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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On second thought, Anthony (sorry, not Andrew my bad) should redact the entire text of Welch’s piece, but LEAVE in the picture of the Cheerleader.
I am no scientist, but what about water vapor? Water vapor, I have heard asserted, contributes 95% of the GHE, with co2 and methane contributing the other 5%. How many “seats” does the water occupy (on adv.; humidity is variable (far more so than co2 level)?
I think you need a GHE gas seating section, with co2 subsection, a human caused co2 sub subsection.
The yearly production proportions do seem irrelevant, but…
Whether the 25 to 40 seat increase is all due to human action is an open question; arctic thaw and ocean warming release co2 with no human fingerprint.
A very interesting article written by Joe D’Aleo on why it doesn’t make sense that the rise of CO2 is caused solely by man-made CO2
http://www.principia-scientific.org/carbon-dioxide-the-houdini-of-gases.html
It takes a little thought to get what they are saying.
Here is Spencer – Increasing Atmospheric CO2 man-made or natural
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/increasing-atmospheric-co2-manmade%E2%80%A6or-natural/
The warmers think they can tell that the 400-150=250 ppm is all man-made because of isotopes differences between man-made and natural CO2. I think there have been these articles on this forum discussing this. But it doesn’t appear to be that simple
This very interesting WFT graphs show that CO2 concentration rise and falls AFTER a temperature change.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/isolate:60/mean:12/scale:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/isolate:60/mean:12/from:1958
And here is Murry Salby who has youtube video’s discussing the same topic.
I’d like to follow timc, and ask rgb what the moderately strong evidence is for, “some human-linked warming.”
As I see it, evidence in science is found by reference to a falsifiable physical theory. With respect to air temperatures, there’s evidence they’ve increased. But how is it possible to assign any causality to this (moderately strong evidence for), when there’s no viable physical theory of climate?
rgbatduke says:
January 27, 2014 at 10:46 am
Recent satelite observations of CO² in the atmosphere showed that it was not well mixed as had been hypothosised.
my, my appears you struck a nerve.
And excess CO2 does not buildup like compound interest. Inceases over time, but not compounding, We are also near the point where the GW effect of CO2 in unimportant, as there is a point where extra CO2 does not create any additional warming.
In the Big Bang Theory with Stephen Hawking, this is just a “boner”, not an attempt to misrepresent, methinks.
Out of 100,000 “seats” of atmosphere, 400 ppm represents 40. Humans have contributed 15 of the 40 by burning fossil fuels (and wood). Each year we contribute 2 ppm, or 0.20 seats.
An irrelevant comparison anyway, I’m afraid. If you remember the old movie, “2 Minute Warming”, in which a sniper hid in a tower above the stadium football crowd, it doesn’t even take one legitimate seat, if occupied by the right guy, to control the outcome of the game.
A fun stat, though.
” The physics of this is quite clear.” yes, the physics is that the greenhouse effect, as defined by the IPCC, is not real.
Half a seat may be a too low estimate, but I don’t think that I’ve seen a convincing argument for what is the right estimate for cumulative human sourced CO2. I do see that the Hawaiian CO2 growth looks linear while the human contribution growth looks exponential, and I suppose that’s why it’s not obvious what the answer is.
@rgbatduke: Did I misunderstand the article or your response. It appears that someone came up with another, easily visual, way to explain ppm. In the explanation, it was indicated that the anthropogenic portion of CO2 was miniscule and likely not to be a significant contributor.
Your response said it didn’t include cumulative anthropogenic CO2, I assume that CO2 not absorbed or used. It’s a very complex matter, and most of the estimates I’ve seen go on assumptions that can better be classified as glittering generalizations.
You also asserted that CO2 can cause catastrophic global warming with the caveat that the system is complex. Did you mean 400 ppm CO2? If not, what concentration? . I haven’t seen a scenario that appears to give that tipping point at any reasonable, or likely concentration. Don’t the mass of GCM’s assume some forcing for CO2 and have any of them come close to accurately predicting the climate. If we understood the simple physics that well, maybe we could control the climate as the warmists suggest.
“I don’t think it does the search for truth any favors if you present the 0.04% in such a way that you leave people with the impression that CO_2 couldn’t produce catastrophic warming.”
Right on brother. Why do we persist in making stupid arguments when we have plenty of strong ones within easy reach.. The “how can a trace gas necessary for life possibly do any harm?” is a terrible “common sense” based argument that only hurts our credibility.
