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Comments 12901 to 12950:
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MA Rodger at 09:27 AM on 4 December 2018CO2 is coming from the ocean
scaddenp @13,
There was the admission from Hairy Turtle @12 that propane was "is not the only type of fuel burned" but that propane was taken "for example" as a fossil fuel. So enumerating the ratios for the different fuels is good to see. Yet the pertinent number from Manning & Keeling (2006) is surely the average ratio of O2:CO2 for total emissions for all fossil fuels. The paper gives it as 1.39, a little lower than the value for propane given @12 as 5:3 or 1.66.
That 1.39 average value is an average for the 1990s. If you look at CO2 emissions by fuel-type through the years, the figure was dropping from the turn of the century as coal-use made a come-back, dropping from a high of about 1.40 down to 1.36 but subsequently with coal now less used, the ratio has now risen to something like 1.50 in recent years. -
michael sweet at 08:47 AM on 4 December 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
dkierleber,
You have asked good questions that are on topic. I think you have a small misunderstanding that will soon be corrected. Keep up the discussion till you feel you are informed. It helps other readers to hear your questions. Everyone looks harder at their understanding.
I think you are just a little off. As I understand the physics, it is easy for carbon dioxide molecules to lose the extra vibrational energy they get from IR photons through collisions with other molecules. Due to the long time before a new photon is released, there are usually thousands or millions of collisions before a photon is emitted. It is not necessary for a photon to be emitted at the same time as the collision. The extra vibrational energy ends up as kinetic energy and heats up the atmosphere.
Because other molecules of CO2 can be put in the excited state by collisions there is always a population of molecules that can emit photons. Even though most of the molecules do not emit the energy as photons, enough do to keep the system in equilibrium. At higher temperatures more molecules are in the excited state and more photons are emitted.
I think line broadening is only a small contribution to the greenhouse effect. The primary issue is that when CO2 is at low concentrations emitted photons escape to outer space. At high concentrations of CO2 the photons are absorbed by other CO2 molecules before they can escape.
On Mars the CO2 is in a low concentration (measured as grams per liter) even at the surface so the energy escapes to space. On Earth the escape altitude was about 10.00 kilometers in 1850. Since then the CO2 concentration has increased about 130 ppm. That increase caused the escape altitude to increase to about 10.16 km (only about 160 meters). The lapse rate (the rate of decrease of temperature due to increasing altitude) is about 6C per kilometer. That means it is about 1C cooler at the new escape altitude. Less energy is emitted when it is cooler. In order to preserve conservation of energy, it has to heat up at the new escape altitude so that the same amount of energy is emitted. This increase then propagates down to the surface.
At 10km altitude there is little water vapor in the atmosphere since it is so cold. CO2 is the main greenhouse gas at that altitude. Since CO2 is the main gas at the escape altitude it exerts the most control over warming.
I have digressed a lot from your questions about vibrational energy. Does this information help? Unfortunately, I do not know of a good reference. For what it is worth, I teach introductory College Chemistry. We touch on energy exchange. I did not take quantum chemistry. I learned the most about the greenhouse effect reading Skeptical Science for the past 10 years.
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Doug_C at 06:15 AM on 4 December 2018SkS Analogy 16 - Arctic ice, sailboat keels, and wild weather
"A meandering jet stream allows deep troughs and ridges, allowing some areas to get unusually warm while other areas become unusually cold (read here, here, and here)"
Living in Edmonton Alberta a few years ago in mid winter we had one period where temperatures were well above zero when they could just as easily have been -30 C. While at the same time Eastern Canada and the US all the way down to Florida were in a deep freeze with very cold temperatures.
January 2014 Weather in Edmonton
Winter Storm of January 28-29, 2014
Climate change is not a smooth and gradual process to a slightly warmer Earth, it comes in chaotic jumps and pauses and can have devastating impacts.
Now living back in BC we've had two consecutive years where much of the province has been under a state of emergency starting with too much water too fast in the springs to not enough in the forests during summer heat waves. Large parts of this province have been consecutively drowned and then burned and we're certainly not alone with this weather chaos that comes as natural systems like the Jet Stream and other global scale systems are destabilizing and moving into a much different state.
Thousands of homes evacuated, highways closed in B.C. because of flooding
2018 British Columbia wildfires
Something that will in fact take centuries. No matter what we do we have left chaos for many generations to follow to deal with. And if we don't take this bull by the horns and very soon, the chaotic conditions this creates may overwhelm first complex human society then after a global collapse our species itself.
David Attenborough - Climate change and extinction
And yet we still have politicians here in Canada who demand we keep expanding the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.
Trans Mountain pipeline should go ahead even if consultation doesn’t end with consensus, Notley says
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SirCharles at 04:18 AM on 4 December 2018COP24: UN climate change conference, what’s at stake and what you need to know
Amazing. The BBC is citing climateactiontracker.org
=> Climate change: Where we are in seven charts and what you can do to help
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SirCharles at 03:58 AM on 4 December 2018COP24: UN climate change conference, what’s at stake and what you need to know
Great article. Many thanks for all that information.
