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Search for CO2

Comments matching the search CO2:

More than 100 comments found. Only the most recent 100 have been displayed.

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

MA Rodger at 19:42 PM on 25 April, 2024

Eclectic @14,

You say the work of these jokers Kubicki, Kopczyński & Młyńczak failed the WUWT test, being too bonkers even for Anthony Willard Watts to cope-with. I would say Watts has happily promoted work just as bonkers in the past.

And as you say, there is no WUWT coverage of this Kubicki et al 2024 paper although Google shows it is mentioned once in one of the comment threads, as is an earlier paper from the same jokers. Indeed, there are two such earlier papers from 2020 and 2022. Thankfully, these are relatively brief and thus they easily expose the main error these jokers are promoting.

In Kubicki et al (2020) they kick-off by misusing the Schwarzschild equation. The error they employ even gets a mention within this Wiki-ref which says:-

At equilibrium, dIλ = 0 even when the density of the GHG (n) increases. This has led some to falsely believe that Schwarzschild's equation predicts no radiative forcing at wavelengths where absorption is "saturated".

They then measure the radiation from the Moon through a chamber either filled with air or with CO2 and show there is no difference and thus, as their misuse of Schwarzschild suggests, that the Earth's CO2 is "saturated." In preparing for this grand experiment, they research the thermal properties of the Moon as an IR source and thus tell us:-

The moon. The temperature of its surface varies a lot, but for the part illuminated by the Sun, according to encyclopaedic information, it may slightly exceed 1100ºC.

This well demonstrates that these jokers are on a different planet to us as it is well know our Moon only manages 120ºC under the equatorial noon-day sun.

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

Eclectic at 01:29 AM on 25 April, 2024

Thanks for that, MA Rodger @13.

Possibly - just possibly - the ultimate Thumbs-Down on the Kubicki et al. paper . . . is that it has not been trumpeted at WUWT website (which usually trumpets any crackpot paper which seems "anti-mainstream" science. And that's despite many of the WUWT denizens regularly/continually asserting that the CO2-GreenHoouse Effect was now irrelevant (because "saturated") or was always non-valid anyway.

Now perhaps I have failed to remember "Kubicki" being a Nine-Day Wonder at WUWT ~ or perhaps I failed to notice "Kubicki" among the mountainous garbage-pile accumulating at WUWT. But as a final check, I used the WUWT Search Function . . . and turned up Nothing.

Something of Contrarian pretensions would need to be pretty bad, not to get 15-minutes of fame at WUWT. But maybe I speak too soon?

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

MA Rodger at 00:15 AM on 25 April, 2024

The paper Kubicki et al (2024) 'Climatic consequences of the process of saturation of radiation absorption in gases' is utter garbage from start to finish. When something is so bad, it is a big job setting straight the error-on-error presented.

As an exemplar of the level of nonsense, consider the opening paragraph, sentence by sentence.

Due to the overlap of the absorption spectra of certain atmospheric gases and vapours with a portion of the thermal radiation spectrum from the Earth's surface, these gases absorb the mentioned radiation.

I'd assume this is saying that the atmosphere contains gases (or "vapours" if you are pre-Victorian) which absorb certain IR wavelengths emitted by the Earth's surface. Calling this "overlap" is very odd.

This leads to an increase in their temperature and the re-emission of radiation in all directions, including towards the Earth.

The absorption if IR does lead to "an increase in their temperature" but the emission from atmospheric gases is determined by its temperature. Absorbed IR only very rarely results in a re-emission of IR (and if it does, the IR energy is not cause "increase in their temperature").

As a result, with an increase in the concentration of the radiation-absorbing gas, the temperature of the Earth's surface rises.

This is not how the greenhouse effect works. For wavelengths longer than the limit for its temperature defined by 'black body' physicis (for the Earth, about 4 microns), the planet emits IR across the entire spectrum. The level of emission depends on the temperature of the point of emission which for wavelengths where greenhouse gases operate is not the surface but up in the atmosphere. For IR in the 15 micron band, CO2 will result in emissions to space from up in the atmosphere where it is colder and thus where emissions are less. If adding CO2 moves the height of emission up into a colder altitude, emissions will fall and the Earth then has to heat up to regain thermal equilibrium.

Due to the observed continuous increase in the average temperature of the Earth and the simultaneous increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it has been recognized that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration associated with human activity may be the cause of climate warming.

This was perhaps true before the 1950s but the absorption/emission of IR by various gasses was identified and measured when the USAF began to develop IR air-to-air missiles. The warming-effect of a doubling of CO2 (a radiative forcing of +3.7Wm^-2) has been established for decades.

So just like debating science with nextdoor's cat, taking the heed the whitterings of Messers Kubicki, Kopczyński & Młyńczak is a big big waste of time.

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

Bob Loblaw at 23:43 PM on 23 April, 2024

Theo:

Taking a quick look at that paper, I see it refers to Angstrom's work in 1900 to support their "saturation" argument. This is already discussed in the Advanced tab of the detailed "Is the CO2 effect saturated?" post that this at-a-glance introduces. Short version - we've learned a few things since Angstrom wrote his paper in 1900.

Searching the recent paper for "saturation", it seems that they are using the typical fake skeptic approach that applies the Beer-Lambert law (which is exponential in nature, and a standard part of radiation transfer theory) to the atmosphere as a whole. That is - they look at whether or not IR radiation can make it through the atmosphere in a single pass.

To nobody's surprise, this turns out to not be the case - IR radiation in the bands absorbed by CO2 rarely makes it directly from the earth's surface to space. The energy in the photons needs to go through a series of absorption/re-emission cycles as it gradually works its way up through the atmosphere. When these processes are included in the calculations, it turns out that this particular flavour of the "saturation" argument falls flat on its face, and adding more CO2 (compared to our current levels) does indeed have an effect.

Executive Summary: the authors of that paper have no idea how the greenhouse effect works, as Eclectic has stated.

Read the full rebuttal here for more discussion - and the details of the Beer-Lambert Law are also discussed in this SkS blog post.

Elsevier is usually considered a reputable publisher, but they screwed up on this one. The rapid passage from "received" to "accepted" is indeed a red flag. The journal - Applications in Engineering Science - is clearly an off-topic journal for this paper. On the page I link to, it mentions "time to first decision" as 42 days, and "review time" of 94 days. If you click on "View all insights", you get to this page that also gives "Submission to acceptance" as 77 days, and "acceptance to publication" as five days. The seven days for this paper (from "received" to "accepted") is, shall we say, a bit shorter than usual?

It is worth noting that several other papers in the same issue also have very short times between "received" and "accepted". Of the four I looked at, none of them had any indication that the authors were asked to revise anything, which is rather unusual. Someone at that journal is in a rush.

(If you click on "What do these dates mean?", below the title/author section of the web page for the appear, it specifically states that "received" is the date of the original submission, and they will say "revised" if a more recent version is submitted - e.g. after review.)

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

John Mason at 16:53 PM on 23 April, 2024

re - # 4: I've just taken a look at that paper. The reason we didn't mention it was that it came out very recently.

This however is part of the conclusion:

"However, the intention of the authors of this article is not to encourage anyone to degrade the natural environment. Coal and petroleum are valuable chemical resources, and due to their finite reserves, they should be utilized sparingly to ensure they last for future generations. Furthermore, intensive coal mining directly contributes to environmental degradation (land drainage, landscape alteration, tectonic movements). It should also be considered that frequently used outdated heating systems burning coal and outdated internal combustion engines fueled by petroleum products emit many toxic substances (which have nothing to do with CO2). Therefore, it seems that efforts towards renewable energy sources should be intensified, but unsubstantiated arguments, especially those that hinder economic development, should not be used for this purpose."

In scientific literature, a conclusion should be about the work that was done, and not an arm-waving diatribe! The Introduction likewise gives its first 400 plus words over to arm-wavy waffle about the IPCC. I'm surprised it got beyond peer review on that basis. Indeed, its submission/acceptance dates (Received 4 December 2023, Accepted 11 December 2023) suggests it never was reviewed. In most cases a period of months divides those two dates because the peer review process is quite slow. These are all warning signs that 'something is up' with this item.

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

Theo Simon at 15:46 PM on 23 April, 2024

I am not science trained but trying to understand. This rebuttal doesn't mention the alleged evidence presented in the paper "Climatic consequences of the process of saturation of radiation absorption in gases" by Kubicki and others - or does it? The current denialism talking point is that additional CO2 has now been shown to have no additional warming effect, and claims new proofs of this:

https://notrickszone.com/2024/04/23/3-physicists-use-experimental-evidence-to-show-co2s-capacity-to-absorb-radiation-has-saturated/

What is Mexico doing about climate change?

prove we are smart at 00:04 AM on 16 April, 2024

On behalf of Mexico and the many,many nations on this planet who will struggle more than the "entitled wealthy", climate justice - can it come from those who have given us the current 20% of global co2. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zP0L69ielU

Full article here www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-which-countries-are-historically-responsible-for-climate-change/

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Grumnut at 20:39 PM on 11 April, 2024

I think it's bizarre, that Durkin has basically made the same movie again. This is "The Great Global Warming Swindle" made over with the same players. One of the oddest parts of BOTH films is the contention of the claim that warming comes first, followed by CO2 rise, 800 years later. They even use the graph (at least in TGGWS) from the paper from Caillon et al. The trouble is, that paper clearly states that CO2 rose first in the Northern Hemisphere followed by warming. Highly educated scientists, some with doctorates, can't read a simple scientific paper, it seems.

They wouldn't be trying to put one over on us, would they?

Welcome to Skeptical Science

Bob Loblaw at 01:07 AM on 5 April, 2024

cookclimate @ 118:

I have looked at the paper in the volume I linked to in comment 121. There are definite changes compared to an earlier version I found that said "submitted to Earth and Space Science", so I presume that you've had some sort of review and modified the paper since the earlier drafts.

It looks like you have identified the 1470-year cycle using your eyecrometer. I see nothing in the paper that actually does any sort of signal processing to identify cycles using any objective statistical technique. You are seeing a cycle because you want to see a cycle.

Your speculation includes arguments that include all sorts of stuff that has been debunked many times before. Pages are available on Skeptical Science that cover thee topics:

Geothermal heat flux is included in this post.

The "CO2 lags temperature" argument is discussed here.

Most of your examples use regional, not global, temperature proxies. Regional temperatures are far more variable than global ones, and it is invalid to compare the two directly. This is discussed in this SkS post.

You're convinced that an increase in volcanoes are adding to warming. That is the opposite of the argument commonly made by "skeptics" that increasing volcanic activity caused the Little Ice Age, so a subsequent decrease is causing warming (discussed here). In any event, just counting the number of volcanoes (your figure 3) is extremely simplistic. Arguing that more volcanoes implies more geothermal heat is a non-starter, as discussed in the post linked above.

Your "computer models are unreliable" is an old, tired argument, scoring position 6 on the SkS Most Used Climate Myths. The rebuttal is here.

So, your paper is really nothing more than an "I see it" 1470-year cycle mixed with a rehash and Gish Gallop through a variety of common "skeptic" myths. I could probably find more, but it isn't worth the time.

I hope you didn't pay too much money to get it published.

Welcome to Skeptical Science

cookclimate at 09:28 AM on 4 April, 2024

CO2 does not cause Earth’s climate change.

It is estimated that it will cost $62 trillion to eliminate fossil fuels, but eliminating fossil fuels will be a complete waste of our tax and corporate dollars, because it will not stop the warming. You can’t stop Mother Nature.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) frequently shows that temperature correlates with CO2 for the last 1,000 years as proof that CO2 is causing the warming. But if you extend that to the last 800,000 years, the temperature and CO2 lines do not correlate or fit (Figure 14 in Supplemental Data). If the lines don’t fit, then you must acquit CO2. CO2 is not guilty of causing climate change. CO2 does not control Earth’s temperature. The IPCC has not demonstrated any scientific evidence that CO2 controls Earth’s temperature (they only have unproven theories).

The facts:
• Earth is currently warming (it is still below the normal peak temperature).
• CO2 is increasing (it is above the normal CO2 peak).
• Earth’s current warming is being caused by a 1,470-year astronomical cycle.

The 1,470-year astronomical cycle warms the Earth for a couple of hundred years and melts ice sheets primarily in Greenland and the Arctic. It has repeated every 1,470-years for at least the last 50,000 years. It is normal that it would be happening again. It accelerates Earth’s rotation, stopping length of day increases (Figure 9). It warms the Earth. Based on historical data, the current warming should peak near the year 2060 and then it should start to cool.

For more information, see A 1,470-Year Astronomical Cycle and Its Effect on Earth’s Climate,

DOI: 10.33140/JMSRO.06.06.01

and Supplemental Data,
www.researchgate.net/publication/379431497_Supplemental_Data_for_A_1470-Year_Astronomical_Cycle_and_Its_Effect_on_Earth's_Climate#fullTextFileContent

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

John Mason at 08:16 AM on 4 April, 2024

Jim, which is it to be?

"But truth is I have never denied the greenhouse effect."

"Clearly commneting here on SkS is a privelege only given to those who support the CO2 warming narrative."

If you have never denied the greenhouse effect, you must surely accept that enhancing its intensity warms the planet. Likewise you must surely accept that reducing its intensity cools the planet.

Both, I must add, based on very old, tried and tested first principles.

There are as we all know other factors that should be taken into account at all times. We are talking about one component, albeit highly significant, of the climate system here.

So I suggest you try and reconcile the two statements above, upon which I have quoted you.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

jimsteele at 07:54 AM on 4 April, 2024

I would respond to Charlie_Brown and Eclectic, but the moderator will simply remove my comments that refute your comments. Clearly commneting here on SkS is a privelege only given to those who support the CO2 warming narrative. Allowing scientific debate is not something that is honored here as revealed by the "moderator" deleting my post on polar bears, and other trivia. WUWT is clearly offtopic, but is always allowed because it dishonestly trashes skeptics which is the mission of SkS.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Eclectic at 05:09 AM on 4 April, 2024

Gentlemen ~ "Climate The Movie" is currently being featured and featured "bigly" , at the WattsUpWithThat [WUWT] blogsite. WUWT has the topic "pinned" for consideration and comments. Comments are currently numbering 422. Yes, 422.

However, please do not waste your time by seeking through the 422 for any sign of perceptive & intelligent comments. I assure you that I have skimmed the 400-ish . . . and it's merely the typical WUWT "usual suspects" who are angrily venting into the WUWT echochamber.

Jimsteele , it sounds like you are completely unfamiliar with the WUWT website. It is full (well ~ at the 95% level) of commenters who deny the greenhouse effect ~ either directly or indirectly. Yes, I view the website to "educate" myself . . . mostly about the follies of Motivated Reasoning which are on display there daily. WUWT manages to be both interesting and tiresome. But the cynical reader will see some amusing comments there ~ of egregious fatuities & unintended ironies.

