Caldeira It seems in the desperation to erase “the pause” in time for Paris, Ken Caldeira has jumped the shark with this claim. Basically he’s claiming that the heat from fossil fuel combustion is a factor, not just the posited slowing of infrared from Earth’s surface to the top of the atmosphere by increased CO2 concentration.
This headline “Greenhouse gas-caused warming felt in just months” is in contrast to what Caldeira previously said in this Institute of Physics publication saying:
…we find the median time between an emission and maximum warming is 10.1 years, with a 90% probability range of 6.6–30.7 years.
Now whether its months, years, or decades, they still have to get around the problem of “the pause” and climate sensitivity, which so far appears to be low in observations as seen here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/29/an-observational-estimate-of-climate-sensitivity/
Washington, DC–The heat generated by burning a fossil fuel is surpassed within a few months by the warming caused by the release of its carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to new work from Carnegie’s Xiaochun Zhang and Ken Caldeira published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. The release of CO2 into the atmosphere contributes to the trapping of heat that would otherwise be emitted into outer space.
When a fossil fuel is combusted, heat is released. Some of this is used to make electricity or heat human-built structures, but eventually all of that energy escapes into the environment and warms the planet. But this combustion process also produces carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas that accumulates in the atmosphere for thousands of years and traps heat that would otherwise escape into space, causing global climate change.
In a modeling study of coal, oil, and natural gas, Zhang and Caldeira compared the warming caused by combustion to the warming caused by the carbon dioxide released by a single instance of burning, such as one lump of coal, and by a power plant that is continuously burning fuel.
They found that the carbon dioxide-caused warming exceeds the amount of heat released by a lump of coal in just 34 days. The same phenomenon is observed in 45 days for an isolated incident of oil combustion, and in 59 days for a single instance of burning natural gas.
“Ultimately, the warming induced by carbon dioxide over the many thousands of years it remains in the atmosphere would exceed the warming from combustion by a factor of 100,000 or more,” Caldeira said.
For a power plant that is continuously burning, the warming caused by atmospheric carbon dioxide exceeded the heat released into the atmosphere by combustion in less than half a year–just three months for coal plants. With this kind of steady continuous combustion, it takes 95 days using coal, 124 days using oil, and 161 days using natural gas.
Caldeira explained: “If a power plant is burning continuously, within 3 to 5 months, depending on the type of power plant, the CO2 from the power plant is doing more to heat the Earth than the fires in its boiler. As time goes on, the rate of burning in the power plant stays the same, but the CO2 accumulates, so by the end of the year, the greenhouse gases will be heating the Earth much more than the direct emissions from the power plant.”
“It’s important to note that heat emissions from combustion are not negligible, particularly in urban areas,” Zhang added. “But carbon dioxide-caused warming is just that much greater. Our results drive home the urgency of cutting emissions immediately.”
###
Funding for this work was provided by the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (FICER) and the Carnegie Institution for Science.
The data that used to calculate thermal emissions with thermal contents of fossil fuels and estimate CO2 emissions are available from IPCC AR5 (https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/ipcc_wg3_ar5_chapter7.pdf). The historical CO2 emissions data from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) fossil-fuel CO2 emissions dataset, and can be accessed via http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/CSV-FILES/global.1751_2008.csv.
Paris is waiting at the 50000 yard/rentseekers line, I can hardly wait for the hot woosh of abject failure. Oh well there is always the next climate junket.
Don’t be complacent.
A 90 % chance of failure is still a 10 % chance they’ll succeed in their goals. It’s only a few of them who explicitly aim at destroying Industrial Civilisation. The rest of them don’t even realise that’s the probable consequence of their goals, a fact which makes no difference at all to the outcome. And as you say, there’s always the next one.
We must win every time. They have to win just once.
so, according to the graph above, it take 20 years for coal to reach 50x, but 40 years for gas to reach 50x. so, in other words, switching from coal to oil does not change the total amount of warming, only the time that it takes.
in other words, the EPA regulation to end coal and replace it with gas are a waste or time, because for the same amount of electricity produced you will get the same amount of global warming, regardless of whether you use coal or gas. all that will change is the length of time.
