Spain:- Lights out/Speed limts cut!

[c1ue]

Re: Spain:- Lights out/Speed limts cut!

Sorry, but 37 (or even 55) molecules out of 100000 is absolutely insignificant. Unless they are fusing.

From Wiki:

It contains roughly (by molar content/volume) 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% carbon dioxide, trace amounts of other gases, and a variable amount (average around 1%) of water vapor

Oxygen, of course, is ozone among a number of other forms.

The point here is that water does have an effect - but water absorbs energy from 3x the spectrum that carbon does. Plus there is 33x the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. And water also has the benefit of being highly variable in form; you'll never see CO2 rain or snow.

So how then is CO2 able to affect global temperatures so much when water vapor has so much greater an impact?

http://nov55.com/gbwm.html

[renewable]

Re: Spain:- Lights out/Speed limts cut!

The molecular concentration thing is laughable.

The point is that there is so much atmosphere, a tiny concentration of CO2 is a lot.

Approx 27 billion tons of CO2 are emitted into the atmosphere each year.

[c1ue]

Re: Spain:- Lights out/Speed limts cut!

27 billion tons sounds like a lot, until you consider the total mass of water vapor alone in the atmosphere is somewhere around 1.2 x 10 exp 15 kg to 1.5 x 10 exp 15 kg - or (1.2 - 1.5) x 1000 x billion metric tons.

So given the above where water vapor has 3x the solar absorbtive capability of CO2, perhaps in a millenia the carbon we're shooting out of our exhausts will start equalling the water vapor effect.

Of course, the entire atmosphere is about 100x the water vapor, so we're talking 5 QUADrillion metric tons. Or 200000x the CO2 in question.

With the scales in question, you realize the argument that the carbon being spewed affecting global temperatures is exactly like the homeopathy argument?

I'm not saying it is impossible, but I would definitely like to understand how such a small amount of CO2 relative to the entire atmosphere can have such a gigantic effect.

Or put another way: the surface area of the earth is 510 million square kilometers, or 510 trillion square meters. 27 billion tons = 27 trillion kg (assuming metric tons).

So we're talking about 52 grams of CO2 per square meter, mostly scattered in the 100 km above the square meter.

To put this in perspective, the average person breathes out 900 grams of CO2 per day.

So if CO2 is truly causing global warming, then there should be a local temperature gradient around each person caused by his CO2 output.

We should do an experiment where a 1 kilometer wide square is kept empty and some lucky volunteer stashed in the center with a pile of food and water. Each square meter will have a thermometer, and we can measure the effect of the person's CO2 output on temperature.

[renewable]

Re: Spain:- Lights out/Speed limts cut!

27 billion tons sounds like a lot, until you consider the total mass of water vapor alone in the atmosphere is somewhere around 1.2 x 10 exp 15 kg to 1.5 x 10 exp 15 kg - or (1.2 - 1.5) x 1000 x billion metric tons.

So given the above where water vapor has 3x the solar absorbtive capability of CO2, perhaps in a millenia the carbon we're shooting out of our exhausts will start equalling the water vapor effect.

Of course, the entire atmosphere is about 100x the water vapor, so we're talking 5 QUADrillion metric tons. Or 200000x the CO2 in question.

With the scales in question, you realize the argument that the carbon being spewed affecting global temperatures is exactly like the homeopathy argument?

I'm not saying it is impossible, but I would definitely like to understand how such a small amount of CO2 relative to the entire atmosphere can have such a gigantic effect.

It's not news that there is far more water vapor than Co2. The argument goes that more Co2 = warmer = more evaporation = more water vapour = even warmer.

So we're talking about 52 grams of CO2 per square meter, mostly scattered in the 100 km above the square meter.

To put this in perspective, the average person breathes out 900 grams of CO2 per day.

So if CO2 is truly causing global warming, then there should be a local temperature gradient around each person caused by his CO2 output.

We should do an experiment where a 1 kilometer wide square is kept empty and some lucky volunteer stashed in the center with a pile of food and water. Each square meter will have a thermometer, and we can measure the effect of the person's CO2 output on temperature.

(At least, I really hope you're joking here!)

[Rajiv]

Re: Spain:- Lights out/Speed limts cut!

An interesting series of posts on this topic
"Unexplaining" global warming


Good discussions on global warming in the parent forum to the above thread

[renewable]

Re: Spain:- Lights out/Speed limts cut!

An interesting series of posts on this topic
"Unexplaining" global warming


Good discussions on global warming in the parent forum to the above thread

Very interesting Rajiv, thank you for posting.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Spain:- Lights out/Speed limts cut!

It has been so cold this summer in British Columbia that I have been heating my house using my wood stove, now for the first time, every month of this year. This is the year without a summer.

So, I began to wonder, am I just imagining this chill?

So, I looked into mean temperatures being recorded at Vancouver International Airport, and sure enough, the temperatures are now below the 30 year monthly means for the last year or so.

Here they are: July 2007, observed 18.8C, normal 17.C; August 2007, observed 17.8C, normal 17.6C; September 2007, 14.2C, normal 14.6C;
October 2007, 9.6C, normal 10.1C; November 2007, 5.9C, normal 6.0C;
December 2007, 3.2C, normal 3.5C; January 2008, 2.8C, normal 3.3C;
February 2008, 5.5C, normal 4.8C; March 2008, 5.9C, normal 6.6C; April 2008, 7.6C, normal 9.2C; May 2008, 12.8C, normal 12.5C; June 2008, 14.4C, normal 15.2C; July 2008 not recorded yet.

Looking at mean annual temps, Vancouver Int'l Airport has been above normal for a number of years, but the deviation above normal has been shrinking since 2004 when La Nina began. This year, 2008, appears to be going below normal.

Here are the numbers: Normal annual mean temp using the 30 year average: 10.1C

1997, 10.8C; 1998, 11.3C; 1999, 10.2C; 2000, 10.1C; 2001 10.2C; 2002, 10.3C; 2003, 10.9C; 2004, 11.5C; 2005, 10.8C; 2006, 10.6C; 2007C, 10.2C.

San Francisco is currently around normal to slightly below normal in its temperatures, just as Vancouver is.

The more I look, the less evidence I see for global warming, but I will keep looking.:rolleyes:

[c1ue]

Re: Spain:- Lights out/Speed limts cut!

Another reason I really look hard at man-made global warming advocates is their reliance on computer models.

I'm not a climatologist, but I have very long and extensive experience with computer modeling.

Everywhere I have touched in the last 10 years - modeling for large and complex problems has advanced to the point of millions (and tens of millions) of lines of code.

Why does this matter?

It matters because there are very few people, if any, who really have an intimate understanding of all of these lines. The vast majority of software engineers tweak some small part of the code and test vs. some expected outcome.

When you're trying to create a router that can handle 10 million wires, or a parasitic extraction tool that can handle all 50M objects, etc etc, you tweak the code then compare sections against a 'golden' result.

This is ok because you have an objective test: both smaller scale finite body calculators and a large number of past designs in production to compare against.

Unfortunately for climate modeling, the golden historical results are fairly uniform across the historical record. (although some of this data has been manipulated also)

I'm sure the result is the modeling then focuses on predicting the recent warming - again by fitting behavior to expected results.

This is fundamentally flawed because in this case the expected results are not necessarily correct.

It is trivially easy to wind up with code which does exactly what is expected of it as opposed to truly discovering future behavior.

This is why I continuously ask if said models correctly model other events further in the past such as the European little ice age, or better understood (but not completely understood) local events such el Nino.