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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richardscourtney says:
January 27, 2014 at 1:04 pm
You wouldn’t be able to sort out the gas molecules in an English stadium … they would be too busy fighting with each other 🙂
Roy UK:
Just because you and others in Engliand don’t undersand English isn’t the fault of Americans…
From the Oxford English Dictionary:
Soccer
NOUN
a form of football played by two teams of eleven players with a round ball which may not be handled during play except by the goalkeepers. Also called football and Association football.
Origin
late 19th century: shortening of Assoc. + 4) in Oxford Dictionaries (British & World English)”>-er.
Soccer is NOT a word invented by Americans, but by the English.
Roy UK says:
What is football?
… the lack of balls require the use of complete body armour (armor), and oxygen after 15 seconds on the field.
On the other hand, these ballsy performers don’t wear body armor but they should be given oxygen to revive normal brain functions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgPBeu4hLKw
BTW, Go Spurs!
@Colorado Wellington – Go Spurs??? You do realize they are just a boot attachment on a cowboy? 😉
Abby Klein is hot, the globe not so much, though we’re having a wonderful respite here in Alaska. Reminds me of when I was a kid in the 70’s when snowmachine races were cancelled several years in a row or as they called it back then the coming ice age.
How convenient this article is today. I was just looking for the math on how absurd the gw hypothesis is.
The stadium seat comparison and the 100 yard football field CO2 analysis more so shows the left wrongly picked CO2 for political purposes as there simply is not enough concentration in the atmosphere to have any affect on warming or cooling the planet. That’s why they had to use propaganda, manipulated and cherry picked data to HIDE THE DECLINE in temperature. And to this day still lie through their teeth in defending the scam.
I always clobber Warmists with the old…if the entire Earth’s atmosphere was $1000 how much would be CO2. I love that look they get on their faces when I tell them!
ossqss says: @ur momisugly January 27, 2014 at 1:13 pm
What is CO2′s dissapation rate anyhow? How long will the additional man made stuff hang around in varied scenarios?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If it is any where near plants it is GONE.
Oh and just incase you wondered, here is what AIRS itself is saying about the ‘Well Mixed” assumption:
JBJ:
At January 27, 2014 at 1:30 pm you say to me
Possibly, but they would generate a lot of heat and would not need body armour 🙂
Richard
rgbatduke says:
”simple fact that the GHE is real and that the 0.04% atmospheric concentration contributes a lot more than 0.04% of it”
But it has been estimated that a doubling of CO2 enhances the GHE “backradiation” (the mechanism by which cooling is slowed) by 3.7 W/m^2 and it has also been estimated that the total GHE “backradiation” is around 333 W/m^2. Therefore 2XCO2 represents a whopping 1% increase in GHE. Even if one assumes all the fantasy positive feedbacks materialized and produced a 20 W/m^2 increase in GHE, we’re still talking about a mere 6% increase in GHE. An effect that supposedly boosts Earth’s temperature by about 30 degrees Celsius so we’re talking 0.3 degrees Celsius or at the off chance that the fantasy feedbacks that have yet to be observed magically materialize and further boost the GHE we’re still talking 1.8 degrees Celsius, safely below the arbitrary 2 degree safety limit.
Oh my God…It’s worse then?
Try explaining it this way,
You are driving from the centre of Perth to the GPO in Melbourne, a distance of 3,451km,
Day 1: an easy drive of 721km to Norseman – 8 hours
Day 2: a long drive of 1,200km to Ceduna – 12 hours and [watch] the roos.
Day 3: another short days drive of 846km through Port Augusta and Adelaide to Murray Bridge – 9 hours.
Day 4: a short but slow drive of 664km to Melbourne – 8 hours.
As you leave the Western Hwy, turn right onto the Ring Rd, left onto the Westgate Freeway, over the Westgate Bridge and when you reach the corner of Spencer and Collins St you have entered the 1.345km killing zone of CO2.
I hope this simplifies it.
richardscourtney says: @ur momisugly January 27, 2014 at 1:38 pm
..Possibly, but they would generate a lot of heat and would not need body armour 🙂
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Only mad dogs and Englishmen are found on English football fields.
My Hubby has a classmate still playing at age 70. He is in the mad dog category.
So in summary, this article is about Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders and some other stuff…
😉
richardscourtney says:
January 27, 2014 at 12:41 pm
===========
Thank you for your summary/comment.
I, as a lifelong Cowboys fan, am willing to call the CAGW crowd the equivalent of the Cowboys defence in 2013. [for those non-football fans, the defence was an absolute disaster, the worst in Cowboys history and one of the worst in NFL history]
Sorry, I thought I had stumbled upon page 3 in a UK tabloid.
Now I understand it was intended as a visual analogy of CO2 percentage for the layman so
absolute data accuracy was not entirely relevant.
I do have one concern. If the ‘tabloid’ layman was looking at this in visual terms would they not consider that if the ‘CO2’ half seat was occupied by the cheerleader it is likely to get hotter?
phillipbratby says:
January 27, 2014 at 11:50 am
Other than your scorn, what’s wrong with the cyanide analogy? The author is arguing that because something is tiny we can afford to ignore it … cyanide proves him wrong.
Are you actually agreeing with his premise, that we can safely ignore the small stuff just because it is small?
If you want a proper big-versus-small comparison, you have to compare effects. Here’s one for you.
