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#26091 05/16/08 04:33 PM
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A new NASA-led study shows that human-caused climate change has impacted a wide range of Earth's natural systems, from permafrost thawing, to plants blooming earlier across Europe, to lakes declining in productivity in Africa
Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York, and Scientists at 10 other Institutions, analyzed a database of more than 29,000 data series pertaining to observed impacts on Earth's natural systems, collected from about 80 studies each with at least 20 years of records between 1970 and 2004. Observed impacts included changes to physical systems, such as glaciers shrinking, permafrost melting, and lakes and rivers warming. Impacts also included changes to biological systems, such as leaves unfolding and flowers blooming earlier in the spring, birds arriving earlier during migration periods, and ranges of plant and animal species moving toward the poles and higher in elevation. In aquatic environments such as oceans, lakes, and rivers, plankton and fish are shifting from cold-adapted to warm-adapted communities.

The Scientists concluded that, "Humans are influencing climate through increasing greenhouse gas emissions and the warming is causing impacts on physical and biological systems that are now attributable at the global scale and in North America, Europe, and Asia"

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2008/human_impact.html


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"You will never find a real Human being - Even in a mirror." ....Mike Kremer.


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And more...

Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.

The figures, published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on its website, also confirm that carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than expected. The annual mean growth rate for 2007 was 2.14ppm - the fourth year in the last six to see an annual rise greater than 2ppm. From 1970 to 2000, the concentration rose by about 1.5ppm each year, but since 2000 the annual rise has leapt to an average 2.1ppm.

Scientists say the shift could indicate that the Earth is losing its natural ability to soak up billions of tonnes of CO2 each year. Climate models assume that about half our future emissions will be reabsorbed by forests and oceans, but the new figures confirm this may be too optimistic. If more of our carbon pollution stays in the atmosphere, it means emissions will have to be cut by more than is currently projected to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

The Guardian, Tuesday May 13 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/13/carbonemissions.climatechange

Or, data from the horse's mouth:

Earth System Research Laboratory, Global Monitoring Division, http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

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Thanks Mike, for the lunchtime literature.
Seems as if we're witnessing "evolution" in action.

Originally Posted By: redewenur

Scientists say the shift could indicate that the Earth is losing its natural ability to soak up billions of tonnes of CO2 each year.
Thanks Rede,
This is specifically what I've been ranting about for over a year now. "Degrading the Earth's ability to absorb CO2" is a phrase I'm sure I've written more than once. It's not our emissions that are the (main) problem; it is our rapacious behaviour towards the lands and oceans. If we managed our land and ocean resources properly, emissions would be sequestered naturally on a yearly basis (providing much of the biomass for our food and fuel). The "Turnover Rate of CO2" is not a physical constant; it is a measure of the resiliency of the biosphere.
This is why the topic of Terra Preta is so important; it provides key insights into the nature of soils ability to "soak up" CO2.

This is why changing our resource management (farming and harvesting) habits/methods is so critical to the survival of our civilization, and it's transition into a sustainable Type I civilization.
Not only does the solution multiply energy production and regulate the climate, but it also obviates poverty and other social inequities, as well as globally raise the standard of education, health care and sanitation to 'first-world' levels.
Enlisting the aid of about 4 billion marginalized people to help replenish the Earth's ability to soak up CO2 will be the quickest, easiest, and most cost effective route to evolving into a Type I, global civilization.

Restoring the planet to a natural "Eden" is not possible, but the resources are available to create a managed, equitable, sustainable, and bountiful environment.
If we're not evolving up a ladder, we're just cycling between the peaks and valleys of subsistence.
IMHO
smile


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G'day,

Wow 387 parts per million! That actually is around twenty times lower than has occurred in that not that distant past, at the time of the immediately previous Ice Age. In terms of interference with solar radiation it is actually a tiny percentage of the effects that are upon solar radiation.

Aside from anything else, there is no indication at all that shows that CO2 actually is a greehouse gas in the sense of the term being that it traps heat from the sun that otherwise would not be trapped. CO2 reacts with solar radiation only over certain quite small bands of radiation and it is not at all clear whether in that reaction the impediment to the entry of the solar radiation caused by reflection or obtuse refraction is not greater than any re-radiation or absorption of outward bound heat. Just like clouds can both heat and cool an area of the earth depending on so many factors no actually knows exactly all the factors involved, so CO2 may react the same way. If you get cloud forming in the afternoon then the evening and the next morning will be warmer than if the clouds were not there. If the clouds then stick around for three or four days then both days and nights end up being much cooler than if the clouds had not been there. Depends on the type of clouds, their internal reflectivity, whether they contain large ice formations, their height, density, colour, wind, etc, etc, etc.

So while in a laboratory you might be able to demonstrate that CO2 causes the trapping of heat the same may not be true at all in the real world and there does not seem to be any evidence to support it does at all.

This is one of those assumptions that I find most troubling with the global warming argument. It goes to the very heart of the argument yet it is perhaps the least solid theory on which the whole man made global warming argument is hung.

And even if CO2 is a greenhouse gas it certainly is no the chief one. That honour goes to water but such a huge margin, a factor of many magnitueds greater than CO2 as to be laughable. Then there is a great many other materials. Methane is around 40 times as extreme as CO2 in lab tests and there is a lot of it potentially able to be released if the frozen former marshlands in Siberia and in the oceans become released.

But it might well be that together with the methane, the effect is that more clouds form and the world cools. This is an excuse being used right now by a number of scientists to explain why nothing they said would occur in relation to global warming has come to pass. Why the oceans, especially the Pacific Ocean are COOLER even when measured over very large areas and to extreme depths. Why there has been a fall in sea levels in so many areas and no major rise in areas where they said it was certain. The argument is now going that the earth has a self regulating mechanism that they were and are unaware of that has meant that perhaps more clouds or more reflective clouds or more moisture in the air has caused the lack of warming up even when there is more heat overall. of course they then cannot actually show that there has been more heat overall but they just have to have been otherwise, well, global warming is a crock.

By the way the information you started this thread with is newspaper articles. These have been shown in this forum over and over to be biased, often misconstruing or misquoting the research involved and in this case it appears that they are not even quoting research but the opinions of some scientists.

I'm sorry but I'm guilty of the same thing in not quoting any scientific research in support of my arguments here but I'm simply not well enough to do the research and I must say that the type of research needed would be that which is basically proving a negative. That is very hard to do. So I'll turn it to a positive. Please point us to any research that demonstrates that CO2 is a greenhouse gas even if only in the laboratory and better yet to research that demonstrates that increased CO2 in the atmosphere translates to an increase in world temperature.

Please don't quote any ice core data. All ice core data is subject to considerable interpretation for starters, into such esoteric things as the leaching of air pockets, the effect on part thaw and refreeze seasonally, the possible absorption of trace chemicals, ions, gases etc from the ice to the air and on and on. But much more fundamentally there is the problem that ice cores without exception show that higher temperatures cause an increase in CO2 levels. Never the other way around. It gets hotter and then CO2 increases. Bit hard for the CO2 increase some 60 years after the heat increase to be the cause if it follows the heat and the fall back that the increase in CO2 sustains the heating does not hold true for one second. In all cases the heat seems to reduce the same basic pattern or frequency regardless of how much higher the CO2 became because of the longer hotter period. So you will have to find some other research. I'd like to help but I know of none at all that demonstrate this minor point upon which the whole man made global warming argument rests.



Regards


Richard


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Originally Posted By: RicS
Wow 387 parts per million! That actually is around twenty times lower than has occurred in that not that distant past, at the time of the immediately previous Ice Age.

What! Twenty times! Is that a transient spike, after some "big release?"
....I should go look; but first let me just say:

Ric, Ric, Ric....
You are crossing the line from being a climate-science denier into being simply a science denier.

It was observations about carbon dioxide's "greenhouse effect" that led into the science of spectroscopy, and also evolving models of the atom that could explain spectroscopic observations.
You are questioning work done back in the 19th century by names such as Fourier, Angstrom, and Roentgen.
For a brief history, with modern updates, google Arrhenius & carbonic acid; or see:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
That's the American Institute of Physics, isn't it?

I think this link will answer your request for an experiment on CO2.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Giants/Tyndall/

Note the strong CO2 absorbance (dip) between 4-5 microns (where water does NOT absorb much). ...hence the logic problems arising as some simply say 'water vapor is a stronger GHG than CO2.'

smile

Last edited by samwik; 05/18/08 07:11 PM. Reason: repeated link

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Interesting......

Quote:
Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York and scientists at 10 other institutions have linked physical and biological impacts since 1970 with rises in temperatures during that period


So they've correlated ecological impacts to observed warming since the 1970's.....Assumed that all that warming is due to AGW, and somehow this "proves" that AGW is to blame for the ecological impacts? This is science?

I'm going to release a study outlining the effects of AGW on the world pirate population. Pirate population since 1850 has been in steep decline. The world has warmed since 1850. The warming is caused by AGW. Therefore AGW causes a decline in pirates. AGW is a good thing.
Can I get a grant now??


This quote is also interesting
Quote:
Other driving forces, such as land use change from forest to agriculture, were ruled out as having significant influence on the observed impacts.


I'd be interested to see how they controlled for all other impacts us humans have, other than CO2 emissions. I don't know too many locales that we haven't screwed up, in one form or another.

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Originally Posted By: samwik


Note the strong CO2 absorbance (dip) between 4-5 microns (where water does NOT absorb much). ...hence the logic problems arising as some simply say 'water vapor is a stronger GHG than CO2.'

smile


samwik - sorry, water vapour is a stronger GHG than CO2. Just looking at the GCM output should drive that home. At 2xCO2, warming effects are estimated to be about 1.1C. It is the positive feedback processes (namely the increase in water vapour) that brings the total warming effect to be 2.5-4 degrees.

Also, the warming effect caused by CO2 increases logarithmically. This is due to IR at the CO2 absorption band already being removed to extinction (can't absorb what's not there). It is theorized that at lower pressures (higher elevations), the absorption band for CO2 will broaden, which will allow more IR to be absorbed, which is where this extra warming is supposed to happen. This is why we're supposed to see more warming at the mid-troposphere, than the lower troposphere. Yet, we see the exact opposite......apparently another "fingerprint" we're not seeing.

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Yes, your first paragraph is completely true. H2O is stronger (there's more of it and it absorbs over a wider range of wavelengths), but it does not absorb where CO2 absorbs (between 4-5 microns); hence the "strength" of the two is unrelated in terms of IR absorbance (apples and oranges logic).

But what the heck is your second paragraph talking about?
Extinction? At atmospheric pressure ranges? Where did you get this from?
The blackbody radiation from Earth (at 4-5 microns) far outstrips the capacity for CO2 to absorb it all (until our atmosphere gets up to >85% CO2). smile

Originally Posted By: Canuk
It is theorized that at lower pressures (higher elevations), the absorption band for CO2 will broaden, which will allow more IR to be absorbed....
What new physics is this? They've already tested gasses at different pressures. Absorbance spectra don't broaden or narrow until you start changing phase to a liquid or solid. Where did you get this info. from?

I think it's emission spectra that change with pressure.
Standard physics tells us that at lower pressures, CO2 can radiate heat away (to space) more easily, as at these lower pressures, there are fewer collisions to translate (retaining) the heat, and there is less chance of another molecule re-absorbing any released IR. Maybe we're talking about different layers of the atmosphere here, but the "physics" that I know predicts higher concentrations of CO2 will increase cooling in the upper levels (lower pressure levels) of the atmosphere.

Maybe we're both wrong (it's been 30 years since I took classes in this stuff), or maybe we're both right and just not expressing it very well; but I'd like to find out whether you know this physics yourself or if you've learned this stuff second hand (and where can I learn more of it)?
wink


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Infrared radiation is absorbed then remitted. It does not contribute to the kinetic energy of the molecule, so it does not contribute to a rise in air temperature. Physicist R.W. Wood demonstrated in 1909 that greenhouses didn't become warmer by trapping IR radiation.

http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html

The small frequency band that CO2 absorbs combined with the small 0.0387% of the atmosphere that CO2 takes up leaves little radiation for the CO2 molecules to reflect back to earth.

John M Reynolds

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John,

Oh, I think I see your logic; there's no net change after the IR is re-emitted, therefore no heating? Where do you think it goes?

I wrote this below, after first reading your post. After re-reading, the below still applies, and explains the heating of the atmosphere, even if the CO2 has no net change (really it's in an equilibrium, between having absorbed some IR and having re-emitted some IR; there's no final, net, state).

So, initially, in response to your post....
Even if IR did not contribute to "kinetic energy" (via collisions you mean?), the re-emitted radiation does get absorbed by other air molecules frequently enough to "contribute to a rise in air temperature." But CO2, energized by IR absorbance, can also translate that extra heat to other air molecules, via collisions.

Perhaps, when you say, "does not contribute to the kinetic energy of the molecule," you are referring to the rotational and stretching vibrational modes for CO2. These could be considered as "potential energy;" but in the long run, that energy is either re-emitted as IR, or lost through collisions (kinetically, just as with any gas molecule).

Originally Posted By: JMR
The small frequency band that CO2 absorbs combined with the small 0.0387% of the atmosphere that CO2 takes up, leaves little radiation for the CO2 molecules to reflect back to earth.
...or 'leaves little radiation for the CO2 molecules to absorb and then reflect back to earth (or other molecules).'

Anyway, yes; that a fair qualitative assessment.
Quantitatively however, one needs to realize that losing all the water vapor in the atmosphere would change things by 70-100 degrees (cooler); whereas losing all the CO2 in the atmosphere would only drop the temperature by about 5-10 degrees. Conversely, doubling or tripling the CO2 would only add 5-10 degrees.

Just to be clear, when you say "leaves little radiation," it's important to realize that there is lots of heat at 4-5 microns, as well as more at the shorter wavelengths. There's no danger of "running out of 4-5 micron radiation" for CO2 to absorb or "reflect."

As to the link.... Hey!
This link has nothing to do with what we're talking about here.

It doesn't even mention, much less test, CO2!
It only deals with the greenhouse effect of glass. The substances, glass and CO2 (& as noted, along with rock-salt) all behave differently in response to solar radiation.
...and, as the original poster noted, the conclusions are wrong.
~SA


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What are you talking about Samwik? My link deals with the greenhouse effect of IR radiation. It is suggsted that if you increase the level of CO2 in a greenhouse, that the temperature would increase by slowing the rate at which IR can leave the structure. Similarly, if you keep the CO2 at the same level and only increase the amount of IR radiation, then the temp would still increase. The link I gave you disputes the second with respect to air, so logically it also disputes the first. That is not how greenhouses work.

Temperature is the measure of kinetic energy of atoms and molecules. Since IR does not contribute to to the temperature of air, it also does not contribute to the kinetic energy of molecules.

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Hi John,

I'm gonna start at the end, and work backwards.
"Since IR does not contribute to to the temperature of air...." -JMR
Okay, I guess you mean that the oxygen/nitrogen part of our atmosphere is transparent to IR. That is true.

"...it also does not contribute to the kinetic energy of molecules. " -JMR
Ever? smile Not even CO2 (which then itself, heats the air)?

I'm not sure how to take this. You've mentioned "kinetic energy" before, and I provided some information about your use of the phrase, which should have precluded this most recent remark.

If you're considering kinetic energy only as "translational vibration" (moving from one place to another and bumping into things), then you're missing all the "rotational" and "stretching" vibrational modes that gas molecules have. It is these vibrations that are equated with CO2's absorbed IR at 4-5 microns.
Eventually, if these vibrations are not transmitted to another air molecule (by bumping it), the vibrational energy will be re-emitted (to be re-absorbed locally, if not escaping unimpeded into space).

Maybe there should be a thread on "Energy, kinetic and potential." Does the above make sense?

So, with this understanding of "kinetic energy," yes; your statement "Temperature is the measure of kinetic energy of atoms and molecules," is true.

