Solar and GHG effect in vertical temperature of the atmos.

TDPerk · Post by **TDPerk** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 3:08 am

MSimon, I want you to know, I utterly--with the last of my strength if it came to it--I would persist in endorsing your efforts to beat these people with a stick.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 3:20 am

JCC et. al.,

If North America is a net carbon sink then it seems to me that holding back development by limiting the use of "fossil" fuels is the wrong way to go.

Maybe if the rest of the world had the energy intensity per capita we have along with the requisite industrial and technological development we could turn the whole world into a carbon sink.

In other words "Greens" are promoting policies counter to their own stated intentions. Wouldn't be the first time - biofuels any one?

Josh Cryer · Post by **Josh Cryer** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 4:27 am

MSimon wrote:JCC et. al.,

If North America is a net carbon sink then it seems to me that holding back development by limiting the use of "fossil" fuels is the wrong way to go.

Maybe if the rest of the world had the energy intensity per capita we have along with the requisite industrial and technological development we could turn the whole world into a carbon sink.

In other words "Greens" are promoting policies counter to their own stated intentions. Wouldn't be the first time - biofuels any one?

Um, that means that we can't exploit, for example, tar sands, since it results in an overall frick up ecosystem.

What an extraordinarily bit of spin you are putting on this, MSimon. You can find good in any sort of bad, it's amazing.

Josh Cryer · Post by **Josh Cryer** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 4:29 am

Also, we're not really arguing for making reviewer names public are we? That's grand, so if you get a bad review you can go on to screw up one of your reviewers when you got a chance.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 7:42 am

I'd scrap the whole review system. It is obvious from the e-mails it is compromised. Public review.

===

And yes. Some areas will get trashed to relieve the pressures on others.

Cut down forests for fuel and agriculture as is done in some places. Or strip mine for fuel allowing forests to advance. Trade offs.

But we could put a stop to all that if there just weren't so many people. I hear the Germans have some good designs for ovens that just need a little updating. </sarc>

Trading a few square miles of strip mine for thousands of square miles of forest seems like a good idea. Haiti has little access to "fossil" fuels. They have few trees as a result. The trees have been strip mined.

BTW Germany was stripped of trees due to a coal shortage at the end of WW2. The worst was in the city of Berlin.

Josh Cryer · Post by **Josh Cryer** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 7:54 am

MSimon wrote:I'd scrap the whole review system. It is obvious from the e-mails it is compromised. Public review.

L&C (2009) prove that it is not, as opposing viewpoints still make it through.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 8:02 am

Look at it this way.

I have a reputation for being knowledgeable when it comes to technical subjects. I have a rep for honesty and if I make a mistake (once I'm convinced - which may take some doing) I will correct my error.

So people come to me.

I have a couple of reviews going on in private now. And once they get far enough along you may or may not hear of my involvement.

But any way I perform the public review function.

Might some one want to give me grief because of my reviews? Sure. Life has its risks. I'm willing to take them. I've had a loaded 45 put to my head because of a misunderstanding. Nothing scares me much any more.

I like what a soldier said of Grant:

Old Ulysses, he don't scare worth a dam n.

My hero.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 8:11 am

L&C (2009) prove that it is not, as opposing viewpoints still make it through.

Yeah. And Lee made it through Meade's lines at Gettysburg.

What we know is that the record is biased. That is not right.

A person having to fight for 5 years to get a paper through is at a disadvantage relative to some one who gets his papers waved through in weeks.

Really Josh. I can't believe you would uphold such a system. It is unbecoming. It impugns your integrity.

Josh Cryer · Post by **Josh Cryer** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 8:13 am

MSimon wrote:Might some one want to give me grief because of my reviews?

Is it likely that one of those people could review you in the future, and screw you over like they perceive you did to them? Peer review is exactly that, your peers, and yourself, review others stuff. So if you have an axe to grind even unconsciously, you may screw thei review up.

I should say that I'm not, in principle, against open review. I think it would work better if there were more specialists in a given field.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 8:36 am

Josh Cryer wrote:
MSimon wrote:Might some one want to give me grief because of my reviews?
Is it likely that one of those people could review you in the future, and screw you over like they perceive you did to them?

