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Comments 21951 to 22000:

21951. nigelj at 11:16 AM on 14 December 2016
       On climate change, angels and demons are battling over Trump’s soul
       

       Red Baron @11, thanks and I had a read of your link. Basically you do acknowledge livestock emit methane, but appear to claim different farming techniques can solve the methane problem by less indoor livestock farming, etc, and better soils management.

       Well I respect your view and maybe you are right, but changing farming techniques exactly like you suggest will be challenging thing in so many ways in terms of persuading farmers, legislating, etc. It would take forever. The general maistream view is changing feedstock has the most practical promise.

       I was suggesting to the other poster its futile to blame animals or expect that much change will happen there, and we should concentrate on reducing fossil fuels as the first priority. Im not saying give up on the animal methane issue, but its a particularly tough one obviously.

21952. nigelj at 10:46 AM on 14 December 2016
       On climate change, angels and demons are battling over Trump’s soul
       

       The following article is worth a read and is quite chilling:

       www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11766755

       Its by Eric Holthaus writing in the Washington Post, reprinted in my local newspaper. He is a meteorologist and journalist concerned that the Trump administration may delete public / government data bases of climate data. He has taken extaordinary steps to archive this material and so have others. He cites examples where other governments have removed data.

       His concern is Trump may want to make as difficult as possible to access information so as to stop further understanding of the climate, and to reinforce the interests of the fossil fuels industry.

21953. Art Vandelay at 10:19 AM on 14 December 2016
       Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup
       

       One thing to consider in the argument that the biosphere is still in balance with 7 billion humans is that 20% of food consuption is from the oceans, not land. In other words, 20% of the 3Gt CO2 exhaled by humans was not part of the normal terrestrial cycle. It's also true that not all food is derived from a source of photosynthesized CO2. 

       Also, to what extent is balance achieved by the burning of fossil fuels - which increases photosynthesis as a feedback response?

       If the existing balance is only made possible by virtue of 400ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, the current population is obviously not sustainable in the long term.   

       Based purely on the amount of CO2 exhaled by humans it should be possible to calculate a population level that's sustainable with a photosynthesis rate commensurate with around 280 ppm atmospheric concentration.  Based on flux apprximations from the IPCC it would appear that we're already beyond a sustainable population maximum. 

       One last point is that 7 billion humans doesn't actually sequester much in the way of C when compared with plants. There's approx 25kg of carbon per human, so <0.2Gt for the entire population.   

21954. RedBaron at 10:19 AM on 14 December 2016
       On climate change, angels and demons are battling over Trump’s soul
       

       nigelj,

       As I have pointed out many times, the agricultural component to rising methane has nothing to do with methane emissions from livestock anymore than breathing out CO2 counts towards greenhouse gas emissions. 

       There is an agricultural component, but that component is not the livestocks' fault and veganism will not fix it. I have spelled it out with good references here

21955. RedBaron at 09:58 AM on 14 December 2016
       From the eMail Bag: CO2 in the air and oceans
       

       Jeffrey,

       Yes I got that was the feedback you were refering to. No I can't comment on it as I am not a climate scientist. Like you I amd working on mitigation through sequestration, in my case agricultural soils. I have taken a climate science course at university level in order to better understand and communicate with climate scientists and better communicate climate science to laymen. But that does not make me one myself. Just a research farmer concerned as all farmers are about climatic conditions and their impacts.

21956. Jeffrey Middlebrook at 09:31 AM on 14 December 2016
       From the eMail Bag: CO2 in the air and oceans
       

       Wow, I'm impressed with the responses and tangentially inspired responses to my initial inquiry. I don't know if any of you who've posted your learned responses are actually "climate scientists", so if any of you are I'd love to have you say so. I'm just a humble engineer and inventor of a sequestration technology, but one of my friends is a maverick climate scientist from the UK who is not a global warming denier (only a fool would be so), but he is an AGW skeptic. I invited him to create an account with this group but I don't know if he has. His imputs would liven the discussions for sure. I think perhaps I might not have made myself fully clear in my initial inquiry to this group. I did not mean to imply that there isn't an evaporative transfer of heat upwards as precipitation enters the oceans. It wasn't heat per se I was asking about, rather the capture of CO2 in precipitation, and whether or not greater precipitation brought on by atmopsheric warming would capture more CO2 to then be transferred to the oceans. Was this clear to anyone else?

21957. nigelj at 08:35 AM on 14 December 2016
       On climate change, angels and demons are battling over Trump’s soul
       

       Ivanka Trump appears to be the brains of the Trump family. I have to take her at face value that she is sincere in her concerns about the climate.

       However Trump has already appoined several hard line climate denialist people. Trump has shown flexibility of views on some things, but his actions indicate he is serious about his denialist views on climate change.

       Of course he may soften his position, or listen to Ivanka, but he will then be at war with the very people he has appointed. They will be unlikely to simply soften their views if Trump softens his. He is unlikely to fire them.

       The whole thing looks like a gigantic mess in the making to me.

21958. nigelj at 08:24 AM on 14 December 2016
       On climate change, angels and demons are battling over Trump’s soul
       

       Swampfoxh @6

       I'm not sure where you get the figure that animal agriculture is responsible for 51% of emissions or exactly what that includes. However I agree it is certainly an issue.

       Basically animals and humans exhale CO2 but this is part of a cycle and isnt responsible for increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Its easy enough to google this issue.

       Livestock exhale methane and increasing livestock has led to increasing methane. This is more of a problem. This methane breaks down to CO2 in the atmosphere eventually but causes a high level of warming in the short term. However there are no easy solutions, although research is being conducted on feedstocks that reduce methane emissions and does show some promise, but no actual solution yet.

       The other approach is vegetarianism, which does have some appeal, but we simply cannot force this on people by law.

       So the priority and something we can change right now is fossil fuels.

21959. Tom Curtis at 07:48 AM on 14 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       rkrolph @151, you probably have picked this up, but it is important to the budget that it contains three layers, the TOA, atmosphere, and Surface.  In order, the budgets are (with all values in units of W/m^2):

       TOA:  340.4 Solar in - (77.0 Solar reflected from clouds and atmosphere + 22.9 Solar reflected from the surface + 239.9 IR out) =  0.6

       Atmosphere: (77.1 Solar absorbed by atmosphere + 358.2 Surface IR absorbed by atmosphere + 18.4 thermals + 86.4 latent heat) - ( 169.9 upward IR from atmosphere + 29.9 IR upward IR from clouds + 340.3 back radiation) = 0

       Surface: (163.3 solar absorbed at surface + 340.3 back radiation from atmosphere) - (398.2 IR emitted from surface + 18.4 thermals + 86.4 latent heat) = 0.6

       In addition, it is very important that the energy imbalance (right hand term in the equations) in the atmosphere plus the energy imbalance at the surface equals the energy imbalance at the TOA.  If it did not, we would have a violation of conservation of energy.  As a side note, it is also important that solar energy in equal solar energy reflected plus solar energy absorbed.

