105 Comments

1. Professor Guvinoff:

Yes, Carbon Dioxyde is useful, and if we develop the large scale biofuels, Carbon Dioxyde will be recognized as an essential feedstock, and will be traded on the commodities market!

By the way, there is also a method of simultaneous CO2 sequestration and solar energy collection. This technology is known as “Agriculture”, and one of its byproducts is known as “food”.

The people who advocate the reduction of CO2 production are occasionally called “fools”, but the usage of the term is somewhat controversial.

Aug 4, 2009 - 11:48 pm 2. RAP:

Those cave men of 150,000 years ago sure were clever to build coal fired power plants.

Aug 4, 2009 - 11:48 pm 3. Pragmatist:

The irony of this is of course completely lost on those like Obambi who worship at the Green NAZI shrine. These idiots are completely blind to all reason and lost in their unshakable belief that they and their theories alone are right and can save the Planet. How ironic therefore that they choose a completely HARMLESS and whats more BENEFICIAL gas like CO2 as the object of their hate and their crackpot theories. They like the rest of the ‘libtards’ who swallow their guff are in reverse morality land where you THINK you are doing right and your SCIENCE is TRUE but in reality you are doing completely the wrong thing and your so called science is bunkum.

Lets just for arguments sake accept the Green NAZI LIE that CO2 causes planet warming well reality and REAL Scientific data tells us that as the Planet has actually been COOLING for over TEN YEARS NOW what we need is MORE CO2 not less . But they still persist in trying to cut it down. Now this is the true sign of the cognitive dissonance of mass hallucination that the Green NAZI’s suffer from.

Aug 5, 2009 - 2:43 am 4. Tom Perkins:

Tell them the truth, and they’ll think it’s hell.

Yours, TDP, ml, msl, & pfpp

Aug 5, 2009 - 3:06 am 5. AL:

Mr. Tipler:

While I appreciate your understanding of the role of carbon dioxide (routinely called “elixir of life” by biologists), you really gotta check your numbers.

Most of plants increase their biosynthesis yield up to 3-5 thousand ppm of CO2, not up to 1000 ppm. Concentration of 1000 ppm CO2 in air is safe and comfortable level for current breed of animals, including humans, hence the referents to 1000 ppm as “ideal”.

Wheat is not C4 plant. Corn, sugar cane, miscanthus, sorgho, etc. are.

Never in Earth history concentration of carbon dioxide dipped below 300 ppm level (luckily to all us). Ice core derived estimations of 280 ppm at pre-industrial time is total BS (Bad Science).

Aug 5, 2009 - 3:12 am 6. fear Obama:

Recent news article:

GREENLAND ICE MELTING
SEA LEVELS COULD RISE 23 FEET.

My granddaughter said:

“Papaw our teacher asked why are we sinking the land mass of our world?”

Trying to overcome her sadness and using humor,
I said:

“Because the people in California need to get away from wild brush fires.”

Turns out I was wrong-

Greenland- Ever wonder why they call it GREENLAND?

The theory is that increased volumes of ‘meltwater’ accelerate the movement of ice to warmer low-lying areas and, consequently, even more intensified glacial melting. Utrecht University researchers, however, insist that this is not how the process actually works in the long term.
GPS measurements-
Since the early 1990s, Utrecht University scientists have tracked the movement of the West Greenland ice sheet using GPS measurements. During warmer weather, the ice appears to move – over the course of a few days – as much as four times faster, because the meltwater acts as lubricant between the ice and the subsoil.
As a result, the ice sheet moves more rapidly to lower and warmer areas. It seems, however, that over time larger channels form in the ice that are able to drain off the increased volumes of melt water.
As a result, the water pressure on the ground once again decreases, as does the tempo of the ice movement. Over the long term, therefore, the feedback mechanism between the glacial melting and ice sheet movement contributes little to rising sea levels.

Why do they call it Greenland?

Anyway..

We need crap and trade so the democrats can put a 4 dollar tax on a gallon of gas since everyone has increased their gas millage 10 miles per gallon with the clunker trade ins.

Good deal for government-

Spend 3 billion for clunkers,
Get 2 trillion in gas tax.

And you thought Nancy Pelosi was a dummy?

She could sell Polar bears ice.

Aug 5, 2009 - 3:35 am 7. Anonymous:

Interesting article. However, I have to wonder about this line: “Plants tried to adapt by evolving a new, more efficient way of using the little remaining CO2.” Really?

So, I’m not supposed to believe God actually took any kind of deliberate action in putting this place together, and I’m not supposed to toy with intelligent design…but I’m supposed to accept that plants tried to adapt? Funny how we constantly find ourselves using such “deliberative” language to describe the process, in a way that goes beyond mere anthropomorphism.

Aug 5, 2009 - 5:38 am 8. ~Paules:

Mr. Tipler,

You are ordered to report to the International Criminal Court at the Hague at your earliest possible convenience. The following charges have already been filed against you: treason, heresy, consumption of animal protein, possession of an SUV, purchase of firearms, and harboring carnal thoughts of a heterosexual nature. The hearing will be held in the Torquemada Lecture Hall. Your cooperation in this matter is deeply appreciated.

Aug 5, 2009 - 5:55 am 9. Kazooskibum:

The Democrat Party is a criminal enterprise.

Aug 5, 2009 - 6:14 am 10. Boris:

How do you guys do it? This article makes even less sense than usual. Congrats, I guess?

Aug 5, 2009 - 6:27 am 11. Bear:

Paul Krugman has Napoleon complex

Aug 5, 2009 - 6:56 am 12. fear Obama:

9. Kazooskibum:

The Democrat Party is a criminal enterprise.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s leaders are Chicago thugs.

Aug 5, 2009 - 7:12 am 13. David W. Lincoln:

Those in favour of the cap & trade system are guilty of only dealing with what they want to support their conclusions which were determined before they got the data.

Those who stand up for traditional science work with more data.

Now, who is being close minded?

Aug 5, 2009 - 7:12 am 14. Mark:

Boris,

It makes some sense to those of us with an open mind who aren’t as susceptible to the marketing and propaganda efforts of the politicians who are willing to take advantage of the self-loathing Gaia worshippers.

Anyway, you present the typical leftist argument in your comment. Since the message in the article doesn’t agree with what you prefer to think is the right answer, you insult the messenger. You can’t argue to the facts or opinions presented here, so all you can do is take a swipe at the author’s intelligence.

Do you want to dispute the material presented here? Do you have any facts? Do you have any theories about climate change, evolution, etc?

If not, then it appears that you’re bluffing and you don’t have any good cards in your hand to play.

Aug 5, 2009 - 7:25 am 15. JED:

What you maybe trying to apply, Frank, is logic against the emotional appeal of going green. Going green, as supported by junk science, seems to have great appeal to urban dwellers who can visibly see their air and other forms of pollution, and then project it onto a global scale which is supported by junk science. The voice of reason is no match for the roar of the mob. CO2 has been declared a toxic gas by politically expedient decree.
One wonders that if one of the minor green house gases, CO2 becomes subject to taxation, then what about the major factors of the greenhouse gases? Can it be that in the future it becomes legislated that water vapor is also on the market for cap and trade? Already in some states rain and humidity are considered federal property. (A drop of rain that lands on federal land is federal property until it reaches the ocean.)

Aug 5, 2009 - 7:33 am 16. Now and Then:

Don’t hold back, folks. I want someone here to step up and say that CO2 levels are not and cannot be dangerous.

Aug 5, 2009 - 7:39 am 17. savage24:

If Obama and his ilk think carbon dioxide is so bad, they could do us all a favor and quit breathing.Enough said.

Aug 5, 2009 - 7:43 am 18. negentropy:

You have to give them credit. They finally figured out a way to tax the air you breathe.

Aug 5, 2009 - 7:50 am 19. Boris:

Mark,

Plants have no “CO2 problem.” True, the preindustrial level of CO2 was lower than it had been in the past, but plants have thrived at that level for millions of years.

But even if you still think plants were in trouble and humans came along just in time to save them, the current perturbation of the carbon cycle will be incredibly short lived in geologic terms. 90+% of the CO2 humans have emitted will be out of the atmosphere in a hundred years after fossil fuel burning stops and 99+% in a few thousand.

At least PJM seems to be coming around to the fact that humans have increased the CO2 level of the atmosphere. This is actually quite a step forward around here.

Aug 5, 2009 - 7:52 am 20. ked5:

Here’s an article that explains how earth’s temps are actually ‘adjusted’. Well researched and documented from a number of different sources, with (get this) *reproducable* results. (unlike all the “climate” modeling of the AGW crowd). Henrik Svensmark (Ph.D. Solar Physicist) is a well-deserved thorn in James Hanson’s side. It’s the SUN, not mere mortals. The sun is triggering the production increase or decrease of the aerosols that are the GHG’s invovled with cloud formation.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/04/a-link-between-the-sun-cosmic-rays-aerosols-and-liquid-water-clouds-appears-to-exist-on-a-global-scale/

I’d also strongly suggest reading his book “The Chilling Stars”. It’s well documented, as well as very readable to the layman. His findings are all in nice harmony with the findings of paleoclimatologists too.

Aug 5, 2009 - 7:52 am 21. Drake:

And yet congress just spent 200 mil on new Gulfstream jets to ferry their carbon spewing arses all over the globe. When they start to act warming is a problem rather than give it politically correct lip service, then I will take it seriously.

Aug 5, 2009 - 7:53 am 22. Now and Then:

17. savage24:
“If Obama and his ilk think carbon dioxide is so bad, they could do us all a favor and quit breathing.Enough said.”

More than enough.

Aug 5, 2009 - 7:58 am 23. billslayer:

Climate Change hysterics is no different than other forms of eschatological cultism. “Environmentalism” as we know it today is then new witch burning fundamentalism. I wonder if anyone has contacted their local ACLU whangers and asked them if they could sue the Gov’t for using their tax dollars to subsidize this religion…just a thought.

Aug 5, 2009 - 8:10 am 24. Benson:

Those of you with an interest in global warming (or climate change, or whatever it’s called these days) might be interested in reading this compact and informative article by Richard S. Lindzen. He’s the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Aug 5, 2009 - 8:15 am 25. Calvin Ball:

“treason against the planet”

Can’t pull the wool over Krugman’s eyes. Ok. I’ll fess up. I’ve been a double agent for the Romulans and the Klingons. I got more quatloos than I know what to do with. You fools! while your earth-god spends the US dollar into oblivion, I have the only currency that will have any value in the coming new era.

You think your earth is so special, ye of small minds!

Aug 5, 2009 - 8:21 am 26. Peter the Bubblehead:

10. Boris wrote:
How do you guys do it? This article makes even less sense than usual.

Peter writes: Try actually reading the words, in the order in which they were printed. It will make more sense to you.