Let them do it in public. I'm capable of defending my work.

I don't scare worth a dam n.

But I get it. The weenies of climate science are a bunch of piss ant cowards.

taniwha · Post by **taniwha** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 10:54 am

[foreword: Take the following with a pinch of salt: lots of assumptions and simplifications.]

I just ran some very quick numbers (BOE, or more accurately, python), and going by that 30000 million tonnes (per year?), us humans are pumping about 6ppm/year into the atmosphere:

>>> 30000e6/(6370000**2*3.1415*4*101.3e3/9.82/1e3)*1e6
5.7035778939233195

(that's tons/(radius(m)^2*pi*4*atm(Pa)/G(m/s/s)/1000(kg to tonne))*1e6 (to get ppm) ie, simple surface area of Earth * pressure to get mass.

If MSimon is right about the 20:1 of nature vs man, that means about 126ppm/year, yet levels are rising by 1-2ppm/year. If nature is putting none into the are, that's still 4-5ppm that's getting soaked up by the sinks.

The carbon sinks are pulling in between 4-122ppm (20e9-610e9 tonnes) per year.

In conclusion, if humans weren't dumping 30e9 tonnes/year into the atmosphere, the CO2 would be dropping by 4-5ppm/year. Assuming that would be at a steady rate, there would be 0ppm (yes, zero) CO2 in about 95 years (starting with today's 380ppm). That's mass extinctions in less than a century.

Josh Cryer · Post by **Josh Cryer** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 11:02 am

You have simplified the carbon cycle to the point of rendering it non-existent.

taniwha · Post by **taniwha** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 11:47 am

Care to elucidate? I care to be elucidated.

I know I over-simplified the rate of decrease of CO2. It would probably be e^-x, so that would make 1 century put the levels around 37% of what they are now (neglecting the rate at which nature puts CO2 into the atmosphere).

Ignoring the timing and the exact levels the CO2 will drop to, it's still a scary prospect: by selfishly holding onto our coastal cities, we could be killing the planet.

However, I'd say it's already started: desertification. Yes, humans started the process for many (all?) of the deserts, but the plants are losing the war against the sand because they can't get enough CO2 to spread faster than the sand.

Anyway, with a choice between mass extinctions and coastal flooding, I'll take coastal flooding any day.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 12:53 pm

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/index.html

The above is from 2007 so it doesn't account for the found sink. Other wise the analysis is sound IMO.

Start with the following paragraphs if you don't want to read the whole thing. There are a number of following paragraphs. The article has links which I do not reproduce here.

But we're responsible for all the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect?

Gracious no! Humans can only claim responsibility, if that's the word, for abut 3.4% of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere annually, the rest of it is all natural (you can see the IPCC representation of the natural carbon cycle and human perturbation here or a simple schematic from Woods Hole here).

Half our estimated emissions fail to accumulate in the atmosphere, "disappearing" into sinks as yet undetermined. Humans' total accumulated carbon contribution could account for perhaps a quarter of the total non-water greenhouse gases (that is, accounting for all the increase since the Industrial Revolution regardless of source and irrespective of whether warming from any cause might result in an increase in natural emission to atmosphere -- we're simply claiming the lot as anthropogenic or human-caused here).

Assuming that water vapor accounts for about 70% and clouds (mostly water droplets) accounts for another 20%, thus water in it's various forms is 90% of the total greenhouse effect, leaving 10% for non-water greenhouse effect (we know we cited 95% above -- see "important distinction"). Of this remaining 10%, mainly atmospheric carbon, humans might be responsible for 25% of the total accumulated atmospheric carbon, meaning 0.25 x 0.1 = 0.025 x 100 = 2.5% of the total greenhouse effect.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 1:00 pm

Here is one corroborating the above:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 184221.htm

To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.

In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.

The research is published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Some good commentary on the above can be found here:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/no-rise-of- ... finds.html

Along with the usual snidery.