Lets finish this! Numbers do not lie.

reply to post by TheRedneck


to further clarify for all on kelvin and celcius-

zero celcius is the freezing point of water.

zero kelvin is the temperature at wich all molecular motion stops.

the incrementation is the same.

Originally posted by Byrd

Originally posted by TheRedneck
Carbon dioxide molecules are not spread out in a film like paint; rather they are distributed more or less randomly among the troposphere.

Not really. There's some interesting patterns. geology.com...

Bear in mind that I am showing the potential increase in energy retention based only on the increase in carbon dioxide since pre-industrial times.

Anthropogenic factors, though, aren't ONLY carbon dioxide. There's also methane (large factory farms, drilling operations) which has increased dramatically in the last 300 years.
Methane

And there's also deforestation:
www.moorlandschool.co.uk...

(and by the way, changing prairies into farmland. Crops and grass for animals tend to sequester less CO2 than prairie switchgrass.)
www.netl.doe.gov...

heat islands:
www.epa.gov...
en.wikipedia.org...

Desertification of formerly green lands (and subsequent dust storms) :
en.wikipedia.org...

the end results are the same: carbon dioxide cannot be causing the warming trends of the last few decades. To discount that statement would require a discrepancy of 500% in either the energy available or the energy needed, or both combined.

It's a complex picture, and CO2 isn't the only gas. Using only CO2 and ignoring things like methane, deforestation, desertification, heat islands (and other heat sources like factories and oil processing plants) and so forth will not give you the accurate picture you desire:
en.wikipedia.org...

You need to add those into your calculations... and you probably should use calculus since you're looking at multiple values that change over time (you can do it with multiple calculations but that's tiresome and leads to the accusation you've cherry picked data.)

The provided link showed that CO2 is distributed at 376ppm to 386ppm. I would call that insignificant personally in determining the effect on global warming. If a 10ppm difference of CO2 leads to a significant climate change that would certainly be news to me.

And furthermore, I don't see why it makes a difference even if it were a range of 0 to 5,000ppm. As long as the average is a fixed number I would think you'd simply have more warming in one area and more cooling in another area but it would ultimately average out.

reply to post by TheRedneck


very very nice work bravo. everyone needs to know the grand scam trying to be forced down their throats. s and f

reply to post by TheRedneck


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/914504e2370d.jpg[/atsimg]

Originally posted by TheRedneck
reply to post by mikelee

Are you saying you discount it because of the conclusion and not because of the calculations?

TheRedneck

If the conclusion had arrived at some monumental figure that we have not heard before then yes, it must be discounted as nothing more than a long rehash of what has already been. Nothing new here.

While the calculations may be correct in terms of the numbers (math) it really is overkill just to arrive at an already establish result.

reply to post by TheRedneck


I will admit TheRedneck that I don't understand global warming physics, so your maths simply did not make sense to me.

The part I don't understand is this: How does more CO2 cause global warming?

First, please help me rule something out. Is it the thermal insulation properties of CO2 that is causing the increase in warming? I imagine not since even if it were a perfect insulator as a gas it only takes up a small fraction of the total gasses in the atmosphere. So the thermal insulation of CO2 is then mathematically insignificant, correct?

So what then is it about CO2 that causes an insulating effect? Apparently you refer to something about CO2 interacting with photons to create heat, but I can't quite understand what that is exactly. CO2 is not an optically clear gas and therefore absorbs light? Is that what it is?

I knew I should have checked out this thread yesterday!

Great Job Red Neck. S & F

reply to post by truthquest

A carbon dioxide molecule is invisible to visible light; we cannot see it. But it is not completely invisible to certain wavelengths of light. There are actually two areas of the spectrum (absorption bands) that CO2 is more translucent to than invisible. both are located in long-wavelength radiation (heat radiation).

The theory is this: sunlight can reach the earth just fine, since it is mostly shorter wavelengths and is not affected by CO2. But when the earth absorbs short wavelength light, it begins to emit longer-wavelength heat. That heat would simply escape out into space if not for the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere intercepting them. If a ray of heat strikes a greenhouse gas, it causes that gas to heat up. Then, when the gas molecule cools back down, it releases that heat again, this time in a random direction. Sometimes the emitted heat will go on into space, but other times it will head back to earth to be absorbed and re-emitted by the ground again.

Each time heat or light hits the earth, only part of it will be reflected this way back as heat. Exactly how much varies depending on what the ground is made of, how much plant life is there, etc. When it hits a greenhouse gas molecule, the attenuation (loss) is close to 50%, since half of the time it will radiate on out into space and the other half it will head back to the earth when re-emitted.

CO2 is actually a rather poor greenhouse gas. Somewhere I read that it only absorbs 16% of the energy it intercepts, but I have not been able to find that information again (I have a very large personal library to search through). That may be an average based on how much of sunlight is in the absorption spectrum for CO2, but until I locate it, I won't actually use the value in a calculation.