       Some AGW deniers look at this diagram and say some element should be completely excluded as non-existent - most typically the back radiation.  In doing so they merely show they do not consider conservation of energy to apply in climatology.  You cannot remove a major element without creating an unaccounted for imbalance.

       john warner has made such a suggestion (in his deleted coment @146) that:

       "The total air at all altitudes combined radiates to space at the rate of 199.8 W/m2. That is the only energy that needs to be replaced to maintain all of the temperatures of the temperature gradient"

       Again, that fails the conservation of energy test.  The total energy that needs to be replaced in the atmosphere is the combination of IR radiation to space from atmosphere and clouds (199.8) and the total value of the back radiation (340.3), but as the budget shows, that is indeed what is replaced.

       Finally, it should be noted that many values in the graph are determined by a combination of observations plus the knowledge that they balance.  Thus, due to calibration errors of absolute values, space born instruments show an imbalance of 1 - 2 W/m^2 between incoming and outgoing energy.  The far more accurate observations of changes in ocean heat content are known to effectively identical with the actual TOA imbalance (within error), and are used with the knowledge that total surface plus atmosphere absorbed must equal the TOA imbalance to calibrate the actual TOA imbalance.  Thus the precise concordance of the values is not evidence of anything but the researchers knowledge that the budget must not violate conservation of energy.  The values are, however, sufficiently well constrained from observation that the removal of an entire form or energy transfer would violate not only conservation of energy but known observations.

21960. PluviAL at 07:36 AM on 14 December 2016
       On climate change, angels and demons are battling over Trump’s soul
       

       Swampfoxh: Jackson had some shortcomings but he expanded the nation and did a prety good job, that's how he got his gig on the $20 Bill. My sense is that Trump is more like Grant, with a supremely corrupt administration resultnig from political incompetance and alcohol. Let's hope Trump can listen to his daughter and see the huge loss the US will take if we force advantage in the green revolution to China. Personally, I am willing to work with China to develop my technology, it's for the good of my kid's and grand kid's world, not for my national pride. I think a lot of people feel the same way, especially if they are not Americans.

21961. rkrolph at 06:37 AM on 14 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       152 HK:

       Thanks for clarifying that.  I missed the 77.1 solar absorption number. I think then I would have figured out how the numbers work.  That's my excuse anyway! :)

21962. villabolo at 06:30 AM on 14 December 2016
       Climate Science Legal Defense Fund at AGU and how you can help
       

       Slightly off topic but I ran into this article about scientists archiving everything related to AGW in anticipation of Trump's administration deleting government data sets.

       https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/13/scientists-are-frantically-copying-u-s-climate-data-fearing-it-might-vanish-under-trump/?utm_term=.2db84db1fd76

21963. HK at 06:01 AM on 14 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       151 rkrolph:

       You have to include all the energy fluxes into and out of the atmosphere!

       The energy input includes absorbed incoming solar radiation (77.1), absorbed radiation from the surface (358.2), thermals (18.4) and latent heat in water vapour (86.4), totalling 540.1.
       The energy loss includes back radiation to the surface (340.3) and radiation to space (169.9 + 29.9), again totalling 540.1.

       The atmospheric window (40.1) represents radiation that passes directly from the surface to space without being absorbed by GHGs or clouds, and should not be counted here.

21964. swampfoxh at 04:29 AM on 14 December 2016
       On climate change, angels and demons are battling over Trump’s soul
       

       So much for the efficacy of the universal right to vote.  Hillary only had a miniscule more votes than Donald.  Had the electorate been "informed" about the universal perils of anthropogenic climate change they might have picked the Green candidate instead...she was the only candidate that knows the problem well enough to do something meaningful about it.  Since the electorate remains ignorant 187 years after they voted for Andrew (trump) Jackson, why would any of us believe that a few more votes might have canned Trump?  (Hillary wasn't qualified either).  So let's forget the whining over whose going to manipulate the levers of power and work to educate the public about the facts of climate change.  We could do a better job educating ourselves by acknowledging that Animal Agriculture is directly and indirectly responsible for about 51% of global emissions, along with desertification, deforestation, water shortages, ocean dead zones and famine, but I never hear any of you talking about that.  Why? 

21965. william5331 at 03:34 AM on 14 December 2016
       On climate change, angels and demons are battling over Trump’s soul
       

       Tell Trump to forget climate change.  Instead, point out how much money he is sending overseas to buy oil which could be better used for his infrastructure programs.  No need for government handouts.  Simply sort out the government settings so that the America people and her industries find it worth while to install wind and solar generation.  Every 5 kWh generated, especially if the settings also favor construction of a truly affordable electric car, is a dollar that doesn't go out of America: a dollar that can be used internally.  Also point out to him how many jobs are create installing wind and solar and building electric cars compared to the few provided by the largely mechanized coal mining.  No need to bash coal.  Economics will take care of that.  Simply stop wasting money subsidizen coal.  This money can also be diverted into Trump's works programs.

21966. rkrolph at 03:21 AM on 14 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       Regarding the energy budget shown by Tom Curtis at 140 I have a question.  The IR radiation from the earth is 398.2, and the back radiation is 340.3, for a delta of 57.9 into the atmosphere.  But the total outgoing IR radiation from the atmosphere is 239.9.  So where does the additonal 182 (239.9-57.9) come from?

21967. Paul D at 02:25 AM on 14 December 2016
       On climate change, angels and demons are battling over Trump’s soul
       

       We're all doomed. In more ways than one.

21968. BILLHURLEY13951 at 01:50 AM on 14 December 2016
       On climate change, angels and demons are battling over Trump’s soul
       

       I really think our side doesn't appreciate the importance of 'paradigm' in human understanding.

       What appears ignorance, often is just the polite reaction of someone who doesn't get the big picture and you're telling him/her the details without explaining the big picture first. The big picture is simple - 7 billion people now with most of them using 35 times the natural resources unsustainably.