As a global 24/7 average, total downwelling radiation at the tropopause is just under half a kilowatt per square metre. It’s about 340 W/m2 of solar and 150 W/m2 of longwave.
A doubling of CO2 is slated to increase that by something like 3.7 W/m2 … which is well under 1%.
Note that I am not comparing abundance, I’m comparing effects, W/m2 to W/m2.
This makes CO2 what I call a “third order” factor. A first order factor is a variable that can change something by more than 10%. So, for example clouds are a first-order factor in the amount of instantaneous sunlight hitting the earth, they change it by much more than 10%.
A second-order factor is one that can change something by between one and ten percent. In terms of total 24/7 downwelling radiation (not just solar), clouds have a net effect on the order of 20 W/m2 of cooling, or about 4% of the total downwelling radiation. Second order.
But a doubling of CO2? At 0.8% of the game, they are a third order factor …
That’s the proper way to compare. Not by abundance, but by effect.
All the best,
w.
The real number is 1 in 20,000. That is the 50 ppm (50/1,000,000) increase in CO2 that occurred during the great warming from 1977 through 1998. And what about the other 19,999 parts? Well about 400 of those parts are made up of water vapor, which is the main greenhouse gas. Well, what would happen if water vapor increased by 1% and instead of 400 parts we would have 404 parts, that is not even measurable because water vapor is not well-mixed and concentration varies enormously geographically. The entire theory is made up of assumptions, esp the carbon cycle.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch7s7-3.html#7-3-1
And every assumption is made to “fit the theory”.
I have a question … Temperatures are given as anomalies over a given base period. Are there any anomaly charts or any other trend analyses done on CO2.
Pathway says:
January 27, 2014 at 1:28 pm
The whole earth didn’t freeze solid during the Ordovician. That happened (if it did) in the Pre-Cambrian, repeatedly. But there was an extensive if relatively brief glaciation during the Ordovician with CO2 at over 4000 ppm. How much over is subject to debate.
I was doing fine with this analogy until I got to the “half a seat” part. With the picture at the top of the post showing a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader stuck in my mind, I naturally thought about sharing the other half of my seat. If the author meant to convince me that occupying just a half-seat in a football stadium couldn’t cause any warming, he failed completely.
John West:
re your post at January 27, 2014 at 1:39 pm.
Yes, I made the same argument to a troll on another thread two days ago.
Indeed, it is one of the major reasons why I said in my summary in this thread at January 27, 2014 at 12:41 pmhere
I did not mention that I am among those who think the probability of catastrophic warming is vanishingly small. I was making a summary of existing knowledge and so was trying to be dispassionate.
I don’t think effect of AGW will become sufficiently large as to be discernible from natural climate variability so will not be “catastrophic”, and I am as certain about this as anyone can reasonably be about the future.
However, as Robert Brown said, the possibility of catastrophic warming does exist. Nobody knows all the possible feedbacks which could ‘kick in’, and it is a falsehood to claim knowledge we do not have. That claim of false knowledge is what warmunists have done to get us into the present scientific and political mess which is the AGW issue.
We need to be completely clear about what we know and what we do not know if we are to obtain a path out of the mess. And if the public is to follow us out of the mess then we need to increase credibility for what we say. Anything any of us does which allows us to be ‘tarred with the same brush’ as warmunists inhibits us from correcting the AGW-scare (incidentally, this goes to the crux of a recent scandal).
Richard
I have a much better analogy to help people understand what 400 ppm is.
..
Take a 12 x 10 foot room with an 8 foot ceiling.
Seal it so there is virtually no air exchanged with the outside world.
Get a pack of cigarettes and enter the room.
Burn one cigarette.
Can you see and smell the smoke?
…
Now burn nine more cigarettes.
The smoke in the room is roughly 400 ppm.
…
The weight of 960 cubic feet of air is 72 lbs, or 1152 ounces.
The weight of 20 cigarettes is one ounce.
10 cigarettes is half an ounce and 0.5 / 1152 = 0.000435
…
Granted some of the cigarette burns to CO2 and H20, but if you argue that, just burn two or three more cigarettes to make up for it.
This example is good because many people are familiar with smoke filled bars, etc.
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 27, 2014 at 1:58 pm
“Other than your scorn, what’s wrong with the cyanide analogy? The author is arguing that because something is tiny we can afford to ignore it … cyanide proves him wrong.”
Actually Willis at certain levels everything is benificial to life, even cyanide, and everything is a poisen at certain levels, the only question is at what point does the harm outweigh the benifits.
The alchemist Paracelsus wrote that “all things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose makes something nota poison”.
http://www.grc.nia.nih.gov/branches/lns/BestinSmallDoses.pdf
Michael Crichton used a foot ball field analogy in “State of Fear”:
“Imagine the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere as a football field. Most of the atmosphere is nitrogen. So, starting from the goal line, nitrogen takes you all the way to the 78 yard line. And most of what’s left is oxygen. Oxygen takes you to the 99 yard line. Most of what remains is the inert gas argon. Argon bring you within 3 1/2 inches of the goal line. That’s pretty much the thickness of the chalk stripe. And how much of the remaining three inches is carbon dioxide? One inch.
“You are told carbon dioxide has increased in the last 50 years. Do you know how much it has increased, on our football field? Three eighths of an inch — less than the thickness of a pencil. Yet you are asked to believe that this tiny change has driven the entire planet into a dangerous warming pattern.”