Water vapor is by far the most significant greenhouse gas. It is a very good heat absorber and is much more plentiful in the atmosphere. If you watch your local weather, you can see the effect of moisture in the air on temperature: humid air normally will result in temperatures remaining fairly constant, while dry air will allow for wide day-night temperature fluctuations. Part of that effect is from an increased heat capacity of the air due to the higher water vapor level, but some is due to the reflective greenhouse effect holding heat in.

We cannot control water vapor. It is produced as well as CO2 when hydrocarbons are burned, but removing it from the air would be disastrous to weather patterns. CO2, simply because it is the second most plentiful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere by far, ranks as the second highest contributor to greenhouse effects. (I believe it has been targeted because it is the only other product of pure hydrocarbon combustion and the public has little knowledge of its actual properties.)

That's the theory. As the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere goes up, the chance that escaping heat will be intercepted increases. And that is actually true, to a point. Where things go awry with present theory is that the amounts are used to connotate disastrous levels, when compared with other variables the amounts involved are minuscule. We hear of gigatons of carbon dioxide and it sounds like a lot. But that is compared to tens and hundreds of teratons of the other components of the atmosphere.

That is what my OP does: it illustrates with simple energy calculations that even when limiting factors are conservatively left out, when everything practical is done to make CO2 effects look high, there still is not enough energy there to make a substantial difference, and certainly not enough to account for recent warming trends.

TheRedneck

redneck,

please refer to page 5 of this thread for my counter points. i am interested in your response.

while i agree that anthropormorphic CO2 as negligable effect

i instantly spooted one flaw in your logic

you have treated the worlds oceans as a single hommogenous mass - that is simply wrong

while i cannot supply the correct equations [ the maths and physics of oceon temperatures is a mindblowingly complex feild ]

in breif , the oceans have thermoclines that seperate warmer and cooler masses of water , even salinity is not homogenous - and plays a role in thermodymamics

so using the entire oceanic volume as a single " heatsink " is not valid [ from a climate change perspective

heating [ from any source ] of just the surface 100m of a small body by 1 degree - like for instance the medeteranean sea would have a effect on the ecosystem and local climate

in short - yoou dont have to heat the entire oceans to affect the climate and biosphere

appologies for the gross simplification

PS - the ` general thrust ` of your argument is 100% valid IMHO - so S&F

You forgot to carry the 4, just thought I would point that out.

Which if you recalculate your argument would mean that climate change is in fact a man made phenomenon, fortunately, it's localized in just one man...

Al Gore.

The amount of heated air expelled by this one individual if not kept in check will lead to rampant global warming. As shown in the following graph

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/002f4af62c24.jpg[/atsimg]

The only hope is to stop this man from speaking publicly therefore reducing the impact his emissions cause the planet.





[edit on 12/2/2009 by whatukno]

reply to post by wx4caster

Whoa, sorry there wx4caster... I did miss this post, so thank you for bringing it to my attention! And anyone else whose posts I may have missed (this thread grew faster than I could read at one point), please post a reminder.

No I mean to say that the upper atmosphere changes the wavelength of certain incoming radiations. Either way, it is of no real consequence as you say you are ony making a general statement. Perhaps you should make that clear. By giving calculations that have some accuracies down to the 10x10^-3 you are suggesting accuracy via the very nature of your proposed calcs.

You have a valid point; another poster has already called me out on that, and I will admit I have this bad tendency to use too many unnecessary digits.

The area of a circle is less than the area of a half of a sphere...

You're still missing my point here. let me try to explain it from scratch:

If we were to place a hollow sphere around the sun, one where the surface occupied the same position as the Earth's orbit, every portion of that sphere would receive the same amount of radiation as every other portion (not allowing for local variances such as sunspots of course). Now, if we place the Earth in it's orbit as well, the intersection between the Earth, a sphere, and our original sphere is what? A circle the same diameter of the Earth. If we know the size of that circle, then we know the area it occupies receives the same amount of irradiation as any other area of that size.

We can then calculate how much solar irradiation will be hitting that area, and thus how much total solar irradiation will be hitting the earth.

Now this will work for a total Earth calculation, but not when calculating solar irradiance over sections of the Earth. That is where you are correct. The energy of one unit of that disk at the equator will produce the same energy as the same size area of the disk covering the poles; but the irradiance measured on the surface of the Earth will be different. At the equator, both areas are essentially the same, as the equator is normal to the sun. At the poles, there is a tremendous difference between the area of our imaginary disk and the actual land area, because the land is not normal to the sun. The same energy that covered one unit area at the equator now covers many units of area due to this angle. That is why the solar irradiation is less at the poles.

