Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => The Environment => Topic started by: CliffordK on 11/05/2013 04:04:01

Title: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: CliffordK on 11/05/2013 04:04:01
For quite some time we've been getting close to 400ppm atmospheric concentration of CO2

They said on the Radio that it has finally hit that level.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=MLO&program=ccgg&type=ts
 [ Invalid Attachment ]

I've been missing fine detail long-term CO2 estimates over the past few million years.  They suggested this level had occurred about 2 million years ago. 

If we truly were at these levels 2 million years ago, it would have occurred around the time we were plunging into our current glacial/interglacial cycles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F6%2F60%2FFive_Myr_Climate_Change.png&hash=bfe4d0659e93af5df352e69a44eb9af9)

So, what does this all mean to humanity?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 13/05/2013 15:54:43


Clifford,
are you a chemisdt?
Any (good) chemist knows that there are giga tons and giga tons of bi-carbonates dissolved in the oceans and that (any type of) warming would cause it to be released:

HCO3- + heat => CO2 (g) + OH-.

This is the actual reason we are alive today. Cause and effect, get it? There is a causal relationship. More warming naturally causes more CO2. Without warmth and carbon dioxide there would be nothing, really. To make that what we dearly want, i.e. more crops, more trees, lawns and animals and people, nature uses water and carbon dioxide and warmth, mostly.

Wake up out of your dream worlds. More CO2 is better. I hope you at least agree with me on that.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 13/05/2013 19:06:50
"More CO2 is better. I hope you at least agree with me on that."
No
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Toxicity
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 13/05/2013 19:36:51
henry@bored chemist
they did tests in 1970 with rats
they upped the mixture to 60% CO2
but still had 20% oxygen
the rats would not die
(I have no pity on those rats)
Roempps
check it yourself/ @ Roempps
CO2 is not a poison
the fact that you live actually proves it

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 13/05/2013 19:44:07
Note we are only talking about 0.04%
not 60%
as mentioned in the previous comment
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 13/05/2013 20:00:18
btw
the 400 ppm (parts per million) level has NOT been reached
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/13/premature-400-ppm-fail-a-bration/
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Mazurka on 14/05/2013 12:39:55
There is no particular "meaning" to the 400ppm level other than as human beings we tend to like nice round numbers - hence the pseudo "science" of numerology. 400 ppm does not represent a “tipping point” or some other sort of point of no return, it is merely a symbolic milestone.

It is entirely true to say that life as we know it would not exist without the CO2 and the greenhouse effect.  However, it is facile(*) to suggest that more carbon in the atmosphere is unequivocally a good thing.  Changing weather and climate patterns are more likely to result in poor harvests rather than the enhanced ones some people anticipate due to higher CO2 levels because we are growing things in the “wrong” place.  These impacts may be compounded by impacts on populations of pollinator species and land use issues caused by the demands of a burgeoning global population.  I would accept that higher CO2 is good for life generally, but it is hard to see how it is good for Homo sapiens specifically.   

Whilst in the controlled conditions of a lab or commercial greenhouse, increased CO2 can significantly boost growth in some plants, the evidence in the real world does not support it, where, more often than not, other factors – such as soil fertility and water availability are the limiting factors to growth/ production. There are also species that respond to increasing temperatures by reducing growth (often to limit moisture loss). 

It is also expected, that increased energy in the atmosphere is likely to result in increasing numbers of extreme weather events – these can devastate production on a local/ regional scale. Good examples of this include the shortage of the right quality wheat for weetabix due to the poor summer in the UK last year http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-22248961 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-22248961) or the devastation of the Italian basil crop in 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5267796.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5267796.stm)  whilst, of course, any one weather event is impossible to (scientifically) link to increasing CO2, it is an increasingly reasonable connection to make. 

We are entering almost entirely uncharted territory climate wise.  This is because the paleo-historic temperature increases, whether resulting from Milankovitch cycles, or other mechanisms, appears to drive increasing atmospheric CO2 levels.  In the current situation, the reverse is true - the consensus is that increasing CO2 will drive temperatures upwards.  The only occasion when there is clear evidence that this happened before is the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum.  The PETM resulted in a mass extinction (and subsequent re-radiation) of foraminifera species (a kind of plankton) but also in the diversification of mammal species.   Unfortunately, the cause of the PETM is unclear, although there is a lot of academic interest in it.


* as is much of the assumption heavy analysis / group think posted on Anthony Watt’s site.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 18/05/2013 13:55:00
Mazurka says
 In the current situation, the reverse is true - the consensus is that increasing CO2 will drive temperatures upwards.

Henry says
huh?
You actually have the  results (from actual tests and measurements)  that I have been looking for?
Where are they?

I first studied the mechanism by which AGW is supposed to work. I will spare you all the scientific details. I quickly figured that the proposed mechanism implies that more GHG would cause a delay in radiation being able to escape from earth, which then causes a delay in cooling, from earth to space, resulting in a warming effect. 

It followed naturally, that if more carbon dioxide (CO2)  or more water (H2O) or more other GHG’s were to be blamed for extra warming we should see minimum temperatures (minima) rising faster, pushing up the average temperature (means) on earth.

I subsequently took a sample of 47 weather stations, analysed all daily data, and determined the ratio of the speed in the increase of the maximum temperature (maxima), means and minima.

You will find that if we take the speed of warming over the longest period (i.e. from 1973/1974) for which we have very reliable records, we find the results of the speed of warming, maxima : means: minima

0.036 : 0.014 : 0.006 in degrees C/annum.

That is ca. 6:2:1. So it was maxima pushing up minima and means and not the other way around. Anyone can duplicate this experiment and check this trend in their own backyard or at the weather station nearest to you.

 Having effectively found little or no real evidence of AGW in the temperature records, I did notice that anyone (like me) now querying the “certainty” of “climate change” being due mostly to AGW, are mocked or vilified in the media and the blogosphere. However, it also appeared to me that most people do not even understand the very basics of the chemistry involved. Any (good) chemist knows that there are giga tons and giga tons of bi-carbonates dissolved in the oceans and that (any type of) warming would cause it to be released:

HCO3- + heat => CO2 (g) + OH-.

This is the actual reason we are alive today. Cause and effect, get it? There is a causal relationship. More warming naturally causes more CO2. Without warmth and carbon dioxide there would be nothing, really. To make that what we dearly want, i.e. more crops, more trees, lawns and animals and people, nature uses water and carbon dioxide and warmth, mostly.

<link to scientifically unsupported blog removed, in line with previous notifications by the mod. team>
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 19/05/2013 17:37:59
henry@bored chemist
they did tests in 1970 with rats
they upped the mixture to 60% CO2
but still had 20% oxygen
the rats would not die
(I have no pity on those rats)
Roempps
check it yourself/ @ Roempps
CO2 is not a poison
the fact that you live actually proves it



And your assertion was that more is better. So, what about 100% CO2?
Also, at levels greater than a few % it is plainly toxic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia#Tolerance

Survival isn't the same as health.

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 19/05/2013 19:19:31
bored chemist says
Also, at levels greater than a few % it is plainly toxic.

henry says
who uses wiki for reference?
roempps suggests that maybe at a few % it becomes a bit uncomfortable, but never toxic.
everything at high concentration becomes toxic eventually, even sugar or salt.
Anyway, we are talking about a few hundredth of a %, not one or two %
it went from 0.03% to 0.04% in 100 years.
and the result was this:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/

the earth is getting greener

this is why they add it to greenhouses (1500 ppm)

so more carbon is OK!
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: wolfekeeper on 20/05/2013 00:24:51
No, as I understand it, the studies indeed show some increase in growth, but then the vegetation gets limited by other factors.

Meanwhile the higher temperatures reduce growth. In addition higher temperatures are going to increase desertification and similar issues.

While the biosphere can adapt in the very long run, the changes are happening much too quickly.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 20/05/2013 01:04:11
from henry (moreCarbonOK):
Quote
Clifford,
are you a chemisdt?
Any (good) chemist knows that there are giga tons and giga tons of bi-carbonates dissolved in the oceans and that (any type of) warming would cause it to be released:

HCO3- + heat => CO2 (g) + OH-.

This is the actual reason we are alive today. Cause and effect, get it? There is a causal relationship. More warming naturally causes more CO2. Without warmth and carbon dioxide there would be nothing, really. To make that what we dearly want, i.e. more crops, more trees, lawns and animals and people, nature uses water and carbon dioxide and warmth, mostly.

Wake up out of your dream worlds. More CO2 is better. I hope you at least agree with me on that.

Henry are you a chemist? Any (good) chemist knows that there must be a stoichiometric balance in an equation system like the one you have been quoting so frequently to justify your simplistic assumption.

If the equation that you are relying on to account for the increase in atmospheric CO2 as the result of increasing temperature, then the alkalinity of sea water would be rising in accordance with the increase in atmospheric CO2. In fact it has been falling. This is more in line with the conventional explanation of a steady increase in atmospheric CO2 in line with human activity, with approximately one third of the additional CO2 burden being taken up by the world's oceans. An analysis of the global sources and sinks of CO2 also matches the conventional explanation: CO2 is mostly generated over land, and much more over populated industrialized land, and is mostly absorbed in the oceans. The models now have a fine enough resolution to pick out specific areas of ocean, e.g. the Behring Strait, where CO2 is being released to the atmosphere. But they are more than compensated for by the overall effect of the oceans in absorbing CO2. (By the way this has been confirmed by direct measurement).
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Mazurka on 20/05/2013 10:03:56
Mazurka says
 In the current situation, the reverse is true - the consensus is that increasing CO2 will drive temperatures upwards.

Henry says
huh?
You actually have the  results (from actual tests and measurements)  that I have been looking for?
Where are they?

I was referring to the observed lag of CO2 levels behind temperatures through most of the quaternary. In other words other mechanisms were forcing the climate change observed -  this is likely to primarily be the Milankovitch cycles.  The one event where it appears temperature rise lags behind CO2 levels is the PETM. 

Quote
I first studied the mechanism by which AGW is supposed to work. I will spare you all the scientific details. I quickly figured that the proposed mechanism implies that more GHG would cause a delay in radiation being able to escape from earth, which then causes a delay in cooling, from earth to space, resulting in a warming effect. 

It followed naturally, that if more carbon dioxide (CO2)  or more water (H2O) or more other GHG’s were to be blamed for extra warming we should see minimum temperatures (minima) rising faster, pushing up the average temperature (means) on earth.
  Whilst I accept the logic of this, I disagree as it is an over simplification of an exceedingly complex system, that we (mankind) have an imperfect understanding of.

Quote
I subsequently took a sample of 47 weather stations, analysed all daily data, and determined the ratio of the speed in the increase of the maximum temperature (maxima), means and minima.

You will find that if we take the speed of warming over the longest period (i.e. from 1973/1974) for which we have very reliable records, we find the results of the speed of warming, maxima : means: minima

0.036 : 0.014 : 0.006 in degrees C/annum.

That is ca. 6:2:1. So it was maxima pushing up minima and means and not the other way around. Anyone can duplicate this experiment and check this trend in their own backyard or at the weather station nearest to you.
That does seem to be a very small data sample.  I vaugely recall an analysis on WUWT in realtion to the locations of weather stations that fell apart quite quickly after it was scrutinised
Quote
Having effectively found little or no real evidence of AGW in the temperature records, I did notice that anyone (like me) now querying the “certainty” of “climate change” being due mostly to AGW, are mocked or vilified in the media and the blogosphere.
It depends on where you look.  The group think/ confirmation bias seen at WUWT and similar blogs very much applauds "skeptic" coments/ polemic
Quote
However, it also appeared to me that most people do not even understand the very basics of the chemistry involved. Any (good) chemist knows that there are giga tons and giga tons of bi-carbonates dissolved in the oceans and that (any type of) warming would cause it to be released:

HCO3- + heat => CO2 (g) + OH-.

This is the actual reason we are alive today.
Whilst I hesitate from making what could be seen as an Ad hominem comment, thus confirming your perception that self claimed climate skeptics are attacked in the blogosphere, I think this statement illustrates the problem.  It is partially true.  It is a contributory factor as to why mankind is alive today not the "actual reason" why we are here today.  There was plenty of CO2  in the atmosphere before the Oxygenation event 1.8Ga...

Quote


Cause and effect, get it? There is a causal relationship. More warming naturally causes more CO2. Without warmth and carbon dioxide there would be nothing, really. To make that what we dearly want, i.e. more crops, more trees, lawns and animals and people, nature uses water and carbon dioxide and warmth, mostly.

<link to scientifically unsupported blog removed, in line with previous notifications by the mod. team>
Again, a facile generalisation, no one is disagreeing with the notion that warmth and CO2 are factors  essential to life as we know it.  I disagree that in reality "on the ground", that increased CO2 universally leads to more growth.  This is because other factors are important to life as well.  Furthermore, extremes of weather driven by climate change  can,  in a timescale as short as a few hours, destroy harvests of particular crops.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 20/05/2013 12:40:54
wolfekeeper syas
No, as I understand it, the studies indeed show some increase in growth, but then the vegetation gets limited by other factors.

Henry says
The benefits of carbon dioxide supplementation on plant growth and production within the greenhouse environment have been well understood for many years.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an essential component of photosynthesis (also called carbon assimilation). Photosynthesis is a chemical process that uses light energy to convert CO2 and water into sugars in green plants. These sugars are then used for growth within the plant, through respiration. The difference between the rate of photosynthesis and the rate of respiration is the basis for dry-matter accumulation (growth) in the plant. In greenhouse production the aim of all growers is to increase dry-matter content and economically optimize crop yield. CO2 increases productivity through improved plant growth and vigour. Some ways in which productivity is increased by CO2 include earlier flowering, higher fruit yields, reduced bud abortion in roses, improved stem strength and flower size. Growers should regard CO2 as a nutrient.

For the majority of greenhouse crops, net photosynthesis increases as CO2 levels increase from 340–1,000 ppm (parts per million). Most crops show that for any given level of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), increasing the CO2 level to 1,000 ppm will increase the photosynthesis by about 50% over ambient CO2 levels. For some crops the economics may not warrant supplementing to 1,000 ppm CO2 at low light levels. For others such as tulips, and Easter lilies, no response has been observed.

Carbon dioxide enters into the plant through the stomatal openings by the process of diffusion. Stomata are specialized cells located mainly on the underside of the leaves in the epidermal layer. The cells open and close allowing gas exchange to occur. The concentration of CO2 outside the leaf strongly influences the rate of CO2 uptake by the plant. The higher the CO2 concentration outside the leaf, the greater the uptake of CO2 by the plant. Light levels, leaf and ambient air temperatures, relative humidity, water stress and the CO2 and oxygen (O2) concentration in the air and the leaf, are many of the key factors that determine the opening and closing of the stomata.

Ambient CO2 level in outside air is about 340 ppm by volume. All plants grow well at this level but as CO2 levels are raised by 1,000 ppm photosynthesis increases proportionately resulting in more sugars and carbohydrates available for plant growth. Any actively growing crop in a tightly clad greenhouse with little or no ventilation can readily reduce the CO2 level during the day to as low as 200 ppm. The decrease in photosynthesis when CO2 level drops from 340 ppm to 200 ppm is similar to the increase when the CO2 levels are raised from 340 to about 1,300 ppm (Figure 1). As a rule of thumb, a drop in carbon dioxide levels below ambient has a stronger effect than supplementation above ambient.
etc. read it here:

http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/00-077.htm

did you notice that life was really lucky to have developed at all with so little CO2 in the air? 180 is the lower limit. Below that, life will not exist.
Everything we eat and drink (except water) depends on CO2
Anyone wanting less of water and CO2 must be daft.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 20/05/2013 12:47:57
wolfekeeper says
Meanwhile the higher temperatures reduce growth. In addition higher temperatures are going to increase desertification and similar issues.

henry says
temperatures are not going up.
if you want to be technical: they have stayed unchanged for 16 years.
If you knew what I know, (by studying maximum temperatures in particular) you would realize that we have started cooling down since about the beginning of the new milennium.
This (cooling) will cause drought, at the higher latitudes, not the lower latitudes.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 20/05/2013 12:54:43
Wolfekeeper says
While the biosphere can adapt in the very long run, the changes are happening much too quickly.

henry says
60% of the CO2 that we put up in the air has simply gone "missing"
where do you think it has disappeared into?
(7 billion people wanting more plants, more lawns, more trees, and more food in their stomachs, perhaps?)
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: wolfekeeper on 20/05/2013 15:27:14
Tell you what, why don't you read the peer-reviewed papers on these subjects, and find out what the truth is rather than hanging out on echo-chamber websites?

I know it's dangerous, for example you might learn something, rather than simply having 'an opinion'; everyone has an opinion, but I personally respect people that have experimental data directly backing up their opinion.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 20/05/2013 16:58:35
wolfekeeper says
rather than simply having 'an opinion'; everyone has an opinion, but I personally respect people that have experimental data directly backing up their opinion.

henry says
I did my own investigations, and very thorough at that, if I may say so myself...

but Imatfaal says

This is a clear warning - one more link to your blog will lead to your suspension. 

imatfaal - moderator

Clearly, this is a catch 21 situation?

You must speak to him, not to me?

try google
climate change henryp
and see if you can find my results...
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: wolfekeeper on 20/05/2013 17:08:22
Sorry, but I don't believe you've done a proper sceptical analysis of the sources. People that have done a proper analysis don't come to the conclusions you have.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 20/05/2013 19:10:50
henry@wolfekeeper
That was a very scientific argument. Thx. for the insult. God bless you for that!
You go with the 97% and..
I go ..ehh.. with myself....
Meanwhile, in another country, we are only 1.5 hours away from the record (cold) in Alaska
and the ice that is NOT melting...
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=47872.msg411911#new
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: wolfekeeper on 20/05/2013 19:25:52
That's weather, not climate, and it's local weather; we already covered that.

You're clearly not listening to us, as well as not reading the research.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 20/05/2013 20:29:05



this is why they add it to greenhouses (1500 ppm)

so more carbon is OK!
More carbon is OK if you are a vegetable.
In particular, if you are a plant which is being looked after in all other respects- most notably the supply of water and other requirements (N, P, K etc).

But, obviously, most wild plants and even crops are not. (Especially in the developing world).
For them , the limiting factor is likely to be water.
And messing with the thermodynamics of the atmosphere means that the rain falls in different places to where it used to.
But the plants can't get up and walk to where the rain is- so they die.

So more CO2 isn't a good thing.
Perhaps you should breathe some until you can come to your own independent view, rather than trusting wiki (or even this).
http://www.bmj.com/content/2/5103/1012 (http://www.bmj.com/content/2/5103/1012)
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: CliffordK on 21/05/2013 01:26:42
As far as CO2 poisoning.  At high levels, carbon dioxide is routinely used as a euthanasia agent.

However, it is likely that humans and most animals would be able to adapt to a slow increase of CO2 over hundreds, or thousands of years.  Certainly significant toxicity wouldn't be reached at levels less than 1% CO2 (10,000 ppm).

That is, except perhaps for crustaceans.  But even the crustaceans have likely evolved during times of relatively high CO2 levels.  One of the problems with the crustaceans is that we are adding the CO2 to the surface of the ocean faster than it can diffuse through the entire ocean.

Plants are divided into C3 plants (many of our grains, wheat, barley, most trees, etc) and C4 plants (corn, sugarcane).  The C4 plants likely are experiencing close to their peak growth rate at current CO2 levels.  Adding more CO2 won't help them significantly.  The C3 plants, on the other hand, will likely experience some increased growth based on the increased CO2 levels, but as BC mentioned, it will also depend on heat, water, other nutrients, and other factors.

Earth has experienced many climate changes in the past, and not everything died off.  But, it may take some time to adapt, and some people believe that the speed at which the climate is currently changing is faster than has happened in the past.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 21/05/2013 07:21:46
henry@clifford & bored chemist.
I looked again at the books.
In the case of rabbits, they found that the animals would not die if they went to 65%, as long as they kept O2 up at normal 21%. On these results I quote from roempps: (translated from german)
"The conclusion from this (i.e. the results as mentioned above) is that as such we can hardly regard CO2 as a poison. This is further proven by the fact that we consume CO2 in large quantities in our bodies with carbonated cooldrinks, without any disadvantage, and that in the human BODY (not plants only!!) CO2 circles around in the blood at comparative high levels (50-60 vol. % in venoesen? blood) of which we daily breath out about 700 grams. Human can breath for hours in 2.5% CO2 without any damage.
end quote; ()& ? is my comment

Anyways, like I said, we are talking about 0.01% added in 100 yrs, not  1 or 2 % or 65%. And I hope you understand that 0.02% is not enough for life.
Even salt and sugar are poisonous if the concentration is high enough....
Danger does exist from CO2 sources, especially natural sources,  because, among other things, we must not forget that it is heavier than air and therefore we can die of asphyxiation (lack of oxygen) rather than CO2 poisoning.

Climate is changing because we are naturally cycling back to cooler times.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=47872.msg411911#new
The models predicted that the arctic would warm,
but I showed you that the models are wrong, anyway.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 21/05/2013 10:38:37
OK then Henry, let us consider the reaction

HCO3(-) + heat ==> CO2 (g) + OH(-)

CO2 (g)  delta H°f = –314 kJ/mol   S° =  213.6 J/mol/K   delta G°f   –315 kJ/mol
HCO3(-)(aq)  delta H°f = –691.99 kJ/mol  S° =  91.2 J/mol/K  delta G°f  = –586.77 kJ/mol
OH(-)(aq)  delta H°f = –230 kJ/mol  S° = –10.75 J/mol/K  delta G°f = –157.24 kJ/mol

reaction  delta H° = 148 kJ/mol  delta S° = 111.65 J/mol/K   delta G° = 114.5 kJ/mol

These figures are taken from standard values at 25°C, so at 15°C  delta G° = 115.7 kJ/mol

how did I arrive at this figure? You will need to put aside your favoured websites and read a bit of genuine chemical thermodynamics!

The equilibrium constant Kp is then given by p(CO2) * a(OH–]/a[HCO3–] = exp (– delta G°rxn /R /T)

Substituting in for a(OH–) and a(HCO3–) gives us

p(CO2) * 7E–7 / 5.E-3 = exp ( –115.7 / 8.314 / 0.288 )

leading to p(CO2) = 5.E-3 * 1.E-21 / 7.E-7 = 7.E-18

Still with me? Good! But what does it mean?

What it means is that sea water, on average, has the capacity to take in more carbon dioxide. Far from being released, this treatment shows that, on the whole, an increase in temperature does not release more carbon dioxide, but that carbon dioxide is continually being slowly taken up by the ocean. The equilibrium partial pressure of carbon dioxide is 7.E-18 atm, and the actual partial pressure of carbon dioxide is around 3.9E-4 atm

In order to participate properly in a scientific debate, you need to be particularly well read in the subject matter, you need to have done some original research and submitted it for peer review, and you need to listen to and carefully consider the reviewers' criticisms. If the journal editor refuses to submit your material for peer review that is usually a sign that your work is fairly obviously flawed. The alternative conspiracy theory is not really a goer, especially if you submit your work to a forum like this and find that it is not favourably received here either.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 21/05/2013 14:29:17
Henry@Damocles
your calculations are as much putting the horse behind the carriage as the IPCC's

You must always first observe before you "calculate"
What is expressed in my equation is that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere follows the warm periods, it does not cause warming,  I will give you many verifiable references that all seem to agree that CO2 lags by about 600-1000 years, e.g.

http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/ice-core-graph/



Here is a quote from CO2science.org :

For the past two decades or more, we have heard much about the global warming of the 20th century being caused by the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration that is generally attributed to anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This story, however, has always been controversial [see Smagorinsky et al. (1982) and Idso (1982) for early pro/con positions on the issue]; and with the retrieval and preliminary analysis of the first long ice core from Vostok, Antarctica — which provided a 150,000-year history of both surface air temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration — the debate became even more intense, as the close associations of the ups and downs of atmospheric CO2 and temperature that were evident during glacial terminations and inceptions in that record, as well as in subsequent records of even greater length, led many climate alarmists to claim that those observations actually proved that anthropogenic CO2 emissions were responsible for 20th-century global warming.
This contention was challenged by Idso (1989), who wrote — in reference to the very data that were used to support the claim — that “changes in atmospheric CO2 content never precede changes in air temperature, when going from glacial to interglacial conditions; and when going from interglacial to glacial conditions, the change in CO2 concentration actually lags the change in air temperature (Genthon et al., 1987).” Hence, he concluded that “changes in CO2 concentration cannot be claimed to be the cause of changes in air temperature, for the appropriate sequence of events (temperature change following CO2 change) is not only never present, it is actually violated in [at least] half of the record (Idso, 1988).”

How has our understanding of this issue progressed in the interim? Our website provides several updates.

Petit et al. (1999) reconstructed histories of surface air temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration from data obtained from a Vostok ice core that covered the prior 420,000 years, determining that during glacial inception “the CO2 decrease lags the temperature decrease by several thousand years” and that “the same sequence of climate forcing operated during each termination.” Likewise, working with sections of ice core records from around the times of the last three glacial terminations, Fischer et al. (1999) found that “the time lag of the rise in CO2 concentrations with respect to temperature change is on the order of 400 to 1000 years during all three glacial-interglacial transitions.”