Jimsteele @91 ~ please go back and carefully re-read my comment @84. No, I did not state or allege that you "denied the greenhouse effect". But among your convoluted statements on ocean warming/cooling, you both allege and imply that CO2 contributes little or nothing to the (presently unfrozen) temperature of the Earth's ocean. Do you see the irony/incongruity of your position ?

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Charlie_Brown at 05:02 AM on 4 April, 2024

The discussion of the heat transfer mechanisms at the ocean’s surface is irrelevant for understanding the mechanism of global warming caused by increasing greenhouse gas emissions. It neglects infrared radiant energy emitted from the surface and the overall global energy balance.

jimsteele @91 claims that he does not deny the “greenhouse effect”, yet the movie and his initial post @67 direct to myths about “global warming caused by increasing GHG emissions.” He reveals his lack of knowledge about the “greenhouse effect” when, @83, he accuses eclectic: “It is your narrative that grossly incomplete! You make a totally unsubstantiated assertion that without CO2 the oceans would freeze.” It is a correct assertion substantiated by a simple radiant energy balance over the globe: Solar In = Infrared Out.

The surface of the ocean and the land are blackbodies that absorb and emit radiant energy based on Planck’s Distribution Law. Gases, being simple molecules, emit at specific wavelengths as internal energy levels change determined by bending and stretching depending on the molecular structure. CO2 has many strong absorptance/emittance lines in the wavelength band of about 14 to 16 microns and many more weak lines on the shoulders of this band.

Absorptance equals emittance at thermal equilibrium (Kirchoff’s Law). That is the energy balance of a molecule. The condition of thermal equilibrium is important because it is conservation of energy, not conservation of photons at a specific frequency. Because the bottom layer of the stratosphere is cold, the intensity of emitted energy from CO2 is lower than the intensity emitted in the same wavelength band from the surface. Thus, energy emitted to space is reduced. With increasing CO2, the emittance lines fill in and the range of the CO2 emittance band becomes wider. Infrared out is reduced. Energy accumulates. The pre-industrial steady state balance when accumulation was zero is upset. Warming occurs until the energy balance is restored. It is restored when the temperature of the surface increases enough such that the energy emitted by the surface at other wavelengths outside of the CO2 absorptance band matches the reduced energy emitted to space from within the CO2 band.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

jimsteele at 03:39 AM on 4 April, 2024

Second, when you Bob told me to discuss this elsewheere I didnt know it was said by a moderator. You never made that clear, so it appeared you were just a random commenter deflecting the discussion.

I also believed the topic here was about the Climate the Movie and whether or not the facts presented in it were just refuted myths.

SkS topic 31 greenhouse stated the argument "Increasing CO2 has little to no effect" is a myth and that "The strong CO2 effect has been observed by many different measurements."

I had not argued about the greenhouse effect in general, just about how the ocean is warmed. Then Eclectic dishonestly alleged I denied the greenhouse effect. So please explain why his post is still up but my reply gets deleted?

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

jimsteele at 03:15 AM on 4 April, 2024

Eclectic, LOL What are you talking about saying " Jim ~ you would lose all scientific credibility if you assert that the so-called greenhouse effect does not exist."

But truth is I have never denied the greenhouse effect. Your allegations are typical of alarmists trying to denigrate skeptics. Every skeptic I know totally understands the greenhouse effect and are grateful for its warming effect. The question is how much does further increased CO2 cause further warming and is that beneficial or not.

Your second funny is telling me not to get distracted by the details of the actual mechanisms of the ocean is warming, simply because you believe ,without ever substantiating, that there are equilibrium points that are unaffected by those proven dynamics.

Please educate yourself Eclectic.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

jimsteele at 02:19 AM on 4 April, 2024

Eclectic, LOL What are you talking about saying " Jim ~ you would lose all scientific credibility if you assert that the so-called greenhouse effect does not exist."

Please educate yourself Eclectic.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Eclectic at 15:33 PM on 3 April, 2024

Jimsteele @83 :

Certainly the ocean skin surface is the gateway through which heat enters & leaves the ocean. (Other than the large flux of solar radiation which penetrates deeply into the ocean ~ we scuba divers can definitely see that occurring ! )

But as I mentioned above, the skin surface dynamics do not disturb the long-term equilibrium of energies, over the course of days and years. Surely that is obvious to you. Please do not confuse & distract yourself with the ephemeral fluctuations in the surface few microns of oceanic water.

Also ~ do not distract yourself with thinking about the different heat fluxes in the tropic / temperate / and polar zones of the planet. Those zones have their own long-term equilibrium positions, and their existence (and fluctuations) won't change the medium-term equilibrium of the total planet.

Second ~ please educate yourself about the paleo history of Earth . . . and its "iceball" phases. Yes, the paleo evidence indicates low armospheric CO2 produces "iceball" oceanic freezing. In addition to that evidence, the basic physics of Earth's planetary orbital distance and the incident solar radiation on Earth . . . indicate that the Earth's oceans would become meters-deep in ice, if the atmospheric "greenhouse" effect were to disappear.

Jim ~ you would lose all scientific credibility if you assert that the so-called greenhouse effect does not exist. Please step back from the brink . . . and reconsider your position.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

jimsteele at 13:43 PM on 3 April, 2024

ocean heat flux

Eclectic, First the skin surface dynamics are essential. The skin surface is the only layer from which heat can leave the ocean.

Second It is your narrative that grossly incomplete! You make a totally unsubstantiated assertion that without CO2 the oceans would freeze. You totally ignore solar heating. However the heat flux into the ocean primarily happens due to tropical solar heating in the eastern oceans, where La Nina like conditions reduce cloud cover and increase solar heating. The ocean sub surface can trap heat but the skin surface cannot.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Eclectic at 12:57 PM on 3 April, 2024

Jimsteele @81 :

Thank you ~ but the analysis is still incomplete. Possibly some semantic obfuscation or confusion is impeding the basic physical picture.

Over a 24 hour cycle or 365 day cycle, the interesting variations in the topmost few microns of ocean are unimportant. What is important is the overall flux of energy into & out of the ocean ~ for that is what maintains the ocean's temperature structure (stratification) and long-term heat content. And the ocean is responsible for a large slice of the atmosphere's heat content & stratification (indirectly). It goes both ways.

Remove CO2 and the lesser greenhouse gasses . . . and the ocean temperature would decrease . . . and the surface few microns would be ice (and the deeper ocean would freeze as well).

Ergo ~ and in straightforward language ~ it can be accurately said that CO2 has a major effect in warming the planetary ocean.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

jimsteele at 12:26 PM on 3 April, 2024

Eclectic to be more complete

First understand, CO2 infrared only penetrates a few microns depth compared to solar heating that warms the sub-surface for several meters depth, creating the diurnal warm layer

Second, the ocean’s skin layer is the only layer where heat can ventilate from the ocean. Absorbed solar heat creates a temperature gradient where conduction moves heat from the diurnal warm layer up towards the skin surface and out to the atmosphere. 98% of the time the ocean heats the atmosphere. The atmosphere does not heat the ocean.

The skin surface is always the coolest layer because as soon as any downward infrared from greenhouse gases heats the skin surface, the skin surface radiates that heat away as the laws of physics dictate! Furthermore, any heating of the skin surface increases evaporation and promotes evaporative cooling. And finally the skin surface heat is conducted away by the atmosphere. Thus even at night after most solar heat has been ventilaated, the skin surface is cooler than subsurface layers.

Measurements show the skin surface radiates away infrared from the combined inputs of solar heating that rises to the skin surface and infrared heating absorbed in the skin surface. The skin surface cannot trap heat. However subsurface layers trap heat because of the time delay of that heat reaching the skin surface to ventilate. Furthermore, heat is trapped in the ocean where ever solar heated subsurface layers are overlain by fresher water that suppresses convection.

To better understand this dynamic watch or read: Science of Solar Ponds Challenges the Climate Crisis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl3_YQ_Vufo&t=17s

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Eclectic at 12:13 PM on 3 April, 2024

Jimsteele @76 :

You have answered incompletely. Have I missed something basic in physics or in logic ? e.g. ~

Solar shortwave radiation -> ocean

ocean heat -> atmosphere by molecular vibration and by IR radiation

atmospheric heat -> ocean (predominantly by molecular vibration, but a small component of IR radiation too)

CO2 -> greenhouse effect -> lower atmosphere warming [lapse rate]

Ergo, CO2 provides a large (but indirect) amount of ocean warming.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

jimsteele at 11:20 AM on 3 April, 2024

Hi Eclectic, No you are wrong to claim "In summary ; the ocean receives heat predominantly from light energy and from conduction from the atmosphere."

Conduction is negigible if at all.

The diurnal warm layer created by greater subsurface heating from the sun creates heat conduction out of the ocean and towards the skinlayer which is the only layer from which heat can leave the ocean.

Once infrared heats the ocean's couple of micron thick skin surface, the warmer surface begins emitting infrared and cools the skin surface. Basic physics! Heating the skin surface also increases evaporative cooling and 98% of the time the atmosphere is warmed by contact with the ocean's skin surface. Basic physics does not indicate CO2 infrared can heat the ocean.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

jimsteele at 11:15 AM on 3 April, 2024

scaddenp SCIENCE OF DOOM had many accurate posts but regards heating the ocean he/she failed miserably. So I ould appreciate hearing your understanding, instead of pawning the issue off to someone else.

He first presented the idea of conduction as important for OC2 heating with "Once you establish a temperature difference you inevitably get heat transfer by conduction"

Indeed, the diurnal warm layer created by greater subsurfac heating by the sun created heat conduction towards the skinlayer which is the only layer from which heat can leave the ocean.

Once infrared heats the ocean's coup;le of micron skin surface, the warmer surface begins emitting infrared and cools the skin surface. Basic physics! Heating the skin surface also increases evaporative cooling and 98% of the time the atmosphere is warmed by contact with the ocean's skin surface. Basic physics does not indicate CO2 infrared can heat the ocean.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Eclectic at 11:02 AM on 3 April, 2024

Jimsteele : help me understand your position.

At the most basic level :- solar radiation at visible wavelengths does penetrate 10's of meters into the ocean. (As a scuba diver, I can vouch for this.)

At other wavelengths, into the infrared & longer, there is shallow or deep penetration, but the actual penetration flux is tiny in comparison to the visible light. (That includes the infrared flux radiated from CO2 in the lowermost few meters of atmosphere.)

Then we have a large flux of energy (both out of and into the ocean) from molecular vibrations at the ocean/air interface ~ vibrations of molecules of water / water vapor / nitrogen / and oxygen. I have not chased down the magnitude of such flux into and out of the ocean ~ but presumably that magnitude is huge.

In summary ; the ocean receives heat predominantly from light energy and from conduction from the atmosphere. CO2 molecules have only a very tiny direct ocean-warming effect ~ but arguably a huge indirect warming effect through CO2's action as a greenhouse gas warming the planet's atmosphere.

Have I understood that correctly ?

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

jimsteele at 07:50 AM on 3 April, 2024

scaddenp: I am unsure why you claim "On interannual and to some extent the decadal scales, variations in surface temperature are strongly influenced by ocean-atmosphere heat exchange, but I think you would agree that the increasing OHC rules that out as cause of global warming?"

Why?

Most studies I have reviewed, find that most heat flux(98%) leaves the oean and warms the air. I trust the Argo data that the oceans have slightly warmed, but Argo does not determine attribution.

It has been well established that the tropics absorbs more heat locally than it ventilates. And that outside the tropics more heat is ventilated than is absorbed. Because CO2 infrared never penetrates deeper than a few microns compared to deep solar heating, I argue solar heating of the oceans drives atmoispheric warming.

I addressed this in https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1771957182407536940

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

jimsteele at 07:15 AM on 3 April, 2024

Why?

Most studies I have reviewed, find that most heat flux(98%) leaves the oean and warms the air. I trust the Argo data that the oceans have slightly warmed, but Argo does not determine attribution.

I addressed this in https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1771957182407536940

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

scaddenp at 06:38 AM on 3 April, 2024

Two dog. The OHC content data in red comes from the Argo array. You can find reasonable description here. The old pentadecadal data is ship-based and has much bigger error bars. I cant immediately find the paper that determined the accuracy of the Argo data but if interested I am sure I dig it out.

On interannual and to some extent the decadal scales, variations in surface temperature are strongly influenced by ocean-atmosphere heat exchange, but I think you would agree that the increasing OHC rules that out as cause of global warming?

"I did also read that the warming effect of CO2 decreases as its concentration increases so the warming is expected to reduce over time. Is there any truth in that?"

Sort of - there is a square law. If radiation increase from 200-400 is say 4W/m2, then you have to increase from CO2 from 400 to 800ppm to get 8W/m2. However, that doesnt translate directly into "warming" because of feedbacks. Water vapour is powerful greenhouse gas and its concentration in the atmosphere is directly related to temperature. Also as temperature rises, albedo from ice decreases so less radiation is reflected back. Worse, over century level scales, all that ocean heat reduces the ability of the ocean to absorb CO2. From memory, half of emissions are currently being absorbed there. Hot enough and the oceans de-gas. These are the calculation which have to go into those climate models.

Which brings us to natural sources. Geothermal heat and waste heat are insignificant so would you agree that the only natural source of that extra heat would be the sun? Now impact of sun on temperature has multiple components that climate models take into account. These are:
1/ variations in energy emitted from the sun.
2/ screening by aerosols (natural or manmade). Important in 20th century variations you see.
3/ changes in albedo (especially ice and high cloud)
4/ The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Now climate scientist would say that changes to all of those can account for all past natural climate change using known physics. They would also say very high confidence that 1/ to 3/ are not a significant part of current climate change (you can see the exact amount for each calculated in the IPCC report). Why are they confident? If you were climate scientist investigating those factors, what would you want to measure to investigate there effects? Seriously, think about that and how you might do such investigations.

Is it possible there is something we dont understand at play? Of course, but there is no evidence for other factors. You can explain past and present climate change with known figures so trying to invoke the unknown seems to be clutching at straws.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

jimsteele at 06:07 AM on 3 April, 2024

A Netherlands journalist, Maarten Keulemans, tried to denigrate Climate the Movie: The Cold Truth in about 50 tweets using much of the same arguments posted to here on SkepticalScience. I successfully debunked all of his arguments in 16 tweets (originally I intended 20) listed below, and so I was just honored with being interviewed for a Dutch TV segment regards how the Climate the Movie promotes vital scientific debate. Too often alarmists try to suppress debate with weak arguments or denigrating the opposition as deniers. However I doubt alarmists can refute any of my arguments, but I will gladly entertain your arguments.

