Reader (and Statistician) Jan Galkowski’s Quick Primer on CO2 and Climate Change
This weekend’s open thread here on AB produced an awesome post by reader, statistician and obvious genius Jan Galkowski on the significance of last week’s report on the level of CO2 now in the atmosphere. Here’s part of the thread, including Mr. Galkowski’s post:
Rjs / May 11, 2013 4:54 am
in case you missed it, yesterday we breached 400 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide…
all you need to know in just one chart…
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Sammy / May 11, 2013 3:54 pm
rjs,
Don’t fall for the scare tactics. The y axis scale on your graph is “parts per million.” So we’ve gone from 300 max parts per million, to 400 parts per million. Or .0003 to .0004 percentage CO2. This is statistically insignificant. Plus, as Jack pointed out, there “little correlation with global temperature.”
This graph backs up Jack’s point over a longer time frame; and also shows that we are historically at a low in atmospheric CO2:
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Sammy / May 11, 2013 3:54 pm
rjs,
Don’t fall for the scare tactics. The y axis scale on your graph is “parts per million.” So we’ve gone from 300 max parts per million, to 400 parts per million. Or .0003 to .0004 percentage CO2. This is statistically insignificant. Plus, as Jack pointed out, there “little correlation with global temperature.”
This graph backs up Jack’s point over a longer time frame; and also shows that we are historically at a low in atmospheric CO2:
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Jan Galkowski / May 12, 2013 2:52 pm
@Sammy,
Surely you’ll agree the argument that materials in systems are safe as long as their concentrations are small is erroneous. There are many examples where tiny amounts will derail proper operation.
But, to your specific point, the fact that CO2 concentration is, as Richard Alley calls it, The Biggest Control Knob of Earth’s climate is due to a simple confluence of [t]hree physical facts.
First, blackbody radiation from a body at Earth’s temperature happens to have the bulk of its outgoing radiation in the region of the infrared spectrum between 400 per cm and 1000 per cm.
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Second, CO2 happens to have a broad absorption between 550 per cm and 750 per cm.
Third, CO2 happens to resonate strongly at 667 per cm and, when it goes to ground state, reemits photons with frequencies very close to that. CO2′s cross-section for 667 per cm photons is very high. Thus, a stray photon at 667 per cm will in all likelihood be reabsorbed by another CO2 molecule.
This means about 2/3 of the radiation in the 550-750 per cm band gets captured by CO2, and the stronger the concentration, the more thorought the lasing effect of emission and reabsorption.
The net of this is that about 1.8 Watts per square meter are re-radiated from CO2 in the lowest 100 meters of atmosphere all around the planet. 1.8 Watts per square meter times the area of the Earth is about 690 Terawatts. That energy has to go somewhere, and does, boosting convection in atmosphere and oceans, as well as being conveyed in the water evaporation and condensation cycle, which essentially serves as a heat pump. Some goes into deep ocean, raising its temperature and weakening its ability to absorb CO2.
The greater differences in energy density, as always, demand equalization, so the poles warm more, percentagewise, than the tropics and intermediate lattitudes. This 690 Terawatts increases to 2000 Terawatts at 700 ppm CO2.
There is no trending or paleoclimate evidence needed to establish this. This is simple physics. It would be truly remarkable if 690 Terawatts of additional forcing had no effects upon Earth weather.
They who might be interested in more details regarding this should monitor my blog,
http://hypergeometric.wordpress.com
where a 4-part lecture describing these mechanisms and the reason we know atmospheric CO2 increases are due to people’s actions, namely fossil fuels, will be described in detail, probably some time this summer.
Thanks.
Those among us who can do such things as add and subtract will have an easier time understanding the specifics of Mr. Galkowski’s post than those among us (okay, the one among us) who cannot. But even those of us in the latter category can understand the gist of this. And its importance. (Trust me on that.)
i was going to let this go, but
667 WHAT’S per cm.?
i could guess, but it seems to be a change in the way of talking about wavelength from the way we used to do it.
and while i am at it… Sammy’s “histerically low in CO2” would have to be compared to the last 4 billion years or so. we are quite high compared to the time since man evolved.
not that we have evolved that far.