=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a6JeqX1BHI
Moderator Response:[DB] Please set image widths to below 500.
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scaddenp at 13:28 PM on 3 December 2018CO2 is coming from the ocean
The language is possibly a little loose here. The detail is in Manning and Keeling 2006 and I see that in the O2 consumption calculation, they used:
"O2 consumed is calculated assuming full combustion of all fossil fuel
types, and using O2:CO2 molar ratios for each fuel type from Keeling
(1988). That is, O2:CO2 is 1.17 for solid fuel; 1.44 for liquid fuel; 1.95
for gas fuel; and 1.98 for flared gas. (Cement manufacture does not
consume O2)." -
Hairy Turtle at 06:19 AM on 3 December 2018CO2 is coming from the ocean
Hi,
So the chemical reaction between hydrocarbons and oxygen are (hydrocarbon + 02 --> CO2 +H20). Lets take propane, for example. When combusting, we get (C3H8 + 5(O2) --> 3(CO2) + 4(H2O)). This article states that "Atmospheric oxygen is going down by the same amount as atmospheric CO2 is going up." From this equation, which I know is not the only type of fuel burned, CO2 is going up by 3 mols for every five mols of O2, so oxygen is burned faster than CO2 is emitted, which is the case for every hydrocarbon. This also doesn't account for impurities found in fossil fuels, like sulfur and nitrogen.
Im taking the 29 gigatons of CO2 emitted from this article. Doing some stoiciometry, we can find the number of tons of O2 that is being consumed by propane*.
29 gigatons = 2.9e+16 grams
2.9e+16 g / 44.01g = 6.5894115e+14 mols C02 produced, rounded to 6.6e+14 for significant figures.
(6.6e+14 mols CO2/3 mols CO2)(5 mols O2) = 1.1e+15 mols O2 consumed (sig figs)
1.1e+15 mols O2 is vastly greater than 6.6e+14 mols CO2.
In 1. Oxygen decrease, you say that the carbon part comes from reduced carbon compounds, and that the oxygen comes from the atmosphere, and I agree that burning fossil fuels uses oxygen from the atmosphere. But what I am not understanding is that O2 is decreasing at the same rate CO2 is increasing. O2 is consumed faster than CO2 is emitted, so O2 should be consumed at a 5:3 oxygen to carbon dioxide, which is not what your articles have been saying. If oxygen is decreasing by 5 ppm per year, CO2 should be increasing by 3 ppm, which is significantly different than the roughly 1:1 ratio suggested.
Where does this 2/5 discrepancy come from? Is there something I'm missing? If my math or reasoning is wrong, please show me where.
*I understand that propane is not the only type of fossil fuel burned, and is merely an example used in my argument. There will never be a 1-1 C02 to O2 ration when burning hydrocarbons, as is found in their balanced combustion reactions. The more complex hydrocarbons combust with a higher ratio of O2 to CO2 than propane, and simpler hydrocarbons combust at a lower ratio.
Thanks for your response.
B. M.
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Evan at 06:00 AM on 3 December 2018COP24: UN climate change conference, what’s at stake and what you need to know
Nice summary John!
Moderator Response:[JH] Thank you, It's also chock full of embedded links to important stuff.
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dkeierleber at 04:10 AM on 3 December 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
PS I will read the 1971 NASA publication today to see how they explain it.
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dkeierleber at 04:05 AM on 3 December 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
I’m dense and not quite there yet. From Pierrehumbert Principles of Planetary Climate (p 221), “Since energy is conserved, the absorption or emission of a photon must be accompanied by a change in the internal energy state of the molecule. It is a consequence of quantum mechanics that the internal energy of a molecule can only take on values drawn from a finite set of possible energy states, the distribution of which is determined by the structure of the molecule.”
So molecules can only take on specific vibrational states, constrained by quantum mechanics. A molecule with 2 atoms has only 1 allowed vibrational state (3 x 2 – 5). GHG molecules have more allowed energy (vibrational) states (3 x the # of atoms -5 for linear molecules, -6 for nonlinear ones). But the energy states are still confined to whole multiples of the quanta that excites them. Just like a photon energy must match the energy gap between electron shells in order to be absorbed and boost the electron to a higher shell. The photon could not boost 2 electrons half way to the next shell. Quanta can’t be divided.
It is this quantum constraint that makes the GH work. If GHGs were excited by any LWR the atmosphere would go crazy. GHG molecules can only absorb energy in narrow bands---they are little receptors tuned to specific frequencies. So loosing part of their constrained vibrational energy via collisional transfer would leave them in a non-allowed quantum state.