1 Denigrating the Climate Reconstruction graph by Ljungqvist https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1771929435366940908…

2 Keulemans' Medieval Warm Period lie https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1771933673488789868…

3 Contamination of Instrumental by Urbanization https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1771939656504062260…

4 The Best USA temperature Statistic! https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1771947116631580724…

5 Ocean Warming Facts https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1771957182407536940…

6 US Heat Waves https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1771963700951527487…

7 It is the Sun Stupid! https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1771977013576024282…

8 Alarmists know better than Nobel Prize Winners ! https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1771987039631921454…

9 Wildfires: Liar Liar Keulemans' Pants on Fire https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1772000151596572844…

10 The Dangers of CO2 Sequestration and CO2 Starvation https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1772016867265380795

11 Models Running Hot! Keulemans Disgraceful attack on the most honest Dr John Christy! https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1772081300884852829…

12 Keulemans’ Blustering Hurricane Fears
https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1772319957042479298

13. Dishonestly Defining Natural Climate Factors
https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1773395443864736058

14. Denying Antarctica’s Lack of Warming
https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1773473481637957758

15. Misinformation on CO2’s Role in Warming Interglacials during our Ice Age.
https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1773777313924297210

16. Science journalists vs grifting propagandists – Antarctica
https://twitter.com/JimSteeleSkepti/status/1774428539858907444

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Two Dog at 22:33 PM on 2 April, 2024

Scadd - #64

Thanks for the explanation and appreciate the civility, I don't consider it a dog-pile(on?) to reply - and its nice not to be accused of "abysmal ignorance" and told to "put up or shut up".

I get the fact the planet is warming and your sea temperature chart is more compelling for the reasons you cite, although I would like to understand where this temperature is measured and the average obtained - but I do not doubt the trend. I also agree the heat has to come from somewhere and, to be clear, I have no preference for theories of man-made sources or natural sources. My point remains that we are not dealing with a world in perfect temeprature equilibrium, so I feel uneasy discounting natural sources as significant when their impact is all too obvious when looking at the historical temperature record. I have no idea "which natural sources" I am referring to but I am fairly confident we are unable to accurately measure and predict them. However, so long as the temperature continues to rise in line with C02 emmissions I think the man-made argument becomes more and more compelling but a few years blip and, for me, it becomes open to considerable doubt. That is why the 30 year period of little warming looks suspicious to me (and I now know the explanation some have for this)

I did also read that the warming effect of CO2 decreases as its concentration increases so the warming is expected to reduce over time. Is there any truth in that?

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

scaddenp at 13:00 PM on 2 April, 2024

Two Dog, I don't want to be dog-piling, but I am very curious as to how you assess evidence when you are examining a question like global warming? We are seeing the same information, and yet to my mind you are fixating on the very unlikely or what you seem to think is unknownable rather than the obvious, the observable and the extremely likely. Other commentors have commented on your tendency to push what they see as straw-man arguments - you seem to be confident the scientists say things or work in ways that they dont. I am curious as to what informed assertions like these?

Can I assume that you comfortable with conservation of energy? So that any change in temperature involves moving or transforming energy. Consider total ocean heat content - a much less noisy measure than surface temperature and the ocean is where most of the heat is going.

The blips you see here in the red on this record are the near-surface action of ENSO - when the upwelling of warm water to surface heats the atmosphere but cools the ocean.

Do you agree that all that heat has to come from somewhere whether it is natural or anthrogenic? If your priors are to assume it is natural, then how do you start to think about what might be causing it and what measurements would you like to make to verify or falsify?

Also, you do realise that increased radiation from the CO2 has been directly measured? In terms of likelihood, the match between the amount of excess radiation and increased ocean heat content would be strong evidence for anthropegic warming for most people. I am assuming your priors would try to discount that so again, what do you think happens to excess radiation from the greenhouse effect and what kind of measurements would you use to verify?

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Bob Loblaw at 03:59 AM on 2 April, 2024

Frankly, Two Dog, you are continuing to put words in other people's mouths, and continuing to create strawman caricatures of climate science. Many people working in climate science are actually well-trained (if not primarily trained) in physics and geology. All you are doing is showing your abysmal ignorance of the science and the people involved.

I'll choose one example - in fact, the first example I decided to check. Michael Mann is often a target of the fake "skeptics". He is a well-respected member of the "climate science" community. You can find his biography at realclimate.org. Here is his academic training:

Dr. Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University.

You should be embarrassed at how easy it is for people to show that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Once again, nobody has ever claimed "knowledge of all factors that impact the climate." Nobody has claimed that natural factors are not significant. Nobody has claimed that all natural factors are temporary (which is what I presume you have meant with your use of the term 'temporal').

Natural factors exist on a variety of time scales, from hours to thousands of years, and "climate science" has considered many of them, and found that many of them can be both measurable and predictable. And they have collected evidence to support the position that these factors are having impacts that are much less important that CO2 over the past few decades - and are extremely unlikely to become more important than CO2 in the coming decades.

What you have utterly failed to do is to provide any new "natural factor" that you think has not been considered and can possibly have a large enough impact to explain what is already fairly well-explained by the factors that we do know about and have quantified. It's time to put up, or shut up.

What you have done is refuse to actually engage in discussion with people that have pointed out your errors. You simply re-assert your unfounded and uniformed opinions. As OPOF says, you have an "apparent resistance to learning".

Before you comment again, I suggest that you read the Comments Policy, especially the part about excessive repetition. If you are only going to repeat your uninformed and unfounded strawman arguments, you should expect to see parts or all of your comments subject to moderation.

Comments should avoid excessive repetition. Discussions which circle back on themselves and involve endless repetition of points already discussed do not help clarify relevant points. They are merely tiresome to participants and a barrier to readers. If moderators believe you are being excessively repetitive, they will advise you as such, and any further repetition will be treated as being off topic.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

One Planet Only Forever at 02:21 AM on 2 April, 2024

Two Dog @55,

I offer the following as an example of the incorrectness of your beliefs, and your apparent resistance to learning:

A combination of understood natural factors explain the 'blip' of warm global average surface temperatures in the early 1940s. That warm blip, along with the other aspects shared by others, especially nigelj, for your potential learning benefit, is a significant part of the total understanding of why there 'appeared to be no warming from 1940 to 1970 in spite of CO2 levels increasing'.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Bob Loblaw at 23:38 PM on 1 April, 2024

diff01 @ 51,52:

If you want to apply a "modicum of reasoned thought", the answers to your questions are available if you look. Given your use of labels such as "true believers" and "sham", I doubt that your mind is open to any reasoned discussion, but here are a few pointers. Basically, your short post is kind of like the movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths.

Skeptical Science posts that are already linked in the OP:

CO2 is just a trace gas

Increasing CO2 has little to no effect

It's the sun

Additional Skeptical Science posts:

Milankovitch Cycles (orbital variations)

I hope that if you come back with "a myriad of other questions", that you will have given them more than "a modicum of reasoned thought". So far, what you have said here suggests that your level of thought is at the "trifling" end of "modicum" (per Wictionary). Scientists, on the other had have given these issues a lot of thought.

Noun

modicum (plural modicums or (rare) modica)

A modest, small, or trifling amount.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

John Mason at 20:35 PM on 1 April, 2024

Re - #51 diff01:

I'll break this up into Q&A because there's a range of questions:

Q. Will changing one small ingredient (0.04%) of the earth's greenhouse gases (CO2) arrest gloabal warming (if that is what is happening)?

A. CO2 has increased 50% since pre-industrial times. Can you imagine if sunshine became 50% stronger?

Q. If the scientists(?) believe this to be the case, how will it be regulated to adjust the climate to maintain an average that is not too hot or cold?

A. We have yet to see!

Q. If all anti-carbon emitting policies were implemented, what says the climate will not be too cool?

A. Already locked into further warming for centuries.

Q. How will the climate be regulated (say changing one greenhouse gas does the trick) if the sun's intensity changes (sun spots), the reduction in carbon emission works, and it cools too much?

A. Changes in total solar irradience across a sunspot cycle are very low, but not neglibible.

Q. Another question I have is about other factor's, such as the recent eruption at Hunga Tonga. Apparently water vapor increased by 10% in the stratosphere. Won't that affect the climate?

A. It may be accoutable for a few tenths of a degree of recent warming, but research continues.

Q. What about the earth's orbit, and it's distance from the sun?

A. You are referring to Milankovitch cycles that affect three orbital parameters. However they do so over tens of thousands of years, not in a couple of centuries.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

diff01 at 19:38 PM on 1 April, 2024

Will changing one small ingredient (0.04%) of the earth's greenhouse gases (CO2) arrest gloabal warming (if that is what is happening)?

If the scientists(?) believe this to be the case, how will it be regulated to adjust the climate to maintain an average that is not too hot or cold?

If all anti-carbon emitting policies were implemented, what says the climate will not be too cool?

The other, obvious hole in the argument for drastic economic change in the name of cooling the planet, is that the sun is not factored into the equation (by the way, I am all for increasing efficiency and reducing waste). How will the climate be regulated (say changing one greenhouse gas does the trick) if the sun's intensity changes (sun spots), the reduction in carbon emission works, and it cools too much?

Another question I have is about other factor's, such as the recent eruption at Hunga Tonga. Apparently water vapor increased by 10% in the stratosphere.

Won't that affect the climate? How do the 'models' account for nature not doing what the computers predict?

There are a myriad of other questions. I haven't watched the movie yet, but will, with interest.

When I searched for the movie, this website popped up right under the movie heading.

It's always interesting to hear from the 'true believers'.

The whole thing is a sham of biblical proportions. You need just a modicum of reasoned thought to tell you so.

Just had a quick look at your response regarding 'the sun'.

You say the 'irradiation level' has been measured with accuracy for the last 40 years, and shown little variation.

The sun has been influencing weather on earth for 4 and a half billion years. What about the earth's orbit, and it's distance from the sun?

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

diff01 at 19:32 PM on 1 April, 2024

Will changing one small ingredient (0.04%) of the earth's greenhouse gases (CO2) arrest gloabal warming (if that is what is happening)?

If the scientists(?) believe this to be the case, how will it be regulated to adjust the climate to maintain an average that is not too hot or cold?

If all anti-carbon emitting policies were implemented, what says the climate will not be too cool?

Another question I have is about other factor's, such as the recent eruption at Hunga Tonga. Apparently water vapor increased by 10% in the stratosphere.

Won't that affect the climate? How do the 'models' account for nature not doing what the computers predict?

There are a myriad of other questions. I haven't watched the movie yet, but will, with interest.

When I searched for the movie, this website popped up right under the movie heading.

It's always interesting to hear from the 'true believers'.

The whole thing is a sham of biblical proportions. You need just a modicum of reasoned thought to tell you so.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

nigelj at 04:48 AM on 1 April, 2024

Two Dog @41

"Finally, on the "cherry picking" of the 50s, 60s and 70s. I think its a fair point to pick 30 years out of 150 in this case. Indeed, the argument above is, as I understand it, that the main and dominant factor in the current warming is human GHG emissions. For that theory to hold, in any period where GHG emissions are increasing year on year, then only a few years "blip" in warming must presumably call the theory into question? (unless we can find another new and temporary factor like air pollution)"

The reason the temperature record has "blips" and is not a smooth line is because the trend is shaped by a combination of natural and human factors that have different effects. However the overall trend since the 1970s is warming. The known natural cycles and infuences can explain the short term blips of a couple of years or so, (eg el ninos) but not the 50 year overall warming trend since the 1970s. Sure there may be some undiscovered natural cycle that expalins the warming, but its very unlikely with chances of something like one in a million. And it would require falsifying the greenhouse effect which nobody has been able to do. Want to gamble the planets future on all that?

The flat period of temperatures around 1940- 1977, (or as OPOF points out it was really a period of reduced warming) coincides with the cooling effect of industrial aerosols during the period as CB points out. This is the period when acid rain emerged as a problem until these aerosols were filtered out in the 1980s.

However the flat period mid last century also coincided with a cool phase of the PDO cycle (an ocean cycle), a preponderance of weak el ninos, and flat solar activity after 1950 and a higher than normal level of volcanic activity. Literally all the natural factors were in a flat or cooling phase. In addition atmospheric concentrations of CO2 were not as high as presently, so it was easier for the other factors to suppress anthropogenic warming.

So for me this is all an adequate explanation of why temperatures were subdued in the middle of last century. Just my two cents worth. Not a scientist but I've followed the issues for years.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Bob Loblaw at 04:38 AM on 1 April, 2024

It's also worth noting that the trend values OPOF is providing from the SkS Trend Calculator use 2σ ranges for the uncertainties.

...and if you look closely, none of the trends OPOF mentions are significantly different from 0. So, the "cooling from 1940 to 1970" is really "no significant warming [or cooling] from 1940 to 1970". To argue "cooling", you need to

ignore the statistical significance of the linear fit

choose your starting point carefully.

In comment 41, Two Dog makes the point "...then only a few years "blip" in warming must presumably call the theory into question? ". That depends on "the theory" being that CO2 is the only factor causing warming on an annual or several-year basis. As we've been pointing out, this is not "the theory" that climate science is working with.

Two Dog is making the classical logic failure that is discussed in the SkS Escalator.

The Escalator

In fact, Two Dog is also arguing with himself. On the one hand, he is arguing that climate science can't possibly know all factors that might be affecting global temperature, no matter how many factors they have already considered in the relevant scientific literature. And then on the other hand, he is criticizing climate science because any blip in temperature that is not explained solely using CO2 as the only factor "...must presumably call the theory into question?". The two positions he argues are mutually contradictory.

Unfortunately this is a common thing in "skeptical" arguments against well-supported climate science - mutually-contradictory (and often impossible) positions on the subject. It's like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland:

I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Bob Loblaw at 00:07 AM on 1 April, 2024

Two Dog: You say ' but I am less convinced about the arguments that "all other causes for the current warming have been looked at and ruled out".'

First of all, I will point out that nobody here, and nobody in climate science (that I am aware of), has ever claimed that "all other causes ... have been looked at". In fact, I'd be willing to wager that there is not a single scientific subject where any scientist would claim that "all other causes ... have been looked at".

By putting that phrase in quotes (in your statement in #41), you are making it look as if someone has actually made that claim. If you have a source for such a quote, please provide it. Otherwise, you are creating a strawman argument, and setting impossible expectations ("all other causes").

In the rest of comment 41, you are basically making an argument from incredulity. You use strawman terms such as "all of those factors", and emotive impossible expectations such as "then accurately measure their hypothetical potential impact". You throw in rhetorical questions such as ' how do we "know" what would have happened to our climate absent human GHG increases?'

The answer to the last question is, climate scientists do the science. The second figure in my comment 34 shows the results of some of that science: running models that look exactly at the question you raise - how does the model behave with and without the anthropogenic forcing. They look at hypothetical natural and anthropogenic causes, quantify them as best they can, and perform calculations to determine the relative importance of each factor.

As Eclectic pointed out in comment 31, saying there might be some "undiscovered mysterious physical cause responsible for the recent rapid global warming" [Eclectic's words] is nothing but handwaving. Unless you can propose a plausible mechanism that would cause the warming (and another one to offset the warming from GHG, as Eclectic points out in #31), then you're just blowing smoke.

People often try to use the same bogus arguments in denying that fossil fuel combustion is causing the rise in atmospheric CO2. They postulate some mysterious, unknown source of CO2 that remains undiscovered - and avoid the question of what mysterious, undiscovered process is managing to remove all the CO2 from fossil fuels (but can't remove this mysterious, unknown source of CO2 that is making atmospheric CO2 rise).

