Global warming is not caused by CO2

[Andrew Mason]

However, science is science and it is not because the means to gather proof are harder, that truth is easier to find and hence that one has to be less rigorous. And what disturbs me profoundly in the *scientific* discussion of AGW, is that open but sceptic inquiry is now frowned upon - while it should be the prevailing attitude. When you look at the IPCC and all the supportive bodies around it, it seems that if you even dare to question certain hypotheses of the AGW theory, you are stamped as a heretic, a climate sceptic, etc... with the underlying insinuation that you are or a crackpot, or that you have some or other vested interest in denying AGW, or that you have yourself leading by your emotions and are in a psychological state of denial.

There is a big difference between questioning a theory and taking a position that the theory is wrong. The first is good science. The second is not, unless you can a) provide conclusive evidence against it and b) provide an alternative theory that explains all the evidence.

AM

 

[Andre]

There is a big difference between questioning a theory and taking a position that the theory is wrong. The first is good science. The second is not,

What happened to the scientific method? It's not the subjective position one takes, it's the objective evidence that counts. If you can't falsify a hypothesis, the chance is that there is some truth in it

unless you can a) provide conclusive evidence against it and b) provide an alternative theory that explains all the evidence.

No, conclusive evidence is enough. It doesn't matter if the defendant has a motive and has no alibi and is the owner of the murder weapon. If the DNA of the offender doesn't match, he is innocent. Period. The barrister/counselor doesn't have to proof who else did it.

nevertheless, my previous post shows both elements

 

[vanesch]

The worrying thing to me is, that scientists can not derive an experiment to prove or dis prove AGW, the laboratory is Earth and is tangible, or is it that this problem IS so testable?

Sure, we're doing it right now. We're pumping a lot of CO2 up there. One day, we will have lowered our CO2 output dramatically, or because we all collectively decided so (for good or bad reasons), or because there are no cheap fossil fuels left. That can be 30 years in the future, or 200 years in the future. It is then sufficient to look at the climate records over still some more decades, and the issue will be settled for good. So between 50 and 200 or 300 years, we will know for sure and there will be no more discussion

The drawback is that it is a long experiment...

 

[Andrew Mason]

No, conclusive evidence is enough.

Conclusive evidence is enough to falsify a theory. But that does not necessarily mean that the conclusion is wrong, just the theory supporting the conclusion. To take a position that the conclusion that human activity is warming the Earth is wrong, a scientist has to provide conclusive evidence that the AGW theory is wrong and offer an explanation that is consistent with all the evidence that leads to a different conclusion.

It doesn't matter if the defendant has a motive and has no alibi and is the owner of the murder weapon. If the DNA of the offender doesn't match, he is innocent. Period. The barrister/counselor doesn't have to proof who else did it.

DNA is not always conclusive. It depends on the circumstances. The case of Dr. John Schneeburger is a case in point. The eyewitness (the victim of a rape) said he did it. A DNA sample extracted from his arm did not match the DNA of the perpetrator left at the crime scene. A second DNA test on blood from the Dr. matched the first sample. There was another "theory" that fit all the evidence and the complainant was vindicated and Schneeburger was convicted.

Usually, though, if DNA does not match, the non-match is conclusive evidence exhonerating the accused and proving another theory and resulting in another conclusion ie that the perpetrator was a person whose identity is not known.

AM

 

[Andre]

Conclusive evidence is enough to falsify a theory. But that does not necessarily mean that the conclusion is wrong, just the theory supporting the conclusion. To take a position that the conclusion that human activity is warming the Earth is wrong, a scientist has to provide conclusive evidence that the AGW theory is wrong and offer an explanation that is consistent with all the evidence that leads to a different conclusion.

Wouldn't be the first step, testing the AGW hypothesis with real life data. Sure that has been done and there was evidence that supported it but, repeating myself, now ALL evidence is evaporated, verschwunden. We only see natural variability, there is nothing left that needs to be explained other than natural variability can't explain.

 

[DEMcMillan]

Before moving to other topics, this thread touched on CO₂ level effects on human physiology with little recognition of the ability of closed environments to raise CO₂ levels when large numbers of humans or animals raise CO₂ by their breathing.

Consider a thousand people attending a function in a room of 1000 m² are and 10 m height. As they enter the volume of CO₂ is about 3,500 liters. They each exhale 1 liter each 6 minutes. After 2 hours the level becomes 23,500 liters. No-one notices because each of us is already experiencing a much higher CO₂ inhalational level due to “dead space” exchange effects in which the 5% CO₂ air that we exhale is mixed with incoming air. Now think about the levels achieved on a submarine and the need to be concerned but not dismayed. The CO₂ levels we need to consider are well below toxic levels in all cases.