“Ultimately, the warming induced by carbon dioxide over the many thousands of years it remains in the atmosphere would exceed the warming from combustion by a factor of 100,000 or more,” Caldeira said.
===============
so the CO2 released today from a single power station will in many thousands of years fry the earth.
so what is the purpose of cutting emissions? they certainly cannot be cut back to zero without returning the survivors to the stone age. if this report is true then all we are doing by cutting emissions if buying time. we are all doomed, so we might as well keep the lights on, heat the house in winter and run the air-con in summer. none of us are getting out of this alive.
You aren’t getting it. The heat doesn’t need to increase from the co2, it just doesn’t go away like the heat from combustion. So after many years the total heat summed is a very large factor bigger than the instantaneous heat.
They are making it up as they go along.
“””””…..…we find the median time between an emission and maximum warming is 10.1 years, with a 90% probability range of 6.6–30.7 years. …..”””””
Simply wunnerful ! And the 99% probability range is 2.2 -92.1 years, and we predict the 99.9% probability range is 0.7 – 275 years, in fact we’re fairly sure of it.
Ken’s doctor saw the fetid cognitive dissonance building in his head and lanced it before it exploded. This was the result.
The
rune stonesmodels say so.Would be interesting if there was another release of emails just before Paris.
My thoughts exactly. It’s time for Climategate IV.
… and Servergate I.
Popcorn.
“In a modeling study …” says it all when it’s about climate models.
But… the earth ain’t warming no mo.
Obfuscation and techno babble to conceal the fact that I am still burning oil to heat my house in bloody June.
It is frigging cold.
Right. It isn’t a pause, it is a HALT until it starts moving again, and then expect cooling.
Just remember that the moving phase is quite benign. It’s that sudden halt in the movement, that does all the damage.
It won’t be “frigging cold” anymore once the CRU gang have ‘homogenised’ the temperature data and turned it into catastrophic warming for you. So you can throw your heaters away.
So when we get to the year 2100, will the freezing point of pure water be 2 degrees, or 4 degrees Celsius
Actually Paul, it’s too cold to do even that #;-)
In Indiana it is now warm enough for the more efficient heat pump to keep us warm in June. Global warming my ass.
Do alarmists get loonier around the full moon?
Someone needs to perform a study about the effects of the phases of the moon on the bizarreness of the claims by the CO2 obsessed.
Bob, you may have a valid point with regards to the moon.
The Paris looney tune show will officially begin shortly after the full moon and officially end on a new moon. There will likely be accelerated bizarre claims before the start and hopefully some sanity will have returned with the new moon.
Will Paris be like a school of fish migrating for a spawn?
They should meet at Stonehenge dance around for while then sacrifice Big Al to the global warming gods Maybe the pause would end..
@old construction worker.
The Gore Effect would ensure sufficient cold and snow to cancel the festivities.
I think it’s loonier with temperature, seems like every year, as we move toward the summer months, there’s more and more odd-ball stuff being said and published. Maybe that’s why they’re so afraid of global warming, it will results in massive insanity and widespread lunacy.
Yes, why yes, they do! Drill here. Drill now. Drill early and often.
I haven’t heard that said since I worked for the dental college.
The phases of the Moon is a pet subject of mine. You see, I had to applaud the geezer who is currently cycling around the world “to raise awareness for climate change”. Well he’s doing something like that… cycling somewhere I think, but I got bored listening and felt sick so not all of it registered as I reached for the bucket to puke, as I do with such things. Anyway it was on the TV news yesterday morning and I thought ‘Well done!’. I was so impressed, it inspired me to cycle around my local suburb to ‘raise awareness for the phases of the Moon’ and other perfectly natural phenomena that people forget about. Climate change is one of them because it’s only been happening for the last five billion years so I take my hat off to all the loonie toons who do wonderful things to “raise awareness” for it. I’ll be on my bike tonight raising awareness for the Moon’s phases, lest they be forgotten.
Yes, it is the tidal effect on the voices they hear.
