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Greenhouse Gases - Get Real!

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posted on Aug, 12 2006 @ 03:51 PM
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I'll illustrate my point based on Carbon Dioxide, but the same holds true for any gas in the atmosphere, they block a few frequencies out of an entire spectrum, with negligible effect. these frequencies are absorbed completely at very low concentrations, meaning that adding more 'greenhouse gas' won't change anything past a certain, early threshold, it's like covering tinfoil with paint to increase opaquity.


Source

Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation (IRR) in three narrow bands of frequencies, which are 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM). This means that most of the heat producing radiation cannot be absorbed by it.

Heinz Hug* showed that carbon dioxide in the air absorbs to extinction at its 15µM peak in about ten meters. This means that CO2 does whatever it's going to do in that amount of space. Twice as much CO2 would do the same thing in about 5m.
There's no significant difference between 5m and 10m for global warming, because there is at least 50 kilometers of significant distance in the atmosphere to get it done in.



There are many ways to spread fear, in this case it's 'selective perception' ie. fraud and deceit, CO2 was declared evil, for purely political reasons, it's simple it's stupid, it's mainstream and heretics are few (and mostly concerned with war politics i might add) that's why i still haven't seen a thread like this on this subforum, even though it's long overdue.


Disclaimer: i do not contend the existence of global warming but i abhor ill-informed knee-jerk reactions like storing CO2 in the sea or ground, it's dangerous, it's expensive and most of all an exercise in futility! it wouldn't do diddly squat and lull people into a false sense of security, after all, who will have the courage to wave BS flag when 'billions of dollars are being spent to combat global warming' and at whom ?


PS: i advise utmost caution whenever the sky is reported falling, see another glaring example of overlooking the obvious: plants emit methane, so much for models and calculations, they're tools, they can be misused, catastrophies sell, he who cries the loudest receives maximum publicity and grants.



posted on Aug, 12 2006 @ 04:34 PM
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Originally posted by Long Lance
There are many ways to spread fear


There are many ways to selectively pick your science too...


From the man's own website:




About the Author: Gary Novak M.S. Microbiology, 1970


In college, I ended up studying science but was forced out by mental pain while in graduate school. Mental pain is not the same as depression or schizophrenia. It's caused by distracting sights or sounds which contact memories containing pain, which are too close to the surface.

Creating the mental pain is totally dependent upon sin, and therefore I felt a need to get systematic in deriving the basics of the subject of morality, which I have been doing for thirty five years...

In graduate school, I studied yeast physiology and stumbled onto the basic control mechanisms of mushroom formation. After being forced out by mental pain, I moved onto the vacated family farm in South Dakota, where I began doing mushroom research...

After getting significant results with mushrooms, I attempted to publish in the science journals but was locked out. Science is a good-old-boys club, and I was an outsider. So I got a computer and put the results on the internet.

More...



Yeah...he sounds real credible...



posted on Aug, 12 2006 @ 05:34 PM
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Long Lance...don't tell Venus this, it will confuse her.


The pressure of Venus' atmosphere at the surface is 90 atmospheres (about the same as the pressure at a depth of 1 km in Earth's oceans). It is composed mostly of carbon dioxide. There are several layers of clouds many kilometers thick composed of sulfuric acid. These clouds completely obscure our view of the surface. This dense atmosphere produces a run-away greenhouse effect that raises Venus' surface temperature by about 400 degrees to over 740 K (hot enough to melt lead). Venus' surface is actually hotter than Mercury's despite being nearly twice as far from the Sun.



www.nineplanets.org...

And before you go off on the path of "they're just saying that to back their global warming theory" - they've known this about Venus for a LONG LONG time...before anyone had ever said the phrase "Global Warming".

Get real, will ya? Even the energy industry - in it's entirety - has accepted the scientific evidence. Practically all major research efforts into ways to mitigate GHG effects are being funded by none other than...

THE ELECTRIC POWER COMPANIES. Because power plants are number one CO2 producers. Meanwhile, the coal community is moving to start capturing the methane (which is 20% stronger in its GHG effects than CO2) that is released with coal is processed. And the oil industry has been working under "zero emissions" for over a decade now.