On the basis of atmospheric CO2 data obtained from the Antarctic Taylor Dome ice core and temperature data obtained from the Vostok ice core, Indermuhle et al. (2000) studied the relationship between these two parameters over the period 60,000-20,000 years BP (Before Present). One statistical test performed on the data suggested that shifts in the air’s CO2 content lagged shifts in air temperature by approximately 900 years, while a second statistical test yielded a mean lag-time of 1200 years. Similarly, in a study of air temperature and CO2 data obtained from Dome Concordia, Antarctica for the period 22,000-9,000 BP — which time interval includes the most recent glacial-to-interglacial transition — Monnin et al. (2001) found that the start of the CO2 increase lagged the start of the temperature increase by 800 years. Then, in another study of the 420,000-year Vostok ice-core record, Mudelsee (2001) concluded that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration lagged variations in air temperature by 1,300 to 5,000 years.

In a somewhat different type of study, Yokoyama et al. (2000) analyzed sediment facies in the tectonically stable Bonaparte Gulf of Australia to determine the timing of the initial melting phase of the last great ice age. In commenting on the results of that study, Clark and Mix (2000) note that the rapid rise in sea level caused by the melting of land-based ice that began approximately 19,000 years ago preceded the post-glacial rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration by about 3,000 years.

So what’s the latest on the issue? To our knowledge, the most recent study to broach the subject is that of Caillon et al. (2003), who measured the isotopic composition of argon — specifically, ð40Ar, which they argue “can be taken as a climate proxy, thus providing constraints about the timing of CO2 and climate change” — in air bubbles in the Vostok ice core over the period that comprises what is called Glacial Termination III, which occurred about 240,000 years BP. The results of their tedious but meticulous analysis led them to ultimately conclude that “the CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 ± 200 years.”

This finding, in the words of Caillon et al., “confirms that CO2 is not the forcing that initially drives the climatic system during a deglaciation.” Nevertheless, they and many others continue to hold to the view that the subsequent increase in atmospheric CO2 — which is believed to be due to warming-induced CO2 outgassing from the world’s oceans — serves to amplify the warming that is caused by whatever prompts the temperature to rise in the first place. This belief, however, is founded on unproven assumptions about the strength of CO2-induced warming and is applied without any regard for biologically-induced negative climate feedbacks that may occur in response to atmospheric CO2 enrichment. Also, there is no way to objectively determine the strength of the proposed amplification from the ice core data.

In consequence of these several observations, the role of CO2 as a primary driver of climate change on earth would appear to be going, going, gone; while the CO2 warming amplification hypothesis rings mighty hollow.

Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
References
Caillon, N., Severinghaus, J.P., Jouzel, J., Barnola, J.-M., Kang, J. and Lipenkov, V.Y. 2003. Timing of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature changes across Termination III. Science 299: 1728-1731.

Clark, P.U. and Mix, A.C. 2000. Ice sheets by volume. Nature 406: 689-690.

Fischer, H., Wahlen, M., Smith, J., Mastroianni, D. and Deck B. 1999. Ice core records of atmospheric CO2 around the last three glacial terminations. Science 283: 1712-1714.

Genthon, C., Barnola, J.M., Raynaud, D., Lorius, C., Jouzel, J., Barkov, N.I., Korotkevich, Y.S. and Kotlyakov, V.M. 1987. Vostok ice core: Climatic response to CO2 and orbital forcing changes over the last climatic cycle. Nature 329: 414-418.

Idso, S.B. 1982. Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe? IBR Press, Tempe, AZ.

Idso, S.B. 1988. Carbon dioxide and climate in the Vostok ice core. Atmospheric Environment 22: 2341-2342.

Idso, S.B. 1989. Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition. IBR Press, Tempe, AZ.

Indermuhle, A., Monnin, E., Stauffer, B. and Stocker, T.F. 2000. Atmospheric CO2 concentration from 60 to 20 kyr BP from the Taylor Dome ice core, Antarctica. Geophysical Research Letters 27: 735-738.

I hope this helps to explain things for you.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: wolfekeeper on 21/05/2013 16:28:53
You're quoting from CO2Science.org, who say with regards their funding:

Nevertheless, questions about funding persist, and they are clearly of great interest to many people, as evidenced by the spate of publicity aroused by the 4 Sep 2006 letter of Bob Ward (Senior Manager for Policy Communication of the UK's Royal Society) to Nick Thomas (Esso UK Limited's Director of Corporate Affairs), as well his criticism of us in his BBC Today Programe interview of 21 Sep 2006 with Sarah Montague, where he pointedly described our Center as being one of the organizations funded by ExxonMobil that "misrepresent the science of climate change."

That we tell a far different story from the one espoused by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is true; and that may be why ExxonMobil made some donations to us a few times in the past; they probably liked what we typically had to say about the issue.


Uh huh. No chance of this being selectively quoted then from the literature, I'm sure that's full and balanced. Oh. Wait.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 21/05/2013 16:35:03
From MoreCarbonOK:
Quote
your calculations are as much putting the horse behind the carriage as the IPCC's
I do not believe that I am, and the scientific jury certainly does not believe that the IPCC is

Quote
You must always first observe before you "calculate"
Yes, certainly, but I have observed carbon dioxide uptake by the oceans, and my calculation only serves to show how ridiculous your use of that equation is in this context.

Quote
What is expressed in my equation is that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere follows the warm periods, it does not cause warming
No, your use of that particular equation does not show that at all. (Actually, all that it really shows is how shallow your understanding of the subject is). Certainly it has been the case throughout the ice ages and interglacial periods that CO2 has followed behind temperature rises. It has been generally a bistable system with a level around 200 ppm in the ice ages rising to around 280 ppm in the interglacials. But what has happened in the last 150 years is that CO2 has risen from 280 ppm to 396 ppm. This has not been preceded by any temperature rise, is a remarkably short period on the time scale of the geological processes that have led to switching between the two attractors, and is easily accounted for by humanity's use of fossil fuels in the industrial revolution.

Quote
I will give you many verifiable references that all seem to agree that CO2 lags by about 600-1000 years, e.g. ...

But I am not disputing this, and nor, if you read the report carefully, is the IPCC.

Quote
Here is a quote from CO2science.org :

A pity you had to use this deniers' webpage as the basis of your lengthy quote, although it does contain many good (if irrelevant) references.

Quote
I hope this helps to explain things for you.

well, no it does not, because all of this looking into the past is quite irrelevant to a new phenomenon brought about by the industrial revolution, and humanity's profligate consumption of fossil fuel reserves.

We have moved from a situation where a bistable system with attractors around 200 and 280 ppm has operated for at least a million years (and where CO2 levels have lagged behind temperature) into an unstable system where the level is 396 ppm and rising fast over a timespan of a mere 150 years
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: wolfekeeper on 21/05/2013 16:53:14
CO2Science.org says:

"our individual scrutinizing of the pertinent scientific literature and our analyses of what we find there, which we have been doing and subsequently writing about on our website on a weekly basis without a single break since 15 Jul 2000, and twice-monthly before that since 15 Sep 1998 ... and no one could pay my sons and me enough money to do that."

Which is very high minded, although Wikipedia lists their yearly funding at $1,001,003 so I fail to see how that really works in practice. They've been paid a million dollars to write on their website once a week?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 21/05/2013 17:45:54
henry@damocles

Going by the various graphs from Joanna, for example, the Medeviel WP was about 0.4 or 0.5 warmer than 1950 but we were almost equal now, I think, in the modern warm period, before turning down now, to cooling.
I personally believe the Medieval WP was slightly warmer than the Modern WP due to the people in the middle ages in Holland being convinced that a north west passage had existed(remember Willem Barentz?).
This was also the time when large parts of Greenland were habitable and the Vikings prospered.There was a quick way via the north to get to America.

So your whole argument there falls a bit in the water.
There is no evidence for AGW in my tables (to which I cannot provide a link, because of Imatfaal). Other people have confirmed it too, by looking at various parameters that affect the GH effect.
e.g.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/17/an-analysis-of-night-time-cooling-based-on-ncdc-station-record-data

sorry if you have built your whole life around the 0.01% CO2
there is no AGW
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: wolfekeeper on 21/05/2013 17:58:48
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fd%2Fdc%2FIPCC_2007_AR4_Figure_6.10_%2528b%2529_%2528c%2529.png&hash=6164c55083b753d4ed826ca69683d7ed)

Yup, nothing to be worried about there; the people being paid $1 million dollars a year by petroleum companies just to run a website to simply deny there's anything going on are likely right.

Funny how the upswing coincides with injecting trillions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, but what possible link could there really be?

Oh wait.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 21/05/2013 21:21:07
"On these results I quote from roempps"
Who or what is that?
Did you not realise that you need to explain "references" like that?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 22/05/2013 06:19:44
henry@bored chemist

sorry
I thought all European chemists knew what I meant
it is Roempps Chemie Lexicon,
(Germany)
it has all the chemical properties of any known substance.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 22/05/2013 06:38:15
henry@wolfekeeper

The graph you referred to is the graph where they made the MWP almost go away
but if you look carefully you will see the peak at around 1000, larger than the ModernWP
(look at the graph on the bottom)

don't forget that there has been a large increase in accuracy of thermometers and temp. recording which also may explain some "warming" late 20th century.

the latest results here confirm my own results:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/monckton_hadcrut4_98month_graphic.png

We already dropped by about -0.1 degree C since 2002 (= one whole solar cycle)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997/to:2014

and according to my own tables we will drop by as much as the maxima are dropping now, accelerating to a bit more than -0.9 degree K per century.
By 2040 we will be back to where we were in in 1950, more or less. The global cooling will not stop until 2039, at least, and then there is some lag after that.



Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: wolfekeeper on 22/05/2013 15:45:51
If you look at the graph the temperature went down by about 0.2 between 1940 and 1960 or so, but the underlying trend was the same as it is now; if the temperature is more or less the same over the last ten years, it means absolutely nothing at all; we get natural variations of that order, but we've never seen a fast rise like the one we've been in since 1900, not in 2000 years. Since 1900 the temperature has gone up by a whole degree, and the CO2 is higher than it's been in millions of years, and we've been injecting huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the biosphere.

Note that the rise was predicted before the measurement, and at some points the experimental actually pointed away from global warming, but as measurements have improved, the signal has come ever more clearly out of the noise; this is the opposite of what happens with pseudoscience. Indeed the case for there not being global warming is becoming ever weaker, to the point where 97% of scientists are pretty sure it's happening, and that it's caused by humans. This is not just the thermometers reading better; the scientists have put in careful adjustments to the raw data to allow for that kind of thing, and the results have been calibrated against things like satellite temperature readings to check that that's been done correctly.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 22/05/2013 18:53:02
Henry@wolfekeeper

we have seen in my posts that the increase in CO2 from 0.03% 0.04% has caused a change in the biosphere:it has started booming. That is why we started adding CO2 in real greenhouses: you want big fruit & vegetable.

What is the logical consequence of this increase of the greening of earth?
What I have noted from my analyses of weather stations from all over the world is that where the change
in vegetation was dramatic, like in Las Vegas, which changed from a desert into a green paradise, in a relative short period of time, some heat gets trapped. Exactly the opposite happened in Tandil (ARG), where deforestation was noted. (If you want to see my tables, ask Imatfaal to approve links to my blog)
In the end, what I concluded from my tables is that
earth is warmed by
1) the sun, mostly
2) by itself (volcanic, core, lunar etc.), a little
3) by the increase in vegetation, a very little bit, due to entrapment of heat

Seeing that I also could see from my tables that the sun is going to take a nap (a figure of speech) I decided that more CO2 and more vegetation is good, to help us against the common (coming) cold....

Follow the results on my blog and you will begin to realize that we are only 6 or 7 years away from the droughts that became known in history as the Dust Bowl droughts 1932-1939 (USA). I think we will not be able to stop that from re-occurring.

Do you understand me now?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: wolfekeeper on 22/05/2013 18:59:41
I understand that you're making new claims about the environment, that this particular effect, which is probably to some degree real, overwhelms all the other effects of raised CO2, many of which are negative, many of which are positive, as well as the effects of the high rate of increase of CO2, which are mostly only negative.

If you claim to know more than 97% of scientists, write it up and submit it to a proper scientific journal. That's how science works.

In the meantime the overall scientific evidence that is in the published record does not seem to agree with you.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 22/05/2013 19:17:58
Henry@wolfekeeper
Climate science is my hobby. No interest in the glory. But I challenge you and anybody to repeat my analyses.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 22/05/2013 19:50:25
henry@bored chemist

sorry
I thought all European chemists knew what I meant
it is Roempps Chemie Lexicon,
(Germany)
it has all the chemical properties of any known substance.

Not all European chemists speak German.
Even Google doesn't recognise it.
Did you mean "Rompp Chemie Lexikon"
(It's a bit useless unless you have log-on credentials and read German)
and, if I am looking for information about human health I will look at the journals that cover that field, like the BMJ, rather than one that specialises in chemistry.

In the meantime, it's good to know that these people didn't really die.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1083623/Two-French-wine-makers-suffocated-carbon-dioxide-fumes-grapes-treading.html
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 22/05/2013 19:59:55
henry@bored chemist

suffocated = lack of oxygen

I told you to be careful with CO2

it is not poisonous

but it is heavy....

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 22/05/2013 20:55:10

It's fairly strongly acidic, It's enough to mess up blood chemistry at concentrations well below those which cause suffocation.
And the thing about drinking carbonated drinks is a red herring too.
The stomach puts up with quite a high concentration of HCl,
but it's bad news to breathe it.
(not to mention the fact that much of the CO2 in cola is burped out)
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 22/05/2013 23:43:54
From Bored chemist:
Quote
Quote from: MoreCarbonOK on Today at 05:19:44
henry@bored chemist

sorry
I thought all European chemists knew what I meant
it is Roempps Chemie Lexicon,
(Germany)
it has all the chemical properties of any known substance.


Not all European chemists speak German.
Even Google doesn't recognise it.
Did you mean "Rompp Chemie Lexikon"
(It's a bit useless unless you have log-on credentials and read German)
and, if I am looking for information about human health I will look at the journals that cover that field, like the BMJ, rather than one that specialises in chemistry.

In the meantime, it's good to know that these people didn't really die.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1083623/Two-French-wine-makers-suffocated-carbon-dioxide-fumes-grapes-treading.html

Sorry BC, but I have to side with henry on the subject of CO2 toxicity.

• First there is the issue of Rompp/Roempp -- these are two alternative renderings of the German o with an umlaut. English does not have any accents over letters, so there are two alternative renderings of Schrodinger/Schroedinger, etc. However Roempps Chemie Lexicon is a printed volume dating from the 1970s (when I started my career as a chemistry researcher/teacher) and climate science has moved on a long way from then. But if henry is only quoting Roempps values for LD50 there would not be too much wrong with them.

• There is also the fact that most urban dwellers are breathing air containing up to 1% CO2 most of the time. The fact that CO2 levels decrease from the source is in fact one of the main points that helps us to unravel the carbon cycle. It is also the reason why the readings for CO2 levels in places like Bulgaria are elevated, and should not be used as the basis of any argument that CO2 levels have exceeded 400 ppm many times in the recent past. There are certain "remote location" monitoring stations which are effectively controlled for CO2 levels: these include Mauna Loa (Hawaii), Cape Grim (NW Tasmania), Amundsen-Scott (South Pole), American Samoa, etc.

• It is also a fact that levels of 400 ppm have no toxic effects on humans. When we get to levels of 10% and above then we need to consider the possibility. At lower levels it is unlikely that there are any chronic effects of toxicity, and is there not some evidence that CO2 helps the breathing reflex?

• The French wine makers who were unfortunately killed almost certainly met their deaths as the result of "pooling". A gas that is heavier than air will accumulate under the influence of gravity while it remains unmixed into the air. Once mixed, it will not "unmix", but until it mixes in it can form pools in low lying areas or near strong sources, and exclude the oxygen.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 23/05/2013 07:22:20
Thank you, Damocles, for coming to my help there. I appreciate. I rely on my Roempps more than Wiki, which I often find "adapted" and "controlled" to fit in with general opinion. It won't be long and we will be back to like it was in German Nazi time, with all information being controlled (by the anti-christ).

Did you perhaps catch my argument here:
Quote
we have seen in my posts that the increase in CO2 from 0.03% 0.04% has caused a change in the biosphere:it has started booming. That is why we started adding CO2 in real greenhouses: you want big fruit & vegetable.

What is the logical consequence of this increase of the greening of earth?
What I have noted from my analyses of weather stations from all over the world is that where the change
in vegetation was dramatic, like in Las Vegas, which changed from a desert into a green paradise, in a relative short period of time, some heat gets trapped. Exactly the opposite happened in Tandil (ARG), where deforestation was noted. (If you want to see my tables, ask Imatfaal to approve links to my blog)
In the end, what I concluded from my tables is that
earth is warmed by
1) the sun, mostly
2) by itself (volcanic, core, lunar etc.), a little
3) by the increase in vegetation, a very little bit, due to entrapment of heat

Seeing that I also could see from my tables that the sun is going to take a nap (a figure of speech) I decided that more CO2 and more vegetation is good, to help us against the common (coming) cold....

Follow the results on my blog and you will begin to realize that we are only 6 or 7 years away from the droughts that became known in history as the Dust Bowl droughts 1932-1939 (USA). I think we will not be able to stop that from re-occurring.

Do you understand me now?

You are probably going to argue that this does not prove that CO2 on its own also does not trap heat, so how can I be sure?
Well, I did investigate that matter, at the very first beginning when I started to look at this problem. Here in Pretoria we get a lot of inversion, during winter times. In winter, also, people start burning fossil fuels for heating. So in winter there is elevated CO2 in the air. What I did was checking the rate of the trend in warming in winter months and compared it to the rate of the trend in warming in the summer months (in Pretoria) from 1973 to present (2011, at that time). There was no difference. If anything, the reverse was true. It is a pity that I lost my own report on that, when they made changes to my blog, so I cannot give you a reference. However, I think we can repeat the statistical analysis.


Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 23/05/2013 11:10:16
henry I am very much afraid that you are not listening nor reading carefully. You are also being very repetitive with your arguments. If you fail to convince people the first time you put a particular argument you are not likely to do anything other than annoy them by repeating it. I cannot really be bothered to point out all of your misconceptions, many of which would be eliminated if you were to read a bit of chemical thermodynamics, which I would hope would not be part of a conspiracy theory!

henry from reply #35 and repeated in reply #42
Quote
In the end, what I concluded from my tables is that
earth is warmed by
1) the sun, mostly
2) by itself (volcanic, core, lunar etc.), a little
3) by the increase in vegetation, a very little bit, due to entrapment of heat

If most of the Earth's warmth comes from the sun, then there is a very simple radiation balance equation that can be performed to calculate an equilibrium temperature at a planet whose distance from the sun is the same as the Earth's. The result is that the average temperature at the Earth's surface "should be" –20°C. In fact, fortunately for us, the average temperature is actually +15°C. Is something wrong with the model? Well, no, because we can observe the moon, which qualifies as a planet the same distance from the sun as the Earth, and we find an average temperature of –20°C.
The Earth's internal heat generation can account for at most about 1°C. (I have no idea what the third source of heat can be but I note that you say that it is even smaller than the geothermal contribution). So what is missing from the model? The greenhouse effect, which is around 90% due to water vapour and around 10% due to carbon dioxide. So if there is a natural greenhouse effect contributing around 35°C and human activity is putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, there would at least be a prima facie expectation of an increasing temperature.

henry from reply #42:
Quote
I rely on my Roempps more than Wiki, which I often find "adapted" and "controlled" to fit in with general opinion.

damocles from reply #41:
Quote
However Roempps Chemie Lexicon is a printed volume dating from the 1970s (when I started my career as a chemistry researcher/teacher) and climate science has moved on a long way from then. But if henry is only quoting Roempps values for LD50 there would not be too much wrong with them.
The fact is that Roempps on anything to do with climate science is about 40 years behind the latest research, while wikipedia is right up with it.

henry from reply #1:
Quote
Any (good) chemist knows that there are giga tons and giga tons of bi-carbonates dissolved in the oceans and that (any type of) warming would cause it to be released:

HCO3- + heat => CO2 (g) + OH-.

This is the actual reason we are alive today.

Damocles in reply #41 pointed out that urban air typically contains rather more CO2 than remote location air. This indicates strong sources of CO2 in or near major cities rather than CO2 being emitted from the oceans (even if the latter were not clearly ludicrous for good reasons of chemical thermodynamics).

And finally henry tried to use figures from 2 stations in Eastern Europe that were not in the network of remote location stations to indicate that CO2 levels had exceeded 400 ppm in the recent past -- undoubtedly they had indeed indicated this, but that is only because they were close to sources, and the daily readings would depend on which way the wind was blowing.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 23/05/2013 15:34:33
henry@damocles

You are not good at providing actual (measured) results (from tests) that prove your position, like I do. No word on my results here on Pretoria where elevated CO2 during winter does not cause any change in the difference of Tmax- Tmin compared to summer months. It is you who keeps on referring to calculations that are based on misconceptions. For example, we know that at TOA the TSI is reasonably constant but incoming at sea level is what varies. In this respect, Trenberth simply forgot that besides ozone, the E-UV from the sun also produces peroxides and nitric oxides that also back radiate. The oceans (SH, mostly) then get less F-UV. Incoming UV is immediately transferred to heat, due to the strong absorptivity of water in the UV.
If you go back to that solar spectrum that I showed you, and to Trenberth's papers,  you can see that the peroxides and nitric oxides are not mentioned.
So, on 1) there is a large unknown factor, also known as Trenberth's missing energy. I think I found it. My results suggest that earth is most likely on an 88 year A-C wave, the so-called Gleissberg solar/weather cycle, with ca. 44 years of warming followed by 44 years of cooling.
On 2) you have no specific values because nobody has
On 3) we can say from the results that (more) vegetation does trap some (extra) heat, but it won't be such a lot. Rompps does report some values for this in 1974, (sonnenenergie) and it is not so much. Either way, it is not up to date. I could not find any other up to date values. Note that there has been a big increase in greenery over the past 40 years.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 23/05/2013 20:05:09
From Bored chemist:
Quote
Quote from: MoreCarbonOK on Today at 05:19:44
henry@bored chemist

sorry
I thought all European chemists knew what I meant
it is Roempps Chemie Lexicon,
(Germany)
it has all the chemical properties of any known substance.


Not all European chemists speak German.
Even Google doesn't recognise it.
Did you mean "Rompp Chemie Lexikon"
(It's a bit useless unless you have log-on credentials and read German)
and, if I am looking for information about human health I will look at the journals that cover that field, like the BMJ, rather than one that specialises in chemistry.

In the meantime, it's good to know that these people didn't really die.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1083623/Two-French-wine-makers-suffocated-carbon-dioxide-fumes-grapes-treading.html

Sorry BC, but I have to side with henry on the subject of CO2 toxicity.



• There is also the fact that most urban dwellers are breathing air containing up to 1% CO2 most of the time. The fact that CO2 levels decrease from the source is in fact one of the main points that helps us to unravel the carbon cycle. It is also the reason why the readings for CO2 levels in places like Bulgaria are elevated, and should not be used as the basis of any argument that CO2 levels have exceeded 400 ppm many times in the recent past. There are certain "remote location" monitoring stations which are effectively controlled for CO2 levels: these include Mauna Loa (Hawaii), Cape Grim (NW Tasmania), Amundsen-Scott (South Pole), American Samoa, etc.

• It is also a fact that levels of 400 ppm have no toxic effects on humans.


.
Where are these urban dwellers who get 1% CO2?
The levels I have seen are about 500 ppm at the most.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/ad_hoc/12755100FullTextPublicationspdf/Publications/sookim/ElevatedAtmosphericCO2ConcentrationandTemperatureAcrossanUrbanRuralTransect.pdf

http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=geosciences_theses

(Page 31 to save you time.)
LD50 is about lethality.
Do you understand that things can cause toxicity at levels that don't kill half the population?
And, since nobody said that 400 ppm would kill (or harm) anyone, it's a red herring.

And I still maintain that a book that most people can't read isn't the best thing to cite.
(BTW, how old are the data)
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 23/05/2013 22:36:47
Quote
Where are these urban dwellers who get 1% CO2?
Indoors, mostly.
From wikipedia article on indoor air quality
Quote
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a surrogate for indoor pollutants emitted by humans and correlates with human metabolic activity. Carbon dioxide at levels that are unusually high indoors may cause occupants to grow drowsy, get headaches, or function at lower activity levels. Humans are the main indoor source of carbon dioxide. Indoor levels are an indicator of the adequacy of outdoor air ventilation relative to indoor occupant density and metabolic activity. To eliminate most Indoor Air Quality complaints, total indoor carbon dioxide should be reduced to a difference of less than 600 ppm above outdoor levels. NIOSH considers that indoor air concentrations of carbon dioxide that exceed 1,000 ppm are a marker suggesting inadequate ventilation. ASHRAE recommends that carbon dioxide levels not exceed 700 ppm above outdoor ambient levels.[17] The UK standards for schools say that carbon dioxide in all teaching and learning spaces, when measured at seated head height and averaged over the whole day should not exceed 1,500 ppm. The whole day refers to normal school hours (i.e. 9.00am to 3.30pm) and includes unoccupied periods such as lunch breaks. European standards limit carbon dioxide to 3500 ppm. OSHA limits carbon dioxide concentration in the workplace to 5,000 ppm for prolonged periods, and 35,000 ppm for 15 minutes.

