Guest essay by Clyde Spencer
Unless you have been in cryogenic suspended animation for several decades, you are aware of the extreme polarization about the role that CO2, particularly from burning fossil fuels, assertedly plays in warming the planet. I will attempt to provide a fresh perspective on the issue below.
It seems that many people think of global circulation models (GCMs) as being a virtual reality, or at least some kind of scientific ‘truth.’ What is generally unappreciated is that the GCMs are, instead, complex and convoluted working hypotheses. As such, they are a part of the Scientific Method. However, they should be subject to careful scrutiny, evaluated against reality, and modified as appropriate to conform to reality. That is the essence of the Scientific Method! Any hypothesis that does not have utility as an explanation, or have reliable predictive powers, does not achieve the purpose of scientific theories.
The extant GCMs, while purporting to work from first principles, have widely varying predictions of future temperatures, and are generally contradictory in their predictions of future precipitation patterns. Projections fail to mimic the step-like behavior of past, recent temperature increases. They gave no prediction of the current plateau in average global temperatures, nor do they provide an acceptable explanation for the current temperature plateau. The only thing that they have in common is an upward trend, not unlike CO2, or even the general population growth. Clearly there are problems with the computer models! Apparently, basic assumptions about the relationships of feedback loops add an element of subjectivity that nullifies the goal of operating from first principles. There are other more technical criticisms of the GCMs, but I won’t go into them here. As long as all the modelers assume that CO2 is driving temperature increases, one can expect that the models are going to display that behavior because CO2 is increasing. If I were to buy a high-performance car, based on computer simulations of similar veracity, I’d ask for my money back.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) is indeed a significant contributor to global warming. I will define “anthropogenic” as any production that is influenced by or created directly by humans from carbon sources that have been sequestered for short or long periods of time. The International Energy Agency (citing the US Dept. of Energy) claims that the burning of fossil fuels contributes more than 31 gigatons (Gt) annually to the atmosphere.1 However, fossil fuels used for transportation, heating, and power generation aren’t the only anthropogenic sources of CO2. The calcining of limestone to make cement (>3.8 Gt annually2) additionally produces more than 3 Gt of CO2 annually,3 of which approximately 2 Gt is CO2 produced from the chemical decomposition of limestone alone.4
To the extent that biomass is burned to supply heating and cooking, at a rate greater than it is replenished, there is a net contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere that is tied to population. If deforestation of old trees is accomplished by burning to make way for expanding agriculture, then there is a net contribution of CO2 again tied to the expanding population. Controlled burns of forest land and agricultural stubble are an additional anthropogenic contribution. Probably wildfires started by arsonists should be considered anthropogenic sources of CO2 also! Maybe we should also consider the CO2 resulting from smoking tobacco and marijuana for a thorough accounting! To be conservative, let’s assume that intentional biomass burning amounts to about 1 Gt annually.5
Additionally, CO2 released from fermentation of alcoholic beverages and the rising of leavened bread dough contribute in proportion to the population. The production of bio-ethanol produces CO2. CO2 is also an industrial byproduct of hydrogen production by steam reforming, and the synthesis of ammonia. Limestone is used to neutralize industrial-waste acid streams, and in so doing, CO2 is released. Steel can be produced without using fossil fuels for heat, but coke (derived from coal with the release of CO2) and limestone as a flux, are still important in purifying steel in the smelting process. Magnesium production directly produces CO2. While I don’t have good estimates on the industrial contributions, it probably would be reasonable to assume that it is at least 2 Gt annually.
However, a complete accounting of anthropogenic sources of CO2 needs to recognize the contribution of respiration, 24 hours a day, of some 7 billion humans and the animals that feed them (not to mention the methane that both produce). Humans alone produce nearly 3 Gt of CO2 annually6 just breathing. Some argue that this isn’t appropriate to consider. However, if an increasing population is producing more CO2 from metabolism, and if vegetation isn’t immediately converted back to oxygen and carbohydrates, then it needs to be accounted for! Agricultural land would largely be covered with vegetation even if there were no humans. The difference is that by planting cultivars, humans promptly convert that vegetation into CO2! Excluding respiration makes about as much sense as ignoring biomass burning. Animal respiration and digestive gases are usually allocated to natural sources. However, I would argue that, if the animals are domesticated, then the respired CO2 should be considered anthropogenic in the same sense that industrial fermentation is. Let’s assume that humans and their domesticated animals together contribute approximately 5 Gt of CO2 to the atmosphere annually. Landfills and sewage also create CO2 and methane of an additional undetermined amount! Farmland plowing is claimed to be a significant source of CO2; however, I have not seen what I would consider reliable estimates of the actual amount.
The above calculations and available estimates come to at least 41 Gt of anthropogenic CO2 annually. Conventional estimates of anthropogenic CO2 vary, but typical values are around 38 Gt annually,8 which doesn’t include respiration; therefore, my estimates (exclusive of respiration) are in line with conventional estimates.
To complicate things further, a generally unappreciated, significant source of CO2 is underground coal fires.8 An unknown number of smoldering fires in organic-rich shales are found throughout the world, also.9 Some of this CO2 can be assigned to anthropogenic origins, but there is a large number that are natural in origin, started by lightning or spontaneous combustion. One fire in Australia has been burning for 6,000 years.10 I have not explicitly taken these into account, and conventional Carbon Cycle accounting ignores them. An unknown amount of coal is consumed by fires in China, but estimates run as high as 200 Mt per year,11 and they possibly produce as much CO2 as all the cars in the USA! There are thousands of coal fires throughout the world and CO2 estimates run as high as 3% total new CO2 derived from them — nearly as high as for cement production!