Also from Pierrehumbert (p 227) collisional broadening of the absorption bands occurs because the kinetic energy of the collision is not quantized. So a molecule can borrow some of that energy to be boosted to the next allowed vibrational state by photons whose frequency (and thus energy) would ordinarily be outside their absorption band.
That is the missing part of MA Rodgers response on why Mars is so cold. The lack of water vapor is a big factor but so is the thin atmosphere---too thin to allow for collisional broadening. On Venus, collisional broadening extends high into the atmosphere. This is explained on the American Chemical Society’s post on Multi-Layer Model.
Digressing for a bit, in a sufficiently thick atmosphere, non GHG molecules can absorb photons during a collision. Nitrogen in Titan’s cold dense atmosphere, eg. That’s a different process called Continuum Absorption and also happens on Venus.
So, again, I can see the vibrational energy state of molecules being affected by a collision only if the process involved the emission of a lower energy photon to return the molecule to a lower vibrational state. Of course the problem may be my failure to understand the process and learning difficulties associated with my aging brain. Also, Pierrehumbert likely explains the process in the next 2 chapters but I struggle a bit with a graduate level climate science book. I was hoping for a short cut to understanding this
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One Planet Only Forever at 09:06 AM on 2 December 2018But their Emails!
Since the EELI is not the owner of the emails is it possible to legally require them to only present them as full email strings. No partial presentation allowed. And no paraphrasing allowed.
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nigelj at 07:52 AM on 2 December 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
dkeierleber @15, I came across this when reading up on the greenhouse effect some time back, appears to be written by a chemistry teacher.
chemistry.elmhurst.edu/vchembook/globalwarmA5.html
"Certain gases in the atmosphere have the property of absorbing infrared radiation. Oxygen and nitrogen the major gases in the atmosphere do not have this property. The infrared radiation strikes a molecule such as carbon dioxide and causes the bonds to bend and vibrate - this is called the absorption of IR energy. The molecule gains kinetic energy by this absorption of IR radiation. This extra kinetic energy may then be transmitted to other molecules such as oxygen and nitrogen (as they bump together) and causes a general heating of the atmosphere. Analogy: Think of a partially stretched "toy slinky" - if you bump the slinky, the energy of the bump is absorbed by the vibrations in the slinky."
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Ed the Skeptic at 07:37 AM on 2 December 2018Rapid climate changes more deadly than asteroid impacts in Earth’s past – study shows.
So was the extinction due to the initial cold caused by the mongo massive volcanic exhaust solids including carbon from burned fossil hydrocarbons blotting out of the sun, or the proposed latter GHG induced warming?
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:19 AM on 2 December 2018But their Emails!
Instead of trying to angle to get David's emails though some version of a FOIA, maybe Drs. Hughes and Overpeck could Publicly request tha David Schnare do the honorable things of being totally transparent "In the Public Interest he claims to be Concerned about" by sharing all of his emails - without reviewing them for potential Personal Confidential Interests.
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:32 AM on 2 December 2018But their Emails!
SInce David Schnare claims to be performing a Public Service through this Public Process it seems reasonable that someone could do FOIA request for all of his emails, starting form the date he began using this Public Mechanism to perform this Public Service.
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MA Rodger at 05:59 AM on 2 December 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
dkeierleber @15,
Can I provide references? Not easily.
On line, perhaps Siegel & Howell (1971) may be of use to you. Alternatively, you may wish to narrow your enquiry within what is a piece of physics that doesn't get described within published literature in the manner that is understandable to the general reader. Or more correctly, I have never found anything on-line more complete than the likes of this overly-simplistic UCAR page.
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dkeierleber at 04:38 AM on 2 December 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
@14, MA Rodger
Can you provide references for your response?
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SirCharles at 00:25 AM on 2 December 2018But their Emails!
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0270467617707079?journalCode=bsta
Moderator Response:[DB] Please set image widths to below 500.
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SirCharles at 00:23 AM on 2 December 2018But their Emails!
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Tadaaa at 20:41 PM on 1 December 2018But their Emails!
i do love the fact that worshippers at the "church of the eternally concerned" hold climate scientists to much higher standards than just about any other human - living or dead
I beleive even Einstein had issues with data conflicting with theory
the earth is round, evolution is the best theory that explains the diverstity of life on earth and AGW is the best thoery that explains the data - get over it
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Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 18:26 PM on 1 December 2018But their Emails!
It's a bit disappointing that already, and even here, David Kirtley's concerns described above are being fulfilled- cherry-picking, misrepresentation, fake concern etc.
JP66 quoted a passage out of context, which was part of an email discussion that went on for several emails (10 July 2000 email by Ray Bradley, with replies by other people). The discussion was evidence of scientists doing science and working hard, talking together, to try to get to the bottom of what was happening 1000 years ago, well before thermometers and barometers.