On the other hand, now land on Venus or Mars with an over 95% CO₂ atmosphere. Respiration now introduces a nineteenfold rise in a gas that dissolves quickly in water and dissociates into hydronium (H₃O⁺ = H⁺) and bicarbonate (HCO₃^-) ions to create an instant acidosis as well as taking away oxygen needed for cerebral activity. The drop in pH becomes as important as the lack of oxygen in killing us.

While we are in the health-carbon area we seem to be missing a major point in the recent dialogue about carbon and its potential negative effects on “World” climate. The rising use of “fossil fuels” in the last half century has had one unambiguous effect on the World. It has released very low ¹⁴C carbon into the atmosphere, lowering the elevation that was produced by atmospheric testing from the end of World War II to 1969. The rise and fall are of the same magnitude, returning us to pre-WWII ¹⁴C levels. This confirms the allegation of the magnitude of the addition. It also means that ¹⁴C levels would be 30% higher without fossil fuel use.

What is the ¹⁴C doing to our health? We have 18% carbon bodies. For a 70 kg adult, this converts to 6.3x10²⁶ carbon atoms. One in a trillion (10^-12) is ¹⁴C, giving us 6.3x10^{14 14}C atoms in our bodies. ¹⁴C half life is 5,730 years, giving us a rate of disintegration of 6x10⁸ per day or 7,000 per second. Each event emits an electron from the nucleus whose average energy is 156 keV. A molecular bond can be broken by 2 eV of energy. A feature of this disintegration is that the atomic number of the product goes up 1. It is once again nitrogen, altering the chemistry of its molecule. In DNA, this means a chain disruption that needs repair. DNA chain repair takes time and an unrepaired change mediated by the altered state can lead to a chromosomal crossover linkage. Such crossovers are responsible for malignant diseases and other proliferation problems. No-one has been able to quantify the C to N effect. General features of exposure to radiation are used to estimate the problem’s magnitude. What ever its magnitude, this problem is 30% less than it would have been without fossil fuel use.

 

[vanesch]

While we are in the health-carbon area we seem to be missing a major point in the recent dialogue about carbon and its potential negative effects on “World” climate. The rising use of “fossil fuels” in the last half century has had one unambiguous effect on the World. It has released very low ¹⁴C carbon into the atmosphere, lowering the elevation that was produced by atmospheric testing from the end of World War II to 1969. The rise and fall are of the same magnitude, returning us to pre-WWII ¹⁴C levels. This confirms the allegation of the magnitude of the addition. It also means that ¹⁴C levels would be 30% higher without fossil fuel use.

What is the ¹⁴C doing to our health? We have 18% carbon bodies. For a 70 kg adult, this converts to 6.3x10²⁶ carbon atoms. One in a trillion (10^-12) is ¹⁴C, giving us 6.3x10^{14 14}C atoms in our bodies. ¹⁴C half life is 5,730 years, giving us a rate of disintegration of 6x10⁸ per day or 7,000 per second. Each event emits an electron from the nucleus whose average energy is 156 keV. A molecular bond can be broken by 2 eV of energy. A feature of this disintegration is that the atomic number of the product goes up 1. It is once again nitrogen, altering the chemistry of its molecule. In DNA, this means a chain disruption that needs repair. DNA chain repair takes time and an unrepaired change mediated by the altered state can lead to a chromosomal crossover linkage. Such crossovers are responsible for malignant diseases and other proliferation problems. No-one has been able to quantify the C to N effect. General features of exposure to radiation are used to estimate the problem’s magnitude. What ever its magnitude, this problem is 30% less than it would have been without fossil fuel use.

Ok, this is going to get off topic, but this is dramatic for 2 reasons, the first one being that if there are people 5000 years of so from now are going to get all of their history wrong because of that erroneous C-14 scale, and second, because if it happens to be true that there is hormesis, then we are doing away with all that good radiation that would have stimulated our cell repair mechanisms

No, seriously, I don't think that the slight lowering of the radiation dose due to C-14 compensates all the toxic stuff we inhale because of coal powered plants...

 

[billiards]

Wouldn't be the first step, testing the AGW hypothesis with real life data. Sure that has been done and there was evidence that supported it but, repeating myself, now ALL evidence is evaporated, verschwunden. We only see natural variability, there is nothing left that needs to be explained other than natural variability can't explain.

That's a bold statement.