The energy and fossil fuel use in industrial societies is a tangled web and sometimes it is difficult to decide where to assign sources. All things anthropogenic considered together, excepting fossil fuels, probably produce an amount equal to at least one-third the CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels. These additional sources of anthropogenic CO2 are important because even if fossil fuels were eliminated tomorrow, if nothing is done to reign in the growth of population, these other sources will grow to become significant. Even in the absence of any fossil fuel combustion, should the world population triple, they would produce anthropogenic CO2 of at least 30 Gt annually – what is produced currently by all fossil fuel combustion! Assuming that CO2 is the problem claimed by many, we would be confronted with essentially the same problem that we currently are concerned about! Actually, it could be worse because warming oceans will be less effective at sequestering CO2. Is there really any wonder that the shape of the curve representing the CO2-concentration time-series resembles the population growth curve? The elephant in the room that few are willing to talk about is the runaway population growth since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
I have begged the question of the magnitude of the influence of anthropogenic CO2. Unless one can quantify all the influences on warming, it is impossible to assert confidently that the CO2 derived from fossil fuels is the major contributor to warming. Therefore, let’s return to the initial assumption that anthropogenic CO2 is the dominant agent responsible for 20th century warming.
Undeniably, physics predicts that CO2 will cause warming by absorbing infrared radiation radiated outward from Earth’s surface.12 The question is, “What proportion of measured warming is directly attributable to the atmospheric CO2 concentration?” To answer that, we have to look at all the processes that are known to, or could, influence warming.
Other factors that play a role in increasing temperatures, and thus changing the climate, include the following:
1) Compared to the heat supplied by the sun, the waste heat from our profligate use of energy is miniscule. However, it is sufficiently large to be calculable. Notably, it is concentrated in urban and industrial areas and contributes to the Urban Heat Island effect. It has the potential to upwardly bias recorded temperatures and falsely give the impression of greater warming than is actually taking place globally. Weather stations recording temperatures are neither random nor uniform in coverage; they are biased by being located where most people live. After all, who is going to be willing to pay for information in some remote corner of the world where few if any people live?
2) A decrease in cloudiness, particularly cloudiness in the mountains, may contribute to general warming and, especially, the retreat of glaciers. (There is anecdotal evidence that most alpine glacier retreat is impacted more by increased surface insolation than an increase in ambient global air temperatures.13) Decreased cloudiness not only has implications for surface insolation, but also implications for precipitation. It is well known that the energy exchanges within clouds are handled poorly (somewhat ad hoc) by the current GCMs, and probably always will be! The phase change from vapor to liquid is exothermic and the phase change from liquid to solid is also exothermic, but the amount of heat released is not the same. This is one of the complications encountered by GCMs because the clouds, in which these transformations occur, are much smaller than the grid-cell size used for all other calculations.14
3) A decrease in aerosol concentrations and/or type since the 1970s, when the first serious efforts to reduce air pollution began, may impact surface insolation as well as cloudiness by reducing nucleation particles.15
4) A dense network of condensation trails from commercial aircraft can accumulate, under favorable meteorological conditions, and noticeably dim sunlight over large areas. What is their effect on upwelling radiation at night? The IPCC states, “The level of scientific understanding of contrail RF [radiative forcing] is considered low, since important uncertainties remain in the determination of global values.”16
5) An increase in surface water-vapor resulting from a) a world-wide program of dam building in the 20th Century, b) increased irrigation, and particularly, c) the invention of pivotal irrigation17, may be responsible for increased retention of heat at night and a decrease of temperatures in the day in arid rural areas. Massive amounts of water sequestered in deep aquifers under the Great Plains, and elsewhere, have been extracted and used for irrigation18. Microclimates change within irrigated fields, and in proximity to large reservoirs. Also, one of the by-products of internal combustion engines is water. (Hydrogen-powered cars would exacerbate this.) Water vapor has a much shorter residency (≈9 days)19 in the atmosphere than CO2, but a stronger ‘Greenhouse’ effect than CO2. It is replenished regularly – every commute cycle in cities and continuously at reservoirs! Furthermore, assuming prevailing winds transport the water vapor easterly at an average of 15 MPH, any individual ‘pulse’ can travel approximately 3,200 miles! Thus, there is the potential of water vapor evaporated in the western US influencing most of the country to the east. In places like Phoenix and Las Vegas, swimming pools and golf courses are ubiquitous where there were few 50 years ago. Also, one can now find water-misters at bus stops, gas stations, and backyard patios, driving up the relative humidity. In the 1950s, so-called ‘swamp coolers’ were common in the hot SW desert communities; one never sees them anymore because evaporative coolers aren’t as effective as they once were. The water vapor being generated over land that is naturally arid would help explain why average surface temperatures are rising faster than at the altitudes CO2 is supposed to be trapping outgoing thermal radiation. An examination of the Berkeley Earth project’s global high and low land-temperature data20 reveals that the low temperatures have been increasing steadily and for a longer period of time than the high temperatures. Furthermore, the lows have increased more than the highs during the 20th century. (See below) This is what is expected for a ‘Greenhouse’ effect, but it may be more than CO2 driving the increase!