Aug 5, 2009 - 8:23 am 27. Paul of Alexandria:

Boris (19):

But even if you still think plants were in trouble and humans came along just in time to save them, the current perturbation of the carbon cycle will be incredibly short lived in geologic terms. 90+% of the CO2 humans have emitted will be out of the atmosphere in a hundred years after fossil fuel burning stops and 99+% in a few thousand.

You miss the whole point, Boris. CO2 is not the primary greehhouse gas, water vapor is. See the figures Geocraft.com. Total atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) — both man-made and natural– contributes only about 3.62% of the overall greenhouse effect, anthropogenic CO2 is about 3.2% of that. On the whole, humans contribute less than 0.28% of of the total greenhouse effect.

If our atmospheric system is so unstable that a 0.3% change could send it into uncontrollable global warming, then Krakatoa or Mt. St. Helens would have sent us into the next ice age long ago.

Some other pertinent articles:
Can’t See the Signal For the Trees
The Correlation between Sunspots and Temperature.

Finally, please consider the human cost of the proposed CO2 reduction measures. By forbidding the construction of new coal/gas/nuclear power plants (especially if they are promoting electric automobiles) the environmentalists are almost certainly condemning us to a shortage of power, leading to rolling blackouts and the sort of power grid usually associated with third-world dictatorships.

Aug 5, 2009 - 8:25 am 28. Calvin Ball:

But even if you still think plants were in trouble and humans came along just in time to save them, the current perturbation of the carbon cycle will be incredibly short lived in geologic terms. 90+% of the CO2 humans have emitted will be out of the atmosphere in a hundred years after fossil fuel burning stops and 99+% in a few thousand.

I missed the thread on RealClimate about the day after humans. So the consensus of alarmists is that it’s no big deal? The oceans aren’t going to turn to boiling cauldrons of acid, and 90+% of all animal species aren’t going to go extinct?

Where do Gavin and RayPierre say it’s all going to go? And btw, what do they have to say about Dr. Phil and his “confidentiality” bluff? Looks like once again, McIntyre caught one of your team players with his pants down.

So tell me, why doesn’t Dr. Phil come clean?

Aug 5, 2009 - 8:34 am 29. BC:

Boris, how about this: “I’ll believe it’s a crisis, when the people who call it a crisis, act like it’s a crisis.” – Glenn Reynolds
By that he doesn’t mean imperious regulation and taxes, he means personal lifestyle choices.
The Hollywood types who jetset all over the globe, and tell fans to use CFLs. The politicians who want to legislate “green” home inspections, but fly by private jet every weekend…
Final point on that: the congresscritters were vilifying the private jets owned by GM and Ford, for one main reason: they were in DC to ask for tax $$. Well, what do trough does the congress eat out of? Taxes. Total hypocrisy there. We have a colossal debt, and they’re buying private jets. My whole family produces less CO2 in ten years than one of these guys do in one month.

Aug 5, 2009 - 8:36 am 30. Stu:

Most commercial greenhouses try to maintain 1000 ppm of CO2. As a side note the Navy considers 8,000 ppm CO2 tolerable for personnel on a submarine.

Aug 5, 2009 - 8:37 am 31. Trouble:

I was offended by the whole “treason against the planet” meme. One can commit treason only against one’s nation and nationality.

I am an American citizen, but only an inhabitant of the planet. It is no more possible to commit treason against the planet than it is to commit treason against lawn furniture.

Aug 5, 2009 - 8:39 am 32. Charlie:

What’s more, it’s well established, contrary to current fad theory, that CO2 is already causing all the greenhouse effect it can. More CO2 cannot cause more warming as this chart shows: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/7/7c/Atmospheric_Transmission.png

CO2 traps heat (infrared light, photons actually) in three narrow wavelength bands. Two of these overlap with the more prevalent and active greenhouse gas, water vapor. Heat trapping in the CO2 ranges is highly efficient; 99% of the photons are trapped within 100m of the earth’s surface, per satellite sensing. The effect of adding more CO2 would be to cause those photons to be trapped yet closer to the earth, meaningless in global warming terms.

Aug 5, 2009 - 8:46 am 33. Charlie:

#16 Now and Then:

I want someone here to step up and say that CO2 levels are not and cannot be dangerous.

QED

That is precisely what my post at 31 demonstrates.

Aug 5, 2009 - 8:52 am 34. wildman:

Exactly who nominated these morons to be the keepers of the planet? Based on their theory, when the earth was forming and had an atmosphere of 100% CO2 and at pressures greater than today, life could not have developed and we would have had a runaway greenhouse effect. The earth constantly scrubs CO2 out of the atmosphere. The majority winds up in solution in the oceans and gets converted to limestone as time passes. The earth is a self regulating ecosystem and does not need help from the government. The whole falacy of these notwits is: Give us the money and your rights and we can control the climate. I have yet to see a plan for controlling the climate from these yahoo’s. The models they use to predict global change cannot replicate actual conditions when fed with actual data. This is a serious flaw in the math and cannot be used as fact.

Aug 5, 2009 - 8:57 am 35. Delia:

Mother nature does plenty of polluting all on her lonesome.

Species come and go. The cycle of life continues. The earth will go on.

2012 prediction?

The end? Of?

Remember all of the movies about the end of the world before the year 2000? Now movies are coming out about 2012 being the end of the world.

People crack me up.

Aug 5, 2009 - 9:15 am 36. Boris:

Geocraft.com is not a scientific source. And even a cursory inspection should tell you this.

First, they artificially cut the amount of CO2 added by humans by 86%. Humans are responsible for all of the post industrial change in atmospheric CO2.No justification is given for this action.

Also, they come up with 95% for water vapor’s contribution to the greenhouse effect. This is sourced to a “viewpoint” column, which appears (though it is quite unclear and no calcs are shown) to get this number by looking at a specific band of wavelengths, when both CO2 and WV absorb at a variety of wavelengths.

So why use some viewpoint, web published comment for their WV contribution number? Even if they think this number is more accurate, they make no explanation for why it is better than the accepted canonical calculation (Rmanathan and Coakley 1976). They don’t even refer to the literature on radiative transfer in the atmosphere at all.

There are likely more errors, but, really, after finding these huge mistakes, there’s no point in continuing.

Aug 5, 2009 - 9:17 am 37. Maurice:

Benson: That Lindzen article is one of the most devastating condemnations of Crap and Trade lunacy I’ve yet encountered. Thanks for posting.

BTW, see here an excellent analysis of how this junk science became politicized, from the late and brilliant Michael Crichton.
http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html

Aug 5, 2009 - 9:18 am 38. anton:

The AGW scam is the “Rainmaker” scam from the Middle Ages played out with with bad science and a PowerPoint presentation.

When Al Gore lives in a truly carbon neutral hut and gets rid of his mansions and private jets I might start litening.

Aug 5, 2009 - 9:26 am 39. Calvin Ball:

Based on their theory, when the earth was forming and had an atmosphere of 100% CO2 and at pressures greater than today, life could not have developed and we would have had a runaway greenhouse effect.

That’s not far from what got this whole thing started. Back in the ’70s, a nobody from Iowa State was hired at NASA to do some calculations to explain why Venus is as hot as the probes were showing. The answer turned out to be the greenhouse effect. What they didn’t mention was that the concentration (g/cc) of CO2 on Venus is about 250,000 times what it is on Earth, and that there was a significant contribution from sulfuric acid. And it’s also about 2/3 of the distance from the sun, and so gets about double the radiation.

This nobody was so pleased with himself for putting together some equations that were ~70 years old at the time, that he immediately went to work proving that the same thing was earth’s fate.

It’s a very long and involved story, but by 1988, this nobody was testifying to a senate committee. He’s now the head cheese at NASA’s Goddard center at Columbia. He’s built a career upon the belief that there’s a climate call amity upon us, and if that weren’t widely believed, he’d still be a nobody somewhere at NASA, maybe in Houston.

He claims to be a scientist, and (this take chutzpah) a Whistler-blower. But if you look closely, he’s an eco-vangelist. Just like the Swaggerts of the world, he sell salvation from damnation. And also like them, he sins by jetting all over the world (and commuting to Manhattan from Pennsylvania), but is forgiven.

But those evangelicals are bad hypocrites, and Hanson’s a hero. See?

Aug 5, 2009 - 9:31 am 40. Boris:

“it’s well established, contrary to current fad theory, that CO2 is already causing all the greenhouse effect it can.”

No. CO2 will cause more warming. The problem with looking at the graphic you present is that it doesn’t have enough resolution to show the spaces still open. See:

http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/co205124.gif

Aug 5, 2009 - 9:33 am 41. Syl:

This is the same argument I presented in dotearth comments a year ago. You should have heard the scoffing. They see the climate only as what they have known during their own lifetime. Almost as if the earth was formed just a few years prior to the industrial revolution and the low level of CO2 we have currently is the natural state of affairs. No acknowledgment that if CO2 is a climate driver, the low levels of CO2 is what has caused our planet to dip in and out of ice ages for the past 1.6 million years.

The carbon cycle is NOT a zero-sum game. Over our planet’s geological history CO2 levels, except for a couple of excursions, have been continuously dropping.

In the last 130 years or so, CO2 levels have increased about 100 PPM and is currently under 400 PPM. The average amount of water vapor is around 14,400 PPM. RealClimate doesn’t tell you that. Yeah, I’m worried about CO2. Not.

Instead I praise those such as Exxon Mobile, the carbon farmers.

Aug 5, 2009 - 9:34 am 42. Calvin Ball:

Geocraft.com is not a scientific source.

And Realclimate is? Let me clue you in: it’s no secret who registered the URL. A whois will tell you that. You do know what “whois” is, don’t you?

And I won’t even mention when these “volunteer” sysops are “volunteering” their time. Unless you really want to talk about that.

Aug 5, 2009 - 9:36 am 43. AST:

We didn’t create this stuff, you know. Carbon is the key to life! That’s why carbon chemistry is called Organic Chemistry. We didn’t import it to the planet. It was always here, the reason it’s bound up in coal and oil is because they were once living creatures. Carbon is fixed into limestone via phytoplankton who incorporate it into their microscopic plankton. So when they say that we’re headed toward a Venus-like climate, why hasn’t it happened a long time ago when there was three or four times the CO2 in the air than there is now?

Aug 5, 2009 - 9:51 am 44. Greenberry:

You guys don’t get it do you? Allow me to act as your decoder ring.

We need cap and trade as citizens of the World to dampen the excessive use of oil and coal by the US, which has not reduced its use by any significant amount.

The poorer countries (which have been suppressed by the evil, patriarchially directed capitalist system (the ECS for short) can then catch up.

The UN can then have reasonable discussions and give reasonable enlightened directions: it will not be diverted by just economic grievances impelled by unequal and inequitable wealth distribution (due the aforesaid ECS. It will not be deterred in its mission for world peace by countries like the US seeking to preserve unequal wealth.