Although it raises a fair point:

Looking at these temperatures, and comparing to the life-over-time chart below, it would seem that Humans have evolved on a planet with bipolar glaciation, a fairly unusual state of affairs in Earth History. How will the humans react to change? My guess is they'll get scared and try to kill each other, who knows, maybe they will become extinct?


http://lachlanhunter.deadsetfreestuff.com/geological_time.jpg

 

[Andre]

... the first one being that if there are people 5000 years of so from now are going to get all of their history wrong because of that erroneous C-14 scale, ...

It's exactly that atmospheric 14C variation that has played an essential role in the myth forming. In the early days of ice core layer counting and the discovery of the large isotope excursions (d18O) it was assumed that these resembled temperatures, which is not unlogical. So seeking confirmation of that, the ice core records were compared with many other geologic records which were carbon dated. However, little one was aware of the high variability of the delta14C in atmospheric CO2, which led to mismatching. For instance some glacial readvance was carbon dated 12,000 years BP and the start of the alleged hyper cold Younger Dryas was counted to about 12,900 - 12,700 years ago. It seemed a perfect match and one could move ahead with such a nice evidence.

Now the problem is that 12,000 14C years calibrates with INTCAL04 to about 13,830 calendar years which is in the middle of the alleged warm Bolling Allerod interval.

Of course one never looks back to see if the process was still valid with modern information available, because that would seriously challenge this interpretation:
edit:

see for instance:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/rapid.htm

 

[DEMcMillan]

Vanesch wrote

No, seriously, I don't think that the slight lowering of the radiation dose due to C-14 compensates all the toxic stuff we inhale because of coal powered plants...

You seem to equate nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide effects with radiation exposure. Do you have any evidence to support your position. I live in an area where all electricity is generated from coal. No-one here knows of such a relationship. If you are right we need to abandon solar and wind power because, being periodic, they will need to be supported by coal. Nuclear is not suited to periodic use. Periodic Sierra hydroelectric use is prominent in California in summer but is at capacity. I have lived before where wind power was used and was annoyed by the devices’ appearance without knowing yet of the bird deaths.

30% is more than a little. People in the radiation-cancer field usually make the relationship linear. The DNA repairase process may produce some positive feedback, increasing disease more than linearly.

I lived for 14 years in the Southern California air basin where inversions mediated by the Pacific were a regular feature. Aldehydes and opacity were the main source of difficulty. Collection of gasoline vapor to avoid its entry into the air has reduced opacity. Conversion of diesel trucks to natural gas is useful there but cab conversions are all for show. Future supplies of natural gas are threatened by a number of NIMBY movements. An attempt there to have ships use only low gravity bunker oil while in the area is being met with resistance that will raise shipping costs.

 

[Andrew Mason]

Wouldn't be the first step, testing the AGW hypothesis with real life data. Sure that has been done and there was evidence that supported it but, repeating myself, now ALL evidence is evaporated, verschwunden. We only see natural variability, there is nothing left that needs to be explained other than natural variability can't explain.

So I guess you can explain Venus' surface temperature without reference to CO2 content of its atmosphere.!?

AM

 

[vanesch]

Vanesch wrote
You seem to equate nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide effects with radiation exposure. Do you have any evidence to support your position. I live in an area where all electricity is generated from coal.

I don't have any evidence because there is no evidence at all that low levels of radiation exposure have any health effect at all - one only takes on *by convention* the LNT model in radiation protection, because it is the severest model that makes sense. From that model one can calculate the expected number of victims due to a radiation exposure. It is 5.6% of chance to die prematurely per Sievert of equivalent dose. I think, off the top of my head, that the dose you are talking about must be around 100 microsievert per year or so (C-14 is a fraction of the natural body self-irradiation, next to cosmic and telluric irradiation which amounts to a few hundred microsieverts a year).

The average world exposure is 2.4 mSv / year, of which about 0.4 mSv comes from medical diagnosis exposure (world average) and 1.2 mSv / year medical diagnosis exposure in the West (dentists and the like). Most of the natural background radiation varies, from about 1 mSv to 10 mSv per year, but there are some places where this gets in the 100 mSv / year, without observable effects which can clearly be distinguished from other variability.
So I don't think we should get nervous because of 0.1 mSv or so...

That said, a serious fraction of particulate and chemical air pollution is due to coal fired plants, and that pollution is known to lead to a significant number of death per year. Coal brings in the environment large amounts of mercury, of radium, of uranium, etc...