       IE Evil people are not the cause. That turns heads among "trumpistas"

21969. mark48 at 01:38 AM on 14 December 2016
       On climate change, angels and demons are battling over Trump’s soul
       

       Don't get played by Trump. He is the current (!) producer of a reality TV show and he has been running his transition like The Apprentice. The NY Times editorial staff made a big deal out of his 'I have an open mind' comments, but read the actual transcript of the Times interview. He would make a ridiculous climate denier comment, then finish with 'but I have an open mind'. He used Al Gore to distract attention from his cabinet picks, and probably DiCaprio, except DiCaprio did manage to emphasize the jobs potential of clean energy. Trump's cabinet nominations and the DOE questionnaire trying uncover 'climate moles' in the DOE say everything. We grasp at Trump's gratuitous comments in hopes that it isn't as bad as it seems, but it is. Elections have consequences and far too many Americans did not bother to vote.  Trump lost the popular vote and was elected by about a quarter of the eligible voters. Over the next 4-8 years we will be conducting a grand climate experiment, 'the will of the people'. 'Belief in climate change is optional, but participation is mandatory' (Jim Beever, SWF Regional Planning Council).

21970. Tom Curtis at 00:51 AM on 14 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       john warner @150, are you explicitly stating that your snipped post @146 answers my question at the end of my post @149.  In other words, you are explicitly stating that (in my words), "There is an external source of energy which provides the energy allowing the atmosphere to radiate at 199.8 W/m^2 at approximately 6 Km altitude, but the additional emission at the surface is the result of a continuous energy supply to the atmosphere by gravity".

       Is that correct?

21971. Tom Curtis at 16:35 PM on 13 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       john warner, given your tendency to ignore rebutals, and just switch topics, the moderators have directed you to stick to the topic @142 until you have acknowledged your errors therein, or proved your views on that topic to be correct. (See Moderator's comment @146, and @147.  Particularly the statement that:

       "I propose John first address the pressure and temperature violation of thermodynamics. Any comments outside of that will be struck until John addresses this one."

       )

       In light of that, you claim @142 that the ideal gas law states:

       P = CDT          (1)

       where P is pressure, C is a constant, D is density, and T is temperature.

       The ideal gas law is normaly given as:

       PV = nRT        (2)

       where P is pressure, V is volume, n is the number of molecules of the substance (in moles), R is the gas constant, and T is the temperature.

       Rearranging (2), we get

       P = (Rn/V)T    (3)

       If we then multiply n/V by the molar mass of the substance (M(s)), relying on the fact that M(s) * n equals the mass of the substance, we then get

       P = R/M(s) * DT  (4)

       Substituting with one, we then find that so long as C = R/M(s), your formula is correct.  R = 8.3144598 J/(K mol).  The molar mass of dry air is 0.02897 Kg / mol.  Ergo, in the case of dry air, C= 287.0024 J /(Kg K)

       Inserting, that and checking units, we find that the right hand of the equation has units of Joules/meter^3, which reduces to units of (kg x m^2)/(m^3 x sec^2).  That cancels to units of kg/(m x sec^2)  In the meantime, the left hand has units of pascals, or kgs/(m x sec^2).  The two are identical, thereby validating the equation.

       Comparing to your exposition @142, I first notice a slight difference in the value of C (about 2%), which is possibly due to rounding errors in the calculation.  I also notice @148 that you use correct units for C.  It follows that your presentation of the ideal gas law, although ideosyncratic, is valid.

       You proceed by saying:

       "How much did the Gravity induced increase in Temperature increase the the radiation emitted by the surface temperature? 154.8wpsm. 199.8wpsm +158.4wpsm=358.2wpsm."

       That is ambiguous to me.  Are you saying that:

       1)  Gravity induces a temperture difference in the atmosphere between an altitude of approximately 6 kms and the surface, such that additional energy must be supplied from some other source (ie, not from gravity) to maintain that equilibrium temperature difference (and hence difference in emmitted radiation); or

       2)  There is an external source of energy which provides the energy allowing the atmosphere to radiate at 199.8 W/m^2 at approximately 6 Km altitude, but the additional emission at the surface is the result of a continuous energy supply to the atmosphere by gravity?

       (1) is, of course, the standard theory of the greenhouse effect; while (2) is arrant nonsense.

       (PS inline @147, I looked carefully at the post suggested, and Postma's article and I cannot find where he is suggesting the theory such as john warner appears to be expounding above.  While we have encountered that theory several times on SkS, it has always to my knowledge, been in comments and lacks a specific article debunking it.  Hence, for want of a better location I am continuing to discuss it here.) 

21972. john warner at 14:09 PM on 13 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       Michael sweet @ 147

       101325 Nm^-2 = 287.052 Nm^-2m³/kg^oK * 1.25203 kgm^-3 * 281.930^oK

                                            Nm/kg^oK

                                            J/kg^oK

       If you know that a pascal is defined as a Newton per square meter and simplify the expression to a Newton meter which is a Joule you can see that the individual gas constant for air in Standard International Units is 286.9 J/kg^oK.

       http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/individual-universal-gas-constant-d_588.html

       Would you repost my snipped comment so I can defend it.

       Moderator Response:

       [RH] Please respond to Tom's comments below. This needs to be acknowledged and resolved before moving forward.

21973. Stardustoz at 11:32 AM on 13 December 2016
       2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #50
       

       FYI - I've noticed your social media share tab has not been working correctly the last couple of days. It' s not linking the article of interest or providing a shortcut to the more popular social media options (such as Facebook or Twitter for example). 

21974. John Hartz at 06:09 AM on 13 December 2016
       On climate change, angels and demons are battling over Trump’s soul
       

       Supplementing the information contained in Dana's article...

       The heads of Donald Trump’s transition teams for Nasa, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy, as well as his nominees to lead the EPA and the Department of the Interior, all question the science of human-caused climate change, in a signal of the president-elect’s determination to embark upon an aggressively pro-fossil fuels agenda.

       Trump has assembled a transition team in which at least nine senior members deny basic scientific understanding that the planet is warming due to the burning of carbon and other human activity. These include the transition heads of all the key agencies responsible for either monitoring or dealing with climate change. None of these transition heads have any background in climate science.

       Trump's transition: sceptics guide every agency dealing with climate change by Oliver Milman, Guardian, Dec 12, 2016

21975. michael sweet at 03:12 AM on 13 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       John Warner,

       At 142 you claim that according to the ideal gas equation P = CDT where C is the ideal gas constant (normally abbreviated as R), D is density and T is temperature.  If that were the case, since all gases have different densities, all gases would have different pressures at the same temperature and volume.   All my High School students learn that at the same temperature and volume different gasses have the same pressure.  Your equation is falsified by my college textbook (Brown and LeMay: Chemistry the Central Science 11th edition page 407).