thanks for bringing this up, dan, cause i forgot that i had even left that comment (forgot to check the followup box)
as you know, i wrote a paragraph on this for my weekend mailing; basically. i think it’s significant in that the composition of the atmosphere and ocean is different than it’s ever been in 3 & half million years; ill try pasting html of what i wrote:
we would be remiss if we didnt at least make note of the milestone marker that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations hit on Friday morning (Thursday Hawaii time, where official readings are taken)…CO2 measurements at the mountaintop Mauna Loa Astronomical Observatory (chosen for it’s remoteness from local influence) averaged 400.03 parts per million on Thursday, the first time that level has been breached in known history…the estimates of a previous time when CO2 might have reached that level would be in the pre-historic Pliocene, when jungles covered northern Canada and the north pole averaged 60 degrees and the sea level was around 125 feet higher than today…we have two charts below which will serve to explain graphically how this change in the atmosphere came about…on the left, we have a graph of the average monthly atmospheric concentrations of CO2 as per the readings taken at Mauna Loa; you’ll note it is a jagged line; that’s because each summer green vegetation removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, lowering it’s concentration down to a november minimum, when carbon dioxide again begins to increase, to end up at a annual higher high each May, when the growing season and photosynthesis again turn the levels down..the only pause in the continuous upslope was caused by the 1991 eruption of mount pinatubo, which belched millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, which resulted in an increase in cloud cover cooling and a corresponding increase in the solubility of carbon dioxide in sea water…on the right, we have a graph of atmospheric CO2 levels as measured from data from air bubbles trapped in ice taken from ice cores drilled into the Antarctic ice sheet, where what’s graphed on the left appears vertical…you can see that over most of the last 800 thousand years, atmospheric carbon dioxide has roughly averaged between 180 and 280 parts per million, only once briefly touching 300 parts per million about 325,000 years ago…so it’s quite obvious that at 400 ppm we’re already living in an entirely different atmosphere than we or any of the plants and animals that we know have ever experienced, a new atmosphere which will persist for thousands of years even if new emissions are controlled… and the oceans, where much of the carbon dioxide we’ve emitted has ended up as carbonic acid, are already 30% more acidic than preindustrial times, and now acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred…
wonder if i can post the charts…
beverly
for what it’s worth to you the science of global warming is a little more complex than Galkowski seems to imply here…. though i am grateful that he has made a beginning.
It would be too much in the sammy vein to over react to a few facts without actually understanding what they mean and how they fit into the whole picture.
plenty of people know how to add and subtract who have no idea what they are adding or subtracting or why.
looks like i cant post graphics in comments…and i just realized that beverly’s the one who transcribed this, so it’s her i should have thanked..
667 cycles aka waves per centimeter
seems to be the conventional unit used by chemists to describe light frequencies
Jeff Fisher
thanks. for those who got their book learnin’ in the last century like me, the unit “waves per centimeter,” or “wavenumber,” is the reciprocal of the wavelength, which in this case would be about 15 microns (millionths of a meter). not sure that is any easier to understand, but note that it is NOT the same as “frequency” which would be cycles per second.
Why is Jan Galkowski an “obvious genius?” Because she believes in AGW? There are many certifiably intelligent people who “can add and subtract”t think it is a farce.
Ask Jan why the global temperatures have not increased commensurate with the increased CO2.
Ask Jan what the percentage of CO2 is anthropomorphic.
Ask Jan why the historic correlation between CO2 and temperature is so poor.
Ask Jan what other factors influence global temperature.
AGW is just a liberal wet dream. “Hey we can control the people in the name of saving the world.”
So Bev,
FYI. There was a time maybe about 8 years ago, when AGW was a fait accompli. I think that was a recent peak in temperatures. I and a very few others on this blog (Co Rev) were sceptics.
It turns out that most, actually all, of the scientific evidence in support of AGW was proven false. All we have now is theoretical (see Jan).
I could bury you in contrary scientific exposition. If you try and pretend the “science is in” you are just being deceitful.
Hell, Al Gore just sold out to the Arabs.
what the hell does what al gore does have to do with the fact that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are more than 50% above the levels under which our species evolved and oceans around the planet are 30% more acidic than their preindustrial levels?
“So we’ve gone from 300 max parts per million, to 400 parts per million. Or .0003 to .0004 percentage CO2. This is statistically insignificant.”
When someone says this, kindly ask them if they would be willing to snort 400 ppm of VX gas. The lethal dose is a few ppb.
well, just in case anyone misunderstood, i was NOT endorsing the sammy view of things. Galkowski is right.
there is no hope of convincing the sammy’s of the world, but we don’t do ourselves any favors by reasoning “two plus two is four so i am a genius and the moon is made of green cheese.”
Well, while I am flattered Dan posted this Comment and his very kind characterizations, I don’t think the term “genius” applies. Nor would I have my claims taken on the basis of authority, but simply Science, notably basic Physics.
Yes, 667 per centimeter is another way of expressing frequency, that is, number of waves per centimeter.
@Sammy, @Coberly, the nice thing about physical laws and conservation rules, and their power, is that however complicated the systems within a boundary are, they STILL need to observe certain principles, such as Conservation of Energy. Thus, the entrapment of energy by CO2 needs to be explained IN SOME WAY. Or reasons need to be given why it doesn’t work. If someone challenges these basic scientific principles, at least, according to Science, they are obligated to offer a DETAILED and FALSIFIABLE counterproposal. Otherwise, the criticism has no merit.
@Sammy, I don’t care about historical correlations of CO2 and temperature. There is plenty of evidence for it, but, by your tone and history, it’s apparent you don’t put much stock in it. So, set it aside. The challenge is why do the laws which allow us to build working satellites and manufacture semiconductors fail when applied to planetary climate? They should not. If one works, so should the other.
@Sammy, I did not address evidence for why atmospheric increases in CO2 can be laid almost entirely to burning of fossil fuels. Of course, given your challenges to CO2’s involvement at all, why would that be important, since you feel CO2 has nothing to do with it? Or is it that you do not like the conclusion and are disingenuously putting roadblocks in the way of drawing the conclusion?
@Sammy, in fact, there is plenty of hard, experimental, non-historical evidence for why CO2 increases are due to fossil fuels. I have an upcoming Web-based lecture on this entire subject which will cover it. I don’t expect you to buy the shortened version of the argument here, but, essentially, increases in atmospheric CO2 have mixtures of carbon isotopes (C12 to C13 ratio) which can clearly be assigned a plant origin, as opposed to, say, volcanic. That is consistent with a plant or fossil fuel origin, since fossil fuels were ultimately derived from plants. They can be assigned a fossil fuel origin because their C14 abundance is absent, unlike contemporary plants, since the fossil fuels have been buried for so long.