Have you read somewhere that IR (4-100 microns) does not contribute to the kinetic energy of air, or CO2, or any gas molecule?
I'd like to see such a link....
===

Okay, now on that first paragraph, about the greenhouse stuff....
Firstly, there's a big difference between the effect of a glass greenhouse, and CO2's "greenhouse effect."
They are analogous, but not the same; not even similar in their mechanism of heating action, as glass is opaque to IR, and CO2 is nearly invisible (except at 4-5 microns and above 13 microns).

Secondly, when you say, "It is suggsted that if you increase the level of CO2 in a greenhouse...." are you talking about CO2 inside of a glass structure?
If so, why; there nothing about it in that link, nor is there any real-world analog in our climate.
I'm not trying to be obtuse, but that was all I could get out of that first paragraph; you actually use the word 'structure' in that sentence about CO2.

Thirdly, do you have any other link(s) about this? Your link to a blog about a century old article in which the author himself, after making some comparative observations in his garden, concludes with:
"I do not pretent to have gone very deeply into the matter, and publish this note merely to draw attention to the fact that trapped radiation appears to play but a very small part in the actual cases...." -R. W. Wood [final paragraph]
...and the OP goes on to say,
"I present the full text, although the second-to-last paragraph is (in my opinion) regrettable and wrong." -link

...again, there's nothing about CO2 on this 1909 link of yours.
...and that American Institute of Physics link does have all these common misunderstandings spelled out and answered.

...any questions? I'll be happy to answer....

...also, just fyi....


You asked, what I am talking about?
It's been 25 years since my degree in Chemistry, but I don't think the principles of physical chemistry or instrumental analysis have changed too much. I may be wrong about something or, more likely, I left something out; but I'm pretty sure the end result is correct.
Are there any chemists or physicists who think CO2 doesn't absorb IR as the spectra show?

Well, this is way too much talking (although shorter than the average college lecture); but this is a complicated subject (they pay people to teach this stuff, y'know), so it shouldn't be too surprising.
smile
~SA


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You are doing a poor job of fisking Samwik. The way we tell the globe is warming is by taking the temperature of the air. In the Wood experiment, he used air as the medium. One of the boxes was encased in a material that blocked IR radiation. The other was encased in a material that permitted IR radiation to pass through to do what it could to the water vapour, CO2, methane, ozone, etc. that was in the box. There was virtually no difference in the temperature of the two boxes, so the answer to your "Not even CO2" question is Yes. Not even CO2 nor the more powerful water vapour that existed in the air changed the temperature of the polished rock salt box.

The rest of your post is about strawman arguments like your "[a]re there any chemists or physicists who think CO2 doesn't absorb IR as the spectra show" question. I am not saying that the IR is not absorbed. You are confusing the two arguments.

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Oh, ...so it's not me that's trying to be obtuse.

Score one for a casual observation in 1909; and zero for the accumulation of atomic theory and spectroscopic science in the 20th century.
My apologies; we must be wrong about all this science stuff.

Originally Posted By: JMR
I am not saying that the IR is not absorbed. You are confusing the two arguments.

Please, help me learn; what two arguments am I confusing?
smile


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There are two hypotheses:

1. The absorption of IR radiation by molecules in the air does not contribute to the temperature of the air.

2. IR radiation is absorbed by some molecules in the air.

You are busy refuting the second when that is not what the Woods experiment found.

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Hi John, Thanks for the clarification.

Hypotheses (not arguments)?

Aren't physical chemistry and spectroscopy sufficiently advanced to be beyond the need of hypotheses about basic physical processes like these?

I'm not trying to "refute" anything, except maybe that Woods' observations with glass and rock salt don't qualify as "an experiment" (certainly not about CO2 or physics in general); I'm saying that IR "is absorbed by some molecules in the air," and so are you:
Originally Posted By: JMR
I am not saying that the IR is not absorbed.

So, on #2 we seem to agree.
===

Now I will try to refute your hypothesis #1.
Who came up with this hypothesis?

Wouldn't this be an example of an action without an "equal reaction?"
Originally Posted By: JMR
1. The absorption of IR radiation by molecules in the air does not contribute to the temperature of the air.
What does the absorption of IR do to molecules in the air?
smile
Thanks~



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The IR is absorbed then re-emitted.

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I was going to edit my previous post and also ask "what does heat up the air?"

Originally Posted By: John M Reynolds
The IR is absorbed then re-emitted.


So, then what happens to the IR, after it's re-emitted?


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It is absorbed by another molecule or exit the box.

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Originally Posted By: John M Reynolds
It is absorbed by another molecule or exit the box.


Well, I guess I agree with that. If not exiting, isn't being "absorbed by another molecule," heating that molecule up?
Do you not consider "absorbing IR" and "heating up" to be the same thing?

Originally Posted By: JMR
1. The absorption of IR radiation by molecules in the air does not contribute to the temperature of the air.

I guess the question needs to be "what does heat up the air?"

...also, what does the infra-red radiation do after it's absorbed, while it's waiting to be re-emitted?

This is getting interesting; thanks again John.
~samwik
smile


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I appreciate your being patient with me.

The molecules transfer the radiant energy to some combination of kinetic energy. You were right. I was wrong.

The effect must be small otherwise there would have been a temperature difference between the two boxes. Looking at why increased IR radiation would have a small effect, I see a few reasons.

1. The rock salt encasement reflected some higher energy photons offsetting the temperature change due to the increased amount of IR.

2. The heat transfer coefficient for the molecules that absorb IR radiation is small enough that the IR radiation is re-emitted quickly.

3. The rock salt allowed more IR to escape since there was likely more outgoing than incoming.

Then again, it is visible light that increases the amount of heat while the IR band is already low on the energy totem pole. IR is the result not the cause. In other words, IR radiation cannot cause more heat wherease visible light can.

Now that I have figured out that I was wrong about the absorption of a photon not changing to dynamic kinetic energy, I will finally go back to your #26261 post above.

Originally Posted By: samwik
Just to be clear, when you say "leaves little radiation," it's important to realize that there is lots of heat at 4-5 microns, as well as more at the shorter wavelengths. There's no danger of "running out of 4-5 micron radiation" for CO2 to absorb or "reflect."


Most of the IR at the 4-5 microns is already being absorbed by the much more plentiful (78% vs 0.0387%) Nitrogen while the 2-3 micron range is absorbed by the much more plentiful water vapour.

http://www.coe.ou.edu/sserg/web/Results/Spectrum/n2.pdf

You can check other molecules at this link:
http://www.coe.ou.edu/sserg/web/Results/results.htm

Of course, that N2 spectrum does not help my Woods link argument, but it does bring us back to the actual topic of human influence on climate -- finally.

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Originally Posted By: John M Reynolds
Most of the IR at the 4-5 microns is already being absorbed by the much more plentiful (78% vs 0.0387%) Nitrogen while the 2-3 micron range is absorbed by the much more plentiful water vapour.

Be back later, but....

This is new information for me here, and that coe link.

Those are Fourier transformed spectra. I don't know what to make of them, but will get back to you about that. ...and the rest.

Thanks,
~SA
smile

p.s. heat is considered to be about 4-100 microns, so the 2-3 micron point is.... ...but water absorbs above 5-6 also, so it is a strong absorber of heat also.


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"Atmospheric nitrogen is an inert, colorless, odorless gas, and has no known influence on the greenhouse effect."
This is from a GW denier site, renewamerica; that then goes on to say:
Quote:
Although neither nitrogen or oxygen has an influence on the greenhouse effect, for some reason CO2 is assumed by environmentalists to influence the greenhouse effect so as to cause global warming. We are all waiting for an explanation of how CO2 differs from nitrogen and oxygen in its influence on the greenhouse effect. Until such explanation is forthcoming, it seems reasonable to suspect that the theorists are failing to differentiate between wholesome CO2 and poisonous CO1 (carbon monoxide) and other toxic gases that accompany CO2 in industrial pollution. Why are the global warming theorists singling out a wholesome gas that is necessary for life on earth as the culprit of the impending disasters they are predicting?
Conclusion:
The burden of proof lies with those who claim that CO2 gas has a greenhouse effect, because they have presented no understandable mechanism or process that explains how CO2 gas in the atmosphere increases heat on earth.


Hmmmm. Other than this "Nitrogen masking-effect" *^* which you've hypothesized, haven't we already (post#26288, above) visualized the mechanism by which absorbed IR "increases heat on earth?"

"Why are the global warming theorists singling out a wholesome gas that is necessary for life on earth as the culprit of the impending disasters they are predicting?"
Why? Because CO2's having the largest effect and it is the easiest to change?

Well, enough of that stuff.
===

...also indicating that Nitrogen has no significant IR absorbance:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Nitrogen_Molecule_VdW_png
The strong bond makes it chemically stable and non-reactive in most circumstances. Nitrogen's simple structure is unable to absorb either visible or infrared light. As a result, nitrogen is not a greenhouse gas.

Yes it is from wikipedia frown

Every technical thing I found was dealing with molecular nitrogen in high temperature or high pressure, bound states, dealing with materials science. See my "surfings" at:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=26306#Post26306

Anyway, the coe site you linked to is a semiconductor type, material science site.
http://www.coe.ou.edu/sserg/
Solid State Devices
Welcome to the Solid State Devices research group at the University of Oklahoma. We perform research in a number of areas related to development of mid-infrared optoelectronic devices as well as development of applications for these devices. Specific research areas include semiconductor materials growth and characterization, laser fabrication, and tunable laser spectroscopy.
Here's a list of their publications, indicating what type of materials they work with.
http://www.coe.ou.edu/sserg/web/Publication/paper%20title.htm

I noticed that their HITRAN-96 spectrum of CO2 bears no resemblance to the standard IR spectra of atmospheric gasses that we normally see (update: I see more commonalities now... -see below).

*^*Despite the fact that you have that beautiful, rich spectrum of N2 at the very specific wavelength that we're talking about here, I don't think it applies as proof about your Nitrogen masking hypothesis; but if you can find any more information about the pressure, temperature or state of that N2 (or a comparison of it's absorbance at 4.5 microns with CO2's, in terms of relative strength), I'd be happy to acknowledge that. From my reading around about those Fourier Transform spectra, I think those are used for high precision observations of electron shell changes during bonding processes, or some processes which are not related to gasses at atmospheric conditions.
...hmmmm, maybe not: see update below.

Update:
Oh, I see from their 6 pages of CO2 spectra, that their studying different isotopes of CO2.
Oh, ...and I think I see a comparison:
Their 2nd page of CO2 (first image) shows the 4.5 (~2300+ wavenumber) peak with a line strength of 1e-18;
The Nitrogen peak has a line strength (whatever that is) of 1e-28.

As negative exponents, I take it to mean the Nitrogen's absorbance is much smaller than is the CO2.

I'd also note that the dark (solid) central peak in the N2 spectrum is very narrow, whereas the CO2 solid area is much broader.
I don't even know if that dark, solid area is significant in these Fourier Transforms, but it was a noticeable difference.

Well, again, this is way too much talking. I guess I'll leave it over to you. What do you think about all this Nitrogen stuff.
How come nobody's ever mentioned N2 before if it's at all involved in heat absorbance effects.
It couldn't be much if, without water vapor, the air temp would fall by 70-100 degrees (post#26261).

...not quite as fun as I'd hoped, but still worthwhile....
smile


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My apologies for being away for a bit. I don't have enough time to read through all the recent postings, so I'll just respond to your response to my post.


Originally Posted By: samewise

H2O is stronger (there's more of it and it absorbs over a wider range of wavelengths), but it does not absorb where CO2 absorbs (between 4-5 microns); hence the "strength" of the two is unrelated in terms of IR absorbance (apples and oranges logic).

I fully understand the different absorption bands that H20 and C02 have. CO2's absorption bands are in the 2, 3, 5, and 13-17 micron ranges. I never said H2O absorbed IR within these ranges, just that is it responsible for, by far, the majority of IR absorption.

Originally Posted By: samewise

But what the heck is your second paragraph talking about?
Extinction? At atmospheric pressure ranges? Where did you get this from?
The blackbody radiation from Earth (at 4-5 microns) far outstrips the capacity for CO2 to absorb it all (until our atmosphere gets up to >85% CO2). smile


You're saying there's enough IR radiation in the 4-5 range, that it would take a atmosphere made up of 85% CO2 before the IR was absorbed to extinction??? Reference please. I'd love to know where you got this from.
This is completely at odds with everything that I've read. Here's a link to a wikipedia page with showing the atmospheric transmission of IR.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Atmospheric_Transmission.png
You'll notice that in all of the CO2 absorption bands (2, 3, 5, and 13-17), the amount of IR leaving the earth is 0. The IR that is leaving the globe is within a fairly narrow band of ~8-13 microns. There's next to no IR leaving the earth's atmosphere other than within that range. Which, I'll remind you, is outside the absorption range of CO2.
That same page has the absorption that is responsible from each major GHG, and you can easily see 100% absorption already occurring in the each of the absorption bands for CO2.

The theory of AGW is that as the atmosphere becomes more "optically thick" with CO2, there is more CO2 available to reabsorb emitted IR from the CO2 molecules which originally absorbed the initial IR emitted from earth. This, in theory, warms the earth, as energy is held within the atmosphere longer before being lost to space.

The other thing (which I did have wrong), is the pressure broadening of the CO2 absorption bands due to increases in partial pressure (brought along by the increased concentration), not lowering pressures as I stated. My apologies.....this idea that absorption characteristics can change depending on the concentration of molecules seem a little odd to me. I need to do some more reading on this.

Originally Posted By: samewise

Maybe we're talking about different layers of the atmosphere here, but the "physics" that I know predicts higher concentrations of CO2 will increase cooling in the upper levels (lower pressure levels) of the atmosphere.


I believe we are talking about different portions of the atmosphere. As you mention, the stratosphere is supposed to cool, this is because as the atmosphere becomes "optically thicker", heat takes longer to reach the atmosphere. This reduces the heat flow to the stratosphere (until the atmosphere reaches steady state), and because the stratosphere continues to radiate heat to space at the same rate as before, it cools down.
The upper troposphere (which is much lower than the stratosphere), is supposed to warm. And at a greater rate than the near surface.

This page has good info on the cooling/warming characteristics of the various portions of the atmosphere.
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_browse.html

This seems (to me) to be a good page on describing the IR adsorption physics behind AGW - and a quote for you samewise
Quote:

It is generally accepted that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already high enough to absorb almost all the infrared radiation in the main carbon dioxide absorption bands over a distance of only a few km

http://brneurosci.org/co2.html

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Originally Posted By: Canuck
Originally Posted By: samewise
But....
The blackbody radiation from Earth (at 4-5 microns) far outstrips the capacity for CO2 to absorb it all (until our atmosphere gets up to >85% CO2). smile


You're saying there's enough IR radiation in the 4-5 range, that it would take a atmosphere made up of 85% CO2 before the IR was absorbed to extinction??? Reference please. I'd love to know where you got this from.
This is completely at odds with everything that I've read. Here's a link to a wikipedia page with showing the atmospheric transmission of IR.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Atmospheric_Transmission.png
===
This seems (to me) to be a good page on describing the IR adsorption physics behind AGW - and a quote for you samewise
Quote:
It is generally accepted that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already high enough to absorb almost all the infrared radiation in the main carbon dioxide absorption bands over a distance of only a few km

http://brneurosci.org/co2.html
You caught me!
I knew when I wrote that, about the 85%, I'd get in trouble. Hopefully the smiley face indicated something to be looked at more closely. Thanks for finding that reference for me (I figured if it was wrong, then someone would let me know).

And Thanks for the other reference too, I have some more studying to do!

One point I think I can ask about:
Originally Posted By: Canuk
The theory of AGW is that as the atmosphere becomes more "optically thick" with CO2, there is more CO2 available to reabsorb emitted IR from the CO2 molecules which originally absorbed the initial IR emitted from earth. This, in theory, warms the earth, as energy is held within the atmosphere longer before being lost to space.
Good description, but....
There's no reason that the warmer CO2 can't also warm up the surrounding oxygen and nitrogen molecules (through contact... -loss of vibrational energy), is there?

...off to study now; thanks again!
~samwise
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Alright Samwick. Here we go again.

First, I will concede that N2 does not seem to be a greenhouse gas. I too was surprised by that graph, but the e-28 makes sense. Good catch Samwik!