Quote
LD50 is about lethality.
Do you understand that things can cause toxicity at levels that don't kill half the population?
Yes

Quote
And, since nobody said that 400 ppm would kill (or harm) anyone, it's a red herring.
umm ... Is it not a red herring that you dragged in?

Quote
And I still maintain that a book that most people can't read isn't the best thing to cite.
Agreed. It is a comfortable reference for henry though, because it dates from a time when we had a much poorer understanding of climate science, and the issue of global warming had not been recognized.
Quote
(BTW, how old are the data)
As far as most of the content of the reference is concerned, 40 years plus. As far as LD50 is concerned, anything up to 100 years. But that is not really important because an old measurement of LD50 is likely to be just as reliable as a recent measurement.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 25/05/2013 02:32:46
I said:
Quote
Quote
And, since nobody said that 400 ppm would kill (or harm) anyone, it's a red herring.
umm ... Is it not a red herring that you dragged in?

 My apologies, BC. On re-reading carefully through the thread I find that in fact it was henry who introduced the red herring.

bored chemist says
Also, at levels greater than a few % it is plainly toxic.

henry says
who uses wiki for reference?
roempps suggests that maybe at a few % it becomes a bit uncomfortable, but never toxic.
everything at high concentration becomes toxic eventually, even sugar or salt.
Anyway, we are talking about a few hundredth of a %, not one or two %
...{snip}...
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 25/05/2013 08:56:14
To summarize, we do not know that (more) CO2 causes (more) warming. If it does, probably only very indirectly so, by causing the biosphere to boom. Namely if you look at my tables at Las Vegas, that used to be a desert, you will see the difference Tmax – Tmin decreasing whereas in Tandil (ARG) where they hacked all the trees down, you see Tmax – Tmin rising.
From the beginning I figured that we must rather look at the average change from the average in a specific period of time at a certain place (weather station). To do that you need linear regression.So all of the (black) figures you are looking at in my tables, are the result of a linear regression.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[link to my tables has been removed to please Imatfaal}

My sample of weather stations was balanced by latitude and 70/30 sea/land. I looked at average yearly temps. so that the influence of longitude is cancelled out.
How do I know my tables are right? First of all, if you look at the table for means, you will see that we warmed by about 0.013 or 0.014 degrees C/annum over the past 32 years. A similar result is reported by Spencer and he looked at data from the satellites. Others also reported the same result. So we warmed by about 0.4 K over the past 32 years, on average.
This warming is an average, taking over time. Obviously the speed of warming in each year is different. This is best seen in my first table, on the bottom, where we can see a gradual drop in maximum temperatures that seemed to follow a binomial distribution. In the end, I decided it must be an A-C wave. I hope it is, because if it is not, I am not sure where we will end up.
So, don’t tell me statistics does not work. It works!! And it tells everything you want to know. I am stunned that nobody has yet been able to reproduce my results.They are all just lazy, or they rather do not want to know what the figures are telling us.
[The average temperature data from the stations were obtained from http://www.tutiempo.net.
I tried to avoid stations with many missing data. Nevertheless, it is very difficult finding weather stations that have no missing data at all. If a month’s data was found missing or if I found that the average for a month was based on less than 15 days of that month’s data, I looked at the average temperatures of that month of the preceding- and following year, averaged these, and in this way estimated the temperatures of that particular month’s missing data]
Based on my results, we can see that by 2040 we will be back to where we were in 1950, more or less.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 25/05/2013 15:29:19
OK, The original assertion from Henry was
 "Wake up out of your dream worlds. More CO2 is better. I hope you at least agree with me on that."
Now whether you think CO2 is only a problem at 65% (according to some rats) and above or about 0.5% (according to OSHA)
or above 300 ppm according to the environment, the point is that more that that cut off (whichever one you choose) is a bad thing so .
Henry's original assertion is wrong above 65%, wrong  above 0.5% or wrong above 300 ppm.
The only question is not if it's wrong, but just how wrong it is.

There is also a ridiculous level of difference between saying that
"most urban dwellers are breathing air containing up to 1% CO2 most of the time."
(1% is 10,000 ppm) and reality saying "Air Quality complaints, total indoor carbon dioxide should be reduced to a difference of less than 600 ppm above outdoor levels. NIOSH considers that indoor air concentrations of carbon dioxide that exceed 1,000 ppm are a marker suggesting inadequate ventilation. ASHRAE recommends that carbon dioxide levels not exceed 700 ppm above outdoor ambient levels.[17] The UK standards for schools say that carbon dioxide in all teaching and learning spaces, when measured at seated head height and averaged over the whole day should not exceed 1,500 ppm. The whole day refers to normal school hours (i.e. 9.00am to 3.30pm) and includes unoccupied periods such as lunch breaks. European standards limit carbon dioxide to 3500 ppm. OSHA limits carbon dioxide concentration in the workplace to 5,000 ppm for prolonged periods, and 35,000 ppm for 15 minutes."

Do the maths- only one of those figures is over 1% and they say that a level like that should only be tolerated for 15 mins or less.

So the assertion that "most urban dwellers are breathing air containing up to 1% CO2 most of the time"
is flatly and obviously false except in the trivial sense that 500 ppm is "up to 1%" because it's massively less than 1%.

"Carbon dioxide at levels that are unusually high indoors may cause occupants to grow drowsy, get headaches, or function at lower activity levels. "
Is a statement of the toxic effects of CO2 so can we stop pretending that it's not toxic?

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 26/05/2013 08:32:36
BC says
So the assertion that "most urban dwellers are breathing air containing up to 1% CO2 most of the time"
is flatly and obviously false except

Henry says
how do you know? Typically, they have these concentrations in green houses in Holland where they grow tomatoes.
In submarines they let it go up to 4000 ppm with no effect.
If the place of work is in downtown New York with high rises in the street and lots of traffic, I can imagine that the CO2 gets higher than 1%, especially if there is little or no wind. This is because it is heavy. We have already seen that the danger of the CO2 is not its poisonous nature, but that it is heavy. It takes some time to mix in and diffuse. The benefit of more CO2 in the air is a booming biosphere and this may help us a bit as we are entering a time of global cooling, by (the extra vegetation) trapping some heat. So anything that can help us to stay warm is good. That is good for life.
More carbon is OK.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 26/05/2013 10:28:43
Thank you for providing me with the data which shows that you are wrong.
"In submarines they let it go up to 4000 ppm with no effect."
Why don't they let it go up further?
Obviously, because it does have an effect (and, equally obviously, not a good effect)
Also, it may shock you to learn that most urban dwellers don't live in Dutch greenhouses.

"We have already seen that the danger of the CO2 is not its poisonous nature, but that it is heavy."
Stop denying reality.
The drowsiness + headaches that were discussed earlier are evidence of a toxic effect.
"I can imagine that the CO2 gets higher than 1%, especially if there is little or no wind. "
Who cares what you can imagine?
I already posted some measurements.
Why do you think your imagination is more important that the truth?


Learn some physics
"(the extra vegetation) trapping some heat".
Plants transpire, in doing so they evaporate a lot of water. Doing that takes energy.
They cool their environment rather than trapping heat.

"More carbon is OK"
True, the problem is that people keep burning it and making CO2.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 26/05/2013 12:29:55
bored chemist says
Why don't they let it go up further?

henry says
you demonstrate that you still don't understand it.
We have shown to you that CO2 is not poisonous. For pete's sake, you have it in your blood.
Smokers do not die (immediately) from inhaling  near 100% CO2

Obviously, any substance becomes toxic at very high concentrations, even sugar and salt.

However, the rabbits would not die at 65% CO2,  PROVIDED oxygen was kept at 21%
There is the problem. As soon as CO2 goes up, other components of the air go down, especially oxygen, if you are burning something.
And that creates the  problem (of inconvenience) , especially for people with breathing problems.
For people that suffer from hyper ventilation, CO2 is a miracle cure.....
Wiki is not right there, again.

Now go along, ask your doctor or GP , what he writes on the death certificate in the case of a suicide by a person who gasses himself in a car with exhaust fumes.
Hint: it will not be:  CO2 poisening.
CO2 poisening does not exist. You will die of lack of oxygen before you die of CO2 poisening....

Best wishes
MoreCarbonOK
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 26/05/2013 13:12:03
"We have shown to you that CO2 is not poisonous. "
No.
You have cited evidence that, even at fairly low concentrations, it's toxic- for example it causes headaches. These are not due to oxygen deficiency.
If breathing or combustion added 1000 ppm of CO2 to the air then it would remover 1000 ppm of oxygen.
That does reduce the amount of oxygen available, but so does a drop in air pressure caused by the weather.
The changes caused by the weather are rather bigger than those caused by the conversion to CO2
So, it's not the drop in oxygen concentrations which causes the headaches and so on, it's the toxic effect of CO2

Is it that you don't think a headache is a toxic effect or are you labouring under the misunderstanding that the headache is due to oxygen deprivation?

"For pete's sake, you have it in your blood."
For Paracelsus's sake there's lead and cyanide in my blood- but at levels which are not toxic.

"Smokers do not die (immediately) from inhaling  near 100% CO2"
No, but they would die from the nuclear radiation that would need to be produced from converting the nitrogen in the air to CO2.
Would it be better if you understood what you are talking about, before you made comments like that?


"For people that suffer from hyper ventilation, CO2 is a miracle cure....."
Miracle is overstating it- the science is well known- though not, it seems, by you.
However, at least you have accepted that CO2 has a physiological effect that's not just oxygen deprivation.

Taken to excess and in the absence of initial hyperventilation, that physiological effect is, of course, toxic.

"Now go along, ask your doctor or GP , what he writes on the death certificate in the case of a suicide by a person who gasses himself in a car with exhaust fumes.
Hint: it will not be:  CO2 poisening. "
Indeed, it will be carbon monoxide poisoning, because, unlike you, he knows what he's talking about.
Here's a video of a man who is suffering from CO2 poisoning.
http://www.hse.gov.uk/diving/video/co2video.htm

You will probably try to say that it's oxygen deficiency.
No, it's CO2 toxicity.
The sorbent in the rebreather failed, but the oxygen delivery system was working fine. It will have maintained the O2 levels as they should be.

What would it take to get you to realise that you have already cited evidence that CO2 is toxic- you just haven't understood it.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 26/05/2013 23:51:49
OK then,

First I am owing BC another apology because I said "... the fact that most urban dwellers are breathing air containing up to 1% CO2 most of the time."

I should have said "... the fact that many urban dwellers are breathing air containing up to 0.15% CO2 much of the time."

(Certainly my original statement is a fact in the "trivial" sense pointed out by BC, but I was focussed on the lower limit on the toxicity of CO2 rather than the offence I might have been causing another poster that I was criticizing)

To get a bit of authority into the subject, I am just going to quote a few wikipedia articles about CO2 toxicity. Sorry that you do not recognise that wikipedia articles are authoritative henry, but you should not complain too much because they largely support your side of the story.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide

Quote
Toxicity [edit]
See also: Carbon dioxide poisoning
...{ at this point in the original there is a figure showing the main symptoms of CO2 toxicity. It is colour coded with levels ~1%, ~3%, ~5%, and ~8% . The only toxic effect at ~1% is drowsiness, which the text indicates is both mild and reversible. Some of the indicated effects at the higher levels, 5% and 8%, are quite drastic, however.}...
Main symptoms of carbon dioxide toxicity, by increasing volume percent in air. [79]
Carbon dioxide content in fresh air (averaged between sea-level and 10 kPa level, i.e., about 30 km altitude) varies between 0.036% (360 ppm) and 0.039% (390 ppm), depending on the location.[80]
CO2 is an asphyxiant gas and not classified as toxic or harmful in accordance with Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals standards of United Nations Economic Commission for Europe by using the OECD Guidelines for the Testing of Chemicals. In concentrations up to 1% (10,000 ppm), it will make some people feel drowsy.[79] Concentrations of 7% to 10% may cause suffocation, manifesting as dizziness, headache, visual and hearing dysfunction, and unconsciousness within a few minutes to an hour.[81]
Because it's heavier than air, in locations where the gas seeps from the ground (due to sub-surface volcanic or geothermal activity) in relatively high levels, without the dispersing effects of wind, it can collect in sheltered/pocketed locations below average ground level, causing animals located therein to be suffocated. Carrion feeders attracted to the carcasses are then also killed. For example, children have been killed the in same way near the city of Goma due to nearby volcanic Mt. Nyiragongo.[82] The Swahili term for this phenomena is 'mazuku'.
Adaptation to increased levels of CO2 occurs in humans. Continuous inhalation of CO2 can be tolerated at three percent inspired concentrations for at least one month and four percent inspired concentrations for over a week. It was suggested that 2.0 percent inspired concentrations could be used for closed air spaces (e.g. a submarine) since the adaptation is physiological and reversible. Decrement in performance or in normal physical activity does not happen at this level.[83][84] However, it should be noted that submarines have carbon dioxide scrubbers which reduce a significant amount of the CO2 present.[85].
My interpretation of this is that you do not need to worry about chronically toxic effects of CO2 until the level gets to around 2%, and that both BC and henry are overstating their cases. It is also fairly clear that most if not all of the effects attributed to acute toxicity of high levels of CO2 are the result of asphyxiation via removal of the oxygen supply
From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoor_air_quality
Quote
Carbon dioxide [edit]
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a surrogate for indoor pollutants emitted by humans and correlates with human metabolic activity. Carbon dioxide at levels that are unusually high indoors may cause occupants to grow drowsy, get headaches, or function at lower activity levels. Humans are the main indoor source of carbon dioxide. Indoor levels are an indicator of the adequacy of outdoor air ventilation relative to indoor occupant density and metabolic activity. To eliminate most Indoor Air Quality complaints, total indoor carbon dioxide should be reduced to a difference of less than 600 ppm above outdoor levels. NIOSH considers that indoor air concentrations of carbon dioxide that exceed 1,000 ppm are a marker suggesting inadequate ventilation. ...
My interpretation of this is that elevated indoor CO2 levels are indicative of poor ventilation and elevated levels of other more toxic gases, most notably formaldehyde and carbon monoxide, and that some of the reported effects of CO2 toxicity at lower levels should be reattributed.
I know that both BC and henry are likely to want to come back and scoff at "My interpretation of this is ..." but I would really appreciate it if they produce new evidence of why my interpretations of the articles is ridiculous when they do.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: CliffordK on 27/05/2013 08:10:27
Apparently the target for Spacecraft is less than 0.5% CO2.  However, Apollo 13 got up to about 2% which was considered critical.

"Neurological impairment" was considered to start at about 3%.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12529&page=112

Anyway, we are no where near those levels, at least in the typical outdoor environment.  If levels were slowly increased to say 5% over a period of 1000 years, most species would likely adapt (except perhaps some crustaceans).  Although, if things like migraines don't limit the human ability to procreate, potentially humanity would suffer more than other species.

I think the problem is that we are considering Earth, and all our progeny as one large experiment, without knowing the outcome. 

If we get it right, some plants will experience greater growth, and perhaps longer growing seasons.  Potentially we will never see a return of glacial periods.  Possibly enlarged tropical climates, and more pleasant temperatures in northerly climates.  Species may be shifting, and for some, the changes may be too rapid for them to fully adapt.

If we get it wrong, we'll be battling flooding along all the coasts, and `perhaps enlarged arid areas.  Or, if the impact is over-estimated, we will be spending millions or billions of dollars to fix, or put a band-aid over problems that don't exist.

The prudent course of action would be be invest in conservation.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: JP on 27/05/2013 15:27:18
I dug this up on wikipedia: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia

According to the table it has no significant effects until ~2% concentration in air.  The table comes from an article here:
http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/xmlui/handle/123456789/3861

To quote from the abstract of that article,
Quote
Inhaled carbon dioxide produces the same physiological effects as does carbon dioxide produced metabolically. These effects appear to result from the acidosis induced by carbon dioxide reaction with water, rather than by the CO2 molecule itself. Toxic effects of CO2 do occur when such high concentrations of CO2 are inhaled that severe and disruptive cellular acidosis occurs. This acidosis and its effects are alleviated by lowering the inhaled concentration of CO2.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 27/05/2013 19:30:35
All this talk of concentrations is beside the point.
Henry said  "More CO2 is better."
It's not.

Incidentally, NASA is in a position to be sure that the people exposed are fit and healthy and also that they are only exposed for a relatively short time.
Using their figures as a potential "target" for atmospheric concentrations would condemn quite a lot of the elderly, the very young, and those with respiratory problems to death. Personally, I don't see that as acceptable morally or in terms of common sense. Killing (even some of) your own young isn't clever.

Also, you may wish to consider that the last time the earth's CO2 levels were regularly above 400 ppm the sea levels were (IIRC) about 5 to 40 m higher.
That wipes out a lot of cities.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: evan_au on 28/05/2013 13:16:34
The rebreather accident video shows that as well as having O2 sensors, the rebreather computer should have CO2 sensors.
Then they could set off an alarm when the CO2 levels in the rebreather air get dangerously high.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 28/05/2013 22:00:47
The rebreather accident video shows that as well as having O2 sensors, the rebreather computer should have CO2 sensors.
Then they could set off an alarm when the CO2 levels in the rebreather air get dangerously high.

In reality, yes: but in Henry's world. no. Because CO2 isn't toxic.
He says  "More CO2 is better."
I think he's wrong.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 30/05/2013 08:20:37
BC says

more greenery does not trap heat

henry@BC

deforestation causes cooling, see here

<personal blog removed (again) - posting scientifically unsupported rhetoric - last warning >

and more greenery causes warming,
look at my results for Las Vegas and northern Namibia (big increase in greenery)

ergo

more carbondioxide promotes more greenery

hence

more carbon is OK!

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 30/05/2013 09:57:07

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4rLRObEhC4I


(Ian Plimer, in England, gives a very nice summary about the carbon dioxide that everybody can understand)
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: peppercorn on 30/05/2013 13:54:40
(Ian Plimer, in England, gives a very nice summary about the carbon dioxide that everybody can understand)
...but is fraudulent.

"Plimer has become the go-to guy for Australian deniers and authored a book, Heaven + Earth, critical of climate science. Most of his objections consist of long refuted talking points about solar cycles and bad models. Ian G Entings's lengthy analysis of Plimer's book ran to an impressive 64 pages of errors, misrepresentations and other such fudges. Impressively, the book misrepresents the content of cited sources 43 times, the nature of recreated graphs twice and recorded data at least 10 times.
However, he did come up with an original talking point that has become popular in denialist circles: Underwater volcanoes. Plimer argues that volcanic activity releases more CO2 than all of humanity combined. This was quickly refuted by actual climate scientists who noted that humans released over 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes. Like any good crank, Plimer has continued to put forth these debunked arguments over and over. "
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ian_Plimer

And,
Plimer is a director of seven mining companies (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Ian_Plimer)
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 30/05/2013 15:07:40
henry@peppercorn

Perhaps I should inform you that an attack on the person (ad hominem) instead of anything in particular that he said (in the video) shows your poor character.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 30/05/2013 15:14:28
pepper corn (?) says
<personal blog removed (again) - posting scientifically unsupported rhetoric - last warning >

henry says
ehh, ehh, scratch my head,
this is an observation from data, rather supported by data, i.e. supported rethoric,
that shows that in the south of Argentine, where they hacked all the trees away,
the difference between maxima and minima is increasing,
whereas in other places that saw large increases in greenery the difference between maxima and minima  is decreasing.
please put that link back?
this is daft.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: imatfaal on 30/05/2013 16:25:18
MoreCarbonOK

You have received your last warning (twice) stop linking to your blog and stop moaning about it when you are pinged by the moderators. 

I have shrunk your last post.  There is plenty of peer-reviewed and well-sourced data out there - give links to that, not to your blog.

For your guidance - critiquing the motivation and expertise of person put forward as an expert is not technically an ad hominem.  An ad hominem argument is fallacious due to unsaid proposition that the personality/nature/characteristics of this person, unrelated to the matter at hand, causes his or her argument to be incorrect. 

Peppercorn is advising the membership of the site that the supposed expert has been found to have misrepresented the facts about climate change in the past, has a personal motivation for dissembling in this area, and thus might not be a fair advocate to explain the science; it is a subtle but important difference. 

On the other hand "shows your poor character" - is an insult.  Stop it. 
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 30/05/2013 19:21:23
BC says

more greenery does not trap heat

henry@BC

deforestation causes cooling, see here

<personal blog removed (again) - posting scientifically unsupported rhetoric - last warning >

and more greenery causes warming,
look at my results for Las Vegas and northern Namibia (big increase in greenery)

ergo

more carbondioxide promotes more greenery

hence

more carbon is OK!


Citing your own blog doesn't tell us anything.
Please explain how the process of evaporating water (as done on a big scale by plants) doesn't cool the surroundings.
Alternatively, accept that it does.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 31/05/2013 00:45:53
Henry, it might interest you to know that Plimer's previous target was literal interpretations of the Old Testament. His life was made a misery by pious defenders of a young earth taking out legal actions against him, but then he was rather waving a red flag in front of a bull when he took out his own legal action -- forget what exactly it was but something to do with Noah's flood and being "misled" by their claims.
Plimer is an Aussie.
***
(so much for the "ad hominem")
***

I have not listened to the whole of Plimer's address/submission, but it is inappropriate for him to claim rapid CO2 change in the recent or remote geological past, because the present rate of increase -- 1.5 ppm/yr, or 100ppm in 150 yr (the increase has been roughly exponential)-- simply is beyond the resolution of any of the proxies. It could be true or false, there simply cannot be any evidence either way.

(later ...) OK I decided that that was a rather lazy post. Here is the full detail, which was easy to find on a google search:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Plimer

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 31/05/2013 06:55:16
Henry@BC
Plants extract energy from the sun via photosynthesis and use it to grow and live.  When ever we eat a vegetable we are using energy that a plant has got from photosynthesis.  The calories in things like starchy potatoes , like bread, and sweet sugary fruit come from photosynthesis.  Even when we eat meat we are getting energy from say beef or chicken or lamb - but the animals in turn got the energy from grass and grain - which originally got its energy from photosynthesis.  All the energy you will every use in your body will most likely (I cannot think of an exception) have come (maybe via long route) from the Sun via a plant and photosynthesis.

So, clearly, before we eat this energy, it is still there,
that is how the heat gets trapped?
It is not much though, according to Roempps, but a little bit.

Anyway, my results clearly that show that heat is being trapped by advancing greenery by looking at the decreasing difference of Tmin - Tmax and there where the trees were hacked down you see the difference between Tmax and Tmin rising.

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 31/05/2013 07:00:08
Sorry, Damocles,
I stop here again with this subject
after one of my comments here has been removed
we cannot have an open discussion here
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: imatfaal on 31/05/2013 12:20:02
The comment which was shrunk was a entirely unwarranted complaint against moderation.  You have been told ad nauseam that links to your blog are both unacceptable as evidence and contrary to our forum acceptable usage policy.   You continue to link to your blog - these are deleted by staff.  When you complain on the forum about these deletions we will shrink your posts that moan. 

Please do not play the lone sane voice whose views are censored by the thought police - you have been given greater leeway and more chances than any previous member of this site.   The fact that you can still post after receiving multiple final-warnings shows the tolerance of the moderators and our desire to maintain a plurality of opinions and outlooks even in the face of personal insults.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: yor_on on 31/05/2013 19:31:47
There is a reason for noticing the 400 ppm CO2 :)
A historic one.

"The last time CO2 levels at Mauna Loa were this high, Homo sapiens did not live there. In fact, the last time CO2 levels are thought to have been this high was more than 2.5 million years ago, an era known as the Pliocene, when the Canadian Arctic boasted forests instead of icy wastes. The land bridge connecting North America and South America had recently formed. The globe’s temperature averaged about 3 degrees C warmer, and sea level lapped coasts 5 meters or more higher...

At present pace, the world could reach 450 ppm in a few short decades. The record notches up another 2 ppm per year at present pace. Human civilization developed and flourished in a geologic era that never saw CO2 concentrations above 300 ppm. We are in novel territory again and we show no signs of slowing to get our bearings, let alone stopping." http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2013/05/09/400-ppm-carbon-dioxide-in-the-atmosphere-reaches-prehistoric-levels/

And you Carbon seem to take the denier discussion one step further here. From denying it to arguing that it will be 'good for you' :)

Wouldn't surprise me if there's a sponsor or two waiting in the bushes somewhere, but I'm not sure if it is us on TNS that should be the ones, paving that road, for you? Why not fight it out at that blog of yours instead?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 01/06/2013 09:08:50
Henry@BC
Plants extract energy from the sun via photosynthesis and use it to grow and live.  When ever we eat a vegetable we are using energy that a plant has got from photosynthesis.  The calories in things like starchy potatoes , like bread, and sweet sugary fruit come from photosynthesis.  Even when we eat meat we are getting energy from say beef or chicken or lamb - but the animals in turn got the energy from grass and grain - which originally got its energy from photosynthesis.  All the energy you will every use in your body will most likely (I cannot think of an exception) have come (maybe via long route) from the Sun via a plant and photosynthesis.