6) Changes in land use, including urbanization and converting forests to agriculture, generally result in greater surface heating because of reduced albedo. Urban areas are not only local hotspots, but remote sensing research has demonstrated that the weather can be influenced for miles downwind of these hotspots.21
7) Albedo of snow and ice can be decreased not only by soot from combustion, but also by dust created from land that is plowed, and urban dirt such as tire and brake-lining dust, and abraded pavement. This can help explain warming in Winter, and glacier melting.22
The above are obvious contributors to temperature changes. Many of them are potentially related through feedback loops. Unfortunately, they aren’t well characterized. To the extent that they are ignored, and GCMs are tuned to get apparently good historical results based principally on CO2 trends, then the confidence in predictions is decreased precisely because we know that things have been left out! Individually, they may not be exceptionally important; however, in aggregate, they may be very important, particularly if they are components of incomplete feedback loops.
However, what is potentially a more severe problem in model building are the things that may be missing. One doesn’t know what they don’t know! As examples:
1) The sun is the most important source of heat for Earth. Satellite observations of a couple of sun spot cycles indicate that there is trivial variation in the sun’s Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) during those recent cycles.23 But, what if there are longer-term variations (>22 years) that haven’t been measured? Astronomers believe the sun was dimmer when the Earth was born and variations in observed sunspot cycles and radiogenic evidence strongly suggest that there are intermediate-term variations in solar activity that have not been characterized nor included in models.24 There is no satisfactory alternative explanation for the exceptionally cold weather during the Maunder Minimum, when there were no sunspots.
2) Even though the TSI changed relatively little during recent sunspot cycles, there is a significant increase in the shorter wavelengths at the peak of sunspot cycles. Might there be some unappreciated impact of increased UV beyond just creating more ozone? The IPCC states, “The effects of … shifts in the solar spectrum towards the ultraviolet (UV) range, at times of high solar activity, are largely unknown.”25
3) The Earth’s magnetic field strength has declined at least 10% during the same period of time that rising global temperatures have been observed;26 the decline appears to be accelerating, as measured by a recently launched satellite constellation.27 Is it coincidence? Or, might a weakening of the Earth’s magnetosphere allow more extraterrestrial high-energy particles to enter the atmosphere than previously, and heat the upper atmosphere? If one can’t dismiss the possibility because research hasn’t been done, then it raises a red flag about misplaced research efforts.
4) High-energy charged particles from coronal mass ejections spiral in at the magnetic poles. As they enter the upper atmosphere they produce the well-known auroras. However, the auroras are a result of ionization of the air and, consequently, heat is produced. Could the wandering of the poles over decades result in changes in the jet streams and then changes in weather at mid-latitudes?28
5) There is still controversy about whether cosmic rays might modulate cloud formation through ionization.29 This deserves more attention.
6) Recently, it has been found that bacteria apparently can play an important role in cloud formation and precipitation.30 Might the ubiquitous use of antibiotics for humans and livestock, and now routinely found in sewage, have some unintended consequences for bacteria that play previously unsuspected roles in precipitation?
In summary, there is much still unknown about weather and climate, and many of the things we are aware of are poorly characterized. There is disagreement about the sensitivity of temperature increases in the atmosphere resulting from increased CO2; that is the essence of my remarks above. There is disagreement about whether the water vapor feedback-loop is positive or negative! We know even less about what is called space weather. Even the fundamental Carbon Cycle has issues about accuracy and completeness. How much CO2 do the hidden, and largely unexplored, oceanic spreading centers — more than 80,000 Km in length — contribute to the dissolved CO2 in the oceans?31 How do we know that we are adequately accounting for diffuse volcanic CO2 emanating from the ground as is happening at Long Valley Caldera (Calif.)? Recent research strongly suggests that volcanism on land contributes much more CO2 than was formerly believed.32 If there is any sort of scientific consensus, it can only be a result of shared ignorance. There is an old joke that for the handyman who only owns a hammer, the solution to all problems looks like a nail. As long as there are still significant unanswered questions about what things influence weather and climate, and precisely how they interact with other influences, then we are at risk of treating screws as though they were nails. We need to be looking beyond CO2 if we want to have confidence we really understand the problem!
References
2 http://www.cemnet.com/content/publications/GCR10Worldoverview.pdf
3 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080442761501574
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concrete
5 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110316084907.htm
6 http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2009/08/7_billion_carbon_sinks.html
7 http://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-oldest-underground-fire-has-been-burning-fo-1539049759
8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire
10 http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/CO2-Now/global-carbon-emissions.html
11 http://www.okstorms.com/chasing/other_weather/climate_change/underground_coal_fires.htm
12 http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
13 http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/files/norock/products/GCC/SattelliteAtlas_Key_02.pdf
14 http://www.inscc.utah.edu/~krueger/6150/Cloud_System_Modeling_GCMD.pdf
15 http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Aerosols/page3.php
16 http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/aviation/index.php?idp=38
17 http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/water_03.html
18 https://water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html
19 http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=894
20 http://berkeleyearth.org/data/
21 http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/atlanta/
22 http://esp.cr.usgs.gov/projects/sw/swdust/snow_pack.html
23 http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/244.htm
24 http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/geos462/20climsolar.html
25 https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-4-3.html
26 http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/104_spring2004.web.dir/Carla_Tomsich/Slide3.htm
27 http://www.livescience.com/46694-magnetic-field-weakens.html
28 http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/GeomagneticPoles.shtml
29 http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/246.htm
30 http://www.nature.com/news/high-flying-bacteria-spark-interest-in-possible-climate-effects-1.12310
31 http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
32 http://www.livescience.com/40451-volcanic-co2-levels-are-staggering.html
Quite a complicated approach.