To help answer your question:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1893&dat=19950309&id=mFkfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ftgEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4557,1249785&hl=en
Tonight the full moon was my friend, being a silly old male I forgot it was the day the rubbish bins needed to be taken to the road side.Being winter in oz and bloody cold and around a 1/4 mile to the road on the phone my good woman told me to take the bins out, the full moon was my friend. The first second and third day of winter in oz for me has been bloody cold. I am waiting for the promised, or is it the inevitable warming that must arrive soon or I will have been conned into paying to much for my power, and strange green fees, even on my rubbish bins.
I was out and about travelling by train here in Sydney, and yes, it was very VERY cold yesterday, even in the sun. I had my thick, hooded, fleece jacket on too. Well, it is winter after all.
I’m surprised he didn’t calculate the heat from the friction generated by scratching his own behind while breathing out that nasty CO2 (and then multiply it by 7 billion).
The illusion of competence is greatly enhanced via the application of computers and software.
To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer.
Let’s see, 70W times 7×10^^9 = 490GW Aaahhhh! We’re all gonna die!
So Zhang and Caldiera have announced they’re walking to Paris? No? They’re flying? Um, jet fuel is very oil-like, so in 45 days…
When I turn on the heater in my car, it warms me almost immediately. This is what he means, right? He can’t mean that because I drive my car, I don’t need a heater.
Heat cannot be emitted into outer space.
According to NASA, it does: 2011 Link =
http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-global-warming-alarmism-192334971.html
If it can’t be emitted, how is the earth dealing with all the energy absorbed from the sun over the last 4.5billion years?
It hides it…..
Didn’t you read the memo?
Well the energy leaves the same way it arrived as EM radiation. It can’t get here as heat, and it can’t leave here as heat.
Just for laughs try connecting a copper rod (suitably guard ringed) from sun to earth, and calculate the W/m^2 of heat conducted from sun to earth, assuming the normal thermal conductivity of copper, and also ignoring the fact that the copper rod, might evaporate at the sun end.
Better yet make the rod out of type IIa diamond, and find the W/m^2 of conducted heat from the sun.
We make all of our heat ourselves, right here on earth; don’t get any of it from any place else.
“as EM radiation”
Then it was emitted.
“If it can’t be emitted, how is the earth dealing with all the energy absorbed from the sun over the last 4.5billion years?”
Good question. The only culprit seems to be the expanding earth, an idea championed by Australia geologist Sam Carey who took a lot of shtick for having the temerity to question the “settled science” of plate tectonics.
Heat also cannot be trapped.
You just need the right bait, that’s all.
question is- once you trap it, how do you skin it?
Yup it can, in the proverbial Black Holes at the center of galaxies.
And some of it could be trapped in all that Dark Matter for all we know.
Maybe the Earth is emitting a lack of warmth?
Or, perhaps instead of the Earth undergoing radiational cooling, it is instead absorbing some heat cancelling substance from the cold void of space?
We can call this frigid miasma “Coolth”.
It cancels warmth, being anti-energy, and can also literally suck the heat out of an object.
This is the stuff that blows down on cold winter winds, and descends from the night sky as well.
Ooh hoo, ooooh. That’s very scary, boys and girls!
Death eater …!
@Mark and two Cats
Please elaborate.
Heat requires a physical medium made out of molecules to propagate it.there’s basically none of that between the sun and the earth, or the earth and outer space, so no go on heat loss, or gain.
So, according to this theory of yours, the sun does not warm up the earth…?
Also, are you saying that a person could walk through space in the nude and not worry about freezing?
Please also explain why all space artifacts sent to space wastefully insulate the humans aboard. Your take on the problems faced by the Apollo 13 mission promises to be priceless.
The problem is not one of transfer of energy to space but of terms describing that transfer. Energy leaves the Earth system as radiation. I’ve long bristled at the use of the word heat to describe the process. It does not matter at what frequency the radiation occurs, but for CO2 and other so-called greenhouse gases it is IR. Gases don’t radiate anything but their natural “color”, another odd concept.