So, clearly, before we eat this energy, it is still there,
that is how the heat gets trapped?
It is not much though, according to Roempps, but a little bit.

Anyway, my results clearly that show that heat is being trapped by advancing greenery by looking at the decreasing difference of Tmin - Tmax and there where the trees were hacked down you see the difference between Tmax and Tmin rising.


You are now arguing against yourself here.
Since the energy of the sun is converted into stored energy in the form of carbohydrates and such, that same energy isn't available to heat the surroundings so as we now both have shown, plants make the place cooler.

That's the thing with arguing against the laws of physics: you lose.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: yor_on on 01/06/2013 14:45:24
By the way. I'm still surprised over the amount of 'hits' that Carbons musings procured? Soo many people reading if you check those 'hits' :) None interacting though, except us being at TNS before?
=

And yes, we've passed the point of no return as I see it. We have two immense fields of ice on earth, slowly starting to react to a global warming. As they do a lot of things will change, streams will change, winds will change, farming and your local weather too. People seems to think we will fix it anyway :) They also think that it doesn't really matter if we continue to spew out man-made CO2? As that is what we continue to do, each year. If we thought otherwise I would expect us to stop, but we don't.

I hope they are right.  http://www.skepticalscience.com/pliocene-snapshot.html
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 01/06/2013 17:50:11
Henry@inmatfaal

listen to me carefully as I am only going to tell you once
If you had read all my posts here you would realize that I am saying exactly as what Ian Plimer is saying in the video. So what do you have against me? I am making money out of this? How? Where?
I am just trying to educate you so that one day when we have to do terra forming some place in the universe, on another planet, we actually get it right.

You are what we call in Dutch a "snotkop"
A snotkop, as opposed to a slimkop (somebody who is clever in the head) ,
is somebody who thinks he is clever, but he lacks the experience...
We let such people sometimes make the mistakes that we made in the past,
(if it does not affect the corporation too much), just to teach him a lesson.
Me quoting from Roempss (tests!) rather than WIKI should already made you realize that I could probably be your father, and I will become a granddad soon...
So whatever I say, you treat me with respect.
I have no problem with you or anyone disagreeing with me, with whatever I say,
but you DO NOT DELETE anything I say

If you do not put it back you can just carry on listening to the complete nonsense like yor_on from the SS in the previous comment is trying to put across to you.
Have a great day!

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: peppercorn on 01/06/2013 18:16:23
Henry@inmatfaal

listen to me carefully as I am only going to tell you once.

O' ho ho! Chance would be a fine thing if you only 'told' any of us anything once. Sadly, the reality is you return time and again to spout more of the same unsubstantiated* nonsense that is then repeatedly challenged, dissected and disproven by long-suffering educated members here.

In your 'universe' respect may be a factor of age, or 'experience' (so-called), but on this forum all that is respected is good science.  And you have been shown lacking heartily in that area.

* - NB. here we mean scientifically unsubstantiated.

And I don't think you will do what remains of you arguments any good by stating that you are 'agreeing with Ian Plimer' - as he has previously been shown to be a charlatan by a number of well respected sceptical commentators, ie. science journalists and academics.

The moderators' job is to enforce both the guidelines and the spirit of this science forum (that is primarily, a question and answer 'space').  As we have laid out in both PMs and replies, your rhetorical use of 'personally gathered' data is not permitted under any circumstances when stating an argument on the 'boards here; and likewise posts going after the moderators personally will be shrunk.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: yor_on on 02/06/2013 00:26:45
Think it's high time someone stood up against those repressors of real science (naturally only referring to such science as done by real men, following their vision, lone and proud of it), as those pesky moderators. Hopefully we now at last can correct science into what it should be. Not that corrupted excuse for a word called peer review, and those even worse called 'consensus by ones peers'. A reality where a man at last can speak freely, without hiding from the the naked scientists 'thought police'.

And I think you have that possibility in reach Carbon, at your blog.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 02/06/2013 17:02:57

peppercorn accuses moreCarbonOK:
the reality is you return time and again to spout more of the same unsubstantiated* nonsense that is then repeatedly challenged, dissected and disproven by long-suffering educated members here.

MoreCarbonOk says
Fine, let us just recap for the records?

On the issue if CO2 is a poison:

In the case of rabbits, they found that the animals would not die if they went to 65%, as long as they kept O2 up at normal 21%. On these results I quote from roempps: (translated from german)
"The conclusion from this (i.e. the results as mentioned above) is that as such we can hardly regard CO2 as a poison. This is further proven by the fact that we consume CO2 in large quantities in our bodies with carbonated cooldrinks, without any disadvantage, and that in the human BODY (not plants only!!) CO2 circles around in the blood at comparative high levels (50-60 vol. % in the blood of veins) of which we daily breath out about 700 grams. Human can breath for hours in 2.5% CO2 without any damage."

1-0

On the issue whether the earth is cooling

All data sets, including my own,  show we are cooling from 2002
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2013/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend

if it carries on - and unfortunately my own data set says it will -- we will face serious challenges of climate change, especially in the Great Plains of the USA, namely droughts. Nothing to do with the CO2!!!

2-0

On the issue whether 100 ppm's of CO2 causes more warming, I said, that looking at the current results for global cooling, that seems very unlikely.  I asked whether anybody can show me a balance sheet which shows how much warming and cooling is caused by an increase in 100 ppm of CO2 and nobody could direct me to the balance sheet with actual test results.

3-0

Sorry,
looks to me I am bit ahead of the Naked Scientists, but you are all entitled to believe whatever you want, what was it again, the 98% consensus?

LOL

maybe you did not get that. maybe one day you will.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 02/06/2013 17:22:19
"On the issue if CO2 is a poison:

In the case of rabbits..."
Which matters if you are a rabbit.
However if you are human, it's plainly toxic- the only room for debate is whether that's at 2%, or 5% or so.
1- 0 to Science.

"On the issue whether the earth is cooling
All data sets, including my own,  show we are cooling from 2002"
But nobody takes such a short snapshot seriously so your conclusions are not valid. (and the data might be questionable too, but that's not the real issue)
 2-0 to Science.
"On the issue whether 100 ppm's of CO2 causes more warming, I said, that looking at the current results for global cooling, that seems very unlikely.  I asked whether anybody can show me a balance sheet which shows how much warming and cooling is caused by an increase in 100 ppm of CO2 and nobody could direct me to the balance sheet with actual test results.

"On the issue whether 100 ppm's of CO2 causes more warming, I said, that looking at the current results for global cooling, that seems very unlikely.  I asked whether anybody can show me a balance sheet which shows how much warming and cooling is caused by an increase in 100 ppm of CO2 and nobody could direct me to the balance sheet with actual test results."
Nobody can give an exact figure for 100 ppm will cause x degrees more warming, but they can show that warming will take place (and a simple experiment can show the same thing)
So, as you say, the score is 3-0 ,
Against you, and in favour of science.

Before you post anything arguing  against this, please sit in a room with 80% CO2 and 20% O2 for an hour or so.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: peppercorn on 02/06/2013 17:43:50
OKC:  Aww, thank you :) - I did enjoy your 'scoreboard' lay out; most entertaining *grin*

...as is your stoic abilities for selective amnesia when it comes to all this.
It's almost magnificent in the face of being so repeatedly 'challenged, dissected and disproven'... and to be able to put all that out of your mind and 'go round on the ride again' is sort of strangely innocent. Lovely :)

A point of order, for those enjoying this gentle spiral into the ridiculous, if one is challenging conventional wisdom in science, one needs to find one own -peer reviewed- analysis to overturn accepted views.  Whether anyone did bother to supply OKC with 'a balance sheet which shows how much warming/cooling is caused by a 100 ppm increase in CO2' is really very kind of them but he ultimately needs to do his own 'peer review homework', then maybe he can really (to use his analogy) get a bit closer to 'a shot on goal' (at the opponents end, anyway).
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: yor_on on 02/06/2013 17:53:47
http://precisiondiving.net/blog/hidden-killer-understanding-carbon-dioxide-toxicity/

"Our bodies respond to the elevated partial pressure of the gas. So a safe PPCO2 on the surface is four times higher at 100 feet underwater. The increase of carbon dioxide has the following symptoms: shortness of breath, headache, confusion and loss of conscientiousness (i.e. blacking out and thus drowning). What many people do not know, is that CO2 is four times more narcotic than nitrogen. When I first started doing deep air dives, I felt like complete crap after my dives. I had headaches and was very tired after. While I knew I was narc’ed, I believed that it was from the nitrogen. Instead it was from the CO2. While many scuba diving accidents are blamed on nitrogen narcosis, rarely is CO2 toxicity blamed (which is most likely the case). As you can see in the chart above, CO2 is highly solubility in lipid oil (the test for narcotic potency). As CO2 is significantly more narcotic than nitrogen, the effects can cause a diver to lose mental capacity and not respond in a calm and orderly manner to emergencies. "

http://inspectapedia.com/hazmat/CO2gashaz.htm

"Carbon Dioxide CO2 Exposure Limits & Toxicity to humans: this document discusses normal and abnormal CO2 gas levels, the toxicity and exposure limits for exposure to carbon dioxide gas (CO2). We discuss Carbon Dioxide gas levels in outdoor air, in buildings, typical CO2 levels and conditions under which levels are unsafe. We discuss the symptoms of carbon dioxide poisoning, describe different types of risks where high levels of CO2 may be present, and present data about the effects of CO2 exposure. Seek prompt advice from your doctor or health/safety experts if you have any reason to be concerned about exposure to toxic gases. Links on this page also direct the reader to carbon monoxide gas information in a separate document. We give references and explanation regarding toxicity of Carbon Dioxide."

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx200220r

"The toxicity of carbon dioxide has been established for close to a century. A number of animal experiments have explored both acute and long-term toxicity with respect to the lungs, the cardiovascular system, and the bladder, showing inflammatory and possible carcinogenic effects. Carbon dioxide also induces multiple fetal malformations and probably reduces fertility in animals. The aim of the review is to recapitulate the physiological and metabolic mechanisms resulting from CO2 inhalation. As smokers are exposed to a high level of carbon dioxide (13%) that is about 350 times the level in normal air, we propose the hypothesis that carbon dioxide plays a major role in the long term toxicity of tobacco smoke."

Those together should give an idea of its toxicity. As for doing a study on Global warming? Global warming discuss the heat stored in CO2, not if you're getting poisoned by it :) That's two different things actually, maybe you missed it though. If so I hope I've cleared it up slightly?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: yor_on on 02/06/2013 19:23:44
As for defining at what point we should worry about CO2 as poisonous? That has very little to do with Global warming Carbon. It is also so that when you add one concentration of a gas it might bear on a concentration of some other gas existing, it's fiendishly difficult to define all possibilities there. It's a science, not sooth saying, although deniers seem to assume that if science can't be absolutely precise then it's not science :).

"Atmospheric O2 measurements provide a powerful and independent method of determining the partitioning of CO2 between the oceans and land (Keeling et al., 1996). Atmospheric O2 and CO2 changes are inversely coupled during plant respiration and photosynthesis. In addition, during the process of combustion O2 is removed from the atmosphere, producing a signal that decreases as atmospheric CO2 increases on a molar basis (Figure 2.3). Measuring changes in atmospheric O2 is technically challenging because of the difficulty  of resolving changes at the part-per-million level in a background mixing ratio of roughly 209,000 ppm. These difficulties were first overcome by Keeling and Shertz (1992), who used an interferometric technique to show that it is possible to track both seasonal cycles and the decline of O2 in the atmosphere at the part-per-million level (Figure 2.3). Recent work by Manning and Keeling (2006) indicates that atmospheric O2 is decreasing at a faster rate than CO2 is increasing, which demonstrates the importance of the oceanic carbon sink."  from Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing - IPCC. (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter2.pdf)

You can see a similar reasoning here. "What may be unclear in some cases is whether the sub-acute (sub-toxic) effects at modestly-elevated levels of CO2 in air stem from more from exposure to higher levels of carbon dioxide or whether they are due to reduced levels of oxygen. In an enclosed space such as a tight home or an enclosed basement or work space, increasing the level of CO2 is likely to simultaneously reduce the proportion of Oxygen (O2) in that same breathing air. Some experts opine that complaints that seem to be associated with high CO2 problem in many if not most circumstances are likely to be actually due to the corresponding reduction in available oxygen in air rather than high toxicity levels of CO2 in the air. As carbon dioxide levels climb above a few percent the relative proportions of gases making up that air change: the concentration of oxygen in the air inhaled is reduced as the amount of CO2 is increased.

However, the TOXIC effects of elevated levels of CO2 are serious at levels when the oxygen reduction effects are only minor. [3]" http://inspectapedia.com/hazmat/CO2gashaz.htm

And it's not as simple as you want it to be. Nothing is..
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: yor_on on 02/06/2013 20:28:13
You know Carbon, I can't decide if you're serious, or just argumentative? What worries me is that so many seem to read it, possibly assuming we're having some 'scientific debate'. This is not a scientific debate, at most it is you arguing against climate science, that you personally refuse to accept.

Have a look at this, apropos 'global gas mixing'. Atmospheric Oxygen Decline Due to Fossil Fuel Combustion. (http://www.climateemergencyinstitute.com/atmos_oxy_karen_v-t.html) Not that we need to worry yet, but to me it points to that we still have a fair way to go, to understand all ways a whole world can interact. And Scripps O2 Global Oxygen Measurements. (http://scrippso2.ucsd.edu/) That does not imply that I can ignore the science made though. Neither will I call this a positive trend.
=

(Changed the first link as it actually linked to the Gaia hypothesis :) I don't want that, although the information itself seemed correct, as far as I could judge. Better have ones links as neutral as possible.)
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 03/06/2013 17:47:08
You guys are so pathetic, I almost feel sorry for you/

we were talking (in this post) about 400 ppm (0.04%), not 1  or 2 or 65 or 80%!!!
and I was only saying that if you want to do terra forming, like when we go out to Mars,
life actually needs a lot more than 300 or 400 ppm (as Plimer said).
\ as we have seen,  they are adding 1500 ppms CO2 in the Dutch greenhouses, to stimulate life!
So are we all agreed now that, on that scale,  more CO2 is better (for life)?
please say yes

As to the issue on whether we are cooling or warming: we are currently cooling.
I wish it would go away (because I know warmth is better for life), but I know it won't...
 I found three confirmations in history that we warmed from 1950 or 1951,
and we started the downward curve from 1995, looking at energy-in (max. temps.)


As to whether an increase of 0.01% (100 ppm's), in CO2, as observed from 1950-2013,
causes any global warming, I say that the IPCC made the obvious mistake, that befalls many a scientist.
I made such a similar mistake myself, in a complex investigation, a long time ago. But I learned from it!!
You must first establish true cause, before you apportion blame!!
Here you can see that we never really got to the point of establishing what is causing sudden warming and sudden cooling periods.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/02/multiple-intense-abrupt-late-pleisitocene-warming-and-cooling-implications-for-understanding-the-cause-of-global-climate-change/

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 03/06/2013 18:27:51
"we were talking (in this post) about 400 ppm"
And you said "More CO2 is better"
and we have shown (at some length because you refused to accept it) that your statement is false.

"as we have seen,  they are adding 1500 ppms CO2 in the Dutch greenhouses, to stimulate life!
So are we all agreed now that, on that scale,  more CO2 is better (for life)?
please say yes"
No.
Of course not.
That would be a silly generalisation- just like the one about more CO2 is better.
It is true that, from the point of view of well watered, well fed plants, the growth is faster (and more economic) in 1500 ppm of CO2.
But there's no reason to suppose that such a notion would generalise if we extended it to the whole of teh atmosphere.
Most notably, those plants wouldn't grow under water.
However if we increased the whole of the atmosphere to 1500 ppm we would raise the earth's temperature, melt the ice and flood those greenhouses with sea water.

"As to the issue on whether we are cooling or warming: we are currently cooling."
On what time scale?
"You must first establish true cause, before you apportion blame!!"
But, before you establish cause you need to know   what the effect is.
and, at the moment, the effect is warming.



(Edited to fix typo)

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 03/06/2013 18:39:42
BC says
and, at the moment, the effect is cooling.

henry says
Good heavens BC, either you are confused or you must be drunk.
You were the one who once said:
let's have a planet, let's add some CO2, let's see if the temp. goes up,
it did, so THAT MUST BE IT.....

 I never forgot that!!!

Cheers!
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 03/06/2013 19:18:11
BC says
and, at the moment, the effect is cooling.

henry says
Good heavens BC, either you are confused or you must be drunk.
You were the one who once said:
let's have a planet, let's add some CO2, let's see if the temp. goes up,
it did, so THAT MUST BE IT.....

 I never forgot that!!!

Cheers!

You overlooked the obvious: I made a mistake.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: yor_on on 04/06/2013 02:01:58
Eh, IPCC is not a scientist Carbon?
You can check it out here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change

" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body, set up at the request of member governments. It was first established in 1988 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and later endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly through Resolution 43/53

Thousands of scientists and other experts contribute (on a voluntary basis, without payment from the IPCC) to writing and reviewing reports, which are reviewed by representatives from all the governments, with a Summary for Policymakers being subject to line-by-line approval by all participating governments. Typically this involves the governments of more than 120 countries.

The IPCC does not carry out its own original research, nor does it do the work of monitoring climate or related phenomena itself. "

Hope this help?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 22/06/2013 19:09:15
Your friend JP banned from this site
claiming all that I  said here was proven wrong
I challenged him in a personal note to show me one (scientific) statement that I made where (any)one of you (naked scientists) proved me wrong
and I got no reply,....which shows the kind of person he is...


I encourage anyone of you with questions to try and approach the IPCC, and please tell me if you (ever) received a reply?
I never got any answers....to any of my questions to them...

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 22/06/2013 19:32:57
"I challenged him in a personal note to show me one (scientific) statement that I made where (any)one of you (naked scientists) proved me wrong"
"More CO2 is better"
But a high enough concentration of CO2 is toxic, so more is not better.
So, you were, in fact, proved to be wrong.
Had you forgotten?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 22/06/2013 19:59:56
Henry@BC
I distinctly remember telling you that any chemical or substance, even sugar or salt, becomes toxic at high concentrations...
CO2 is like sugar or salt....
What is so difficult to understand?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 22/06/2013 20:11:18
@BC
clearly in the range of 0.04% or 400 ppm CO2 (earth) to 0.4% orn 4000 ppm (submarine vessel) there is no problem.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 22/06/2013 20:40:08
Which would be relevant, had you claimed that in the range 0 to 4000 ppm more is better.
You would still have been wrong, because the environmental damage gets worse at higher concentrations.
But, since you made the unadorned and unqualified claim that "More CO2 is better" you were still wrong.


OK, so now you are saying "clearly in the range of 0.04% or 400 ppm CO2 (earth) to 0.4% orn 4000 ppm (submarine vessel) there is no problem."
But it's anything but clear that it isn't a problem. There is strong evidence for harm
Practically nobody who understands the climate agrees with you.

So, you are still wrong.
So, once again
"I challenged him in a personal note to show me one (scientific) statement that I made where (any)one of you (naked scientists) proved me wrong"
OK this "clearly in the range of 0.04% or 400 ppm CO2 (earth) to 0.4% orn 4000 ppm (submarine vessel) there is no problem."
is proven wrong because it's far from "clear" (and probably not actually true) that "there is no problem".

Why don't you just accept this, and move on?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: JP on 22/06/2013 21:20:19
Just to set the record straight, since Henry is misrepresenting my PM:

What I said to Henry via PM was that other users had pointed out major scientific flaws in his analyses that he refuses to address.  I warned him to address the science or his posts would be considered evanglism which is against forum rules.

As far as the (temporary) ban goes, it was primarily for personal attacks, especially "You guys are so pathetic, I almost feel sorry for you" posted up above.  Though at this point, he's been repeatedly warned for personal attacks, evangelism, posting links to his blog and copy/pasting content to this site, all of which contributed the ban.  I'm not going to get into any further arguments on moderator decisions in this thread. 
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 22/06/2013 21:21:13
ehhhh...
400 is not enough for the dutch tomato growers....that add 1500...
so more than 400 is better?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 22/06/2013 21:30:43
Here we go again.
Here's a reminder of the explanation I already gave you of why you are wrong about that.
"400 is not enough for the dutch tomato growers....that add 1500..."
That would be a silly generalisation- just like the one about more CO2 is better.
It is true that, from the point of view of well watered, well fed plants, the growth is faster (and more economic) in 1500 ppm of CO2.
But there's no reason to suppose that such a notion would generalise if we extended it to the whole of the atmosphere.
Most notably, those plants wouldn't grow under water.
However if we increased the whole of the atmosphere to 1500 ppm we would raise the earth's temperature, melt the ice and flood those greenhouses with sea water.

Why don't you just accept that you are wrong?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 22/06/2013 22:00:09
BC says
Practically nobody who understands the climate agrees with you

@BC
So, my idea was that you were going to provide me with the balance sheet? Where is it?
Clearly,you have no scientific proof to show me that the net effect of more CO2 is that of warming rather than cooling....
 

More CO2 is caused by more warming.
Since we are cooling, for the past odd 15 years, or so, that argument of more CO2 causing harm (warming) falls flat.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/05/global-warming-theory-has-failed-all-tests-so-alarmists-return-to-the-97-consensus-hoax/



Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 22/06/2013 22:05:19
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agreeing on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics.” Michael Crichton 17 January 2003 speech at the California Institute of Technology
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 22/06/2013 22:16:46
"Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agreeing on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics.” Michael Crichton 17 January 2003 speech at the California Institute of Technology"

That particular logical fallacy was an appeal to authority.
Did you somehow think it was valid?

"Clearly,you have no scientific proof to show me that the net effect of more CO2 is that of warming rather than cooling...."
Well, there is more CO2 and there is warming but there is no cooling
so I hardly have to explain that something which is happening does not cause something which is not happening.
Did you think you had a point there?

Why do you keep raising logical fallacies and re-raising points that have already been addressed?
Is it poor memory or poor understanding or what?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 23/06/2013 16:34:20
bc says
Well, there is more CO2 and there is warming but there is no cooling

henry says
who says it is warming? you have simply not been paying attention to me in the thread of this post?
earlier on this thread we noted that it has been cooling for at least one whole solar cycle
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2013/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend

Note that this result from various data sets is confirmed by my own results which JP says I may not quote...here? JP and your  team has some peculiar rules when it comes to global warming....

If you want to go nit picking you could also ask: how long has is not been warming? That leaves those poor souls whose miserable lives depend on this global warming scam some stay of execution.
e.g.:  this post contains graphs of running trends in global surface temperature anomalies for periods of 12+
 and 16 years. They indicate that we have not seen a warming hiatus this long since the 1970s.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/21/may-2013-global-surface-landocean-temperature-anomaly-update/

However, my own results for the drop in global maxima will show you that the current cooling trend will continue, until at least 2040....or there about.

So, there is no warming trend, and there has not been any, for at least 16 years. You, get on with that. I ask you: why do you keep referring  back to it as if it (i.e. the "global" warming) were truly still happening?


Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 23/06/2013 17:02:58
bc says
Well, there is more CO2 and there is warming but there is no cooling

henry says
who says it is warming? you have simply not been paying attention to me in the thread of this post?
earlier on this thread we noted that it has been cooling for at least one whole solar cycle
[link snipped because it messes up the formatting of the page]
Note that this result from various data sets is confirmed by my own results which JP says I may not quote...here? JP and your  team has some peculiar rules when it comes to global warming....

If you want to go nit picking you could also ask: how long has is not been warming? That leaves those poor souls whose miserable lives depend on this global warming scam some stay of execution.
e.g.:  this post contains graphs of running trends in global surface temperature anomalies for periods of 12+
 and 16 years. They indicate that we have not seen a warming hiatus this long since the 1970s.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/21/may-2013-global-surface-landocean-temperature-anomaly-update/ (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/21/may-2013-global-surface-landocean-temperature-anomaly-update/)

However, my own results for the drop in global maxima will show you that the current cooling trend will continue, until at least 2040....or there about.

So, there is no warming trend, and there has not been any, for at least 16 years. You, get on with that. I ask you: why do you keep referring  back to it as if it (i.e. the "global" warming) were truly still happening?




It seems that you were too busy asking if I was paying attention to pay attention to what I already said.
"But nobody takes such a short snapshot seriously so your conclusions are not valid. (and the data might be questionable too, but that's not the real issue)"

So the reply to "So, there is no warming trend, and there has not been any, for at least 16 years. You, get on with that. I ask you: why do you keep referring  back to it as if it (i.e. the "global" warming) were truly still happening?
" is, that it is warming.
Your assertion is like saying it's cooler this evening than it was at lunchtime, so the world is cooling.