@Coberly, the rest of the “science of global warming” is simply the science of ordinary planetary energy distribution on Earth, except dealing with the extra energy radiated back by CO2 in lower atmosphere. To the degree the science of energy distribution is understood, it’s clear what happens, even if specific predictions are limited to long term linearized trends.
@Sammy, there is no “control knob” on the planetary climate bigger than CO2. Sure, incoming sunlight density affects things, but variation in sunlight is and has been measured, and it has not changed.
Finally, to all, the grasping-at-straws argument for Deniers of late has to do with atmospheric aerosols. There are fundamental reasons why that cannot work, having to do with atmospheric residence time, but if, hypothetically, it did, there remain experimental contradictions. In particular, if aerosols were an effect, they would deflect incoming solar radiation and reduce the amount incoming to Earth surface. That would, indeed, keep things cooler. But, then, there needs to be an explanation for the large increased heat content in the deep ocean and the increased heat content of low atmosphere. Where does the energy come from if it’s not coming from the Sun? Aerosols would block that. Surely not geothermal. Thus, even if aerosols have effects which are not fully understood, we have measurements which are, and, unless the Law of Conservation of Energy is repealed, must be from Sun and, so, CO2 is a big player.
Oh, and to those who want some graphs …
http://pubclimate.ch.mm.st/CurrentEstimatesOfRadiativeForcingsMeasures2012.png
http://pubclimate.ch.mm.st/AbsorptionSpectrumOfCO2.png
http://pubclimate.ch.mm.st/MODTRAN-Typical-2013-03-30_163239_annotated.png
@Sammy,
Your graph from geocraft.com clearly portrarys CO2 at “tectonic time scales”. If you took the trouble of going back to the original “R A Berner 2001” paper the graph is based upon, you would find the following paragraph:
“The first-order agreement between the CO2 record and continental glaciation continues to support the conclusion that CO2 has played an important role in long-term climate change. The Veizer et al. data, if correct, could be considered a Phanerozoic extension of a possible dilemma long known for the early and mid-Cenozoic.
To weigh the merits of the CO2 paradigm, it may be necessary to expand the scope of climate modeling. For factors responsible for the presence or absence of continental ice, the CO2 model works very well. In contrast, there are substantial gaps in our understanding of how climate models distribute heat on the planet in response to CO2 changes on tectonic time scales. Given the need for better confidence in some of the paleoclimate data and unanticipated complications arising from altered tectonic boundary conditions, it may be hazardous to infer that existing discrepancies between models and data cloud interpretations of future anthropogenic greenhouse gas projections.”
jan,
” The challenge is why do the laws which allow us to build working satellites and manufacture semiconductors fail when applied to planetary climate?”
Because there are too many variables associated with climate: at a minimum they include:
Solar output (that big burning gas thing in the sky that is the source of ALL WARMING).
Ocean currents.
Volcanic activity.
The Earth’s orbit.
Measurement error.
Cloud cover.
What caused the Ice Age, when glaciers covered the entire of North America, down to Arizona? A lack of CO2?????
Natural, uncontrollable forces far out determine the small increase in CO2 caused by man.
And….oh yeah, only 3% of the CO2 in the atmosphere is man made. THE OTHER 97% is naturally caused. http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
Thank you Jan. I would like to point out the possibility of a reversal in the non-linear system which is the earth-climate. I believe the possibility that global CO2 emissions are hastening the on-set of an ice-age should be entertained. I say this because ice-ages start warm. The temperature then gets progressively cooler, until they end. The temperature then increases during the inter-glacial period.
Ice-ages represent a change in the planetary heat budget from positive, warming, to negative, cooling. They are always preceded by a peak in the atmospheric CO2 concentration, though never as great as the one we are seeing now. Who knows, perhaps this time we may blow right through the ice-age regime.
I discuss this more thoroughly at: http://anamecon.blogspot.com/2011/09/ice-age-in-our-future.html
Remember, the massive snow requires massive evaporation, and 10 or 12,000 years is apparently what it takes for the deep ocean to become warm enough to support this.
Keep your mind open.
@Sammy,
(1) “Too many variables”. Nonsense. A semiconductor is a vastly more complicated system than an atmospheric layer. We know it better because there are greater financial incentives to do so. We know the atmosphere pretty well, at least insofar as warming goes. We know the oceans less well.
(2) As mentioned, solar output is monitored. There has been no significant change. Volcanic effects are monitored and noted. Their change is muted, in fact, less than those of financial pullbacks.
(3) Earth’s orbit is a slowly varying very predictable thing. Couldn’t get to Mars otherwise.
(4) Measurement error pervades all. Because there is random variability in things does not mean it cannot be predicted. Poker can be won.
(5) Cloud cover is always there, has increased very little. It is a player, but not a determiner.