Even if JP66 didn't look at the other emails in the discussion, they could hardly have missed key lines in the one he/she cherry-picked. After explaining some of the difficulties of sorting through data to get valuable information, Ray Bradley wrote:
In Ch 7 we will try to discuss some of these issues, in the limited space available. Perhaps the best thing at this stage is to simply point out the inherent uncertainties and point the way towards how these uncertainties can be reduced. Malcolm & I are working with Mike Mann to do just that.
That's leaving aside the fact that the email thread was yet another example showing the dedication of scientists. They were working late into the night. (Researchers do not stick to 9-5 hours. For a lot of them, like the ones writing these emails, it's a 24-7 commitment.)
Now if anyone is concerned about how scientists view or speak about fake sceptics, they hold them in the same contempt as I do. Who can blame them?
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Doug_C at 15:08 PM on 1 December 2018But their Emails!
JP66 @8
Virtually every peer-reviewed article backs up the theory of athropogenic global warming mostly forced by massive fossil fuel use.
The 97% consensus on global warming
If you're straddling a fence then one half of your body is being crushed up against the wall of evidence.
The models being discussed in these taken out of context emails don't "prove" that anthropogenic global warming is happening, they are an attempt to model what we might expect to see in coming years given specific forcings. And even if the models could be discredited totally - which they haven't been - it doesn't change the basic science telling us why the globe is warming so rapidly and what is almost certainly the main forcing. Coarbon dioxide absorbing huge amounts of longwave EM ratiated by the Earth.
A forcing that has been understood for well over a century and more than a century ago climate sensitivity was calculated before we even understood the fundamental mechanism that causes the greenhouse effect. Namely photons being quantized to be absorbed by certain molecules but not others.
Svante Arrhenius - Climate Sensitivity
The idea is not to wait until there is nothing we can do about this growing global catastrophe, the signal rose above the noice over two decades ago. The idea is to let the overwhelming evidence on this existential issue determine policy. Something that still isn't happening not because the evidence is not far above a rational doubt, but because people skilled in hitting the scientific method where it's most vulnerable - in the constant application of skepticism - keep demanding 100% certainty before we change anything. There is zero genuine skepticism being applied by these people to their own positions.
That's not science, I'm not going to put in blunt words what it is but that is not science and there is nothing sacrosanct in playing silly bastards with an issue that is already killing large numbers of people every year and driving entire essential ecosystems like coral reefs to the edge of existance.
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nigelj at 10:27 AM on 1 December 2018But their Emails!
JP66, the email you quote is a single email relating to climategate taken completely out of context, which shows the whole problem with these thefts / hacks. It's hard to even know what they are really saying, other than they appear to be arguing whether a paleo climate reconstruction of the medieval warm period is reliable, notice its in reference to "a" reconstruction.
I don't see what "theory" this undermines. Greenhouse gas theory, human impacts on climate,and future modelling of temperatures obviously do not rely on reconstructions of the medieval warm period.
What theory do you claim it undermines? What is it you think they are really saying?
Yes they are also talking about problems they are having with analysing the past, misakes that might have ocassionally been made, people attacking their work and how they should respond to this. Wouldn't any normal person do this? Why do you think this is somehow nefarious or abnormal?
If this is the so called smoking gun in climategate its laughable.
I do agree with you if the latest data and the accepted theory diverge then question the theory, but this is not apparent in this case. Also question whether the data is reliable, as it often turns out the data is wrong, for example the problems where the satellite temperature record originally showed a cooling, when it turned out there were problems with the satellite sensors or something.
Please note that many groups have analysed the MWP and found it was no warmer than temperatures over the last decade.
Moderator Response:[DB] Indeed, the first volume of the 4th National Climate Assessment released by the Trump Administration found this to be the case, with regards to the MWP:
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JP66 at 09:43 AM on 1 December 2018But their Emails!
I need to put my thought in context. Science to me is sacrosanct. A key element of science is the understanding that when data contradicts a theory then one discusses the validity of said theory; one does NOT worry about responding to "the antis". As a scientist one should question the theory. That is incredibly simple and extremely damning to me.
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JP66 at 09:34 AM on 1 December 2018But their Emails!
Avowed fence sitter here . . .
I am reading the entire thread of emails and following the discussion, but I am afraid it does not put climatologists in a good light when I read something like this . . .
But there are real questions to be asked of the paleo reconstruction. First, I should point out that we calibrated versus 1902-1980, then "verified" the approach using an independent data set for 1854-1901. The results were good, giving me confidence that if we had a comparable proxy data set for post-1980 (we don't!) our proxy-based reconstruction would capture that period well. Unfortunately, the proxy network we used has not been updated, and furthermore there are many/some/ tree ring sites where there has been a "decoupling" between the long-term relationship between climate and tree growth, so that things fall apart in recent decades....this makes it very difficult to demonstrate what I just claimed. We can only call on evidence from many other proxies for "unprecedented" states in recent years (e.g. glaciers, isotopes in tropical ice etc..). But there are (at least) two other problems — Keith Briffa points out that the very strong trend in the 20th century calibration period accounts for much of the success of our calibration and makes it unlikely that we would be able be able to reconstruct such an extraordinary period as the 1990s with much success (I may be mis-quoting him somewhat, but that is the general thrust of his criticism). Indeed, in the verification period, the biggest "miss" was an apparently very warm year in the late 19th century that we did not get right at all. This makes criticisms of the "antis" difficult to respond to (they have not yet risen to this level of sophistication, but they are "on the scent").