       I cannot find your value of 287.052 Pam3/kgoK for R anywhere on the Internet.  It appears that you made this up.  What are these units anyway?

       As MA Rodger explained, while pressure and temperature are related, you cannot draw power with gravity as the source.  That violates the First Law of Thermodynamics.

       Your "calculation" using Boltzamn's law (struck by the moderator) was similarly in error.

       Since you have demonstrated that you cannot calculate values from first principles, you must start to reference your material to accepted sources.  You need to start asking questions about how the atmosphere works.  People here are happy to help you understand.  Everything you explain just makes others doubt you more.

       Moderator Response:

       [RH] Though it's dubious to believe it would be fruitful, perhaps it would be good to take John's errors one at a time. The list is large and growing, thus the potential for advancing the conversation is diminishing.

       I propose John first address the pressure and temperature violation of thermodynamics. Any comments outside of that will be struck until John addresses this one.

       [PS] John has bad habit of simply ignoring inconvenient response and then changing to a different tack. He not responded to errors pointed about source of CO2, meaning of correlation, calculation errors and now a monumental misunderstanding of thermodynamics. Furthermore he is repeatedly ignoring moderator instructions to find suitable thread.

       I agree that John should respond here to either acknowledge the errors or defend his position and any other response should be deleted. This vaguely resembles Postma's nonsense so perhaps further followup beyond this should go to here.

21976. john warner at 01:35 AM on 13 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       From the Stefan-Boltzmann Law if we know the temperature we can calculated the rate at which the air is cooling itself. The total air at all altitudes combined radiates to space at the rate of 199.8 W/m². That is the only energy that needs to be replaced to maintain all of the temperatures of the temperature gradient. 

       [snip]

       Moderator Response:

       [RH] John, before you go any further here, you're going to have to directly and clearly address the shortcomings that have been pointed out so far.

21977. Tom Curtis at 00:51 AM on 13 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       john warner @142, if you look at the diagram @140, you will notice that the 169.9 W/m^2 from atmosphere, and the 29.9 W/m^2 from clouds are labels for arrows leading upwards.  That is, they are the upward IR flux from the atmosphere at the Top Of the Atmosphere (TOA).  While it is true that the IR flux from a layer of the atmosphere sufficiently thin so as to absorb essentially none or the IR photons emitted from the layer is equal in both the upward and downward direction, that is not true of the atmosphere as a whole.  It follows that upward IR flux at the TOA from atmospheric emission does not inform us regarding the downward IR flux from atmospheric emission at the surface.  Ditto for clouds.  Reading the chart as it it does is nonsense.

       That is most easilly seen with clouds.  Clouds are essentially opaque to IR radiation except for all but the thinest clouds.  Thus, for a cloud of thickness T (units of meters), the upward emission comes almost exclusively from the cloud top, while the downward emission comes almost exclusively from the cloud bottom.  Because of the lapse rate in atmospheric temperatures, that means the downward transmission will have a brightness temperature approximately T x 0.0065 K greater than the upward emission from the cloud top.  As the upward arrow in the diagram is radiation to space, if there is high cloud overlying low cloud the difference in brigtness temperature of the upward emission will be a function of the altitude difference between the cloud top of the upper cloud and the cloud bottom of the lower cloud, multiplied by the lapse rate.

       Atmosperic emission is not quite so clear cut, but in general, the thicker lower atmosphere results in a shorter free path length for downward emission than for upward emission.  That means IR radiation emitted from the atmosphere and reaching the surface comes from much closer to the ground than IR radiation emitted from the atmosphere and reaching space.  Dragging numbers at random from a diagram while ignoring context (such as the arrows) does not change this.  Invoking an unphysical theory to "explain" a discrepancy that only exists because you have completely, and bizarrely, misread the graph does not change it either.  

21978. john warner at 00:38 AM on 13 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       Correction: john warner @ 142

       101325 Pa = 287.052 Pam³/kg^oK * 1.25203 kg/m³ * 281.93^oK.

21979. MA Rodger at 22:04 PM on 12 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       john warner @142.

       There are monumental flaws in the argument you present but I will confine myself to just the one monumental flaw. It is true that there is a phenomenon known as Gravitational Compression. The act of compressing a gas does heat the gas (as anybody who has pumped up a bicycle type by hand would have noted). But when the compression stops so does the warming and the elevated temperatures experience cooling (as my bicycle pump plainly shows). So what compression is happening in the Earth's atmosphere? There is none. The Earth's atmosphere has not been compressing for eons.

       With deference to the Moderator Response @142, I will not suggest that you are delusional in you belief that you have mastered the understanding required to allow a person to wield the equations that you employ. Rather I will humbly suggest that you are a tad out of your depth here.

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] The deleted paragraph is a blatant "ad hominem" attack which is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy.

       You know better than that.

       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.

21980. john warner at 20:11 PM on 12 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       Google 1976 US Standard Atmosphere Calculator, Digital Dutch and the Stefan-Boltzmann Law Calculator. From the Earth Energy Budget emitted by atmosphere is 169.9wpsm and emitted by clouds is 29.9wpsm. They add up to 199.8wpsm. Entering 199.8 for P yields 243.64oK. Now enter 5,891 meters for altitude and -6.22oK into the Standard Atmosphere Calculator. T=243.638^oK Subtract 243.638^oK from 281.93^oK. Where did thes extra 38.292^oK come from? Gravity. The 12 tons of air over the air at the surface increased the Pressure and Density. According to the Ideal Gas Law Pressure and Density determine Temperature according to the following formula. P=CDT Where C is the Gas Law Constant. At 0.0 meters altitude the Ideal Gas Law Calculates:
       101325 Pa = 287.052 Pam3/kg^oK * 1.25203 kg/m3 * 281.930^oK.
       How much did the Gravity induced increase in Temperature increase the the radiation emitted by the surface temperature? 154.8wpsm. 199.8wpsm +158.4wpsm=358.2wpsm.

21981. Tom Curtis at 17:05 PM on 12 December 2016
       2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #50
       

       Courtesy of my son on facebook:

       

21982. RedBaron at 17:01 PM on 12 December 2016
       2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #50
       

       One Planet Only Forever,

       You said, "a subjective opinion can be whatever anyone wants to believe. But as soon as there is any objective basis for the 'opinion' the freedom to beleive what you want is gone and you must participate in the legitimate discussion or argument, accept the objective evidence, and be willing to change your mind if your opinion cannot be objectively and rationally justified."