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With OBSERVED data, correlation can be found between Temperature and ANY of other parameters such as CO2 atmospheric concentration, sea level rise, or change of the declination of the Earth magnetic field over the past 150 years, each being a potentially relevant parameter. Short term (up to a few decades) oscillations don’t help resolve long term climate change and no actual observation is available for sufficiently long periods.
This is why, besides of tentative model calculations, nobody knows what actual contribution CO2 is making to the observed warming. In particular IPCC does not know nothing more about it but makes sophisticated and wrong estimates.
See to this effect the article https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01146608
Carbon emissions: a fair estimate of carbon emissions due to fossil fuels and cement production is given by CDIAC (data since 1751) http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/meth_reg.html
Currently about 10 Pg C (petagram carbon) are burned every year (multiply by 3.67 to get CO2).
Half of it is absorbed by increased biomass and by the oceans (remains diluted of precipitates as solid carbonate), and the other half accumulates in the atmosphere, hence increasing the concentration by about 2.5 ppm.
All other natural carbon transfers are assumed to be in equilibrium, if not every year but over a period that is much shorter than any change of the climate.
Carbon fate. see this document: http://bit.ly/1PopDBk
MikeB @ur momisugly May 6, 2015 at 2:11 am
If a CO2 molecule emits a photon, its vibrational level, not its kinetic speed reduces, it is now cooler.
If that same CO2 molecule absorbed a photon to FILL THE VACANT position the vibrational level is back up to where is was before. Still no change in the kinetic speed of the CO2 molecule except as would normally occur over the local temperature kinetic distribution curve which is much slower than the emission/absorption rate. I understand atmospheric molecular kinetic speed at 15C is around 400 metres per second. Light moves faster.
If you are claiming that CO2 molecules can absorb photons over a specific band when that band is already fully energised can you explain please.
What will normally happen in the atmosphere is the following:
A CO2 molecule absorbs an IR photon from the surface, is excited from having its energy content boosted, but collides almost instantly with a nitrogen or oxygen molecule, passing its surplus energy on to this one by conduction. In other words, it hardly gets to emit the energy back out at all in the form of a photon to fall back to its former state.
The nitrogen and oxygen molecules (making up the bulk air) thus absorbing this extra energy from the surface will help to maintain the temperature of the atmosphere. The warmed air will become less dense and rise spontaneously to higher levels to automatically keep the temperature gradient in place. In this way, the energy ‘leaks’ upward through the troposphere.
High up in the atmosphere, the air density is much lower, and the CO2 molecule does not collide with other air molecules as often as further down, which means its chance of emitting any surplus energy it might have or acquire in the form of a photon is better. Normally, most of the energy transferred from the surface (or the Sun) to the atmosphere, is ultimately held by nitrogen or oxygen molecules, but since these can’t realese this energy to space in the form of radiation, they have to transfer the surplus energy (by way of collisions) to the IR-active constituents like CO2 (and, more importantly, H2O) in order for them to do the job and rid the atmosphere (and the Earth system) of it. This is easier to accomplish the higher up the column you get.
Yes, a pretty crude description, but sort of the gist.
“Normally, most of the energy transferred from the surface (or the Sun) to the atmosphere, is ultimately held by nitrogen or oxygen molecules, but since these can’t realese this energy to space in the form of radiation, (…)
O2 has 336 spectral lines longer than 30um.
http://spec.jpl.nasa.gov/ftp/pub/catalog/catdir.html
http://spec.jpl.nasa.gov/ftp/pub/catalog/doc/catdoc.pdf
In a gas all the molecules are whizzing around at different speeds and bumping into each other. The temperature of the gas can thought of as the average velocity of the molecules.
http://scienceofdoom.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/molecular-speed.png
Because absorbing or emitting a photon only changes the internal energy state of the molecule and not its kinetic energy (velocity) it is not considered to be hotter or cooler. It just has more energy (I didn’t mean to bicker about heat and energy -George will be proud of me)
In brief, gas molecules in the atmosphere cannot absorb radiation by increasing their kinetic energy. They can only absorb radiation which is at the right frequency to raise their internal energy level from one discrete quantum state to another.
A CO2 molecule for example, has a vibrational mode ‘tuned’ to radiation at 15 microns. It will therefore selectively absorb radiation at this wavelength whilst ignoring other wavelengths which do not coincide with one of its internal energy states.
I don’t understand what you mean by ‘that band is fully energised. Only a small portion of CO2 molecules will be in an exited state at any one time. The time to revert back to ground state is 10s of milliseconds. The mean time between collisions is nanoseconds. After a collision the energy of the molecule is ‘thermalised’, i.e. it appears as increased momentum, kinetic energy. The CO2 molecule is now free to absorb another photon and ‘thermalise’ that energy as well.
MikeB says: “After a collision the energy of the molecule is ‘thermalised’, i.e. it appears as increased momentum, kinetic energy.”
++++
Why is it always assumed that all collisions will be additive thereby increasing kinetic energy.
mKelly
Well, that is not assumed. In fact, because of ‘conservation of momentum’ it is never assumed, just the opposite. But in this case, the vibrational energy of the molecule is not part of its momentum. It is ‘internal energy’ which it is carrying (actually it is vibrating due to being zapped by a photon). And in the special case of
’, the vibrational energy is translated into kinetic energy on collision.