Moderator Response:[DB] For context, if you are going to quote an email exchange here, please also include who sent the email and to whom they sent it, including the date. That will enable others to help you improve your understanding of the science in question.
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nigelj at 05:35 AM on 1 December 2018But their Emails!
Curiously enough I was reading this article at the end of a television episode of Dr Who, where the Dr time travelled back to the time of King James and the persecution of so called witches. I thought it an ironic sort of coincidence.
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nigelj at 05:12 AM on 1 December 2018But their Emails!
What you have with the EELI and other climate sceptics groups is a marriage of convenience between fossil fuel interests, libertarian small government fanatics, scientific cranks, conspiracy theory people, ignoramuses, and hired guns. Read any climate sceptics website and you find these characters lurking.
Their propaganda is nothing more than personal attacks, material taken out of context, and bullying. They are not genuine sceptics or whistle blowers, they traffic in muck raking. They have no shame, no conscience, and no ethical standards, and know nothing about anything of value.
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David Kirtley at 02:47 AM on 1 December 2018But their Emails!
Good catch, John. Changes made.
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John Hartz at 01:51 AM on 1 December 2018But their Emails!
David Kirtley: Recommend that you change the acronym for the Energy and Environment Legal Institute from E&E to EELI. The acronym E&E is used by a E&E News - respected news organization focusing on energy and the environment.
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Sunspot at 20:56 PM on 30 November 2018But their Emails!
It's really quite simple: Unless we stop burning fossil fuels, civilization will collapse from the consequences of Global Warming. But if we stopped burning fossil fuels immediately, civilization would collapse before the end of the week. Of course, this is not a real choice, we all get up in the morning and pretend that what we do isn't ruining the future. We are all lying to ourselves.
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Doug_C at 20:00 PM on 30 November 2018But their Emails!
"One wonders, if the shoe were on the other foot, and the private correspondence and paperwork of E&E were made available, what might the public learn about this “charity."
Probably that its funding comes from individuals and corporations closely associated with the fossil fuel sector like the Kochs and Exxon Mobil.
This is the world turned inside out, where professionals carrying out their duty as part of an endeavour to understand the natural world in a way that has great benefit to everyone must constantly defend themselves from a very tiny yet incredibly well funded front group.
And this is a multi phased attack on the science, not only is the intent to get more raw material that can then be feed into the widespread disinformation machine created by the fossil fuel sector, it will also have a chlling effect on scientists who will then be looking over their shoulders for the next attack.
And it also encourages people who don't want any change in their lives to become ever more resistant to change as they are convinced once again the "evil elites" are out to get them.
This will only end when the fossil fuel sector no longer has the millions of dollars to spend fueling this disinformation machine. The British Royal Society asked Exxon Mobil to please stop funding climate change denial over a decade ago, but the only thing that has changed is the money from Exxon Mobil to the network of denial "think tanks" has gone "dark" now.
And as long as the money keeps flwoing to these groups the garbage will keep shooting out of them. 88 people just died in a climate change related disaster in California and many more are unaccounted for and the catastrophic impacts of a hothouse world are sobering to say the least. The IPCC has just made clear, we have very little time left to take real measures to avoid a world that will almost certainly be unable to support our current population plus some.
And the people who take money from the fossil fuel sector still try and prevent those real measures from being implemented because it would mean they would have to find another occupation.
There will always be a need for people who fill the roll scientists do now, do we really have a need for people who distort reality in such a way it places our entire species at risk of extinction...
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Doug Bostrom at 15:50 PM on 30 November 2018But their Emails!
Gunslingers tend to have what are these days politely called "chaotic lifestyles" and Schnare appears to coincide with both of those attributes.
If there's a single good thing that's come out of the whole episode, it may be the photochop in this article. :-)
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Eclectic at 13:22 PM on 30 November 2018Discussing climate change on the net
Sunspot @21 ~ intrigued by your earlier comment, I chased up the comments column of a Yahoo climate article.
The article was quite fair and reasonable (on AGW effects) . . . but Oh My . . . the comments column was a Niagara of 1- to 3-sentence denialist mini-rants. Maybe 98% denialist? Absolutely no way could that represent a randomized cross-section of opinion.
Is Yahoo being a magnet to half the crazy galoots in the USA? Do the crazy galoots simply join in there (having been rejected by their friends & relatives) in order to air their opinions & vent their anger? And yes, one could well believe that some of them are there as "paid actors" . . . or, in this modern automated age, perhaps many of them are simply Heartland-funded bots?