You are incorrect when you say that, "CO2's having the largest effect." CO2 does not have the largest effect. Water vapour has that honour by a long shot. This is mostly due to water vapour's vastly larger concentration.

As well, we did not visualize "the mechanism by which absorbed IR 'increases heat on earth?'" (Why did you put 'increases heat on earth' in quotes?) Molecules that absorb UV and visible light (and shorter wavelengths) are what can increase the heat of the earth. Looking at Canuck's link, the O2/O3 molecules will absorb UV rays allowing that energy to be converted to infrared heat through collisions with cooler molecules.

The absorption of IR radiation does not increase the heat on earth. It slightly slows rate at which the IR heat can escape. That increases the chances of it being reduced to a longer and less energetic wavelength, but it does not cause more heat. This has to happen for the energy to leave the earth since Canuck's link shows all energy from 0.2 to 70 microns, except in the ~8-13 micron band, being kept here.

Even so, increasing CO2 by 0.0002% from 0.0385% to 0.0387% will not have a large change in the amount that IR is slowed in its escaping our globe. Over 100 years, a change of 0.02% will have little effect since water will still have a many times higher concentration. You wrote that "heat is considered to be about 4-100 microns." Assuming that is correct, and looking at your earth observatory gif, water absorbs quite a bit between 1 and 3.5 microns. The only way for CO2 to increase heat on earth is through its ability to absorb energy at the 2-3 micron band. That is the only real chance for CO2 to warm the planet. Then again, it could also COOL the planet by converting the energy from the 2-3 micron range to the 8-14 micron range that can escape through collisions with other molecules. Unfortunately, water also absorbs in that 2-3 band, so CO2's effect will still be negligible.

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Real quickly,
You point out,
Originally Posted By: JMR
You are incorrect when you say that, "CO2's having the largest effect." CO2 does not have the largest effect. Water vapour has that honour....

However, with the rest of the sentence, "and it is the easiest to change," then water vapor drops out of the running for GHG's to be "singled out."
But yes, good catch; it is a poorly written sentence. The answer to 'why we should single CO2 out' should have been, '....of the GHG's that are easy to change, CO2 is having the largest effect'

Next you asked about,
Originally Posted By: JMR
(Why did you put 'increases heat on earth' in quotes?)
I was just reusing the phrasing of that website that I had quoted (from directly above) talking about nitrogen, oxygen, and CO2. It wasn't meant as sarcasm, or anything sinister. smile
===
That is a neat link Canuk provided. It's all a documented opinion piece, but it's gotta be over 90% "spot on," and much more detailed with depth, than most sites have when talking about "the greenhouse effect." It's the best I've seen, except maybe for these science fora.

Originally Posted By: JMR
Molecules that absorb UV and visible light (and shorter wavelengths) are what can increase the heat of the earth. Looking at Canuck's link, the O2/O3 molecules will absorb UV rays allowing that energy to be converted to infrared heat through collisions with cooler molecules.

The absorption of IR radiation does not increase the heat on earth. It slightly slows rate at which the IR heat can escape.


I agree, what we're talking about is the heat radiated away from the earth (whatever the higher energy, shorter wavelength source originally was).
...and it seems the correct wavelength should be about 3; and not 4-5, like I've been saying (based on reading a low-res. graph), though that's something that needs checking because the "4-100 micron" figure for "heat" is from the same graph.
...another good catch... more later.

But I have to ask about how, slowing the "rate at which the IR heat can escape" "does not increase the heat on earth," unless you're using different definitions for "heat."

I suppose the answer is, "That increases the chances of it being reduced to a longer and less energetic wavelength, but it does not cause more heat;" but I think there is room for more understanding here.

... and also for the rest, about concentrations and wavelengths; I need to look long, and think about this before a better reply.

~be back later
smile


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When you ask about the slowing of the rate, you are talking about time frame for the CO2 molecules to release the energy. The heat transfer coefficient will determine CO2's propensity to retain the energy for longer periods. I googled 'heat transfer coefficient' (without the quotes) and found the http://biocab.org/Heat_Storage.html site. I read that last year while people at Climate Audit were still making suggestions. Perhaps now is a good time to re-read it. I will take the time this weekend to read through it again.

Just a thought I had though is that air is a good insulator. This also corroborates Canuck's graphic. We use clothes that have air pockets to keep warm. We use fiberglass insulation that traps air while preventing conduction and convection. We and our houses end up cooling by radiating heat. As Canuck's graphic shows, most of the IR radiation is trapped.

How long does it take for the tables, floor, pots, and ground of a greenhouse to cool when the clouds block the sun depends on the materials of which each component is made. Metal pots will cool quickly to room temperature. Concrete walkways will take longer to cool. In light of air being a good insulator, how long will it take to cool? I am hoping that the link will analyse which components of air affect its ability to be a good insulator. Most importantly to our discussion is the degree to which each molecule contributes to the insulation effect.

Then again, this is all about trapped air. The atmosphere is much more complex, but this may be a good starting point.

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Well, I'm still looking and thinking....
See some surfings at:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=26349#Post26349

...there's lots of stuff about 4.5 microns (so maybe I wasn't wrong after all?)

Meanwhile....
...as you say, a greenhouse is trapped air (it also involves glass for it's effect, unlike our atmosphere). I don't think we can answer these CO2 questions "starting at" a real greenhouse; we need to look at studies of real gasses.

That "biocab" page on CO2 Heat_Storage looks like an introductory course in physical chemistry, so it should provide some insights; and the rest of the site is quite a trip too.

I'm hoping you'll be interested in a site I found, and let me know what you think. I'm just starting to explore it "now."
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/529696/Physical-basis-of-the--Greenhouse-Effect--The-%E2%80%9Cwavelength-shift%E2%80%9D-
Physical basis of the Greenhouse Effect -The “wavelength shift”-
-& scroll down for many other papers linked to this topic--
===

btw... feel free to "fisk" this, from post #26318 above:
"There's no reason that the warmer CO2 can't also warm up the surrounding oxygen and nitrogen molecules (through contact... -loss of vibrational energy), is there?"

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Hmmmm, well after exploring, I'm very disappointed. That docstoc site is a jumble of tertiary sources and opinion (wrong & right); and that biocab site is just too unique to be the final word.

I may be able to trace some of the Docstoc sources back; and biocab cites Stephen Schwartz's paper (that we've cited a few months ago, along with Levitus), so that's cool... good potential leads.

I'll see what I can find at the library about heat.
It may be a few days....

~Later
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"Heat always moves from places of higher density of heat to places of lower density of heat, thus states the Second Law of Thermodynamics (Van Ness. 1969. Page 54). In daylight, air is always colder than soil; consequently, heat is transferred from the soil to the air, not vice versa."

The heat from a CO2 molecule to another molecule within the air will not increase the heat of the air. As we seem to have established here, the CO2 will cause the heat transfer to slow down, but by how much? The Biocab link includes this:

"Does this mean that air temperature would increase by 0.02 °C per second until it reached scorching temperatures? No, it does not, as almost all of the absorbed heat is emitted in the very next second. Thus the temperature anomaly caused by CO2 cannot go up if the heat source does not increase the amount of energy transferred to CO2."

That must be why the air cools quickly when the sun goes behind a cloud. It is the sun that heats up the globe and not CO2. With respect to the forcing of CO2, that site says, "[c]onsidering that the difference between the temperature of the soil and the temperature of the air was 11.5 °C, the amount of 0.15 °C is negligible (just 1.3% of the total)." And for water vapour, "[i]t is evident that water vapor is a much better absorber-emitter of heat than carbon dioxide. Under the same conditions, water vapor transfers 160 times more heat than carbon dioxide.

The above quotes are from this reference:

Nahle, Nasif. Heat Stored by Greenhouse Gases. Biology Cabinet. 27 April 2007. Obtained on 2008/06/03; from http://biocab.org/Heat_Stored.html

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Yes, that biocab site is very entertaining... did you see Nasif's comment here on SAGG?
===


In googling around to find the correct wavelengths for CO2 absorption, I ran across several GW denialist sites.
Curiously, they all seem to have top quality numbers and explanations of the physical mechanisms involved; but then they go on to describe some final mechanism, or process, which makes the "greenhouse heating" conclusions invalid. These "final mechanisms" seem to be completely speculative; as they never cite any sources for this part of their exposition (though the more preliminary parts are well documented).

I've seen some of these "final mechanisms" promulgated earlier in this thread even; and referred to them as a kind of "new physics." My favorite, from a wacky website, was "There's no significant difference ... for global warming, because convectional currents mix the air in such short distances."
...Maybe I just missed class that day... (along with the rest of the alarmist scientists).

Okay, enough ranting.
===

John,
I think I see the point about total absorption (at 4.3 microns) already; therefore any increase in CO2 will not change the emission spectrum of heat escaping Earth.
I'm not sure if that really is true, or if there is some other mechanism (reabsorption and translational heating?) involved that I'm not thinking about; but....

Even if it is true, there are some other details that are being overlooked, which may explain our two differing views on CO2's capabilities.

Looking at Canuk's wiki link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Atmospheric_Transmission.png

...of the relevant spectra, lined up so nicely. Please note their logarithmic scale in microns (two thru nine microns, in the middle; & 20 - 60 microns, on the right-hand side) is the same for all of these spectrographs. ~[between 1, 10 & 70 microns, right?]

The heat we're talking about, the "upgoing thermal radiation," is pictured in blue, around ~10 microns (and 'black' for each side 'bump,' at ~4 & at ~15 microns). This is heat escaping into space.

Its mirror images (roughly), the "white areas" in the next lower graph, are the gaps in atmospheric absorption, through which heat escapes into space. It is the sides of these "white windows," those shoulders of the atmosphere's absorption range (in grey), on which we need to focus.

This "Total Absorption..." Graph is a Summation of those following graphs, from the various atmospheric gases, CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, etc. Its bump and peaks are created by the addition of all the bumps and peaks from the lower spectrographs.

If you'll notice the sides of those windows, these windows are made a bit smaller by the various absorption bands (wider, taller grey areas) of CO2 (from 4 - 20), as well as the N2O absorption peaks. Just follow the various gas peaks straight up to the "Total..." graph to see their contribution. In fact, you can even see the two diminutive peaks of CO2 (just to the right of the tall 4.3 peak) expressed in the Total Absorption Graph as two little notches added onto the left-hand shoulder of the water absorption area beginning at (to the right of) ~4 microns. The largest contribution seems to be from the ~15 micron band, but even the minor CO2 absorption bands at ~9 and ~10 microns show up above, in the Total Absorption Graph.

All of these noted absorption bands for CO2 fall within the open, "white windows" that let heat out to space.
While they are not close to absorbing all of the IR that currently escapes into space, they are making the atmosphere more opaque to escaping heat, retaining heat in the atmosphere, as the concentration of these gases increases.

It's a miniscule effect, only changing the temperature by a small percentage of the temperature change caused by water vapor.
I wouldn't dream of trying to quantify the amount of temperature change. I'll leave that up to the professionals; but I think these points above qualitatively explain the mechanism of CO2's "greenhouse effect," absorbing IR in the ranges where heat normally escapes to space.

Namasté
~ smile


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Originally Posted By: samwik
While they are not close to absorbing all of the IR that currently escapes into space, they are making the atmosphere more opaque to escaping heat, retaining heat in the atmosphere, as the concentration of these gases increases.

It's a miniscule effect, only changing the temperature by a small percentage of the temperature change caused by water vapor.


So, it is a miniscule effect of CO2 whose concentration is changing only minimally... Are you suggesting that if the level of CO2 doubles, then this miniscule effect will/could double?

The graph itself explains the greenhouse effect of CO2. The absorption effect of CO2 is logarithmic itself. The first 20 ppm absorb most. Increasing the concentration to 40ppm has a much lower effect on the temperature.


http://www.mikechurch.com/joomla/daily-features/global-cooling-for-dummies-pt.-iii.html

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p.s. ...should I post this without checking the facts first; without looking at the link to that logarithmic graph?
Should I rant about how anyone can take a real graph of something and then just re-label it to suit thier own opinion (or add their own trend lines, or conflate data from two different graphs, etc., etc.)?

Let's go look. Up to now i've only been looking on my Kindle -and can't follow links.

Hey! There's no citation at all. Is this just some made up graph? I went through that whole unpublished "scientifically denialist" technical paper,
http://www.mikechurch.com/joomla/images/stories/global_NOT_warming/Falsification_of_CO2.pdf
thinking it must come from there; but no... not there. FromWhere?

Thanks for the link to another of those wacky sites, much like the Creationist/ID'er sites, that dazzle folks with scientific information (much of it valid) and then draw completely unwarranted conclusions to so obviously suite their own agenda.
--> end p.s.
& here's a link to some relevant surfings:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=26454#Post26454
===
p.p.s. I see my memory of the graph was wrong, but I'm confident that my points below are still valid....

I haven't looked yet, but I'm betting someone has taken a graph showing the extinction of IR in an absorbing medium (and then relabeled it as the heating potential of IR -or was it CO2).

I'll have to look at the graph again (and the source!).

ummm....
Several times along this thread, I thought it was important to try and describe how energy flows in the atmosphere. It's quite a story; an action tale, set in a landscape bordering on the quantum and macroscopic worlds.

[put in explanation here, or the rc link]
...yea, ...since your source is MikeChurch, I'm just gonna include this neat clip from a realclimate blog.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/04/back-to-the-future/feed/
Originally Posted By: by Rod B.

For all practical purposes the energy from a photon at 15 microns is absorbed in a CO2 molecule’s vibration. This energy is more than twice the kinetic energy of a molecule’s translation at a nominal 300K, and does not affect the temperature, other than from the likely trivial momentum transfer just mentioned. By equipartition quantum probabilities it will strongly want to relax This relaxation is predominately transferring energy to another atmospheric molecule’s translation via collision, at other than very low pressure (density). This does raise the atmosphere’s temperature. It can, though unlikely, transfer to its own translation; however this becomes trivial since the molecule will still quickly relax its new found translation energy again via collision. It can also re-emit a photon instead, the probability of which increases as pressure decreases (among other factors). Conversely, a CO2 can sometimes collide with another molecule, pick up some kinetic energy and immediately relaxing via photon emission, transiting through vibration, and provide a net cooling of the atmosphere

Some of my calculations as a reference (and a check if anyone is so inclined):
The energy of a 15micron photon is 1.325×10^-20 joules; its momentum is 4.4×10^-29 [you’d think by now physicists would have come up with momentum units; I suggest OOMPHS!]
The kinetic energy of a CO2 molecule at 300K is 6.214×10^-21joules (3742 joules for a mol); its momentum is 3.0×10^-23; its velocity (or the average velocity for a mol) is 412.5 m/sec.
One photon’s energy going into one molecule’s translation will raise its temperature from 300K to 630K; the mol’s avg. temp would increase to 300.038K.

The standard relaxation process has a complex formula of probabilities. Of interest is the vibration to translation transfers usually require a large number of collisions before occurring. 10,000 to 100,000 is often quoted, but that is usually at high temperatures (500-1000K) where the molecule is more “comfortable” with its vibration. At atmospheric 200-300K (and normal pressure) it is less : 100-10,000 I would guess (haven’t done the cumbersome math), and more likely to make the transfer. The lower rotation energy takes 5-100 collisions to make a translation transfer and is highly likely — H2O to N2 or O2, e.g. Going the other direction — translation to vibration to emission — I would think (no math again) at low temp and pressure, e.g. stratosphere, somewhere around the 10,000-100,000 collisions range is more the normal and not as likely to occur.
...

In the lower atmosphere there are a lot of CO2 molecules being blasted with thermal radiation from the surface of the earth. They will lose their absorbed vibrational energy to the translational energy of the air molecules through collisions which preserve momentum but transfer energy.

In other words, the surface air will be radiatively heated, just as food is heated in a microwave oven.

Cheers, Alastair.
...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/04/back-to-the-future/#comment-85606

p.s. ...that's also a very neat site; thanks for pointing me at that also. Much to explore....
=

So, the important point to realize that while this graph is true, the origin of that IR can be anywhere in the atmosphere; its origin is not relegated to the earth's surface.