No-one here knows of such a relationship. If you are right we need to abandon solar and wind power because, being periodic, they will need to be supported by coal. Nuclear is not suited to periodic use.

That's a misunderstanding. See https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=1949854&postcount=235 and related posts.

Nuclear is flexible, more so than coal. The only sources which are more flexible are hydro and gas. But nuclear can follow load for more than 99% of the time.

30% is more than a little. People in the radiation-cancer field usually make the relationship linear. The DNA repairase process may produce some positive feedback, increasing disease more than linearly.

Actually, the DNA repair mechanism is more the theoretical basis for models where the effect of a small dose variation is smaller than given by an overall linear relationship, and maybe even a threshold or even hormesis.

But in any case, any non-linear relationship between dose and effect that remains in agreement with effects at higher, measured doses will have a lower effect of a small increase in dose than the linear model. If you don't believe this, do the example with a quadratic model. It is only in the improbable case where the "quick rise" would be exactly on the background level that one would get a worse effect. The reason why this is improbable is that there are very large variations in natural background from place to place.

Now, what you may not know is that the radioactive exposure of people by coal fired plants is several times higher than due to the entire nuclear industry, and with nearby coal fired plants, this can amount up to 200 microsievert per year. That's still a low dose, btw, but of the order of the C-14 effect you were talking about.

EDIT: that said, we are really off-topic here, and any further discussion should be in the nuclear engineering forum...

 

[Andre]

So I guess you can explain Venus' surface temperature without reference to CO2 content of its atmosphere.!?

AM

That's not the question. It's not about challenging the radiative proportions of CO2, it's about understanding how it works. The question is if the condition of Venus would constitute support/proof for the IPCC greenhouse hypothesis or would it support the convection hypothesis of Chilingar et al. Let's see,

The IPCC assumes a global temperature increases of about 3 degrees per doubling CO2, Now if you do the math for Venus doubling the CO2 starting with 1ppmv you'd end up with an order of magnitude of about 20 degrees per doubling. It would require a rather creative explanation to talk that together.

However Chilingar et al propose that the Earth atmosphere is mainly heated by convection The convection transports the heat up so that the chance increases that emitted energy escapes to space rather than being re-absorpted at the Earth surface. How is this for Venus? The strong radiative properties of the CO2 are suppressing convection in the lower atmosphere. Hence energy emitted from the surface has a far larger chance to hit the surface again. Venus is missing the convective air conditioner of Earth.

Hence the Venus numbers don't add up for the IPCC hypothesis but the missing convection in the lower layers do support Chilingar et al.

There is a lot more to say about the origin of the heat of Venus but that's less relevant here.

 

[Andre]

That's a bold statement.

Sorry Jack, I intended to react earlier but I wasn't sure what you intended to suggest.

Anyway, I don't seem to recall that the IPCC had presented the geological alleged greenhouse-icehouse pendulum as evidence for CO2 causing warming. It could be equally true that warming caused higher CO2 levels as the ice cores suggest. Apart from that, there are deviations. The Paleocene greenhouse appears to have had http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:11423657 .

So I stand by my capitals for ALL evidence being evaporated.

 

[mheslep]

...The IPCC assumes a global temperature increases of about 3 degrees per doubling CO2, Now if you do the math for Venus doubling the CO2 starting with 1ppmv you'd end up with an order of magnitude of about 20 degrees per doubling. It would require a rather creative explanation to talk that together...

Most of IPCC's 3 degrees/ 2x CO2 is from feedbacks, mainly water vapor effects, as you often point out, so I don't think one can compare directly to Venus in this way.

 

[billiards]

Sorry Jack, I intended to react earlier but I wasn't sure what you intended to suggest.

Anyway, I don't seem to recall that the IPCC had presented the geological alleged greenhouse-icehouse pendulum as evidence for CO2 causing warming. It could be equally true that warming caused higher CO2 levels as the ice cores suggest. Apart from that, there are deviations. The Paleocene greenhouse appears to have had http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:11423657 .

So I stand by my capitals for ALL evidence being evaporated.

Let me apologize, I originally intended to make a point about your "all evidence evaporated" claim seeming a bit ... extreme. Then I got to thinking about how in terms of geological time we're going through a cold spell, and that any warming we experience will be within natural variability. Yet that doesn't necessarily mean that the cause of the warming is natural!

The point I failed to make in that post was that even though 6+ degrees of warming would seem to be "natural" within the range of temperatures experienced over geological time, we are perhaps encouraging this warming by pumping out CO2.