What the heck kind of junk have you been reading?



posted on Aug, 12 2006 @ 08:10 PM
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Originally posted by loam
About the Author: Gary Novak M.S. Microbiology, 1970
After getting significant results with mushrooms, I attempted to publish in the science journals but was locked out.


Ahhh, it's Shroom Science! Now we can let the machine elves fix it all!


Global warming is no fantasy AZ Republic

[edit on 12-8-2006 by Regenmacher]



posted on Aug, 13 2006 @ 04:07 AM
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Global warming isn't what eberyone thinks it is. We are in an interglacial period when the Earth warms up a bit then when the period is over, we go back into the Ica Age that we took a break from. Well, the interglacial period is now ending and the heat warming the planet will be the things that will cause us to go back in the Big Freeze.



posted on Aug, 13 2006 @ 04:38 AM
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can we agree on a few facts please, before we move on by just pointing out the author's lack of credibility?

first, that the relationship between gas concentration and absorption is not linear, but greatly diminishes at higher concentrations, so the there's wouldn't much of a difference between having, say 1% and 2% CO2 in the atmoshpere, thereby limiting the effect.

second, that no-one took into account natural methane emissions from plants, because this finding is relatively new. matching a model to real world data without taking these emmisions into account won't help its validity.


last but not least that i did not deny global warming (at present and prehistoric times..) but simply questioned the mechanism?




the problem afaics, is that this website may contain a lot of bunk, but this guy surely doesn't invent all the stuff, does he? so in other words, he might as well copy/paste a few passages that are correct. the same is true for the entire internet, much of it is bunk, isn't it?


CO2 absorption lines, more respectable source

another, with quote:


Source
A molecule of nitrous oxide has the equivalent greenhouse effect of 206 carbon dioxide molecules, and the CFC molecules have impact 12,000 to 18,000 times that of carbon dioxide. The absorption bands (wavelength regions) for carbon dioxide are nearly saturated, but those for other gases are not, so one additional molecule makes a larger impact. However, we should keep in mind that each person in the US on average puts about 20 metric tons (20,000 kg or 44,000 pounds) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels each year, compared to 100 kg of methane, 2 kg of nitrous oxide, and 2 kg of CFCs. Multiplying the CFC emission rate by 12,000 gives a CFC greenhouse impact comparable to that for carbon dioxide.




PS. Venus' albedo is sky high (more than twice the earth's), how does that square with heavy absorption? it doesn't. it is assumed that CO2 is responsible for Venus' condition, but i'd love to see its net thermal flow - i'd guess it radiates energy.

another issue i have with the mainstream view of venus is that a day lasts longer than a year there, yet the far (night) side doesn't cool down appreciably and surface winds are very slow, therefore cannot transfer the required heat from the sunny side.

[edit on 13-8-2006 by Long Lance]



posted on Aug, 13 2006 @ 10:54 AM
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btw, my statement about 1 and 2 % CO2 respectively was not meant to reflect atmospheric conditons.. (~0.04%)



posted on Aug, 13 2006 @ 11:01 AM
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One thing you stated in your post two up that I totally agree with - the factor of natural methane emissions from botanical sources. The models have got to be corrected for this hither-to unknown source. Prior it was thought that the reduction of CO2 by plants helped mitigate GHGs, and so the thought was as we de-forest we make things worse (which I love trees, so I'm all for stopping that nonsense as much as we can), but now we find they produce methane that is 20% worse in its GHG effects than CO2. I haven't read whether these two things negate each other or not - have you?



posted on Aug, 13 2006 @ 11:18 AM
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I haven't read whether these two things negate each other or not - have you?



no, of course not.


look, i'm not demanding scientific infallibility , models may be off, contributing factors may be overlooked, no problem, but when more and more people seem to favor 'countermeasures' such as any alternative fuel* or dumping CO2 underground or even at sea i seriously start worrying they might actually DO IT.

* who still calculates overall efficiency nowadays? fuel cells, no matter how efficient are fed with H2 or Ethanol, which has to be produced somehow, at a cost, expending energy... biofuels? how much fertilizer (derived from fossil fuels, of course) went into growing it? sorry, good intentions alone are not enough.