What is not clear to me is Yahoo's business plan, in all this nonsense. To gain reading clicks by stirring up the crazies, allowing them to vent in an echo-chamber . . . and keep them watching/clicking?
In comparison, the comments columns of WattsUp are almost half-sane. Yes, about a third of the posters are so intellectually insane that they totally dismiss the global warming mechanism of CO2/GHG's. And three-quarters of them are rabid political extremists, to whom the term charity (let alone the word tax) is anathema. A further one-fifth are such victims of their own Motivated Reasoning, that they say that around 90% of recent rapid global warming comes from 70-year and/or 1000-year oceanic cycles (or from cosmic rays causing clouding or unclouding . . . or whatever).
I don't bother closely reading the WattsUp articles ~ they are mostly trash & sour-grapes "spin". But I do skim through the comments super-fast, lookin for "names" with a track record of sane intelligence (names such as Nick Stokes, Mosher, and a few others also worth reading) ~ posters who are cool oases in that intellectual desert.
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Sunspot at 09:22 AM on 30 November 2018Discussing climate change on the net
While it is tempting to think that something like Yahoo comments presents a randomized cross-section of opinion, unfortunately, like most things on the internet it seems, this is far from the truth. Comments are arranged to elicit response and keep me on the page. And when Yahoo doesn't like what I am saying, the page I am on will stop getting new comments from anyone else, and the link will disappear from the main page. All clear manipulation. I call them out occasionally for it, for all the good that does. I have never seen any mention of this anywhere, but I can see it happening all the time.
I do like the free email, though... :-)
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MA Rodger at 08:39 AM on 30 November 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
dkeiereber @13,
Gas molecules do increasingly whiz about with increasing temperature. If the gas contains polyatomic molecules (like CO2) it will have a higher Specific Heat Capacity as there will also be energy being absorbed into extra rotation and vibration as temperature increases. The vibrational energy can be transferred to other molecules/atoms as kinetic, rotational or vibrational energy but can also result in the emission of a photon. So the answer to your question "Can the higher quantum state of an excited GHG molecule be transferred to another molecule through a collision?" is 'Yes.'
And the opposite can occur; a collision or a photon of the correct wavelength can set a polyatomic molecule vibrating in a particular mode.
Quantum rules apply to vibration (and rotation) so the photon is always of the same wavelength, abet the rotational energy and kinetic energy do create small variations (broadening) in wavelength for emitted/absorbed photons.
Relative to the energy transferred between molecules/atoms in a gas, the emitting/absorption of photons are a rare events and most absorbed photons will become added to the energy in the gas rather than being immediately emitted as another photon. -
dkeierleber at 05:01 AM on 30 November 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
Pretty sure this is on topic. I’m struggling with the details of the physics. BTW, I thought the video was good but it didn’t go far enough. My question is whether the absorption of infrared radiation (IR) by greenhouse gas molecules directly warms the air. I have seen an explanation regarding the hot atmosphere giving off IR. But, since 1859, we know that the majority of the atmosphere doesn’t absorb IR.So I'm assuming it can't emit IR. The atmosphere isn't a black body (maybe a gray body).
GHGs absorb IR because they have at least three atoms and two bonds allowing more than one quantum vibrational state. A GHG molecule is boosted to a higher state only by a photon with the right energy. The energy must match the energy gap between two allowed quantum states of the molecule.
Similarly, it seems the molecule could only emit a photon of the same energy and return to its base state. Some of the emitted photons will be reabsorbed by the Earth causing further warming.
But gas molecules are also in kinetic motion---whizzing about. The faster the molecules move---the more kinetic energy they have---the warmer the air is. Can the higher quantum state of an excited GHG molecule be transferred to another molecule through a collision? I know that the kinetic energy isn’t quantized so it seems that in order for that to happen the excited molecule would have to emit a lower energy photon, to return to its base state, as part of the energy transferring collision---the transferred kinetic energy plus the energy of the photon would have to equal the energy gap between the two allowed quantum states---kind of the reverse of collisional broadening of the absorption bands.
I hope I’ve made my question clear and I’d really like to know the answer.
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michael sweet at 02:30 AM on 30 November 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
Ken,
I am astonished that someone who claims to be interested in the science behind AGW is so ignorant of the basic data. All gases follow the log relationship. Please provide a citation to support your wild claim that methane and other gases do not.
You are about 100 years behind in your understanding of the science. Claiming you want a scientific discussion while criticizing those who know the science is insulting. Follow your own advice instead of making political, insulting statements. You appear to have informed yourself with a brief review of nonsense (non-science) sites on the internet.
Your wild claims contradict your claims that you want a non-poloitical discussion. You are the only one who is making wild, incorrect claims.
People here are willing to help you obtain an understanding of the science and will provide you references to the science. If you want to make false assertions and insult those who reply to you they will quickly lose interest. Try to up your game.