You may as well be saying "it could be fairies".

...and before you try to counter the graphical evidence in the figure I posted in comment 34 using the "but modelz" argument, I will point out that everything in science uses models. Descriptive, mathematical, statistical, computer simulations - all are different forms of models. If you don't accept models as valid science, then you are rejecting science writ large. (The original post points out that reliabilty of models is one of the myths that was raised in the movie, and proves a link to the SkS page that covers this myth.)

Just how ‘Sapiens’ in the world of high CO2 concentrations?

Eclectic at 23:15 PM on 30 March, 2024

On reflection, I believe my @47 comments (on Dr Bierwirth's paper) were lacking the bluntness that our readers deserve.

His 2024 Abstract shows a notable Red Flag, in his mention of the phrase "existential threat" ~ a phrase which is not only rather panicky, but is fashionably overused nowadays for subjects ranging from imminent nuclear holocaust . . . through to a possible world shortage of cocoa.

A second Red Flag is his lengthy laundry list of "potential" threats of a wide range of nasty diseases ~ cancer; calcification in the kidneys; diabetes; etcetera.

A third Red Flag is his attribution of all these diseases to a combination of elevated CO2 in association with low pH. Actually, such a combination is a brief/transitory situation when CO2 is high ~ for (as I and others have pointed out, earlier in this thread) the body's kidney function does correct the low pH in the medium & long term.

Which leaves us with his dubious claim about "protein malfunctions".

In short, it seems Dr Bierwirth paints with a very broad brush and also draws a very long bow. Not only that ~ but some of his other papers seem to have a similar flavor.

All well and good if Dr Bierwirth has supportive evidence ~ but for the meantime, I think we should all remain most skeptical.

# Obviously, we cannot expect controlled experiments in humans with exposure to years of elevated ambient CO2. The mouse experiment (mentioned above) was a controlled study using mice in 890ppm CO2 versus mice living in half that level. The gestation & first 3 months of life might perhaps equal 5 - 10 years of human equivalence. Still, it is only about 110 days in absolute terms ~ and that might explain the absence of adverse findings in the "high CO2" mice, despite the rapid pace of mouse physiology.

And that fits with other evidence, of mice and men . . . and dinosaurs.

Just how ‘Sapiens’ in the world of high CO2 concentrations?

Eclectic at 05:33 AM on 30 March, 2024

Res01 @46 : thank you for resuming the conversation of 2023, and the mention of the new [2/2024] paper by Dr P. Bierwirth (please note the second "r" in Bierwirth).

His 2024 Abstract quotes: "Protein malfunctions in cells due to elevated CO2 and associated low pH has [sic] the potential to cause threats to life including cancer, neurological disorders, lung disease, diabetes, etc. ... overexpression of carbonic anhydrase, the enzyme that catalyses CO2 in the body, causes calcification in the kidneys arteries and tissues, along with other diseases and this may be an existential threat."

Please excuse my adding of underlining emphasis, in the above. The body of the paper does not really add much, I think, to earlier comments on the topic. # It is all rather breathless [please forgive my feeble attempt at a pun, of sorts].

Looking at the bigger picture, we see that the dinosaurs survived millions of years of "high" ambient CO2. Were their bodily proteins shaped by evolution to perform satisfactorily at high CO2 levels ~ or did their kidneys simply compensate for high CO2 ? We don't know ~ and yet we know that the dinosaurs did survive and thrive.

Is there any experimental evidence to support Dr Bierwirth's gloomy comments about long-term CO2 exposure? # Well, for what it's worth, there is a 3-month study in mice, by C. Wyrwoll et al (2021). Gestation through to 3-months of age. Despite some slight ambiguity in the Abstract, they quote: "There were no clear anxiety, learning, or memory changes. Renal and osteological parameters were minimally affected." [my emphasis]

If there be some clear-cut evidence of failure of the mammalian body to make (renal or other) adjustment/compensation in high ambient CO2, then I would be pleased to learn of it.

At SkS , we all know the potential of increasingly severe adverse effects of higher atmospheric CO2 levels. But these dangers are terrestrial, rather than physiological, for mammals.

Just how ‘Sapiens’ in the world of high CO2 concentrations?

res01 at 02:45 AM on 30 March, 2024

Skeptical Science Team, Eclectic @42, et. al,

Recent paper by P. Bierwith (2024)* notes, "There is now substantial evidence that permenant exposure to CO2 levels in the future will have significant effects on humans." The article goes on to summarize recent findings; all of which generally support the subject article here. I find though the article does contain a few "technical errors" as it was written with the knowledge as it was best known a few years back, it is in no way unnecessarily "alarmist." The problem I believe is that to some the subject itself is "alarmist", and in truth it should be.

To address Eclectic's concern a bit more succinctly; the human body's CO2 compensary mechanisms have been considered in the papers being questioned. Basically, though the body can compensate for very high levels of CO2 for short periods of time, eventually these mechanisms will "give out" over time as one is continually immersed in even mildly elevated levels of CO2; the effect becoming noticeable around 800-1200 ppm. The general effects are bone dimeneralization, calcification of soft tissues, and neurological agitation which will give rise to a range malidies not favorable for human health and well being.

*P. Bierwith, (2024), "Long-term carbon dioxide toxicty and climate change: a critical unapprehended risk for human health. Australian National University. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311844520_Long-term_carbon_dioxide_toxicity_and_climate_change_a_critical_unapprehended_risk_for_human_health

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

One Planet Only Forever at 13:21 PM on 29 March, 2024

Two Dog @32,

Bob Loblaw has provided a good response to your question about the lack of warming from 1940 to 1970. And Eclectic has posed good questions for you.

I have something to add that may help you better understand things.

The SkS Temperature Trend Calculator (link here) can be used to see that the temperature trend for the data set from 1940 to 1970 was indeed negative (GISTEMPv4 Trend: -0.043 +-0.052 C/decade). However, within that time period:

trend for 1945 to 1965 was positive (+0.017 +-0.108 C/decade)

trend for 1950 to 1960 was more positive (+0.126 +-0.302 C/decade)

What’s up with positive trends within a negative trend? You may notice that the 2sigma values are significantly higher for the shorter data sets. The 2 sigma for 1940 to 1970 is also quite high. So look at longer data sets.

trend for 1935 to 1975 is -0.003 +-0.040 C/decade

trend for 1925 to 1985 is +0.048 +-0.024 C/decade

Factors other than CO2 appear to be the cause of the negative trend for the 1940 to 1970 data set. But within that data set the trend of the temperature was still positive. What’s up with that? A significant part of the explanation is apparent in the Temperature Trend Calculator image for the longer data sets.

The temperatures from 1940 to 1947 can be seen to be unusually high. That set of unusually high temperatures needs to be explained, not the apparent lack of warming through the next 30 years compared to that ‘high set of values' (just like the ‘appearance of cooling for a period of time after 1998’ is explained by the explanation for the unusually high temperature in 1998 - also see the SkS myth/argument “Did global warming stop in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010?” which could have included 1944)

I am sure if you put in some effort you could find a reliable source (perhaps you could find such information on this SkS website) that would effectively explain why the 1940 to 1947 set of years were unusually warm (warning: there is an explanation - nothing mysterious or magical happened - warming influence of increased CO2 still happened)

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Bob Loblaw at 05:50 AM on 29 March, 2024

Two Dog @ 32:

You seem to be under the impression that nobody has tried to explain the observed temperatures using anything other than CO2. This is patently false.

This SkS rebuttal looks at conclusions drawn by the IPCC in 2007, looking at a variety of possible explanations. The first figure from that post shows contributions to radiative forcing from several sources:

IPCC 2007 SPM figure 2

...and the second figure on that post shows modelling of temperatures over the last century with and without anthropogenic forcing:

IPCC 2007 SPM fig 4

So when you try to answer Eclectic's question, you'll need to come up with something that is not on that list.

If climate scientists have been "shutting down the debate", it's because they have looked at the proposed alternatives and found that the evidence is against them.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Two Dog at 04:55 AM on 29 March, 2024

"One Planet Only Forever" - I get the point about "having some merit" but couldn't the "deniers" make the same case? i.e. that there are uncertainties in the man-made climate change narrative. One uncertainty that confuses me is why was there no global warming from about 1940-1970? Presumably CO2 was increasing over that period.

John Mason - not sure I understand the point. Over history there has been many cooling and warming factors that are observed by the temperature record but largely unexplained. How do we know this current warming is not, at least in part, one such warming period?

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

One Planet Only Forever at 02:59 AM on 28 March, 2024

Two Dog @26,

The movie in question is still questionable and misleading even if it contains 'points that have merit'.

I am a structural engineer with an MBA. I present two examples for the merit of my opening point:

A structure design is unacceptable even if some parts of the design could be claimed to be 'perfect'. All it takes is one obvious error to justifiably declare the design to be unacceptable.

A business plan is unacceptable even if some parts of the plan could be claimed to be 'perfect'. All it takes is one obvious error to justifiably declare the plan to be unacceptable.

As for the ‘merit’ of things in the questionable misleading movie you perceive to have merit:

Climate Change can be understood to be the term applied to the vast body of science that has proven conclusively that human impacts, not just CO2 from fossil fuel use, have caused significant rapid changes to the climate conditions of regions on this planet. “Climate Change Denial” is a term referring to people who resist learning about the constantly improving understanding of Climate Change science.

The answer provided above questions the merit of your second ‘perceived point of merit’ about the significance of human impacts. There are many presentations of better understanding that shatter the ‘merit of what you perceive is a point of merit’. One example is SkS Myth/Argument 192 “The IPCC confidence in human-caused global warming is based on solid scientific research”. A related presentation is the Carbon Brief item form 2017 “Analysis: Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans” (and more recent investigations have strengthened that understanding).

I will conclude with the following: “Resistance to learning”, not “shutting down debate”, is the real problem. Being ‘hard-of-learning’ (see my comment @18), can cause people to claim that justifiably criticizing their ‘questionable attempts to debate points they unjustifiably believe have merit’, and pointing out that ‘repetition of already well-debunked misunderstandings has no merit’, is “shutting down debate”.

Note: Regarding ‘covid’ you did not present an example of a ‘conspiracy theory’ you believe was proven to be correct. But I would suggest that for this topic on this website you should focus on presenting an example of what you believe is a ‘climate change conspiracy theory’ that has proven to be correct. One example I am aware of is the ‘conspiracy theory’ that undeserving wealthy powerful people have been deliberately misleading regarding Climate Change science resulting is massive amounts of unjustified “Climate Change Denial”.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Two Dog at 00:33 AM on 28 March, 2024

I am relatively new to criticisms of the man-made global warming narrrative but it seems to me that some of the points made in this film have merit.

First, the use of emotive language in a critique like "climate change denial" (what does that even mean?) is problematic. The climate has never been in perfect equilibrium, so presumably nobody denies it changes - best to stick to the arguments. Second, we seem to focus on the wrong question. I think very few anthropogenic climate change skeptics would deny we are pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere right now than ever before and that has a warming effect (the "greenhouse effect"). Surely the question is: "To what extent are man-made increases in CO2 emissions driving the current warming we are experiencing?". It clearly cannot be 100% and for me that is the nub of the question.

Given the huge unknowns about the factors that drive climate (and their significance) it seems unfortunate to me that there is an intolerance around this question. The BBC, for instance, should consider other theories on this. It may well be that the scientific weight suggests anthropogenic CO2 is by far the major cause, but in my reading there are some good reasons to doubt that.

The problem with “shutting down debate” is best evidenced with covid where many of the “conspiracy theories” proved to be correct.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Nick Palmer at 07:13 AM on 26 March, 2024

As it can be cumbersome to explain why CO2 fertilisation is not a get-out-of-jail-free-card in fora such as Twitter/X, I usually try to get the 'sceptic' to look up Liebig's Law of the Minimum, which states why all nutrients need to be optimised in order to get more healthy growth.

Link to wiki article

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

nigelj at 05:51 AM on 26 March, 2024

The greening of the Earth is approaching its limit.

When plants absorb this gas to grow, they remove it from the atmosphere and it is sequestered in their branches, trunk or roots. An article published today in Science shows that this fertilizing effect of CO2 is decreasing worldwide, according to the text co-directed by Professor Josep Peñuelas of the CSIC at CREAF and Professor Yongguan Zhang of the University of Nanjin, with the participation of CREAF researchers Jordi Sardans and Marcos Fernández. The study, carried out by an international team, concludes that the reduction has reached 50% progressively since 1982 due basically to two key factors: the availability of water and nutrients.

"There is no mystery about the formula, plants need CO2, water and nutrients in order to grow. However much the CO2 increases, if the nutrients and water do not increase in parallel, the plants will not be able to take advantage of the increase in this gas", explains Professor Josep Peñuelas. In fact, three years ago Prof. Peñuelas already warned in an article in Nature Ecology and Evolution that the fertilizing effect of CO2 would not last forever, that plants cannot grow indefinitely, because there are other factors that limit them.

If the fertilizing capacity of CO2 decreases, there will be strong consequences on the carbon cycle and therefore on the climate. Forests have received a veritable CO2 bonus for decades, which has allowed them to sequester tons of carbon dioxide that enabled them to do more photosynthesis and grow more. In fact, this increased sequestration has managed to reduce the CO2 accumulated in the air, but now it is over. "These unprecedented results indicate that the absorption of carbon by vegetation is beginning to become saturated. This has very important climate implications that must be taken into account in possible climate change mitigation strategies and policies at the global level. Nature's capacity to sequester carbon is decreasing and with it society's dependence on future strategies to curb greenhouse gas emissions is increasing," warns Josep Peñuelas.

The study published in Science has been carried out using satellite, atmospheric, ecosystem and modeling information. It highlights the use of sensors that use near-infrared and fluorescence and are thus capable of measuring vegetation growth activity.

phys.org/news/2020-12-greening-earth-approaching-limit.html#:~:text=The%20study%2C%20carried%20out%20by,nutrients%20in%20order%20to%20grow.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

John Mason at 03:07 AM on 26 March, 2024

Thanks, Nick!

You're right - 'CO2 is plant-food' is the one that comes closest. The specific claim that the planet is greening does not have a rebuttal. Onto the to-do list. We ran into a similar situation last summer when claims that surface temperature had somehow been swapped for surface air temperature started doing the rounds.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Nick Palmer at 02:50 AM on 26 March, 2024

I've just checked and SKS does not appear to have a rebuttal yet to the 'Earth is getting greener due to CO2 fertilisation' meme, which is currently a very popular argument in the 'Climate Brawl' online and in the media.

My current response is to point out that the 'sceptic' almost always refers to the first paper from NASA, that does indeed conclude that there has been a greening and that it has been most likely caused by the CO2 fertilisation effect. However, the second paper several years later in fact noted that alarge part of the hreening was actually down to China and India planting millions of trees to reforest areas, de-desertification and expansion of agriculture.