Now explain the process in an atmosphere the mass is 100% co2.
Then explain atmospheric heating with no green house gases at all.
The molecular collision rate of CO2 at sea level is 8 billion collisions per second.
Just think about what that means for an excited CO2 molecule. The CO2 molecule that just absorbed a LW photon is 10,000 times more likely to immediately bump into another atmospheric molecule right after rather than to decay and emit back that photon (as people like to say for some psychologically soothing reason, 50% up and 50% down).
With 10,000 chances of molecular energy exchange occuring rather than photon emission decay, the excited CO2 molecule at sea level is just thermalizing all the N2 and O2 molecules instead.
It is not until the pressure drops at 10 kms height or so, that the photon emission decay starts to become 50% possible versus collisional energy exchange. CO2 cools off the planet at 10 kms rather than heating it at the surface.
In addition, the molecular collision rate of non-GHGs with the very ground surface is also on the order of 7 billion collisions per second. Every N2 molecule at the ground surface is constantly absorbing energy directly from the surface land and water.
And let’s just now dwelve into how many photons are flying all over the place constantly. Your front-yard grass on a metre squared, is emitting 8 billion, billion LW photons every frickin second (including at night). That’s an 8 with 18 zeros behind it. Its an astounding number.
Energy is moving at the quantum level. No climate model is simulating what really happens in the real world of energy flow at the quantum level. Maybe a few simple things can be simulated at the grand scale but photons and molecular energy exchange cannot. As temperatures rises, all these numbers increase exponentially to the fourth power. We have to measure what is really happening because this is just too complex.
MikeB, I don’t understand your graph of molecular speed in relation to a multitude of different molecules.
Not to worry. Have a look at oxygen and carbon atoms in a periodic table and note the number of electrons available in each shell. Note also that all atoms have a specific number of electrons occupying certain electron shells. If there are vacancies in a shell that can be shared with other atoms you will get a very stable molecule like CO2. This molecule has a limited number of electrons, 6 for carbon and 8 for oxygen, giving us a total of 22 electrons. Electron shells appear to have finite limitations on the allowed number of electrons in each shell. The table shows 2, 8, 18, 18 etc. for a range of elements, or 2, 8, 18, 32, 18 etc. for another range. So those 22 electrons will attempt to stay in the first three shells of 2, 8 and 12. Problem is this will be zero K. Not where we are. As electrons absorb energy they can move to a higher shell. They emit energy when they drop to a lower shell. It is this limitation in electrons and available electron shells that give CO2 (and other gas molecules) their specific radiation characteristics. It is the occupation of specific electron shells by numbers of electrons the effect the vibrational state of the CO2 molecule. Thus there are also a limited number of vibration planes the atoms of the CO2 molecule can occupy.
Quite what happens to the vibrational state of the molecule during kinetic collisions I am not sure, but I have read that these collisions effect a translational change on the vibrational level of the CO2 molecule such that the molecule reaches the local air temperature which at low altitude is well above 0C and the molecule will be radiating appropriate to its local temperature obeying black body rules within its limited structure.
To claim that the CO2 molecule will now absorb photons from the surface, increase its vibrational level and pass this energy to a nearby O2 or N2 molecule doesn’t make sense (free energy?) as the CO2 molecule must have emitted a photon to allow it to absorb another photon thus no change in vibrational level.
Also this business of vibration effecting the kinetic collisions, It depends on what plane the collision occurred. Imagine a spinning wheel, hit the hub and not much changes, hit the rim and wow! So not all collisions are capable of effecting energy transfer into or out of the CO2 molecule.
If it is because of “conservation of momentum” as you say but vibration is not part of a CO2 molecule’s momentum then what is being conserved. Mv=Mv. To be additive the vibration would have to be in sync with the strike of a molecule of something else. And that seems highly unlikely 100% of the time.
Accepting that most CO2 molecule electrons are in their ground state at any given time, can anyone say at what temperature the gas volume would have to be for electrons to be excited beyond the first level?
Is this a function of change in the inter-nuclear distance as a result of a change in di-pole moment?
There’s some very interesting technical discussions on here about the paper, but surely the key point is that our knowledge of our climate is still extremely rudimentary.
The notion that we should radically change our economy based on such rudimentary knowledge is quite mad.
Too often perhaps we get dragged into discussing the details (as has happened above) when the basic and irrefutable statement is that we know almost nothing.
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”
― Mark Twain
The real author of this aphorism is unknown.
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble,
It’s what you know that just ain’t so
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Mark_Twain
Don’t let the fact that false knowledge is dangerous obscure the equally valid truth that ignorance is dangerous too.
If you recently awoke from a 35 year sleep, you would likely be shocked that the earth is still here and thriving, despite a massive increase in population and continued reliance on carbon-based fuel. Hopefully, you would also have learned a thing or two about doomsday prophesy: it’s always false.
Yes, indeed RH.
The Prophets of Doom who have annoyed, perplexed and scared the pants off of various segments of the human populace since time immemorial, have a perfect record. They are batting zero, with not a single run or even a hit in seventeen umptillion at bats.
And there is no sign of any impending improvements in their perfectly dismal record of failure.
The study of this climate chaos will find a chaos of chaos causes of more chaos.
The title “Anthropological Global Warming and its Causes” lacks foundation – it assumes that AGW is an established fact and looks for data to support it.