Here's the real data
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/RFC12_Fig1.jpg (http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/RFC12_Fig1.jpg)

Why are you pretending that the right hand half of that graph is lower than the left hand half?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 23/06/2013 18:11:04
bc says
Here's the real data
henry says
this is the problem.
people like Cook who have an agenda to "save" their jobs

in this respect I can only trust my own data
(I know that I have no ulterior motive but finding the truth)
which I took from www.tutiempo.net
particularly the drop in maximum temps. (that nobody is looking at)
see here
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=47181.0


Don't forget: automatic recording with thermo couples only began since the seventies
so how are you going to compare older data with automatically recorded data?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 23/06/2013 19:04:48
bc says
Here's the real data
henry says
this is the problem.
people like Cook who have an agenda to "save" their jobs

in this respect I can only trust my own data
(I know that I have no ulterior motive but finding the truth)
which I took from www.tutiempo.net
particularly the drop in maximum temps. (that nobody is looking at)
see here
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=47181.0


Don't forget: automatic recording with thermo couples only began since the seventies
so how are you going to compare older data with automatically recorded data?
OK, so, in order to save his job, Cook tells the truth. There's nothing gets a scientist sacked faster than getting caught faking data.
Glad we have got that sorted otherwise it might look like you were making a libellous statement about someone and that would be a breach of the rules and would get you kicked off the site (in very much the same way that lying would get a scientist sacked).


"Don't forget: automatic recording with thermo couples only began since the seventies
so how are you going to compare older data with automatically recorded data?"
WTF?
Do you think thermocouples are magic?
It's like asking how you can compare peoples heights when they used to be measured in inches, but now they use centimetres.

There's nothing special about a thermocouple, or  the length of a mercury column. Just for the record, neither is the "official" means for establishing temperature.
But you can't use a constant volume gas thermometer (extrapolated to zero pressure) to measure the weather because it takes too long.
So you use some sort of surrogate. As long as you can calibrate the surrogate, it doesn't matter what you choose to use.
A thermocouple is handy if you want to log data automatically, but a mercury in glass thermometer is just fine for most places (you would need an alcohol thermometer for some very cold places).
Or, if you wanted, you could use the 16O: 18O isotope ratio in calcium carbonate.
That last one would be a bit weird- but it has the advantage of recording the data for you in seashells.

So, the biggest data sets all agree that the world is warming. The sea levels and shrinking ice caps support that.
Why should I listen to you?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 24/06/2013 18:51:18
BC says
So, the biggest data sets all agree that the world is warming.

Henry says
no, the biggest data sets show it has been cooling for the past 11 years (which is the equivalent of 1 solar cycle)
which you (&cook&co) say is not significant
They also show that it has not been warming for about 15 or almost 16 years now,
which you (&cook&co) say is also not significant
So, the biggest data sets all agree that the world is not warming.


Now I (we)  know from my own data set that it has been warming (naturally) since around 1951,
until 1998, when we changed the signal
If you want to claim that it has also been warming before that time, i.e. before 1951
you must show me a calibration certificate of a thermometer from, say 1925?


My results show that we started cooling down from the new millennium and we will continue to cool,
until 2039 or 2040\,despite of what Cook and co or anybody says.
But I am happy if you could come with another interpretation (fit) of my results as reported in my tables?


Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 24/06/2013 23:43:50
OK, let's look at your "model": it's a sine wave.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/ (http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/)
It's based on a dozen years or so of data.
There are two ways to test it.
We can look at the predictions and wait to see if they are true or, we can look further back at the real historical data and see if it works.

Guess what! it fails miserably.

Now, your next question was
"If you want to claim that it has also been warming before that time, i.e. before 1951
you must show me a calibration certificate of a thermometer from, say 1925?"
Why?
This guy is on record as calibrating thermometers about two hundred years earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Celsius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Celsius)
He's kind of famous for it.
Anyway, here's one from before 1951 (what had 1925 got to do with anything?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-EX-MOD-Thermometer-Cert-Signed-C-G-Darwin-Whirling-Meteor-/321024094115 (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-EX-MOD-Thermometer-Cert-Signed-C-G-Darwin-Whirling-Meteor-/321024094115)

And then you go back to an invalid model mapping the temperature to a sine wave.

"But I am happy if you could come with another interpretation (fit) of my results as reported in my tables?"
If I get bored, I might.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 25/06/2013 07:10:44
BC says
we can look further back at the real historical data and see if it works.

Guess what! it fails miserably.

henry says

you have global data on maxima?

my data for 47 weather stations is complete from 1974?

there is no other fit than the sine wave for those data on maxima,
unless you want to freeze us to death in the next few decades...?

note that below that global graph there is one from a weather station in Alaska,
which I found had good data on maxima from 1942, which confirmed the sine wave.

In terms of comparison, I am saying that you cannot possibly compare all
results from 1900-1935 and bring this into the equation,
which is why I asked you to provide me with a calibration certificate from 1925.
(they never started calibrating thermometers before the time of the certificate that you quoted. Once manufactured, they were considered "good")
In addition, you must consider the way of recording i.e automatic versus human, at intervals (especially if you want to use means instead of maxima)






Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 25/06/2013 11:07:16
I wonder if you can prove this slur on the competency of the scientists of the day
"(they never started calibrating thermometers before the time of the certificate that you quoted. Once manufactured, they were considered "good")"
If not, perhaps it would be polite of you to apologise and withdraw it.
The reason that the certificate I showed has been kept is not that calibrations were unusual at that time, but because of the signatory. Calibrations were, of course, commonplace.
Of course, in reality there were, at and before that time, systems in place to ensure the correct calibration of thermometers.
http://www.bipm.org/en/si/history-si/temp_scales/its-27.html

This "there is no other fit than the sine wave for those data on maxima, unless you want to freeze us to death in the next few decades...?" is just silly.
What I want  doesn't affect the reality that you can plot a quadratic or other function through that data. Given how little data you actually have, it would be difficult to say that the change wasn't linear.

"you have global data on maxima?"
Nope, and I don't need it.
I have got data for averages (and I already cited it).
If the average is slowly rising, but the maxima are following a sine wave, it would follow that the deviations from the mean were, in the past, much much bigger in order to keep the average on track.
But such data would have been noted and commented on In particular, it would mean the weather in the past was more variable than it is now- but that's the opposite of what the historical record tells us.

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: evan_au on 25/06/2013 11:14:18
The only graph here  (http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/)showing a decline in maximum temperatures seems to come from just 1 site, not 47 sites. The measurements from 47 sites show no such downturn.

Naturally, it is best to have regularly calibrated thermometers. Knowing how vital these temperature measurements become for predicting weather, I am sure that all Navy vessels and Post Office weather stations would have a standard procedure for regularly calibrating all their equipment (including thermometers). Commercial vessels may not be so rigidly disciplined - but there you have the benefit that some devices that might read a bit high will be balanced by those that read a bit low - and they will both be updated by new ones when they drop or are otherwise broken.

There are certainly some blips in the ocean temperature records - a significant one is during the 2nd World War. But after the war, they returned to previous methods & locations for measuring ocean temperatures, and the pre-war upward trend continues.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 25/06/2013 11:32:50
The only graph here showing a decline in maximum temperatures seems to come from just 1 site, not 47 sites. The measurements from 47 sites show no such downturn.

henry says
the blue in the top graph there is the result (average) of the drop in maximum temperatures coming from 47 weather stations.
(you have to go to my tables to see the individual results of each of those  47 weather stations)

the blue in the bottom graph is the result of one station that had good data on maxima going back to 1942
 
the red in both graphs is my best fit for the available data.
I am open for other proposals from you if you think we can make another best fit?


Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 25/06/2013 11:39:35
BC says
The reason that the certificate I showed has been kept

henry says
but that one is from 1948?

I asked you to prove to me that thermometers in weather stations were calibrated regularly before 1930?

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 25/06/2013 18:00:53
Do you think it's the glass tube that changes, or the mercury in it?
Surely you realise that saying "all the thermometers were wrong" is an absurd bit of clutching at straws.
Some might have read high, some low. But what we are looking at is a change so calibration errors are pretty much self cancelling anyway.
However, I'd still like to see the evidence on which you base your claim that all the people measuring temperatures were incompetent.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 25/06/2013 20:35:04
BC says
Some might have read high, some low. But what we are looking at is a change so calibration errors are pretty much self cancelling anyway.
However, I'd still like to see the evidence on which you base your claim that all the people measuring temperatures were incompetent.
Henry says
well...  we are only looking at a few tenths of a degree C (or K)  of warming from 1900-1950
which might be completely wrong if the thermometers were wrong?
You keep returning the question to me, but I asked you first:
from what time onward in history did we start calibrating thermometers at regular intervals?
I think it was only after the war. ./.as proven by the certificate you provided....
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 25/06/2013 21:41:41
Well, I guess I can't help you. I pointed out that they have been calibrating them since 1889, yet you say they weren't  doing it until WWII.
 And, I am returning the question to you for a reason.
You made an assertion that a group of people who are no longer in a position to defend themselves were not competent.
You should be able to back that up.
So, did you just make it up?

Also, how plausible is it that all of the thermometers are exactly as out of true as eachother. And they are all drifting in the same way?
Because that's what it would take to explain away the change in temperatures.
Can you think of a plausible explanation?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 26/06/2013 08:28:00
BC says
 I pointed out that they have been calibrating them since 1889, yet you say they weren't  doing it until WWII.
Henry says
I asked: from what time onward in history did we start re-calibrating thermometers at regular intervals?
I think it was only after the war. ./.as proven by the certificate you provided....
But I asked you to produce a certificate, any certificate, from before 1930.
I am sure they must have been calibrated, once perhaps, when they left the factory,
(if they were made in factories)

However, not only am I interested to see at what intervals the thermometers were re-calibrated before the war,
(which indeed was probably not done regularly at all until after 1945, going by the certificate you produced,
unless you prove me otherwise),
I am also interested to know from those certificates what the accuracy was.
I remember that even in my time, a mercury thermometer with one degree C divided in ten portions,
with an accuracy of 0.05 was quite rare and expensive.
So I am asking you again to provide me the certificates, any certificate,  to show me what the accuracy was before 1930.
If the accuracy was in fact only about 0.5, as I suspect you will find, then the the current warming rate of 0,6 or 0.7K per century,
can be considered questionable....and seriously challenged.
Curious, that you refuse to consider that better accuracy and excluding human involvement with the reading,
would or could  lead to different results?
You will find that in the end it could be exactly as I said: we only warmed some 0.3 or 0.4K  from 1950 - 2000
and we will cool by about 0.3 or 0.4K until 2040,
as we follow the global Gleissberg solar/weather cycle.....
So by 2040, we will all be back to where we were in 1950.....
Blaming natural forces all makes more sense, than blaming the poor 0.01% CO2, does it not?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 26/06/2013 12:13:31
"I think it was only after the war. ./.as proven by the certificate you provided...."
That doesn't prove what you say it does.
Why are you pretending that it does? Do you not understand that if I show you today's paper it doesn't prove that there was no newspaper yesterday?

"I asked: from what time onward in history did we start re-calibrating thermometers at regular intervals?"
You also haven't explained why you think thermometers need to be recalibrated- I asked (and you ignored it) whether you think it's the glass that changes or the mercury.
Well, which is it?
While I'm at it,
"I remember that even in my time, a mercury thermometer with one degree C divided in ten portions, with an accuracy of 0.05 was quite rare and expensive."
So what?
Before the times you are speaking of, they had thermometers that could read to a thousandth of a degree, albeit that you wouldn't use one for measuring the weather.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beckmann_thermometer
They were not cheap- but, because people were prepared to put a fair bit of time and effort into this sort of thing, they would be prepared to spend the money too.

"If the accuracy was in fact only about 0.5, as I suspect you will find, then the the current warming rate of 0,6 or 0.7K per century,
can be considered questionable....and seriously challenged."
No, not really.
because the accuracy isn't the issue here, it's the repeatability that matters.
Also, not all the thermometers would misread in the same direction. So the errors would cancel out.
If you have a hundred measurements -say ten people and ten readings, then the average of those reading will be about 10 times better than the error on each thermometer.


"Curious, that you refuse to consider that better accuracy and excluding human involvement with the reading, would or could  lead to different results?"
It's curious, no- let's face it- dishonest that you claim that I didn't consider it. I did. That's why what I said was that the average of a large number of results will not be affected much if the individual results are made more accurate.
I'm allowed to say that because it follows from a proven theorem in maths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem

"Blaming natural forces all makes more sense, than blaming the poor 0.01% CO2, does it not?"
No.
It's the equivalent (as I have said before) of having 3 blankets on the bed, adding a forth, and saying that you don't expect it to make any difference.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 26/06/2013 19:47:41
BC says
blaming natural forces all makes more sense, than blaming the poor 0.01% CO2, does it not?"
No.
henry says
Yes, it is exactly like you said:
let us have a planet, let us add some CO2, let us see if the temperature goes up,
IT DID NOT, for at least 15 years and counting, so that is NOT it....
Pity you could not shed me some light on the accuracy of thermometers used 75-100 years ago,
in weather stations, but I will still carry on looking for that elusive certificate from those days...
In the meantime, here is a good evaluation done by one of your countrymen,

http://climate.arm.ac.uk/publications/global-warming-man-or-nature.pdf

He got it right, mostly, just by looking at the available data, he even mentioned the Gleissberg cycle!

I think he just went wrong in the end with the mechanisms that he mentioned  for the warming/cooling, I find it is only partly correct, or it is actually a combination, but very few people have that figured out right yet......

For the rest, this whole paper sums up nicely what I have been trying to tell you.
Rgrds.
H

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: JP on 26/06/2013 19:54:11
This is a nice article on how prediction and scientific modelling works, and links to peer-reviewed work offering a possible explanation for the past decade of temperature readings.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/05/15/global-warming-slowdown-retrospectively-predicted/
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 26/06/2013 23:55:55
Historic data on global temperature is at best "suspect". Most of the earth's surface is covered by the oceans, for which we have virtually no reliable surface temperature data before the 1950s. Nobody had measured any temperatures in Antarctica before 1900, and the arctic ice cap had not been greatly explored until the 20th century either.

Whilst plenty of thermometers existed in the 18th and 19th centuries, manufacturing variations and the lack of national and international standards laboratories meant that only 0 and 100 deg C measurements can be regarded as equivalent - any intermediate temperature report, and certainly any report below 0 deg C, must be regarded as having a tolerance of at least +/- 0.1 degree and a difference of 0.2 degree between two adjacent thermometers at a nominal 10 deg C would not be remarkable.

Until 1910, accurate (better than 0.5 degree) air temperature measurements were of little interest, and until the adoption of the Stevenson screen around 1870, there was no agreed method of making such measurements. Surface air temperature is principally of interest to aviators, and we can consider the second world war as the beginning of consistent temperature recording of sufficient accuracy, frequency, and precise location, to detect global changes. The most complete data sets therefore date from 1945, when the world's air forces were making 4-hourly readings with credible instruments at thousands of airfields and a few ships. The number and frequency of manual reports decreased  thereafter, and their nature changed: most wartime airfields were rural grass strips, nearly all of which closed in the following 15 years, and most of the remainder acquired extensive tarmac and concrete surfaces, with canvas tents being replaced by steel and concrete buildings. Temperature reporting from rural fields nowadays is far less frequent as they are mainly used by light aircraft, well below any critical loading: the best modern data comes from large urban airports whose microclimates (thanks, inter alia, to several tons of fuel being burned every hour inside the boundary fence) are far from typical of the "natural" area even a few miles away.

It is thus fair to say that any non-satellite data is at best sparse, poorly representative of any meaningful "mean global temperature", and seriously biassed by microclimates that become more atypical with time. If we add in the probable technical uncertainties of ambient temperature measurement before, say, 1900, the scientific conclusion must be that there is no credible data on mean global surface temperature before 1940 or after 1960.       

Satellite data should be more reliable, but there have been several major corrections and recalibrations since 1970, and the magnitude of these step changes is commensurate with any supposed real change in the underlying measurand.

In a word, we have no actual data sufficient to support an assertion of a consistent global warming or cooling trend  within the last 150 years or so. We do have good proxy data suggestive of massive climate shifts over geological history, but nothing of sufficient reliability to implicate recent human activity as causal.   
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 27/06/2013 00:25:08
Quote
"I asked: from what time onward in history did we start re-calibrating thermometers at regular intervals?"
You also haven't explained why you think thermometers need to be recalibrated- I asked (and you ignored it) whether you think it's the glass that changes or the mercury.
Well, which is it?

The glass, as it happens. There are three major problems: change in volume of the bulb (it is subject to thermal expansion, creep, and distortion by atmospheric compression), variations of stem bore diameter (which determines the precision of intermediate readings between the fixed points) , and the fact that mercury freezes around -40C, making our favourite meteorological thermometer useless over a good 10% of the earth's surface and most of the atmosphere above it!

Quote
"I remember that even in my time, a mercury thermometer with one degree C divided in ten portions, with an accuracy of 0.05 was quite rare and expensive."
So what?
Before the times you are speaking of, they had thermometers that could read to a thousandth of a degree, albeit that you wouldn't use one for measuring the weather.

There's the rub. Beckmann and other high-sensitivity thermometers generally measure changes over a small range of temperature, where the absolute value of the starting point is unimportant. I spent a long time (13 years!) working on devices to detect a microdegree change in local temperature but with no absolute reference point. To detect a meteorological trend even in the UK, where the climate is far from extreme, you need to be able to measure absolute temperature to better than 0.01 degree over a range of -30 to +40 degrees, for about 100 years.  I don't know of any device that has actually done this.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 27/06/2013 11:43:46
The glass tubing does, indeed, creep. But properly made thermometers are annealed carefully to minimise this. Also, it's a known effect and would have been one of the reasons why they would have know that they needed to check the calibrations from time to time.
The freezing point of mercury doesn't change over time- in fact you can use it as a fixed point for calibration.
The fact that people have to use alcohol, or pentane in low temperature thermometers isn't really an issue.

It's trivially simple to check the constancy of the bore of a piece of tubing of the sort used in thermometers, all you need is a drop of coloured water.
It would be an interesting exercise to consult the old chemistry journals and look up the reported melting points of pure chemicals when they were first reported and compare those values with modern measurements. That would let you check the accuracy of the thermometers they used.In the meantime, I think it's fair to assume that they knew what they were doing and, at least, checked the ice and steam points from time to time.

It's also true that good records of temperature only exist for populated areas, but don't forget that, those are the only areas where we have a direct interest in knowing what the climate is doing.
In principle, you can detect a trend in the climate with just one thermometer in one place.
There is, of course, the fact that it the climate warms in one place, it might cool in another but that doesn't stop you being able to measure the local trend. We had no idea what the temperature was in the Antarctic until recently because nobody was there- but we didn't care for exactly the same reason.
You need global temperature measurements if you want to model the system.
But, you can detect changes with just local measurements.



It's obviously a lot easier to sort out the signal from the noise if you have many measurements.
Well, we have lots.
The large number of measurements reduces the scatter of the average of those readings.

As you say, the Beckmann thermometer and those like it only measure changes in temperature.

Fine, that's exactly what we are trying to measure.

And the current rate of change means that over the last 30 years the temperature has risen by about half a degree.
Why would you say that you need to measure to 0.01 degrees over a century to track this trend?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 27/06/2013 14:22:53
Quote
It's also true that good records of temperature only exist for populated areas, but don't forget that, those are the only areas where we have a direct interest in knowing what the climate is doing.

Very, very wrong!

Professional scaremongers are interested in the melting of unpopulated Greenland and Arctic ice. Hurricanes begin their lives as depressions over unpopulated oceans. It's these temperatures that determine our lives!

Quote
And the current rate of change means that over the last 30 years the temperature has risen by about half a degree.

The temperature of what? The 1 sq km average over the entire Pacific and Atlantic oceans? Or just Heathrow Airport?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 27/06/2013 16:01:31
AlanCalvard says
The temperature of what? The 1 sq km average over the entire Pacific and Atlantic oceans? Or just Heathrow Airport?

Hi Allan,

Thx, you had a few good comments there on the accuracy of thermometers in the past which echoes what I have been suspecting. From what you say it seems we cannot rely much on what we have from before the war, really.

As to your question: "the temp. of what?",
in statistics it is of course possible to take a random sample that is representative of a population and to make an estimate. The key is in "representative"
In my sample of 47 weather stations I balanced the sample by latitude and by 70%/30% @sea/on land. Longitude does not matter as I was looking at the average yearly data at the specific station.

in addition I looked at the average change from the average over a reported time period, which excludes the influences of differences between temp. recording devices at various places, mostly

http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/

if you go to the 2nd table, on means (the blue figures),  you will see that we warmed at an average rate of 0.013 degree C per annum globally over the past 32 years. That is ca. 0.42 degree C over the past 32 years.
This result is in fact confirmed by the satellite data, like dr. Spencer's  who reported exactly the same result.
So in this respect, BC is correct.
However, by not looking at the rest of the results, particularly the current cooling trend, many are acting like ostriches.

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 27/06/2013 16:34:03
Quote
In my sample of 47 weather stations I balanced the sample by latitude and by 70%/30% @sea/on land. Longitude does not matter as I was looking at the average yearly data at the specific station.

Longitude makes an enormous difference! Moscow is pretty much the same latitude as Glasgow, but utterly different, and most of Canada that lies north of London is inhospitable or uninhabitable.

The sampling frequency is also very important. It's colder today than yesterday, but warmer than this time last week. Does this indicate a negative or a positive trend?

Nice table of data, but it's all from inhabited areas and airports, so it simply shows the obvious: concrete has less evaporative cooling than forest, and people like making heat. 

What interests me is the "single-point" curves of temperature and carbon dioxide concentration. Geologically, from the Vostok and other ice cores, and recently , from Mauna Loa observations, the CO2 curve lags behind the temperature (or its proxy) curve, not the other way around. Now I don't know what planet the professional scaremongers of IPCC live on, but around here, if A follows B, it cannot be the cause of B. Furthermore the geological temperature curve is a sawtooth, with very fast rises followed by slow declines, and this behaviour can be modelled by the superposition of sinusoids, as you would expect if temperature was driven entirely by atmospheric water content.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 27/06/2013 17:02:29

Alan says
Longitude makes an enormous difference!
Henry says
in my thoughts about this,  I considered that earth turns once every 24 hours and that during one whole year (which are the average temps. I took),  I cancelled out the seasonal shift. Therefore longitude does not matter.
The differences you refer to, are in fact also visible in the tables. Some stations are running exactly opposite the wave.
\Believe it or not, but this has to do with the Greenhouse effect.
Namely, in a period of warming the differential between zero and [90] latitude causes more clouds at higher latitude and somewhat less at lower latitudes. In a period of cooling, such as now, the differential temp. increases, causing more clouds and rain at lower latitudes and less clouds and rain at higher latitudes.
This amplifies the cooling effect (since insolation at the equator is 2x the average)
At some stage, I expect in about 6 years from now, there is a bit of a standstill in pressure difference, causing droughts in many parts, similar to the dust bowl drought 1932-1939
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/dust_storms.shtml
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 27/06/2013 20:34:29
Quote
It's also true that good records of temperature only exist for populated areas, but don't forget that, those are the only areas where we have a direct interest in knowing what the climate is doing.

Very, very wrong!

Professional scaremongers are interested in the melting of unpopulated Greenland and Arctic ice. Hurricanes begin their lives as depressions over unpopulated oceans. It's these temperatures that determine our lives!

Quote
And the current rate of change means that over the last 30 years the temperature has risen by about half a degree.

The temperature of what? The 1 sq km average over the entire Pacific and Atlantic oceans? Or just Heathrow Airport?
They may well, but what we were discussing at the time was the change in temperature in a place or fixed array of places (as it happens, one chosen by Henry)
We weren't looking at sea levels or hurricane frequencies.

The data I was talking about for the past 30 years are here
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/RFC12_Fig1.jpg
Can you explain why you need to measure that change of about half a degree to the nearest 0.01 degree?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 28/06/2013 07:59:02
Quote
Namely, in a period of warming the differential between zero and [90] latitude causes more clouds at higher latitude and somewhat less at lower latitudes. In a period of cooling, such as now, the differential temp. increases, causing more clouds and rain at lower latitudes and less clouds and rain at higher latitudes.

Possibly the first time I've seen a sensible assessment of cloud effects from anyone else,  in any discussion on climate change!

The effect of water on atmospheric temperature is essentially nonlinear (self-amplifying) which can account for the rapid rise  during warming periods, and is bounded and damped by cloud formation - hence the slow downward drift from a fairly consistent maximum over previous geological cycles. Then since the balance  between carbon dioxide uptake by plants and its emission by cold-blooded animals depends on temperature, it is not surprising that the CO2 graph lags behind the temperature graph where the two are derived from independent proxies, as in ice cores.

The effect of longitude is more subtle than Henry's presumption. Temperature in the British Isles, for instance, is determined principally by the vagaries of the Gulf Stream and the jet stream. Most of the time these islands are covered in cloud and our weather is whatever the advected Atlantic depression gives us, with very little influence from the local greenhouse effect or insolation (it's quite often warmer at night than during the day). But around 30% of the time we have clear, dry  arctic skies, under which the temperature is governed by radiative transfer (hot days, cold nights) as there is very little wind to transfer heat laterally on clear days. Eastern Europe at the same latitude does not get warm, wet, Atlantic air, and the climate is principally driven by radiative transfer and local convection of water.  In short, maritime climate on the west coast of anywhere is determined by events further west, whilst continental climate is dominated by local physics.   
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 28/06/2013 12:45:14
And, for the third time now.
The data I was talking about for the past 30 years are here
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/RFC12_Fig1.jpg (http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/RFC12_Fig1.jpg)
Can you explain why you need to measure that change of about half a degree to the nearest 0.01 degree?


