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
CO2 is not alone in having dramatic effects at low concentrations. Compare to the level of it’s sister molecule, carbon monoxide, which kills in the 600 ppm level and at the present levels of CO2, if it doesn’t kill you, it gives you a hell of headache.
RACookPE1978:
Thanks for your comment to me at January 27, 2014 at 3:46 pm.
Brilliant! Thankyou! That is the best and most enjoyable post in the thread by far.
Richard
“something that nearly every person” in the USA ” has seen, a football stadium.”
Do you know there are people living outside America?
@RoHa – really? Where? 😉
Thanks to RGB, had exactly the same thought. We must adhere to assiduous accuracy.
This is sloppy, potentially misleading, and easily assailable by hyper-warmists — close to an own goal.
A question for all you physicists who fixate over down welling radiation and temperature: How many watts of down welling radiation are contained in a tablespoon of popcorn? And what is the temperature of that popcorn?
There is a lot of ‘latent’ heat bound up in chemical bonds produced by plant from sunlight.
Willis Eschenbach Jan 27 1:58pm says “The author is arguing that because something is tiny we can afford to ignore it“. Rubbish. The author says no such thing. If you disagree with something the author said, please quote the author’s exact words, and then explain why you think they are wrong.
Pippen Kool says:
“CO2 is not alone in having dramatic effects at low concentrations…”&blah, blah, etc.
Mr Kool is about as unscientific as any other climate alarmist. He seems to actually believe that one molecule acts the same as a different molecule.
No wonder Pippen Kool is so confused.
BINGO! And I got the main point immediately due to my prior interactions on other websites. Sceptics can make great headway if we stop assuming that people know better, most don’t. Imagine the simple gains of pointing out ppm, water vapour etc? It may seem obvious to many here but we are missing a big opportunity. Stop assuming.
P1ppen K00l:
re your post at January 27, 2014 at 4:27 pm.
As I told you on the other thread where you provided the identical post.
Atmospheric CO2 does not give anybody a headache. Your headache has the same cause as the voices in your head and it is not CO2.
It seems the voices are commanding you to make identical posts on different threads within minutes of each other. For your own sake, get treatment to be rid of the voices.
Richard
Anthony and all moderators…
Accidentally mistyped my name up there a ways (Merick instead of Merrick).
I wouldn’t want to [be] accused of using multiple personalities on the board (or having them, for that matter!). Could someone fix that, or at least note it?
Thanks!
But co2 is what provides you with food. Without co2 you will kick the bucket. Low co2 nearly led to the end of life on Earth. Let’s stop these toxic games.
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5669/hydrogen-cyanide-and-lifes-origin
The real question is, “How much of that less than ½ seat of CO2 originated in the United States?” The next question why should we impose regulations on United States citizens that inflate energy costs for no definable change in CO2 only a significant increase in the misery effect of high energy costs during a bad economy?
I’m getting a bloody blinding green headache. How can I stop this destruction of my world view.
STRIKE ONE.
Pippen Kool
STRIKE TWO:
600ppm of co2 will give you a headache! Where is your peer reviewed evidence? The non-peer reviewed submariners are screaming for Anadin.
GISS’ thoroughly cooked to a crisp books show a spurious increase in global temperature of less than 0.7 degrees C since 1960, despite a gain in beneficial CO2 of supposedly about 80 ppm. So, worst case, adding another 160 ppm over the next 80 years or so could increase T by 1.4 degree C, were the relationship linear, which of course it isn’t. It’s logarithmic, so the first 44 years will have a much greater effect than the next 44 years or the final 36 years.
CACA is hoist by its own petard, even with all the blatant rigging of the “adjusted data”.
Not to mention that from the 1940s to 1970s the world cooled amid rising CO2 levels, & had warmed in previous decades without benefit of higher CO2.
CACA was born falsified.
So you disagree with ALL of the post???? Do you agree with the first three paragraphs? If no then what about the first 2 paragraphs? I only ask because I too believe in adhering to accuracy.
Get a grip sunshine, you are against dishonest forces, don’t gnaw off your own tail, just nibble. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I have to agree with Willis. The greenhouse properties of CO2 are well known and quantified. Due to the logarithmic nature of the effect, most of the effect comes from a very low concentration. The effect on overall climate is very poorly understood. The fact that the effect requires few molecules is of no consequence. This little game with stadium seats accomplishes nothing except to bring the discussion down to the level of the scientifically illiterate.
If you want to explain something to the masses, perhaps the paint analogy is more valid. A thin coat of black paint could turn the whole stadium black, and with just a few molecules cause it to absorb more heat. The second coat would make it blacker, but the tenth coat would have no effect at all.
PS: My arithmetic also assumes that any & all increase in air temperature since 1960 is due to CO2.
Clearly, if the models modeled reality, there should have been a lot more manmade global warming by now.
@ur momisugly richardscourtney
I didn’t intend to imply 100% surety that catastrophic warming won’t happen. Similarly I can’t say for absolutely sure that there isn’t a massive negative feedback to warming that causes super cooling. Robert Brown correctly made the point that the increase in CO2 had a greater percentage effect on the greenhouse effect than the increase in concentration. I just put some numbers around the concept with the added benefit of illustrating the small nature of the much touted “enhancement” of the GHE by doubling atmospheric CO2 with the proper comparison of change in heat flux instead of concentration. While I certainly can’t rule out catastrophic warming the available evidence (including paleo-climatological) strongly suggests that the likelihood is so small it is nearly indistinguishable from zero, orders of magnitude less than relatively mild warming. Of course “catastrophic” is also somewhat relative, if one considers any change catastrophic then they’ll certainly see CAGW in the coming decades. In the future I’ll be more careful to caveat my comments appropriately, thank you for you sage advice.
I know this thread is about concentration, but The Git is having trouble concentrating. He’s trying to reconcile the picture of the “cowboy” at the top with pictures he’s seen of that other cowboy: w. e.
RoHa says:
January 27, 2014 at 4:33 pm
“something that nearly every person” in the USA ” has seen, a football stadium.”
Do you know there are people living outside America?
Yes, we do! They seem to be everywhere!
We are regularly shown great congregations of them on TV as they assemble in large stadiums watching metric football. American TV didn’t use to carry that kind of football so Americans in those days didn’t see many foreigners. Today, we are mainly puzzled by the seating numbers in these venues. It seems that only the Bukit Jalil National Stadium in Kuala Lumpur has a proper metric capacity of exactly 100,000 seats and is therefore usable for atmospheric concentration analogies and other science.
This is precisely the kind of metaphor WUWT, and any one trying to explain atmospheric physics in this case or any science for that matter, should disavow. It is so blatantly simplistic as to be irrelevant to the proposition being explained.
Anthony, and moderators, please adhere to a higher standard for postings.
About CO2….
GO HAWKS!!!
😉
Tom in Florida says: @ur momisugly January 27, 2014 at 1:25 pm
… “we know what is too little (less than 150 ppm)…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually too little is less that ~ 350 ppm. In a field the plants (wheat) consistently sucked the CO2 down to 310 to 320 ppm during the growing season at 2 meters above the crop. Tomatoes sucked the CO2 in a green house down to between 200 and 250 ppm.“… photosynthesis can be halted when CO2 concentration approaches 200 ppm… (Morgan 2003)” So the idea is to be well above the point where photosynthesis stops. You want the plant healthy enough to reproduce and it will not flower and produce viable seed if half starved.
Given that they found CO2 starvation in trees from the Wisconsin glaciation, I would be much much happier with a nice comfortable safety margin like 1000 ppm.