I think this is an accurate characterization of the weird quantum side of the story.
Any molecule of CO2 can spontaneously emit IR (say ~14.7 microns) simply by colliding with a higher temperature molecule of N2 or O2. It doesn't even need to be a collision of a specific energy, as long as it's over a certain lower limit; with the bulk of the energy being converted into the IR emission and the remainder adding on to the momentum and vibration of the CO2 molecule.

...and of course, the reverse can also happen... after absorbing some IR. It's not as if there is a particular quantum of 14.7 IR that leaves earth and you can track it's journey. Well, you can; but you have to follow all its many transitions, from potential energy to kinetic energy, and back again while being added into the sea of energy that is out there and then split off again at some other level (part of some higher energy quantum -or as some, or several, lower energy quanta).

More simplistically, you could envision a particular quantum of 14.7 IR being absorbed a foot above the surface
...and then being emitted, to then be absorbed another foot away, higher above the ground. Now it's two feet above the ground as it gets emitted again, only to be absorbed a foot away (at 3 feet above the ground)... etc., etc....

CO2 could be seen as a series of relay stations, ferrying a quantum of IR up to the higher reaches of the atmosphere where it can finally radiate away (without hitting something and raising its temperature... as it may do all the way up through those thicker layers of the atmosphere).

That extinction graph is a snapshot of what one quantum does, on average, in an absorbing medium (each medium having its own extinction coefficient). It's not a measure of how a quantum will heat the air, but of how easily a quantum gets absorbed.

After it gets absorbed is the story of how energy is stored and transmitted and heat flows.
smile


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John

Quote:
In daylight, air is always colder than soil; consequently, heat is transferred from the soil to the air, not vice versa."


if I go outside and stick a thermometer in my yard it will read 65 F even if the "air" temperature is 95 F
even if the "air" is 45 F the ground is 65 F

so the air is always colder must be incorrect.

stable ground temperatures is how geothermal cooling and heating works.

the thermal mass earth is greater than that of air because its density is greater than that of air.

heat moves into the earth from the air , it is the shear mass of the earth that allows this heat transfer to occur.

if you feel your desk with your hand it feels colder than the air
in the room , this is because the heat from your hand is moving / transfering into the desk because it has a higher thermal mass than your hand , just like the ground has a higher thermal mass than the air.

have you ever wondered why water pipes are underground?

it is because the ground stays warmer than the air in winter.

In simple terms, the second law is an expression of the fact that over time, ignoring the effects of self-gravity, differences in temperature, pressure, and density tend to even out in a physical system that is isolated from the outside world.

your hand is an observance of the second law , as you place your hand on your desk your hand feels the coldness of the desk , then your hand begins to warm as the heat from your hand transfers into the desk.

your hands temperature is equalizing with your desk temperature , the heat is flowing from hot to cold not vice versa.


Last edited by paul; 06/09/08 04:57 AM.

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Paul, don't blame John for that one....
Originally Posted By: JMR
The above quotes are from this reference:
Nahle, Nasif. Heat Stored by Greenhouse Gases. Biology Cabinet....


This explains the disjointed nature of the citations, observations, and conclusions. Did you see my "review" of that site?

Any comments, suggestions, or reviews of the CO2 debate would be welcome (hint, hint, ...anyone); is it all "greek to me," or does it evoke a unified picture?

~ smile


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Originally Posted By: samwik
So, the important point to realize that while this graph is true, the origin of that IR can be anywhere in the atmosphere; its origin is not relegated to the earth's surface.


The source of the IR is irrelevant. The graph shows how much CO2 affects atmospheric temperature based on concentration. The point is that if CO2 is only at 20ppm, there is about 1.5 C of warming. Doubling the amount of CO2 only adds about 0.3 C. Doubling from 280 will have minimal effect.

Here is another set of graphs that were in a paper I had found a while ago.


That paper also concludes that the IPCC has overestimated the effect of CO2 through anthropogenic global warming. This minimizes the human influence on climate.

That RealClimate site is terrible. They do not allow discussion. Many have documented comments that have not been allowed because they ask difficult questions. If you want a vetting of either the RealClimate site, or the biocab paper, both were done at ClimateAudit.org. The vetting of the biocab paper is mentioned in that biocab paper itself. Search the Climate Audit site for Heat_Stored to get a few links to posts where it was at least mentioned if not discussed.

You then discuss the movment of a "quantum of 14.7 IR." That does not make sense. When two molecules collide, some portion of the energy is transferred. For you to follow the quantum of 14.7 IR is to assume that the energy is re-radiated before a collision can happen. I think we are going in circles here. You mentioned, "that extinction graph is a snapshot..." Which is the extinction graph?

Originally Posted By: paul
if I go outside and stick a thermometer in my yard it will read 65 F even if the "air" temperature is 95 F even if the "air" is 45 F the ground is 65 F so the air is always colder must be incorrect.


You cannot use a thermometer. It is the surface layer that gets warm. You need to use a better instrument. You need one that can produce a picture like the second one in Anthony Watts' "I love the smell of sewage in the morning" blog post. The only possible way for the surface to be lower in temperature is if it is a cloudy day and warm air is blown in from some other locale. That air was warmed by being in contact with the ground in that locale. This is how all forced air heating systems work. Heat the air and blow it to another room. The heat does not generally move from the air to the ground on sunny days. Heat rises. The ground gets warmed by the sun. The air is warmest right next to the ground when the sun is shining on it.

About your desk example, that a surface can transfer heat more efficiently away from your hand does not mean that it is colder than the air. I put my hand onto my desk and it feels hot, but it is in the sun. Fast moving air can remove heat from our bodies than still air. The air temperature is the same, but the rate of cooling is faster. These are similar principles. The dashboard in the car is much hotter when I park in the sun than is the shaded car seat.

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Originally Posted By: John M Reynolds
The source of the IR is irrelevant.
I'd like to get back to this and the IR stuff, but first....


I suppose my last post should have been greatly revised.
I was talking as if your graph was something else, and I went on and on about heat flow, IR absorbancy and emissivity.

I'd like to get back to that, but first please let me know where that graph came from. Other than MikeChurch writing,
Quote:
David Archibald of LaVoisier breaks this down even further for us (Figure X). You see, each gas has it's own heat retention factor"
I find no citation for this graph.

Well, let's google: "David Archibald" LaVoisier
Oh, good source! [said sarcastically]
http://n3xus6.blogspot.com/2007/02/dd.html
"The worst climate science paper ever of all time anywhereFeb 1, 2007 ... a fellow by the name of David Archibald popped up, ... Now, Lavoisier is a crazed denialist group based in Australia so the fact that ..."
&
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/my-model-used-for-deception/
"Lavoisier Society’s own programme says “David Archibald is a Perth-based scientist operating in the fields of cancer research, climate science and oil ..."
&
http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/09/americas-biggest-belchers/
"David Archibald is perhaps the most discredited voice in the world of climate science.
The Lavoisier Group, with which Archibald is closely associated, and to which he presented the paper to which Franko refers, defines the purpose of its existence in terms of its ideological opposition to the Kyoto Treaty and the Howard government’s embrace of the principles of that treaty; the group identifies no positive purpose for its own existence. Like the American Enterprise Institute, The Lavoisier Group appears to derive its funding primarily from the coal and oil industries, making its credibility dubious, at best.
Archibald’s presentation is, on its face, a tissue of statistical sophistry. He proposes no coherent explanation for the data he cherry-picks to tenuously support the conclusions from which he appears to have tried to work backwards.
[/quote]

Hey! That's just what I was saying about the graph; someone's taken a graph of the extinction coefficient in an absorbing medium and relabeled it to suite their agenda or "theory."

This all makes sense if you assume that after the IR is absorbed, it is "sequestered" and doesn't heat the atmosphere further. Based on that "theory," one could assume a graph of the extinction coefficient was proportional to the "warming effect."

Unless you can point me to some authoritative source for that graph, I have to say it's worthless.
Worse than worthless, it is leading intelligent folks to draw the conclusions that so obviously emerge from the data in that graph; but erroneous conclusions, based on a falsified document.

To repeat, someone's taken a graph of an IR extinction coefficient in an absorbing medium (CO2) and relabelled it, IMHO.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
....Found the graph in Archibald's actual paper.
It was originally submitted at a "conference" as:
[PPT] The Past and Future of ClimateFile Format: Microsoft Powerpoint - View as HTML
David Archibald. Lavoisier Conference, Melbourne ..... By my calculations, every day’s delay in the onset of solar cycle 24 will lower the average ...
http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/The_Past_and_Future_of_Climate_May_2007.pps

The Past and Future of Climate; [graph on p.16]; Lavoisier Conference, Melbourne
The Warming Effect of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

...and it seems as if he submitted it later for publication in the International Journal of Oncology. Perhaps that's still pending, but it didn't make it into the March, 2008 issue, as the link might indicate.

[PDF] Int J Oncol File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States. David Archibald. International Conference on Climate Change. March, 2008 ...
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf

Erroneously cited as if from the:
International Journal of Oncology 1019-6439
"Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States"
[graph on: p.22].

But look at the science in this Archibald paper.

While the blogosphere is almost exclusively full of praise for ClimateAudit, the fact that he uses Archibald and that "bio-cab" site as sources of basic information does not lend more credibility to Steve McIntyre's blogAudit site.

It seems that ClimateAudit has helped uncover mistakes, falsifications, new ideas and hypotheses, and conspiracies. These are all great functions of the blogosphere; but his site shouldn't be taken as a final word, any more than any other site or source can ever be a final word.

While alarmist sites regale us with a lot of elitist handwaving at the discovery of any more supportive information, hopefully inching up the "certainty" factor; the denialist blogs seem to take a more plebian glee in falsifying an idea, putting the final nail in the coffin, while it's back to the drawing board, ...that is swinging in the wind, overturning the whole GW conspiracy, ...and so achieve some presumed finality.

Revision, refinement, and reviling are a part of the normal scientific process. These things are not indications of some final triumph.
===

What does Archibald report about his graph, ...and stuff in general?

"David Archibald
International Conference on Climate Change
March, 2008"
...
Do we live in a special time in which the laws of physics and nature are suspended? No,
we do not. Can we expect relationships between the Sun’s activity and climate, that we can
see in data going back several hundred years, to continue for at least another 20 years?
With absolute certainty.
In this presentation, I will demonstrate that the Sun drives climate, and use that
demonstrated relationship to predict the Earth’s climate to 2030. It is a prediction that
differs from most in the public domain. It is a prediction of imminent cooling.
...

...about that graph
Originally Posted By: David Archibald

Confirming the logarithmic effect of carbon dioxide is possible using the MODTRAN
facility hosted by the University of Chicago.
Oh, so this is just a proposition, or a hypothesis, of Archibald's....
...Not something he's tested or experimented on, or cited from somewhere else.

...his paper continues, "objectively:"

AGW Proponents are Exactly Wrong
1. The Earth is getting colder and this will accelerate.
2. Carbon dioxide has a minuscule warming effect.
3. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will
increase agricultural productivity.
4. The ideal atmospheric carbon dioxide level is a
minimum of 1,000 ppm

Dr Hansen’s statement that the maximum safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is
350 ppm begs the question of what the actual ideal level is. I have taken the 1,000 ppm
figure from the level that commercial greenhouse operators prefer to run their greenhouses
at. The ability to grow food is going to be the overriding concern next decade.

Stopping coal-fired power generation due to carbon dioxide emissions is exactly wrong in
science. The more carbon dioxide you put into the atmosphere, the more you are helping
all living things on the planet and of course that makes you a better person.
A further big dimension to this debate is US fuel supply security. The oil price is now well
above the level at which coal to liquid fuels plants are profitable. With a breakeven price
of US$40/bbl, they have become quite profitable.
The US has very large coal reserves and the conversion of this coal to liquid fuels could
provide the US with fuel security. If the building of conversion plants is delayed by
notions of supposedly harmful carbon dioxide emissions associated with the conversion
process, those notions are unnecessarily harmful to US national security.

This is my message.
David Archibald
david.archibald@westnet.com.au
===

...oh, I thought this was a scientific paper. Never mind.

smile

p.s. "...what the actual ideal [CO2] level is. I have taken the 1,000 ppm figure from the level that commercial greenhouse operators prefer to run their greenhouses at." ...well there's my best laugh of the day....
~


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Samwik

They are slightly mixed up here.

Quote:
In daylight, air is always colder than soil.


this is wrong , air temperature is in no way as stable as ground temperature.

if the ground is moist and warm and the humidity is low the moisture in the ground will evaporate into the air , as this happens the resulting water vapor absorbs heat from its surroundings.

this causes the remaining air to cool , as the air cools some of the heat from the ground is transfered into the air.

but you cannot say that the air is always colder than the ground.

and you are basing your findings on this error?

I havent read the whole page yet.

however if they are basing findings or theory on this as a foundation then there will most likely be many more errors.


.

Last edited by paul; 06/11/08 01:31 AM.

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Originally Posted By: Paul
but you cannot say that the air is always colder than the ground.


You missed the "In daylight" part. That is the key. Or is your problem with the 'always' being too strict?

Originally Posted By: Samwik
To repeat, someone's taken a graph of an IR extinction coefficient in an absorbing medium (CO2) and relabelled it, IMHO.


I am sorry, but I don't understand. What is an extinction coefficient? The way I see it is CO2 will absorb 100% of the IR radiation at about 15 microns. It is difficult to read from that graph, so for argument's sake, I will say that CO2 will only absorb 30% of the energy at 18 microns. As the concentration increases, more of the 18 micron energy will be absorbed, but the amount absorbed at 15 microns will not change. Is this what you mean by a graph of extinction coefficient?

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Originally Posted By: John M Reynolds
I am sorry, but I don't understand. What is an extinction coefficient? The way I see it is CO2 will absorb 100% of the IR radiation at about 15 microns. It is difficult to read from that graph, so for argument's sake, I will say that CO2 will only absorb 30% of the energy at 18 microns. As the concentration increases, more of the 18 micron energy will be absorbed, but the amount absorbed at 15 microns will not change. Is this what you mean by a graph of extinction coefficient?

15, 18 Microns? Huh; are we talking about different graphs?

Originally Posted By: John M Reynolds


Above is the graph that I'm saying has been relabeled, "falsified" by Archibald, from what I (IMHO) can tell. Do you have a different source for the graph, or any similar graph?

I know I'm setting myself up to look like a really stupid, worthless pest; and I'll have to offer some apologies to various folks and sites if I'm wrong about this....

Maybe I should ask for a 12-24 hour grace period (hopefully 4 hours will be enough) to double check that there isn't something obvious that I'm missing. Sure, I'll try that.

So to restate:
This graph is either a complete theoretical construct, or a relabeled graph of something else (possibly CO2 extinction coeff.); not a graph based on experiment or observations by a citable (or any) source.

Thanks,
smile

P.S. Yes, I feel fairly confident of my claim; no more grace period needed.
...only found:
http://royalsociety.org/downloaddoc.asp?id=1881
Temperature change vs CO2 concentration
(...but just predictions)

Last edited by samwik; 06/11/08 07:41 AM. Reason: UPDATE: P.S.

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The http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=26438#Post26438 has a graph. My description of how CO2 gas concentration is based on that graph and this one that I had linked to:



If that graph is right, then the extinction graph you are talking about also is logical. The first graph on pAZage 9 of your royal society link shows that CO2 to temperature is not linear. That is a start, but what is the relationship at lower concentrations? As well, those graphs are based on the IPCC scenarios. As you say, they are just theoretical predictions from the models. As we discussed on another thread, those predictions are way too high. The biocab site suggests that the radiative forcing of CO2 is much lower than that. Right now I am not interested in the actual number of degrees per CO2 doubling, but in the relationship between them; otherwise, we will be going in circles again.

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Trying again:

Link if the picture does not appear

Here is a link to a physicist that discusses the relationship between CO2 and temperature as logathrimic.