 

[DEMcMillan]

vanesch has seen no benefit from fossil fuel use in the fall in ¹⁴C body radiation from 10,000 to 7,000 disintegrations/sec since 1969. He uses radiation hormesis to make his argument. I looked for ¹⁴C experiments to document its hormesis and could find none. Are there any? I will use chronic myelogenous leukemia as an example of a disease produced by ¹⁴C. Its post-exposure incidence rose after Hiroshima http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_myelogenous_leukemia and has been falling widely in recent years http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/cmyl.html . Its hallmark is the Philadelphia chromosome, making it an early unsuccessful target of genetic engineering. The product of the crossover, a tyrosine kinase, has become a target of a successful treatment. Radiation hormesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis is more controversial than chemical hormesis, a newer version of the homeopathy of a century ago. vanesch doesn’t seem to consider it in his treatment of coal products, but it is an easy assertion for me. My southern California experience taught me that aesthetic judgments need to be supported by health burden data. Do you have any significant information about coal use air product toxicity? It is an important consideration.

 

[Andrew Mason]

That's not the question. It's not about challenging the radiative proportions of CO2, it's about understanding how it works. The question is if the condition of Venus would constitute support/proof for the IPCC greenhouse hypothesis or would it support the convection hypothesis of Chilingar et al. Let's see,

The IPCC assumes a global temperature increases of about 3 degrees per doubling CO2, Now if you do the math for Venus doubling the CO2 starting with 1ppmv you'd end up with an order of magnitude of about 20 degrees per doubling. It would require a rather creative explanation to talk that together.

However Chilingar et al propose that the Earth atmosphere is mainly heated by convection The convection transports the heat up so that the chance increases that emitted energy escapes to space rather than being re-absorpted at the Earth surface. How is this for Venus? The strong radiative properties of the CO2 are suppressing convection in the lower atmosphere. Hence energy emitted from the surface has a far larger chance to hit the surface again. Venus is missing the convective air conditioner of Earth.

Radiation is entirely a function of termperature. A black body at a given temperature emits a radiation distribution according to Planck's law. So it has nothing to do with CO2's radiative properties.

Convection and conduction operate in the atmosphere. The surface heats by absorbing radiation from the sun. The layer of atmosphere in contact with the surface warms by conduction. That layer moves due to change in buoyancy and is replaced by cooler air which, in turn, warms by conduction from the surface. The result is that heat is transferred to the atmosphere.

This has the effect of cooling the surface of the Earth by transfering some of the heat to the atmosphere. But now IR radiation from the atmosphere, in addition to the radiation from the sun, reaches the Earth surface thereby increasing the amount of radiation from (and therefore temperature of) the surface.

My question is how does increasing the CO2 affect the conduction/convection process and introduce more cooling, as Chilingar et al suggest?

AM

 

[Andrew Mason]

That's not the question. It's not about challenging the radiative proportions of CO2, it's about understanding how it works. The question is if the condition of Venus would constitute support/proof for the IPCC greenhouse hypothesis or would it support the convection hypothesis of Chilingar et al.

...

Hence the Venus numbers don't add up for the IPCC hypothesis but the missing convection in the lower layers do support Chilingar et al.

The IPCC says that there is another important mechanism of heat transfer operating in the atmosphere (other than conduction/convection). It says that radiation from the Earth is absorbed by certain gases, particularly CO2 which is opaque to a broad range of infrared radiation. The atmosphere continues to be warmed by conduction and convection but also by this absorption of radiation. It is this additonal heating that raises the temperature beyond what normal conduction/convection contributes. This increases the radiation reaching the surface and therefore the surface temperature.

Chilingar et al do not appear to address this at all.

AM

 

[Andre]

The IPCC says that there is another important mechanism of heat transfer operating in the atmosphere (other than conduction/convection). It says that radiation from the Earth is absorbed by certain gases, particularly CO2 which is opaque to a broad range of infrafred radiation. The atmosphere continues to be warmed by conduction and convection but also by this absorption of radiation. It is this additonal heating that raises the temperature beyond what normal conduction/convection contributes. This increases the radiation reaching the surface and therefore the surface temperature.

Chilingar et al do not appear to address this at all.

AM

That's, right they don't. But the keyword is emission altitude. (sorry short in time right now)Mind that if the incoming radiation is worth a blackbody temperature of -18C then at radiation equilibrium, the outgoing emission must originate from the same temperature range. No?

That's somewhere high in the atmosphere, what happens below there is a mixture of conduction, convection and radiation. More later

 

[Andrew Mason]

That's, right they don't. But the keyword is emission altitude. (sorry short in time right now)Mind that if the incoming radiation is worth a blackbody temperature of -18C then at radiation equilibrium, the outgoing emission must originate from the same temperature range. No?

