 level in the atmosphere wasn’t above the equilibrium, there was no reason for the natural carbon cycle to remove more CO2 than it releases…
Ferdinand:
I said I would give you the last word and I meant it. I write to point out that you need to explain and to justify your assertion in your post at January 30, 2014 at 11:30 am when you are responding to my suggestion that the equilibrium is changing.
Richard
Willis Eschenbach said @ur momisugly January 30, 2014 at 10:36 am
richardscourtney says:
January 30, 2014 at 11:37 am
I write to point out that you need to explain and to justify your assertion in your post at January 30, 2014 at 11:30 am when you are responding to my suggestion that the equilibrium is changing.
Richard, if the equilibrium is changing to a higher level, for whatever reason, most probably temperature, then the overall release of CO2 by all natural causes should be higher than the overall uptake by all natural sinks, regardless of the human emissions.
But we see the reverse: the overall natural uptake is larger than the overall natural release. Thus either the equilibrium setpoint is going down, or the human releases cause a disequilibrium above the temperature controlled equilibrium…
That nature is a net sink for CO2 is anyway true for the past 50+ years of accurate measurements:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
Ferdinand:
Thankyou for spelling out your argument. I leave others to consider it for themselves, as I said I would.
Richard
richardscourtney – In my comment of Jan 30 3L22am there is a clue to the process which perhaps I should have highlighted a bit more: “At the ocean-atmosphere interface, a CO2 partial pressure imbalance has a half-life of about 13 years, but the movement towards equilibrium takes place on both sides – with excess atmospheric CO2 the atmospheric CO2 partial pressure decreases while the sea surface CO2 partial pressure increases. “.This is because the sea surface layer is absorbing CO2 faster than it is transferring it to the deeper ocean. But this is not ocean saturation and it does not support the IPCC (AR4 Ch.7 Exec Summary) saying “Models indicate that the fraction of fossil fuel and cement emissions of CO2 taken up by the ocean will decline if atmospheric CO2 continues to increase.“. This is not happening now and the rest is just a model prediction which looks unlikely to happen. [Think of the ocean surface layer as a CO2 conduit to the deeper ocean. As input pressure increases, flow increases.].
re your statement “The anthropogenic emission may be the cause but other causes are possible and the temperature rise from the LIA seems most likely.“: I agree that other causes are possible. My calculations indicate strongly to me that anthropogenic emission is the major cause and that temperature rise from the LIA is a minor cause – but of course I always have to be prepared to be proved wrong.
Mike Jonas:
Thankyou for your clarification in your post addressed to me at January 30, 2014 at 1:32 pm.
Let me know if I can help with getting your paper published.
Richard
What you fail to realize is that the true threat to global climate is not CO2 but the insane hotness of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. The young lady pictured for the article has, without question, contributed at least a 1 degree rise in global temperatures on her own and is, therefore, the cause of more melting of polar ice caps than all the man-made CO2 since the industrial revolution. Ban NFL cheerleaders and all our problems will be solved (or we will be thrust into a global ice age?).