The UN can then fashion a broad set of Universal Laws to overcome parochial local laws like the the second amendment which insensibly allows priavte ownership of dangerous weapons, the First Amendment that allows hate speech, and bring speech codes and other laws in line with advanced european laws that suppress hate speech and dangerous weapons and maintain dignity for all.(although as soon as there is a national emergency, we’ll declare hat guns are a menace to antional security and get them. Ha, ha).

Equal wealth will be allowed and distributed through cap and trade laws that suppress unfair advantages like those in the US which unfairly industrialized first on the backs of immigrants and its african american citizens.

Population will be controlled as well via still more taxes that inhibit child bearing in the highly developed countries where the carbon footprint of children is higher than in the lesser developed world. (Two Oregon professors have shown that Western babies have a higher carbon footprint than those in developed countries).

You won’t be able to lower taxes even if the republicans get back in power: the party in power now is going to spend so much that high taxes will be needed for years just to pay the interest. Besides, the republicans have been taken over by the flubby, tubby, no-brain types that just want some nice offices, a decent pension at your expense and thats it. They have no fire for battles anymore. Reagan was the last of those, and he barely made it by the Eastern gate-keepers.

Normally, this would be hard to do, but it has been enabled in great degree by lots of people: those who elevate opposition to gay marriage and legalized to the top of their Most Important Issues List, are helpful: it enables us us to move ahead on the other issues. Too bad they don’t see what’s happening. well, actually its good they don’t but its too late for them to matter now anyway.

This is alo enabled by Fat Cat Republicans who predictably sold out the republican party the first chance they got: the last barrier to our goals was a stable economy and the middle class belief that things were being responsibly handled in D.C. But ooops! Guess not!

All those politicians that said they opposed gay marriage have about as much principle as anyone else who can look at you and say that’s fair. So the principled politicians were kept out of office: the lying so and so’s got in. Boy did they amke a mess! Too bad for you!

So now we have control by people who know how to spend, what laws to pass etc.

Too bad in a way: all you hard workers? The people who work part time, do bad work and get fired, the ones who panhandle on the street corners –they’re going to have the same health care as you! That ouhgt to dampen that work ethic a bit! Sorry it has to be a bit unfair, but we won’t get sustainable healthcare if you don’t pay for it–”it” meaning for everyone else.

And yes this will all be costly: but that ought to end those big military budgets and US unilateralism! Like in Britain, the enthusiasm for big military budgets will fade when the contest is between those and health care.

Ho hum. Get it now?

Aug 5, 2009 - 9:55 am 45. Boris:

“And it’s also about 2/3 of the distance from the sun, and so gets about double the radiation.”

You need to account for albedo as well. Venus’ albedo is twice that of earth, so they both receive the about the same amount of solar energy. Venus’s surface temp is 400degC however.

Aug 5, 2009 - 9:56 am 46. cubanbob:

I trust Exxon far more than any environmental group. Their motives are simple to understand and relatively benign. All they want to do is make money. The new age green communists motives are equally clear: control over your life and over the economy. I’ll take my chances with Exxon any day of the week.

Aug 5, 2009 - 10:07 am 47. Pee Wee Herman, Community Organizer:

Venus’s albedo. Hmm… Makes sense. Her albedo is why she’s so hot.

Excuse me while I go relieve myself.

Aug 5, 2009 - 10:10 am 48. Syl:

Boris

“Venus’s surface temp is 400degC however.”

Oh please. The pressure at the surface is extremely high. Measure the temperature at the level of the Venus atmosphere that matches that at the earth’s surface and you’ll see a different story.

Aug 5, 2009 - 10:15 am 49. Wildman:

Regarding Venus as a model of global warming:
Its atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of earth. The ability of a gas to hold heat is in direct relation to its pressure.
Venus is completely covered by clouds of sulfur dioxide which blocks any radiation from reaching the surface. Sulfur dioxide does not contribute to warming. it is a blocking agent for infared radiation and promotes global cooling.
It rains sulfuric acid on venus. last time i checked, an acid reaction with anything creates heat as a byproduct.
Venus is the most volcanic planet in the solar system. its surface is constantly being remade.

Aug 5, 2009 - 10:22 am 50. Boris:

“The pressure at the surface is extremely high. Measure the temperature at the level of the Venus atmosphere that matches that at the earth’s surface and you’ll see a different story.”

You think the pressure causes warming? Oh, boy. I bet those deep oceans are positively sizzling.

Aug 5, 2009 - 10:26 am 51. bobby b:

” . . . leading to rolling blackouts and the sort of power grid usually associated with third-world dictatorships.”
– - –

And California. Don’t forget California.

Aug 5, 2009 - 10:30 am 52. Calvin Ball:

Umm….wildman….just because Boris is an idiot doesn’t make any of what you just said right. Don’t try to compete with the warmists with junk science. Please.

H2SO4 is most certainly an extremely potent greenhouse gas, and the greenhouse effect is pretty much beyond doubt. It may or may not govern the troposphere, but it, by itself, is not seriously disputed. It’s other things (feedback) that are in dispute.

I could go on, but this is beyond the scope of a blog post.

Aug 5, 2009 - 10:38 am 53. Ruebacca:

CIRSCO is the name of the enzyme that fixes carbon dioxide. As enzymes go it is not very efficient. At elevated temps as in the tropics at noon and low CO2 leavals it stops working.

A chemical reactions rate is a function of pressure, temperature-energy and concentration of reagents. C4 plants evolved tissue to concentrate C02 and make CIRSCO work more efficantly. Most pleople don’t relise grasses are very new. Only in the last 2-3 million years have graslands been seen on earth. This is what killed off the Mamoths.

But these facts wont make Al Gore rich selling carbon credits so whats the point.

Aug 5, 2009 - 10:46 am 54. visionar:

It is the Sun’s variable output and Earth’s Orbit and Tilt dynamics that drives climate change. We detect planets around distant stars by the wobble imparted upon them by their gas giant planets.

http://www.schulphysik.de/klima/landscheidt/iceage.htm

The Earth goes into Ice Ages every 100,000 years or so do to its orbital and tilt variances.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Paleoclimatology_Evidence/

The Sun goes through regular solar cycles that have true impact on climate.

http://solarcycle24.com/

With Solar Sun Spots at a near 100 year minimum, it is predicted that a major cooling trend is coming for the next 30 to 170 years. CO2 trails global warming trends by 600 to 800 years. The world has been cooling for the past ten years.

http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/global_warming_ice_age/2008/04/24/90591.html

Let’s bring back science into a give an take debate.

Aug 5, 2009 - 10:55 am 55. Korla Pundit:

>You think the pressure causes warming? Oh, boy. I bet those deep oceans are positively sizzling.

You think pressure doesn’t cause warming?

Really?!

Now I see where this global warm… I mean Climate Change nonsense is coming from. Ignorance.

Aug 5, 2009 - 11:04 am 56. Swobama:

This writer has absolutely no credibility since he is only a physicist. There was also something about “Christianity” in his biography that would cast all his writings into doubt. We must only listen to experts on climatological matters like Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, and of course, our exalted global commander-in-chief, Zed the Magnificent.

Aug 5, 2009 - 11:27 am 57. anton:

What I want is for someone to explain to me why buying carbon credits makes everything OK. I’m rich, so I go out and buy some carbon credits from some poor slob in a Third-World country so that I can run my AC full blast all summer (hat-tip to Al Gore for that example)while he fries. How does this help avert AGW??? I pay somebody to live in darkness so I can give like a king; sounds very elitist to me. What is the the poor slob supposed to do with the money? Buy a copy of “An Inconvienient Truth”?

Moving from the theological (I consider AGW to be a cult) to the practical.

Would somebody please explain how all this fossil fuel came into existance if life is not sustainable at higher carbon levels…..I mean it’s composed of dead stuff, right? So before it was dead it was alive. And being carbon-based life forms they obtained their carbon from the atmosphere. The AGW nuts would have us believe that at high CO2 levels the world would turn into a scorched wasteland, but the fossil record clearly shows it was a verdant paradise of life. How are we supposed to reconcile this?

Aug 5, 2009 - 11:28 am 58. JorgXMcKie:

Paul of Alexandria:

“By forbidding the construction of new coal/gas/nuclear power plants (especially if they are promoting electric automobiles) the environmentalists are almost certainly condemning us to a shortage of power, leading to rolling blackouts and the sort of power grid usually associated with third-world dictatorships.”

What evidence do you have that leads you to think Boris and the other Warmarmalists see that as bad thing?

Aug 5, 2009 - 11:28 am 59. Charlie:

#40 Boris opined:

“No. CO2 will cause more warming.”

And then he showed a chart as “proof” that was identical to a small subset of the chart I provided (his was only the right-hand band of CO2 absorption). Reading your multiple posts, you seem to be arguing in bad faith, Boris, старый друг.

Aug 5, 2009 - 11:29 am 60. Peter the Bubblehead:

30. Stu:
As a side note the Navy considers 8,000 ppm CO2 tolerable for personnel on a submarine.

Peter adds: Though it has been known to cause headaches and drowsyness. (As one who used to do the atmosphere monitoring, I know. CAMS Mk I!)

Aug 5, 2009 - 11:36 am 61. Charlie:

Ruebacca,

Grasses are new, but not that new. They go back 55 my with forerunners going back 10 my before that. And the mammoths were cool with grasslands; they got along fine.

Aug 5, 2009 - 11:44 am 62. Chaz706:

Professor Guvinoff:

Are you actually a professor or someone smarter?

I posited your thoughts to a professor friend of mine and he thought you were hilarious.

Aug 5, 2009 - 11:44 am 63. Lili von Shtupp:

Boris, Boris, Boris…..I guess your vast scientific knowledge has a few, shall we say, deficiencies? Pressure most certainly CAN increase temperature, as anyone who is familiar with the Ideal Gas Law can tell you (ie. a first year chemistry student).

PV = nRT, where P represents pressure, V represents volume, n represents the number of moles of a given gas, R represents a constant (0.0821, if memory serves me correctly), and T represents temperature in kelvins.

Boris, are you also in favor of banning dihydrogen monoxide?

Aug 5, 2009 - 12:23 pm 64. lefroy:

There’s hope

http://www.climatedepot.com/a/2282/Consensus-Takes-Another-Hit-More-than-60-German-Scientists-Dissent-Over-Global-Warming-Claims-Call-Climate-Fears-Pseudo-Religion-Urge-Chancellor-to-reconsider-views

Aug 5, 2009 - 12:34 pm 65. Syl:

visionar

Orbital changes have occurred throughout our planet’s history but may not be sufficient on their own to cause glaciations. Positions of continents, the closing of Panama, and other changes that affect oceanic circulation are contributing factors as well.

The chicken over the past 1.6 million years is cooler temperatures and frequent glaciations, the egg is the lowest levels of CO2 our planet has seen.

Aug 5, 2009 - 12:38 pm 66. submandave:

“forbidding the construction of new coal/gas/nuclear power plants”

Any bill that says its purpose is to curb CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously placing additional restrictions on construction/operation of nuclear power plants is simply a ruse.