Using his Temperature = Temperature0 + ln(1 + 1.2 x + 0.005 x2 + 0.0000014 x3) formula, I made the following spreadsheet:

Where CO2 is the PPM concentration (column V), Temp is in Celcius, and Chg is the temp less the previous temp. Plotting CO2 against Chg, the looks similar to that of the yellow 'extinction' graph. Of course, that is because Ln is in the formula. My version of the formula in open office calc is:

=$W$20+LN(1+1.2*V41+0.005*V41*V41+0.0000014*V41*V41*V41)

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samwise.......

you're looking at the estimated/predicted temperature increases vs CO2 increases, including feedbacks.

The graph that John presented was the temperature increases (calculated) vs CO2 increases, without feedbacks.
The italics are the critical difference here.

It's fairly well documented that from first principles, excluding any changes in convection, a doubling of CO2 will yield a temperature increase of 1.1-1.5 degrees C. You have to include some silly positive feedbacks, and minimize any negative feedbacks to get the 6oC increases predicted by some GCMs.

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John

Quote:
You missed the "In daylight" part. That is the key. Or is your problem with the 'always' being too strict?


I ignored the "in daylight" part , because for the most part , the air in daylight or at night is warmer than the ground , however in the winter months the air can become colder than the ground and varies with geographical location.

but yes I have a problem with people saying always about something that fluctuates such as air temperature , especially when they use something that is more like a always such as ground temperature in their comparison and then reverse the facts
to try and prove a point or theory.

.


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Originally Posted By: Canuck
samwise.......
you're looking at the estimated/predicted temperature increases vs CO2 increases, including feedbacks.

The graph that John presented was the temperature increases (calculated) vs CO2 increases, without feedbacks.
The italics are the critical difference here.

I wasn't looking at any graphs until JMR brought up that one logarithmic graph (which I still think is bogus). I only included that Royal Soc. graph (found during 'grace-period' check) because it had the same parameters as JMR's graph.

I hope to get the back to the CO2 and IR physical properties soon enough, but I need to respond to this graph stuff first, and compose....
~Later
smile

p.s. For some barely related climate surfings on physical properties of extinction (absorbance) and heating, see:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=26584#Post26584

whistle

Last edited by samwik; 06/12/08 09:57 AM. Reason: add p.s.

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Originally Posted By: Paul
I ignored the "in daylight" part , because for the most part , the air in daylight or at night is warmer than the ground , however in the winter months the air can become colder than the ground and varies with geographical location.


As well as ignoring the key part of the biocab sentence, you have it exactly opposite. Like I wrote in my 26477 post, the surface heats in sunlight. Whether that surface is the top millimeter layer of a rock, soil, wood chips, or gravel, it heats first. The darker the object, the more it will heat up. As far as the light can penetrate, that is the top layer that heats up. Some of that heat is then removed by the air through convection, conduction or radiation. The rest of the heat will go to warming the ground just below the surface through conduction. The air will always be colder or the same temperature as the surface layer of the ground unless it is night or cloudy AND a warm wind, that was warmed by the surface elsewhere, blows in. The only possible exception I can think of may be snow on the ground that reflects the sun's light.

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John

Quote:
Originally Posted By: paul
if I go outside and stick a thermometer in my yard it will read 65 F even if the "air" temperature is 95 F even if the "air" is 45 F the ground is 65 F so the air is always colder must be incorrect.


Quote:

You cannot use a thermometer. It is the surface layer that gets warm.


I missed your comments above , I guess I didnt scroll down far enought to see it , your reply was directed at samwik.

I should pay more attention...LOL

I didnt understand that they were refering to only the top layer
of soil as they just referenced the "soil" only.

and yes the thin top layer of soil could be warmer than the air.

from there on down there is heat transfer into the largest heat sink in the world.


the earth.


and just as soon as the soil gets heated it begins to be absorbed
/ transfered into the earth , trying to maintain heat on a section of ground is almost impossible.




Last edited by paul; 06/12/08 05:08 PM.

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Originally Posted By: samwik
Hey! That's just what I was saying about the graph; someone's taken a graph of the extinction coefficient in an absorbing medium and relabeled it to suite their agenda or "theory."

This all makes sense if you assume that after the IR is absorbed, it is "sequestered" and doesn't heat the atmosphere further. Based on that "theory," one could assume a graph of the extinction coefficient was proportional to the "warming effect."
It makes sense, but it's not true; not based on physical reality.
===

John,
About your link to another explanation of the logarithmic effect... see:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=26614#Post26614

Meanwhile, back on topic....

Concentration affects how easily heat (a quantum of IR) traverses an absorbing (concentrated or dilute) medium.
As I think you've said, it slows the escape of the heat; a higher concentration increasingly retards the IR heat flow.

I suspect the term "extinction coefficient" has been taken to mean the point where all of the IR is "soaked up."
A better description would be the difficulty (or ease) of transmittance of an IR quantum; how much of the absorbing medium does the quantum need to travel through, before it's likely to be absorbed.

I've heard several numbers, between 10 and 100 meters, for the "total" absorption of IR by CO2. Whatever....
Raising the concentration, lowers the distance within which that IR is absorbed.
That's why they use the "extinction coefficient" to measure concentration.

CO2 that has absorbed IR, then becomes invisible to more IR, so any additional IR is absorbed by CO2 farther away, until it also becomes saturated (heated) by (and then invisible to) the additional IR. Even more IR would be absorbed by CO2 even farther away (through the hot, transparent CO2); and this would continue happening up through the atmosphere until, as the concentration of CO2 became too low, it would radiate away into space.

Now this is a good graph (except the "98% of heat" should include the 4.3micron CO2 peak also)! The second graph is especially instructive.

The area under the curve is the heat not escaping into space.
Lowering the CO2 concentration would lower the peak until some IR heat escaped into space at that wavelength.
As the graph shows, raising the concentration pushes the peak (at that wavelength) up, truncating the top, leaving a wider and wider plateau of absorbed heat not escaping into space. As you'll notice, the side notch (at ~12.6 microns) that absorb only ~20% of the heat currently, absorbs ~80% of the heat at 8 times present levels.
Notice the truncated plateau. Currently there is a window at ~13.75 microns, that will be closed by increasing levels of CO2.

Now we see from the graph that none of this heat escapes; so why doesn't all the CO2 become invisible as it becomes saturated with IR heat?
There is a relaxation time, or a decay rate, measuring how quickly (or slowly) CO2 loses that absorbed quantum.
Once it re-emits the absorbed IR, or loses heat through collisions, it is no longer invisible to additional IR, and so can absorb once again. Increasing the concentration, increases the re-absorption of previously re-emitted IR heat quanta, in addition to increasing the transfer of heat through an increased number of collisions.

This is a linear relationship; doubling the concentration, doubles the heat lost through collisions.
Of the IR heat that is 100% absorbed by the atmosphere (not transmitted into space), it is continually re-emitted and re-absorbed on a fairly local level (as proven by the extinction coefficient); until it is lost, translated into heat via collision with another molecule, allowing subsequent IR heat to be absorbed by the relaxed CO2. If this didn't happen, then some IR heat at that wavelength would escape into space.

The logarithmic extinction coefficient, relating absorbance to concentration (in a given distance), has nothing to do with the heating that is linearly related to concentration.

There's still the IR sources, collisions, and the changes in frequency that could be discussed; but I wanted to "debunk" that logarithmic graph (and related conclusions) as a good opportunity to examine some of the physics of atmospheric gases.

It seems to me that Archibald has taken the extinction coefficient (which approaches low levels within a few centimeters) and extrapolated out to 10 or so meters where the level would be essentially zero; and then he assumed extinction meant no further heating, and thus deduced that further increases in concentration would not appreciably increase the temperature.

Quote:
Archibald indicates there is no basis for his graph when he says "Confirming the logarithmic effect of carbon dioxide is possible using the MODTRAN facility hosted by the University of Chicago."
This could be an example of "new physics" worthy of an "IgNobel Prize" in physics.
http://improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html
Y'know, I bet if it's true for CO2, it'd be true for all gases!

I can understand why I easily googled this quote, "David Archibald is perhaps the most discredited voice in the world of climate science." His logarithmic graph is "a tissue of statistical sophistry."
...quotes cited on
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=26535#Post26535

Archibald seems to have duped the blog, climateaudit, run by Steve McIntyre, the Canadian statistician, with his falsified graph.
They should get a physical chemist on their team to vet some of this stuff.

John, is it this "logarithmic effect of carbon dioxide" that makes you think CO2 isn't an increasing problem for our climate?

Thanks,
~samwik
smile


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Samwik seems to be asking me 'what makes me think that CO2 isn't an increasing problem for our climate?'

Let's go back to the data. The temperature stopped increasing in 1998. Since 2002, the temperature trend has been negative according to satellite temperature data. Our CO2 levels have been increasing but the temperatures have not followed suit. This is why the IPCC ensemble of models has falsified. Our temperatures are bleow their constant CO2 level scenario. The warming effect, and thus human influence over climate is vastly exaggerated. If CO2 does cause warming at low concentrations, then the relationship must be logarithmic since it has not been causing any warming as of late. To suggest that the relationship is linear, as you do, means that CO2 has almost no warming effect whatsoever at any concentration.

About the second graph, it is not about the peak being reduced. It is about the inefficient edges being able to absorb a bit more IR radiation on the edges. This just lowers the 100 or 10 m limit where all IR radiation, that CO2 can absorb, will be absorbed.

Originally Posted By: Samwik
CO2 that has absorbed IR, then becomes invisible to more IR, so any additional IR is absorbed by CO2 farther away, until it also becomes saturated (heated) by (and then invisible to) the additional IR. Even more IR would be absorbed by CO2 even farther away (through the hot, transparent CO2); and this would continue happening up through the atmosphere until, as the concentration of CO2 became too low, it would radiate away into space.


That would be fine if you assume that the CO2 holds the heat for more than a few seconds. The atmosphere is most dense near the ground. Either the CO2 molecule would re-radiate the energy, or it would change its energy level via a collision with another molecule. Canuck's graph suggests that the collisions are frequent enough that none of the 4.3 or 15 micron wavelengths are able to escape to space; therefore, the area under the curve is the IR that gets absorbed before it is converted to another wavelength.

Do you have any proof that Motl's formula is wrong?

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John , Samwik

You guys seem to be hung up on temperature data.



If there ever was any indication of rising temperatures it would be in the amount and location of water vapor ,storms ,tornadoes huricains , and mainly rain. ie...precipitation !!

Why do I say this?

mainly if the sun is blocked by water vapor / clouds the ground temperature would not show an increase it would show a decrease.

why do I say that location is an indication?

because clouds need cool air to condense the water vapor into rain.

this is why it has been raining so much further north in the U.S.


when the earth heats up there is more water vapor / clouds
and underneath these clouds there are cooler air temperatures.

Link to the info below

Quote:
"The atmosphere's water vapor content has increased by about 0.41 kilograms per cubic meter (kg/m²) per decade since 1988, and natural variability in climate just can't explain this moisture change. The most plausible explanation is that it's due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases."

More water vapor - which is itself a greenhouse gas - amplifies the warming effect of increased atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. This is what scientists call a "positive feedback."

Using 22 different computer models of the climate system and measurements from the satellite-based Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I), atmospheric scientists from LLNL and eight other international research centers have shown that the recent increase in moisture content over the bulk of the world's oceans is not due to solar forcing or gradual recovery from the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. The primary driver of this 'atmospheric moistening' is the increase in carbon dioxide caused by the burning of fossil fuels.



there has been a definite increase in rain data wouldnt you say?

there has been a definite increase in atmospheric polution that blocks the sun comming from the chinese polution machine wouldnt you say?

some companies believe that C02 is a Global Warming contributor

CARBON STORAGE

they want to cover up the C02 so that they can keep on using fosil fuels.

I cant understand why people cant understand or dont include the most obvious things.

But I can understand that if someone wants to put a point accross
and he willingly leaves out things that would not benifit his point , he is just trying to impose his ideas for his benifit.


.

Last edited by paul; 06/14/08 01:59 PM.

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Originally Posted By: John M Reynolds
Let's go back to the data.
....
Do you have any proof that Motl's formula is wrong?

If I may defer comments on the data, paul's "weather observations," and Motl's formula (who? what?); and hope to stay on the topic of CO2's mechanism of heating, ...for one more round ...let me just say....
===

Eggs Ackerly!

Originally Posted By: JMR
That would be fine if you assume that the CO2 holds the heat for more than a few seconds. The atmosphere is most dense near the ground.
Originally Posted By: JMR
Either the CO2 molecule would re-radiate the energy, or it would change its energy level via a collision with another molecule.
Exactly; and it is these collisions that are defined as "heat," contributing to atmospheric heating.

Also, after re-radiating the IR away, it is absorbed by another CO2 quite rapidly, as you mention (and the extinction coeff. also shows).
CO2, on average, is usually "excited" with IR heat. Think of the continual relaxation of CO2 (through re-radiation & collisions), and notice the [whatever] fraction of relaxation that results in those collisions. It is this fraction of energy, the collisions, that determine how much of that absorbed IR gets translated (via those collisions) into heating of the atmosphere.

It is this heating that is proportional to CO2 concentration.


Originally Posted By: JMR
Canuck's graph suggests that the collisions are frequent enough that none of the 4.3 or 15 micron wavelengths are able to escape to space;
Exactly, as evidenced by the spectrum showing that very little is escaping into space anymore.
Quote:
therefore, the area under the curve is the IR that gets absorbed before it is converted to another wavelength.
Exactly; and don't forget that via other collisions and/or the absorption of higher energy wavelengths, CO2 will spontaneously emit the lower energy IR (heat) wavelengths, before then, as you mention, they also eventually get "converted to another [usually longer] wavelength" (if not translated into atmospheric heating, via collisions).

We shouldn't view this as just a snapshot of what happens to one IR quantum; but realize that there is a never-ending, relentlessly ongoing source of these quanta.

It is the net average of all this flux in energy, converting it's wavelength "to what is easiest," that creates the (roughly bell-shaped) blackbody profile that we measure.

Intuitively, if we're shrinking that window through which heat escapes, and retaining that heat here on Earth longer, doesn't it make sense that things would heat up?
I think this is where the "greenhouse analogy" makes the most sense; and not as a proxy for the exact physical mechanism of GHG heating.

How, where, and when Green-House Gas heating affects the climate is open to debate, but I think the physical mechanism of GHG heating is the same regardless of one's worldview or opinion of the "climate change" debate.

Thanks,
smile



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Paul

Originally Posted By: Paul
You guys seem to be hung up on temperature data.


Without the temperature going up, there is no heating and no positive feedback. The upper troposphere is not warming. The ground temperatures are not warming. The oceans have cooled slightly since 2005. There has been no atmospheric warming for 6 years, yet you are suggesting that there is somehow positive feedback? Even you admit that you need warming first! The types of clouds that result matter. Increasing the lower storm clouds increases the rain we get and our albedo. That will cool us much more than miniscule changes in a trace gas will ever warm us.

Samwik

The area under the graph is growing slowly for each doubling. The first 350 (or whatever concentration was current when that graph was calculated) has a large area. The next 350 barely increases the area; therefore, the relationship is logarithmic. I wonder what the chances are of a CO2 molecule radiating its heat to either a water, space, or another CO2 molecule before it runs into either an oxygen (20.9463%), argon (0.93422%), or nitrogen (78.0842%) molecule and loses some of its energy. Those make up 99.96472% of our atmosphere.

Originally Posted By: samwik
Exactly, as evidenced by the spectrum showing that very little is escaping into space anymore.


Anymore? Are you suggesting that this recently changed? I would love to see proof of that one! Considering the logarithmic relationship for CO2 and temperature, I currently don't see how that is possible.

I used Motl's formula (that he describes as a popular one for CO2) in my 26570 comment above

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Paul.

Perhaps I was too hasty. While on my walk home for lunch, I thought about how clouds are formed. Most of the time, clouds are started with a biological cloud condensing nuclei. Seeing as how CO2 increases biological life on land and in the oceans, that could be part of the reason for the increased rain and cooling.

