CO2
illconsidered | November 9, 2010Another good video from greenman:
It is very discouragin to hear a 60 year old science program explaning exactly the same basics of climate change that Inhofe and half the new republican congress claim today is an IPCC hoax.
illconsidered | October 18, 2010No, not how much I will write now, but the approximate value of the two pictures I will post, using standard conversion rates.
(see Eli's place for source and commentary)
(this one from Global Warming Art)
But don't let your lying eyes and faculties of reason fool you, we are on the cusp of a new ice age!
illconsidered | October 18, 2010Just to pick up an ongoing conversation where we left off over at the recently closed How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic thread, I wanted to provide a more serious answer to a likely unserious visitor because I think myhrr's issue deserves an answer, even if myhrr obviously doesn't. Kind of like the "we can't predict the temp 2 weeks from now" argument, this one has an intuitive appeal to perfectly fine people who are just not well informed for whatever reason.
myhrr is wondering why CO2, being heavier than air, does not just stay close to the ground. Okay, he actually claims entire…
illconsidered | August 27, 2010Greenman's latest:
Entertaiing and informative, as usual!
I did not know there was a "theological" debate about CO2 levels in the atmosphere, interesting.
stoat | June 24, 2010 An unfair headline; but I think it is a known phrase: the "Dumb America" phenomenon, wherein the public has the hubris to believe that they really have something valuable to contribute to discussions that they can hardly begin to understand (I'm assuming that if you aren't part of DA then you're intelligent enough to realise I'm not talking about all Americans).
Yes, I'm talking about the comments in Under the Volcano, Over the Volcano by Willis Eschenbach at Wattsup (ht: mt). Incidentally, anyone tempted to complain about my sneering or elitist tone is invited to comment somewhere else. If…
illconsidered | May 4, 2010A regular here recently offered us this PDF from Willie Soon and Lord Monkton's Science and Public Policy Institute and asks what is wrong with the graph in there.
As it happens, Michael Tobis has already taken a look at another very similar construction and identified three deceptions (he kindly called "bugs") in what is technically correct data.
different smoothing is used on the two types of data. Temperature is presented in monthly mean whereas CO2 looks to have had the seasonal rise and fall removed. This gives the impression of a steady rise in CO2 in stark contrast to the jitters of…
illconsidered | April 21, 2010Don't miss April 19th's APOD, a truly awsome sight!
And while on the subject of Eyjafjallajokull and my recent post about it, readers should be aware of a correction on the source site. The best estimate of CO2 is in fact 150,000 tons per day, not 7400, with a possible maximum of 300,000 tons per day. So the graphic is much less compelling, but the story of Joe vs the Volcano is not affected.
stoat | March 30, 2010I haven't been nice to Hobbes for a bit, so:
When God speaketh to man, it must be either immediately or by mediation of another man, to whom He had formerly spoken by Himself immediately. How God speaketh to a man immediately may be understood by those well enough to whom He hath so spoken; but how the same should be understood by another is hard, if not impossible, to know. For if a man pretend to me that God hath spoken to him supernaturally, and immediately, and I make doubt of it, I cannot easily perceive what argument he can produce to oblige me to believe it.
There. Isn't that wonderful…
illconsidered | June 21, 2009Just like those national debt clocks showing you dollar by dollar how high it is, this site has a "Carbon Counter" showing how many metric tons of carbon have been released into the atmosphere.
As I post this, we are at 3,642,255,344,781. No wait, now its 3,642,255,367,521...no, it's 3,642,255,381,988...well, you get the picture!
They have some other interesting resources there as well.
illconsidered | June 16, 2009Of all the myriad climate skeptic arguments out there, the argument that the current rise in CO2 is not human caused truly is one of the most ridiculous positions one could take.
(Please note, I am not saying it is ridiculous to consider, we should consider everything, but like wondering if the light in the fridge really turns off when you close the door, a quick check with your cell phone video camera really should put it to rest!)
It is of course one of the standard denials in the HTTTACS series.
I am closing comments on that thread and directing them here, as surprising as it is to me…
illconsidered | June 11, 2009I think I will start to close down comments on some of the guide articles as the comment threads get too long and meandering, and instead direct people from there to dedicated "open threads".
So consider this the first implementation of that idea for the article "CO2 Lags, not leads". Comments there are now closed.