       This is quoteworthy material. I happen to collect pithy quotes. To whom should I attribute this? One Planet Only Forever? Patrick Stokes?

21983. One Planet Only Forever at 16:04 PM on 12 December 2016
       2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #50
       

       CBC Radio show "The 180" recently included a discussion with Australian philosopher Patrick Stokes with the common sense but currently very provocative title "Actually, you're not entitled to your opinion".

       My brief summary is that a subjective opinion can be whatever anyone wants to believe. But as soon as there is any objective basis for the 'opinion' the freedom to beleive what you want is gone and you must participate in the legitimate discussion or argument, accept the objective evidence, and be willing to change your mind if your opinion cannot be objectively and rationally justified.

       A key point made is "What it comes down to is that for these kinds of discussions to work, you need to have agreement on what counts as evidence and what counts as success and failure and increasingly we don't even have that." I ama firm believe that the guiding priciple for what counts must be the objective of 'advancing humanity to a lasting better future for all'. Others may argue that fuller freedom of everyone to pursue pleasure, popularity and profitability will achieve that objective. I demand proof of their claim, and what is happening regarding climate science is some of the strongest evidence to date disproving their desired opinion.

       In addition to the 'reasons people do not accept that their opinion is not correct' that are presented in the interview, I am a firm believer (and believe there is ample evidence to support my opinion) that resistance to accepting climate science is largely due to the required related understood loss of opportunity for personal benefit.

       Accepting climate science actually requires acceptance that many developed perceptions of economic prosperity and opportunity are actually unjustifiable. Especially perceptions of prosperity that were maintained or increased through the past 30 years by the continued and increased burning of fossil fuels. That continued pursuit of benefit occurred as it was becoming better understood that that way of benefiting had to be rapidly curtailed for the benefit of the future of humanity, contrary to popular preferred opinions among the wealthiest and already more fortunate humans (opinions that less fortunate humans may even be tempted to prefer to believe).

21984. Art Vandelay at 10:24 AM on 12 December 2016
       Report helps scientists communicate how global warming is worsening natural disasters
       

       Whether climate change is or isn't a significant threat, there are great benefits to be had from transitioning to renewable energy. 

       A world where air quality is high and where most countries can be self-sufficient sounds pretty good to me. 

21985. hig314 at 08:32 AM on 12 December 2016
       Skeptical Science at AGU 2016
       

       I'll be there, and would love to talk about Alaska's role in the climate conversation. I'll see if I can catch John or Sarah at their posters. I'm interested in seeing climate mitigation become more a part of Alaska politics. I'm interested in the whole range from specific climate science (my poster, EP41A-0900, is related to landslide tsunamis following deglaciation), to adventure narrative as a means of conveying climate science, to climate advocacy.

21986. michael sweet at 01:29 AM on 12 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       John Warner,

       Your claim at 139 that "increase in radiative forcing of the surface air by the 12 tons of air above every square meter 158.4 W/m2." is unphysical.  The air pressure on the surface is a static force, while the radiation of W/m2 is power.  A static force cannot emit power or it would be perpetual motion.  You have made several other claims that are unphysical.  Making claims that are unphysical are very basic errors that demonstrate you have not mastered of the basic concepts of AGW.  It appears from your posting that you have developed your own description of AGW that does not match what professional scientists have developed.  What is your background that you are qualified to develop a new area of science?  

       If you want to convince others here that your ideas have merit I suggest that you start out asking questions about what you think are errors in AGW theory.  Discuss only one simple concept at a time to reduce confusion.  By discussing the basics you will be able to eliminate the errors that are rife in your posts here.  Expounding on your own ideas will not convince others while basic physical errors, like describing a static force as emitting power, are present.

       As an alternative you could post your material at WUWT where most of the readers do not understand the science and will lap up your ideas.
       
       

       Tom Curtis,

       I am amazed at your patience on this thread.

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] Please keep it civil.

       [PS] Also please note, if you wish to change the discussion away from Co2/temperature correlation, then find an appropriate thread and comment there. Leave a comment on original thread indicating where new comment is (the date of top right of  a posted comment is a suitable link). Offtopic comments are coming to get deleted.

21987. Tom Curtis at 22:14 PM on 11 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       john warner @139:

       1)

       "If you do a runs test on carbon dioxide you get all positive changes from one data point to the next. If you do a runs test on changes in carbon dioxide you get a nice scatter of pluses and minuses."

       The claim here is that, for each data point in a time series of CO2 concentration, the next data point is higher (all positive changes); but that the series x = CO2_(i) - CO2_(i-1) gives a variety of positive and negative values ("a nice scatter of pluses and minuses").  I hope I am not alone in seeing the straight forward contradiction in that claim.   Perhaps john warner means to claim that ΔCO2 is always positive, while Δ(ΔCO2) provides a scatter of positive and negative values.  If so, the point is irrelevant to autocorrelation, which is not a function of slope.

       2)  Here is the energy budget to which john warner refers:

       

       It is NASA's own estimate comparison of the peer reviewed estimates by Loeb et al, and Trenberth et al, (2009).  Of this, john warner says, "The back radiation 340.3 has no corresponding physical scientific meaning" despite the back radiation being an observed quantity from many locations around the Earth.

       The back radiation is IR radiation from greenhouse gases (including water vapour) and the cloud base. It's flux is less than that of the surface because it comes on average from a slightly higher altitude than the surface, and hence (because of the lapse rate) a slightly cooler layer than the surface. john warner's decomposition is a fiction.

       3)  With regard to the energy balance and GMST, because the energy flux is a function of the fourth power or temperature, the mean value of the energy flux does not directly correspond to the mean value of temperature unless the temperature at all points is identical.  Trenberth, Fasullo and Khiel (2009) discuss this issue in the special section on "Spatial and temporal sampling" (page 315).  Deriving the Global Mean Surface Temperature from the Stefan-Boltzmann Law and the known upward flux is, therefore, a basic mathematical error.  Thus, if the Earth had two equal parts, each being isothermal, with the temperature of one being 283 K, and the other 295.6 K, for a mean temperature of 289.3, the net upward flux would average at 398.2 W/m^2.  Using that to estimate surface temperature would yield a mean of 289.5 K.  The variation in surface temperatures is much larger than the +/- 6 K used in my example, which accounts for the larger discrepancy found by john warner.