Box of Rocks:
At January 27, 2014 at 11:13 am you ask
It is the game which Americans call “soccer”.
They do this to avoid confusion because they play a game which they call “football” but is really a tame version of rugby in which the participants wear body armour to avoid getting hurt.
Richard
There is one particular group of people that has attended every home game since 1961.
Much like CO2 concentrations, this unique group has grown in numbers over the years:
11 in 1963
15 in 1973
35 in 1983
34 in 1993
36 in 2003
39 in 2013
Note that these numbers can be expressed in parts per million by multiplying by 10.
For example, the stadium concentration of this group was 390 ppm in 2013.
It is highly plausible that this unique group of people has caused a measurable temperature increase in the stadium, although it may not be sensible heat.
The group is commonly known as the DCC, aka the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.
🙂
If I am understanding the analogy correctly 15 seat to 1/2 transition seems to be implying that the resident time of human produced CO2 (whatever that is) in the atmosphere is 30 years and that 1/2 seat is added every year and 1/2 seat goes away every year. Is that correct? Why 30 years?
Well and how much arsenic will kill a human being as a percentage of its weight ? How much beta blockers will regulate/deregulate her/his blood pressure ?
Apart from the obvious mistake of not cumulating the human contribution over the years, I think that this post is just deceiving and far below the standards of most of the material one can find here. In my mind it had better be removed.
Here is the other dangerous greenhouse gas.
And if you equate the “noisiness” of each fan occupying those 40 seats to c02’s warming effect, is it not true that the last 38 fans collectively don’t make as much noise as the first 2?
Just wait for the “… but one drop of cyanide will kill a 100kg man” from the peanut gallery.
Dr Burns: Willis has already tried the cyanide analogy! It hardly explains the physics.
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 27, 2014 at 10:59 am
I agree with Robert Brown. You were doing great until you got to the end. Yes, humans only contribute a small percentage PER YEAR, but over time that addition builds up. For an illustrative example, if you were to save a small percentage of your salary every year, soon it would end up as a large percentage of your savings …
Second, I don’t see the point of the analogy. Your argument seems to be, CO2 is only a trivially small part of the atmosphere, so we can ignore it.
However, compare it with something like say cyanide. The percentage of cyanide that someone slips into their business partner’s breakfast may be as small as the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere … but the reality of the world is, some things have effects that go far, far beyond their level of concentration.
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And this gentlemen is why the bad guys win and the good guys lose. Willis the atmosphere is NOT the human body. The human body is made up of 10,000+ chemicals so there fore a small amount of almost anything will disrupt the workings. The Human body is a chemically active piece of machinery. The atmosphere is chemically inert with 2 major components and the the rest very minor. The amount of CO2 is so small it is worthless even talking about. The analogy is a good one.
Also to RGB time may add about half a seat. Yeah that will kill us.
chris y says:
January 27, 2014 at 11:38 am
Needs pictures.
Thank you all for the feedback as I was curious what flaws there might be in my reasoning. Most of the criticism seems to come from CO2 dwell time which I understand is unknown, but since 98% of all CO2 emitted into the atmosphere each year is reabsorbed by the oceans and plants I don’t see that it matters. It does not matter where the CO2 comes from, just how much CO2 there is at any point in time. The sun does not prefer one CO2 molecule over another.
Box of Rocks:
At January 27, 2014 at 11:13 am you ask
What is football?
Football is a game played worldwide (except USA) where a spherical ball is kicked with ones foot. Hence: “Football”. Commonly referenced as “Soccer” in the USA.
Football is also a game played in the USA, where the players pass the ball from hand to hand. Hence it is called “Football” because of the lack of use of feet and balls. Thats why the lack of balls require the use of complete body armour (armor), and oxygen after 15 seconds on the field.
Please do not get me started on the “World” series of baseball where only teams from the USA can play….
BTW GO Seahawks 😉
Question for all:
Prior to mid-1900, atmospheric CO2 was increasing at a certain rate of ppm per year and it continues to do that at a slightly higher rate since then. Why then would we say that all of the increase is anthropogenic?
rgbatduke on January 27, 2014 at 10:46 am said: “The ***evidence*** for some human-linked warming is moderately strong.”
Let me propose a theory regarding the evidence you seem unable to provide. Consider the .45 seat and the lead-in picture… That Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader would take about .45 of a seat in the stadium and is smoking hot. I have a 97% confidence that she would raise the temperature in the stadium by at least .7 degrees F.
Please post your evidence and we will compare. 8D
Eric