I'm asking because, if there isn't a good reason, then it looks like you are seeking to set an unnecessarily difficult target of measurement before you accept that there's any warming.


Seriously, do you really think you need a hundred years of measurements that are good to 0.01C to measure a change that seems to be occurring at about 1.5 degrees over that time?

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 28/06/2013 13:13:48
alan
it is not surprising that the CO2 graph lags behind
henry@alan
forget about CO2. It is not a factor at all. Not in warming and not in the weather.
Look again carefully at the results in my 3 tables.
1)
Note the ratio maxima-means-minima is 6:2:1
(if you take it over the longest period)
If increased CO2 or H2O were a factor, we should see minima rising, pushing up the average.
That is not happening.
2)
If you know how to do curve fitting in excel, you should try and set out the speed of warming/cooling
in K/year,  against time, on each of the 4 final results (on the bottom) for maxima, means and minima.
That gives you K/year 2
Tell me what correlation you get, especially if you try binomials?
3)
note the differences between NH and SH
Does it not seem that most of the (maxima) heat ends up in the SH oceans and is taken by weather and currents up to the NH (means)?

Once you figured out why we see these results happening, you are on your way....!!
You cannot miss it.


Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 28/06/2013 15:10:38
BC: Nice graph, but no title! The temperature of what? Measured how? Calculated how?

If I measure outside air temperature at my local airport over 24 hours, a 15C range is within normal bounds. The automatic system reports every 20 minutes, but if I use 4-hourly manual measurements I'm likely to miss the max (usually around 1300) and min (about 0300). If I take a true 24 hour mean, it will vary between +5 and -5 over four typical consecutive winter days, and anything less than a 2 week average (two Atlantic depressions or one winter high, say) is pretty meaningless.

The reason for asking these nitpicking questions is due to the apparent finesse of the graph. It shows about 18 - 20 ripples per quinquennium, suggesting 3-monthly means. OK, so let's look at "1992.5", halfway between 1990 and 1995. The slope suggests that midsummer was colder than the winter either side, which does not correspond with my recollection.

Or if the abscissal marks indicate mid-year, look at 1995, where once again it apparently got hotter towards the end of the year!   

There's a significant discrepancy between the pink and the red line. Which indicates the truth, and which the opinion of the author?

For what it's worth, the last calibrated meterorological thermometer I owned was scaled in 0.05 degree increments but had mid-range (10 - 30 C) corrections of as much as 0.2 degrees. You simply cannot use these instruments "out of the box" to compare temperatures at different times or places. Problem is that as far as as aviators are concerned, absolute accuracy of +/- 1 degree is of no consequence: we just want to know if we can take off with a reasonable margin of safety, or land without encountering fog or ice, so the kit is generally used without reference to the cal chart and most met reports are actually pretty crude compared with the rate of climate change.

A good rule of thumb in metrology, if not meteorology, is to use an instrument at least one order of magnitude more accurate than the effect you are trying to measure, hence my suggestion of +/- 0.01 deg as the acceptable specification for examining climate change, and for the figures to be meaningful you need to average each location over a year.

There certainly is climate change, always has been and always will be, but I object to a temporary correlation being used as an excuse to raise taxes and screw my life up by politicians jumping on a fatuous bandwaggon.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 28/06/2013 16:05:20
MCOK: I'll believe your arithmetic. What are the answers? I don't have time to fit the curves myself!
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 28/06/2013 18:21:16
Let's face it, the important thing about graphs of global temperature is that they look more like this
/ than like this\
And you don't need a thermometer which reads to 0.01C to spot a change of 0.5 do you.
It doesn't matter where it's measured or by whom as long as it's consistent so ,yes if you measure the temperature every 4 hours you will miss the max and min- but, if you are consistent, you will always miss it by the same extent. And you would have missed it just as much in 1980 as today.

As I have said a number of times you don't need brilliant measurement precision to show a trend.

"A good rule of thumb in metrology, if not meteorology, is to use an instrument at least one order of magnitude more accurate than the effect you are trying to measure, hence my suggestion of +/- 0.01 deg as the acceptable specification for examining climate change, and for the figures to be meaningful you need to average each location over a year. "
Yes, but what said was "you need to be able to measure absolute temperature to better than 0.01 degree over a range of -30 to +40 degrees, for about 100 years."

Over that time the predicted change is about 1.5 degrees so 0.1C would be good enough,  and that's still not allowing for the benefits of averaging many thermometers but you wanted 0.01 degrees.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: JP on 28/06/2013 18:29:47
A good rule of thumb in metrology, if not meteorology, is to use an instrument at least one order of magnitude more accurate than the effect you are trying to measure, hence my suggestion of +/- 0.01 deg as the acceptable specification for examining climate change, and for the figures to be meaningful you need to average each location over a year.

True, and that's why day-to-day measurements of local temperature don't tell us much about climate.  What matters is the uncertainty around the measurements over time, accounting for the law of large numbers, which tells us that combining many measurements actually decreases the uncertainty in the mean relative to the uncertainty in any individual measurement.  If many independent measurements are taken at roughly the same time, then the uncertainty decreased by a factor of ~ the square root of the number of measurements taken. 

I'd go so far as to say that any claims about climate change without an analysis of uncertainties are suspect, because you don't know if they show a trend or just measurement error.  Fortunately, most scientific publications which track temperatures do have error bars, e.g. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/  The important part is not that the trendline increase, but that it increases so much relative to measurement uncertainty that we can be nearly certain that the rise is real, and not due to uncertainties in the measurement.

Edit: BC beat me to most of this, but the TL;DR version is that uncertainties can be reduced by averaging and a proper analysis shows global temps increasing.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 28/06/2013 19:35:03
henry@alan
r2> 0.95
in the case of maxima,
r2=0.996

ergo:
must be natural, such a trend cannot be man made.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 28/06/2013 19:57:51
Quote
Let's face it, the important thing about graphs of global temperature.....It doesn't matter where it's measured or by whom

It makes an enormous difference! Just staying with airfields for a moment, in the period of your graph Stansted grew from a small strip of tarmac surrounded by grass and a few huts, to a hundred acres of concrete surrounded by steel hangars, whilst the runway at Wrexham was broken up and removed. Every two minutes, someone dissipates several megajoules of exhaust heat or kinetic energy on the Stansted runway, but you can't land at Wrexham any more. So the local temperature at Stansted went / and that at Wrexham went \  Of course nobody measures the temperature at Wrexham now the runway has been sold as hardcore, so the apparent mean of all British airfields is // !

Pretty obviously, most of our weather data comes from populated areas because that's where the present and forecast conditions are most immediately important, but nearly all of our climate depends on conditions in unpopulated areas like the middle of the Pacific, Arctic, Gobi, northern Canada... which account for 95% of the earth's surface.The problem is that the 5% on which we live is increasingly concreted over and heated by our activities as well as the sun, so the data is both overrepresented and unrepresentative.

So the questions remain: what data is represented by your graph, and why does it show that some winters are warmer than the adjacent summers?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 29/06/2013 11:34:29
Not sure why you are so hung up on airfields since we have data like this
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
 but...
How fortunate then that, as I have said repeatedly, the average (which would include Stansted and Wrexham) would give a better result than either of them.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 29/06/2013 15:26:31
 JP says
Fortunately, most scientific publications which track temperatures do have error bars, e.g. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/  The important part is not that the trendline increase, but that it increases so much relative to measurement uncertainty that we can be nearly certain that the rise is real, and not due to uncertainties in the measurement.

Henry says
sorry JP, but I do not see any error bars in that graph that you quoted?

In fact, subsequent to satisfying my curiosity about error, I did a comparison of same gistemp data set with the wood for trees temperature index, which is an average of anamolies of all available data sets,
here is the result of my analysis
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/plot/gistemp/from:1930/to:2014/plot/gistemp/from:1930/to:1980/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:2002/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/wti/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/wti/from:1980/to:2002/trend

It appears that gis temp. anomalies  are considerably higher than that of other data sets,

which points to a considerable,  apparently consistent, error in the gis temp. data set.


Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 29/06/2013 20:29:07
Interesting set of graphs.
It illustrates my point nicely.
Even though there's a lot a scatter and different biasses on the two data sets, they both show the same trend.
The data on the right hand side are higher than those on the left- i.e. they show that the world is warming (with some scatter).

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 29/06/2013 21:02:41
bored chemist says
the two data sets, they both show the same trend.

henry says
true
both show that temps have been gradually going up from 1930 -2000
but going down from 2002
exactly as predicted by me here
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures
(note there is a lag between energy-in /maxima and energy-out /means)

consequently, seeing that I was right, correctly predicting history, 
unfortunately we will continue cooling down until around 2040

clearly

we cannot trust the data before 1930 as we do not have a global baseline before that time,
because of inaccuracy and different methods of recording means
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 29/06/2013 21:17:50
Not sure why you are so hung up on airfields since we have data like this
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
 but...
How fortunate then that, as I have said repeatedly, the average (which would include Stansted and Wrexham) would give a better result than either of them.


I'm not "hung up" on airfields, it just happens that nearly all the credible historic data comes from them.

Not sure what you mean by a "better" result. If the average temperature over the entire UK had decreased during the period when Stansted airport was expanding, in what respect would today's Stansted temperature (there is no mean because Wrexham no longer has a runway so it no longer reports temperature) be "better"?

The GISS "data" is fascinating. It goes back to 1880, when one continent (Antarctica) was completely unexplored, another (Australia)  had no established meteorological service, and there were no regular reports from anywhere in the Pacific. So how did they deduce a global mean? I smell bullshit!

So I repeat my question: you showed a graph earlier (reply 126). Where did the data come from and what do the curves represent? Simple enough, surely, to deserve an answer?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 29/06/2013 21:38:35
"Where did the data come from"
Here
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
you can tell from the web address.
But take your pick. There are plenty of web pages out there with data and they seem to show a pretty much consistent rise over the last 30 years or so.
Here's another (chosen pretty much at random from heaps on google).
http://metaclimate.org/2010/02/14/a-ghcn-analysis/

Perhaps you can find the ones where an estimate of the global temperature over that period (rather than cherry picking since the last el nino) actually falls.
Its fair to say that if you look at the results from a google search for images of climate change graphs
there are a lot more like  this / than like this\ and it's hard to see how they could all be wrong.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 30/06/2013 00:19:50
It's quite clear where the "skeptical" graph came from, but I'm interested to know what its authors actually plotted. Data that suggests that some winters are warmer than their adjacent summers deserves serious investigation.

The "metaclimate" graph does at least state a geographical area. Amazingly, it includes data from the North Pole in 1880, at least 30 years before anyone actually got there, and probably 90 years before anyone measured temperatures above 80 deg latitude for an entire year.

Skeptic? Moi? No, just wondering how much "climate data" has been falsified, and why it was done in such a transparently amateurish manner..
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 30/06/2013 09:18:34
"Amazingly, it includes data from the North Pole in 1880"
No, it doesn't and, of course, nor does it pretend to.
Here's the graph's title
"Here’s one of his graphs, covering 70 – 90 deg north latitude"

And here's where that data is explicitly stated to be from
"stations north of 70N latitude — instead of defining separate grid boxes for stations north of 80N latitude, I’ll lump them together with the stations north of 70N latitude."
So the graph is the combination of all the data North of 70 degrees.
That data may be a bit sparse, but that's not the same as saying it's impossible.
Such a comment might be thought of has having " been falsified" in "transparently amateurish manner"

No, I don't think you are a sceptic. A sceptic would look at the data to see what it says, rather than launching a strawman attack on what it doesn't say.

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 30/06/2013 22:47:14
The underlying problem is that the world is not a smooth, stationary, homogeneous surface. The air above it moves to transport heat, and clouds form and disperse in different ways at different points. This makes it impossible to generate a sufficient sample from which to extract a meaningful mean, if substantial areas are not mapped - you have to survey the entire surface with a constant finesse, and ensure that your data points are not in any way "special" or time variant. Hence historic temperature observations, which in the main are necessarily "special" and time variant, are not useful in a discussion of trends in global heat exchange or climate.

Fortunately we do have recent satellite data, which can give us good random samples of constant finesse over the entire surface . On the downside there have been significant recalibrations of that data (who ever said physics was easy?) but generally we can accept that satellite data from say 1990 onwards is consistent and representative.

I approve of your definition of a sceptic. So I looked at the "skeptical science" graph and it clearly says that some winters were warmer than the adjacent summers, so once again I ask what is the source data for this interesting graph? It's the counterintuitive that makes life interesting.   
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 01/07/2013 06:44:29
Since Summer and Winter are local events, it's easy to see how they might get messed up if you took a global average: do you mean Australia's Summer or England's?
Also, if I wan't to know if the temperature in, for example, London, is changing over time, I clearly don't need to measure the temperature in Antarctica.
All I need are a series of measurements in London.
If those are going up then London is warming.
There are plenty of such measurements going back into history and, if we don't assume that those doing the measuring were incompetent, then we can track the local temperature changes for many places.
In fact, they are generally rising..
As I have said, if you put a forth blaknet on the bed and you get warmer, it's hard to rule out cause and effect.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 01/07/2013 10:22:21
I have no idea what the "skeptical science" graph represented - it was your suggestion, and you still haven't told us! However if it represents a true global average, you wouldn't expect to see any seasonal cycles, and if it represents one or other hemisphere, or even one point on the globe, you'd expect the cycles to be consistent. But it showed significant, inconsistent cycles, which makes it very interesting.

The temperature in London is indeed changing with time, because the surface albedo, the concentration of human activity, and the nature of that activity, are all tending to increase the outdoor temperature. But the question we are trying to answer is about the global effect of increasing CO2, not the local effect of urban heat islands, which even the most ardent warmists agree are anomalous. Interestingly, I think the highest local concentration of CO2 in London was probably in the 1940's and 50's when everything was coal fired - and it was a lot colder than recently!

The "fourth blanket" is an interesting analogy. As you add more blankets, so the incremental effect of each becomes smaller. It's called "close" in clothing design, and "saturation" in infrared spectroscopy. If you add a sheet of paper to a continuously changing heap of blankets, you'd be hard put to pin down its causality from observation. And if,  as in the geo-historic CO2 case, the additional blanket always arrived after the temperature had risen and departed after the temperature had fallen, you might question which was the cause and which the effect.

Causality demands correlation, consistent sequencing, and the elimination of co-causation. Until you have demonstrated all three, you can't use a presumption of causality to predict anything qualitatively. And if you want to make a quantitative prediction, you need a good handle on the effects of nonlinearity and saturation. Unfortunately, all the evidence I have seen to date points strongly to temperature being the cause of CO2, not the other way around, so it's difficult to answer the original question.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: JP on 01/07/2013 15:03:18
This reminds me of an interesting book I just picked up: The Norm Chronicles by Michael Blastland.  It's about our perceptions of risks vs. the actual statistics.  There's a nice section on climate science which points out that it's virtually impossible to convince die-hards on either side, and this thread backs that up.  His argument is (and he cites a bunch of psychological studies to back this up) that people generally choose a side due to their politics, and since climate science can't be 100% proven either way, they entrench their opinion with whatever ideas they understand, be those scientific or not.  It's interesting that on a science site like this, any post on climate change brings out a lot of people arguing against the scientific consensus, and that virtually all of their arguments don't use anything approaching a scientific methodology.  This strongly argues for better scientific literacy among the voting public (at least among those of us who think policy decisions should be based on sound science.)

Most of the arguments here against climate change are "not even wrong" as Wolfgang Pauli famously put it.  Sure, many are technically true, but they don't have much to do with the scientific method and aren't useful in evaluating climate science one way or the other.  As I've pointed out in a prior thread (and no one bothered to address), the scientific method of climate change involves two major steps:
1) Collecting and analyzing data on climate (primarily temperature).  This means collecting data from modern satellites, historical temperature readings with thermometers, ice cores and so on.  Some of these data sources are more accurate than others, which is where analysis comes in.  We've had a few centuries to perfect our methods of statistical analysis, and so scientists can estimate both mean temperatures (over regions or the whole globe) as well as the uncertainties of those mean estimates.  Arguments against temperature records in this thread ignore those uncertainties.  Sure, the plot of means might or might not be true, but it's important to look at the ranges within which we are 95%, 99%, 99.99999%, etc. that the true mean temperatures lie.  In the end, it's how confident we are of the trend that matters.

2) The second step is coming up with a model that explains and predicts the data.  It's easy to come up with a best fit curve through some section of data and claim that temperature is falling.  It's also just as easy to pick some section of data which shows a massive upward trend and predict we'll all bake to death in a few decades.  What's important is to come up with a model (not just a best fit curve) that makes predictions based on some underlying science (such as the physics/chemistry of CO2), which matches the data.  What do we mean by matching the data?  Again, you have to take a scientific perspective which has been woefully lacking in this thread.  You can compute what are called confidence intervals which tell you that if this model is correct, the data will lie in this range with X% certainty.  Based on that, you can't tell if a model is correct, but you can tell if it's consistent with the data.  You can even say how certain you are that the model is wrong--so if enough data falls outside of the 95% confidence interval, for example, you can throw out the model.

Since this is a science forum, we should be evaluating criteria on these bases, not on the basis of nitpicking details and ignoring the extensive body of literature analyzing both data and models.  Nitpicking details while accounting for 1) and 2) is very useful however, so I look forward to seeing Alan and Henry post some details about how their points correlate with the confidence intervals on the models or uncertainties in measured data. 
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 01/07/2013 15:48:33
Nothing to do with me, JP, but when someone publishes an untitled graph which contains counterintuitive data, I'd like to know what it represents and why it behaves that way. Is that nitpicking or just asking the sort of question that we professional scientists are paid to ask?

Politics? I'm a dyed-in-the-wool atheist leftie tree-hugger. But that derives from studying the data, not the other way around.

A model based on the nonlinear greenhouse effect of water goes a long way to explaining the Vostok ice core data over periods of thousands of years, and recent Mauna Loa data clearly shows the consistent lag of CO2 behind temperature, but the inherently chaotic nature of the planetary atmosphere makes short-term prediction a very risky business.

My preference is always for clean, raw data. Hence Mauna Loa, which represents a "good site" with no obvious CO2 anomalies or heat island effects, and Vostok, which has used the same data collection process for millions of years, are more likely to yield understanding of the process of climate change than any attempt at meta-analysis of incoherent data and proxies.

History has shown that we should be wary of "scientific consensus". Phlogiston, the geocentric universe, the aether, the flat earth, aristotelian gravitation....all held sway as consensus at some time. Early on in our careers, we learn that data is more important. To paraphrase Einstein, when confronted by a debunking consensus paper signed by 100 Nazi professors: "If I had been wrong, one student would have been sufficient." So let's look at the data, please. 

Regarding uncertainties and sampling intervals, here are some samples of a set, each with negligible uncertainty

1, 16, 23, 45, 48, 49, 51, 60, 74, -5, -7, -23, -60, -80 

What is the mean? Well it's about 13.7. But these numbers are "samples" of latitude, reported with something approaching the frequency of, say, air temperature reports. Most meteorologists live in the northern bit of the planet, hence the preponderance of numbers around 40 to 50,  and we have a few reliable reporters from the polar regions. But the mean of these samples tells us nothing about the mean latitude of the planet, which is of course 0.  Same problem with terrestrial-based temperature records: however precise they may be, they only tell us about the temperature in places where people live, and even if we correct for heat island effects, the mean is globally meaningless. You can only determine global trends by evenly sampling 100% of the surface (which was not possible before the 1970s) or smoothing the curve of an unequivocal proxy at one fixed point.   
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 01/07/2013 17:25:42
JP says
that people generally choose a side due to their politics,
Henry says
well...in my case it is actually religion, which demands that I speak the truth at all times,
I determined no influence of the CO2
it is rather natural forces, that show decline in temps. from 2002
as proven to you from all available data sets
and that this decline in temps. will continue
as shown to you from my own data set (with data from 1974-2012)

but I am intrigued to know as to why you did not respond to my question to you raised in my earlier post, specifically addressed to you?
(which seems to confirm some kind of bias from you which I have noted before)

rgrds
H
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: JP on 01/07/2013 18:16:41
but I am intrigued to know as to why you did not respond to my question to you raised in my earlier post, specifically addressed to you?
(which seems to confirm some kind of bias from you which I have noted before)

I'd be surprised if you hadn't noted my bias.  In fact, I flat out told you before that I was done debating you on the topic since you use your posts to promote your own model based on cherry-picked data and a best fit curve.  This is a science forum, so I'm biased towards having science-based discussions.   I also don't like repeating myself like a broken record.  Either you don't understand the scientific method, or you're deliberately trolling us.  In either case, since you've made over 100 posts now without making an effort to make your ideas scientific, I don't see why engaging you would be helpful to either of us or to the forum.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 01/07/2013 18:33:13
jp says
...to promote your own model based on cherry-picked data and a best fit curve.
henry says
I told you from the beginning that my sample of 47 stations was random,
except for the fact of the choice of stations with complete or nearly complete records...
even choosing more stations won't change the result
if you get a correlation coefficient of 0.997 on the binomial for the drop of maximum temps.....
Either way, even if you believe I am trolling, the question to you was about the error bars,
on the gistemp data set,
which you state were there
but they were not...
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: JP on 01/07/2013 18:40:57
Nothing to do with me, JP, but when someone publishes an untitled graph which contains counterintuitive data, I'd like to know what it represents and why it behaves that way. Is that nitpicking or just asking the sort of question that we professional scientists are paid to ask?
Yes, but a proper scientist would probably find out what an unlabeled plot represents before saying that it casts doubt on many temperature records.

Quote
A model based on the nonlinear greenhouse effect of water goes a long way to explaining the Vostok ice core data over periods of thousands of years, and recent Mauna Loa data clearly shows the consistent lag of CO2 behind temperature, but the inherently chaotic nature of the planetary atmosphere makes short-term prediction a very risky business.
Great!  I've seen many claims like this, so show us a model that's been peer-reviewed and has a proper confidence interval analysis so that we can judge if it's consistent with the data! 

Quote
My preference is always for clean, raw data. Hence Mauna Loa, which represents a "good site" with no obvious CO2 anomalies or heat island effects, and Vostok, which has used the same data collection process for millions of years, are more likely to yield understanding of the process of climate change than any attempt at meta-analysis of incoherent data and proxies.
In any single experiment, I agree--all scientists would prefer clean data.  But your argument doesn't hold up, since averaging many lower-quality measurements together can actually produce cleaner statistics (smaller uncertainties) than using a small number of high-quality measurements, especially when we're trying to get a handle on a global mean, rather than local means.  Since climate science is observational, we have to live with what data we have, so it quite probably turns out that large-scale averages produce better estimates than using the cleanest datasets.

Quote
History has shown that we should be wary of "scientific consensus". Phlogiston, the geocentric universe, the aether, the flat earth, aristotelian gravitation....all held sway as consensus at some time. Early on in our careers, we learn that data is more important. To paraphrase Einstein, when confronted by a debunking consensus paper signed by 100 Nazi professors: "If I had been wrong, one student would have been sufficient." So let's look at the data, please. 
You're shooting yourself in the foot here: yes, data is more important than consensus, but data without analysis is meaningless.  I recall doing an experiment in undergraduate lab where my data, taken at face value, would prove Newton's second law wrong.  Sadly, I didn't win the Nobel Prize for proving Newton wrong, of course, because there were huge uncertainties and errors in my measurement process.  And that's precisely my point--whether you cherry pick data and fit a curve through it or claim that "clean" data is better than the data that is currently being used, you have to back that up with an analysis that favors your version over the consensus version.  Scientific consensus is reached because many scientists have done a intense work analyzing data or models.  Those claiming to prove climate science is wrong on forum threads like this tend to ignore that work and point out that they can draw a better curve through the data or they don't like some feature of a data set or trend-line without actually providing any analysis. 
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: JP on 01/07/2013 18:44:33
jp says
...to promote your own model based on cherry-picked data and a best fit curve.
henry says
I told you from the beginning that my sample of 47 stations was random,
except for the fact of the choice of stations with complete or nearly complete records...
even choosing more stations won't change the result
if you get a correlation coefficient of 0.997 on the binomial for the drop of maximum temps.....
Yes, and you picked a small subset of the climate record that happens to have a straight line through it.  So what?  I can pick dozens.  Your method is unscientific because all you've done is make a model.  Now you have to extrapolate it and show that it fits more data.  It's fine if you don't understand the scientific method well enough to do that.  We all have to start somewhere, but at least stop telling other users on a science forum that you've done a proper scientific analysis that proves that climate scientists are wrong. 

Quote
Either way, even if you believe I am trolling, the question to you was about the error bars,
on the gistemp data set,
which you state were there
but they were not...