        I should note that Trenberth et al derived their value from a reanalusis product (NRA), ie, a climate model run constrained to match observational data (ie, weather stations, among other sources).  That is, he is using a result obtained premised on the accuracy of weather stations to "show" that the weather stations are inaccurate - while making a mathematical blunder in the process.

21988. john warner at 19:51 PM on 11 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       MA Rodger @ 138 If you do a runs test on carbon dioxide you get all positive changes from one data point to the next. If you do a runs test on changes in carbon dioxide you get a nice scatter of pluses and minuses. Which proves Tom Curtis linear regression data is autocorrelated data. But I also explained that is the least of the problems with is carbon dioxide sensitivity coefficient.

       It is not your fault that you misinterperted the earth energy budget. The presention is intentionally misleading. The back radiation 340.3 has no corresponding physical scientific meaning. It is composed of emmitted by atmosphere 169.9 W/m², plus emitted by clouds 29.9 W/m², minus greenhouse gases 17.9 W/m², (not even shown) and the increase in radiative forcing of the surface air by the 12 tons of air above every square meter 158.4 W/m². (169.9+29.9-17.9+158.4= 340.3). In 1992 I wrote a 42 page paper which my congressman circulated to the relevant commmitties and submitted into the congression record based upon the misleading presentation of absorbed by atmosphere that confused you. I didn't like being tricked into making a fool of myself. That is why I self-educated myself so I can't be fooled again. I am dedicating a lot of my time on Skepticel Science to help those who are making a good faith effort to understand the real science of global warming.

       398.2 W/m² is the radiation power per square meter of the earth surface. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann Law Equation the temperature of the earth surface is 289.48^oK. 358.2 W/m² is the radiation power per square meter of the earth air at the surface. The earth air temperature is 281.92^oK at the surface. The difference is 7.56^oK. This means that 40.1 W/m² of the surface power is not absorbed by the air and radiated directly to space.

       The CERES mission proves that weather station data is not accurate. If something as simple as his was not settled when AlGore won the noble prize maybe CAGW was not settled either.

       The information contained in the earth energy budget is excellent, you just have to know how to draw inferences about the real world from the budget.

21989. RedBaron at 22:57 PM on 10 December 2016
       From the eMail Bag: CO2 in the air and oceans
       

       That's the problem Michael. Very little has been done on negative emissions scenario's. There is this: Simulating the Earth system response to negative emissions But it explicitly states that 

       It is vital to address these knowledge gaps in order to quantify the requirement for, and implications of negative emissions.

       This is not my field. In fact there is no scientist on the planet that can fully have expertise in every field of climate science. It is too complex. I can add my knowlege you can add your and Tom can add his. Everybody from agricultural science to marine biologist, to physicists, mathematicians, economists, geologists etc etc..  Someone has to take the new information available regarding the LCP and add it to their specialty! I can't stop my research go back to school for 6 or 8 years to specialise on modeling a negative emissions scenario, then go back to my research again. The renassance man that knows everything in every field went extinct centuries ago. What you are asking me to do is unreasonable. Nor can Hansen be expected to know the cutting edge of agricultural sciences regarding the LCP.  It just isn't reasonable on something this complex. Now I have many places here given case studies and published papers as references. And there are people with different fields of expertise going over them. Read #17 if you don't believe me.

       But try as I might, I have yet to find the paper that modeled the scenaio where fossil fuel emissions drops to near zero AND worldwide agriculture changes are made sequestering 25 to 100 GtCO2/yr , what the outgassing of the oceans would be. It just isn't on any of the models on any published paper I can find. And I lack the expertise to publish a paper with than scenario myself.

21990. michael sweet at 21:29 PM on 10 December 2016
       From the eMail Bag: CO2 in the air and oceans
       

       Red Baron,

       Good luck with your scheme.  I hope that you can rebuild human agricultural methods across the entire world and that drought does not block your scheme.  I will support your enterprise because I think better soil makes for better farming.

       I note that you do not cite a single reference to support your claims in 31.  Of the very few citations you have previously made most appear to me to be anecdotal or very small scale.  

       While you claim that large amounts of carbon can be sequestered, you have not addressed how much carbon has to be removed from the atmosphere.  You do not account for where all the soil carbon that has been lost has gone.  It stands to reason that you cannot sequester all the carbon released from soil and all the fossil carbon by your scheme.  You state in 27 that you have no idea how much carbon the ocean will outgas.  These issues have been studied and peer reviewed papers address these points.  I think you underestimate the amount of carbon that has to be removed by a very large amount.  Remember the denominator.

       Everyone has their own standard of proof.  While I hope you succeed, you have not met my standard.  Based on the data I have seen you present, I doubt your claims. 

       Since I have also offered no data or proof I expect readers to treat my claims with caution.  Look at the posts that Tom Curtis makes.  He rarely makes a claim without a citation to show why he claims that.  When he makes the same claim again he cites his reference again.  To convince scientists you need to show that you are correct using data from peer reviewed sources.

21991. RedBaron at 18:52 PM on 10 December 2016
       From the eMail Bag: CO2 in the air and oceans
       

       Michael,
       What you continue to ignore is the scale. If the nearly 1.5 billion ha of world cropland now under cultivation for crop production (and a significant % of the 2 billion ha of cropland that has been abandoned by humans since farming began due to soil degradation) were sequestering CO2 at 5 -20 tCO2/ha/yr via the LCP, that totals 7.5 to 30 GtCO2/yr cropland + whatever degraded abandoned land can be restored.

       
       + 3.5 billion ha agricultural grazing land = 17.5 to 70 Gt CO2/yr

       
       So just those two categories alone we have a biological potential of 25 to 100 GtCO2/yr. And not for only a year or two. The source I already gave you states currently about 80% of the world’s agricultural land suffers moderate to severe degradation. So instead of the 6, 8, 10% SOC meters deep; we have 1, 2, 3% SOC centimeters deep. It will take decades to fully restore this land. That means at MINIMUM we can have 25–100 Gt CO2e pumping into the soil sink for decades before we even have to start worrying about feedbacks slowing us down. In fact no one really knows if it ever will slow down short of atmospheric CO2 getting so low and climate so cold it reduces the flow. All the inovators are claiming sequestration rates that continue to climb. Gabe Brown has one field up to 11%. That field actually sequesters faster now! It just keeps getting deeper. Coli Seis's best fields are up to sequestering 33t/ha/yr. No reduction in rate at all. Dr. Jones asks why would anyone think the LCP would ever slow down?