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Originally Posted By: John M Reynolds
The area under the graph is growing slowly for each doubling.... therefore, the relationship is logarithmic.
Yes, but this is a graph of absorption, not temperature.
===

About the,
Quote:
Originally Posted By: samwik
Exactly, as evidenced by the spectrum showing that very little is escaping into space anymore.
Anymore? Are you suggesting that this recently changed?"
...asked from your last post:

Think of the shape of the top of the (CO2 + water) peak that is cut off. It's a very ragged peak. Some of the valleys from that "ragged peak" are visible in your close-up of 15 microns (post #26570, "fig.3"). If this was lowered (lower concentration, i.e. 285 ppm), wouldn't there be some valleys (windows) opening wider, as the bottom of other valleys came into view?
===
...but back to the mechanism of heating.

That CO2 is effective at trapping IR heat quickly, over short distances (logarithmically, to extinction), only means that it is a better greenhouse gas than any gas that has a lower extinction coefficient.
The extinction coefficient doesn't mean that 'it can't absorb any more heat' (which is what some blogger has interpreted), but refers to how quickly a gas absorbs energy (in this case, IR heat). If it were "heated to extinction" with heat, and couldn't absorb more heat, then we'd be seeing some heat escape into space at that wavelength; but the graph shows that's not happening (anymore). smile
[next week: saturation....]

John, you said "I used Motl's formula (that he describes as a popular one for CO2) in my 26570 comment above."
Originally Posted By: 26570
[Here is a link to a physicist that discusses the relationship between CO2 and temperature as logathrimic.
Using his Temperature = Temperature0 + ln(1 + 1.2 x + 0.005 x2 + 0.0000014 x3) formula, I made the following spreadsheet:
This link was to Gary Novak, notable as a climatologically inclined "mushroom scientist."
Someone can't just take a formula for determining the Extinction Coefficient [Absorption = Absorption0 + ln(1 + 1.2 x + 0.005 x2 + 0.0000014 x3) ] and substitute "Temp." into the equation, in place of Absorption.
That is all someone [Motl or whomever] has done here.

There is no "logarithmic relationship for CO2 and temperature," except in the mind of some blogger, and those who have picked it up as a scientific-sounding fact.
Originally Posted By: JMR
Considering the logarithmic relationship for CO2 and temperature, I currently don't see how that is possible
I can see that you "currently" think this is a fact; but that is the very point we're debating here: Is the extinction coefficient (which has a well-established logarithmic relation to concentration), proportional to the temperature change?

The only thing I learned from that Gary Novak link was that "Steve McIntyre at climateaudit.org is trying to locate the provenance ;-) of the logarithmic formula [relating Temp. & concentration]...."
Gee, it oughta be in any chemical reference book, (Merck's CRC perhaps?) if it's not just a made up "formula."

I can understand how someone could hear that the absorption of IR is logarithmic and think that must apply to the heating also, but it just refers to how quickly IR heat is absorbed (or over what distance) at a given concentration.
But....

Absorption of IR quanta is a quantum process, and can be described by an equation containing 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.... order terms; leading to the logarithmic expression. There are some hints of what is involved in describing this process on the "climate surfings" link:
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:2vN5elQF66wJ:www.hthpweb.com/hthp/fulltext/h34/htwu309.pdf+%22extinction+coefficient%22+%22heat+capacity%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=20&gl=us
Quote:
.... "The second and third terms characterise the increase of 'I' due to isotropic scattering and re-emission, respectively."
.... "A considerable fraction of photons can pass through the sample without being multiply scattered or absorbed, which causes a direct radiative exchange between the surfaces. Therefore, besides the conductive heat transfer, the radiative heat transfer and the interaction of both transfer channels have to be considered, too."
... "In the case of a cold sample the re-emission term in equation (3) vanishes and there is no interaction of radiation with other heat transfer modes. The part of the incoming radiation flux F which reaches the point t within the sample is described by an additional source term...."


...meanwhile....
Heating, via collisions, is a Newtonian process, and is described by simple linear equations; and so is directly proportional to concentration.
.
.
.
Originally Posted By: JMR
I wonder what the chances are of a CO2 molecule radiating its heat to either a water, space, or another CO2 molecule before it runs into either an oxygen (20.9463%), argon (0.93422%), or nitrogen (78.0842%) molecule and loses some of its energy.
Probably fairly low. Most likely, excited CO2 will collide with O2 or N2 as it "loses some of its energy." You've just described the mechanism that is defined as heating of the atmosphere.

&
For the few heat quanta that are transferred to another CO2, or water, those also eventually are translated into heat, via collisions with the more abundant atmospheric gases, as you've suggested.

Thanks again,
smile


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2 thoughts:

If adding CO2 causes only a little more radiation to be absorbed because the relationship is logarithmic, then only a little more heating is possible.

If there is no more energy to be absorbed because none makes it to space anyway, then adding more CO2 will not increase the temperature.


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...as to your first point....
[typed earlier]
I'm thinking you'll now try to say that the fraction of heat lost thru collisions versus re-radiation is what is logarithmic; but....
reply to anticipated response:

For this "logarithmic heating idea" to be valid, there would have to be mostly heating via collisions (and fewer re-radiations) at the lowest concentrations; and the fewest collisions (with mostly re-radiation) at the moderate to higher concentrations.
.
.
Fewer collisions ...at the higher concentrations? Does that make sense?
===

I'll look at the second point now....

smile

p.s. ...hmmmm. Maybe I didn't anticipate very well. I'll have to look at this again... sorry....

Last edited by samwik; 06/17/08 05:45 AM. Reason: add p.s.

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Ah yes, the second point. I knew we'd be getting into saturation sooner or later.

The term "saturated" has come up, and becomes important now to understanding how extinction is tangentially related to temperature. The amount of "saturation" refers to how long a molecule will remain relaxed, not excited by a particular wavelength (or the other way around, I guess). So a fully saturated gas would be continually excited by incoming radiation; and a half saturated gas would spend half of it's time relaxed, before absorbing more incoming radiation. Saturation varies differently at different altitudes; but all we need to know is that the IR is 100% absorbed (mostly) before it gets lost to space.

This means that saturation is not totally complete, otherwise the unabsorbable IR would escape to space.
[I typed this hastily, earlier; but I think it's expressed correctly and also applies]

The point being that as CO2 is relaxing, it absorbs more IR to become excited again. It's an equilibrium, depending on the amount of incoming radiation.

[whoops, have to catch Jay Leno's "headlines:" hehe: the Pickle/Ryder wedding; and the Gentle/Bang wedding...

Well, anyway, a certain portion of the CO2 is always losing it's energy via collisions, to the rest of the atmosphere... in proportion to it's concentration (and temperature).

This logarithmic thing really is just a misunderstood juxtaposition of two measurable parameters (or scientific concepts).

But as I said, the how, when, and where of "climate effects" are plenty open to debate.
That cirrus clouds Topic was very interesting. I'm hoping to head over that way eventually. wink

~Thanks again,
~SA

Last edited by samwik; 06/17/08 05:17 AM. Reason: haste

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Originally Posted By: John M Reynolds
#1. If adding CO2 causes only a little more radiation to be absorbed because the relationship is logarithmic, then only a little more heating is possible.


Let me try that #1 again:

No. Again, you're equating absorption with heating; ...but to answer the suggestion:
In the real world (and not a 1 cm cuvette), it'd just be absorbed farther away, where CO2 wasn't already excited (to extinction).

Better?
Later,
~ smile


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Hiya John,

This is getting too complicated; I'm not sure what I wrote in those last three posts makes enough sense, or answers your points. I'm just going on what I learned in general, 25 years ago. I'm about at my limit, although our previous posts about the mechanism, quantum stuff and explanations of the spectra, etc., are pretty good, solid stuff ...IMHO.

The real point that has come out of all of this is that the "logarithmic formula" has no citable source. The only place to find it is on the denialist sites.
If you want to prove me wrong, you need to find some citable source for that formula, that isn't based on a blog or some denialist webstitution (but preferably based on a dot.edu site, or from a scientific journal or book).

What'ya think?

Later...
~Sam

p.s. Just recall all those P = T/V (pressure, temperature, volume) equations; they didn't depend logarithmically on the concentration, did they?

Last edited by samwik; 06/17/08 07:35 AM. Reason: add p.s.

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Originally Posted By: samwik
Fewer collisions ...at the higher concentrations? Does that make sense?


It is not fewer collisions, it is the same number of collisions with only a miniscule increase in a trace gas. Changing the concentration by 0.0002% is not going to have a detectable influence on pressure P=V/T.

Originally Posted By: samwik
So a fully saturated gas would be continually excited by incoming radiation;


I never said that would be the case. I just observed that the atmosphere, that is prodominantly nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and water vapour with traces of other gases like carbon dioxide, has not been letting much heat out. CO2 does not have the correct wavelengths to close most of the current window. Increasing its concentration will not retain much more energy. Looking at Canuck's graph, only the right hand edge of the blue section will be affected. Looking at the "area graph" there has to be a doubling of CO2 for a small increase and only half of it matters to warming (the left edge).

The original equation comes from Arrhenius (1896). A non-skeptic's site?

How about Wikipedia. It is usually good for the basics like the pvt

formula:
Quote:
Using 'Stefan's law' (better known as the Stefan Boltzmann law), he formulated his greenhouse law. In its original

form, Arrhenius' greenhouse law reads as follows:
"if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase

nearly in arithmetic progression."

Which is still valid in the simplified expression by Myhre et al. (1998).
ΔF = α ln(C/C0)


Arrhenius linked temperature and CO2 concentration in a logarithmic relationship and that basic relationship still held until

1998?

If wikipedia is not good enough, then how about the IPCC?

CO2 ΔF = αln(C/C0) α = 5.35

Further you suggest that "[a]bsorption of IR quanta is a quantum process..." You also implied

yesterday that Newtonian physics

is appropriate when looking at the energy transfer via collisions. The reason quantum mechanics was created as a theory was

because molecules on that scale do not conform to newtonian physics.

Finally, a National Academy of Sciences site suggests that W*m-2 can

be converted to temperature when it reads, "... 4 W/m2 (the forcing for a doubled atmospheric CO2) would be an increase of

about 1.2°C (about 2.2°F)."

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Originally Posted By: John M Reynolds
....
observed that the atmosphere, that is prodominantly nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and water vapour with traces of other gases like carbon dioxide, has not been letting much heat out. CO2 does not have the correct wavelengths to close most of the current window. Increasing its concentration will not retain much more energy. Looking at Canuck's graph, only the right hand edge of the blue section will be affected. Looking at the "area graph" there has to be a doubling of CO2 for a small increase and only half of it matters to warming (the left edge).
Originally Posted By: IMHO
Yep, all a good assessment (except CO2's absorption wavelengths are close enough to matter). There aren't many windows (plural) left for heat to escape; and GHG's are slowly closing what is left. As I said earlier, roughly, it's a small effect, ...only a few degrees....


....
Which is still valid in the simplified expression by Myhre et al. (1998).
Arrhenius linked temperature and CO2 concentration... and that basic relationship still held until 1998?
Originally Posted By: IMHO
Huh, what?


Finally, a National Academy of Sciences site suggests that W*m-2 can
be converted to temperature when it reads, "... 4 W/m2 (the forcing for a doubled atmospheric CO2) would be an increase of
about 1.2°C (about 2.2°F)."
Originally Posted By: IMHO
Is this related to Canuck's logarithmic graph?
I see they use the 1.2 degree figure speaking about CO2's "direct effect;" but then add, "Well-documented climate changes during the history of Earth, especially the changes between the last major ice age (20,000 years ago) and the current warm period, imply that the climate sensitivity is near the 3°C value."
But I know that's open to lots of debate (as they also acknowledge).




Oh, "natural logs" ...are something I used to have a neat insight about, but alas I'd have to study that again.
This "Myhre expression" is not the equation that I'm challenging, but it is a good response about the relationship between temperature and concentration. I can't believe I never read that link before; thanks.

Natural logarithms don't decay as steeply as do the base 10 logs; but...
Yes, still a good point.
So you're not disputing this well-established climate science (although I realize there are refinements happening occasionally). I thought this logarithmic temperature thing was a new "discovery."

Canuck first brought up this logarithmic/extinction subject as relating to the temperature change; and I still maintain that it is "junk science" based on a copied and altered graph circulating only in the blogosphere.
The steep logarithmic Extinction Coeff. is not the parameter that correlates with, or affects temperature.
I'm going to continue to rely on the long established graphs relating GHG concentration and temperature, until I see some scientific vetting and acceptance of any new interpretations of these parameters.

Or was I mistaken? Wasn't this about some new logarithmic way of calculating CO2's warming effect?
.
.
.
...and yes, those last three posts of mine are not up to the standards displayed on the rest of this thread. As you noticed, the replies didn't even focus on the points you made.
Posting stuff written "in anticipation" is not a good strategy.

The P=T/V comment wasn't meant to say anything about greenhouse warming; it was only meant to suggest the linear character of gas behaviours in general.
...and I knew when I wrote that about the Newtonian stuff, I was opening myself up to some obvious challenges;
but isn't Boltzman-type "statistical mechanics" about the same as Newtonian mechanics?

I recently reread the first page of this thread and found two mistakes I'd made (such as saying shorter wavelength when I meant longer [groan]), but that should be an obvious mistake. I still think this thread is a good (mostly accurate) view of the P.Chem. involved with this process. At least first year students, after reading this thread, would know why they were learning the stuff Physical Chemists teach. smile

~Cheers


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this thread is going nowhere.

Samwise doesn't believe CO2 increases doesn't have a logarithmic effect of temperature (excluding water vapour feedbacks)?

Fine - argue with the following "denialist" site
Quote:

Radiative forcing caused by carbon dioxide varies in an approximately logarithmic fashion with the concentration of that gas in the atmosphere. The logarithmic relationship occurs as the result of a saturation effect wherein it becomes increasingly difficult, as CO2 concentrations increase, for additional CO2 molecules to further influence the “infrared window” (a certain narrow band of wavelengths in the infrared region that is not absorbed by atmospheric gases). The logarithmic relationship predicts that the surface warming potential will rise by roughly the same amount for each doubling of CO2 concentration. At current rates of fossil-fuel use, a doubling of CO2 concentrations over preindustrial levels is expected to take place by the middle of the 21st century (when CO2 concentrations are projected to reach 560 ppm). A doubling of CO2 concentrations would represent an increase of roughly 4 watts per square metre of radiative forcing. Given typical estimates of “climate sensitivity” in the absence of any offsetting factors, this energy increase would lead to a warming of 2 to 5 °C (3.6 to 9 °F) over preindustrial times (see Feedback mechanisms and climate sensitivity). The total radiative forcing by anthropogenic CO2 emissions since the beginning of the industrial age is approximately 1.66 watts per square metre.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-274825/global-warming

Or perhaps you'd rather argue with Arrhenius????
Quote:

Thus if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/1/18/Arrhenius.pdf


Fact of the matter is, each doubling of CO2 concentrations yields 4 Wm2. 250 to 500 gives us an additional 4 Wm2. 500 to 1000 gives us the same 4 Wm2. 1000 to 2000 gives us yet another 4 Wm2. In my book, that's a logarithmic relationship.

I'd be looking at your own posts, before accusing others of spreading junk science, samwise.

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Moving on...

Using the simplified IPCC ΔF = 5.35*ln(C/C0) formula and knowing that 1 Joule is equivalent to 1 Watt*second let's now figure out how accurate it is.

ΔF = 5.35*ln(380/280) = 1.633792 W/m²

That is 1.633792 extra Joules per second per square meter that are being added since the CO2 concentration was 280 ppm back around 1750.

Given:

- Earth's surface area is about 510,072,000 km² = 5.1 x 10^14 m²
- Using 365.25 days per year (standardized for leap years), there are 31557600 seconds per year

Joules added each year = 1.633792 * 5.1 x 10^14 * 31557600 = 26294862753792000000000 J = 2.629486x10^22 J

In other words, there is 2.629x10^22 Joules per year of extra energy being trapped by CO2 if the formula is correct.

Now, how much energy is needed to increase the atmosphere by 1 °C?