However, we do not even know how anthropological contributes to total atmospheric CO2.
Total atmospheric CO2 has been increasing steadily at about 2ppm per year. However, anthropogenic CO2 production has increased dramatically over the last 30 years. Why has the 2ppm CO2 increase not increased?
The author seems to imply that we can improve the models and data collection so that they output meaningful results. IMHO this is illusory. It is just not feasible currently to collect enough detailed information. Furthermore, we do not even know what variables need to be included. Even if we did, are we able to solve the fluid dynamics PDE’s?
Sort of like the war on poverty.
War is man kinds best effort towards chaos.
Poverty too has a chaos of causes.
Lots of our tax money thrown into this chaos hole too.
Study not the chaos , study the money trails.
fobdangerclose
May 6, 2015 at 5:28 am
“Sort of like the war on poverty.
War is man kinds best effort towards chaos.”
Well even though it has become fashionable to call everything a war in the USA, it is not really a war. Think about it. Handing out EBT cards is not exactly what one would call warfare.
Other countries do not call their welfare systems a means of warfare. It’s a US-specific abuse of language.
Thinking about it, declaring a War On Global Warming gives WAR-munist a whole new meaning.
Of course, Lester Brown already had the ides.
http://www.worldwatch.org/global-war-global-warming-heats
Clyde,
One essential error in your reasoning:
Burning wood for heating and cooking, plant decay, eating and breathing by bacteria, molds, insects, animals and humans doesn’t add to the CO2 level of the atmosphere. All what happens is releasing CO2 to the atmosphere which was captured out of the same atmosphere a few months to a few decades before by photosynthesis. Neither does forests clearing and regrowth. That is only recycling.
The biosphere at this moment is a net sink for CO2 of ~1 GtC/year, including all the above…
Only if there is a permanent unbalance like burning a forest for agriculture, that adds to human emissions, as the total permanent carbon storage in a forest, including the root system and debris (humus,…) is larger than in crops, even if the latter have faster cycles…
Thus the increase of the human population is mainly a “problem” for the CO2 emissions for the part that they use fossil fuels (including cement manufacturing, ore processing,…) and land use change (forest clearing and transfer towards agriculture).
For the rest, I ‘don’t think that the CO2 increase will have much impact on climate, as the current “pause” with ever increasing CO2 levels shows…
All what happens is releasing CO2 to the atmosphere which was captured out of the same atmosphere a few months to a few decades before by photosynthesis. Neither does forests clearing and regrowth. That is only recycling.
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burning fossil fuel fuel is also recycling of CO2 previously captured from the atmosphere and oceans. The heating of limestone to produce cement is similarly recycling of CO2 captured from the oceans.
As 2 satellites have now confirmed, the human contribution to CO2 is minuscule as compared to the release of CO2 by the tropical oceans. Far from being a source of CO2, the industrialized countries of the earth are net sinks of carbon, as their forests regrow, free from the pressure of burning for heat and energy.
ferd,
Burning fossil fuels does increase CO2 levels in the atmosphere today, burning wood or eating does not.
Further, tropical oceans do release a lot of CO2, but polar oceans do sink a lot of CO2. The net effect is about 40 GtC/year into the atmosphere, 43 GtC/year out of the atmosphere: more sink than source. The 40 GtC/year comes back via the deep oceans, some 1000 years later…
The OCO-2 satellite needs many more months of data before one can make a balance over a full year…
“Burning wood for heating and cooking, plant decay, eating and breathing by bacteria, molds, insects, animals and humans doesn’t add to the CO2 level of the atmosphere. All what happens is releasing CO2 to the atmosphere which was captured out of the same atmosphere a few months to a few decades before by photosynthesis. Neither does forests clearing and regrowth. That is only recycling.”
I often see this reasoning, but I don’t understand how these shorter term cycles are considered “recycling”, but the longer term cycle of burning fossil fuels is not. How long must CO2 be sequestered before it is no longer just recycling? Where is the line? 10 years, 25, 100, 1,000 years? And how was that line scientifically determined?
There is only a loose definition of time in this case: in general if the use and regrowth is within a few decades, let’s say 50 years, there is little influence on the total CO2 level in the atmosphere.
If the replenishing needs several centuries to many millions of years, it is added to “fossil” fuels.
There are of course some overlaps: if you burn wood from a 500 years old oak tree, that is taken as not contributing, but 500 year old dried peat burning is taken as “fossil fuel”… These cases have little contribution to the total human emissions, which is mostly coal, oil and gas, which are millions of years old.
After giving it some thought, I think I understand what your saying. However, I still have to wonder if within this “short term” cycle anthropogenic sources of CO2 aren’t still adding to the overall increase. I think the article was trying to point out the uncertainty in trying to determine the various contributions.
Mr. Spencer says: “…heat from our profligate use of energy is miniscule.”
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I object as strenuously as possible to the use of word profligate in human use of energy. The word is defined as:
adjective
1.utterly and shamelessly immoral or dissipated; thoroughly dissolute.
2.recklessly prodigal or extravagant.
You are wrong Mr. Spencer human are not profligate in the use of energy.
mkelly,
Al Gore called. He said speak for yourself.
The IPCC states, “The level of scientific understanding of contrail RF [radiative forcing] is considered low, since important uncertainties remain in the determination of global values.