[edit on 13-8-2006 by Long Lance]



posted on Aug, 13 2006 @ 01:04 PM
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Originally posted by Long Lance
PS: i advise utmost caution whenever the sky is reported falling, see another glaring example of overlooking the obvious: plants emit methane, so much for models and calculations, they're tools, they can be misused, catastrophies sell, he who cries the loudest receives maximum publicity and grants.



Originally posted by Valhall
One thing you stated in your post two up that I totally agree with - the factor of natural methane emissions from botanical sources. The models have got to be corrected for this hither-to unknown source. Prior it was thought that the reduction of CO2 by plants helped mitigate GHGs, and so the thought was as we de-forest we make things worse (which I love trees, so I'm all for stopping that nonsense as much as we can), but now we find they produce methane that is 20% worse in its GHG effects than CO2. I haven't read whether these two things negate each other or not - have you?


I too am aware of the contribution of natural methane sources, but the conclusions you seem to imply by it, Long Lance, do not make sense.

For example, see the following article and interesting correction:




Global warming: blame the forests

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Monday January 16 2006

The headline above overstated the more circumspect case outlined in the article below, which said that plants emit up to 30% of the methane, a greenhouse gas, entering the Earth's atmosphere. Scientists have just discovered this, but to conclude that it is a new cause of rising temperatures is mistaken.




Now for the relevant portion of the article:




According to a study published today, living plants may emit almost a third of the methane entering the Earth's atmosphere.
The result has come as a shock to climate scientists. "This is a genuinely remarkable result," said Richard Betts of the climate change monitoring organisation the Hadley Centre. "It adds an important new piece of understanding of how plants interact with the climate."

Methane is second only to carbon dioxide in contributing to the greenhouse effect. "For a given mass of methane, it is a stronger greenhouse gas, but the reason it is of less concern is that there's less of it in the atmosphere," said Dr Betts.

But the concentration of methane in the atmosphere has almost tripled in the last 150 years, mainly through human-influenced so-called biogenic sources such as the rise in rice cultivation or numbers of flatulent ruminating animals. According to previous estimates, these sources make up two-thirds of the 600m tonnes worldwide annual methane production.



I'm not sure why this was such a surprise, because even the EPA estimated 60% of the global methane emissions to be human related as early as 2001.


According the the EPA:






Methane is emitted from a variety of both human-related (anthropogenic) and natural sources. Human-related activities include fossil fuel production, animal husbandry (enteric fermentation in livestock and manure management), rice cultivation, biomass burning, and waste management. These activities release significant quantities of methane to the atmosphere. It is estimated that 60% of global methane emissions are related to human-related activities (IPCC, 2001c). Natural sources of methane include wetlands, gas hydrates, permafrost, termites, oceans, freshwater bodies, non-wetland soils, and other sources such as wildfires.

...

In the United States, the largest methane emissions come from the decomposition of wastes in landfills, ruminant digestion and manure management associated with domestic livestock, natural gas and oil systems, and coal mining. Table 1 shows the level of emissions from individual sources for the years 1990 and 1997 to 2003.

Table 1


And:





And in January 2006, the publication Nature, had the following:




Methane emissions from terrestrial plants under aerobic conditions

Methane is an important greenhouse gas and its atmospheric concentration has almost tripled since pre-industrial times1, 2. It plays a central role in atmospheric oxidation chemistry and affects stratospheric ozone and water vapour levels. Most of the methane from natural sources in Earth's atmosphere is thought to originate from biological processes in anoxic environments2. Here we demonstrate using stable carbon isotopes that methane is readily formed in situ in terrestrial plants under oxic conditions by a hitherto unrecognized process. Significant methane emissions from both intact plants and detached leaves were observed during incubation experiments in the laboratory and in the field. If our measurements are typical for short-lived biomass and scaled on a global basis, we estimate a methane source strength of 62–236 Tg yr-1 for living plants and 1–7 Tg yr-1 for plant litter (1 Tg = 1012 g). We suggest that this newly identified source may have important implications for the global methane budget and may call for a reconsideration of the role of natural methane sources in past climate change.