Given:
- Total atmospheric mass is 5.1480×10^18 kg
- Specific heat capacity of air (cp) is 1.0035 kJ/kg*K = 1003.5 J/kg*K

Therefore, heat required to raise temperature of atmosphere 1 °C = 5.137 x 10^18 x 1003.5 = 5.1549795 x 10^21 J.

Dividing J added each year by the J needed to raise the temperature of atmosphere 1 °C we get the number of degrees for the Joules of excess energy per year:

2.629486x10^22 / 5.1549795 x 10^21 = 5.1 °C

Our temperature is not rising that much each year. It is not even rising 0.5 °C each decade. If the natural log relationship is correct, then that means their 5.35 constant is off by more than a factor of 100.

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Paul

About your comments on rain and humidity, the NOAA have a graph that shows how specific humidity from the surface to about 8 miles up has been on the decline globally. If that link is to busy, Watts has a copy on his blog.

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Originally Posted By: Canuck
Fact of the matter is, each doubling of CO2 concentrations yields 4 Wm2. 250 to 500 gives us an additional 4 Wm2. 500 to 1000 gives us the same 4 Wm2. 1000 to 2000 gives us yet another 4 Wm2. In my book, that's a logarithmic relationship.

I'd be looking at your own posts, before accusing others of spreading junk science, samwise.

I'm no math whiz, and I may have some things wrong; but not the stuff I cite....
Isn't there a big difference between geometric progressions and logarithmic progressions?
===

Real quickly ("Lunchtime Little Theatre")... Those look like good links, but I haven't looked yet.

I don't think anything I've said will conflict with those sources you've cited.
My objection is to that bar graph (yellow w/ blue bars, wasn't it?), and the conclusions made about CO2 having no effect on warming, based on that graph. Has anyone, even climatAudit, found the source of that graph?
Any citation for it?

Sorry to eat and run; I'll look at this more tonight....

~Thanks.
smile


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In my 26570 comment above, I recreated a graph similar to the yellow bar graph using a formula Motl described as popular. Here is another one using the IPCC ΔF = 5.35*ln(C/C0) formula:



Note, I used 1 as the initial CO2 concentration since using 0 would give a divide by zero error. The spreadsheet formula is =5.35*LN(V65/V64)

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Hey, I just noticed that a lot of the mechanisms of heating that I've been talking about are also explained similarly on that American Institute of Physics site that I cited in my second post to this thread.

http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=26109#Post26109
I should have looked at that 'aip' site earlier, and just quoted stuff from there rather than composing an explanation out of what I recalled from my college days.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/simple.htm#L_0141
"It appeared that there was already enough CO2 in the air so that its effect on infrared radiation was "saturated" — meaning that all the radiation that the gas could block was already being absorbed, so that adding more gas could make little difference. Moreover, water vapor also absorbed heat rays, and water was enormously more abundant in the atmosphere than CO2. How could adding CO2 affect radiation in parts of the spectrum that H2O (not to mention the CO2 itself) already entirely blocked? These studies with the crude techniques of the early 20th century were inaccurate. Modern data show that even in the parts of the infrared spectrum where water vapor and CO2 are effective, only a fraction of the heat radiation emitted from the surface of the Earth is blocked before it escapes into space. And that is beside the point anyway. The greenhouse process works regardless of whether the passage of radiation is saturated in lower layers. As explained above, the energy received at the Earth’s surface must eventually work its way back up to the higher layers where radiation does slip out easily. Adding some greenhouse gas to those high, thin layers must warm the planet no matter what happens lower down."

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Looking back, some more, I see your were always talking natural logs. What about the mikechurch (yellow) graph?
What about your formula from:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/01/why-is-greenhouse-effect-logarithmic.html
[-a deadly site- you'll be snow-blind after reading one paragraph -from the actual 'black' page]
"With the assumptions listed above, and they are kind of - although not perfectly - satisfied for the doubling from 280 to 560 ppm of CO2 as one can check (the temperature change comparable to 1 °C is much smaller than the 300K absolute temperature, the percentages change from 92:8 to 95:5 or something like that is relatively small), the Arrhenius' law is a law. It is all about the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, the lapse rate, and the black body law. A geometric/exponential increase of the concentration moves the physical phenomena linearly in altitude and makes standardized linear contributions to various terms."
This is gibberish, isn't it?

Ow, my eyes! I had to look at that site again to get this.
"Phenomenologically, the linear increase for small C and the logarithmic law for the large values of C is often interpolated by a function that is also quadratic in the middle but it is just one of possible conventions for curve-fitting. Another popular function is
Temperature = Temperature0 + ln(1 + 1.2 x + 0.005 x2 + 0.0000014 x3)
where "x" is the CO2 concentration in ppmv. This formula works pretty well up to 1,000 ppmv.

However, the asymptotic logarithmic behavior for large C is more than a convention. It can be derived as a result of an idealized calculation that is relatively realistic - a kind of calculation that theoretical physicists, especially condensed-matter physicists, should like. One reason for the logarithm could be found if we were looking how new spectral lines and their "wings" become relevant for the absorption. The old lines eventually get saturated but the total greenhouse warming never quite stops because new spectral lines emerge: it just slows down...."

Holy Crap! Talk about gibberish....

And that formula is the one I said somebody had switched Absorption and Temperature (and relabeled the graph).
Uncitable concoction, I still maintain.

Now, your chart/graph John, (thanks for all your time making that work, btw) as you say is similar because it has a ln factor. Especially if you plot absolute change in concentration instead of the change ratio. You've simply repeated the Motl (now I know who that is) graph by plotting the preceding concentration subtracted from the successive concentration, haven't you?
Or... why doesn't 2 ppm give almost infinite Forcing???

IMHO
Your x axis should go from zero to five(ish), to represent the Concentration ratio of C/Co (i.e. 560/280 would be 2 on the x axis, or 350/280 would be 1.25), and could then be plotted against the delta F (change in Forcing from the initial forcing of Co).
This way also, if you looked at 200ppm/280ppm, the natural log would be negative (showing the lowering in forcing relative to the initial forcing of Co at 280ppm.

I think that is what the ΔF = α ln(C/C0) equation is trying to show.
Does that make sense?

Thanks again,
~Later
smile



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Originally Posted By: samwik
This way also, if you looked at 200ppm/280ppm, the natural log would be negative (showing the lowering in forcing relative to the initial forcing of Co at 280ppm.


It is negative because you have the initial over the new reading. It should be 280/200. don't worry about the really small numbers. The formula does not work well near zero. Similarly, Motl wrote that his popular formula only works well up to around 1000 ppm.

What I am trying to show is that the 5.35 constant used in the IPCC ensemble of models is way too high. Any model that uses this simplified version or any other (third or fourth order) version that produces similar results will yeild results that are too high. The IPCC estimate of human influence on climate change is way too high.

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Can you find any citation for "his popular formula?"
===

John,
re: the ΔF = α ln(C/Co) equation.

I'd hoped you might update your last post, but....

I'm sure you'll realize that 200/280 is not "upside down" as you suggested, but is just an example of a final CO2 concentration lower than the "standard" initial concentration of 280ppm [Co] used for the reference point (based on the pre-industrial level).
So, if somehow CO2 levels were to be brought down to 200, the graph shows that the forcing would be negative (relative to the forcing at 280).
For this equation, F is negative for the natural log of fractions (less than one); 200/280 = 0.7143....

I only included the (far-fetched) example of 200/280, to show how the equation would graph if the x axis measured C/Co, instead of the way you set it up.

This whole claim about the logarithmic effect of CO2, thus meaning that CO2 didn't matter, came about out of Richards comments:
Originally Posted By: RicS
Aside from anything else, there is no indication at all that shows that CO2 actually is a greehouse gas in the sense of the term being that it traps heat from the sun that otherwise would not be trapped.
... on the 4th post of this thread.

I have agreed that there's plenty of room for debate over the value of alpha; the how, where, and when of CO2's effects.
However, four pages later, I hope it's persuasive that whatever adjustments might need to be made to alpha, the adjustments have nothing to do with this recently suggested logarithmic effect of CO2. The only references to this newly incorporated effect comes from the blogosphere, a few private websites, and some uncitable graphs; and are based on obsolete information or unsupportable interpretations of a gas's physical parameters.

Adjustments to alpha would depend on the positive and negative feedbacks related to humidity, clouds, and various other atmospheric dynamics.
Why is it that you think the IPCC estimate for alpha is too high?
Cirrus clouds perhaps?

~Later,
... smile


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Of course if the concentration goes down then the forcing would be negative. If you want to make some other graph then go ahead. I was simply showing how the ln graphs were made. They are all similar.

The IPCC estimate for alpha is too high because they are overestimating the effect of CO2 on temperature. They had no other idea of what could be causing global warming, so they subbed in CO2 and blamed us. Their models have falsified. They got it wrong. We are not the cause.

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Sorry to leave this hanging for so long; but at least that logarithmic stuff seems fairly well-settled.

About the estimates of alpha.... I think they are aware of other forcers of the climate such as other GHG's, soot, clouds, land-use changes, etc., (but not all forcers, nor the magnitude of known forcers).

Originally Posted By: JMR
"....they subbed in CO2 and blamed us."
What!!?

It's not as if the IPCC just made up that CO2 idea recently.
Throughout this thread we've talked about the original theoretical work done on CO2 as a greenhouse gas back in the 19th century.

Originally Posted By: JMR
Their models have falsified. They got it wrong.
ummm, yea....

Just look at the models' projections for the Arctic. They're 20-30 years "off" in their predictions of when the polar cap would melt. Talk about falsification! wink

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623.pdf
Global Warming Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near
...by James Hansen
"Such phenomena, including the instability of Arctic sea ice and the great ice sheets at today’s carbon dioxide amount, show that we have already gone too far. We must draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide to preserve the planet we know. A level of no more than 350 ppm is still feasible, with the help of reforestation and improved agricultural practices, but just barely – time is running out."

Hey! Good going Jim! Thanks for mentioning that land-use and sequestration stuff and not focusing just on emissions!

http://www.nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
June 3, 2008
Arctic sea ice still on track for extreme melt
"Arctic sea ice extent has declined through the month of May as summer approaches. Daily ice extents in May continued to be below the long-term average and approached the low levels seen at this time last year. As discussed in our last posting, the spring ice cover is thin. One sign of thin and fairly weak ice is the formation of several polynyas in the ice pack."
"Inuit report that sea ice is starting to break up near Baffin Bay much earlier than normal this year. They have observed wide cracks in the ice already forming, according to NSIDC scientist Shari Gearheard, who lives and works in the Baffin Island hamlet of Clyde River."

I wonder if the Inuit are needing new words to describe the snows these days.
===

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001363update_on_falsificat.html
Update on Falsification of Climate Predictions March 15, 2008; Posted to Author:
Roger Pielke Jr.

"For what it’s worth: I believe AGW is real, based on physical arguments and longer term trends, I suspect we will discover that GCM’s are currently unable to predict shifts in the PDO. The result is the uncertainty intervals on IPCC projections for the short term trend were much too small."
"None of this discussion means that the basic conclusion that greenhouse gases affect the climate system is wrong, or that action to mitigate emissions do not make sense. What it does mean is that we should be concerned about the overselling of climate predictions and the corresponding risks to public credibility and advocacy built upon these predictions."

Even Roger believes "AGW is real."
Roger is saying that "the basic conclusion that greenhouse gases affect the climate" is correct.

His main concern is that "overselling ...predictions" will risk the credibility of science in the public's eye.

Originally Posted By: JMR
We are not the cause.

It sounds as if Roger Pielke Jr. is worried someone will see that the models are not perfect; and (despite that being normal in science) that someone will then make the illogical jump to a conclusion like "We are not the cause."

~ smile


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Originally Posted By: RicS
Please don't quote any ice core data.


And how do you know what and when historic CO2 levels were?

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Originally Posted By: greenfyre
Originally Posted By: RicS
Please don't quote any ice core data.


And how do you know what and when historic CO2 levels were?


Easy - the answer is "we don't"

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My point is that CO2 is not the cause; therefore we are not the cause. Do we contribute? Maybe a little. That does not change the fact that the IPCC's temperature graphs have falsified for their high CO2 emission scenarios.

That bit about the arctic is funny though. Are you using a single year to justify your argument?!? It is as though you never read that NASA blamed the 2007 arctic ice melt on wind and the PDO. ( http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/nh-sea-ice-loss-its-the-wind-says-nasa/ )

That June 3rd article seems to have been a bit premature. As of the end of June, the Northwest Passage is still impassable. ( http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/northwest-passage-still-impassable/ ) While the ice extent may be less than the 20 year norm, we are still no where near where we were last year.

That whole ocean oscillation concept has allowed us to warm and cool. That is the primary driver, but what is the background warming that could be from CO2? The background warming is what matters. Looking at the HadCRUT data, the world warmed for about 30 years (1855-1885), then cooled for about 30 years (1885-1915) then warmed for about 30 years (1915-1945), then cooled for about 30 years (1945-1975), then warmed for about 30 years (1975-2005). It is no longer warming. The 1945-1975 cooling period is just of special mention since the CO2 levels started to skyrocket around 1945. In light of these oscillations within the temperature record, suggesting that all of the 1980's and 1990's warming is from CO2 does not make sense. That is the subbing part. You are correct that subbing is not correct, but they had nothing else, so they put it on a pedastal and called CO2 the primary driver. This little thought experiment of mine here does not lay blame and simply looks at what is happening. For now, I am ignoring the why.

Let's look at the background trend instead. Taking the mid point of each warming period from the HadCRUT June 18, 2008 data I estimate this:

1870 -0.3
1930 -0.2
1990 0.2

Graphed: http://users.vianet.ca/paulak2r/AGW/HadCRUT20080618.JPG
Current data: http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/monthly
(the second column is the global anomoly in Celsius)

This is a very poor sample of only three points, but it is just for discussion due to the short period of direct temperature measurements. The trend seems to have increased from 0.1 C to about 0.4 C every 60 years. If the 0.4 C trend holds, by 2110 we would be about 0.8C warmer by this measure which is much less than the IPCC TAR's lowest case scenario. It would also be near the top end of the AR4 idealised constant composition commitment scenario for which we don't qualify. Of course, this assumes that the trend will continue at the 1930 to 1990 pace.

The wiki page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation ) says "[t]he level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional — the last period of similar magnitude occurred over 8,000 years ago." I will not quibble over the 70 year value. That wiki page also quotes Sami Solanki saying 60 years. Will that trend continue to be as high? Maybe. Will it decrease? Maybe. I have no idea what the probability of either is. I want to know if it is linked to this trend increase from 0.1C to about 0.4C every 60 years. The reason for the cooling periods is key at this point.

This is just 'back of an envelope' type of calculation. I submit that I am simply reading numbers from a graph while guessing at the mid points and assuming that the mid points are close to the average. My midpoint of 0.8 C in 2110 could easily be 0.4 or 1.2 C. The point is that background warming (climate) is not the +4 C by 2100 catastrophe that the IPCC has as its upper bound for its worst case scenarios where CO2 emissions continue to be high.

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Originally Posted By: Mike Kremer


I dont like to interupt this interesting discussion.
But I found this item.

http://ceduna.yourguide.com.au/news/loca...tvs/802836.aspx

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/07/03/nitrogen_trifluoride_tv/

Prehaps the reason this Gas was not included in the Kyoto agreement, was because the production of flat panel TV was virtually nil at that time?



Last edited by Mike Kremer; 07/05/08 01:36 AM.

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"You will never find a real Human being - Even in a mirror." ....Mike Kremer.


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The first active-matrix liquid crystal display panel was produced in the United States by T. Peter Brody in 1972. By the 1990s, laptops, digital clocks, calculators, etc. were all using LCD technology and were plentiful. Nitrogen Trifluoride is also used to make integrated circuits. Your two links do not mention anything about concentration. Nor have I yet found the portion of the spectrum that it absorbs. Without knowing these, it is difficult to assess how much influence this chemical has other than possibly damaging our kidneys.

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@Canuck RE: "please don't quote any ice core data."