(6) Research on the cause of Ice Ages is what revealed the degree of climate change risk. Ice ages are caused by slow changes in solar illumination, and CO2 becomes, in those cases, a mediator of climate change, but a cause nonetheless. What shocked people was the realization that if a slow forcing like slow change in illumination could cause Ice Ages and inter-Ice Age periods, mediated by CO2, what in the world would happen when we were slamming the climate system with the excess CO2 we are. Actually, yes, drawdown of CO2 due to decreased photosynthesis (geologic burial in carbonates) was one significant factor in Ice Ages starting. But … you are getting historical again. I prefer to remain in the now.
(7) Seasonal variability in the CO2 you refer to is a fraction of the long term trend. We know that anthropogenic CO2 is the source of the increase, small on a percentage basis, because the amount of anthropogenic CO2 in all reservoirs in increasing directly in proportion to the amount of overall increase and the amount people are emitting to the atmosphere.
(8) Your reference cites water vapor as a greenhouse gas, which it is, but it is irrelevant since its atmospheric residence time is so short. It, rather, serves as a conveyor of heat energy from low in atmosphere and oceans to upper atmosphere and back. It does not contribute to radiative warming in the main portion of Earth blackbody emissions.
(9) In fact, you fail to acknowledge there are, as I reported, THREE parts to the increase of energy on Earth surface due to human activity. One is that there is a peak of blackbody emissions where CO2 has a very strong absorption line. The next is the existence of that line. The last is the lasing effect of CO2 with itself. H2O is a player, but due to the placement of its absorption lines with respect to Earth blackbody, not so much. I repeat the link given above: http://pubclimate.ch.mm.st/MODTRAN-Typical-2013-03-30_163239_annotated.png It is not even a significant greenhouse gas, not like others.
@Greg,
Yes, the climate system is non-linear, and non-linear systems can have portions of their state space where very rapid transitions to other states are possible, including the flip to an Ice Age condition. However, given our knowledge, it could just as well flip to a 35 degrees Celsius worldwide condition.
We don’t have constraints upon these kinds of transitions except from paleoclimate evidence and knowledge of the general physics. The Earth’s climate is big enough that it is unlikely it could change really really rapidly. On the other hand, there is paleoclimate evidence that some abrupt changes have occurred on the order of a decade, whether that was indirectly induced, say, by a volcanic event or not.
The scariest thing about your proposition is that, as far as is known, by geologic time scales, NEVER has there been as rapid an increase in CO2 concentration as people have created.
For those who may want to know more about human contributions of CO2 to atmosphere:
http://www-naweb.iaea.org/napc/ih/documents/global_cycle/vol%20II/cht_ii_06.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~forcpgm/OxMetrics2012_Papers/Pretis-OxMetricsSubmission-CO2_Hendry_Pretis_ver2.pdf
Thank you Jan. If you can find the time, I would appreciate your feedback on my blog post: Like anyone, I tend to get enthusiastic about my viewpoints, and could use another opinion.
http://anamecon.blogspot.com/2011/09/ice-age-in-our-future.html
At least check out the diagram. Thanks.
“The challenge is why do the laws which allow us to build working satellites and manufacture semiconductors fail when applied to planetary climate?”
Because there are too many variables associated with climate: at a minimum they include”
Ironically, when I read this exchange, I was on my lunch break from work…work related to inventing a slightly improved bit of adhesive that will hopefully wind up in one of the hundred-odd layers of high-tech materials that make up a modern computer chip.
Sammy, at minimum the relevant variables that go into such an adhesive are at least one polymer made up of at least two monomers, but probably more, along with at least a few formulation additives including but not limited to initiators, photoinitiators, photosensitizers, dissolution inhibitors, anti-oxidants, viscosity modifiers, at least one solvent, tackifying agents, adhesion promoters, cross-linkers, catalysts, fillers, and hardeners. You then face a similar if not greater number of process variables, all in an effort to meet one checklist of criteria while optimizing several more. Oh, and make it cheap and quick and pure and utterly reliable while you are at it.
Did I mention that this is one material for one chip in a device that probably has a dozen chips or similarly complicated parts?
Climate modelling is actually easier than semiconductor manufacture, which is only accomplished using billions upon billions of dollars in R&D.
People focus upon what climate science and climate models cannot predict. Here’s a litany of things they have successfully predicted:
@Greg, I just took the trouble of writing a long response at your blog, only to lose it when it presented me with a sign on challenge. I am not going to take the time to reproduce it in view of such technical Web silliness.
Jan
I keep hoping people will not misunderstand me. I in no way disagree with anything you said up to this point. I certainly do not agree with Sammy.
But the energy considerations you helped inform us about in no way answer all of the questions about global warming. I was hoping you’d get on to the rest of the story, as I think you know better.
I would get into details but there isn’t much point as long as the people you are talking to can’t tell the difference between “scientific caution” and “ignorant denial.”
Chad Brick
thanks for telling us about making a microchip. it makes me feel better about saying, when given the simplified version in “basic physics,” “i don’t understand this.”
but please note that you were comparing making the chip to “modeling” the atmosphere, not to the atmosphere itself. I don’t know whether the atmosphere itself is more complicated than a microchip, but i do know that such leaps of logic lead to useless argument and self deception.
which makes my life kind of hard, because essentially I agree with Mr Galkowski, but his leaps of logic in a good cause drive me crazy. And I am trying not to make any more enemies than i have to.
The thing is Sammy is wrong, wrong, wrong, and reveals himself to be a complete ignoramus in spite of being able to cite a number of talking points that he picks up from the denialist lie factory. It is a shame to answer him in his own style.