There are papers which say that, in fact, the greening stopped a while back and Earth is now browning although there are others that say the greeninh has continued. Thoughts?

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Doug Bostrom at 04:04 AM on 24 March, 2024

"Climate vs. Freedom" is the main point of the movie, the mainspring of the climate denialist clockwork. Careful disassembly and reverse engineering of this particular brand of synthetic ignorance inevitably reveals solipsism expressed in ideology as the movement's power source; so-called "freedom" here means "I get to do whatever I want regardless of costs to others," and powers the entire affair.

The film's funders would like us to confuse the freedom to think that is central to enlightened governance with freedom to dump sewage at our property line. This brings us into the territory of irony. Enlightenment thinking delivered the facts governing the anxieties of the film's producers— and this film is essentially trying to wind back the clock on several hundred years of the results of freedom to think.

The producers of the film are not at all concerned with freedom of thought and its outcome of science and enlightened understanding of our world. Their fears are centered on application of scientific results to public policy dealing with climate effects of CO2 emissions, circumspect and informed decisions proscribing unaccounted external costs. This will threaten any ideology founded on "everything's all about me."

Is application of climate science to public policy decisions itself ideological, even socialist? In a way it's true that climate policy is "socialist" if we're thinking in terms of social vs. antisocial, if we're employing the word "social" in its basic meaning.

Climate policy is an outcome of "socialist ideology" in the same sense that traffic regulations are a social response to selfish automobile drivers. Individual irresponsible actions come at cost to bystanders. Society is generally concerned with fairness and rejects that one person may destroy another for no good reason.

Some small percentage of persons are so poorly socialized as to care nothing about others, so we must resort to various forms of coercion to force societally-compatible behaviors. Reckless driving is discouraged by force of policy and law, ranging from fines to imprisonment because we attach such high value to fairness.

So it's proving to be the case with the external costs of vending fossil fuels, and hence we end up with climate policy that ultimately will end up with sharp edges of coercion to deal with diehard antisocial elements, given that some very tiny fraction of our society is composed of people truly uncaring of anybody but themselves.

If vast amounts of money were to be made by driving over the speed limit, we'd find a vigorous public relations industry centered on denying that e=1/2mv². The intent would be the same as with climate science and climate policy, to fool us into thinking we don't know established facts and by extension the outcomes of those facts.

We'll never see "Traffic Tickets: The Movie" because there's no group of people for whom a vast revenue stream is threatened by being forced to drive safely. In this case of climate science and (more importantly) climate policy there is indeed a postively astronomical vector of money that will change due to policy arranged around facts and fairness and informed by science. So here we are, dealing with a slickly produced film created entirely for the purpose of prolonging profoundly anti-social behavior and employing the tactic of propagating synthetic ignorance.

Freedumb isn't freedom. It's the opposite. Freedom to think well and to make informed choices isn't the same as freedumb, feeling free to make stupid decisions because we've been fooled into believing we're ignorant.

CO2 lags temperature

Charlie_Brown at 02:31 AM on 17 March, 2024

The mention of quantum mechanics warrants further discussion so one is not baffled or misled by a misrepresentation of it. Besides, the science is fascinating, and the concept is not that hard to understand. All molecules above absolute zero have internal energy. They vibrate, bend, and stretch in a limited number of ways that depend on their structure and ability to interact with electromagnetic radiation. Absorption and emittance of a photon changes the internal energy level by a discrete amount, which gives rise to discrete absorptance/emittance lines. CO2 is a linear, non-polar molecule that can stretch symmetrically and asymmetrically, but also polarizes temporarily when it bends. When molecules in the atmosphere have absorptance/emittance lines that fall within the wavelength range of IR at moderate temperatures by the Planck distribution, they become greenhouse gases. Discrete lines for CO2 and H2O are illustrated in Figure 3 in Introduction to an Atmospheric Radiation Model.
One more comment about the “quantum process” which is described incorrectly by RBurr @ 654. CO2 is “additive” and increasing. Thus, it is affecting the accumulation term in the global energy balance.

CO2 lags temperature

Charlie_Brown at 09:26 AM on 16 March, 2024

RBurr @ 654

1) CO2 lags temperature rise at the end of an ice age because CO2 evolves from ocean waters as the temperature rises. This is Henry’s Law. In that case, temperature rises first due to the Milankovitch Cycles. Note that ice age temperatures cool slowly and warm rapidly. Modern CO2 emissions are different because they come from burning fossil fuels. Therefore, temperature rises as a result of CO2. Cause and effect in both cases is clear in both cases, and different in both cases.
2) The quantum mechanical mechanism on IR radiation that explains the greenhouse warming theory has been proven. It is based on fundamental principles of energy balance and radiant energy transfer and has been verified by massive amounts of data, cross-checks, and validation.
3) The Earth’s energy “balance” is fundamental:
Input = Output + Accumulation
Output is reduced as greenhouse gases increase. Thus, energy accumulates.
4) Your description of quantum mechanics does not make sense. Quantum mechanics is fundamental to the specific frequencies (i.e., wavelengths) that are absorbed and emitted by CO2, CH4, and H2O. There is a huge amount of energy carried by IR radiation. It is naturally emitted (not dissipated) and lost to outer space by IR. By the overall global energy balance at steady state:
Input solar = Reflected solar + Emitted IR
Accumulation is zero at steady state, as before CO2 emissions of the industrial revolution.
5) The hot object in this case is the sun at about 5800 Kelvin. That is more than hot enough to warm the earth. The temperature profile is 5800 K of the sun to 288 K (60F) of the Earth 217 K of the lower stratosphere to 2 K of outer space. Increasing CO2 reduces the energy loss to space at specific wavelengths (e.g., approx. 13-17 microns). The absorptance/emittance lines in that range increase, meaning that energy is emitted from a cold 217 K instead of a warm 288 K. This upsets the energy balance. The balance is restored by accumulating energy until the surface temperature increases enough to make up the reduction by CO2. Nothing about this violates either the 1st or 2nd law of thermodynamics. Some mistake the 2nd law by describing the energy balance being at steady state, but the steady state was upset by increasing GHG.
6) Neither the Milankovitch Cycles nor the Schwabe Cycles (sunspots) explain the cause of modern global warming. The long-term Milankovitch Cycles have not been in a period of significant change for the last 12,000 years after warming from the last ice age. Measured radiosity data from the sun show that short-term Schwabe Cycles have not changed significantly either and do not explain modern warming.

CO2 lags temperature

RBurr at 08:51 AM on 15 March, 2024

The analogy was cute, that the observation that CO2 rises lag temperature rises, means that the Temp rise causes the CO2 rise, is a bit like saying that chickens do not lay eggs because they have been observed to hatch from them. I would submit that, by the same token, opining that CO2 increases cause global warming is a bit like saying that chickens to not hatch from eggs, because they they’ve been observed to lay them.
This all suggests (as inferred) a co-dependent process.
However, this overlooks the same thing that MOST public blogs overlook, and that is the quantum mechanical mechanism on IR radiation (per greenhouse warming theory) has never been proven, and is actually false. New research indicates the fundamental error in the theory, presumes that Heat is ADDITIVE (eg. The Earth’s energy ‘budget’). The quantum process for Thermal transference is not additive. It is a function of frequency resonance. This is why microwave ovens work. Solar heating occurs because the spectrum of frequencies included in sunlight (which reaches the Earth’s surface) sets the maximum temperature which the recipient object may reach. An object in an oven set to 400 degrees will never reach 500 degrees no longer how long it is in the oven, because heat transference is not additive over time. The low energy IR waves received by CO2 molecules will naturally dissipate into the atmosphere with negligible net effect upon the atmosphere, but will never cause planetary ‘heating’ because, per thermodynamic law, no object can heat something beyond the temperature it possesses. Irradiated CO2 molecules can never heat the earth beyond the temperature frequency that already exists within the earth, which generated the IR light waves to begin with. IR Radiation does not raise the temperature of the Earth. The greenhouse warming theory is flawed. THAT is why the universally accepted historical record shows zero correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and average temperature over the entirety of the past 4 Billion years. Zeroing in on the last 400k or 800k years, and pointing to an anomaly amounts to cherry picking, which disregards the other dynamics in play, such as Milankovitch Cycles. Note: Ozone depletion CAN increase surface temperatures because the range of UV frequencies that reach the surface is expanded.

2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #09

ChangeTheName at 11:20 AM on 4 March, 2024

As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow our comments policy. Thank You!

The term "climate change" is an Orwellian BENIGN and VAGUE term for a civilization threatening DISEASE.

A medical approach to naming this disease would result in a term such as "Atmospheric Carbon Poisoning".

Atmospheric is the LOCATION of the POISON

Carbon Gases (CO2 and CH4) are the NAME of the primary POISONS.

Poisoning is an unequivocal declaration of dangerous toxicity.

A skeptical scientist should think about telling the public the TRUTH and not shy away from naming the disease like a good scientist would. Climate change is clearly vague and inadequate. The generally public is woefully ignorant about this DISEASE.

https://www.change.org/p/change-name-of-climate-change-to-atmospheric-carbon-poisoning?recruiter=261487266&recruited_by_id=d2d62b10-d0fa-11e4-b3f4-bd4f0f527c9b&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=petition_dashboard_share_modal&utm_medium=copylink&utm_content=cl_sharecopy_37915781_en-US%3A3

CO2 is just a trace gas

Bob Loblaw at 06:13 AM on 2 March, 2024

In addition to what OPOF says about ozone, it should be noted that ozone in the stratosphere is an important absorber of UV radiation as well. Not that absorption of UV radiation in the stratosphere causes any noticeable heating. Oh, wait. It does.

Atmospheric temperature profile

As for the errors in using % or ppm as a measure of CO2 quantities, I'll beat my own drum and point to this blog post from a couple of years ago.

CO2 is just a trace gas

One Planet Only Forever at 04:52 AM on 2 March, 2024

JJones1960 @48,

I hope the following helps you understand that John and Bob have correctly pointed out that you have made a very weak counter-presentation regarding the significance of small amounts. The points presented in the Argument effectively counter the simplistic and understandably incorrect belief that the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is too small to make a difference.

A major weakness of your counter-presentation is that you appear to lack even a small amount of knowledge regarding the matter, here’s why:

You stated • You don’t use trace amounts of ozone to trap a significant amount of heat

That belief is contradicted by improved evidence-based understanding (contradicted by learning what is already known). One of the many presentations about the global surface temperature impacts of ozone is the NASA Aura item: The greenhouse effect of tropospheric ozone. It opens with the following:

Tropospheric ozone (O3) is the third most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). Ozone absorbs infrared radiation (heat) from the Earth's surface, reducing the amount of radiation that escapes to space.

A lot can be learned from the items presented on SkS and other reliable information sources.

Learning from reliable sources can make a world of difference.

CO2 is just a trace gas

Bob Loblaw at 00:03 AM on 2 March, 2024

JJones1960 even misses his own point.

CO2 is not "colourless" when it comes to infrared radiation. Just because JJones1960 can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

CO2 is just a trace gas

JJones1960 at 17:47 PM on 1 March, 2024

This is a very weak article, here’s why:

• You don’t use trace amounts of blood alcohol to trap a significant amount of heat
• You don’t use trace amounts of iron to trap a significant amount of heat
• You don’t use trace amounts of ibuprofen to trap a significant amount of heat
• You don’t use trace amounts of Earth to trap a significant amount of heat in the solar system
• You don’t use trace amounts of arsenic to trap a significant amount of heat
• You don’t use trace amounts of ozone to trap a significant amount of heat
• You don’t use trace amounts of hydrogen sulphide to trap a significant amount of heat

You might be able to use a trace amount of colour to trap a significant amount of heat, but here’s the thing, CO2 is colourless.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

John ONeill at 07:32 AM on 24 February, 2024

'Nuclear is not economic' - the 17 countries building new nuclear missed your memo.

'..takes too long to build..' Mean construction time was 7.5 years, with a long tail. Countries involved in a concerted buildout do rather better - Japan averaged less than 5 years, China and South Korea less than 6. Sheffield Forgemasters, one of the few companies qualified to make reactor pressure vessels, has just demonstrated a new method of ion beam welding, letting them weld around the girth of an RPV ring in one day. This weld, on a 4 metre diameter, 200 mm thick piece, with very tight inspection requirements, would normally take up to a year. RPVs have been one of the bottlenecks for nuclear growth. Other solutions, such as the heavy water reactors used in India, don't have RPVs.

'..there is not enough uranium.' This was the perceived reality when the industry was just starting up - and when Cold War bomb-making led to a frantic search for uranium reserves, since enriching to 90% U235 bomb-grade uses up far more feedstock than does the 3-5% used in light-water reactors, or the natural uranium used in mainly Canadian and Indian heavy water reactors. At the time, it was also assumed that energy demand would keep growing at 1960s rates, and that most of the growth would be from nuclear. L Ron Hubbard's famous graph of human energy use rising sharply from a low base, as fossil fuel reserves are used up, and dropping equally sharply back to pre-industrial levels, was used by Peak Oil doomers to predict a coming crash, to be followed by unending scarcity. In fact, Hubbard original graph showed nuclear growing as fast as fossil fuel energy, completely replacing it, and then maintaining that level indefinitely. Plans were in place to switch to fast reactors, converting the 99.3% U238 of natural uranium to fissile plutonium, and to use thorium, 3x more abundant again, as fissile U233. This effort stalled when demand fell, and uranium proved to be much more abundant than thought. Until recently, global production has been well below demand, due to oversupply causing very low prices. Many high grade mines, like MacArthur River in Saskatchewan, were closed during the drop in demand after Fukushima, with the word's third and fourth largest users, Japan and Germany, temporarily shutting their whole industries. With demand now booming, these mines are reopening, and new prospecting has resumed. (Many nuclear operators are on long-term contracts, and have existing stocks, so are not immediately affected.)

Hubbard's fossil peak has been slower to arrive than expected, and so has the nuclear growth he expected to replace it. Long term though, I expect his insight to be accurate. The drive for increasing energy use is still there - nobody wants to stay poor (religious orders aside). The down-ramp on fossil use will be steeper than the rise, as climate concerns spread. Can weather-based energy fill the gap? Not judging by the view out my window (mid summer, 8/8ths cloud cover, national wind fleet at 1/3 of capacity).

I've read some of Mark Jacobson's papers - all the way back to his cover article on Scientific American, in 2009. Before him, there was Amory Lovins' vision of a 'soft path' energy future, very influential on Jimmy Carter's policy. The two were actually diametrically opposite in their prescriptions. Lovins decried the cost and energy waste of the transmission grid, calling for efficiency ('negawatts'), small-scale, local wind and solar, backed by fluidised bed coal. Jacobson wants a maximal grid, moving greatly overbuilt wind and solar across continents, with probably battery backup, no biofuels or combustion energy, no new hydro. Neither prescription has done well when put into practice in reducing emissions. US CO2 emissions per capita hardly changed from the 70s to the 2000s, only falling with the switch from coal to gas (though increased methane leakage may have negated some of the climate benefit). Widespread, government-sponsored wind and solar growth, most notably in Germany, has bought a rapid rise in installation, but though the individual solar plants and wind turbines became much cheaper, their integration into the grid led to increasing power costs, while fossil fuel use persisted at a higher level than on grids that had already switched to nuclear for largely economic reasons.