Not exactly. If outward radiation from any part of the surface or of the atmosphere is not absorbed on its way out, it will leave the earth. If it is aborbed, it will be re-radiated and 50% of it will be radiated back toward the earth. If above certain level the atmosphere did not contain any molecules that could absorb outward radiation and below that level the molecules absorbed ALL the radiation coming from below, the temperature of the atmosphere at that level would be the blackbody temperature of the earth. But the atmosphere is not like that.

Radiation emission orginates from all different levels at all different temperature ranges. Generally, the atmosphere is at thermal and radiation equilibrium at all altitudes.

The radiation distribution (the graph of intensity of radiation as a function of frequency) as seen from space will be the Planck curve corresponding to the blackbody temperature of the earth. That never changes (unless the emissivity of the Earth changes, which is a function of the Earth's albedo). What changes is the altitude in the atmosphere where the temperature matches the Earth's blackbody temperature. As the atmosphere warms, the altitude at which the air matches the blackbody temperature of the Earth increases.
AM

 

[Andre]

As the atmosphere warms, the altitude at which the air matches the blackbody temperature of the Earth increases.

Or the cloud cover and density increases, due to the accelleration in the water cycle, reducing the insolation, reducing the temperature, remember Pallé et al (posted earlier).

The albedo variation is digitized from Pallé et al 2006, (fig2) variation in %. The global temperature variation in tenths of degrees in in top graph is from the file http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt issued by the Hadley Met office in the UK

Given that in the Stefan Boltzman law for grey body a variation of 10% in albedo as we see here amounts to about 2.5 degrees in temperature, instead of about 0.5 degrees. Hence, it appears that there is a significant negative feedback somewhere, suppressing a larger variation.
Edit: erratum 1% changed into 10%

 

[Andre]

Please close this conspiracy thread.

Wouldn,t you think that this would require some substantiation. Please go carefully over the thread and find evidence of conspiracy first.

 

[vanesch]

Please close this conspiracy thread.

I don't see a conspiracy here. There is no discussion of how the mean vile powerful Dr. Mad and the rich industrials to his boots and corrupt politicians are manipulating the minds of the innocent. There is a discussion of what scientific evidence there actually is that CO2 is the main cause of global warming, and what other plausible mechanisms could compete with that.

I myself have a few questions concerning the scientific *certainty* some display about the fact that CO2 is the main cause of a dramatic heating. I'm not putting into question its plausibility, but I'm putting into question its scientific certainty - meaning that there is a proof that is such, that any other mechanism would by necessity also violate some laws of physics. If that scientific case would be *beyond the slightest bit of reasonable doubt*, and if no other thinkable mechanism could be proposed challenging it without at the same time, say, challenging energy conservation or the second law of thermodynamics, and if it were a namecalling thread, then yes, this would be a conspiracy thread. But simply asking in a critical way of what exactly is the proof beyond doubt that CO2 is the sole, main origin of dramatic heating is, I would think, legitimate, no ?
Confronting the actual scientific case to a challenging critical question is all we could hope to promote, no ? Only better understanding can result from this.

 

[vanesch]

vanesch has seen no benefit from fossil fuel use in the fall in ¹⁴C body radiation from 10,000 to 7,000 disintegrations/sec since 1969. He uses radiation hormesis to make his argument.

That was a half joke of course, I don't need hormesis. I was just pointing out that if you go for one hypothesis, you can also go for another one, and arrive at a different conclusion.

What is true however, is that there is no indication of any health effect of small doses, and that the linear no threshold model is just that: a model. It has the property of being the severest model for small dose variations, and that's why it is adopted in health physics: one wants to err on the safe side. But again, there are no serious scientific indications that small doses do have effects.

Now, even if the LNT model turns out to be correct, it means that its effect is in the noise. If we can't measure it, it means that the global effects are unimportant, compared to other causes. According to this model, the average natural background radiation should cause about 0.6% of deadly cancers. Compare that to the real incidence of cancer deaths (something between 13-20%), and you see that it is a negligible effect.

BTW, I didn't find any reference to C-14 in the articles you cited.

The dose burden of C-14 as compared to the total natural background radiation, and even to the medical doses we are subject to, is rather small.

Concerning the coal pollution and victims, here's a link,
http://www.sierraclub.org/cleanair/factsheets/power.asp

but I agree that this is not a peer-reviewed thing at all.