Can you cite a good reason as to why they should not use such data? Don't the samples yield a direct measure of the atmospheric components at the time the ice formed (limited to available ice, of course)? Much like now: To study the very recent composition and change, 50-yr-old still-inflated tires are sampled. Isn't the ice better than silt and tree ring observations which must be interpreted to 'infer' what the levels were?

Granted: Silt {with its pollen an other organics) and tree ring records give a better measure of the *response* of living things to conditions during a given time and some 'radio-isotopes' can be pulled out of there for further clarification.

Two things that probably have not changed in the time-spans that are relevant to any of these different records:
(1) mean atmospheric pressure -- (essentially, it's the partial pressures of individual gasses that are recorded in the ice)
(2) the freezing temp (triple point, actually--very important)of water.
Based on these two points, I *suspect* that the ice-core data is valid.



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Welcome Arcturus66,
Nice to know someone is reading this stuff critically. smile

Originally Posted By: Arcturus66
Can you cite a good reason as to why they should not use such data?

I've seen the "reasoning" posted here before. I'll see if I can find a link to one of their answers to that question.
===

I was just surfing around about that NF3 question....

Thanks Mike!
Always interesting stuff on your threads.
...fyi....

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L10817, doi:10.1029/2006GL026210, 2006

Revised IR spectrum, radiative efficiency and global warming potential of nitrogen trifluoride
J. I. Robson and L. K. Gohar, et.al.

Abstract
Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) is an industrial gas used in the semiconductor industry as a plasma etchant and chamber cleaning gas. NF3 is an alternative to other potent greenhouse gases and its usage has increased markedly over the last decade. In recognition of its increased relevance and to aid planning of future usage we report an updated radiative efficiency and global warming potentials for NF3. Laboratory measurements give an integrated absorption cross section of 7.04 × 10−17 cm2 molecule−1 cm−1 over the spectral region 200–2000 cm−1. The radiative efficiency is calculated to be 0.21 Wm−2 ppbv−1 and the 100 year GWP, relative to carbon dioxide, is 17200. These values are approximately 60% higher than previously published estimates, primarily reflecting the higher infrared absorption cross-sections reported here.
Received 5 March 2006; revised 11 April 2006; accepted 24 April 2006; published 31 May 2006.
...pay site.... frown ...but.... smile
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"...the intensities of the two main absorption bands measured in the present work are 72% (840–960 cm−1) [~11 microns] and 23% (970–1085 cm−1) [~10 microns {really 9.8microns}]....

...GWPotential values for NF3 were calculated to be 12300, 17200 and 20700 relative to CO2 for time horizons of 20, 100 and 500 years respectively....

... Current global production levels are believed to be about 2300 metric tonnes per year. ...yields an upper limit of the current mixing ratio of 0.10 pptv. Despite the large GWP of NF3, the amount currently in the atmosphere is so small that the contribution of this molecule to overall radiative forcing is very minor (<10&#8722;4 W m&#8722;2).

...However, with an [estimated by Molina et al. (1995)] atmospheric lifetime of 740 years, there is the potential for essentially irreversible accumulation of NF3 in the atmosphere."
===

It looks as if CO2 will still be the main variable keeping us out of another glaciation.
...more about that later....
smile


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Arcturus66, the main problem with ice cores is that two cores taken meters apart have been shown to have vastly different data. There are other problems that are being investigated too. I think this may have been a different thread in the past few months here on science a go go.

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Originally Posted By: Arcturus66
@Canuck RE: "please don't quote any ice core data."

Can you cite a good reason as to why they should not use such data? Don't the samples yield a direct measure of the atmospheric components at the time the ice formed (limited to available ice, of course)?


Just to make it clear, it was not I who said "please don't quote any ice core data". That was RicS.
To answer the question though - it's that first assumption that you really have to validate. Are the air bubbles contained within the ice, really uncontaminated samples of historic atmosphere?
John is right - cores taken meters apart have shown to have vastly different CO2 concentrations. Would it shock you to know that cores with CO2 levels that greatly fluctuate with time, are commonplace? And that these cores are simply discarded as "contaminated"? How do the scientists know they are contaminated? (ready for this) It's because we know, historic CO2 doesn't vary that much. shocked
Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. Declare that CO2 levels are constant without man's impact. Drill cores, analyze them. Discard the cores that disagree with the theory of constant CO2 levels. Use the cores with no variation as proof as the current rise in CO2 is something out of the ordinary.

But to get back to the original assumption - are the bubbles representative of historic atmospheric gases. We have absolutely no way of knowing if they are. Do the bubbles get polluted by the current atmosphere during drilling or testing? Is water held within the ice (we know ice can hold water down to -74 C with sufficient pressure), altering the gas fractionation of the bubbles? Is the youngest ice really at the top, with older ice at the bottom - or has the ice been folded back upon itself (like some rock)? Were the bubbles created by air being entrained into the snow (that eventually became ice), or were the bubbles created from a chemical process occurring within the ice?

The very fact that they are excluding a number of ice cores that do not fit with their theory should give anybody moment for pause.

The fact of the matter is, there are other proxies (leaf stomata) that have been tested under the existing climate (so we have an idea of what the proxy should be telling us), that suggests CO2 levels being much higher than 280 ppm in the very recent past. Unfortunately, some people choose to ignore any other data, and focus on the bloody ice cores.

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Thank you John M Reynolds and Canuck for the replies. I am new to this and, while I find the idea of ice-core paleoclimatology interesting, it is nothing I have any experience with. I had wrongly *assumed* that the measured gasses were those dissolved in the water or snow crystals at the time of freezing. I've been 'googling' some and see that I was greatly mistaken (infiltration of 'firns', dislocation, and whatnot).

--"Would it shock you to know that cores with CO2 levels that greatly fluctuate with time, are commonplace?"

No. It would not.

As for samples meters apart being very different, I can *imagine* a situation such as a path being carved out (by whatever mechanism)or that there may have been a deeper 'drift' so that the depths don't match up. I note that some of these issues have been addressed in the 'dating' of the ice. Perhaps a larger number of samples separated spatially (but also locally, if that makes any sense) and compared to other such samples across the globe could yield better data.

It does seem logical that interpretation of the samples may need to be somewhat *subjective* by nature. That is, If one knows that they've just sampled a past hill or a ditch then...

Still, careful selection of certain sites which are assumed to be somewhat undisturbed thus 'linear' are to be more trusted in the data they yield. Surely such data should be included in the record?

Yes, *assumed* is a big 'if' here; But if the ice-cores are able to illustrate such periodicity then it is reasonable to assume that they have a valid story to tell. That story may be subject to mis-interpretation and exaggeration as it is passed along but it is probably still based in some root truth.

--"there are other proxies (leaf stomata) that have been tested under the existing climate (so we have an idea of what the proxy should be telling us)"

I like that idea. Stick a past-known plant in a box, give it a CO2 concentration, measure the pores, and compare to fossil records, is it? Still, there is that ever-present problem of adaptation along such time scales, isn't there?

{I promise to learn to use the quote function soon, guys!}

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I couldn't find the link here that talked about this "problem" with the ice data, but I found this "representative sample" that may sound familiar:

http://www.tacticalgamer.com/sandbox/85905-new-global-warming-thread-37.html#post786756
Quote:
Ice Core data suffers from a number of faults. One, ice is not a closed system which is the assumption that must be made in order to accept that the CO2 is trapped. Two, if you take snow from the surface, it will not have a representative amount of CO2 represented even in the cracks. Three, chemical processes still occur deep within the ice always altering the chemical makeup of trapped air bubbles. Four, the pressure differential from being brought from well below the surface to 1 bar pressure causes the air to expand, the ice to break and the air to escape. The ice refreezes with any number of continuing chemical processes that can occur when mixing with our air. Nextly, in order to drill the ice, they use a liquid mud mixture of water, zinc and iron that taints the results. Lastly, scientists knowingly discard outrider data that doesn't fit within their agenda which can be as high as 43% of their data. Source Zbigniew Jaworski They are manipulating the data to drive a result.

With all this anectodal hearsay of the "great variability" in ice core data, I can't figure out why someone hasn't made a name for themselves by publishing evidence on this problem.

Isn't that how people get ahead in science; publish or perish?
...or is this another part of the conspiracy?

~Later smile

p.s. Evidence that these "problems" in ice cores with measuring air bubbles, etc. have been looked into, may be found at:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=27013#Post27013

Last edited by samwik; 07/08/08 09:21 AM. Reason: add p.s.

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Originally Posted By: Arcturus66
{I promise to learn to use the quote function soon, guys!}

Just put the quote within quote tags -- that is, start with the word quote enclosed in square brackets. The ending tag is the same except there is a / between the [ and the q. To get fancy, you can put quote=Samwik in the opening tag to show who you are quoting.

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Trying an example using the code tags:
Code:
[quote=Arcturus66]{I promise to learn to use the quote function soon, guys!}[/quote]

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Quote:
Isn't that how people get ahead in science; publish or perish?... or is this another part of the conspiracy?


Well, that would nessecitate *a whole lotta fudgin' going on* but stranger facts have been obscured in the recent past!

I wonder if a situation has ever arose where someone felt it was more like "publish AND perish?" (/sarcasm!)


{Hey, the 'quote thing' worked! Thanks.}

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More on my 26985 post, here is a link that shows we are still almost a million square kilometers ahead of last year's melt.

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Originally Posted By: John M Reynolds
More on my 26985 post, here is a link that shows we are still almost a million sq. kilometers ahead of last year's melt.
...and only about 3/4 of a million sq. kilometers below average.
.
.
http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/trends-i...od-of-1979-2007


"Trends in Arctic sea ice extent in March (maximum) and September (minimum) in the time period of 1979–2007. For the Northern Hemisphere (primarily the Arctic), observations using remote sensing technologies have been used to measure the extent and the to assess the development. Despite considerable year-to-year variability, significant negative trends are apparent in both maximum and minimum ice extents, with a rate of decrease of -2.9% per decade for March and -10.5% per decade for September (linear least squares reqression). The differences in extent are calculated as anomalies compared to the 1979-2000 average, which was 7.0 million sqkm2 in September, and 15 million sqkm2 in March. September 2007 presented a record low extent, with only 4.3 million sq km2, an indication of ongoing climate change. Please note that this figure was not originally published in Global Outlook for Ice and Snow, but is updated from a figure in that publication."


http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html
July 2, 2008
"Arctic sea ice extent averaged for June stood at 11.44 million square kilometers (4.42 million square miles), 0.72 million square kilometers (0.25 million square miles) less than the 1979 to 2000 average for the month. This is very slightly (0.05 million square kilometers; 0.02 million square miles) lower than the average extent for June 2007, but not the lowest on record, which occurred in June 2006."

So, currently we're only "0.72 million square kilometers ...less than the 1979 to 2000 average for the month."

Well, that's looking good....
wink



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Hey buddy boy samwise gamgee - why the focus on the Arctic? I thought we were talking about global warming??
How about we look at the global ice cover?
Or does global warming only effect the Arctic?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg

Why do some people love cherries so much?

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Right Samwise. We are back to the level we were near the level the had in 2000 according to your graph. The text you quoted is slightly confusing though.

Any thoughts on my background climate data extrapolation?

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Lunchtime, but be back later....

Originally Posted By: post script
John, I'm sorry the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP/GRID-A) quoted text from my link was confusing for you. I have to say that your reply is confusing to me. Maybe tonight I can look at it closer.

Canuck,
The title to this thread mentions "climate," not "global warming." Since the Arctic is a major terrestrial influence on our climate....

Why am I talking about the Arctic?
Originally Posted By: Canuck
Just to make it clear, it was not I who said "please don't quote any ice core data". That was RicS.
...and then you go on for 3 long paragraphs to repeat the lot of blogospheric, out-of-context, anectodal speculation on ice-core problems;
as if all of that stuff hasn't been thought of and already addressed in the scientific community.
>see: http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=27013#Post27013
...and then JMR goes on to make a seemingly significant claim, with several links, about the Arctic.

Why am I talking about the Arctic? Because everyone else is, it seems....

But if you'd like, we could talk about the 100+ Gigatonnes of yearly ice-loss in Antarctica;
or the close to 100 Gigatonnes of yearly ice-loss from the world's mountain glaciers;
or why some glaciers are advancing, even while losing ice mass.
...or CO2, or some other complex facet of climate change...?
.
.
.

Oh, I see you've again pulled out that old, uiuc.edu "area.withtrend" chestnut.
Does this make seven different Topics that graph has been cited on; or is it only five?
I know I've commented before on how lame that graph is. What is it supposed to show; that it plots a reversal in global warming over the last few months?

The last few months!? Talk about cherry picking....
...and it's not a reversal; it's a slowing of the increased melting relative to last year.
But from this site that you (and ImranCan, and JLowe, and JMR) have cited....

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
"You've heard Al Gore comment that the "Earth has a fever"? It may also have major tooth decay. The 40Mb animation at the left shows the dramatic loss of multiyear sea ice over the past year. Multiyear sea ice is older and generally thicker ice - sea ice that has survived at least one melt season (shown in brighter white)."

Unfortunately, the current "extent" of ice cover is increasingly composed of "first-year" ice; and not the multi-year ice that gives stability to the ice-cap.
As I recall, I was chided for introducing "complexity" into the question, when I tried to talk about more than "ice extent," the last time this old chestnut was resurrected.

Can you find any graphs of increasing ice mass (perhaps E. Antarctica)?

wink


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Originally Posted By: John M Reynolds
Right Samwise. We are back to the level we were near the level the had in 2000 according to your graph. The text you quoted is slightly confusing though.

Any thoughts on my background climate data extrapolation?


Hiya John,
Can you point out the parts that are confusing or not clear?
I'm not sure what your point is about comparing now with 2000. At any given point in time, one can usually find a similar reading from the past; especially since, in this case, last year was a record breaker.

The important thing to look at is each trend line, the linear least squares regression.
I'm sure that with the more recent data, the trend lines will be a little less steep, but they're still pointing downward (increasing average ice-loss).
You know about the meaning of the "slope," right?

I recall some models predict a kind of decade-long 'tipping point' for the arctic ice related to the loss in albedo, etc. The models had predicted this would happen around mid-century.
However the recent behavior is paralleling what they had predicted for that mid-century 'tipping point.'

It'll be interesting, in a few years, to see if this decade-long tipping point has alreaday started so much earlier than predicted (falsifying the models, btw), or if this is just a minor fluctuation along the road to a blissfully moderate climate (or a climate that does sorta follow the IPCC projections). My greatest fear is that we'll trigger some sort of "cold mode," possibly precipitating a partial or even full glaciation.

Originally Posted By: JMR
Any thoughts on my background climate data extrapolation?

The thing with the 3 rough mid-points, and the 30 year cooling/warming cycling? Well, as you said,
"This little thought experiment of mine... This is a very poor sample... This is just 'back of an envelope' type of calculation.... guessing at the mid points and assuming that the mid points...."

It's hard to say whether the lack of agreement with the predictions is due to the fallicy of the thought experiment itself, or the roughness of the calculations (or both).
Or neither! I'm not sure if your ideas even relate to the predictions, but I'll look at it from beginnning to end again. It's an interesting 'thought experiment,' to divide up the different forcers.

My other thought was that maybe the two cooling periods that you mentioned were just interruptions in a long warming trend; cooling interruptions caused by Krakatoa, in 1883, and the huge increase in sulfate pollution that began with WWII and ended with 'cap & trade' of sulfates back in the 70's (to clean up acid rain).

http://wgntv.trb.com/news/weather/wgntv-weatherwords-v,0,2765479.story
Volcanic cooling: A decline of average global temperatures following volcanic eruptions. Global temperatures fell about one degree Fahrenheit in the few years following the eruptions of Krakatoa (between Sumatra and Java) in 1883 and Aging Volcano in Bali in 1963.

http://isbndb.com/d/book/learning_to_manage_global_environmental_risks_a04.html
"In 1973 the first EC Environmental Action Program (EAP) was adopted."
"...efforts to deal with climate change, ozone depletion, and acid rain from 1957 (The International Geophysical Year) through 1992 (the UN Conference on Environment and Development)."

Well, just a thought....
smile


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