Aug 5, 2009 - 1:02 pm 67. steveg:

I have a feeling this is going to eventually die out like the global cooling hysteria of the 70’s. And after hundreds of billions having been spent on this hoax, the worldwide media will finally sigh, ‘Never Mind’.

Aug 5, 2009 - 1:16 pm 68. visionar:

65. Sly

All have impacts upon the world, we go in and out of ice ages regardless of CO2 and there is a heavy interplay on the Earth’s tilt and orbit variables that line up with each Ice Age. My question to the AGW crowd is if CO2 is bad, why not nuclear power? More radiation is released in coal plants than in the entire Nuclear power industry.

Aug 5, 2009 - 1:17 pm 69. ked5:

35. Delia:

Mother nature does plenty of polluting all on her lonesome.

Species come and go. The cycle of life continues. The earth will go on.

~~~~~

Have you noticed how many liberals support the theory of evolution ascribed to Darwin? Have you also noticed how many of those liberal true belivers are AFRAID of things evolving? to the point they will do everything in their power to stop change? To “freeze” nature just the way it is? How anything “different” is bad?

Makes you really appreciate Tom Clancy’s fantasy ending for Rainbow Six. stick the whacko environmentalists in the jungle with absolutely NOTHING (not even a shred of clothing), and tells them to go make friends with the wildlife they love so much.

Aug 5, 2009 - 1:31 pm 70. Calvin Ball:

What I want is for someone to explain to me why buying carbon credits makes everything OK.

You blockhead! How do you expect DuPont to get paid for doing what they were going to do anyway if you don’t have a “market” for carbon derivatives?

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_13/b4027057.htm

Btw, if selling financial derivatives led to the housing disaster, is it just me, or does this interest that the left has now in creating a huge new derivative market seem…well…a bit disingenuous?

Aug 5, 2009 - 1:56 pm 71. Calvin Ball:

Boris, are you also in favor of banning dihydrogen monoxide?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw

OMG! Urination! She said urination!

Aug 5, 2009 - 2:01 pm 72. Syl:

visionar

“All have impacts upon the world, we go in and out of ice ages regardless of CO2 and there is a heavy interplay on the Earth’s tilt and orbit variables that line up with each Ice Age.”

Just two points. There are limits to how far back we can calculate what the orbit/tilt parameters were and thus can only vouch for the recent glaciations.

Kurschner et al used the stomatal method to reconstruct CO2 and came to the conclusion that 500 PPM was the threshold for triggering ice sheet growth no matter the other factors.

That’s one reason I say ‘500 PPM or bust!’

“My question to the AGW crowd is if CO2 is bad, why not nuclear power?”

I totally and absolutely agree!

Aug 5, 2009 - 2:14 pm 73. Boris:

“And then he showed a chart as “proof” that was identical to a small subset of the chart I provided (his was only the right-hand band of CO2 absorption).”

Yes, it was a small subset, that’s what happens when you increase resolution. That chart also shows the absorption change from 1xCo2 to 2xCO2 and 4xCo2. Clearly CO2 is not saturated.

Aug 5, 2009 - 2:29 pm 74. Visionar:

Syl:

We are on the same planet!! If you have time you will find this a great read. Well worth the time!!

http://www.schulphysik.de/klima/landscheidt/iceage.htm

Aug 5, 2009 - 2:48 pm 75. Boris:

“Boris, Boris, Boris…..I guess your vast scientific knowledge has a few, shall we say, deficiencies?”

Don’t be stupid. Of course pressure can increase temperature, but pressure is not why the temp of Venus’ surface is over 400degC. I’m just going to ignore any more posts that deny the greenhouse effect if that’s okay with you.

Aug 5, 2009 - 2:48 pm 76. Calvin Ball:

I hate to come to Boris’ defense, but I can’t let some of this stuff stand. The pressure, by itself, doesn’t mean diddly for the temperature. The ocean example is a bad example, because he’s comparing liquids and gasses, but the V in the IGL will adjust to make it all come out right in a gas. It does matter in that the adiabatic lapse rate causes it to cool as you go higher (lower pressure) up to the top of the troposphere.

But the important point on Venus is that with 90 atm of pressure, there’s 90 times as much greenhouse gas. That makes a huge difference in the magnitude of the greenhouse heat retention. But there’s an enormous difference between the Venusian atmosphere and the earth’s troposphere: earth has a condensing liquid that can move heat around the greenhouse blanket.

This condensing troposphere causes other things that are still controversial, and not well modeled.

Aug 5, 2009 - 2:49 pm 77. Anonymous:

“And Realclimate is? Let me clue you in: it’s no secret who registered the URL. A whois will tell you that. You do know what “whois” is, don’t you?”

Let’s see, Calvin calls me an idiot and responds to my specific criticisms of the geocraft.com site with irrelevancies. No surprise here.

Aug 5, 2009 - 3:04 pm 78. Charlie:

#75 Boris,

A quick glance at the chart I provided (#32) will show you that of the thermal heat exiting our atmosphere only a miniscule amount is in the range that can possibly be trapped by CO2. That blue band at the top of the chart is the only thermal heat left than can possibly be absorbed to cause global warming, and almost none of it is in a range that can be affected by CO2.

Aug 5, 2009 - 3:39 pm 79. Gary:

This same idea was explored previously, somewhat tongue in cheek, at this website:

http://www.freethedinosaurs.org

Now go free some dinosaurs!

Aug 5, 2009 - 5:28 pm 80. Calvin Ball:

No, Charlie. You got that completely backward. The blue part is the part that was already absorbed. But it can be re-emitted and re-absorbed.

Here’s what really happens:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect

Which means that every time you double a concentration, you pick up an extra x degrees, pretty much indefinitely. Note that he blew it badly on the coefficient. It’s actually much lower; ~1 degree C/doubling. Because of this, Hansen et. el. invented the magical mystery “feedback” effect to make it scary. The theoretical basis for feedback is pretty thin, they just say it’s there, so they can get that sensitivity number back up into scary territory.

FWIW, he was more famous for the kinetic rate equation also called the Arrhenius equation, which many deride as the “erroneous” equation, and also was a leading supporter of Nazi eugenics. The latter fact would make him fit perfectly with present-day environmentalists.

Aug 5, 2009 - 5:29 pm 81. Boris:

May I suggest more than quick glances at one chart? Here’s an explanation from the American Institute of Physics website:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm#molecule

“Neither Kaplan nor anyone else of the time was thinking clearly enough about the greenhouse effect to point out that it will operate regardless of the details of the absorption. The trick, again, was to follow how the radiation passed up layer by layer. Consider a layer of the atmosphere so high and thin that heat radiation from lower down would slip through. Add more gas, and the layer would absorb some of the rays. Therefore the place from which heat energy finally left the Earth would shift to a higher layer. That would be a colder layer, unable to radiate heat so efficiently. The imbalance would cause all the lower levels to get warmer, until the high levels became hot enough to radiate as much energy back out as the planet received. (For additional explanation of the “greenhouse effect,” follow the link at right to the essay on Simple Models.) Adding carbon dioxide will make for a stronger greenhouse effect regardless of saturation in the lower atmosphere.

(And actually, there is no saturation. The primitive infrared techniques of the laboratory measurements made at the turn of the century had given a misleading result. Studies from the 1940s on have shown that there is not nearly enough CO2 in the atmosphere to block most of the infrared radiation in the bands of the spectrum where the gas absorbs it. That’s even the case for water vapor in deserts where the air is extremely dry.)”

Aug 5, 2009 - 6:09 pm 82. newscaper:

I sincerely hope that my fellow conservatives do NOT assume that just because AGW is junk science, that that means the theory of evolution is too.

Young Earth Creationism, in particular, is intellectual suicide of the same order as believing the Earth is flat.

The knowledge of atomic physics which goes into radioactivity-based dating techniques is the same as that which which underlies the technologies of nuclear power and semiconductor electronics.

P.S. The view that evolution (perhaps with a nudge of the dice here and there) is how God chose to develop life is perfectly legit.

Aug 5, 2009 - 8:57 pm 83. Charlie:

Calvin #80 & Boris #81,

Sorry, Calvin, you have it wrong from the plain legends in the chart. The blue represents unabsorbed thermal heat, the heat leaving our atmosphere, which, if trapped, could produce warming.

Since charts don’t do it for you, try this. This article, in a peer-reviewed journal, describes modeling more than 80 percent of climate change without recourse to greenhouse gases at all. Models based on greenhouse gases haven’t predicted, well, anything accurately.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011637.shtml

Aug 5, 2009 - 9:13 pm 84. Pragmatist:

THE SUN IS BEHIND GLOBAL WARMING

The consensus view is that man-made CO2 is causing the lion’s share of global warming. But natural changes in the Sun’s power may be as much to blame.

There is good evidence that the cause of at least some of global warming is an increase in the intensity of the Sun’s heat. Indeed, global temperatures appear to be more closely related to solar activity, which is constantly changing, than to levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

After all, the Earth warmed up more during medieval times than during the 20th century, and it cooled down considerably during the Little Ice Age of the 16th and 17th centuries – without any manmade event that would have affected CO2 output.

Temperatures also dipped between 1940 and 1975 – a period of intense industrial activity.

Meanwhile, data from between 1880 and 2000 shows a close correlation between increased solar activity and higher average temperatures on Earth. So couldn’t it be that the Sun is responsible for heating us up after all?

THE MALDIVES AREN’T SINKING

It has become a key part of the climate change mantra that some of the world’s most beautiful islands are at risk of sinking below the waves, thanks to sea level rises caused by global warming.

But so confident are property owners in the Maldives that the sea is receding, they are building a flurry of lavish seafront hotels. Meanwhile, Tuvalu in the Pacific – also cited as being most at risk – has actually seen a fall in sea levels.
Maldives

The Maldives aren’t sinking: Property owners continue to build lavish hotels

CO2 LEVELS ARE NOT AT UNPRECEDENTED HIGHS

Today, about 0.038 per cent of the atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide, the main man-made climate change gas. This figure has certainly risen over the past 200 years or so – the ‘pre-industrial’ level of CO2 was closer to 0.02 per cent.

But what is often ignored is that in the Earth’s past, carbon dioxide levels have often been as much as ten times higher than they are today.

For example, during the Cretaceous era, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, CO2 levels were five to ten times what they are today. The planet was certainly warmer then, but life thrived and there was no runaway greenhouse catastrophe of the sort that the doom-mongers insist we face if we let levels rise further. They also, it should be noted, came down again naturally.

POLAR BEARS ARE NOT DYING OUT…

The doom-mongers love showing us images of polar bears in peril, floating on isolated ice rafts. But most populations are doing very well, thank you. Despite the (limited) melting seen in the Arctic ice cap over the past 50 years, polar bear numbers have more than doubled since 1950 – and that’s despite the fact that 50 to 100 bears are now shot every year.

Indeed, polar bears aren’t bothered by the odd stretch of open water – they are very capable swimmers.

In fact, it is not even clear that the Arctic ice is melting. The summer of 2008 was the coldest in Anchorage, Alaska, for 40 years.

…NOR ARE THE PENGUINS

And it’s a similar story at the South Pole. Although some Antarctic penguin colonies, especially those near human bases, have decreased in size, overall, penguin numbers are steady or increasing.
Gentoo penguins

Penguins are not dying out: Overall numbers are steady or increasing

THE GULF STREAM IS NOT UNDER THREAT

Some scientists have warned that if the Arctic ice cap melts, the resulting flood of cold water in the Atlantic could push the Gulf Stream – the warm current which keeps Britain relatively balmy – further south. If this happens, they have made dire predictions that northern Europe could become a frozen wasteland.