Some countries whose governments had declared that nuclear power would cease have reversed course, and plan new build - notably Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and Italy. Others - Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, which had 20 to 40% of their power from nuclear - currently persist in de-nuclearising. Russia is building plants in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, India, Bangla Desh, and shortly Hungary. Russia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, and possibly soon Saudi Arabia, are building nuclear plants at home because it displaces gas, which earns much more money as exports. Japan and South Korea are building nuclear for the opposite reason - it makes power much more cheaply than imported liquefied natural gas, at East Asian prices. The important question for the future is whether nuclear can take more than a toehold share in countries like India, Pakistan, South Africa, and Indonesia, where energy use is rising fast, and coal is now the chosen option.

New study suggests the Atlantic overturning circulation AMOC “is on tipping course”

Paul Pukite at 20:32 PM on 18 February, 2024

If the strength of AMOC is being correlated with AMO as shown in Fig 3 of the paper, does that mean that AMOC will oscillate as AMO does?

Increasing CO2 has little to no effect

Charlie_Brown at 15:26 PM on 3 February, 2024

The problem with the articles by Seim, et al., is that the poor experimental design is inadequate to simulate an Earth/Atmosphere environment. It does not simulate and cannot demonstrate the mechanism of global warming. This is a result of an incorrect description of the mechanism provided by the authors, who apparently do not understand the descriptions offered by their references. The authors fail to describe the global energy balance properly by focusing on backscatter (an incorrect term for re-radiation) or back radiation. Instead, the correct mechanism for global warming is a result of reduced energy lost to space emitted from the cold atmospheric layer at the bottom of the stratosphere. This is neglected in both the description and the experimental design. Reduced energy loss to space emitted by CO2 from this layer is obvious from the spectrum. Global warming is a result of upsetting the steady state global energy balance as increasing CO2 further reduces emittance to space. To learn more about the mechanism, please read my guest post at: Introducing-an-Atmospheric-Radiation-Model-to-Learn-About-Global-Warming.html
This is in addition to the comments made on Seim’s paper a year ago, as pointed out by Bob Loblaw @453, by Bob, MA Rodger, and myself. MA Rodger also uses the MILIA model in those comments.

Increasing CO2 has little to no effect

Bob Loblaw at 02:42 AM on 3 February, 2024

Dominic68:

Both those papers are published in "journals" from Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP), which has a pretty bad reputation. In addition to the Wikipedia link, note that SCIRP is listed on Beall's list of predatory publishers. Not a good start.

The first one also mentions Hermann Harde in the abstract, who is a known crank.

Third strike: the abstracts both refer to "backscatter" of IR radiation. CO2 does not scatter IR radiation - it absorbs it. The absorbed energy heats the air via collision with other gas molecules, and that warmer air leads to increased radiation (as IR, for earth-atmosphere temperatures). Any competent climate scientist understands the difference between absorption and later emission of IR radiation (what greenhouse gases cause) versus scattering of radiation (which happens to sunlight in the visible spectrum).

The experiments they propose are not worth looking at.

The second paper was previously discussed in comment on this post at SkS.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

John ONeill at 19:59 PM on 2 February, 2024

Sorry, nuclear, as you cite, only provides more power than either wind or solar separately, not together. Also as you say, it hasn't done much to cut emissions for the last twenty years, largely because in the west none was being built, and fairly successful efforts were going on to shut down those plants already existing. Whether wind and solar will manage to do so this year, we shall see.

Figures for wind and solar production were from Elecricity Maps, which I can no longer access on my computer, only on my phone app. You could try www.Electricitymaps.com. You'll be pleased to see that since Jan 26, when wind only made 3% of Wyoming's power, it's been picking up, to about a quarter, and emissions are correspondingly down, to 'only' 580grams CO2/kWh.

If you're charging your electric car off Florida Power and Light, 23% of it last year would have been from nuclear, 5% solar. Gas did the rest. Supposedly those gas plants are to be converted to hydrogen in the next decade or so.

At a glance - Plants cannot live on CO2 alone

John Mason at 03:31 AM on 13 January, 2024

Elevated CO2 has all sorts of effects, but I think you have read this at-a-glance with too much expectation. It's designed to be highly accessible and readers who want more will go on to Further Details, or possibly Intermediate or Advanced.

Grew Swiss Chard in big pots this year (with soil and 'organic standard' bagged compost) and had to really coax them, indeed requiring such a fertilizer as you describe. Some years ago I had a garden swap (for about 8 years) and there when I started out the 'soil' was sharp slate scree with a bit of interstitial leaf-mould. The solution was to dig out a decades old lambing barn (stratified dry sheep poo almost like chipboard!) to start things off - but also because I live near the coast, working a few tons of seaweed a year into the beds, after every Atlantic storm. That made a huge difference. In the best year some of the chard plants were close to a metre high! Never had to add anything else. Just one man's experience.....

At a glance - Plants cannot live on CO2 alone

PSBaker at 20:27 PM on 12 January, 2024

I think this explainer needs a bit of work.
In the first place it’s not necessarily true that plants in containers struggle without expensive liquid feeds. Provided the mix of soil and organic matter is adequate, in a reasonable sized pot, most vegetables can be grown quite easily, with some additional fertilizer as required. This can be a simple NPK fertilizer dissolved in water and will cost a few pennies per application.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/vegetables/containers
https://www.rhs.org.uk/herbs/growing-bags
On the other hand, growing in some soils can be problematic, in some/many locations they may be sandy/compacted/acidic etc. and will need considerable work to improve.

And while it’s true that atmospheric CO2 increases have led to ‘global greening’ which has helped ameliorate warming (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146296/global-green-up-slows-warming) trying to figure out how things will continue in the future turns out to be very complicated (https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/effects-of-rising-atmospheric-concentrations-of-carbon-13254108/ ; https://ripe.illinois.edu/press/press-releases/photosynthesis-unaffected-increasing-carbon-dioxide-channels-plant-membranes ; https://botany.one/2021/08/rising-carbon-dioxide-concentrations-are-making-the-worlds-most-destructive-toxic-weed-more-toxic/ )

Elevated CO2 has a strong impact on the other aspects of C3 plants' physiology, especially nutrient metabolism which can be attributed to:
• increase in the biomass of plant leaves results in a lower mineral concentration via a dilution effect,
• reduced transpiration cause reduced mass flow in the soil, and hindered nutrient translocation via the xylem sap,
• reduced photorespiration & production of NADH, leading to a decreased NO3 assimilation,
• disturbance in the regulations of root N uptake and signaling.
https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/fulltext/S1360-1385(22)00247-3

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

Just Dean at 09:44 AM on 11 January, 2024

I think this is where data from paleoclimatology can help as well. Three recent studies have looked at the earth's temperature vs CO2 during the Cenozoic period, Rae et al., Honisch et al., and Tierney et al. . Each of those show that the temperature of ancient earth continues to rise as CO2 increases. As I understand it the first two are based solely on proxy data while the Tierney effort includes modeling to try and correlate the data geographically and temporally.

All of these are concerned with earth system sensitivities that include both short term climate responses plus slower feedback processes that can take millenia, e.g. growth and melting of continental ice sheets. Both Rae and Honisch include reference lines for 8 C / doubling of CO2. In both cases, almost all the data lie below those reference lines suggesting that 8 C / doubling is an upper bound or estimate of earth's equilibrium between temperature and CO2. Also notice that there quite is a bit of spread in the data.

In contrast, when Tierney et al. include modeling they get a much better correlation of T and CO2. They find that their data is best correlated with 8.2 C / doubling, r = 0.97. Again, this represents an equilibrium that can take millenia to achieve but does to my way of thinking represent "nature's equilibrium" between T and CO2.

In these comparisons, the researchers define changes in temperature relative to preindustrial conditions, CO2 = 280 ppm. For Tierney's correlation then on geological timescale, the temperature would increase by 8.2 C at 560 ppm. At our present value of 420 ppm there would be 3.7 C of apparent warming potential above our 1.1 C increase already achieved as of 2022, i.e., global warming in the pipeline if you will.

Bottom line, based on paleoclimatological data, there is no apparent saturation level of CO2.

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

nigelj at 06:49 AM on 11 January, 2024

The sceptics claim that the CO2 warming effect is already saturated or is close to being saturated is clearly false. It seems to originate with the assertion that the surface receives about 3.7 W/m2 more energy each time CO2 is doubled ie: a logarthmic curve. This means eventually it would take a huge volume of additional CO2 (presumably over a long time period) to add an extra 3.7W / m2. Which they suggest means the effect is essentially then saturated, but without specifying a precise number (how convenient of them).

I see that the article mentions that this assertion about a logarithmic relationship may have been proven false by He et al. 2023, (?) and it also depends on emissions trajectories and other factors, but assuming the logarithmic relationship is simplistically true a look at radiative forcing versus CO2 concentration below and a bit of maths and its obvious the warming effect is not saturated and we are not yet near saturation:

skepticalscience.com/why-global-warming-can-accelerate.html

My back of envelope maths: In 1960s CO2 was 320 ppm ppm so doubling would be 640 ppm at around roughly year 2100 assuming BAU emissions. This coincides with the IPCC warming projection of 3 - 5 degrees C by 2100.

The next doubling is from from 640 to 1280 is a larger volume of CO2 and would presumably take longer to around year 2300 assuming the same BAU CO2 growth trend and other things being equal. Projections of warming by the IPCC by 2300 are not surprisingly around 8 - 10 degress C for this further doubling of CO2. Such a quantity of CO2 is large but may possibly be feasible given reserves of fossil fuels and uncertainties arount that.

The next doubling from 1280 to 2560 would lead to something like 15 degrees C and is a huge volume of CO2 that would take many centuries and would almost certainly exhaust reserves of fossil fuels, and most probably well before 15 degrees is reached. We could say this is the point of saturation in a practical sense. Its of no comfort because we would have had at least 5 degrees of warming and probably more, and not even factoring in tipping points.

Someone check my maths its very rough, but the sceptics claims are clearly false and meaningless.

Cranky Uncle with Dr. John Cook

Ben Laycock at 07:17 AM on 7 January, 2024

I have collated some important climate data that might come in handy when trying to counteract disinformation.
It is not rocket science, but it is science.
As Cranky Uncle might say, it is just plain common sense.
Every single government in the whole world, bar none, is desperately trying to increase economic growth, blissfully unaware that economic growth is the primary driving force of the climate catastrophe. We point the finger at the evil fossil fuel merchants and their enablers in government, but they are just struggling to keep up with our insatiable demand for more stuff!
Since 1990 global clean energy generation has increased 1000 fold, but our emissions have been going up at the same time, by 60% since 1990. We have burnt more fossil fuels since we learnt about climate change than all the rest of history put together! Our emissions have been rising by about 10% every year since 1950, though the rate has slowed a bit lately, which is encouraging.
The reason they keep going up is because the global economy keeps growing. The economy grows by about 4% per anum. So clean energy must replace emissions at the same rate, just to break even. Clean energy generates 17% of our global energy needs. So to replace 4% of
CO2, it must increase by 18% every single year. If we are to achieve Zero Net Emissions by 2050 we must reduce our CO2 by another 4% p.a. every single year for nearly 30 years. That means increasing clean energy by another 18% p.a. So we must increase our clean energy by 36% every year. Last year we our clean energy went up 10%, a shortfall of 26%. So this year that 26% gets added onto this years target, bringing it up to 62%. Next year it will be 88%, and so on.
If you know anyone who thinks that is even remotely possible, please refer them to a psychiatrist!
There is only one solution to this predicament.

Ben Laycock

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #26 2023

Eclectic at 05:14 AM on 2 January, 2024

Just Dean @9 :

Thanks for the J.Tierney video reference [not yet viewed by me].

I note the name Osman listed in the video credits, and also note that the video is marked as having had 135 views in 2 months. So, not yet setting the the world on fire [apologies to Secretary-General Guterres of the U.N.].

Just Dean ~ broadly speaking, the paleo record conforms with the present-day understanding of the climatic actions of CO2. Is there a special point that you are wishing to make, regarding the paleo climate?

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #26 2023

Just Dean at 01:24 AM on 2 January, 2024

I am also leery of single author papers.

If you are interested in the some of the latest thinking in correlations between ancient CO2 and T, I recommend this presentation by Dr. Jessica Tierney, REF .

If you are interested in just the bottom line, you can skip to the time marker around an hour into the presentation. If you look at her plot of GMST vs CO2 (ppmv) introduced at 1:04:08, you might imagine how if you wanted to play fast and loose with the data and do some cherrypicking you could make the correlation look fairly poor.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #26 2023

Just Dean at 08:32 AM on 1 January, 2024

I was looking for recent articles on paleoclimatogical data for CO2 vs Temperature and happened to this posting about the work of W. Jackson Davis. Based on a previous work of his claiming that CO2 concentrations did not cause temperature changes in ancient climates, REF , I would definitely advise caution when considering his works.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

One Planet Only Forever at 05:12 AM on 29 December, 2023

A follow-on to my comment @18,

If CO2 is injected to produce oil with the end result hoped to be trapped CO2, then the long period of pressure testing to prove that the CO2 is truly trapped can only begin after the ending of the oil extraction ... and sampling for CO2 coming out with the oil, and capturing it for reinjection, is required during the oil extraction.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

One Planet Only Forever at 05:00 AM on 29 December, 2023

michael sweet @17,

Agreed that the use of CO2 to scrub oil off of rock formations, a possible benefit of CO2 injection to increase the production of oil as presented in the article, would almost certainly mean that CO2 comes out with the oil. But, to be fair, CO2 injection can potentially lock-away CO2 while producing more oil from an oil deposit.

Here are potential stages of oil production:

Natural pressure of the trapped oil deposit forces oil to the surface when it is drilled into – the ‘gusher’.

Pressure drops as the oil flows out.

A pump-jack increases the rate of extraction by ‘lifting’ oil out of the well – like a water well pump.

As more oil is removed the rate of flow to a well point pump-jack declines.

Injecting gasses like captured CO2 can increase the pressure in the oil deposit and force more oil out of the well locations. Current operations inject CO2 captured from the exhaust of burned fossil fuels. This process potentially traps the injected CO2 in the rock formation that the oil was trapped in.

So oil can be produced by injecting and trapping CO2. But scrubbing oil off of the formation that the oil is in would mean CO2 comes out with the oil.

However, CO2 thought to be trapped in an oil deposit may not be truly trapped. Accurate pressure monitoring over a long time frame would be required to prove that the CO2 is staying where it was put. And until the completion of that pressure testing it is uncertain that the ‘claimed to be trapped’ CO2 is properly trapped. If a pressure test fails, the pressure drops, then the ‘carbon removal’ action plan is failing. And there would be little that could be done to keep the rest of the ‘believed to have been locked away’ CO2 from leaking out.