       The soil gets so healthy it kills off the AMF? Maybe so. But no one ever observed such a thing ever.

        

       Total worldwide CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement combined was 36 Gt CO2 in 2014, but only about 20Gt actually adds to the atmosphere, because natural ecosystems and processes are at work mitigating this already.

       Of course biological potential varies quite significantly from practical potential. Just training all the farmers how to do it would be a herculean task.

       That's why I have consistently used far more conservative numbers. I get quite annoyed when I use ultra conservative numbers and get accused of exaggerating them instead, implication being this is some small thing that maybe might help just a little. You claim there is an immense amount of carbon that needs to be sequestered. I agree. However, the land surface of the planet under agriculture is immense! And the amount of carbon missing from our agricultural soils worldwide is immense.
       I have been using 62-250% as my numbers. But as you can see I am being excruciatingly conservative.

21992. MA Rodger at 18:21 PM on 10 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       john warner @135 & @136.

       It is good that you enjoy the challenge. Perhaps you can communicate to us your reasons for considering that "the earth’s average annual global surface air temperature" can be calculated in the manner presented @136. In particular, what possible relevance does an estimated 358.2W/sq m average radiative energy flux between surface & atmosphere have to establishing such a temperature. (I am conscious that this was described as being a rhetorical subject of discussion on the previous thread and this off-topic and that it remains so on this thread.)

       And would you communicate your reasoning for suggesting @135 that your methods avoid the problems of autocorrelation as they patently do not.

21993. MA Rodger at 18:08 PM on 10 December 2016
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       

       Note concerning john warner @135 & @136.

       These two comments are copies of comments first posted on this comment thread which is also where the referenced previous comments can be found.

21994. michael sweet at 12:40 PM on 10 December 2016
       From the eMail Bag: CO2 in the air and oceans
       

       Red Baroon,

       We agree that increasing the carbon in the soil would be a good thing to do.  We will have to see how much it helps reduce the carbon burden in the atmpsphere.  Every little bit helps some!  If it also increases soil productivity (which as a gardener it helps my soil a lot)  that is great too.

21995. Andy Skuce at 12:37 PM on 10 December 2016
       From the eMail Bag: CO2 in the air and oceans
       

       Thanks, RB. Very good point about eroded carbon. Has anybody done any studies on the carbon content of recent lake/reservoir sediments downstream from farmed areas?

21996. Rob Honeycutt at 10:27 AM on 10 December 2016
       Report helps scientists communicate how global warming is worsening natural disasters
       

       Daniel Mocsny... You're rather oversimplifying by assigning everything to individual emissions. That's only looking at the demand side of the equation. The problem, I would suggest, is as much (or more) a function of supply. This is a systemic problem related to how we produce energy. If you say the solution is all about demand I think that's a dead end and doomed to failure. In a marketplace where nearly everything is produced using fossil fuel based energy, short of moving into a cave, consumers have little choice but to generate carbon emissions. 

       But as energy markets transition to sources that are free of carbon emissions, then consumers have real choices. They do have the ability to pick and choose and live full productive lives that are free of carbon emissions. Sadly, that only barely exists today.

       The right things are happening. Wind and solar continue to fall in price as FF sources continue to rise. The renewables industry is growing faster than any other energy market segment. Electric cars are now popular in most markets. 

       What's disturbing to me is the potential for an autocratic President to derail such a positive revolution. 

21997. Daniel Mocsny at 09:56 AM on 10 December 2016
       Report helps scientists communicate how global warming is worsening natural disasters
       

       "Rather, I mean “win” in that we have faithfully followed the scientific method, explored alternative hypotheses, checked and rechecked our work, and have come to a truth that is unassailable. We’ve done our job."

       That would be the end of it if you're talking about a field of science such as astronomy that normally has almost no impact on any entrenched interests (individual lifestyles, organized religions, or large-scale industries). (Of course astronomy hasn't always stayed out of trouble - back in the 1600s Galileo found himself in conflict with the religious authorities when he failed to discover the required truth. Astronomers then were in the unfortunate position of today's climate scientists, having to debunk popular delusions, and suffering the predictable unpleasant backlash.)

       Or that would be the end of it when scientists report only to narrow patron groups with stable and predictable reasoning processes, such as the military brass (for weapons research), venture capitalists, and so on.

       Sadly for humanity's survival prospects, climate truth is readily assailable. It's getting more successfully assailed than any other field of science. Even a man with no scientific training can win the juiciest prize in politics - the US Presidency - by denying climate science. Donald Trump's falsehoods resonate deeply with (just enough) voters, which means climate truth is not only assailable, it's one of the softest targets out there. If climate truth were actually "unassailable," then denying it would immediately disqualify a person for high office. But the opposite is true now. The complex and abstract nature of the science, and the unwelcome implications for the American lifestyle, make the science eminently assailable. Especially in light of the audience having been preconditioned by years of right-wing attacks on science.

       Climate science is nothing like many other less consequential areas of science. It's about as far-reaching as fighting World War II, but with a much longer commitment time. Total war requires near-total agreement from nearly every member of the general population. The climate scientist's job isn't done until there is nearly complete buy-in from the public. Merely convincing the tiny handful of fellow trained experts is just the first step out of base camp on the climb up Mount Everest. (Unless scientists don't care about what happens to humanity, and are merely interested in acquiring knowledge which will soon be lost when climate chaos ushers in a new dark age and life goes back to being nasty, brutish, and short.)

       The difficulty is that humanity has an overall budget for "allowable" greenhouse gas emissions. (Picking a temperature target roughly fixes the maximum atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases which in turn roughly fixes the total cumulative amount of durable greenhouse gases we can dump in the atmosphere.) Dividing the total by the global population (which is still growing by over 200,000/day) gives the remaining allowance per individual. Dividing that by the number of years until some target date when we expect humanity's net annual emissions to become zero (which doesn't even seem possible, but we have to assume it will be or we can just commit suicide now) gives the individual's annual emission allowance - and it comes to something less than 2 tonnes of CO_2e/yr, about one tenth of the average American's emissions. This assumes we will have an equitable solution for climate change. If not - if some individuals are to be privileged, with a right to dump more greenhouse gas pollution than other individuals - then the high emitters need to justify their privilege somehow, and enforce it on the low emitters who aspire to become high emitters.