They're the green vertical bars on the data plot.  The web page also cites a peer-reviewed article about the methods used to calculate error bars.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 01/07/2013 18:52:37
JP says
Yes, and you picked a small subset of the climate record that happens to have a straight line through it.  So what?  I can pick dozens.
Henry asks
A binomial fit is a straight line?
Sorry, must I explain the difference to you between linear (straight) fits and polynomial fits?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 01/07/2013 19:07:25

JP says
They're the green vertical bars on the data plot.  The web page also cites a peer-reviewed article about the methods used to calculate error bars.
henry says
Sorry I missed that, but it seems to me the difference between red (ave of 4 major data sets, including gistemp)  and green (gistemp) on the graph I presented to you, WHICH IS the reality of WHAT WE HAVE, seems a lot more than the average [0.2] error indicated?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: JP on 01/07/2013 19:10:28
Ah, yes, I'd forgotten you'd used a polynomial fit.  Even better!  I can find a well-fit polynomial to even more cherry picked chunks of climate data than a linear model since I have more degrees of freedom!  It just makes your argument that much weaker.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 01/07/2013 19:14:09

The "fourth blanket" is an interesting analogy.
As you add more blankets, so the incremental effect of each becomes smaller.

Indeed,
Can you explain why you think it's negative (or, at least, not positive)?
BTW, I think I may have mentioned spectroscopic saturation earlier in the thread
(it's not really the same thing as the usual "diminishing returns" due to a reduced temperature difference)


Henry, perhaps it would help clarify matters if you were to tell us explicitly what your model is in the form
Temperature = (some mathematical function of) year.
Thanks

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 01/07/2013 19:49:06
henry@bc&jp

I did in fact not use the binomial fit with r2=0.997  because I saw it would cause an ice age...soon.
I applied a sine wave!
do you BC, mean, that you want to know the exact mathematical formula for the sine wave
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
that I did propose for the drop in global maxima for my data, evident from the results on the bottom of the first table
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 01/07/2013 20:46:16
Probably just me being gormless but I'd find it much simpler if you gave the amplitude, frequency (or period) and an indication of the phase.
I think the period is 88 years,
The phase is defined by crossing zero at 17 years,
and the amplitude is 0.037
Am I reading it correctly?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 01/07/2013 21:06:41
Henry@bc
you got it figured right
1995 was zero as far as maxima was concerned.
Remember my data only goes up to 2012.
2012-17 equals 1995
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 01/07/2013 22:44:07
From AlanCalverD (reply #140)
Quote
It's quite clear where the "skeptical" graph came from, but I'm interested to know what its authors actually plotted. Data that suggests that some winters are warmer than their adjacent summers deserves serious investigation.

The caption of the graph reveals all: what is actually being plotted is a "twelve month running average temperature". This is a convenient (and familiar to meteorologists) way of factoring out seasonal effects. What is plotted for each month is an average over the previous 12 months. Since this will always contain one of each month, it shows no seasonal variation, but is capable of resolving longer term variation (whether random or forced) to a monthly level.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 02/07/2013 08:15:47
henry@bc
I went back to my notes on this
to see that the formula was:

y=K sin (2pi (x-phi)/ῳ)

K Constant   0.037
Wavelength (Years)   87.4
Phase (Years)   18
K= difference max degreeC /annum         
x= time (years)         
ῳ = wavelength (years)   
phi = phase shift to allow zero point at set time (years)         


henry@all
The idea with the blankets does not really work, because CO2 also cools the atmosphere,
during daytime, by deflecting some light due to re-radiation. People remove the blankets during the day, to let the sunshine in, in nature it does not work like that.

For comprehensive proof that CO2 is (also) cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine, see here:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/644/1/551/64090.web.pdf?request-id=76e1a830-4451-4c80-aa58-4728c1d646ec

They measured this re-radiation from CO2 as it bounced back to earth from the moon. So the direction was sun-earth (day)-moon(unlit by sun) -earth (night). Follow the green line in fig. 6, bottom. Note that it already starts at 1.2 um, then one peak at 1.4 um, then various peaks at 1.6 um and 3 big peaks at 2 um. You can see that it all comes back to us via the moon in fig. 6 top & fig. 7. Note that even methane cools the atmosphere by re-radiating in the 2.2 to 2.4 um range. (There is of course also big re-radiation of CO2 at around 4 um, but this could not be measured with the specific equipment used in the above experiments)

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 02/07/2013 10:26:32
From AlanCalverD (reply #140)
Quote
It's quite clear where the "skeptical" graph came from, but I'm interested to know what its authors actually plotted. Data that suggests that some winters are warmer than their adjacent summers deserves serious investigation.

The caption of the graph reveals all: what is actually being plotted is a "twelve month running average temperature".

But average of what? Not the entire planet, clearly, because we don't have any reliable data of the polar regions before 1900, or of the wet bits of the Pacific Ocean before 1970. But it can't be from a single point either, because of the ridiculously anomalous winter temperatures.

Somebody, somewhere, must surely know what this graph actually represents??


 JP:   
Quote
Quote

Quote from: alancalverd on 01/07/2013 14:48:33

    Nothing to do with me, JP, but when someone publishes an untitled graph which contains counterintuitive data, I'd like to know what it represents and why it behaves that way. Is that nitpicking or just asking the sort of question that we professional scientists are paid to ask?

Yes, but a proper scientist would probably find out what an unlabeled plot represents before saying that it casts doubt on many temperature records.

And being a proper scientist, not claiming to be psychic, I have asked the question several times. Regrettably,  nobody seems to know, or to want to tell me. Damocles states that it is the running average of something, which explains its smoothness but not its shape. I do not doubt the veracity of its source data, any more than I would doubt you if you told me how many whippets live in Yorkshire, but it would be unwise to suppose that it was representative of the global density of whippets, and unhelpful if the data was simply titled "something to do with dogs". And if you claimed to have consistent data before 1891, when the breed standard was defined, I might even doubt your data a bit.

Quote
Since climate science is observational, we have to live with what data we have, so it quite probably turns out that large-scale averages produce better estimates than using the cleanest datasets.

and there's the problem, restated. Better estimates of what? If you average over selected data, you will get the average of selected data. But the point of interest is the behaviour of the entire planet, not just the few bits where people live, which are by nature anomalous and subject to rapid change over a period of years. So I look at Mauna Loa, relatively sparsely inhabited and dominated by the Pacific climate, which shows an unequivocal recent warming and a consistent lag of CO2 behind the temperature graph. And I look at Vostok which shows a long-term bounded sawtooth of temperature and again a lag of CO2 behind temperature. All we need now is a plausible mechanism to explain these findings.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 02/07/2013 12:55:06
Alan CalverD:

My whole aim in my last post was simply to point out why the winter temperatures are not "ridiculously anomalous". The point is that the "winter" points on the graph are not winter readings at all -- they are annual readings for a year from a winter month to a winter month. The adjacent "summer" points are annual readings for a year from a summer month to a summer month. There is absolutely no reason why the "summer" month graph points should be any higher than the "winter" month graph points. And this is clearly stated on the graph caption.

I will need to go back to the graph and read carefully to discover the geographical base. I suspect that it might be from a geographically unrepresentative selection of around 60 stations that have been collecting fairly reliable data throughout the period. But I also suspect that I will find that it is very clearly stated in there somewhere where the data have come from.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: JP on 02/07/2013 13:24:02
So I look at Mauna Loa, relatively sparsely inhabited and dominated by the Pacific climate, which shows an unequivocal recent warming and a consistent lag of CO2 behind the temperature graph. And I look at Vostok which shows a long-term bounded sawtooth of temperature and again a lag of CO2 behind temperature. All we need now is a plausible mechanism to explain these findings.

Those are worth a look.  Could you post the data (or a link to it?)
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 02/07/2013 13:53:02
I am sorry, AlanCalverD, but I cannot see how you can possibly say that CO2 is consistently lagging behind temperature at Mauna Loa, when the CO2 graph is showing a fairly consistent rise (modulated by seasonal factors) throughout the last few decades and the temperature has done likewise, but in much more modest and erratic fashion.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 02/07/2013 15:04:00
Look at the seasonal modulation of CO2. It's more consistent than the seasonal temperature, and peaks in May-June, at the time when anthropogenic CO2 is minimal. If you subtract the underlying recent trend, the peak shifts to July, as you would expect from the dependence of invertebrate activity on temperature.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: JP on 02/07/2013 15:26:36

 JP:   
Quote
Quote

Quote from: alancalverd on 01/07/2013 14:48:33

    Nothing to do with me, JP, but when someone publishes an untitled graph which contains counterintuitive data, I'd like to know what it represents and why it behaves that way. Is that nitpicking or just asking the sort of question that we professional scientists are paid to ask?

Yes, but a proper scientist would probably find out what an unlabeled plot represents before saying that it casts doubt on many temperature records.

And being a proper scientist, not claiming to be psychic, I have asked the question several times. Regrettably,  nobody seems to know, or to want to tell me. Damocles states that it is the running average of something, which explains its smoothness but not its shape. I do not doubt the veracity of its source data, any more than I would doubt you if you told me how many whippets live in Yorkshire, but it would be unwise to suppose that it was representative of the global density of whippets, and unhelpful if the data was simply titled "something to do with dogs". And if you claimed to have consistent data before 1891, when the breed standard was defined, I might even doubt your data a bit.

I agree that BC's posting of that plot raised a lot of questions.  It was out of context without indication of what the data represented.  What I find to be poor science is how you use the lack of context of that plot as justification to launch an attack on climate science:
Skeptic? Moi? No, just wondering how much "climate data" has been falsified, and why it was done in such a transparently amateurish manner..

If we're here to discuss science then we should stick to the facts and data and we can dismiss any plots that are posted without referencing where the data came from or how they were produced.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 02/07/2013 17:03:23
damocles says
I am sorry, AlanCalverD, but I cannot see how you can possibly say that CO2 is consistently lagging behind temperature at Mauna Loa, when the CO2 graph is showing a fairly consistent rise (modulated by seasonal factors) throughout the last few decades and the temperature has done likewise, but in much more modest and erratic fashion.

henry says
I am sorry for you, damocles,
I think everyone here sees now from the available data sets that it has been getting cooler for the past decade or so and that this process will continue, no matter who says what.... It will not even help to pump CO2 in the air to stop the cooling. This is what the data are telling us.
My data obtained is from www. tutiempo.net
Having to shove snow in late spring is going to cause a shift in perceptions and it is not going to help those who falsify the data anymore....
More CO2 in the atmosphere is simply a function of warming as any chemist knows.. not the other way around. If you boil water, the first that comes out is the CO2....

In fact, as I have been saying all along, by challenging all of you to come with a balance sheet, it is not really even sure anymore  if more CO2 does not cause cooling rather than warming...as CO2 is one of our first line defence against CME's
<mod edit>
Editorialising, non-peer reviewed links removed (yet again!)
The NASA story is  about the thermosphere when it gets hit by solar flares. Here’s the Press release:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/
<//end>

never mind what I said....
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 02/07/2013 17:10:43
Quote
What I find to be poor science is how you use the lack of context of that plot as justification to launch an attack on climate science:

It's not just that plot that gets up my scientific nose. As a lifelong enthusiast of meteorology and with several years as an aviator, I'm deeply interested in what the atmosphere does and how it does it. I need credible data and an unbiased expert opinion before planning a flight, and I can see no reason to depart from those standards when planning an economy, levying a tax, or subsidising windmills.

I guess my skepticism of "climate science" began at a public lecture by the then co-chairman of IPCC who pointedly announced at the outset that he was a committed Christian. If he thought this was relevant, surely it meant that he considered superstition more important than facts? Fair enough, others have carved out careers in the god business, but I wouldn't put my passengers' lives or my livelihood in their hands. He then presented the first consensus report of the IPCC, in which the influence of water on the behaviour of the atmosphere was dismissed in a footnote because it was complex and unmeasurable. Yeah, well, if you fly into an active front, or even live on the ground in England, atmospheric water deserves more than a dismissive footnote in your met studies.

At a seminar about a year later I was shown the first Vostok data (somewhere along the line I'd been loosely associated with Earth Sciences). Everyone in the audience remarked that the CO2 graph showed a consistent lag behind the temperature graph, and I still haven't heard a "consensus" explanation of how this consists with CO2 being the driver of gobal temperature. One or two websites shrug it off as "only 500 years" but on my planet, all causes precede all effects, and the word "only" has no place in scientific discourse - the light comes on "only 10 milliseconds" after I press the button, therefore it is the light that makes me press the button, eh?

I got close to exploding on being shown an Approved School Textbook for A level physics. According to the Department of Education and Science, the water molecule is (or was, ten years ago) linear and rigid and has no influence on the solar infrared spectrum, unlike the nasty wobbly CO2 beast.

And so it goes on. People conflate incompatible data and fantasy to produce graphs that justify their grants, then issue "corrections" that somehow always reduce the impact. We fly to Mars  and don't ask why it is so much colder than it would be if the consensus CO2 forcing function were correct. Our gallant leaders sign away our right to manufacture anything, on the grounds that Chinese or Indian CO2 is not harmful, but Western emissions are. Obviously you must pay an additional climate levy tax if you fly, but it isn't related to the distance you fly or the amount of fuel consumed per passenger mile.

I'm not attacking climate science. My life depends on understanding it! But I'm very skeptical of "climate science" that mixes arbitrary proxies with spatially limited data to make global pronouncements. And there's an awful lot of it about.

Final shriek in this rant: a couple of weeks ago some guys announced that they had regrown some bryophytes that had been covered  by a glacier for about 500 years. Wow! Panic! We are going to drown! The glacier has retreated and it's all the fault of anthropogenic global warming! No, friends, it means that the world was warmer 500 years ago, when these little darlings were growing by a flowing stream. That's science.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 02/07/2013 17:29:03
AlanCalverd
who proudly announced at the outset that he was a committed Christian.

Henry says

we all make mistakes, and we must forgive those who trespass (against us),

so be careful how you tread there,
"what is truth?" is what Pilate asked (John 18:37 )
but the answer was given to him in the verse before
I am also one of those who stick to the truth (Truth )

as I see it

no matter what

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 02/07/2013 17:39:23
I'd love to wander off into the realms of philosophy with you, but this isn't the place to do so. Suffice it to say that the truth "as I see it" is not the truth as I define it: that which is invariant between observers. The truth "as I see it" includes the flat earth and heavy things falling faster than light ones, depending on who "I" is. And much as I appreciate your general support in this particular argument, "no matter what" may be ex officio or ex cathedra, but it definitely ain't in laboratorio where opinions change with every experiment (which is the entire point of doing experiments!) 

That said, there is a definite connexion between faith and the weather. For as long as I can recall, it has been possible to ski somewhere in Britain at Easter, regardless of the date of that festival. But I wouldn't use it as an excuse to raise taxes.   
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 02/07/2013 18:36:32

alan says
The truth "as I see it" includes the...

henry says
always remember that we can make mistakes,
I think it was Morse (the inventor of the Morse code) who defended slavery,
with quotes from the bible..
More often than not, the truth as two different people see it,
might lie exactly in the middle....
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 02/07/2013 20:46:45
"For comprehensive proof that CO2 is (also) cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine, see here:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/644/1/551/64090.web.pdf?request-id=76e1a830-4451-4c80-aa58-4728c1d646ec (http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/644/1/551/64090.web.pdf?request-id=76e1a830-4451-4c80-aa58-4728c1d646ec)
"

That's like saying a coal fire cools the house, because you can see some heat is lost up the chimney.
Not all the heat absorbed is re-radiated.



"I am also one of those who stick to the truth (Truth)
as I see it
no matter what"
For example, no matter what the evidence shows, you will distort it (as above) to support the "Truth" as you see it.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 03/07/2013 06:36:54
bc says
For example, no matter what the evidence shows, you will distort it.....
henry says
clearly you still don't understand how the GH effect works. I am not going to explain it again to you.
Suffice to say it has nothing to do with blankets.
In this case, where you say I distort the truth, we see from the evidence that light specific to the absorptive spectrum of the CO2 in the 0-5 um traveled to the moon and back to earth. That is radiation lost to space and is called cooling, as also the numerous  papers I googled for you will tell.
1)If there is more CO2 there will also will also be more cooling.
2)My data predicts further cooling in the future, and no warming.

I never said that 2) could be a result of 1) because I can see the warming and cooling of the past follows natural curves.
But that is what you are doing with the natural warming of earth (of the past). Blaming it on the poor CO2.
in the absorptive region, a gas can only re-radiate; there is little mass to "absorb" heat.
Those are the truths as I see it.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 03/07/2013 16:31:37
<mod edit>
Editorialising, non-peer reviewed links removed (yet again!)
The NASA story is  about the thermosphere when it gets hit by solar flares. Here’s the Press release:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/
<//end>
henry@moderator
believe it or not, that was in fact the paper I googled for...thanks!
It was just that there was so many "non-peer" reviewed stuff popping up....
I am sorry...

henry@bc & jp

now , to quote from the above paper,  "peer reviewed" & all

For the three day period, March 8th through 10th, the thermosphere absorbed 26 billion kWh of energy.  Infrared radiation from CO2 and NO, the two most efficient coolants in the thermosphere, re-radiated 95% of that total back into space.

 
Why, wow,

did you see that 95% of that 26 billion kWh went back into space? (cooling!!)

now, if you both continue to "believe" in man made global warming,
\

why don't you show me how the testing was done to prove that the net effect of an increase from  0.03% CO2 (300 ppm) to 0.04% (400 ppm) is that of warming, rather than cooling?

hint:Forget about the closed box experiments of those that died a hundred years or so ago. It only shows the warming part.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 03/07/2013 21:35:23
Look at the seasonal modulation of CO2. It's more consistent than the seasonal temperature, and peaks in May-June, at the time when anthropogenic CO2 is minimal. If you subtract the underlying recent trend, the peak shifts to July, as you would expect from the dependence of invertebrate activity on temperature.

Alan the seasonal modulation (which peaks in May, not June, because of a rising underlying trend line) is attributed to the extensive Northern deciduous forests shutting down for the winter, and causing CO2 to rise steadily throughout the winter until in spring the new growth restarts the photosynthetic removal of CO2. I am totally mystified by your involvement of the dependence of invertebrate activity on temperature: it is not really apparent why it should work in that direction, and even if it does it is surely a minor factor.

There is further evidence that the seasonal modulation of CO2 is caused by deciduous forests in the Northern hemisphere in the Cape Grim record, which shows a much smaller seasonal modulation. Although there are extensive forests in Tasmania, they are evergreen, and downwind from Cape Grim anyway.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 03/07/2013 22:57:25
So why does CO2 decrease from August to December, when the deciduous forests are closing down?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 04/07/2013 01:24:51
In my previous post I also forgot to mention that the seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere -- duh!!
The Amundsen-Scott data from the US station at the South Pole shows almost no seasonal modulation.

from alancalverd (Reply # 176):
Quote
So why does CO2 decrease from August to December, when the deciduous forests are closing down?

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png

CO2 decreases from August to October in spite of the fact that the deciduous forests are "shutting down" at this time of year because they do not just suddenly stop photosynthesis, but run it down through the autumn months. The rate of decrease of CO2 slows, as the graph above clearly shows, and then the CO2 mixing ratio starts to increase. Once again, your perception of a December minimum is unrealistic because we are looking at a seasonal signal on top of a steeply rising background.

The points on this graph have been obtained by subtracting a running 12-month average from a monthly average, and then averaging that trend across several annual cycles.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 04/07/2013 03:23:17
Here is a promised response to alancalverd's questioning of the database for the plot:

Quote
But average of what? Not the entire planet, clearly, because we don't have any reliable data of the polar regions before 1900, or of the wet bits of the Pacific Ocean before 1970. But it can't be from a single point either, because of the ridiculously anomalous winter temperatures.

Somebody, somewhere, must surely know what this graph actually represents??

What the graph actually represents is five independent "best guesses" at a single figure to represent a global average trend for climate change. The first three involve raw data from ground stations as well as satellite data. The data are corrected in various ways to try to take account of
bias. The last two are based purely on satellite data, but two different analyses of basically the same raw data.

When the climate scientists try to enter the political debate, they are really in a no win situation.
If they report the raw data, they are subject to accusations of bias, unrepresentative data sets, deniers pointing out why certain raw data might be invalid, etc. If they try to apply corrections to the raw data and average over geographical regions, they are subject to accusations of model error, of massaging the data to fit their preconceptions, of model dependence rather than using the "pure" raw data.

What in fact they do is to work very hard on trying to eliminate bias in their models of the data analysis (note that this is quite a different thing to GCMs) and report in great detail what they did with the raw data and why. Anyone can find this material in the scientific literature, but deciphering it will be a major and unnecessary task for any non-expert, and this is outside my area of expertise; I claim expertise in atmospheric CO2, but not in climate models.

What is shown on the graph appears to be the "global" temperature increase or decrease from a base year from 5 independent sources. The sources are
• GISS -- NASA Goddard figures which use ground station results, correct them where necessary,
and then use satellite results to interpolate between stations.
• NCDC -- NOAA analysis similarly based
• HadCRU -- UK Met Office/University of East Anglia analysis
• RSS -- NASA analysis of raw satellite results from NOAA satellites
• UAH -- An independent analysis of the same raw results at the University of Alabama

I believe that we can take some comfort from the following facts:
• The analyses were very detailed ones by 5 independent teams, genuinely seeking to make a scientific contribution, and with considerable expertise.
• The details of the adjustments made are clearly set out for anyone with the time or energy to read and digest them.
• Although not identical in detail, all five models show the same general trends.

However if anyone really wants to get into this stuff, I would suggest that you first visit wikipedia, and then look carefully at the websites of the various organizations: NASA, NOAA, UK Met Office, and University of Alabama at Huntsville.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 04/07/2013 08:23:47
From alancalverd (reply # 138):
Quote
The GISS "data" is fascinating. It goes back to 1880, when one continent (Antarctica) was completely unexplored, another (Australia)  had no established meteorological service, and there were no regular reports from anywhere in the Pacific. So how did they deduce a global mean? I smell bullshit!

To set the record straight about Australia, you need to remember that we were not even a nation until 1901! There were various state- or city-based instrumentalities keeping records. These records are archived and available from the Bureau of Meteorology library. In the case of Victoria, my own state, the observational practices were established by Neumayer (a German meteorologist of high repute) in the early 1850s, and records were rigorously kept at the Melbourne Observatory. In 1859 the State Government took over responsibility for the collection of data, and this responsibility -- and the keeping of records, which started to expand until it took in observations from around 25 Victorian country towns -- continued until the establishment of the National Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne on the first day of 1908.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 04/07/2013 10:36:19
Australia is an extreme example of human habitation globally - practically everyone lives in a tiny strip around the coast and we have almost no useful historic data about the middle of any continent apart from Europe and even less about the oceans than cover 75% of the surface. That's the main problem with historic "data" - it derives from less than 1% of the earth's surface, and most of that very atypical.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 04/07/2013 10:45:03
Reverting to Mauna Loa, they do publish an annual CO2 cycle with the underlying trend removed.  I'm baffled as to why the CO2 level rises whilst the trees are growing, reaches a peak in summer, and decreases as photosynthesis shuts down.  When I was a lad, we were taught that photosynthesis extracts CO2 from the atmosphere, so I'd expect exactly the opposite behaviour if your model is correct (and they haven't moved Hawaii!). Where does the summer CO2 come from? Certainly not human activity, unless you Aussies have found some way of exporting your winter barbie smoke across the equator and halfway round the world.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 04/07/2013 10:48:53
Quote
The Amundsen-Scott data from the US station at the South Pole shows almost no seasonal modulation.

Not a lot of seasonal variation in vegetation or invertebrate activity either. I'm no expert on penguin farts but I doubt that they vary much as they are warm-blooded.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 04/07/2013 11:29:11
Reverting to Mauna Loa, they do publish an annual CO2 cycle with the underlying trend removed.  I'm baffled as to why the CO2 level rises whilst the trees are growing, reaches a peak in summer, and decreases as photosynthesis shuts down.  When I was a lad, we were taught that photosynthesis extracts CO2 from the atmosphere, so I'd expect exactly the opposite behaviour if your model is correct (and they haven't moved Hawaii!). Where does the summer CO2 come from? Certainly not human activity, unless you Aussies have found some way of exporting your winter barbie smoke across the equator and halfway round the world.

Alan please check this diagram and tell me if that is the graph you are referring to: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png

If so, then you must appreciate two things:
firstly that the maximum and minimum are in May and October respectively, not June and December.
secondly that the amount of photosynthetic activity is reflected in the rate of change (slope) of the mixing ratio graph rather than the mixing ratio per se.

The months of maximum negative gradient (high photosynthetic activity) are June and July -- summer months -- while those of maximum negative gradient (low photosynthetic activity) are December, January, and February, the winter months.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 04/07/2013 11:54:25
Australia is an extreme example of human habitation globally - practically everyone lives in a tiny strip around the coast and we have almost no useful historic data about the middle of any continent apart from Europe and even less about the oceans than cover 75% of the surface. That's the main problem with historic "data" - it derives from less than 1% of the earth's surface, and most of that very atypical.