Unfortunately for them, there is no evidence to support this view. In fact, the Gulf Stream is as strong as ever – and is getting warmer, not colder. Nor is it changing direction.

GLOBAL WARMING MIGHT EVEN BE GOOD FOR US

A warmer climate and an increase in CO2 will be a boon for farming and agriculture in general. One can even envisage returning to the warmer landscape of Roman times, when vineyards were common in England.

With less severe winters, it will also be possible to grow many crops that, because they are susceptible to the occasional frost, cannot be grown at present.

THERE ARE FEW ‘BAD’ FOODS
Young woman eating hamburger

No ‘bad’ foods: Hamburgers provide good nutritional value

Received wisdom, repeated by many doctors and public health professionals, says we can remain fit and avoid disease by cutting out certain ‘bad foods’ from our diets.

Indeed, it is variously claimed that 35-50 per cent of all cancers are caused by the food we eat.

But while they are despised by the culinary elite, readily available hamburgers, sausages and pizzas have provided good nutritional value for many low-income families, who in previous days could afford only low-protein, high-carbohydrate, high-fat meals such as bread and dripping, and chip butties.

In fact, fears about hamburgers and sausages in Britain are especially irrational. Most countries have a national dish based on minced or processed meat – and none is suffering from an epidemic of junk food-inspired illness.

For example, meatballs are used in many guises in the Middle East, chopped meat on a bed of onions is a national dish in the Balkans, and mince is also used in countless Italian sauces.

The terrines and pâtés of France and Belgium also contain processed chopped meat. Obesity is not caused by these foods, but by those who choose to gorge on them.

Studies claiming to show the negative impact of a ‘junk food’ diet usually have little scientific validity.

ORGANIC FOOD IS NO BETTER FOR YOU

A widespread belief has emerged that organic foods are better for you than others because they do not contain ‘chemicals’ used in large- scale conventional farming.

This dogma is wrong. All plant nutriment comes from the air, in the form of CO2, and from water-soluble chemicals in the soil.

The composition of these chemicals is the same, whether they come from a plastic bag or from ‘natural’ manure or compost. They are certainly the same by the time they are on your plate.

THERE’S NO NEED TO CUT BACK ON SALT

Salt is an essential food. Without it, we would die. Land-based mammals-such as humans control their body temperature by sweating and panting.

Sweating is impossible without sufficient salt. In fact, strenuous exercise in a person depleted of salt causes overheating and death.

The Government has caved in to the anti-salt zealots in its advice to reduce salt intake. However, there is, in fact, very little, if any, truly scientific evidence that cutting back on it will do you any good.

TURKEY TWIZZLERS ARE FINE

The much-disparaged Turkey Twizzler, bugbear of TV chef Jamie Oliver, is made of recovered turkey meat and provides the same amino acids as normal turkey breast.

Corned beef, now an unfashionable meat product, is also no less nutritious than any other beef, although, like Turkey Twizzlers, it is also a reclaimed meat product.
Bernard Matthews’ Turkey Twizzlers frozen foods.

Turkey Twizzlers are fine: The recovered meat provides the same amino acids as regular turkey breast meat

WE DON’T KNOW WHAT CAUSES HEART DISEASE

The medical (and social) consensus is that cardiovascular disease is caused by being overweight, by having a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet and by unhealthy activities such as smoking.

While being morbidly obese, eating nothing but lard and smoking 60 a day will probably lead to an early grave, there is nevertheless a lot of confusion about the precise link between lifestyle and this, the biggest killer of all.

Many people with high cholesterol levels in their blood do not get heart disease. Many people with very low levels do.

The very low levels of heart disease recorded in some populations, notably the Japanese, may have more to do with cultural variation and prejudice than with medical reality (in many societies, what are, in fact, heart attacks are often listed on death certificates as ’strokes’).

Furthermore, some of the lowest levels of cholesterol and arterial sclerosis are to be found in populations such as the Inuit and Siberian hunter-gatherers, who live on a diet which is incredibly high in saturated fat.

TAKE HEALTH ADVICE WITH A PINCH OF SALT

Everything seems to be bad for you these days, but there is also plenty of scientific evidence to the contrary.

Eggs seldom contain salmonella, even if some chickens do. Cholesterol in the diet does not cause fatty deposits in your arteries. There is probably little difference between the effect of saturated and unsaturated fats.

In those with normal kidney function, salt does not cause high blood pressure. Those with a body-mass index of between 25 and 32 live as long as or longer than those with a lower BMI. And avoiding the sun causes vitamin D deficiency; a suntan is nature’s natural sun block, although sunburn is to be avoided.

MERCURY FILLINGS ARE PROBABLY HARMLESS

Anti-mercury campaigners believe that the mercury used in dental fillings will make you ill (mercury is a potent poison).

But a single amalgam filling provides just 0.03 micrograms/day of mercury, which is almost 3,000 times less than the safety level permitted for persons with occupational exposure to mercury, and is too small to be responsible for any symptoms.

Aug 6, 2009 - 3:51 am 85. Calvin Ball:

Charlie, you’re comparing apples and oranges. As I had indicated, that spectral stuff, by itself, doesn’t mean anything. You either have to do an analytical integration of a dumbed-down model of absorption like Arrhenius did, or you have to use detailed spectral data from MODTRAN and numerically integrate. When you do that, you get a result that can’t be directly compared to anything. What you can say is that the pre-feedback warming is on the order of that result. When you do, you get a logarithmic dependence very close to what Arrhenius got, but you get a better coefficient. But that result, by itself, doesn’t mean much of anything.

However, your link is something else completely. It’s got nothing to do with radiation. I’m not going to go there.

Aug 6, 2009 - 8:19 am 86. Charlie:

Sorry, Calvin, you’re talking to long-time science editor who recognizes an attempt at bafflegab when he sees it.

Aug 6, 2009 - 9:55 am 87. lefroy:

Download the “Skeptic’s Handbook” from the link on the homepage at this site. A primer on how to deal with anxious, hysterical AGW bullies who know, deep down, that the jig’s up:

http://www.auscsc.org.au/

Aug 6, 2009 - 4:48 pm 88. Lili von Shtupp:

But the important point on Venus is that with 90 atm of pressure, there’s 90 times as much greenhouse gas.

You *are* kidding, right, Calvin? That’s like saying if I have 1 mole of nitrogen in a tank, and I up the pressure to 10 atmospheres, I magically have 10 moles of nitrogen in the same tank.

Somehow….I doubt it. Please prove to me how that can be possible, since it flies in the face of pretty much everything I ever learned.

And BTW, Boris….didn’t state one way or the other my position on AGW. I just stated my point on basic scientific illiteracy. I can’t help it if it hit a bit close to home for you.

Aug 6, 2009 - 5:34 pm 89. auldzalt:

My apologies for quibbling to PRAGMATIST but “Green Nazi” is redundant. Die Nazional Socialistsche Arbeiter Partei started the modern green movement. A.Hitler was a vegetarian as were many of the party’s civilian leadership. The Nazi party pushed; smoking bans, vegetarianism, and a party based national religion that was uber Gaiist. Anti-smoking, anti-meat, and anti-technology folks can and should be called Nazis.

Aug 6, 2009 - 6:16 pm 90. Boris:

“You *are* kidding, right, Calvin?”

No he’s not kidding. The pressure at the surface is dependent on the column of atmosphere above it. The pressure is high at Venus’ surface because there’s a hell of a lot more atmosphere. (Venus’ atmosphere is 93 times more massive than Earth’s.)

Aug 6, 2009 - 7:59 pm 91. Calvin Ball:

Sorry, Charlie. You don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground. You want to talk science, or you want to bluff like one of these troll?

Aug 6, 2009 - 8:33 pm 92. Calvin Ball:

Lili – you just made the mistake of assuming constant specific volume, which is not the case in a tank. If you have one mole in a tank, and you compress it to 10 times the pressure, you have one mole in 1/10 the space (assuming ideal gas behavior). You got the part right about 90 times the density. Now you have to adjust for the fact that Venus is almost 100% CO2 instead 390/1,000,000. This gives you 1,000,000/390*90 = about 230,000.

But the problem that I was having is that you’re talking about taking a gas from one pressure and raising it to another. Then the temperature does go up. Once it’s at that pressure for a while (such as on the surface of a planet), the temperature is determined by other things.

And in fact, if a volume of atmosphere rises, and the pressure drops, it does cool. That’s why there’s snow in the mountains. It’s called adiabatic lapse. As the air circulates upward and downward, the temperature rises and falls with it.

Aug 6, 2009 - 8:46 pm 93. Brian G Valentine:

Good man, Frank.

It’s about time people start telling it like it is around here.

Aug 6, 2009 - 10:27 pm 94. Mission Impossible:

In some ways, I applaud the sense of urgency that accompanies the perceived need to do something to affect climate change. The need is there in more ways than you presently know. But the means could be another matter entirely. The Akkadian Empire under Sargon (2,300-2,200 BC), mankind’s first empire ever, succumbed to climate change that happened rather suddenly. A 300 year long period of drought struck this nascent civilization and toppled what turned out to be only a 100 year empire. The Old Kingdom of Egypt and the Harappans of the Indus Valley suffered a similar fate 4,200 years ago, succumbing to an abrupt drought that ended those civilizations, with Egyptians “forced to commit unheard of atrocities such as eating their own children and violating the sacred sanctity of their own dead (Fekri Hassan, 2001)”. The Mayans had pretty much the same luck with three periods of extreme drought at 810, 860 and 910 AD. Sadly just two years after the last drought which saw 95% of the Mayan population gone, wet years returned to the Yucatan. A reconstruction from fossil algae in sediments from Drought Lake in North Dakota of the past 2000 years found that dry conditions were far and away the rule in the High Plains, with the Dust Bowl conditions of the 1930’s one of the lesser dry spikes found in the record. Half of the warming that brought us out of the last ice age (the Wisconsin) occurred in less than a decade.

There were 24 Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillations between this interglacial, the Holocene, the interglacial in which all of human civilization has occurred, and the last one, the Eemian, in which the first fossils of Homo sapiens are to be found. D-O oscillations average 1,500 years, and have the same characteristic sawtooth temperature shape that the major ice-age/interglacials do, a sudden, dramatic, reliable, and seemingly unavoidable rise of between 8-10C on average, taking from only a few years to mere decades then a shaky period of warmth (less than interglacial warmth), followed by a steep descent back into ice age conditions. Each D-O oscillation is slightly colder than the previous one through about seven oscillations; then there is an especially long, cold interval, followed by an especially large, abrupt warming up to 16C. During the latter parts of the especially cold intervals, armadas of icebergs are rafted across the North Atlantic (Heinrich events) their passage recorded reliably by the deep ocean sediment cores which capture the telltale signature of these events in dropstones and detritus melted out of them. We know with absolute certainty that these events happen, with evidence of D-O oscillations extending back some 680 million years. We do not know yet precisely what causes them. What we do know is that the past 6 interglacials (dating back to the Mid Pleistocene Transition) have lasted roughly half of a precessional cycle, or 11,500 years, which just happens to be the current age of the Holocene. What we know is that N65 latitude insolation values are very close now to what they were at the close of the Eemian. What we also know is that GHGs seem to have played only a spectator role to all of these natural transitions, with temperature changes leading GHG concentrations by a considerable margin of time (800-1,300 years). What we do not know is if anthropogenic sourced GHGs can trigger a climate change event. What we do know is that earth’s climate is bimodal, cold (90%) and warm (10%), with the transition times (such as at the end of an interglacial) well known from proxy records to be quite sensitive to forcings we do not yet understand, and the forcings we have identified seemingly incapable of producing the responses we see in the paleoclimate record. Including the recent paleoclimate record.