I see the same rubbish is still being presented. Yes, I still occasionally visit!
Try to explain this graph: http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
or this one of current conditions: http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/uah/from:1997/plot/uah/from:1997.9/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/detrend:-0.0735/offset:-0.080/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/trend
Note the divergence of temps from CO2.
Only the hangers on still believe and preach global warming/climate change. Even the big names, Hansen and Pachauri { http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri } have been forced to admit the hiatus in warming.
The latest science has centered on ways to explain the hiatus, or support a “Hockey Stick” temperature structure for printing in the new IPCC AR5. Hail Mary attempts to save the AR5. They are failing.
@Coberly,
With respect to comment to me, Nature demands a certain mathematical if not physical sophistication when dealing with its processes. The trouble with explaining these matters in a forum like this or many other popular forums is that much but not all of the audience is ignorant of these skills and, worse, lacks respect and interest for them. I have produced a 4-part presentation aimed at a senior in high school familiar with high school maths and science describing climate disruption from first principles, without paleoclimate evidence. Dan has a draft copy. This is a mini-course, in fact, and it will take about 2 hours to go through. It has audio. It will be led, later in Autumn, by an in-person talk, derived from it, which is necessarily not as comprehensive.
I am finding that people are having difficulty with even the high school version of this talk. That is not the fault of science, nor of education, but of a cultural shift, the same kind that causes major media outlets to eliminate their science journalists. With those intermediaries to explain things to people, there will be a gap between those who understand this stuff, and those who, at some level, either need to learn the maths to understand or take it on authority. It is terrible that people need to take it on authority.
All that said, to someone with a good understanding of college physics, that climate change must happen given the amount of greenhouse gases we dump is inevitable. What happens to that energy and how it achieves equilibrium is a complicated business, but, as in the case of blackbody radiation and semiconductors, it is within our grasp to model. Designers of America’s Cup yachts do it all the time. Why can’t we model better? Frankly, not enough money has been put into it. Scientists recently were able to model retreat of an Antarctic glacier for the first time by simulating it at 200 meter resolution rather than the coarser resolution which predicted it would remain stable. Why? For the first time they were able to use a large multicomputer previously devoted to nuclear weapons research.
With respect to your comment to Chad, I use analogies like semiconductors and America’s Cup yachts because I cannot present the maths here. In addition to my upcoming talk, which necessarily uses such analogies, if you are interested there are plenty of resources online which do this properly.
See https://www.msri.org/general_events/19901/schedules/16868 for a recent presentation that gets into technicalities. Professor Jennifer Francis at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xugAC7XGosM talks about weather impacts of Arctic ice loss. And I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the free course and accompanying book by University of Chicago’s Professor David Archer, GLOBAL WARMING: UNDERSTANDING THE FORECAST, at http://forecast.uchicago.edu/. It’s “Open Climate 101” there.
Beyond that, I’m sorry about “leaps of logic”.
Incidently, I’m sure you did not mean this specifically, but it’s something I address in my prepared talk so I might as well do so here, if only for other readers. You need to understand how Science is done. Science is not case law and it is not rhetorical in the sense of legal argument. While logic is important, logic is insufficient to model many of the systems in the natural world. Similarly, cause and effect as a model is insufficient to model many systems in the natural world. For that we need mathematics and structures like coupled systems of differential equations. There is no other way we know. To see, consider trying to model a simple feedback control system using cause and effect. You’ll see it can’t be properly done.
Once maths are in hand, many difficult things become much easier. See Professor Baez’s treatment of the mathematics of climate at http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/mathematics-and-the-environment-part-6/ and its predecessors, for instance.
Science is not a house of cards where if one card is pulled the entire structure of a hypothesis or theory collapses. It is more like a jigsaw puzzle where patterns are discovered. Sometimes we find a piece that we think fits, but then, after consideration, decide we need another instead. The puzzle that’s been solved is still there, and we still know what we know. It’s just the piece we were looking at doesn’t work. We certainly don’t start over.
Scientific revolutions are very rare, as Thomas Kuhn observed. In fact, a lot of the insights he had were developed by studying the history of the discovery of blackbody radiation, as documented in his book, http://www.amazon.com/Black-Body-Theory-Quantum-Discontinuity-1894-1912/dp/0226458008/
Regarding my “Frankly, not enough money has been put into it”, the entire budget requests for EPA, NOAA, and NSF total 21.5 billion dollars. There are obligations which EPA and NOAA have for enforcement and fisheries maintenance in addition to research. The remaining funds are allocated for research in ALL fields. Oceanic and atmospheric research got $413 million in 2013, all fields, not just climate. National environmental satellite and other observational platforms including those needed to feed the National Weather Service got $2 billion.
If the entire U.S. budget of $3.8 trillion were put in correspondence with a year, the $21.5 for all three agencies would be 2 days. NASA in contrast, as one agency, has a budget a bit smaller than the sum of all three, $18 billion. Obviously the Defense budget is much higher.