The main reason I want to do this article first, aside from the recent explosion of unproductive comments, is because I would like to make a correction and a couple of clarifications based on what came out there. The majority of the comments fall squarely in the "completely…
illconsidered | April 17, 2009This just reported today from the Washington Post:
The Environmental Protection Agency issued a proposal today finding greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to the public's health and welfare, a determination that could trigger a series of sweeping regulations affecting everything from vehicles to coal-fired power plants.
In a statement issued at noon, EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson said, "This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations."
She added, "This pollution problem has a solution -- one that will create millions of green jobs…
illconsidered | February 23, 2009I am a bit slow off the mark with this posting from Nature's Climate Feedback blog, but last month they put up a little news about iron fertilization of oceans as a geoengineering technique for removal of atmospheric CO2.
Have a read, but in a nutshell: that Indo-German experiment is going forward in the Southern Ocean and recent studies of naturally occurring blooms are not cause to celebrate, as actual sequestration into deep water is not very high.
As with this story, humanity needs to keep the cork in the champagne bottle for at least a little while longer...
illconsidered | February 18, 2009In the climate debates, I hear it all the time: why should the US do anything when China and India are the fastest growing and largest emitters of greenhouse gases on the planet? Though I make it a personal policy to never discussion mitigation policies with characters who will not even accept the reality of the problem, the question does, on its own merits, deserve a thoughtful answer.
Clearly, climate disruption due to accumulating greenhouse gases is a global problem and requires a cooperative and global solution. We all share the same planetary atmosphere, and CO2 is a well mixed gas in…
illconsidered | February 17, 2009Thanks to Crakar14, I came across this article from the India Times online:
In a major breakthrough that could help in the fight against global warming, a team of five Indian scientists from four institutes of the country have discovered a naturally occurring bacteria which converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into a compound found in limestone and chalk.
Based on this, Crakar thinks we should just continue business as usual and forget this whole global warming scare thing. (Oh, btw, that's what he thought that before too)
Now, I don't know anything more than what it says in the article, but it…
illconsidered | October 30, 2007Oceans are 'soaking up less CO2' is the headline of a recent BBC News article. (Well, it is recent in most senses of the word though not in blogger-land...Rabbet Run discusses it here, Stoat did it here, and Michael Tobis blogged about it here).
So the news is that a some new research indicates that the rate at which atmospheric CO2 is being absorbed into the ocean is falling. The findings are new, the authors are not sure if natural varibility is involved or not, but regardless it is a troubling sign. If it does turn out to be the case it signals the cessation of a free ride nature has…
illconsidered | October 29, 2007Real Climate has a good post on geo-engineering and why it is only fitting as a final act of desperation, not a policy platform. It expresses very well all my own misgivings (it's a terribly dangerous one-chance-to-get-it-right experiment on the entire planet, it commits the human race to centuries of climatic meddling, it will ultimately be more expensive and harder to agree on than simply reducing CO2) so I won't enumerate them here, just go read it all there.
But I will emphasize one of the points Ray Pierrehumbert mentions that is too often overlooked.
As anyone who follows the science…
illconsidered | June 27, 2006This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
Objection:
Taking into account the logarithmic effect of CO2 on temperature, the 35% increase we have already seen in concentrations represents about 3/4 of the total forcing to be expected from a CO2 doubling. Since we have warmed about .7oC so far, we should only expect about .3oC more for a doubling from pre-industrial levels, so about 1oC not 3oC as the scientists predict. Clearly the climate model sensitivity to CO2 is much too high.
Answer:
Even…
illconsidered | April 27, 2006This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
Objection:
The United States actually absorbs more CO2 into the land than it emits into the air. The world should be grateful.
Answer:
As often is the case, at the heart of this talking point is a grain of truth, though it is no longer equivalent to what it has been forcibly grown into. According to the US Department of Energy the land use changes taking place in the United States between 1952 and 1992 have resulted in a net absorption of CO2, but…
illconsidered | April 25, 2006This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
Objection:
In the geological record it is clear that CO2 does not trigger climate changes. Why should it be any different now?
Answer:
Given the fact that the human species and our industrialization is rather unique in the history of planet Earth, do we really need to see some kind of historical precedent for CO2 triggered climate change before accepting what we observe today? Surely unprecedented consequences are not far fetched in the face of…