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It appears that NASA has found the cause of the warming that Gavin and the IPCC claim must be due to CO2, because they can’t find any other cause:
“NASA scientists have found that cirrus clouds, formed by contrails from aircraft engine exhaust, are capable of increasing average surface temperatures enough to account for a warming trend in the United States that occurred between 1975 and 1994.”
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=4435
If that is true, I wonder if there was a drop in CONUS temperatures immediately following 9/11? All air traffic was grounded or re-routed for three days afterwards.
This topic was the subject of a 3-31-2011 WUWT article
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/31/the-planes-the-planes/
My understanding is that increased contrails block incoming solar radiation, making days cooler. After the sun goes down, the contrail cover helps to block outgoing LWIR, making nights a little warmer, keeping in mind that most commercial jet flights occur during the day.
The climate change doctrine is just one of the many tools our establishment is using to execute our modern civilization and eventually reduce the world population.
These people are traitors and ruthless murderers, nothing more nothing less.
http://green-agenda.com and UN Agenda 21
The underlying cause of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is political will. It is not otherwise evident in the observed data. Non-catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is a concept that is thought to be exposed by observation, but observed climate behavior does not validate the predictions that fall out of the concept.
There is tremendous value to some for continuing to be wrong because the solutions for the dangers identified in the CAGW concept create wealth and power, and if done right, will appear to have turned around or arrested CAGW. It is a beautiful deception. Utterly beautiful.
dp understands the situation.
simple and accurate
I don’t get it. How on Earth is a global circulation model that is programmed to augment one minor factor (CO2) to major status in the climate, while ignoring over 50 major factors that influence climate in the real world, have anything to do with the Scientific Method? These models were programmed and do exactly what they are programmed to do. This is NOT science, particularly when the major assumption is that all natural climate influences and factors have been eliminated by CO2 powerful trace gas effects. Truly junk science at best.
Real science would be to put in all the cyclical aspects of, say, the Sun, let the different frequencies of the cycles interfere with each other, and then compare them with the real, say, sunspot record. When this is done, the results clearly show that the Sun’s overlapping cyclic parameters almost perfectly reflect the ups and downs and the extended minimums of the real record, allowing us to predict the outcome of future cycles with a degree of confidence.
In the case of climate models, they include few factors other than CO2 and its related junk science. Climate models are manipulated egregiously to even get them not to outright cook or freeze the planet. How can any such model be valid, when it does not properly include the massive, global, water cycle, negative feedback engine, cloud cover, and night time energy movement to space? They simply are not valid. This is fantasy.
In the latter case, they included everything they knew of and let it run—they did not know the answer.
It would be nice if a large segment of the population of The US or Western Europe would read this and try to understand it but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.
Before 1980, the TSI was assumed to be a constant; check this out before they rewrite history (like with the NOAA and temperature record adjustments). Now, 1980 (approximately) was when the Ozone hole was discovered. Interestingly, all Tropospheric Ozone is created by Solar EUV (and UV). Since the TSI was deemed to be a constant, therefore, the Solar EUV, UV were also deemed to be virtually constant. So a cause for the Ozone hole must be anthropological actions.
Fast forward to today. Now we have satellites that measure Solar EUV, UV before it is intercepted by the oxygen in the upper Troposphere and converted to Ozone. 99.5% of all Solar EUV, UV is absorbed by the Ozone layer. In addition, we know that Solar EUV, UV intensity can vary a 100 fold between a Solar maximum and a Solar minimum. Surprisingly, it is very difficult to find a graph of the relationship between Solar EUV, UV intensity and Ozone creation! Form your own opinion.
NASA has a group of individuals that monitor the Solar EUV, UV effects on the upper atmosphere. When extreme Solar EUV events occur, the Stratosphere can expend enough to increase satellite atmospheric drag. The atmospheric expansion is due to Solar EUV, UV being converted to heat near the Ozone layer. Why aren’t the Solar EUV, UV affects included in the atmospheric models? If we use the simple formula PV=nRT, and both V, T increase, then P must have also increased (license used, assuming the Earth/Atmosphere is a closed container). Does Solar EUV, UV affect the atmospheric pressure on the Earth?
So many questions, now that we know the the Sun is not a constant energy output Star, and we can now measure the Solar EUV, UV accurately.
The above statement should to be a candidate for the quote of the week. Consensus alone has nothing to do with science. It is simply an attempt to convince the uninformed that believing in global warming is the “in” thing to do. It’s a powerful appeal because most people want to be part of the in crowd. Signing on to the latest fashion, especially if it allows you to claim that you’re “saving the planet,” is much more important to the ignorant than becoming informed on the science.
Not “reign in” to describe limiting a runaway. Should be “rein in”.
In 2008, whilst sitting on the bank of a small, jungle-clad creek in the remnant crater of a supposedly extinct volcano on Big Tabar Island in Papua New Guinea, I noticed a tiny spring issuing clear water bubbling with carbon dioxide. Since this geologic entity is 9-10 kilometers in diameter, how would you measure the amount of carbon dioxide being vented into the atmosphere within such rugged jungle terrain? Bear in mind that the world is also repleat with so-called ‘extinct’ volcanoes. Then there are dormant volcanoes, active volcanoes and submarine volcanoes … even at the North Pole. Most folk probably don’t appreciate that even the Mauna Loa CO2 recording station in Hawaii sits atop a dormant volcano.
Mauna Loa station indeed is at some distance of the vents of the volcano, but when the wind blows downslope, that is seen in the high variability of the CO2 data. These data are noticed, and “flagged” and not used for averaging. The same when in the afternoon with upwind conditions, air from the valleys is measured, which is slightly depleted in CO2. These data and others like mechanical problems, etc. still are available, but flagged and not used for daily, monthly and yearly averaging.