Who will pay for removing it and locking it away? Everybody essentially pays for the profit obtained, or pays for the government subsidy (worse when the government subsidizes the obtaining of profit - nobody should profit from publicly funded harm reduction like CO2 removal).

It would be nice if the ones who benefited most from the developed total current problem paid the most to limit the harm done ... but the current systems have a histry of making the least fortunate, who do not deserve to be penalized, suffer the most harm. Refer to the lead article in the Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2023 for a detailed presentation of concerns regarding free-market development of Carbon Capture.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #51

One Planet Only Forever at 03:51 AM on 28 December, 2023

The following NPR News item is new recommended reading for anyone interested in what is happening regarding Direct Air Carbon capture.

It is a comprehensive report showing how 'the fundamentally ethics-free marketplace' is developing Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage. And it shows how governments can be motivated to subsidise harmful unsustainable 'misguided' developments to protect unjustified perceptions of status (including unjustified perceptions of people like Warren Buffett being concerned about being less harmful and more helpful).

"This oil company invests in pulling CO2 out of the sky — so it can keep selling crude"

Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage is almost certain to be needed to bring human climate impacts back down to 1.5 C levels of impact. Plans like Occidental's, and many other 'profitable or popular net-zero efforts', do not help achieve that undeniably desirable result.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2023

One Planet Only Forever at 03:39 AM on 28 December, 2023

NPR News has published the following comprehensive report on Carbon Capture. It shows how 'the fundamentally ethics-free marketplace' is causing Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage to be pursued for the benefit of people who unjustifiably developed ways to have higher status by getting away with ‘excused’ harmful unsustainable activity.

"This oil company invests in pulling CO2 out of the sky — so it can keep selling crude"

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

One Planet Only Forever at 03:36 AM on 28 December, 2023

NPR News has just published the following comprehensive report on Carbon Capture. It shows how 'the fundamentally ethics-free marketplace' is causing Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage to be pursued for the benefit of people who unjustifiably developed ways to have higher status by getting away with ‘excused’ harmful unsustainable activity.

"This oil company invests in pulling CO2 out of the sky — so it can keep selling crude"

This Market-drive development undeniably makes the future worse than it needs to be by protecting unjustified unsustainable developed perceptions of status. Burning fossil fuels is not sustainable. Getting more of the non-renewable stuff out does not have a future ... but it sure can increase current day ‘enjoyment of life’ by some people.

Marketplace competition ‘freer from ethical governing’ develops very little motivation to learn to be less harmful and more helpful. There is a tragic diversity of examples of harmful unsustainable activity becoming popular and profitable, some benefit at the detriment of other, including cases of the current generation benefiting to the detriment of future generations.

Competition for status undeniably develops interests that very powerfully motivate people to oppose and resist learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

One Planet Only Forever at 14:37 PM on 18 December, 2023

michael sweet,

I agree that focusing on building the renewable energy systems, along with reducing unnecessary ‘luxury’ ghg emissions, is the most rewarding action, from the perspective of the future of humanity. It is far better to do that than build partial fixes like Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) in an attempt to make ‘parts of unsustainable damaging systems – like the fossil fuel systems – appear to be ‘helping to achieve’ global net-zero.

In addition to wasting effort attempting to prolong an unsustainable damaging developed system with CCUS, getting those parts of the fossil fuel system to appear to be net-zero will require significant amounts of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR).

A serious concern is the use of CDR to make those parts of the ‘system that is still, all things considered, very damaging’ appear to be excusable/acceptable. The article I linked to in my comment @3 explains things well in the following quote from the part titled A CDR thesis:

CDR is a limited resource [Citation14]. For-profit goals inherently prioritize the activities for which some entity will pay the most, which are likely disproportionately related to compensatory removals in high wealth contexts. Allocation of more CDR to compensatory functions constrains availability for drawdown while increasing overall demand for CDR and CDR scaling. These incentives create a structural bias toward providing offsets to high-wealth emitters who can provide ongoing revenue streams, and away from offsets for low-wealth emitters or remedial drawdown activities. In effect, unconstrained for-profit governance of CDR allows for luxury consumption to colonize [and tragically abuse] an emergent global commons.

Another example of plans, not started to be built, for a major CCUS operation with an eventual demand to unnecessarily consume CDR resources is the action plans of the Alberta oil sands operators in Pathways Alliance. Refer to this linked CBC News article “Oilsands giants continue work on proposed $16.5B carbon capture project, despite lingering questions”

Alberta already has some CCUS, similar to the Middle East capture of CO2 and its use to produce more oil or gas. But a major collective CCUS project, subsidized by public funding, is the first part of the Pathways Alliance plan to be able to claim to be ‘net-zero’ producers of exported fossil fuels by 2050.

By 2050 there will hopefully be a very small market for exported fossil fuels. And that fossil fuel use would hopefully be restricted to assisting people who live less than basic decent lives.

The Alberta oil sands operators, with the support of government in Alberta and Canada, plan to compete to be exporting 5 million bpd or more in 2050 and beyond (being an exporter of choice). Other regions with already discovered exportable fossil fuel resources can be expected to do the same. Who would give up on such a potentially lucrative opportunity? And they will all potentially end up fighting to be among the few who end up with the least ‘stranded fossil fuel reserves’. Tragically, that marketplace for-profit competition to be the biggest winner will also consume massive effort and resources, public and private, to build CCUS facilities that will also end up ‘stranded’.

If, instead of being assisted to build CCUS, they were required to build DAC facilities, those DAC facilities could continue to be beneficial after the need for ‘dead-end fossil fuel extraction for export’ is substantially ‘transitioned away from’ (by 2050).

Global leadership focusing on rapidly building the transition away from fossil fuels, along with reducing unnecessary energy demand, will reduce the unnecessarily tragic damage being done to the global commons by making the ‘deservedly tragic future’ of all the ‘pursuers of maximum benefit from fossil fuels’ harder to deny.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

michael sweet at 03:11 AM on 18 December, 2023

It seems to me that to find the bottom line for carbon capture used to keep fossil fuel production going in the future all you have to do is look at the production facilities that the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the oil majors have built or planned. As I understand it, they combined have about one large facility world wide. They recover CO2 from their refinery operations and pump that back into the ground to recover more oil, but that is not carbon capture and storage.

If the fossil fuel produceers were serious about carbon capture there would be many facilities planned or under constrution. These facilities take 5 years or more to build, and longer to plan and permit. The lack of proposed facilities indicates that this is the last gasp of the oil producers hoping everyone will look at the squirrel instead of installing solar and wind.

The only realistic solution is to build out wind and solar as fast as possible. If all fossil fuel subsidies were transferred to building renewable energy we would finish the system in a decade.

China alone will install over 300 gigawatts of renewable energy this year. If the entire world put in as much effort as China we would be in a much better place. The fossil plants China is building will be obsolete before they are commissioned.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

nigelj at 10:53 AM on 17 December, 2023

OPOF @4

Thank's for correcting the math. I think I know what happened. I scribbled some numbers and calcs. for different scenarious on a piece of paper and came back to it later, and transposed the wrong number into the computer. The main thing is the total is 925,000 DACs, or even more using the assumptions in your copy and paste.

We clearly need some sort of way of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. But the thing I was trying to get across about the DAC industrial plant option is that 925,000 DAC's would clearly require a vast quantity of materials and energy, and over a 30 year span if its function is just to offset certain emissions. These plants are not small. Photo of worlds largest existing instillation here.

For comparison purposes the world currently has 600,000 bridges and about 24,000 coal fired power stations built over our entire history. The issue is whether the world has enough materials and spare energy for something like 925,000 DACS, - especially if they are all built over about 30 years. Remember we are also building renewable energy at the same time.

Known reserves of concentrated deposits key minerals are only expected to last another century or two at current rates of use. There are enough apparently to build out a renewable energy grid, (Jacobson) but add in 925,000 DAC's and its another matter entirely. I'm not a minerals depletion pessimist and we will probably discover new reserves, but it intuitively looks like we might not have enough materials to do everything.

The other options you list for extracting CO2 from the air ( biomass, soil sinks, enhanced rock weathering, marine storage, etc ) look interesting an dpotentially useful, and intuitively look less materials and energy intensive given natural processes do some of the work. But they are very land intensive. DAC does have the advantage that its a rapid extraction, and less land intensive and CO2 storage is permanent or close enough.

I might try and find or calculate some comparisons of materials and energy required if I have time.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

One Planet Only Forever at 08:44 AM on 17 December, 2023

nigelj,

While reading the report I mention in my comment @3, I came back to re-read your comment.

There is indeed a concern about the scale of required DAC's. But the math appears to be:

currently 37 Gte of emissions

20% assumed to be impractical to stop is 7.4 Gt, not 4,625 Gte

Number of 8 kte DAC plants is 925,000 (as you correctly indicated)

The report I refer to @3 indicates a higher possible range of required Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) in the following quote:

Thus far, estimates of how much CDR might be needed range from almost none up to more than 300 gigatonnes (Gt) cumulatively by 2050, or over 1,200 Gt cumulatively by 2100 [Citation10] – that is, up to about 10–15 GtCO2/year starting immediately, contingent on simultaneous rapid emissions mitigation, to meet 1.5° or 2 °C targets. Such estimates are purely mathematical, balancing positive with negative emissions: in theory, CDR could be used to counteract any emission (currently about 60 GtCO2e/year [Citation5]). As such, CDR requirements will be higher for less rapid and/or lower levels of emissions mitigation. To date, binding requirements for decarbonization that clearly articulate which emissions should be mitigated and which remain residual emissions to be addressed via CDR [Citation12] are rare, and CDR remains voluntary, contributing to a lack of clarity on necessary scope, scale, pace, and degree of resource competition.

Also note that the author's CDR includes many actions, not just mechanical DAC, as described in this quote:

Here, we define CDR to mean intentional, additional actions taken to capture CO2 from the atmosphere (either directly or via intermediaries like biomass or the ocean) and permanently store it such that the CO2 will not return to the atmosphere on time scales that at least match the lifespan of its impacts on the atmosphere and ocean [Citation5]. Commonly proposed approaches that are potentially capable of delivering CDR include (but are not limited to) direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS); biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS);Footnote1 direct ocean carbon capture and storage (DOCCS); enhanced rock weathering (ERW); forestry; and soil carbon management. Some storage mechanisms, particularly those that rely on biological sinks like forests and soils, are not permanent in the sense of matching the lifespan of CO2’s impacts. As such, we distinguish between CDR-capable interventions (e.g. an afforestation project) and actual CDR, which might entail consistent rehabilitation or replacement for projects where CO2 is stored for less than geologic time (and which necessarily imposes greater administrative burden for strategies requiring relatively short replacement intervals).

Greenhouse effect has been falsified

MA Rodger at 18:48 PM on 15 December, 2023

Is it healthy to pander to crazy sock-puppet nonsense by discussing 'what-if' ideas when the sock-puppet is wedded to a 'surely it is' idea?

The idea that the existing GHE can be attributed to 50% water vapour, 25% cloud and this forced by 25% CO2 which thus attributes cloud as a warming agent does overlook the full impact of cloud on planetray albedo and which could be used to calculate cloud as a cooling agent.

The sock-puppet @176 suggests a cloudless Earth would see albedo drop from 30% to 15%, the latter being roughly the Moon's effective albedo which would suggest the Moon woud have an average temperature of 267K. However the measured temperature of the Moon averages at 201K and this because the Moon rotation is so slow that it sheds massive amounts of energy during its day with Moon equatorial temperatures reaching 390K.

Of course, the Earth spins fast enough to prevent such a large duirnal range and if there had never been CO2 to form a GHE, there would never have been oceans to slow it down from its 4 hour day back when the Earth-Moon began.

But unlike the Moon, there is a lot of water on Earth and the albedo of ice is high. That is reduced by the dust which would cover the ice on a GHE-free Earth but albedo would remain high, and perhaps higher than today. De Vrese et al (2021) suggests the albedo of 'meteoric ice' is 65% which, if the Earth's albedo, would indicate a 250K Earth and a GHE of 38K.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

One Planet Only Forever at 15:21 PM on 14 December, 2023

Excellent point Nigel.

I would add that the lack of reduction of climate change impacts by the portion of the global population that benefit most from the harm being done has made 'Carbon capture from the atmosphere and locking it away' an essential action to bring the level of impact back down to 1.5 C.

The people today who have benefited most from the damage done to date owe the future of humanity a significant number of DAC facilities being built and beginning operation in the near future, no matter how expensive that is.

Excessive levels of impact, far beyond 1.5 C, are now almost certain. The accounting of credit for actions to limit the harm done during the curtailing of human caused climate change impacts, during the transition away from unsustainable developed activity, needs to exclude any 'credit' from DAC facilities (or extra trees planted). Those CO2 removal actions need to be understood to be a 'debt penalty owed' in addition to the Loss and Damages penalties owed.

Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage

nigelj at 12:31 PM on 14 December, 2023

Informative video as always. Its true that fitting CO2 capture technology to coal fired power stations isn't compelling because it just prolongs our reliance on coal fired power and the technology is plagued with problems. DAC (direct air capture) that removes CO2 directly form the air sounds helpful in dealing with areas of the economy that are hard to decarbonise. Or would it? Consider the maths:

We emit about 37 giga tons of CO2 globally each year.
Lets assume we use direct air capture to extract 20% of this each year, so 4,625 giga tons, because about 20% of the economy is really hard to decarbonise.
There are about 20 DAC facilities operating globally. The largest existing DAC facility extracts 8,000 tons CO2 each year. And this plant is large and complex and energy intensive.
This means you would need 925,000 DAC plants!!!!!

I feel the number speaks for itself. Yes you would not necessarily rely just on DAC but even so it would be a collosal challenge.

A New 66 Million-Year History of Carbon Dioxide Offers Little Comfort for Today

MA Rodger at 19:46 PM on 13 December, 2023

One Planet Only Forever @3,

Where do you source your "set of scenarios with equal 2100 temperature values of 1.7 C" ?

I do note the use of IAMs to create scenarios & MAGICC to calculate the climatic outcomes does provide a route to developing such scenarios with a lot less effort than the SSP -> GCM approach. And I also note the rather worrying way such scenarios are presented simply as % cuts by 2050 along with a temperature rise. This is worrying as the cuts required over shorter and longer timescales are airbrushed away, this often along with the substitution of CO2 emissions timings for CO2(equivalent) emissions which can be very significant (as per AR6 WGIII Fig3.6 below). IPCC AR6 WGIII FIG3.6

A New 66 Million-Year History of Carbon Dioxide Offers Little Comfort for Today

Evan at 01:07 AM on 13 December, 2023

Some say that current CO2 emissions have no effect on future warming (global warming, climate change deniers).

Some say that past CO2 emissions have no effect on future warming (no-warming in the pipeline climate modelers).

This study suggests that maybe we are not in as much control of the environment as these other two groups of people would like to think.