Consider for example, hi-power lasers. Non-IR lasers will burn things quite well. IR isn’t heat – it produces heat when it strikes a great many things, though. So does green or blue or red light. Some colors are more effective at this for some materials than for others.
Here’s the big question. If energy is trapped in the atmosphere then the atmosphere will heat. As it heats it radiates more. That can be observed. Observations show that increase does not match modeled output. Observations apparently show there is no increased radiation for nearly years (that is what satellites measure). Something we’re sure of is wrong. What is it?
Some people get caught up in the differences between vibrational energy and EM energy.
‘Something we’re sure of is wrong. What is it?’
The total IR emitted to space is not supposed to much increase when Tyndall gases become more abundant. The upper athmosphere is supposed to cool and lower to warm, leaving the TOA IR almost unchanged.
The hot spot in large is missing, so something appears to balance this effect somehow.
There is nothing in space to accept transfer of heat.
@Mark and two Cats
So you continue insisting that the sun does not warm up the earth or other objects in the solar system because… “there is nothing in space to accept transfer of heat”.
Please elaborate. As it stands, you sound like a complete lunatic. I don’t mean to disparage. It is just that you make no sense whatsoever. I’m sure that if you used more words, your notions would sound less demented.
@MarkW
“Some people get caught up in the differences between vibrational energy and EM energy.”
Yep.
Right on Bro !
Yes it can see the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, better yet go outside on a sunny day and feel the heat emitted from the sun that travelled here through outer space
There is nothing in space to accept transfer of heat.
They probably meant “The release of CO2 into the atmosphere contributes to the trapping of IR that would otherwise be emitted into outer space.”
IR isn’t heat, it is light. It can be absorbed by CO2 as vibronic energy (aka heat), but IR leaving the earth without molecular interactions is not heat leaving the earth, but light; potential heat, but not heat.
They should say what they mean.
Mark and two Cats,
The opposite of absorb is emit.
They did. Consider a broader definition of the term heat commonly used in thermodynamics texts — net energy transfer — and it might make more sense.
OMG.
What in tarnation is going on here:
Gates said something I agree with!
Heavens to Betsy.
warming caused by the carbon dioxide……No one knows
So he figured all the heat from heaters in the winter, air conditioneers in the summer…
I don’t suppose keeping everything above freezing all winter counts
I wonder what percentage of the energy we use gets turned into heat?
I suspect it’s a larger percentage. I’m betting it’s insignificant compared to Nature.
100%. At some stage everything ends up as waste heat. The law of conservation of energy dictates this.
Paul, all of global warming is insignificant
Um No Andrew, energy ends up as lots of things, energy does not all degrade to heat it can end up as the energy bound in compounds, it can end up as rock turned into sand, ice to water ( entropy), it can end up as potential, orbital velocity or momentum. Blowing a speck of dust uphill stores energy, It can end up as visible photons whizzing through space from say lightning or our electric lighting, and it can end up as matter. There are probably dozens of other forms – Frozen electricity (Aluminium) springs to mind as rather durable concentrated form of stored energy.
By the way Air conditioners can only transiently warm the air, Air conditioners just move energy, the only energy added is the electricity drawn from the wall plug, so the warm produced outside quickly (within say 24 hours) recombines with the cold air produced inside. Because the A/C is able to take a large amount of diffuse heat and concentrate it into a small space, which because of the cube law of radiation and thermodynamic efficiency is much more able to radiate and convect away, Ill wager that A/C overall results in planetary cooling even though they are capable of causing localised heating.
Um Yes bobl. All of those other things ultimately end up as heat. The satellite orbit decays, the photons are absorbed, the aluminium oxidizes etc etc.
Globally it’s still insignificant but locally in developed densely populated countries like Europe it’s comparable to the W/m2 supposedly due to CO2 emission.
Urban heat effect is well documented.
“Greenhouse gas-caused warming” – you feel it when you’re frying.
These people are just pissing on their own chips.
With that name, I had to check it wasn’t April 1st:
http://mobile-dictionary.reverso.net/portuguese-english/caldeira
BTW, Anthony, I clicked on the link to the paper and it is “Caldeira” and not “Caldiera” as you have it in some sentences.