There is also http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/archives/2002-releases/press10172002.html

Something more official from the WHO:
http://www.who.int/entity/quantifying_ehimpacts/countryprofilesebd.xls

(41 000 yearly victims of air pollution in the USA).

However, I would also like to see some more substantiated material concerning this.

 

[Andre]

I don't see a conspiracy here. There is no discussion of how the mean vile powerful Dr. Mad and the rich industrials to his boots and corrupt politicians are manipulating the minds of the innocent.

How subtle. If one wonders whether or not this is happening, perhaps include "enron" in the google searches.

But looking back at the thread. I still don't see any evidence presented that singles out CO2 to cause the recent global warming at the end of the former century and I see no evidence that CO2 was the reason for any temperature fluctuation in the past.

 

[Andrew Mason]

...I'm not putting into question its plausibility, but I'm putting into question its scientific certainty - meaning that there is a proof that is such, that any other mechanism would by necessity also violate some laws of physics. If that scientific case would be *beyond the slightest bit of reasonable doubt*, and if no other thinkable mechanism could be proposed challenging it without at the same time, say, challenging energy conservation or the second law of thermodynamics, and if it were a namecalling thread, then yes, this would be a conspiracy thread. But simply asking in a critical way of what exactly is the proof beyond doubt that CO2 is the sole, main origin of dramatic heating is, I would think, legitimate, no ?

Who is saying it is beyond all reasonable doubt? Even climate scientists admit that they do not fully understand all of the factors that affect the Earth's climate.

All anyone is really saying is that increased CO2 and other IR asborbing gases will result in more heat radiating from the surface being trapped in the atmosphere AND that we are putting more CO2 and other IR absorbing gases in the atmosphere. That will tend to cause the temperature of the Earth surface and the atmosphere to rise. Whether there are other effects that will come into play that will reduce or nullify the heating effect of additional greenhouse gases, or that will accelerate the warming is a matter of ongoing study.

AM

 

[Andre]

Who is saying it is beyond all reasonable doubt? Even climate scientists admit that they do not fully understand all of the factors that affect the Earth's climate.

All anyone is really saying is that increased CO2 and other IR asborbing gases will result in more heat radiating from the surface being trapped in the atmosphere AND that we are putting more CO2 and other IR absorbing gases in the atmosphere. That will tend to cause the temperature of the Earth surface and the atmosphere to rise. Whether there are other effects that will come into play that will reduce or nullify the heating effect of additional greenhouse gases, or that will accelerate the warming is a matter of ongoing study.

AM

One should take more factors into consideration, for one we have discussed convection and diurnal variation and putting more CO2 in the atmosphere also increases the outradiation into space. Which causes cooling again. Another factor that has not been discussed is the quantitative heat transportation and specific heat capacity of the out radiating atmosphere. Perhaps that Chiligar's increased convection rate also increases the energy flow to the average effective emission altitude, causing the increased 'trapped' heat to be vented out at comparable rates again. Just pondering about why all evidence suggest no detectable variation in temperature with variation in greenhouse gas concentration.

 

[vivesdn]

That will tend to cause the temperature of the Earth surface and the atmosphere to rise

Some years ago, three engineers were playing with their new toy: a computer. Instead of crashing cars, they were designing and testing a new structure with it. At a given moment, a crash of the current structure had still high damage on legs for rear passengers. Well, the T (inverted) junction between front and rear doors was to be reinforced, obviuosly. But one of them asked to retest it on the computer. At the end, they did it, even when it was obvious that the junction needed to be strengthened. But the computer told them the opposite: the junction needed to be weaker to allow a *correct* deformation to protect passenger's legs.

Given this real story and its moral:
* Are you sure that increasing CO2 will increase air temperature?
* Are you sure high albedo will increase Earth temperature?
* Are you sure that CO2 increase is coming from higher rates of production and not from lower rates of sinking?
* Being water a high performing GHG, will more humidity feed an increase of temperature or will cloud formation imply a descend of temperature?

None of these questions should be considered obvious. And finding reasonable proof for any of them is a hard task.

 

[Andrew Mason]

One should take more factors into consideration, for one we have discussed convection and diurnal variation and putting more CO2 in the atmosphere also increases the outradiation into space. Which causes cooling again.

This does not cause cooling. If the outradiation from the atmosphere increases, the temperature of the atmosphere must have increased. So, increased outradiation has to be associated with a temperature increase.

AM

 

[Andrew Mason]

Given this real story and its moral:
* Are you sure that increasing CO2 will increase air temperature?
* Are you sure high albedo will increase Earth temperature?