The climb out from the Last Glacial Maximum of the Wisconsin ice age (called Termination 1 with sea level bottoming out about 121 meters, ~397 feet, below present) into the Holocene is studded with the Younger Dryas, a 1,300 year near instantaneous return to ice age conditions. “Briefly, the data indicate that cooling into the Younger Dryas occurred in a few prominent decade(s)-long steps, whereas warming at the end of it occurred primarily in one especially large step of about 8°C in about 10 years and was accompanied by a doubling of snow accumulation in 3 years; most of the accumulation-rate change occurred in 1 year (National Research Council, 2002)”. Almost as suddenly we came out of it: “Taylor et al. (1997) found that most of the change in most indicators occurred in one step over about 5 years at the end of the Younger Dryas, although additional steps of similar length but much smaller magnitude preceded and followed the main step, spanning a total of about 50 years (NRC, 2002)”.

Termination 1 began with what is referred to as Melt Water Pulse 1a (mwp-1a) centered at about 14,680 years ago which resulted in a 24 meter rise (about 78 feet) in sea level believed to have occurred at the rate of 4.5 cm (about 2 inches) a year. It was followed around 12,260 years ago by mwp-1b with a 28 meter (about 92 feet) rise nearer 5 cm per year. Recent model results predict that sea level is currently rising at 32cm/100 years. With natural rises clocked at 5cm/yr (or 500cm/century) we, (meaning us) have a lot of hard work ahead of us if we hope to trump mother nature’s most recent finest result.

Another variable worth devoting some cpu time to is just how astonishingly well the fourth cycle of eccentricity matches up with hominid evolution.

“An examination of the fossil record indicates that the key junctures in hominin evolution reported nowadays at 2.6, 1.8 and 1 Ma coincide with 400 kyr eccentricity maxima, which suggests that periods with enhanced speciation and extinction events coincided with periods of maximum climate variability on high moisture levels.”

state Trauth, et al (2009) in Quaternary Science Reviews. There is just nothing quite like having such a natural fly land in your climate change soup. As it turns out, periods of wet maximum climate variability (in modern lingo, global warming correctly re-branded as climate change), cook up the larger braincases. We went from 500-550cc braincases 2.8 mya to the average of about 2,500cc today in the most rapid encephalization of any mammal in the fossil record.

Between 6,000 and 7,000 years ago, a period known to geologists and paleoclimatologists as the Holocene Climate Optimum, sea levels peaked between 1.5 to about 6 meters higher than today (average in the literature seems to be about 2.5-4.5 meters but ranges to 8 meters), and during the Eemian Optimum, some 20 meters (about 60 feet) higher than today (some say 70 meters). During the seven post MPT ice ages, sea levels dropped some 100 or more meters below present, the water tied up in the miles thick ice sheets that have spread in North America as far south as Kansas. These are just some of the facts of the abrupt climate changes which we, as Homo sapiens, have experienced. General Circulation Models, of which the IPCC references 23, have yet to reproduce a single known abrupt paleoclimate change fed with the proxy data. The latest GCM models produce predictions based on a variety of input data and complex equations which few of us would understand. But for all the complexity and investment, they are just predictions.

Belief in, and acting as a result of, such predictions has opened up what may be the first chapter in faith-based science (W. should be so proud). Understanding the history of climate change provides a factual understanding of far more alarming climate changes that have actually happened, with sea level changes and temperature shifts that dramatically overshadow any faith-based prediction you have yet heard.

What might be quite ironic is that if GHG predicted global warming is in fact real, and, at half of a precessional cycle, we are near to the cliff of the next natural shift to an ice age, we may find ourselves needing to generate as much GHGs as possible to ease our transition into the next ice age. So as I said at the beginning, doing something about climate change is not necessarily a bad thing. Doing the right thing might actually be quite another. The ice ages and associated interglacials are well known to be paced by the eccentricity, obliquity and precession cycles in earth’s rickety orbit. These we will do nothing about. D-O oscillations show strong evidence of being tied to the 1,500 year cycle of solar output, something we cannot change.

So be ever thoughtful of both facts and predictions before leaping to a conclusion. It was in fact a LEAP that terminated the last interglacial, the cold Late Eemian Aridity Pulse which lasted 468 years and ended with a precipitous drop into the Wisconsin ice age. And yes, we were indeed there. We had been on the stage as our stone-age selves about the same length of time during that interglacial that our civilizations have been during this one.

Meanwhile, enjoy the interglacial!

Aug 7, 2009 - 5:45 am 95. Pat J:

The professor left out the problem of deforestation. This is a manmade phenomena and one partly responsible for the problem. And yes. CO2 is good for plants. Plants serve as a natural filter converting carbon dioxide nto oxygen via photosynthesis. But if you don’t have any large forests and jungles to counter absorb the CO2 then you have a big problem. And we have a big problem.

Aug 7, 2009 - 9:29 am 96. Visionar:

94. Mission Impossible: Great read!

Aug 7, 2009 - 1:51 pm 97. Mission Impossible:

Pat J is correct. Allow me to expand on that subject, as it is the first of the several 800 pound gorillas in the Climate Change room with us. Assume, for a moment that the Single Variable Processors (SVPs) are correct, and anthropogenic emissions of CO2 could indeed cause our first very own global climate change event, and that it will hit us sooner, and with more irreversible effect than anything else.

By picking on CO2, at just under 0.04% of the atmosphere, we have placed ourselves rather firmly on the wrong side of the decimal point. We need to get over the decimal and into the real percentages to even be able to compete with those 800 pounders. We will work our way up, so to speak. Did you know that one quarter of all mammals are on the endangered species list? How about a third of all amphibians? Make that a 50% loss of all the earth’s forests and all the earth’s grasslands. “Short of a miraculous transformation in the attitude of people and governments, the Earth’s remaining closed-canopy forests and associated biodiversity are destined to disappear in the coming decades” says the 2001 UN study’s author Klaus Toepfer. Considering all of the complexly interwoven equilibria that has evolved with us on this planet we estimate we are putting 40,000 species extinct each year, that’s about 50 per day.

At a conference held on deforestation in December 2007 in Bali, Indonesia UN specialists estimated that 60 acres of forest are felled ever minute worldwide, or at the rate of 32 million acres (50,000 square miles, or about the size of Mississippi) per year according to the UN’s latest “State of the World’s Forests”. “If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change” declared more than 300 scientists, conservation groups, religious leaders and others at the Bali gathering. Destruction of forests is estimated to account for 20% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, second only to electricity and heat generation by fossil fuels. Try not to forget that forests store CO2 and carbon. They are pivotal in the extinction crisis. The 50,000 square mile estimate of triple canopy rainforest (TCR) devastation is a 2005 estimate. Imagine trying to plant an area the size of the state of Mississippi every year to begin the process of halting this, every single year!

And not only plant it, but manage it, because no one has ever tried this at anything like the scalethat we would have had to do it. All that changed last year as TCR deforestation doubled last year in the Amazon due to the demand for biofuels. But what one must also remember is that TCRs are natures most exquisitely balanced ecosystems, cut them down and plant crops on the acreage and you will get one, maybe two crops before you must do it again, and again and again. This leaves states of Mississippi available for generation of dust aerosols, every year. Meaning we will be out of TCR well before the end of the coming decade (which is only months away now).

Spend some time really looking into the ice core records and you will soon discover that atmospheric dust burdens increase dramatically at each of the glacial maxima. Such increases in dust aerosols are widely implicated at the major transitions as well as at D-O events.

So what would a wise man do? Attempting to curb GHG emissions, of which anthropgenic CO2 is a paltry sum, but will be horrendously expensive and of dubious success (try herding cats), would a wise man see if there was something he could do to curb TCR deforestation? What would that cost in comparison?

Which leaves (at least) the untouchable third rail of this non-debate, population. Wreathed in religious shackles unlikely to be broken by this iteration of the genus Homo, whatever you do will likely have little effect in the zero-sum game of GHG emissions if you do not freeze or reduce population. In 1999 Kofi Annan announced we had just crossed the 6 billion mark in human population. In just 10 years, we have added another 10%. Ban ki Moon announced at last year;s Geneva food conference that we would hit the 10 billion mark by 2050. Also in 1999, the UN published a study that intimated we would need another 7 earth’s to keep all 6 billion of us in western plush (resources wise). Add 7 to this one and that makes 8. Divide 8 into 6 billion and you come up with a western plush sustainable population of 750 million. Food for thought.

The entire argument reminds me of two fleas arguing over who owns the dog they are riding on. Doing something about it reminds me of the old saw of the ant crawling up the elephant’s leg with rape on its mind.

Mission Impossible, not even considering GHGs.

So enjoy the interglacial……while it lasts.

Aug 7, 2009 - 5:58 pm 98. Wayne Lusvardi:

Reply to Pat J. – “the problem of deforestation …is a big problem”

Deforestation is a myth. Urbanization has shifted populations from dependence on forests and wood as fuel to industrialized electrical power plants. Suggest reading environmentalist Alston Chase’s book “In a Dark Wood: The Fight Over Forests and the Myths of Nature.” According to Chase, we have more forests than 200 years ago.

Aug 8, 2009 - 9:32 am 99. Mission Impossible:

Did somebody forget to take their Google Earth pill? It’s all (not) there. I just had a looksee myself. Better hurry though, its going fast………

Aug 8, 2009 - 12:27 pm 100. Archimedes2:

Mission Impossible: You seem to have a pretty good grasp of the range of issues relating to carbon. Perhaps you could weigh in on something that’s come up in my cobwebby brain:

It seems that old-growth and mature forests are close to carbon-neutral, relative to young ones. If one measures carbon sequestration in forests by growth in carbonaceous plant material, mature forests don’t soak up much atmospheric carbon at all — they consume space that could be more efficiently utilized for this purpose by fast-growing immature forests.

The practice of clearing out mature growth and planting new wood in it’s place, as is now done across much of the lumber industry and most of the paper industry, would seem to be a “best practice” in terms of long-term carbon sequestration, considering that much of that wood ends up in construction that more-or-less permanently takes it out of the carbon cycle, and the bulk of paper ends its life permanently sequestered in landfills.

So, if our goal is to encourage carbon sequestration in massive forest systems the first thing we should be considering is knocking down all of the old-growth forests the environmentalists have been campaigning to preserve in their carbon-neutral state and replacing them with rapidly-growing harvestable young forests.