CO2 limits will harm the economy

One Planet Only Forever at 08:20 AM on 11 December, 2023

PollutionMonster @120

I appreciate your concerns. Thanks for the link to the ccdh Toxic Ten.

I was unaware of the evaluation and identification of the Toxic Ten regarding climate change. It is indeed a helpful compilation and sharing of information. However, the results of the investigation are no surprise. The problem is much more than the success of the likes of the Toxic Ten.

Increasing the number of people who are determined to ‘learn to be less harmful and more helpful to others’ is a key to correcting the developed systemic socioeconomic-political problems and the diversity of resulting developed problems.

Keeping the Toxic Ten from being popular and profitable is helpful. But it is unlikely to solve the fundamental problem of ‘the success of efforts against learning to be more helpful and less harmful to others’. How and why the Toxic Ten, and other efforts against ethical learning, succeed is more of a concern.

A way of understanding the Toxic Ten ‘success’ is presented by Alan MacLeod in Propaganda in the Information Age, Routledge (Taylor and Francis Group), 2019. It is a social media era update of Edward S. Herman’s Propaganda Model that Herman presented (with Noam Chomsky) in Manufacturing Consent, New York: Pantheon Books, 1988 updated 2002 (a movie of the same name was made in 1992).

A significant point of the Propaganda Model is that developed socioeconomic-political systems can be systemically biased to develop and promote misinformation and disinformation to defend and excuse unjustified ‘successful powerful interests’.

In 2000 Herman stated the following update “Although the new technologies have great potential for democratic communication, there is little reason to expect the Internet to serve democratic ends if it is left to the market.”

An example of the free-marketplace failure Herman referred to is new in the news. Members of X have voted to allow proven massive-dis-informer Alex Jones to be eligible to post again on what used to be Twitter (the version of the social media platform that justifiably kicked Jones off of its communication platform). The harmful disinformation actors now thriving on X voted to allow one of their worst examples to ‘Shine Fine Again’ ... because more freedom is argued to always be better. (PS Alex Jones making money through X could help him pay court settlements. But that is no justification for increasing his Freedom to ‘almost certainly try to profit more from disinformation’).

I agree with the need to cripple the ability of ‘bad actors’ to proliferate harmful misunderstandings through social media and other means. However, I am also aware that the ‘bad actors’ include everyone involved in the recent US Court actions (an example article is NBC News item “Supreme Court blocks restrictions on Biden administration efforts to get platforms to remove social media posts”), including some members of the US Supreme Court, fighting against government efforts to limit the harm done through social media ... arguing that efforts to limit the harm done are harmful, often based on arguments of the glory of Freedom (especially Freedom from the responsibility to ethically learn to be less harmful and more helpful to Others).

Similar arguments have been made, including the opening line of the Myth “CO2 limits will harm the economy”. That is arguing that ‘harm is done by efforts to limit the harm done by fossil fuel use’. A significant ‘harm done’ would be the loss of undeserved perceptions of superior status by people who benefited most from the harm done so far.

Merchants of Doubt defending undeserved developed perceptions of status are an expected product of a socioeconomic-political system that lacks ethical self-governing or external governing of the competition for impressions of status, especially in a marketplace of ideas and actions driven to ‘over-protect freedoms’ to the detriment of ‘fundamental ethical responsibility to learn to be less harmful and more helpful to Others’.

This is an age-old problem. Protecting unjustified perceptions of superiority relative to Others has always included arguing for unjustifiable ways of obtaining and maintaining perceptions of status - including any argument that attempts to increase or prolong the ability of 'already fortunate people' to benefit more from fossil fuel use.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #49 2023

nigelj at 04:35 AM on 10 December, 2023

MS Sweet. Good information to know.

"I note that Dr. Hansen has long held an Earth System Sensitivity of 6 C. The IPCC consensus has been 3C"

The IPCC number is "equilibrium climate sensitivity", a different thing from earth system sensativity as below. Making it hard to compare the two numbers.

"By definition, equilibrium climate sensitivity does not include feedbacks that take millennia to emerge, such as long-term changes in Earth's albedo because of changes in ice sheets and vegetation. It includes the slow response of the deep oceans' warming, which also takes millennia, and so ECS fails to reflect the actual future warming that would occur if CO2 is stabilized at double pre-industrial values.[38] Earth system sensitivity (ESS) incorporates the effects of these slower feedback loops, such as the change in Earth's albedo from the melting of large continental ice sheets, which covered much of the Northern Hemisphere during the Last Glacial Maximum and still cover Greenland and Antarctica)...."

(Climate sensitivity, wikipedia)

We will probably never know any of these numbers for sure because you can't put the planet in the laboratory. (Although I think paleo studies like the one you posted have a lot of credibility - because they are based on real world conditions). But IMHO that uncertainty is not necessarily a crucial problem. Current rates of warming are bad and are having very visible effects, and huge implicatrion in the short to medium term, and so whatever the level of climate sensitivity using whatever definition, we clearly have a huge problem.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #49 2023

michael sweet at 01:16 AM on 10 December, 2023

This MSN article, Which is apparently a press release from the Columbia Climate school describes a paper in Science. The paper is a collaboration of many scientists summarizing knowledge of CO2 concentrations for the past 65 million years. The MSN article is easy to read. Since it is a press release it would be a good OP here at SkS. I have not yet read the paper.

Unfortunately, they conclude that Earth system sensitivity, the climate response when all slow feedbacks respond, is 5-8 C. The processes involved can take a long time to equilibrate (as much as thousands of years). Still, it is a very grim conclusion. I note that Dr. Hansen has long held an Earth System Sensitivity of 6 C. The IPCC consensus has been 3C. This is unlikely to affect anyone living but bodes very bad for 1000 years from now. The question of how long the slow processes take to equilibrate is left unanswered.

At a glance - Has the greenhouse effect been falsified?

nigelj at 05:04 AM on 7 December, 2023

"By the end of that century, Eunice Foote and John Tyndall had proved him quite correct through their experiments with various gases..."

Exactly so. It might be good to include a brief statement about how the experiments worked (with canisters of CO2 exposed to a radiant heat source and measurements taken?). I say this because this is really the crucial foundation of things, along with observations of the planets climates and deducations from that.

In order to make sense of the whole complicated issue as a non expert, I have always done this. It seems to we know for a fact from laboratory experiments that CO2 is a greenhouse gas because it (simplifying) absorbs heat while oxygen and nitrogen etc,etc do not. Therefore if you add even very, very small quantities of CO2 to the atmosphere, even one single molecule, it must absorb heat and thus have at least some warming effect on the atmosphere, and the issue is entirely about how much CO2 is added to the atmosphere, and what warming effect results in total. This is simple logic.

Arrhenius did some calculations in the 1890s I dont fully understand but they seem robust as they made accurate predictions about warming in the 20th century. While I generally dont like assumptions, it seems safe to assume our current climate calculations are more sophisticated. So I see no need to be scepetical any longer about the greenhouse effect, and the proclamations in the climate myth box that the greenhouse effect contradicts so called physical laws is just ignorance or made up nonsense.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #48

Evan at 21:49 PM on 3 December, 2023

Although I do not disagree with the conclusion of the lead article here that CO2 concentrations are rising at alarming rates, it is incorrect to compare levels from one year to the next, simply because natural variability causes up and down swings in individual readings.

A 10-year running average shows that the rate of increase of CO2 is continuing to increase. This alone is alarming and concerning, but focusing on changes during a single year is excessively alarming.

John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

michael sweet at 03:01 AM on 30 November, 2023

AB19:

In support of John Mason at 64, here is the carbon dioxide graph:

carbon dioxide graph

The graph is from the Royal Society CO2 concentrations from ice cores go back about 800,000 years. As you can see, the last 200 years are completely exceptional. The antarctic temperature has not yet responded as much as global temperatures above.

John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

John Mason at 22:34 PM on 29 November, 2023

Re #63: " I believe it's also true that in the last ice age the level of atmospheric CO2 was at least 10 times current levels - which according to IPCC thinking ought to have produced a blisteringly hot climate - yet there was an ice age. "

You believe incorrectly unless by "last ice age" you are referring to something hundreds of millions of years ago.

During the last glacial maximum of the Quaternary, ca. 23,000 years ago, CO2 was around 180 ppm.

John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

AB19 at 21:32 PM on 29 November, 2023

I quote from the article introduction:

"It’s a familiar story – the physicist who draws attention for declaring that climate scientists have got climate science all wrong. He (it’s always a ‘he’) was born before color television was invented, usually retired, perhaps having won a Nobel Prize, but with zero climate science research or expertise. William Happer."

I don't know if the writer of the article is a scientist or not but it starts with some rather unscientific viewpoints, namely by suggesting that male, retired physicists are not qualified to comment on climate matters. What does it matter what sex they are or how old they are? In relation to physicists, I don't know about the others in the list given, but William Happer would, I would have thought, certainly qualify to comment on the global warming debate given that if you have watched any of his presentations on this topic, you'll know that his field of research was the absorption of infra-red radiation by CO2 molecular stretches and bends - very apt in the climate debate I would have thought, given that it is precisely CO2 that is being posited as the culprit in current global warming trends. He also openly admits that he was once a climate alarmist until his work led him to believe he was wrong.
I am not a climate scientist- my background is chemistry- but there are certain apparent facts that appear to be ignored in the current debate, namely that we know the earth warmed before about 1000 years ago in the medieval warming period and again about 2000 years ago in the Roman period. These warmings cannot have been due to human activity given that there were no combustion engines or factories around and world population was vastly lower than today. I believe it's also true that in the last ice age the level of atmospheric CO2 was at least 10 times current levels - which according to IPCC thinking ought to have produced a blisteringly hot climate - yet there was an ice age. Whilst not denying that CO2 is x greenhouse gas, these facts do tend to cast doubt on just how potent a greenhouse gas CO2 really is. I believe Dr Roy Spencer, who is a meteorologist not a physicist and also not retired ( though he is male) has similar views to the listed physicists.

Just how ‘Sapiens’ in the world of high CO2 concentrations?

Eclectic at 06:04 AM on 13 November, 2023

Michael @44 , I must modestly disagree with you.

Yes, there is a real concern about the adverse effect of high local ambient CO2 levels in classrooms, submarines, and other enclosed spaces. A perfectly valid concern, for health and intellectual performance (and most especially the performance of crew in a nuclear-armed submarine ! ).

But please read again through the O.P. ~ and note the panicky crescendo in the final few paragraphs. [quote] "... we may end up intellectually a lot closer to plants."

Sure, that was an expression of dramatic hyperbole ~ but hyperbole more fitted to a rally of Extinction Rebellion adherents, than to the sober annals of SkepticalScience. Even in the comments thread, some seem to have taken that apocalyptic message seriously. And I am thinking the propagandists at WUWT would take it even further, as an example of them thar crazy Alarmists.

But I am not so much interested in the final paragraph, as in the build-up evident in those lattermost paragraphs. Even in the sly reference to D.Zappulla,2013 ~ a reference which actually discusses effects at CO2 ambients in the range 5,000 - 30,000 ppm. Golly !

The O.P. starts with matters of technical interest . . . but then gradually slides into unwarranted alarmism. And it entirely fails to mention the human body's well-evolved compensation system [the kidneys].

I do not wish to see the O.P. deleted ~ but suggest a prominent CAUTION for the casual reader.

Just how ‘Sapiens’ in the world of high CO2 concentrations?

michael sweet at 00:43 AM on 13 November, 2023

Eclectic:

I think your concern is misplaced.

This paper, from 2015 finds concentrations of CO₂ in classrooms in New York at levels up to 1591 ppm. They report teachers had more headaches the higher the concentration of carbon dioxide. Obviously students are negatively affected. Since background levels have increased since then you would expect classroom levels to increase.

I taught in Florida. Our classrooms are more crowded and often the air conditioning systems do not work. I woud expect classroom conentrations to be hgher in Florida. New York spends more on classroom maintenance than most states so I would expect New York data to be lower than most other states.

If the external CO₂ concentration increases that has a disproportionate on inclosed space concentrations. If you are diluting the internal space with 300 ppm air the internal concentration stays lower than when you dilute the internal space with 450 ppm air. Anywhere there are crowded buldings the concentration of CO₂ becomes severely elevated. Theatres, crowded offices, manufacturing areas all have elevated CO2. Restaraunts that use gas stoves are severely affected.

The external air in cities is not 425 ppm. This paper reports an hourly average of CO2 in Salt Lake City USA as high as 700 ppm in 2016. I would expect other locations to be higher.

Even 1000 ppm affects how people work and feel. Most of us do not live on the top of Mauna Loa where the air is well mixed. (They delete the data when hgh CO2 air from the volcano mixes in). You are looking at outside air. The spaces where people work and live have increased carbon dioxide and exceed the limits that affect people.

Just how ‘Sapiens’ in the world of high CO2 concentrations?

Eclectic at 22:40 PM on 12 November, 2023

A modest suggestion [ not Modest Proposal ] :-

In the absence of any information to the contrary during the past 8 days in this thread, I would like to suggest that this O.P. from 2014 be marked with a prominent note of Warning or Caution for readers.

The O.P. starts well, by evidencing mild impairment of human intellectual function at an ambient (air) level of 1000 ppm of CO2. Fortunately, a reversible impairment.

But in the final 4 paragraphs, the O.P. implies that we humans should be alarmed, medically, at the prospect of a terrestrial atmospheric CO2 level of even 426ppm - 900ppm. (The O.P. also links to the [bookish] D.Zappullo~2013 , wherein is discussed major health problems from air CO2 of 5,000ppm - 30,000ppm.)

However, in actuality, an ambient CO2 426ppm-900ppm level would be swiftly compensated inside the body (within hours to days) through the activity of the kidneys which possess routine mechanisms to normalize total body acidity. The adverse planetary effects of high CO2 are an entirely separate matter.

SkS staff may wish to consider adding an up-front note, such as :-

CAUTION : parts of this 2014 post are very misleading.

SkS Analogy 26 - Earth's Beating Hearts

Bob Loblaw at 11:19 AM on 10 November, 2023

groovimus @2:

Congratulations. Your second post at SkS, and you've provided two incredibly bad arguments in a single paragraph.

First, you're making an "argument from incredulity" I can't believe that people are still making "I can't believe" types of arguments these days. [See how that works?]

Second, you're making an "it's only a trace" argument. Usually people that are making an "it's only a trace" argument are doing it with respect to CO2 concentrations. At least we should give you some points for originality - for making it about the mass of humans vs. the mass of the earth - but you're still only scoring 2-3 points out of 100. If you were really creative, you'd go onto the CO2 is a trace gas thread and tell us how the mass of CO2 is sooo small in comparison to the mass of the earth, instead of the usual comparison with the mass of the atmosphere alone. It would still be a completely bogus argument, but boy oh boy could you really throw around some huge ratios!

Also, you never did go back to follow up your first SkS comment, where you completely failed to provide any argument why anyone should listen to John F Clauser (the subject of the post you were supposed to be commenting on). All you had there was ad hominem rants and insults.

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