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MA Rodger at 00:31 AM on 30 November 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
Ken @8,
Although it is not relevant to the substance of this interchange, you evidently have a different understanding of the term "directly proportional" than I do. And it seems my understanding is shared with Wikipedia.
As for the log relationship resulting in there being a diminishing relationship between rising CO2 levels and extra direct climate forcing, there is also another non-linear relationship - the greater the forcing imposed on climate, the greater the harm to humanity from a unit rise in that forcing. Mankind really does not want to arrive at a point where CO2 emissions have a negligible direct effect on climate forcing. If we do arrive we will find that 'negligible' increases in CO2 forcing will nontheless bring with it non-negligable impacts, either in resulting feedbacks or in dramatic climatical effects.
You say that "someone must have developed the first partial derivative of Temp with respect to CO2" but do not express this overtly as a question or why the inception of this work would be relevant to policy decisions today.
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Tadaaa at 19:12 PM on 29 November 2018Discussing climate change on the net
"If you think education is expensive - try ignorance"
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nigelj at 16:25 PM on 29 November 2018Discussing climate change on the net
Eclectic 18, yes exactly.
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes from BrainyQuote.com."
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nigelj at 16:19 PM on 29 November 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
Ken @8, I think I can see where you are going with this. Before you waste your time posting a whole lot of data, read the following:
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scaddenp at 14:26 PM on 29 November 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
So we can assume you are now satisfied on the questions of snowball earth and why Mars isnt hot? Given your stated background, it would seem that you could have easily consulted a text book.
The amount of radiation acting on the earths surface is what is proportional to CO2. Double the CO2 concentration to double the forcing. The effect of change from 200ppm to 400ppm is same as change from 400ppm to 800ppm. The effect on surface radiation can be directly measured.
The surface temperature that results from such a change in radiation is not so straightforward because of feedbacks. You cant change the earths temperature up or down without also affecting the amount of water in the atmosphere and the albedo. Hence the relationship of CO2 to temperature is much more complex.
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Ken at 14:07 PM on 29 November 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
MA Rodger at 02:58 AM on 29 November, 2018
I appreciate your bringing up the log relationship for CO2 and GHG effictiveness. That was going to be my next question, because no one seems to want to address it. I believe what you meant by not "directly proportional" was "not linear", because it is directly proportional, but in a ln (natural log) curve, and that means it is a smooth, continuous function. CO2 GHG effectiveness is a ln function of CO2 consentration. This means that the slope of that ln curve is the effectiveness. The problem is that the slope of the ln curve (or the first partial derivative) is equal to 1/(CO2 consentration). For example, at 200 ppm the slope is 1/200 and at 400 ppm the slope is 1/400. Eventually the ln curve approaches horizontal, which means the GHG effectiveness is reduced by 50% when the CO2 consentration doubles. Any engineering of scientific system that follows the ln curve has the same result, the more you have of the independent variable (x-axis) the less effective the dependent variable is.
The best physical example of this is laying a chain on the ground, holding one end and running toward the other end. You move the chain quickly at first, but pretty soon you can hardly move the chain and your speed, or effectiveness, goes to zero.
I realize the interactions in the atmosphere are complex, but that complexity does not negate the properties of the natural log function. Methane and other gases do not follow the ln curve, but CO2 and water vapor do follow it.
If more CO2 means more temperature at some ratio, someone must have developed the first partial derivative of Temp with respect to CO2, otherwise how can we make estimates of containing Temp by reducing CO2 by a certain amount over a certain number of years.
Just to clear the air here, I am very serious about wanting to know how the atmosphere really works. I am a retired AF pilot, I have a BS and MS in aerospace and aeronautical engineering, a MS in software engineering/computer science. I have worked in these fields and taught university courses for over 40 years. I am a serious amateur astronmer and astro photographer, and design custom astronomy equipment.
I am sorry if scientific questions and comments upset people. I was hoping to find people who want to find real answers and leave people and politics out of the scientific discussions.
I am traveling right now, but will answer the other comments and show some data I have next week.
Thank you for your time.
Moderator Response:[DB] Inflammatory rhetoric snipped. Please read this venue's Comments Policy and stick to the science and all will be fine. Thanks!
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Eclectic at 08:28 AM on 29 November 2018Discussing climate change on the net
Sunspot @17 , please keep up the good work!
The "Russians" (as you call them ~ but doubtless including some "Home-grown Russians") are driven to public lying, by their own warped psychologies plus, in some cases the regular receipt of "dark money". (Old psychological experiments, from the 1970's and earlier, show that even quite small rewards can be remarkably motivating, in influencing actions and beliefs.)
The lies find fertile soil in the scientific ignorance of many citizens ~ and fertile soil in those intelligent/educated citizens who desperately wish to believe the lies & distortions. And all of them ~ the good, the bad, and the ugly ~ are voters.