My only objection to the plan is that as far as I can tell, the optimum CO2 level, if such a thing exists, for supporting a healthy biosphere for the needs of both flora and fauna, appears to be somewhere between 500 and 1000 PPM. If this is true, then it strikes me that it’s a bit premature to talk about strategies for global-scale carbon sequestration projects.

And, if we do use harvested wood, paper and similar products to sequester carbon long-term, I would argue that disposal of such products ought to be done in a fashion that makes it retrievable, in case large-scale release of carbon becomes necessary later. After all, in geologic terms, the current amount of carbon in the atmosphere is precipitously low, and we should not risk dropping much farther.

Your thoughts?

Aug 8, 2009 - 2:57 pm 101. Mission Impossible:

Archimedes2: Forest management is not my forte at all. Although I have done watershed analyses and timber harvest plans for timber companies, the names are a bit misleading. These involved mostly geological and geotechnical assessments for proper cutting areas and road locations for slope stability and sediment management. What rubbed off during the several years I was involved in this was that (1) we do a pretty poor job of forest management overall, (2) nature seems to do this better if we just leave her alone (thinking of fires, pestilence etc.), and (3) thinning of old growth timber, since we are stuck into it anyway, doesn’t seem to be that bad of a practice. Seems to be better than clear-cutting. But this is strictly a layman’s perspective/opinion. It is unreasonable to even cogitate doing without forest products, so better and better ways and means of managing the effort represents to me the most reasonable approach.

The other end of the spectrum is the wholesale burning and clear-cutting (not always for timber, but to clear land for planting crops as is being done in the rainforests) on an unimaginable scale has already been proven to be a particularly bad idea from a host of perspectives. When we are talking about +50,000 square miles a year (and a significant boost to that in just the last year or two), the sheer scale of replanting, and of course managing this, becomes a herculean task. Particularly if the soils are depleted in the process. How would one pay for such a massive undertaking? How could it be done at anything approaching the speed of the devastation?

Now here are the clinchers regarding CO2. We have from the many lines of proxy data the fact that for the vast majority of natural, reliable, often abrupt and seemingly unavoidable climate mode switches temperature leads and GHGs follow. The relatively rare instances where the reverse has occurred seems to be related to the temperature switches occurring faster than the oceans (as the largest reservoir) can come into CO2 equilibrium with the atmosphere and the prevailing cold or warm state. It takes hundreds to thousands of years for the oceans to turn over, warm up or cool down, releasing and re-absorbing CO2. During periods of maximum climate variability (fast temperature switches), such as at the major and stadial/interstadial transitions, the proxy records show that the state switches happen with astounding swiftness, from years to decades, leaving the much slower process of atmosphere/ocean equilibrium, which take centuries to millenia to re-equilibrate, in a far more gradual swing. With temperature swings driving, and GHGs reacting, it is hard to fathom the focus on a single variable, CO2, as capable of actually producing one of these events.

However, having said that, one must also consider the possibility that rapid upswings in CO2 concentrations, like we seem to be experiencing now, could precipitate a climate state switch. Honestly, in my vast readings of all sides of this issue, I remain unconvinced that anyone truly knows for sure, but on the other hand, we really don’t know that it couldn’t. The problem here is that the experimental proof must be done on the planetary scale, because this is definitely not a single variable equation. But this sort of equation is what the present issue of the genus Homo is best at.

Consider for a moment that when we split genetically off from the Australopithecines about 2.8 million years ago, the first species of the genus Homo, habilis, meaning handy man, kicked off the Stone Age with the astonishing discovery of rocks. This single variable rocked our world. We are so proficient at single variable processing that we quickly (over the next million years) tooled up to hand axes and bi-face tools, the Acheulian period had begun. We stuck with these more or less single variables (still rocks for goodness sake) for almost twice that time (1.8 million years) before we figured out how to cook metals out of them, kicking off the metals ages (Iron and Bronze etc.). It took yet another 5,000 years to shift into industrial age overdrive.

Now sapiens is in this too, with that 5,000 years less than 5% of the time we have been stomping around the place. We seem to be genetically pre-disposed to distill complexity down to the least common denominator, and seem quite pleased with ourselves if that turns out to be just a single variable, like CO2 for instance. One would have to suppose that some of us have evolved the proclivity towards multivariate processing, for it seems the only way James Watt could have managed to cobble metal, fire and water together to harness the power of steam.

Given that only during the present interglacial did we graduate from rocks, could it possibly be that what we are witnessing is the rapid evolution of Homo from single variable processing to multivariate processing? I often wonder.

Let’s test the hypothesis. We are well on our way to the carbon sequestration schema of which you speak. We know from the proxy records that for hundreds of millions of years the overall trend of CO2 concentrations has been steadily down. Still, many extinction events, periods of much greater warmth and bitter cold happened anyway. And the gradual trend of earth’s temperatures has also been down, certainly over the past 5 million years. We know that ice sheets have spread to Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska and Illinois over the past million years, and we know that sea levels have bounced so regularly through 100-140 meter swings that we can set our geologic clocks by them. Does it strike anyone as odd that by stuffing only carbon down holes (or all manner of schemas) that we will have any kind of substantial effect on the plethora of other variables that seem to have a much greater effect on climate? If we are really all that concerned about climate change vis-a-vis our current level of civilization, would it not seem more reasonable to set our sights on something which can power our civilization through events which are stupefyingly faster, larger and far more certain to occur?

I am no fan of carbon-based fuels, but they did power our history straight on from the discovery of fire. We have toyed with the simpler particle level process of fision, but it strikes me often that every penny spent on anything other than fusion will likely turn out to be a penny wasted.

Personally, I can see no deleterious effects whatsoever with CO2 levels at 1000 ppm. If we are at peak oil now (or soon will be), it beggars the imagination to think we could even approach 1,000 ppm with what is left to be found and burned. Having said that, I stand ready to accept your tax dollars to do my geological thing and drill holes and pump it into the ground for you, and I am headed that very way. Most of us find that we have been standing in the wrong line most of our lives anyway, and fools and their money soon part ways. This multivariate processor sees no conflict taking the single variable processors money if they are hades bent on spending it this way.

Just another way to enjoy the interglacial…..while it lasts.

P.S. Methinks you are spot-on with the CO2 healthy biosphere. But cutting back on forest products usage might pay good dividends, particularly with respect to anthropogenic induced climate change potential.

Aug 8, 2009 - 5:14 pm 102. Archimedes2:

Hi again Mission Impossible.

I am impressed by your command of a broad set of disciplines. I detect a bit of a polymath, and I like your style. Still, while you came close to answering my question I think it was a near miss. Just to be clear, I am with you — I don’t advocate carbon sequestration, and your excellent demonstration of why it’s a dumb idea rings well with me, but then I’m sitting in the choir.

What I was looking for was more like this: Let’s play the sequestration game as a Gedankenversuch (thought experiment). Take it as read that CO2 is an evil bad guy gas that is about to turn the planet into a fireball. Further, let us isolate the single strategy of sequestration for mitigating our guilt over burning fossil fuels over the last 100 years.

(The other strategies being (i) to stop adding CO2 — next to impossible and only then by going back to the stone age; and (ii) to do something else to the environment that would hopefully compensate — like dumping millions of tons of iron filings into the ocean to promote plankton growth or orbiting large reflective membranes over the earth to increase it’s albedo — these may be technologically realistic, but this sort of “tinkering” can have unforeseeable catastrophic complications…)

So we’re playing a game, under the dubious assumption that sequestration is the right thing to do. Burying carbon in deep holes (bubbling it into shale formation, or whatever…) is just an expensive waste. Carbon, after all, is a natural resource. And, besides, what happens when the solar irradiance decreases by 5% and we have sudden need for increasing the GHG content of the atmosphere to avert a catastropic descent into an ice age? Pouring out billions of tons of long-life aerosols is probably a very bad idea, CO2 is the only reasonable alternative, Mother Nature’s home remedy if you like. So I would argue that it is far better to put all this carbon in a place where it is easily retrieved.

I can’t think of any better form of sequestration than wood and paper.

Aside: I wonder if I calculated how much carbon there is stored in the wood frame of my house, I would find I have huge carbon credits coming to me under some new legislation? I’m just sayin’… Then there’s my library, and big bin of newspapers I put out each day for recycling. But maybe the “sequestration” would be more effective if, instead of recycling, these papers were buried in a landfill. Or, if I’m right that it should be retrievable, perhaps there should be special enormous landfills outside every city reserved for cellulose and other carbon-intensive waste, for long-term (but retrievable) sequestration?

Now, to the forest management business. I also don’t know much about this subject, although for a short time I actually helped a lumber company pick plots of standing timber (we called it “cruising”; you drive around in a pickup and record the dimensions and health of randomly-sampled trees in marked-off areas. Pays good), but that was in a different life, and I can’t claim any “expertise” from that.

Suppose we are a generic forest management organization and we have, say, a thousand square kilometers of virgin timber, let us say, at maturity.

Our mission (and our ONLY consideration in this game we’re playing) is to manage this huge forest over a period of a century or two in such a way as to maximize the net amount of CO2 that is taken from the atomosphere by our vertical stock. In your framework, it’s a 1 variable game. Dumb, yes, but if one can’t play well with 1 variable, what are the hopes of playing with dozens, or thousands, or an unknowns number?

For simplicity I’ll further assume that, “if a little is good then a lot is better” — whatever we find the best use is, we apply it to the whole forest.

What should we do to have the best chance at accomplishing our mission? Some possibilities:

A. Leave the forest untouched and let nature take its course?
B. Harvest the wood that’s there and put it to another, carbon-neutral use?
C. Let it grow for some period and then carry out B?
D. Harvest it in some cycle, replanting trees and reharvesting at some stage?

B is just dumb. No new carbon is taken in by the trees. The only thing that can be said is that, if the harvested wood is not burned or otherwise returned to the biosphere, then we have kept that carbon from entering the atmosphere.

C seems a bit wiser, and perhaps so. But, let us say that one harvests after, oh, say, 50 years. If we imagine that we are standing there in 50 years, what is option C? It is now option B. If option B for a mature forest was wrong 50 years ago, why is it right today, as 50 years doesn’t really make the forest significantly more mature.