Increasing albedo will increase reflectivity of the Earth and decrease the temperature of the earth.

* Are you sure that CO2 increase is coming from higher rates of production and not from lower rates of sinking?

What matters is whether there is a human cause of increased CO2.

* Being water a high performing GHG, will more humidity feed an increase of temperature or will cloud formation imply a descend of temperature?

We don't really know. What we do know is that increased atmospheric temperature will increase the vapour pressure of water and this will have an effect on climate.

AM

 

[DEMcMillan]

Andrew Mason wrote “So I guess you can explain Venus' surface temperature without reference to CO₂ content of its atmosphere.!?‘
Venus has a very hot surface and a complete cloud cover. The atmospheric pressure at its surface is 93 times that of Earth. A 1991 Magellan rocket recorded its atmospheric temperature; the recording stopped at 34 km altitude. http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/vel/1918vpt.htm This figure extends its last recorded temperature to Venus’ surface using four lines to intersect at four surface temperatures reported later. The dry adiabatic lapse rate for Venus has been calculated by NASA to be 10.5 ^oK/km compared to 9.8 ^oK/km for Earth http://pds-atmospheres.nmsu.edu/education_and_outreach/encyclopedia/adiabatic_lapse_rate.htm
The difference is mediated by Venus’ slightly lower gravitational force and higher atmospheric mean molecular weight. The lines argue that Venus’ lower atmosphere is adiabatic, not heated by radiation. Venus’ temperature at 58 km altitude is 260 ^oK. This is the top of its sulfuric acid cloud. Below the cloud top, Venus’ temperature rises continuously to about 730 ^oK at the planet’s surface. Earth’s stratosphere has a peak temperature of 262 ^oK at 50 km mediated by ozone, but its temperature at 10 km is only 217 ^oK, rising to 298 ^oK at its surface. Venus’ outward radiation is determined by the temperature at its cloud top. 260 ^oK means 259.1 W/m2. The cloud reflects an albedo of 0.65 to lower the planet’s net downward solar radiation to 228.8 W/m2. The reduction in outward loss needed for radiation balance is 39.7 W/m2. The balancing temperature without a greenhouse effect would be 252 ^oK, 8 ^oK lower. Venus’ surface is ~730 ^oK because of its dense atmosphere. CO₂ contributes 8 ^oK at the top. It is the massive nature of Venus’ atmosphere that acts adiabatically over a wide altitude range to make it so hot.

 

[vanesch]

Who is saying it is beyond all reasonable doubt? Even climate scientists admit that they do not fully understand all of the factors that affect the Earth's climate.

All anyone is really saying is that increased CO2 and other IR asborbing gases will result in more heat radiating from the surface being trapped in the atmosphere AND that we are putting more CO2 and other IR absorbing gases in the atmosphere. That will tend to cause the temperature of the Earth surface and the atmosphere to rise. Whether there are other effects that will come into play that will reduce or nullify the heating effect of additional greenhouse gases, or that will accelerate the warming is a matter of ongoing study.

AM

Ah. Well, that's also the statement I subscribe to. I would even add that "there are indications that it is possible that these effects are amplified through feedback and could potentially lead to much stronger heating than just the optical effect of the greenhouse gasses". But that's not really what is said everywhere in scientific circles, and it is certainly not the impression you get when you read the IPCC summary reports. There the tone is more that it is now "scientifically established" that there is going to be a strong heating, and the only thing that is left is an uncertainty of how much: 90% chance between 1.5 and 6 degrees, with a most probable value of 3 K.

 

[vanesch]

This does not cause cooling. If the outradiation from the atmosphere increases, the temperature of the atmosphere must have increased. So, increased outradiation has to be associated with a temperature increase.

Yes, of upper layers in the atmosphere. The point is that convection can change the temperature profile of the atmosphere, and depending on that profile, you have a different radiative balance. That is the same as changing the resistivities in a resistive chain, will change the potential distribution along that chain, and will also change the overall current, for the same overall potential difference.

 

[vivesdn]

Increasing albedo will increase reflectivity of the Earth and decrease the temperature of the earth.

Ok. And low albedo will increase temperature? Sure?

What matters is whether there is a human cause of increased CO2.

The origin of CO2 matters if CO2 plays a role on climate change. But again, increase of CO2 is due to increased sources (human cause) or due to low sinking?

We don't really know. What we do know is that increased atmospheric temperature will increase the vapour pressure of water and this will have an effect on climate.

And referring water vapour, then we should clarify this first, shouldn't we?