With these monies, as I have observed elsewhere, the oceanographic fleet is dwindling, and we have but one Arctic ready (Coast Guard) icebreaker. Oceanographers and marine geophysicists often need to hitch rides on Norwegian or Russian icebreakers to get North.
meanwhile, while we’re watching CO2 rise slowly, methane is blowing out of gas wells everywhere:
Fugitive methane emissions from Los Angeles basin oil and gas drilling operations at 17%!
methane is about 21 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 in the long term, but 72 times as potent over a 20 year horizon.more than 130 times that of carbon dioxide over a period of ten years:
(see methane graph)
according to the World Meteorological Organization’s annual report on 2011 greenhouse gases, atmospheric methane hit a new high of about 1813 parts per billion (ppb) in 2011, which was 259% of the pre-industrial level; since CO2 levels were at 390.9 parts per million (ppm) in 2011, that means methane’s net warming effect was already one-third that of CO2 over 20 years at that time..…
Jan
yes to all that. and i am sure you know what you are talking about. but i grind my teeth a little when someone says “conservation of energy” as if they had explained something. those CO2 molecules could be little red balloons exchanging packages of “energy” back and forth as they rose into the stratosphere where they would all of a sudden throw their packages into space… and energy would be conserved and you still would not have explained how that translates into global warming.
now, the fact is that it does, and i am pretty sure we both know how. and it doesn’t take advanced maths to give a better explanation.
but don’t expect Sammy or Co-Rev to understand a word of it.
@Jan- Thanks for your time.
JBTW- When ever I write a long comment, I always do it on a word processing program, and then copy and paste it into the comment space. I’ve had that bad experience more than once, myself.
@Coberly,
Regarding “conservation of energy”, in fact, a major advance in Physics came with the late 18th century and early 19th, when people realized that certain “conservation principles” would apply no matter the mechanics of the systems therein. So, if you draw a boundary about the Earth, just above the atmosphere, and account for all the energy going in and out across that boundary, add the initial energy in the Earth, you know everything about the energy in the Earth. Conservation of energy serves as an accounting principle in that way, and I don’t believe, based upon your description, that you understand it quite correctly.
Also, although methane is potent in the short term, 30 years really doesn’t matter on this time scale. The real risk with methane is, whether burned or naturally decomposed, it yields a molecule of CO2 when it does.
Se http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/much-ado-about-methane/
Jan
now i am grinding my teeth AND tearing my hair. i understand conservation of energy as well as you do. and you do not explain global warming by citing conservation of energy.
now i will shut up before i say something rude.
@Coberly, why not? This is key. Basically, if you sit on a satellite outside atmosphere, and atmospheric CO2 increases, you see less blackbody radiation in the bands corresponding to Earth surface temperature radiating into space. This is a direct measurement. If you place sensors on Earth’s surface, you see corresponding radiations back at 667 per centimeter (and a few other CO2 emission channels) coming back from atmosphere to surface, also a direct measurement.
What remains is attribution of CO2 to fossil fuel burning, which I have sketched previously.
The science of the explanation is of course conservation of energy. It’s either energy in the form of radiation, energy put into conduction and convection, or warming, or taken up in biological production. You can budget the energy in atmosphere, oceans, Earth surface, and biosphere. Much of the biosphere is plant matter, and its photosynthetic energy gets released.
I have no idea why this would cause you to “grind your teeth and tear your hair” but that’s clearly not anyone’s problem but yours.
Jan
try this:
imagine that i bring into solar orbit two objects, one made entirely of iron, and one made entirely of water. at first they are “cold.” but they receive “heat” from the sun and grow warmer.
please explain what happens. feel free to be as scientific as you wish, including the role of conservation of energy. a reasonable level of detail would suffice, at least at first.
i confess to an old fashioned fondness for cause and effect and what we used to call “logic,” though i fancy i am aware of the limitations and abuses of “logic,” as well as its potential among honest people to help them understand what they are talking about. for example, if you feel it necessary to use “coupled differential equations,” perhaps you can at least explain the “logic” — or “sequence of thoughts” — that leads you to select those particular diff eq’s and that particular system of coupling them.
when i see a rabbit pulled out of a hat i usually (i think) notice that i don’t know how it got there, and am disinclined to believe the professor did it by the sheer power of his thought.
Jan
your last and my last crossed in the mail. i see you are on your way to discussing some of the details. conservation of energy we always have with us. details are harder.
and actually it’s not my problem. if you set yourself up to explain greenhouse warming, you ought to explain it and not resort to bluff and bluster.
please remember, i am actually on your side. i agree that CO2 is “the” driver of “real” global warming. And I even think you know what you are talking about… even if you don’t connect the dots very well.
Coberly, what are you trying to imply?
There is no meaningful evidence that clouds are going to come in and save the day by reflecting extra sunlight away. The overwhelming evidence points to their net effect being minimal as temperature rises, and if anything the net balance leans towards amplification, not damping.
CO2 will trap heat. That will vaporize water. The water will trap more heat. Everything else is noise. You can wish and pray that something in the noise will somehow cause a miraculous interaction that will save us all, but that is no more likely the opposite happening and the earth frying under interaction effects that amplifying the warming.
Pretty much the only hope of for “but this will save us from ourselves” was that the increased water vapor would result in more and more reflective clouds, too a very large degree. The evidence is simply not consistent with this theory. In the meanwhile, there are other factors working against us, such as ice-melt related albedo changes, permafrost melting releasing methane gas, etc. There are multiple factors pointing at warming amplification and pretty much nothing major pointing backwards.