[Fixed, thanks. ~mod.]
“All right, I’m sorry I tied you to the furnace” What does that mean? Some sort of Portuguese adage?
I wonder if caldeira can also mean cooker like ‘forno’ in Italian so really the translation of the adage shouldn’t have been furnace but oven. It would then be “tied to the oven”……like “chained to the sink” ?
If you can believe this, it sounds like good news to me. Warm is better than cold and CO2 benefits the planet through the plants so it’s a win-win-win we get the energy from the lump of coal, then we get a warmer planet and finally we get more CO2 for the planet. I’m a bit skeptical that burning a lump of coal really has a meaningful long term impact on warming the planet but this article sounds like coal is a miracle substance.
The search is over! CO2 is the God particle.
The Higgs Boson is a CO2 molecule in drag!
It is the Caitlyn particle
There are intervals of thousands of years during past geological eras when CO2 was rising significantly but the planet was cooling. Is that cooling possible if the rising CO2 trapped the equivalent of 100,000 times the amount of heat of combustion that would have been produced had the increased CO2 been the result of burning fossil fuels? Do you think the authors did that calculation?
So. There are at least three different kinds of human-generated carbon dioxide with different properties, from combustion of coal, oil and methane. This is a major breakthrough in chemistry which should earn them a Nobel.
No. Same CO2, but less of it from methane per unit of heat generated by combustion.
The CAGW secret they don’t want you to know.
There is a nasty ole Anthropogenic Global Warming secret about CO2 that the proponents of CAGW are not telling you. Surprise, surprise, there are actually two (2) different types of CO2.
There is both a naturally occurring CO2 molecule and a hybrid CO2 molecule that has a different physical property. The new hybrid CO2 molecule contains an H-pyron which permits one to distinguish it from the naturally occurring CO2 molecules.
The H-pyron or Human-pyron is only attached to and/or can only be detected in CO2 molecules that have been created as a result of human activity. Said H-pyron has a Specific Heat Capacity of one (1) GWC or 1 Global Warming Calorie that is equal to 69 x 10 -37th kJ/kg K or something close to that or maybe farther away.
Thus, said H-pyron is very important to all Climate Scientists that are proponents of CO2 causing Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) because it provides them a quasi-scientific “fact” that serves two (2) important functions: 1) it permits said climate scientists to calculate an estimated percentage of atmospheric CO2 that is “human caused” ……. and 2) it permits said climate scientists to calculate their desired “degree increase” in Average Global Temperatures that are directly attributed to human activity.
As an added note, oftentimes one may hear said climate scientists refer to those two (2) types of CO2 as “urban CO2” and ”rural CO2” because they can’t deny “it is always hotter in the city”.
And there you have it folks, the rest of the story, their secret scientific tool has been revealed to you.
Yours truly, Eritas Fubar
So . . if we’ve got to contend with increased heat generated by combustion and a further increase in heat caused by greenhouse insulation, and over the course of the last 13 years approximately there has been no increase in temperatures, what exactly has been happening to this double whammy of extra heat? . . ‘Twould surely make even a true believer a little bit sceptical . . you would have thought . . . It’s cold enough here in Scotland at the moment . . Thank goodness for AGW . . without it, it would be even colder . .!
Get out your pooper-scoopers and your doggy doo-doo bags. Gonna be a lot more of this kind of thing from the Warmbots the closer we get to Paris.
Remember when ninnies used to get laughed out of science?
Now they get a fat research grant and front page accolades when they spout their drivel.
And, hey, did anyone else notice they seemed to have asserted that there actually is a urban heat island effect, and that it is quite large?
Youch, this is gonna leave a mark!
I wonder what the folks at BEST would think of this?
Maybe a climate change reporter will ask?
And as everyday goes by, not only does it refuse to warm but alarmists become more stupid.
Who actually believes this stuff?
On a side note, don’t worry about measuring temperatures, just follow water vapour.
Its decreasing, for a good reason.
If warming from CO2 is that quick, it seems to be contradicted by the IPCC’s own claim of long residence times for CO2.