       Naturally almost no one in the English-speaking world wants to frame the problem in terms of individual emissions (which is the only logically coherent framing, since the individual is unit of climate change causation, much as the individual heroin user is the unit of the heroin problem), because most native English speakers are among the world's top billion individual emitters. Even worse, the ruling class in almost every country consists of individuals from the top few centiles of greenhouse gas emissions for that country. The people who are talking to our high-emitting rulers are themselves mostly high emitters in proportion to their income level: scientists. It's hard to do cutting-edge science without burning plenty of jet fuel. A quick jaunt to one academic conference can gobble an individual's emission allowance for the whole year.

       The inconvenient truth is inconvenient on more levels than even many people close to the issue want to confront. I think a good way to come to grips with it is to do the following:

       1. Using every available technology or technique, try to reduce your emissions to an honest individual fair share. For most people, this pretty much precludes flying, driving, heating, cooling, eating meat, owning meat-eating pets, or procreating. (If you can find a way to live on your carbon fair share while still doing some or all of those things, great - write a book so I can read it.)
       2. Once you have your emissions somewhat under control, find the climate science denier nearest you (you probably needn't go far - he'll still have a Trump sign up), and try to persuade him or her to repeat what you did in step 1.
       3. If that sounds too daunting, then pick what should be a slightly easier target: a Clinton voter who at least verbally acknowledges scientific reality, but continues to behave as if climate science is bunk (by flying, driving, etc.). Try to talk the person who should know better into behaving as if science is real.

       If we can't even persuade one individual, then we're not nearly ready to try persuading the entire public. You'll find with one individual that you need to identify and destroy multiple onion-peel layers of disinformation he or she has absorbed or self-constructed. There's no way to correct all that damage with just a drive-by public service announcement. It takes lengthy one-on-one commitment and relationship building.

21998. RedBaron at 09:53 AM on 10 December 2016
       From the eMail Bag: CO2 in the air and oceans
       

       I agree Michael The ocean is the unknown to me. All I have claimed ever is that we can sequester into the soil many times more than all the biomass and atmospheric carbon combined based on the fact that since human impact many times more was lost. Currently right now world wide we lose so much soil there is more abandoned cropland than arable cropland. I could go on and on but this explains it better. Soil Erosion Threatens Food Production

       So honestly there is a strong case for rebuilding soil rapidly like the new research in the LCP allows us to do, whether or not it changes AGW or not. But the numbers are larger that all the other climate scientists mitigation proposals combined. More than zero carbon emissions, more than CCS, more than all of them. So either every CO2 mitigation plan ever made is completely useless and nothing will work, or this will work. Simple as that. I don't know if it is large enough to capture all the outgassing of the ocean. But if it can't, then nothing can in under millions of years and nothing we do including 0 emissions has any chances of reversing AGW. I don't believe that any more than I believe AGW denialism. The only difference being 1 denies we did it, and the other denies we can fix it. But both are in complete denial of human impact on the biosphere, whether positive or negative.

21999. nigelj at 09:36 AM on 10 December 2016
       Report helps scientists communicate how global warming is worsening natural disasters
       

       Jonbo @69, I dont have any in depth list in my head of research on extreme weather, as I just take a general interest in climate change. However I came across this media article a while ago which discusses quite specific storms and and floods in Britain and evidence linking them to climate change. It's a good overview style of article, but with links to several specific published papers which may interest you.

       energydesk.greenpeace.org/2016/01/04/uk-flooding-climate-change/

       Much of the weather research papers appear to be on certain trends in certain countries and finds some things changing and some not changing or even getting less severe. Its so hard to make sense of this as an individual and one or two papers on specific events dont give the full picture.

       However James Hansen did an overview of global extreme weather by looking at a large number of events and countries, and concluded its getting more extreme. Im pretty sure thats the paper quoted above. This is probably as near as you would get to a definitive single paper.

       I think we have to trust the IPCC as well. They review all the research to see what it adds up to as a global trend overall, and have broadly concluded certain things are getting worse globally (including heat waves and heavy rain events) and its too soon to be certain about others like hurricane activity. Their summary for policy makes is online. Its hard for an individual to do such a big review,  so I have to put my faith in the team of experts who serve on the IPCC.

       And you will get a lot of regional variation. Some weather may get less extreme in some places because of regional factors, and this is ripe for cherry picking by climate sceptics. I'm interested in the big global picture, and it does seem certain weather is generally becoming more extreme overall.

       In comparison the skeptical study you mentioned seems to have an agenda. The author listed too few cases to be able to draw conclusions. We know not all weather events will get more extreme everywhere so its complicated, therefore you have to look at a very wide selection of events and regions before drawing a conclusion.

       The author also made claims about temperature trends my country of New Zealand which I strongly dispute and I have local knowledge of the issues he raised.

22000. michael sweet at 08:48 AM on 10 December 2016
       From the eMail Bag: CO2 in the air and oceans
       

       Red Baron,

       James Hansen has discussed ocean outgassing of CO2 once emissions become low enough that the ocean has more CO2 than the air.  Look for articles on geoengineering that remove CO2 from the air.    As I recall (sorry no link but you rarely link), the top 1000 meters of the ocean starts to emit CO2 quickly after CO2 in the atmosphere starts to drop and will be a very large amount of carbon dioxide compared to the amounts you are talking about sequestering in the soil.  The ocean contains much more carbon than the atmosphere.

       You need to provide data and/or links to support your claims that soil can sequester the amount of CO2 that will come out of the ocean.  The immense amount of carbon that needs to be sequestered is the problem for any geoengineering scheme that proposes to remove carbon from the air.  Most of the carbon that has been emitted would eventually have to be removed, natural sequestration processes are very slow on a human timescale.  You do not appear to have determined the amount of carbon that your scheme needs to address.

       At the same time the deep ocean absorbs some CO2.  Depending on the exact amounts of emissions, sequestering and time frame the distribution of CO2 is different.  Evaluating the issue is complex.  One issue with soil sequestration is that if there was a change in soil use, say there was a severe drought or war, that can release the carbon sequestered in the soil.

       Any sequestering of CO2 is a good thing and increased carbon in the soil increases productivity.  I see little downside or risk to increasing soil carbon.  I have not seen here data that I think supports your claims that enough CO2 can be sequestered in the soil to substantially lower temperatures.  The amount you claim can be removed has to be compared to the amount that needs to be removed.  The latter has not been addressed.

       When you say you do not know how much CO2 can potentially come out of the ocean it appears that you need to do more background research to support your very strong claims.  The amount of CO2 involved is potentially many times more than is currently in the atmosphere.

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