In fact, per your post of May 16, 2013 10:16 am, I have such an illustration, using a large spherical silver sphere, in my climate talk, in space, with little else about. I use it to introduce blackbody radiation to the audience. I begin it having the somewhat artificial temperature of absolute zero, but I have the incoming radiation, from Sun, say, having a spectrum. Radiation is captured, with some cross-section (I don’t talk about cross-sections or material specifics in the talk), and considering albedo and the like, and energizes atoms and molecules on the surface of the sphere. These heat, and then the sphere begins emitting radiation per Stefan-Boltzman blackbody law. Assuming the incoming radiation and albedo are constant, the sphere warms until the outgoing radiation balances the incoming (again conservation of energy), and then the temperature of the sphere remains in equilibrium.
You can do this with Earth, calcuating the temperature at which outgoing radiation power balances incoming power, with standard solar spectrum, pretending there’s no atmosphere, and assuming an ambient albedo of 0.3, and you get a surface temperature of 255 Kelvin. The observed average surface temperature is 288 Kelvin, but that’s not too bad for such a simple model.
If you throw in an atmosphere with a simple greenhouse gas model, using an atmosphere bandpass model with short waves transmitted through at 0.9 and long waves allowed to pass with 0.2, you get an average surface temperature of 286 Kelvin, not quite, but better.
So, in order to have a surface Earth temperature comparable to that measured, you need greenhouse gases, principally CO2, and that’s an important throttle on temperature.
Who’s bluffing and blustering? I don’t know why you take these things so personally, unless you are trying to use ad hominem tactics.
Jan
I think it was you who started with the ad hominem. … which by the way is an incorrect use of a logical term. To use an ad hominem I would have to say “we can’t trust Jan’s climate science because he beats his wife.”
If I talk about bluff and bluster… I am pointing to your use of “conservatioin of energy” “coupled differential equations” even Kuhns essay on scientific paradigm shift, your “it’s your problem,” your “ad hominem,” your “you don’t quite understand it correctly…” and so forth.
your present example of the silver satellite sort of “explains” the radiation energy budget, but does not explain why the silver sphere gets warmer. and i suggested the water sphere because i was hoping you ‘d explain which one gets warmer as well as which one holds more heat. there is a difference between “black body” and “black box.”
i know what albedo is. I don’t know what an ambient albedo is.
the incoming radiation is eventually balanced by outgoing… but while the sphere is warming, they do not balance, yet energy is conserved.
you can use the principle of conservation of energy to alert you to the need to look for missing energy or account for an unexpected excess… you cannot use it to explain the process of warming… your explanation has to maintain “conservation” but just saying “conservation” doesn’t explain anything.
back at the beginning of this you described some details about exchange of radiation between CO2 molecules. you did not explain how that translated into warming. you might ask how wearing a coat on a cold day in bright sunlight makes you warmer. this would come closer to explaining what the CO2 is doing than just waving your arms about conservation of energy. it might be as simple as saying… as opposed to assuming… that the energy that would otherwise be lost directly to space via infrared radiation is captured by… water and rocks and ice… from the re-radiation from CO2 (including by contact)… but even this might take a little more explanation of what happens to that “delayed” energy loss… that is, what exactly is the process by which “capture” of radiation turns into “heat” and how does “heat” turn into temperature. i am sure you know this, but you didn’t say it. and it’s not obvious.
i am fairly sure you will find that water vapor plays an important role in determining the earth’s surface temperature, just not one that denies the danger from increased CO2.
Chad Brick
i do not remember saying… or implying… that clouds would save the day.
In fact I pretty much agree with Galkowsi. What I object to is his “explanation” that doesn’t in fact explain anything.
It is a characteristic of humans in general… perhaps especially college graduates… that if you give them an “explanation” of something they want to believe, especially one with fancy words and magic numbers, they will be oh so grateful, fight the unbelievers to the death, and go to their graves in the smug certainty that they understand everything.
@Coberly, I am not wasting any more time on explaining to you. I have explained this sufficiently to other readers, and provided references to literature for additional work. I am of course speculating, but I think you are using a standard Denier tactic, of trying to make people who have better things to do waste time on details, while you find more and more ways to the audience to make their explanations seem contrived, challenged, and unanswerable. In other words, the Denier tactic indulges in the Continuum Fallacy.
The remainder is addressed to other readers of this forum.
The exercise I just sketched is as basic as it gets and is a simple problem set assignment in geophysics. How radiation gets captured and reexpressed as heat is that photons make parts of molecules like (say) CO2 vibrate, the oxygens in this case, and because they have resonant frequencies, they retransmit at a frequency of resonance. Interested readers should inspect the graphic at http://pubclimate.ch.mm.st/VibrationalModesOfCarbonDioxide.png
I’m sure if and when Coberly does, he’ll find some other reason why that isn’t sufficient.
Water vapor is important, but more as a conveyor of energy and less in its cloud forming effects. Its effect on albedo is small in comparison to the quantities we are talking about,. Its residence time is very short. What I mean by conveying energy is that when water evaporates, it effectively absorbs 2260 Joules per gram to do so. When it condenses, it releases that 2260 Joules per gram. In doing so, it is transporting heat from Earth surface to higher in the atmosphere. That conveyor produces turbulence and if it increases, there is more turbulence. Naturally, the liquid water returns to surface.