While A is the option that tugs at my heartstrings as a natural-born lover of nature, I think it’s also a wrong choice, because our forest, being mature, is not “bulking up” like a young forest. Further, the status quo, in such a large forest, means leaving it vulnerable to forest fires, etc. Indeed, in its natural state what will necessarily happen, in order for equilibrium to be attained, is that over the long run burn-off returns about the same amount of carbon to the environment as is removed by photosynthesis. As forests mature there is more and more dead, dry, flammable material on the forest floor and the probability of fire skyrockets. After some stage it is so incendiary that such fires cannot be stopped…the forest becomes carbon-neutral. This is not, in the large view, distinguishable from B and C in terms of sequestration potential.

Option D, on the other hand, makes a great deal of sense in this one-dimensional analysis. At every harvest, huge amounts of carbon are extracted in a form that permits us control of whether or not it is returned to the environment or “sequestered”. It avoids the problem of becoming a carbon-neutral fire trap to which old-growth forests are so susceptible. And, a new forest planted in its place will continue the process of extracting CO2 from the environment. Further, new forests bulk up far faster than old ones (here I’m bluffing — I don’t know this, I’m appealing to common sense.) I don’t imagine they do in the first few years, but there must be some period early in a tree’s life during which its carbon-bulking is maximized. Knowing the growth pattern of our trees and a few other management factors would permit us to choose an optimal age for harvesting.

I think (by the rules of our game) Option D is the winner. Probably something even better is

E. As D but to partially harvest, thinning the forest at intervals to optimize growth among remaining trees.

And, as I understand, this is precisely what the vast majority of paper producers use — paper is no longer, in the main, harvested from mature virgin forests, but from cultivated forests of fast-growing wood with good paper-friendly qualities, that is continually harvested and replanted. The lumber industry is less fixed on this option, but a good portion of this industry is employing sustainable practices of this sort. I have read that the timber stock in the U.S. has increased significantly in the U.S. over the last 50 years. I don’t know if the same is true in Canada but I have been impressed with the large areas of B.C., for example, that are now subject to sustainable practices, and I know their silvicultural expertise is in demand around the world (I know a number of people who have entered the profession there).

A comment on one of your last paragraphs. I don’t know that I’d say I’m a “fan” of carbon-based fuels, but I have to say I don’t think they’re the bogeyman they are being made out to be. Petroleum, in any case, is soon to decline, and I expect its use will fade over a few decades, as natural gas becomes a fuel of choice for many things. Our Natural Gas reserves are very healthy and will easily take us into the next century, by which time hopefully we’ll have mastered fusion or some other safe, clean energy source.

Natural gas has the advantage that it burns cleaner and at a lower temperature than petroleum, though it has fewer helpful biproducts for industry (which may keep the petroleum industry alive long after it ceases being the dominant fuel). The problem with burning petroleum is not the CO2 but the other more toxic emissions products associated with it.

Aug 9, 2009 - 9:16 pm 103. Mission IMpossible:

Archimedes2:

You raise some fascinating points. I haven’t the time this early morn to give them the consideration they deserve (work calls), but I will spend some time this evening replying.

Briefly, I think managing forests more sustainably is a fine idea. If done to manage carbon, well, why not? Though the oceans are by far the larger reservoir. But putting an end to rainforest forest devastation must be the first step or this will be rather ineffective.

Perhaps I should qualify my statement about not being a fan of carbon-based fuels. Over the past 25 years I have spent an inordinate amount of my time cleaning up messes at all manner of fuel producing, storage and dispensing locales. Like forests, we need to manage this better, if for no other reason than to protect, in particular, groundwater supplies. Cleaning up these messes is horrendously expensive, and the benefits of doing so are often questionable. Although at least in this country (as well as many others) cleaning up the combustion process has reaped huge benefits in terms of air quality (I live in LA). But try as I might, I see no viable alternative to carbon-based fuels for the foreseeable future.

As I mentioned before, carbon sequestration, in any form, might, again I say might, result in some amelioration of climate forcing, but I am so far convinced that this will be a particularly good answer to a non-existent problem. As for the other many variables, fusion remains my answer of choice. We will do nothing about solar and orbital forcings, and iron filings was recently tested and that didn’t work out so well (nature turned out to be a little more complex than anyone thought, go figure).

Gotta go do the interglacial work thing.

Aug 10, 2009 - 6:13 am 104. Mission Impossible:

Archimedes2:

I am not really sure how to play this game, the concept of believing in a single variable and acting out a single cure, carbon sequestration, because the planet is going to warm up, raises myriad purely scientific warning bells that seem impossible to ignore. But if I get the gist of what you are trying to do here it is to advance the premise that managing forests as a carbon sink or reservoir might be a better idea if we are so concerned about it.

Frankly, I see little wrong with doing it anyway. For those that feel a compulsion to manage CO2, the the forest management concept you put forth is a good and not so expensive a place to start.

However, again I feel compelled to mention that if we do not stop triple canopy rainforest devastation, first, and soon, this may all be for naught. Managing all other forests combined will probably not net much of an advantage given the massive amounts of CO2 being released by removal of the worlds rainforests for any reason. And with spent soils, replacing them may not even be possible. Just re-planting those areas will not be sufficient for them to regenerate their own self-sustaining water budget dynamics until they have re-established themselves without it. A process which likely took millions of years to reach stasis in the first place.

But in your game, D seems the correct choice if we do not consider the above.

Might want to visit a rainforest before they are gone. I suspect it will be long before the end of the interglacial, it might even go a ways towards precipitating it!

Not the best way to enjoy the interglacial.

Aug 10, 2009 - 7:10 pm 105. Archimedes2:

Hi again Mission Impossible.

Thanks again for your thoughts. My “game” was only an artificial construct to explore this thought about sequestration. I agree that long-term carbon management makes perfect sense, and it may be where environmentalists and hard-core capitalists could/should see eye-to-eye.

I think the cleanup problems surrounding gas and oil are a management problem too. If processes were controlled to a point that avoids messes (or, in some cases, ecological disaster) it would be a very good thing. I see no reason why the petroleum industry should be regarded as irredeemably “dirty”. I believe that, on balance it is clean, but one has to see “clean” in the right context, and I do not deny large-scale problems that continue to plague the industry. Where it is dirty, dangerous and harmful, I believe there is still room to mitigate the effects and/or reduce the problem, and it is worth the government creating carrots and sticks to encourage such, but I think to have the desired longterm effect and not cripple our economy this should be done as sparingly as possible, and the primary mover and shaker in such reforms should not be the radical environmental lobby, but well-informed and balanced advisory councils that pay more attention to science than politics and propaganda.

I personally love this earth (who doesn’t?) and would not see harm come to it. But a great deal of what groups like Greenpeace do nowadays amounts to what C.S. Lewis called “straining at fern seeds while swallowing elephants”. The world may invest billions, or trillions, in CO2 reduction, putting all of our environmental ethos and energy eggs into this one basket … and then discover that there was little value in doing so, at great harm to our own welfare, and possibly even worse harm to those less prepared to adapt, if we can just as effectively cripple developing nations by exercising muscle internationally. The investment in CO2 just represents resources that are NOT invested in other, more worthwhile, environmental needs, and does harm by misallocation and miseducation.

Further, Dr. Tipler (and you) have made a convincing case that the whole CO2 program is not even neutral — that there is net benefit to the ecosphere in the present-day trends of CO2 release that is threatened by it. It is insanity for — of all groups — those who regard themselves as the most faithful friends of Gaia to cut off this important supply of her most vital nutrient. The way I look at it is that the earth, coming into the Holocene, was starving; facing its last gasps. The plentiful CO2 from earlier geological eras during which the herbisphere flourished so grandly had diminished, being “sequestered” underground in giant deposits of oil and gas where it was no longer available to the biosphere. The “tank” was nearing empty, and Earth was facing its most extreme shortage of carbon. The only salvation for the biosphere is continuing warm temperatures, which siphoned CO2 back out of the ocean reservoires into the atmosphere, and carbon that exited via food lines from the oceans to us (through the harvesting of kelp, fish, etc.

It may be, in the broadest analysis, that the best thing humanity has done for this earth is the restoration of all this carbon into the biosphere. It may even amount to the salvation of the biosphere. Who’s to say how close it came to being snuffed right out?

Had the earth remained at the all-time low mid-19th-century CO2 levels then suddenly, by a change in solar irradiance, been plunged into a centuries or millennia-long “hard ice age”, CO2 would drop precipitously (the Henry Law constant would increase and atmospheric CO2 would be absorbed in massive quantities by the oceans over a period of centuries). Faced with unusually cold conditions and starved of their main nutrients, how many important plant species would permanently succumb? I think it may have meant the permanent decline, perhaps toward the end, of life on Earth as we know it.

How “environmentalists” could be so single-minded in the wrong direction really eludes me.

So my thought was “If we’re going to sequester, it’s best to do so in a recoverable fashion”.

I’m still not clear on whether I’m right about the relative values of old-growth versus new forests vis-a-vis carbon management, but it seems likely that new forests are easier to “steer” and in any case soak up carbon much more rapidly.

While I agree that the devastation of rainforest must stop, I am a bit uncertain what “stopping” looks like. I don’t mean to sound dumb — I expect someone may say “just stop cutting down the damn trees”. What I mean is, there are other forms of encroachment that may be just as devastating, are more subtle, and even more inexorable. Do we prevent migration toward use of rainforest resources that do not simply amount to “cutting down trees”? Should rainforests be left in a virgin state, or is there a “managed” version that is actually healthier? Like the northern forests, would rainforests actually benefit from carefully managed harvesting of wood? To what extent should wildfires be permitted to run their course? Do we intervene when there are natural threats to the intricate biosystem — pest invasion, disease, drought or flooding? Should rainforests become sanctuaries against all human activity — no tourists at all, only indigenous subsistence? Should there be concerted efforts to re-flood drained basins and reestablish past rainforests? What do we do about the resulting increase in disease due to insect-born vectors and the necessary relocation of formerly impoverished peoples whose lives are now dependent on the former rainforest lands?

There are many such questions, and I know they go beyond a political blog’s comments discussion. But I’d be happy with some brief thoughts about managed harvesting of wood and other plant products in a rainforest environment (and perhaps this would answer some of the other questions at the same time. For example, if large-scale rainforest-friendly harvesting systems that indigenous folks could take ownership of, this may help answer the “relocation” and lifestyle questions…)

Aug 11, 2009 - 12:28 pm