Besides, Sunspot, I would hope that you find an additional measure of fun and entertainment in "Striking a blow for Liberty". It all adds up, over time.
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scaddenp at 06:41 AM on 29 November 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
Ken, so just how much effort did you put into trying to answer your own question? Frankly looks like grasping at a straw because perhaps you cant imagine a solution to climate change that is compatiable with your political philosophy? Or if you are simply trolling, perhaps its time to find another site for your amusement.
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Sunspot at 05:43 AM on 29 November 2018Discussing climate change on the net
I frequently comment on Climate Change articles at Yahoo. I'm Sunspot there too. I present them with scientific facts. I don't care who "believes" me or not. Just the fact that the truth is there helps counteract all the lies. I also frquently call out the trolls, and I call them Russians. Which may be true. There are people over there - "Gooner(something), "It's Me", "Fun", and numerous others are regular features there and must be getting paid to spend that much time at it. I'm retired. It seems futile sometimes, but there are times when I get thanked for explaining something concisely, like I did yesterday with the old "but they predicted an Ice Age in the 70s" song.
My favorite question this time of year is "Do you know what causes winter?". Because they don't! They really expect Global Warming to eliminate winter. But nobody ever explains the seasons. And with all the discussions I've seen on the TV, I have never seen an explanation of why it gets cold in the winter. If we don't educate ourselves and others, it's truly over... I, for one, intend to keep doing my part.
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shoyemore at 05:22 AM on 29 November 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
I am an old enough geezer & what catches young folks' attention is somehat outside my zone of understanding. So I think it might suit the generation it is aimed at, and kudos to Climate Adam for trying. I enjoyed it and watched to the end.
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MA Rodger at 02:58 AM on 29 November 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
Ken @4,
A very quick reply, (but perhaps not as quick as the Moderator Response).
(1) The GHG effect from CO2 is not "directly proportional" to the level of CO2. It is a lot more complicated than that. For small changes in the terrestrial atmosphere (200ppm to 1,200ppm) the relatinship is logarthmic. However your general assertion that more CO2 would result in more warming would be correct in most circumstances.
(2) The Snowball Earth episodes were a long time ago so their circumstance are not very well nailed down. The favourite cause of Snowball Earth is that it begins with lowering levels of CO2 allowing global temperature to drop and this cooling is amplified by an increase in albedo - the extensive snow/ice fields increasing the amount of sunlight being reflected into space and so not warming the planet. Once a Snowball Earth has formed, it requires a very large increase in GHG (ie CO2) to warm up the planet enough to melt the snow/ice and release it from the Snowball. Note that through this time, the sun was much weaker. By the end of the Snowball Earth eposides, it would still have been 6% weaker than today, roughly equal to losing a third of today's GHG effect.
(3) The Martian atmosphere is almost all CO2 and, although there is little gas in the Martian atmosphere, it still has more CO2 than Earth. Indeed Mars (95% x 6mb) has well over ten times the CO2 of Earth (0.06%[mass] x 1,000mb) in its atmosphere. The problem for a GHG effect on Mars is not the level of CO2 but the lack of any other GHGs to fill in the gaps of the electro-magnetic spectrum not being insulated by the CO2. On Earth, the CO2 warms the planet enough to boost H2O levels which then provides this extra insulation. [The Mars GHG is a bit like going out on a snowy day wearing just a hat and gloves. They don't keep you very warm. Even thick furry hat & gloves will not improve the situation.] And additionally, Mars has on 43% of the sunlight that Earth enjoys. A cold Mars with its CO2-laden atmosphere and a warm Earth with just a small portion of CO2 in a nitrogen atmosphere is what the theory expects and exactly what we see.
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Ken at 01:16 AM on 29 November 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
If atmospheric heating is directly proportional to C02 consentration, how did the Earth go through at least three "Snow Ball Earth" periods when the atmosphere was essentially 100% C02? Also, why is it so cold on Mars when the atmosphere may be thin, but it is 93% C02.
Moderator Response:[DB] "how did the Earth go through at least three "Snow Ball Earth" periods when the atmosphere was essentially 100% C02"
That's nonsense. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has never been more than even 50% of the total:
"why is it so cold on Mars when the atmosphere may be thin, but it is 93% C02"
Less solar insolation received at the surface due to the greater distance from the Sun.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Moderating this site is a tiresome chore, particularly when commentators repeatedly submit offensive or off-topic posts or simply make things up, as you do. We really appreciate people's cooperation in abiding by the Comments Policy, which is largely responsible for the quality of this site.
Finally, please understand that moderation policies are not open for discussion. If you find yourself incapable of abiding by these common set of rules that everyone else observes, then a change of venues is in the offing.Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
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SirCharles at 00:26 AM on 29 November 2018Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! | Climate Chemistry
Much better link => https://climatekids.nasa.gov/greenhouse-effect/
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