The fact that natural methane sources are not accounted for adequately in the models is not the same thing as saying man-made sources are less relevant. If anything, it makes the amount of anthropogenic methane all the more important, in the sense that it may be all that is required to tip the scale for certain instances of Global Warming.


[edit on 13-8-2006 by loam]



posted on Aug, 13 2006 @ 02:24 PM
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if natural sources exist and were overlooked for so long then chances are models were tailored to fit available data, otherwise people would have had to encounter a 'methane gap', ie. more methane in the atmosphere than predicted.

nothing like this happened, at least not publically, so i really don't see why i should trust the GHG scare when we have examples of failed scares in the past (f-ex. acidic rain scare) and theory doesn't seem to predict much if anything at all, but is adapted every time (unexpected) new information pops up. maybe i'm too demanding, but i'm sorry i just don't buy it. while we're at it, is methane hydrate considered a fossil fuel (ie. derived from organic matter) ? if so, please tell me why and how it accumulates mainly on continental shelves everywhere in such huge quantities? shouldn't it be found anywhere organic matter, covered in sediment, decays ? from the general looks of it it seems to emanate from inside, so to speak... btw is methane hydrate cookoff even being considered in climate models?


anyway, i think you'll get my drift by now, based on what we know, any radical proposal should be taken 'cum grano salis'.



posted on Aug, 13 2006 @ 03:34 PM
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(f-ex. acidic rain scare)

Bad move... acid rain has been known for decades to drastically effect soil and marine ecologies. Ask any serious gardener for confirmation. For additional confirmation, you can test the pH of the rain yourself and test it's effect on specific plants, animals and fish.




posted on Aug, 14 2006 @ 08:37 AM
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bad move? really, i still remember when everyone feared the projected wholesale loss of forests by the year 2000 or so


now on to some statistics about S02 emissions


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Initiated in 1985, the Eastern Canada Acid Rain program committed Canada to cap SO2 emissions in the seven provinces from Manitoba eastward at 2.3 million tonnes by 1994, a 40% reduction from 1980 levels. By 1994, all seven provinces had achieved or exceeded their targets. In 1998, the provinces, territories and the federal government signed The Canada-Wide Acid Rain Strategy for Post-2000, committing them to further actions to deal with acid rain. Progress under both the Eastern Canada Acid Rain Program and under the Post-2000 Strategy, including data on emissions, is reported in the respective annual reports of these two programs. Between 1980 and 2001, emissions of SO2 declined by approximately 50% to 2.38 million tonnes. In eastern Canada , emissions of SO2 declined by approximately 63% between 1980 and 2001.




certain areas have little if any alkalinity, sorry to hear that, does any of that change the fact that forests are usually dying because of chainsaw abuse rather than acidity (naturally sensitive areas excluded, btw)? no of course not, nor does it invalidate my statement about the acid rain scare of the eighties, fortunately it did not come true (for completely different reasons, though) and yes, countermeasures were needed (cutting down on SO2 especially), so the example is not valid in an ecological, but very valid, in a political sense, imho.

PS: limiting CO2 emissions in order to protect oceans (and to a lesser degree vulnerable areas you described) is a valid strategy. scaring people with mental images of Venus and pursuing dishonest and often dangeruous campaigns like CO2 dumping isn't. of course, it's kinda hard to seperate wheat from chaff:


Source#2
Capture and disposal of CO2 are actively being sought as a means to avoid release of the greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. At the Sleipner West gas field in the North Sea, Norway's state-owned oil company, Statoil, is conducting the world's first carbon sequestration project that has as its main objective protection of the atmosphere (1). CO2, a natural gas contaminant, is being recovered and pumped into a huge aquifer beneath the sea floor. (*) Another project is planned off Hawaii's Kona coast, where a multinational research team will soon perform field trials, testing options for direct ocean disposal of CO2. (**)


* pumping back contaminant CO2 or pumping CO2 into drained gas wells sounds benign, while

** 'direct ocean disposal' means introducing carbonic acid into the ocean, while complaining about acidity, doesn't it? that's not a countermeasure, that's lunacy.




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