Using the disk calculation means we do not need to take the angles into consideration to calculate the total energy, because the very use of the imaginary disk does it automatically.

Another way to think about this: look at a ball. What do you see? A sphere? No, you see a circle. It is a sphere; you may believe it to be a sphere, maybe based on shadows, but the shape you see is actually two dimensional, not three dimensional. It's the same principle. The sun 'sees' a two dimensional earth, not a three dimensional one. Therefore it 'sees' a circle.

No. there is much more attenuation through the poles than the equator because of the angle of incidence.

There would be some deviation, but since we are using the disk mentioned above, it would be much less than an area with, say, cloud cover.

But the upper atmosphere such as the stratosphere contains mostly 02 and 03, which absorbs smaller wavelengths very well. You used total solar incoming radiation in your calculations, but only considered partial reasons for absorption.

So are you saying that there is less energy coming into the system? That would translate to less of a temperature increase, correct?

Drastic changes of atmospheric content wrt not only co2 but also water vapor, density, atmospheric heights and so on can happen very rapidly over very short distances, and it is these boundaries that give us wind and weather and so on.

That is the definition of an average. Yes, there will be some places with less carbon dioxide than others, and some with more water vapor than others. Yes, that does indeed cause the chaos we call weather. But overall, excess water vapor in one area cancels out dry air in another; 390 ppmv carbon dioxide in one area cancels out 370 ppmv in another. The average is maintained, even though there be deviations in local areas.

You hope. But you cannot be certain. And that is not the type of wager that a scientific individual looking to build credibility and support a hypothesis should be taking.

No, I cannot say that in 100 years, the temperature will rise by only 0.1°K. I wasn't trying to say that. What I am saying is that over a period of 100 years, the maximum rise that could possibly be attributed to present carbon dioxide levels is 0.1°K. That's the only question the mathematics answer.

And you proceed from a false assumption if you believe I wrote this to get fame or accolades. I desire neither. Never have I made any attempt to elicit accolades from other members or staff at ATS. I do understand I have somewhat of a following here (which I will admit is flattering, if surprising), but I assure you it is not by my design. If truth be known, fame is the thing I probably fear the most. I am a hermit at heart, happy to watch society stumble on its merry way as opposed to being a part of it. Unfortunately, I was not born into situations that allow me to live out that fantasy.

I wrote this to expose truth about the carbon dioxide Cap & Trade scam. Nothing else.

What type of heating method are you considering FOR your anthropogenic co2? The gas itself can be heated by several different mechanisms.

The only heating considered is what originally comes form solar irradiation. That can include black-body radiation from the Earth, but does not include any geothermal effects. If those are included, they will of course change the calculations.

But not the result.

Some parts of the troposphere are behaving differently than others based upon the amount of mixing, radiation, and source region that the air mass is in place over. This is another dangerous generalization that threatens the credibility of your calculations.

Again, any true average would include these effects. But perhaps more importantly, I ask how closely you would like to see this calculated? There can be variations from one cm³ to the next; would you break the entire atmosphere into cm³ sections and individually analyze each? What would benefit from such a monumental task? And more importantly, who would be able to perform such a task without some serious financial support... perhaps government support? Even the IPCC doesn't break things down that far... probably because they can't, even with their supercomputers.

Be careful when seeking over-accurate results... too much unnecessary detail can make any rebuttal out of the reach of all but the most powerful, when the result can still be obtained with averages.

But to your target audience it may appear as if you are making a hypothesis based upon scientific data and analyzed with accuracy and presented to them for review and comment.

Yes, and that is exactly what Global Warming propagandists have done. The numbers are unwieldy and cumbersome, but that cannot be helped when calculating on a global scale. I suppose I could have used a more obscure unit such as a teraJoule, but what would that mean to the readers? I am sure both of us know a tera is a trillion, but would the majority of the readers?

It is a difficult line to draw, agreed. And while I cannot say I drew it correctly (only each reader can determine that for themselves), I stand by my choices, although I am happy to further explain my reasoning should it not be clear to a reader.

Sorry again for missing the posts. I may not agree with your comments, but I do welcome them.

TheRedneck

reply to post by ignorant_ape

Yes, I did treat them as one homogeneous mass, and even as I did it, I expected this question to come up.

There are temperature fluctuations in oceans, just as there are in air. Yet, the absolute temperature is not what is important; it is the differential temperature that is of concern. Any heat introduced into a system will work to neutralize differences in that system; in simpler terms, the heat will dissipate. As it does so, the amount of temperature difference per unit of distance will decline, slowing the heat transfer but never stopping it completely. Some materials transfer this heat energy quickly (conductors) while some conduct it slowly (insulators), but all matter will conduct heat at some rate.