Similarly, when ice melts it absorbs 334 Joules per gram. When it freezes, it releases 334 Joules per gram. This is important, because it means that when the Arctic melts, and then re-freezes come late Autumn, it is releasing that heat back into the Arctic environment, primarily atmosphere.
And I welcome all to view the Web-based talk I’ll eventually post at my own blog, http://hypergeometric.wordpress.com. I’m sure Dan will announce when it is available.
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss matters and present questions. Coberly himself gave an opportunity to convey details I wasn’t planning to do, but were useful, such as the temperature calculations at Earth’s surface. It also gave the opportunity to illustrate how Science gets done. If a simple model can explain why Earth temperature is at least 286 Kelvin compared to an observed of 288 Kelvin, that’s pretty good. Any challenger which claims that some other factor is more important needs to work the model into besting the simple one, here, getting more accurately to 288 Kelvin. The calculation requires absolutely no invocation of the specific properties of the materials involved, just general ones like ambient albedo (“average albedo”) and transmissivities of radiations. The determination that water vapor is unimportant at this level of accuracy is objectively determined by saying if it is not needed to explain the observations, its less important. It MAY participate in bringing the accuracy from 286 Kelvin to 288 Kelvin.
I have one more thing to say, but I’ll put it in a separate comment, as this one was devoted to the science of the matter.
So, with this, I’m signing off this discussion. Since the overall Web site is about finance and economics, I should give my personal opinion about what should be done with the problem of people disrupting the climate.
I am a big advocate of financial divestment from fossil fuel companies, including from mutual funds which have an interest in fossil fuel companies. This needn’t be purist: If a mutual fund has, say, 11% of its investments in fossil fuel companies and fossil fuel exploration companies, then sell off 11% of your holdings in that, and put that 11% in a non-fossil fuels investment.
The objective of this is to shun fossil fuel companies and, by such actions, make them pariah investments. I know the divestment will not hurt them directly except to create an expectation among investors that when the day comes — and it will — that the general public really gets the message on climate disruption, those investors will connect the dots and realize that the “proven reserves” of fossil fuel companies should be priced much lower than they are, since they cannot be reasonably used, possibly at zero. At that point, the stocks of the fossil fuel companies will tank, as will the NAVs of the mutual funds and investments of those who rode their backs.
What would I have fossil fuel companies do? I propose three things.
First, I feel each and every fossil fuel company ought to spin off a wholly owned subsidiary with a business plan to pursue purely non-fossil fuel energy sources. These should be handsomely funded from the assets of the fossil fuel company, since they made their profits by selling products which created this problem.
Second, I feel each and every fossil fuel company ought to strongly support a stiff carbon tax (at least $80 per ton) on all sources of carbon coming into the economy, one which returns nearly all the revenue to individual citizens (not corporations) in proportion to the number of people in each household, using the same mechanism that was used to send out stimulus funds during the 2007-2008 financial crisis. This is essential lest the companies spun off wither on the vine by being out-competed by cheaper fossil fuels.
Third, I would remove all direct and indirect subsidies — including those for renewable energy and biofuels and fossil fuels and gasoline — provided by the government in order to allow the market to work properly.
That’s my proposal. Until people do such a thing, while I sympathize for their plight, I really do not have a lot of compassion for people who build homes in harm’s way along the coast, or expect towns to rebuild roads and infrastructure supporting their properties, or farmers who lose crops to drought.
The Science is what it is. People aren’t listening. We’re running out of time. Shrug.
im not sure your proposal will help much, jan, if it only addresses domestic oil & gas companies; i think the US now accounts for something on the order of 17% of global emissions, long having been surpassed by china, who now burns half the world’s coal….unless you can figure a way of shutting down the world’s factories in asia, whatever we domestically will barely make a dent…
well, the science is what it is. the people who don’t want to know, won’t.
the people who know, know. and the people who want to be convinced but don’t want to know too much will have conservation of energy.
as for what to do… i’m not so sure about Rube Goldberg, but I think a carbon tax would be a good start.. phased in slow. And a government capable of leading initiatives to lower carbon consumption. Which we have not got.
Rjs: a dent is a good beginning. So far the Chinese are winning the low-carbon technology “race.” I’m sure they will be able to find low carbon ways for Americans to grow rice for Chinese workers.
coberly, china may be winning the low-carbon technology “race.”, but they’re also winning the high carbon race too…they’re building 3 power stations a week, & 160 of those over the next four years will use coal, just a fraction of the 1200 coal fired plants on the drawing boards worldwide...
not that we’re doing all that better…according to the president’s proposed budget for 2014, electricity net generation in the US from renewable sources was 19.7% of the total in 1960, and down to just 12.7% of the total in 2011.
Rjs
cheers to you too.
i still think we need to start denting.
My 4-part talk on “How people are disrupting the climate” is now available online, beginning at http://hypergeometric.wordpress.com/2013/07/05/how-people-are-disrupting-the-climate-part-1-of-4/
After the science, readers of this blog may be interested in part 4 of 4, where I talk a little policy.
Cheers. Hope you enjoy.
[i]RealClimate[/i] has a set of videos from the 2013 AGU Chapman Conference on Communicating Climate Science available at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/07/agu-chapman-conference-on-climate-science-communication/. Richard Alley heads up the talks with “State of the Climate”.