In fact is a luxury problem: over 8 million samples are taken per year, of which a percentage is rejected, but still more than enough to be sure that the data are from pristine air conditions: trade winds over the oceans.
Moreover, including or excluding the flagged data has no influence on the trend over a year, only the spread is smaller. More information on the selection method for Mauna Loa (and other stations) data:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html
Besides Mauna Loa, some 70 other stations measure CO2 in the best circumstances:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/
Where to measure gives more information:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
RE: 1) Compared to the heat supplied by the sun, the waste heat from our profligate use of energy is minuscule. However, it is sufficiently large to be calculable. Notably, it is concentrated in urban and industrial areas and contributes to the Urban Heat Island effect. It has the potential to upwardly bias recorded temperatures and falsely give the impression of greater warming than is actually taking place globally. Weather stations recording temperatures are neither random nor uniform in coverage; they are biased by being located where most people live. After all, who is going to be willing to pay for information in some remote corner of the world where few if any people live?
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I would further generalize this as work done by human activity, by autonomous and human operated machines, by human built infrastructure and equipment, and, by human created modifications to the Earth’s natural systems.
I wonder if the rural stations that were eliminated starting in the late 1980’s have an effect on the overall average temperatures? If you eliminate only rural stations then only the UHI stations are left as the majority and thus it will show an average rising of highs and lows.
See the surfacestations.org page for photos of weather stations placed in the exhaust side of air conditioners.
The UHI problem can not be corrected, there is no scientific control. That’s why NOAA created an entirely new sensor system called the USCRN. That new network is showing zero warming since it was established. There are very few scientifically reliable surface temperature stations scattered around the world. Those stations show zero long term warming. The only reliable “global” temps are the satellites. Those data since 1979 show no significant warming trend.
On the whole, that is a good essay!
!
Hydrogen-containing polar molecules like ethanol, ammonia, and water have powerful, intermolecular hydrogen bonds when in their liquid phase. These bonds provide another place where heat may be stored as potential energy of vibration, even at comparatively low temperatures. Hydrogen bonds account for the fact that liquid water stores nearly the theoretical limit of 3 R per mole of atoms, even at relatively low temperatures (i.e. near the freezing point of water).
http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/4/4/c/44c04ca979f0e0808cde7a39e0595489.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_capacity
“4) High-energy charged particles from coronal mass ejections spiral in at the magnetic poles. As they enter the upper atmosphere they produce the well-known auroras. However, the auroras are a result of ionization of the air and, consequently, heat is produced. Could the wandering of the poles over decades result in changes in the jet streams and then changes in weather at mid-latitudes?”
Solar forcing of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations and hence the Jet Steam behavior occurs at the scale of changes in weather types. I can verify that with many hundreds of years of hindcasts of what is driving the solar variations at such scales.
Variability in coronal holes is larger factor than CME’s, and as well as Joule heating of the upper polar atmosphere, nitric oxide production from fast solar wind results in ozone destruction.
Note the lack of Aurora sightings in the colder run of years in the Dalton Minimum, 1807-1817:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/92RG01571-Aurorae.pdf
My long range solar based AO/NAO forecast for the UK region is in comments here:
http://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2015/04/13/more-warm-weather-this-week-but-whats-in-store-for-the-summer/#comments
In the insolation input diagram shown below it can be seen that about 26% of insolation is directly reflected back into space by the atmosphere but 19% is absorbed within it as thermal energy with much of the UV radiation being absorbed within the stratospheric ozone layer. Clouds reflect 20% and absorb 3%, atmospheric gases and particles reflect 6% and absorb 16%.
http://www.pilotfriend.com/training/flight_training/met/images2/14.gif
An adiabatic temperature change occurs in a vertically displaced parcel of air due to the change in pressure and volume occurring during a short time period, with little or no heat exchange with the environment. Upward displacement and consequent expansion causes cooling, downward displacement and subsequent compression causes warming. In the troposphere the change in temperature associated with the vertical displacement of a parcel of dry ( i.e. not saturated ) air is very close to 3 °C per 1000 feet, or 9.8 °C / km, of vertical motion; this is known as the dry adiabatic lapse rate [DALR]. As ascending moist air expands and cools in the adiabatic process the excess water vapour condenses after reaching dewpoint and the latent heat of condensation is released into the parcel of air as sensible heat thus slowing the pressure induced cooling process. This condensation process continues whilst the parcel of air continues to ascend and expand. The process is reversed as an evaporation process in descent and compression. The adiabatic lapse rate for saturated air, the saturated adiabatic lapse rate [SALR], is dependent on the amount of moisture content which in itself is dependent on temperature and pressure. The chart below shows the SALR at pressures of 500 and 1000 mb and temperatures between –40 °C and +40 °C.
http://www.pilotfriend.com/training/flight_training/met/images2/18.gif
The chart shows that on a warm day the SALR near sea level is about 1.2 °C / 1000 feet while at about 18 000 feet, the 500 mb level, the rate doubles to about 2.4 °C / 1000 feet.
The environment lapse rate [ELR] is ascertained by measuring the actual vertical distribution of temperature at that time and place.
http://www.pilotfriend.com/training/flight_training/met/hm_temp.htm
Thanks, Clyde Spencer. Interesting summary.