If we were talking about a short time period, this dissipation factor would mean a lot. Oceanic heat is transferred relatively quickly, although vertical transference of heat can be slower. Over the course of tens or even a hundred years, the constant flow of heat would tend to dissipate throughout not only the oceans, but also the land masses. The inherent differences in temperature of various ocean levels would no doubt remain, but the temperature of all levels would tend to increase until the heat energy was evenly distributed.

Thus, when speaking of a 100-year period, I chose to treat the oceans as a homogeneous medium.

TheRedneck

shouldn't the co2 levels from forests dieing out, icefields melting and oceans warming also be included in a long term forcast,
when all these traps stop sucking up most of the co2 being produced, levels of co2 would increase in significant amounts would they not, adding substancially to the rise of what is already placed in the atmosphere.
How much these traps hold or if those levels would ever get discharged back to the atmospere in a big hit I wouldn't be certain. just something to think about.

You sir, have spent a lot of time collecting and solving many equations! (4000x more than I could!)
I would love to reward you with my appreciation for posting this.

As being a man of a 143 IQ, I thank you for furthering my intellect in mathematics !

I'm also an honest man, so I'll say I drank quite a bit tonight, and will have no idea I wrote this in the morning.

But I'm also 100% positive that I would appreciate this sober as well.

I find this post very informative and I would again love to congratulate you on performing these math equations on behalf of the ordinary (bad at math) man.

Having said that I have some thoughts.

Humans ( as well as every complex organism), as they breathe, release Carbon-Dioxide correct?
How does that factor into your equations?

I might come off as retarded but, you know why...

(I spent half the time making this post correcting typos )
Drink carefully!


Take care, AtG

(oh and, S & F mate!)

[edit on 12/2/2009 by Alexander the Great]

As it's 9.00 AM and I had a few last night, I must say that I didn't follow a word of that. But I'm gonna forward it onto a mate of mine who has a maths degree. I'm currently having enough problems trying to figure out why a drag and drop operation isn't working in VBasic when it blatantly should be and has done up until now.

I hate computers...

having got that off my chest, from what could pick up, I would agree that the maths doesn't add up, which is what I have been saying for years. We as a race do not have the ability to change the environment for the Earth and it is pure egotistical arrogance to believe that we can.

[edit on 2-12-2009 by nik1halo]

Thank you for the excellent work and enlightening numbers.

Like others here I can poke some small holes, but on the scale of things I doubt they much difference. The sun is not the only heat/energy input to the system, we have everything from volcanoes to campfires. Still on the scale of things it should not make that much difference.

The real clues that climate change was a big lie have been there all along, no degree in science needed.
1) Basic data used for calculations not open source/published for all to see
2) Modeling software not open source
3) big scare mongers (Al Gore) not taking personal steps to reduce their own carbon footprints

Originally posted by TheRedneck
reply to post by truthquest

A carbon dioxide molecule is invisible to visible light; we cannot see it. But it is not completely invisible to certain wavelengths of light. There are actually two areas of the spectrum (absorption bands) that CO2 is more translucent to than invisible. both are located in long-wavelength radiation (heat radiation).

The theory is this: sunlight can reach the earth just fine, since it is mostly shorter wavelengths and is not affected by CO2. But when the earth absorbs short wavelength light, it begins to emit longer-wavelength heat. That heat would simply escape out into space if not for the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere intercepting them. If a ray of heat strikes a greenhouse gas, it causes that gas to heat up. Then, when the gas molecule cools back down, it releases that heat again, this time in a random direction. Sometimes the emitted heat will go on into space, but other times it will head back to earth to be absorbed and re-emitted by the ground again.

Thanks, that pretty much explains everything I was wondering about.

In your equations then, how do you determine the percent chance of light that will hit a CO2 atom? It seems you are saying in your OP that if CO2 was say is 2% of all gasses in the atmosphere that it would intecept 2% of the light. Is that correct?

In my opinion, given your description of how global warming works, the way to determine how much heat will be captured would be to determine:
- The area (from a cross-section-wise perspective) of an individual CO2 atom.
- The area within that area which if hit would result in absorption of a photon... I would guess 100% but don't know the physics.
- How many CO2 atoms there are per area unit in the atmosphere.
So, by multiplying the cross-section area of CO2 by the number of atoms per unit area you can calculate what the maximum area is of CO2 per unit area that would be that is vulnerable to interaction with light rays. Using a statistical function (not sure which one) you could cancel out CO2 atoms who's area overlaps.

The next step would then be to determine the area (again as a cross-section perspective) of a photon. Since I don't really know too much about thermodynamics there is probably no point in me going on much further but the point is my idea would be to match up the area of the photon.

Ok.... I am taking in most of this, understanding, but then my brain just explodes.

Everyone push this to the top, make it known, well done OP.

1366 W/m² = 1,366,000,000 W/km²

This is incorrect.