No contradiction. They are talking about how long before the effect of the CO2 is greater than the effect of the combustion. Nothing to do with how long the CO2 is resident.
I understand that, John. Maybe you didn’t get my point. If not, sorry about that.
If, as the IPCC claims, the CO2 residency time is a century, then with all the CO2 emitted over the past 50 – 60 or more years, we certainly should have seen some fast-accelerating global warming by now.
But there isn’t any accelerating global warming — there isn’t even any global warming at all! For many years now, global warming has been stopped.
I think whoever said it upthread was right: at this point, they will SAY ANYTHING. Facts and evidence have nothing to do with it. This is all political spin; pablum for the masses.
true…my take home from this is that CO2 provides even less heating ( some of it is from getting there in the first place)…and they discovered UHI
dbstealey, then the consensus of Climate Scientists is necessarily that we’re in a natural ice age, masked only by anthropogenic CO2 sources. At Paris, they will naturally recommend we discontinue all carbon neutral policies so that we can combat the cold and prevent the destruction of biodiversity on this blue marble.
/superfluous sarc tag
Humm, let me know if I got this right from a physics standpoint. CO2 “back radiation” should be relatively instantaneous, as it is affecting “radiation” as soon as it is emitted. And the heat of combustion is available as soon as the combustion takes place. So perhaps if I look at the real world temperatures around me, and ignore the worthless “model” they use, we can tell that the “effect of CO2” will NEVER be greater than the “effect of combustion”.
Just an engineer,
Correct. Observations trump models. Always.
The Financial Post describes what’s going on very well:
Since 1990, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen 13%, from 354 parts per million (ppm) to just under 400 ppm. According to the IPCC, estimated “radiative forcing” of greenhouse gases (the term it uses to describe the expected heating effect) increased by 43% after 2005. Climate models all predicted that this should have led to warming of the lower troposphere and surface. Instead, temperatures flatlined and even started declining.
Mr. Caldeira needs to explain the huge discrepancy between observations, and the official narrative. Because they can’t both be right.
Just an engineer,
As an engineer, any discussion of the Stefan-Boltzmann relationship of radiation emission as a function of the fourth power of temperature should be a remedial topic for you.
Yes, that follows. It’s also consistent with what the authors of this paper are saying.
It’s important to consider as much of the entire system as possible, not just your immediate surroundings. To wit, one would do well to consider observations of the single largest heat sink in the climate system, the oceans:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itemp2000_global.png
In this case, it’s constructive to look at it in terms of units of energy:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iheat2000_global.png
The linear trend over the entire interval is 4.5 x 10^21 J/yr, accelerating to 7.6 10^21 J/yr for the 20 year interval of 1995-2014. For comparison, worldwide energy consumption is 5.6 x 10^20 J/yr.
And this heat is also missing?
doh, stupid facts!
/Homer
When I run in place my body heats up and I start to sweat. I also breath faster and release more CO2 into the air. The CO2 I release in just 5 days traps more heat causing catastrophic climate change than he initial workout heat released from my body.
Solution, you must pay carbon credits to be allowed to workout.
Jared, you are spot on!
Jared, you have given us couch potatoes a good excuse to feel good about ourselves.
+1.0000 (+/- 0.1)
“Basically he’s claiming that the heat from fossil fuel combustion is a factor, not just the posited slowing of infrared from Earth’s surface to the top of the atmosphere by increased CO2 concentration.”
To me, it sounds like he is saying the opposite – that the radiative heating effect eventually far exceeds combustion heat, and “eventually” can be just a few months. It seems rather a trivial calculation- coal is higher because its fuel content is C only, which hydrocarbons have hydrogen, and so produce less CO2 per joule of combustion heat, because they also produce water. Gas has relatively more hydrogen than oil.
I think you’ll find that coal contains other elements apart from carbon (hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur and nitrogen)
Sometimes I breath C02 on my hands to warm them up. I need to be careful I don’t get burned.
This is 100,000 times more effective than putting on gloves.
That might be an offense punishable by EPA sanctions, you are supposed to exhale CO2 into an underground storage facility. All other exhaling is forbidden.