Australia is the world's driest continent with the least reliable rainfall, and the leading nation with expertise on dryland farming. From very early times, the Bureau of Meteorology was faced with a significant problem -- how to reliably forecast significant rainfall and weather events. Every outback station has a rain gauge and most of them regularly send in rainfall reports to the Met Bureau. There is ample coverage of rainfall right across the continent. But temperature, wind, and barometric pressure is quite another matter. Weather stations were set up in remote locations quite early in the piece to fill in the blank spaces in order to have better data available for forecasting: a survey of the data at http://bom.gov.au will give station locations and the number of years for which data is available.

I think that you will find that the Americas have a similar coverage, although for South American countries the data might be incomplete or of questionable quality because of poverty and political instability.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 04/07/2013 18:46:54
I note with some amusement that neither JP nor BC (bored chemist) replied on my challenge here:


<mod edit>
Editorialising, non-peer reviewed links removed (yet again!)
The NASA story is  about the thermosphere when it gets hit by solar flares. Here’s the Press release:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/
<//end>
henry@moderator
believe it or not, that was in fact the paper I googled for...thanks!
It was just that there was so many "non-peer" reviewed stuff popping up....
I am sorry...

henry@bc & jp

now , to quote from the above paper,  "peer reviewed" & all

For the three day period, March 8th through 10th, the thermosphere absorbed 26 billion kWh of energy.  Infrared radiation from CO2 and NO, the two most efficient coolants in the thermosphere, re-radiated 95% of that total back into space.

 
Why, wow,

did you see that 95% of that 26 billion kWh went back into space? (cooling!!)

now, if you both continue to "believe" in man made global warming,
\

why don't you show me how the testing was done to prove that the net effect of an increase from  0.03% CO2 (300 ppm) to 0.04% (400 ppm) is that of warming, rather than cooling?

hint:Forget about the closed box experiments of those that died a hundred years or so ago. It only shows the warming part.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 04/07/2013 19:42:56
Do you mean this "challenge"?

"In fact, as I have been saying all along, by challenging all of you to come with a balance sheet, it is not really even sure anymore  if more CO2 does not cause cooling rather than warming."

Because you did get a reply to that.
I said "Nobody can give an exact figure for 100 ppm will cause x degrees more warming, but they can show that warming will take place (and a simple experiment can show the same thing)" in post 78
Did you not understand?
Since the system is non linear (as you have pointed out) your question makes no sense.
Asking it again doesn't help your case.


"Why, wow,[/size] [/size]did you see that 95% of that 26 billion kWh went back into space? (cooling!!)"
No
Did you see that 5% was not re-radiated (warming!!).
If I give you a hundred buckets of water and take away 95 of them you still end up with more water.
Did you really not understand that?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 04/07/2013 20:16:00
BC says
and a simple experiment can show the same thing)" in post 78

henry says
you did not show me there (in 78) an experiment that shows the extra amount of sunshine being back radiated to space versus the extra amount being back radiated to earth caused by the extra 100 ppm CO2.

In fact, I suspect you have probably have no idea what type of experiment would prove this conclusively.

You honestly think or believe that 95% is less than 5%?

Let us face it: your answer does not make sense.

 
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 04/07/2013 21:10:37


"You honestly think or believe that 95% is less than 5%?"
No, of course not. That's why I didn't say that. What you did there was try to use a "straw man" argument.
I don't know why you chose to do that because I have pointed out before that it just makes you look silly.

I think 95% is less than 100% (because it is).

As I said, if the CO2 absorbs some heat and re-radiates 95% of that heat to space then it keeps the other 5%.
That's a net heating effect.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 04/07/2013 23:52:35
Quote
The months of maximum negative gradient (high photosynthetic activity) are June and July -- summer months -- while those of maximum negative gradient (low photosynthetic activity) are December, January, and February, the winter months.

Never mind the gradient, why does the CO2 level start below and increase above the trend level as the weather gets warmer? When trees become dormant they don't release more CO2 than they absorbed when active - indeed the release is negligible compared with the uptake, and in a closed system plants gradually absorb nearly all the atmospheric CO2 until there isn't enough to sustain growth. And as the weather gets warmer, humans discharge less CO2. So what is putting CO2 into the atmosphere as the sun gets higher in the sky? The annual cycle has been going on with the same amplitude and phase even when the underlying trend was much less steep than it is now. 

And regarding Australian temperature records

Quote
The Stevenson screen was first introduced to Australia in the 1880s and was installed everywhere, with a few exceptions, by 1910. Prior to this date, thermometers were located in various types of shelter, as well as under verandas and even in unheated rooms indoors. Because of this lack of standardisation, many pre-1910 temperatures in Australia are not strictly comparable with those measured after that date, and therefore must be used with care in analyses of climate change within Australia.

from Statistics Australia. Rainfall is fairly easy to measure consistently, so those stats are believable, but even with standard Stevenson screens and calibrated thermometers, point records can show point trends reliably but it's extremely difficult to extract meaningful area data or even to compare screens a mile apart if the vegetation and terrain are different. Hence my considerable caution in evaluating historic temperature data even from scientifically sophisticated sources like the Aussie outback.

The art of glider flying is to spot variations in terrain. Brown fields heat up more than green ones, and the contrast produces the thermals that give us the energy to fly. The art of farming is to introduce temporary variations in terrain by rotating crops and grazing. So you might expect the very best point measurements to show a 5 year cycle even if the climate were absolutely constant!
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 05/07/2013 01:27:38
Quote
The months of maximum negative gradient (high photosynthetic activity) are June and July -- summer months -- while those of maximum negative gradient (low photosynthetic activity) are December, January, and February, the winter months.

Never mind the gradient, why does the CO2 level start below and increase above the trend level as the weather gets warmer? When trees become dormant they don't release more CO2 than they absorbed when active - indeed the release is negligible compared with the uptake, and in a closed system plants gradually absorb nearly all the atmospheric CO2 until there isn't enough to sustain growth. And as the weather gets warmer, humans discharge less CO2. So what is putting CO2 into the atmosphere as the sun gets higher in the sky? The annual cycle has been going on with the same amplitude and phase even when the underlying trend was much less steep than it is now. 


Seriously Alan? I do mind the gradient! Surely you can work out why from my explanation.
Please note that the CO2 level starts to decrease as the weather is warming up (May), and the decrease continues through the summer months (June through September). But it does not bring the mixing ratio to below par for a few months. Similarly when photosynthesis starts to shut down (October and November), the decrease tapers off and is soon replaced by an increase which continues through the winter (December through April) at a steady rate until the photosynthesis restarts the following spring (May)!
This explains the shape of the monthly correlation graph. It is not the mixing ratio that is linked to photosynthesis, but the rate of change of the mixing ratio!

As for the rest of your post, the effects you point out are totally valid, as are many other similar ones. But that is why climate scientists have made a very serious and detailed effort to eliminate them with model corrections and adjustments (in some cases) or by abandoning point measurements at ground stations in favour of satellite proxies (in others). But you dismiss those efforts as "bullshit"? Which side are you batting for? Or are you simply trying to change a scientific debate into a political one?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 05/07/2013 13:55:36
BC says
As I said, if the CO2 absorbs some heat and re-radiates 95% of that heat to space then it keeps the other 5%.
That's a net heating effect.

Henry says
ok, ignoring the NO, let us assume all is CO2 up there, @ 0.05% in total
and we had 95% back radiated  to space and 5% absorbed heat:
and that is a ratio 19:1
Now let us make it 0.06% CO2 due to human emission in the future

that will increase the ratio to 19 x 0.06/0.05 = 22.8 : 1.
in which case we have 95.8% being back radiated to space and 4.2% absorbed heat.

That would be a net cooling effect caused by the increase in CO2
(remember we were only talking here about the thermosphere)




Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 05/07/2013 18:26:37
"that will increase the ratio to 19 x 0.06/0.05 = 22.8 : 1."
No, that's just made up stuff.

Once again, you have not understood that the system is non linear.
Please learn about this before posting again.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 05/07/2013 19:10:42
 BC says
Once again, you have not understood that the system is non linear.
Please learn about this before posting again.
henry says
not once have you spoken to me about "non linear"

but once again you have not  understood that the CO2 is causing cooling from the top (12 hours per day) as proven to you from numerous papers, and warming from the bottom (24/7).
And nobody has provided either you or me with a balance sheet.
Yet you continue to "believe" that the net effect of more CO2 is that of warming, rather than cooling....

Here is something for you from my compatriots (in Holland) to think about:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/05/dutch-meteorological-institute-knmi-critical-of-ipcc-suggests-they-are-leaving-out-study-of-natural-climate-variability/


Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 06/07/2013 01:23:35
Please note that the CO2 level starts to decrease as the weather is warming up (May), and the decrease continues through the summer months (June through September).

not according to the inset on this graph
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=XU7NI4a4HkIJlM&tbnid=AaQqiTlNR_JUkM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcommons.wikimedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFile%3AMauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png&ei=b2DXUey-N4ul0wXIhYGQCQ&psig=AFQjCNFFGFCI3UdKtRO6OD0LB_77meqJCA&ust=1373155780412660 (http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=XU7NI4a4HkIJlM&tbnid=AaQqiTlNR_JUkM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcommons.wikimedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFile%3AMauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png&ei=b2DXUey-N4ul0wXIhYGQCQ&psig=AFQjCNFFGFCI3UdKtRO6OD0LB_77meqJCA&ust=1373155780412660)
which clearly shows CO2 increasing as the temperature rises to a maximum in May/June.

Quote
Which side are you batting for? Or are you simply trying to change a scientific debate into a political one?

I'm batting for a scientific approach to climate. That means starting with good data and trying to work out what is going on. It's difficult to find an analogy*, except in the realm of jokes about politicians and statisticians, but just in case nobody has heard it before, the three usual suspects are travelling in a train in Peru when they see a white cow and a black cow.

Politician: "the vast majority of cows in Peru are black"

Statistician: "on a limited sample one can infer that half the cows in Peru are black"

Physicist: "At 0400UTC I saw two bovine quadrupeds. At least one side of one of them was black"

I am a physicist.

There are three sources of good data: satellite measurements (which cover the entire globe on an even grid with a reasonably consistent technique), ice cores (which provide unequivocal historic data from a consistent source at a single point), and a few observatories such as Mauna Loa in places remote from agricultural or urban development. So we need to explain three phenomena: any trends in satellite data untainted by additions, corrections, or smoothing based on nonsatellite data; the historic cyclic sawtooth of temperature followed by CO2; and the actual seasonal variation of CO2.

*hey, I just thought of one! You have been trying to ascertain the distance between two lumps of rock, to set a baseline for a new survey of Victoria. You have historic data based on surveyors' chains, intermediate surveys, triangulation, ant migration times, aerial photography, folklore, pedometers.....and I offer you a laser interferometer. What use do you make of the historic data?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 06/07/2013 02:09:41
...{shrug}...

One last try:

Quote
Quote from: damocles on 05/07/2013 00:27:38
Please note that the CO2 level starts to decrease as the weather is warming up (May), and the decrease continues through the summer months (June through September).


not according to the inset on this graph
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=XU7NI4a4HkIJlM&tbnid=AaQqiTlNR_JUkM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcommons.wikimedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFile%3AMauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png&ei=b2DXUey-N4ul0wXIhYGQCQ&psig=AFQjCNFFGFCI3UdKtRO6OD0LB_77meqJCA&ust=1373155780412660
which clearly shows CO2 increasing as the temperature rises to a maximum in May/June.

Firstly, the month of maximum CO2 is definitely May, not May-June. Secondly the months of maximum insolation are June-July, and the months of maximum temperature (in the region where the boreal forests are) are July-August.

My point is that photosynthetic activity correlates both with insolation and temperature (insolation is not such a good correlation as temperature, probably because new growth is still "coming on line" in early summer). What is involved in this correlation is actual temperature, not the amount of warming. But photosynthetic activity also correlates well with rate of CO2 reduction. That is, with the rate of change of mixing ratio, not the actual mixing ratio
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 06/07/2013 17:05:28
BC says
Once again, you have not understood that the system is non linear.
Please learn about this before posting again.
henry says
not once have you spoken to me about "non linear"

but once again you have not  understood that the CO2 is causing cooling from the top (12 hours per day) as proven to you from numerous papers, and warming from the bottom (24/7).
And nobody has provided either you or me with a balance sheet.
Yet you continue to "believe" that the net effect of more CO2 is that of warming, rather than cooling....

Here is something for you from my compatriots (in Holland) to think about:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/05/dutch-meteorological-institute-knmi-critical-of-ipcc-suggests-they-are-leaving-out-study-of-natural-climate-variability/ (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/05/dutch-meteorological-institute-knmi-critical-of-ipcc-suggests-they-are-leaving-out-study-of-natural-climate-variability/)



I meant you in the plural sense.
IIRC it was post 144 where it was pointed out that absorption was non linear.
But the point remains that since the system isn't linear (whoever pointed it out)  the naive maths you did isn't valid.




Also, as I already pointed out, repeatedly asking for an impossible balance sheet just makes you looks silly.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 06/07/2013 19:06:40
Damocles

I don't really care whether photosynthesis is driven by insolation, past temperature history, or the arbitrary will of the fairies. The question is, why does the CO2 level increase as the temperature rises?  What is generating the new CO2? It clearly isn't dominated by human activity as the amplitude of the oscillation hasn't changed over recorded time. If the only driver was photosynthesis, the CO2 level would have decreased year on year until all the trees died, several million years before humans evolved. But it didn't. Something was generating CO2, and the rate of generation was and still is temperature-dependent.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 07/07/2013 05:45:21
To summarize what we (i.e. the consensus of atmospheric chemists, with very few dissenting voices) know about atmospheric CO2: basically, there are three quite different effects.

(1) There is a well established and well understood seasonal pattern to the CO2 mixing ratio. It lags the insolation, its ultimate cause, by about 5 months. The chain of causality is mostly down to the extensive boreal forests in the cool temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere:

insolation (maximum late June)
---> (lag of 0.7±0.5 months due to new growth coming on line)
photosynthetic activity (maximum mid July)
---> (lag of approximately 3.0 months because of 90° phase shift associated with time to achieve a minimum with a quasi sinusoidal rate of change)
CO2 mixing ratio minimum near boreal forests (mid October)
---> (lag of 0.7±0.3 months associated with thorough intrahemispheric mixing, Hawaii not being anywhere near the boreal forests)
CO2 mixing ratio seasonal minimum observed at Mauna Loa observatory (late October/early November)

(2) There is a rather less well understood lag of CO2 mixing ratio behind temperature by 50-300 years over the historical ice-core record of 4 ice ages and 4 interglacials in the last half million years, with ice age CO2 levels typically being around 200 ppm and interglacial levels being around 280 ppm. There have been several plausible hypotheses about why this should be the case, but it is a matter for continuing scientific enquiry.

(3) There has been a very steep rise in CO2 starting with the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the mid 19th century. It is certainly anthropomorphic. How do we know this?
• Because we can do carbon accounting and point to how the rise in atmospheric CO2 corresponds to consumption of fossil fuel
• Because if it were a natural effect then we would expect that it would be heralded by some extreme temperature rise, and this is certainly not in the temperature record
• Because it has taken CO2 mixing levels well outside the regime that has operated over the previous half million years or more, with CO2 levels varying between 200 and 280 ppm up to 400 ppm.
• Because there are much more subtle indications from isotope ratios that most of the additional CO2 burden in the atmosphere indicates that most of the increasing CO2 mixing ratio is coming from fossil fuels rather than living (i.e. recently dead) plants.

The fact that the recent rise in CO2 mixing ratio is anthropogenic is really a no-brainer!
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 07/07/2013 12:20:25
Quote
(1) There is a well established and well understood seasonal pattern to the CO2 mixing ratio. It lags the insolation, its ultimate cause, by about 5 months. The chain of causality is mostly down to the extensive boreal forests in the cool temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere:

That would explain a decrease in CO2 level. It doesn't explain an increase. Plants do not exhale carbon dioxide. Where, please, does the new CO2 come from in the months leading up to May? There's no doubt that human activity adds CO2 to the atmosphere, but most of that addition takes place when the plants are dormant, so you'd expect to see a maximum in winter, not summer, surely? And the amplitude of the oscillation appears to be independent of the gradually increasing mean.

Not sure what you mean by CO2 "mixing ratio". Mixed with what? The Mauna Loa data just talks about absolute concentration of CO2 - or is that the same thing?

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 07/07/2013 12:53:30
The 400ppm or so of CO2 in air should be referred to as a mixing ratio, rather than a  concentration.
The units are wrong for a concentration which would be in mass (or moles) per unit volume.
It's a terminology thing, familiar enough to those who study atmospheric physics.

"That would explain a decrease in CO2 level. It doesn't explain an increase. Plants do not exhale carbon dioxide."
Actually, they do.
When there's not much sunlight about they metabolise differently and produce CO2.



Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 07/07/2013 23:56:41
Which would make the graph all the more mysterious. As the amount of sunlight increases, so does the amount of CO2!
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 08/07/2013 07:09:58
From Alancalverd (#201)
Quote
Which would make the graph all the more mysterious. As the amount of sunlight increases, so does the amount of CO2!

***

From damocles (#183)
Quote
Quote from: alancalverd on 04/07/2013 09:45:03
Reverting to Mauna Loa, they do publish an annual CO2 cycle with the underlying trend removed.  I'm baffled as to why the CO2 level rises whilst the trees are growing, reaches a peak in summer, and decreases as photosynthesis shuts down.  When I was a lad, we were taught that photosynthesis extracts CO2 from the atmosphere, so I'd expect exactly the opposite behaviour if your model is correct (and they haven't moved Hawaii!). Where does the summer CO2 come from? Certainly not human activity, unless you Aussies have found some way of exporting your winter barbie smoke across the equator and halfway round the world.


Alan please check this diagram and tell me if that is the graph you are referring to: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png

If so, then you must appreciate two things:
firstly that the maximum and minimum are in May and October respectively, not June and December.
secondly that the amount of photosynthetic activity is reflected in the rate of change (slope) of the mixing ratio graph rather than the mixing ratio per se.

The months of maximum negative gradient (high photosynthetic activity) are June and July -- summer months -- while those of maximum negative gradient (low photosynthetic activity) are December, January, and February, the winter months.

***
Been there , done that, not really up for another lap!
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 08/07/2013 09:34:51
OK, let's make it simple.

Long before humans evolved, plants extracted CO2 from the atmosphere. The atmosphere is finite, but the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere sometimes increased and certainly never decreased to the extent that the plants died.

What mechanism recycled the carbon, previously extracted by plants, back into the atmosphere?

(Hint: all animals generate energy by converting carbon componds to carbon dioxide.)
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 08/07/2013 10:30:28
Hint to you alan: If animals generate energy by converting carbon to CO2, what about plants and microorganisms?

http://vro.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/vro/vrosite.nsf/pages/soilhealth_organic_carbon-cycle

plants ~50%, microorganisms ~45%, animals ~5%
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 08/07/2013 13:50:42
Intriguing thought that living plants lose half of the carbon they acquire - I thought it was less than 10%. Nevertheless, the loss is a "business expense" and the overall tendency is for plants to sink carbon when the sun shines, as evidenced by the fact that trees start small and get bigger every year until they die.

So as far as I am concerned, the point is proved. Microorganisms that convert plant material to CO2 count as "animals by definition" in the simple scheme of things, so as the temperature rises, so the wee beasties become more active and recycle carbon to the atmosphere, completely explaining the shape of the seasonal curve.   

I'll concede a free kick on yeasts. Neither plants nor animals, but they metabolise plant sugars. That said, they do not need sunlight to do so, and are temperature-sensitive, so the mechanism stands: in the absence of volcanic or human activity, the concentration, mixing ratio or whatever you want to call it of CO2 in the atmosphere depends on the competitive balance between plant and non-plant metabolism, which is determined by temperature and insolation. This gives us a plausible relationship between cause and effect that consists with observation: long-term, the CO2 graph lags behind the temperature curve, and short-term [CO2] increases as the temperature rises, until plant activity catches up.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 08/07/2013 17:59:22
henry@alan

anyway, as I had been saying all along, more carbon is OK, in fact it is better....

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/deserts-greening-from-rising-co2/
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 08/07/2013 19:15:06
Nothing new here, then. Local market gardeners burn diesel fuel to increase the CO2 level in their greenhouses (they sell the electricity as a byproduct - the profit margin is in the salad!) and have to ventilate the greenhouse before it's safe for humans to harvest.

There is however an upper limit beyond which it seems that plants shut down, but in answer to the original question, it's well above 400 ppm, and 40,000 ppm is considered long-term tolerable for humans.

So we can expect the jungle to flourish for a while.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 08/07/2013 20:08:51
henry@alan

anyway, as I had been saying all along, more carbon is OK, in fact it is better....

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/deserts-greening-from-rising-co2/
Most people don't live in deserts so greening them is of marginal benefit to people
On the other hand, a lot of people live on coastlines.
Sea level rises are bad for them.

I think Alan has shown the falsehood of your idea when he said
"...have to ventilate the greenhouse before it's safe for humans to harvest. "

Anyway, the point is easy to settle.
If you think more CO2 is better- just sit in a room full of it for a while.
Until you have done that, please don't make the false statement again.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 08/07/2013 20:49:58
Oh come on, BC!

There's a huge difference between 400 ppm and 40,000 ppm, and the mammalian breathing reflex doesn't work in the complete absence of CO2 (which is why we have re-breathing bags on oxygen supplies).

The Israeli economy was built on greening deserts. The US economy nearly collapsed when overcultivation turned parts of the Midwest into a dustbowl. History suggests that the Sahara was largely manmade: its fringes certainly support a fair number of people, and anything we can do to keep it in check, or even reverse desertification, would be welcome. 

Not that I have any sympathy with "most people". The world would be a much nicer place with a smaller human population. 
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 08/07/2013 21:08:21
Oh come on, BC!

There's a huge difference between 400 ppm and 40,000 ppm

Yes, there is.
Which is why the unqualified statement that "more is better" is obviously nonsense.
So, it's a shame that he keeps saying it- but he does.
Perhaps you can persuade him to stop. I have tried several times but he keeps on saying it even though it has been explained repeatedly, and at length, that it's not true.

Also, whatever the merits of wiping out a few billion people (and I can think of some who we could start with) it would be impossible to do it without killing a lot of innocent animals and that's not fair.


Also, things like
"The US economy nearly collapsed when overcultivation turned parts of the Midwest into a dustbowl."
Suggest that trying to grow too much, without regard for the other resources available is a bad thing.
If you raise the CO2 but not the supply of fixed nitrogen or the potassium or and (most importantly of all) the water, how long will this greening last? Perhaps as long as the early Midwestern corn belt.

Perturbing balanced systems is inherently risky; why advocate doing more of it on the biggest scale in history.
As you say, the Sahara, the Midwest and Israel are examples of what happens if you get it wrong. At least those were localised.
You seem to think it's a good idea to mess with the whole world in that way.
Are you sure that's a good idea?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 08/07/2013 23:50:45
AFAIK, Israel continues to export fruit and vegetables from a greened desert. At least the stuff I bought last week. The recent CO2-greening of the Australian desert and other areas appears to be entirely in equilibrium: I don't see massive changes in agriculture over the entire planet, just natural vegetation being its opportunistic self. And IIRC, increased vegetation tends to increase rainfall and wild forests incorporate their own nitrogen fixers.

Curious, isn't it, that any time anyone mentions reducing the human population, someone starts talking about killing. Seems to be an inherent defect in the human brain. Killing is a pointless, ethically complicated, and ludicrously expensive way of doing it. People die, quite naturally, at the rate of about 1.5% per annum. Now if we simply reduce our birthrate, the one ecological variable over which we have absolute and orthogonal control, we can reduce the population and make the world a better place by doing nothing at all! (As I recall, making babies involves doing quite a bit.) 
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 09/07/2013 10:22:48
Alan, the "recent CO2 greening of the Australian  Desert" is no such thing. It is a water greening based around a few successive seasons of exceptional rainfall in the centre. It is an extreme form of a phenomenon that is not unprecedented, and can probably be attributed to climate change, which may or may not be an indirect consequence of CO2 mixing ratio change.

There is a form of farming in Australia called "opportunity cropping". When there is an inland flood a lot of the lakes fill up. The soil becomes waterlogged around the lakes. But there is a significant zone in a ring around any lake where the soil has just the right moisture content to support a crop and not to bog the farm machinery. The following year that ring will be a little smaller, and it will gradually shrink in towards the lake until the soil becomes too salty. At that stage cropping is abandoned until the next flood.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 09/07/2013 14:42:10
Just to quote a bit of the article that MCOK referenced:

Quote
In findings based on satellite observations, CSIRO, in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU), found that this CO2 fertilisation correlated with an 11 per cent increase in foliage cover from 1982-2010 across parts of the arid areas studied in Australia, North America, the Middle East and Africa, according to CSIRO research scientist, Dr Randall Donohue.

“In Australia, our native vegetation is superbly adapted to surviving in arid environments and it consequently uses water very efficiently,” Dr Donohue said. “Australian vegetation seems quite sensitive to CO2 fertilisation.
 

Doesn't sound like opportunity cropping to me, unless that Yanks and everyone else have had exceptional rainfall every year since 1982 - which rather questions the meaning of "exceptional"! And I wouldn't class CSIRO and ANU among the evil atheistic capitalist deniers of AGW. I smell science rearing its sceptical head.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 09/07/2013 18:26:09
BC says
Which is why the unqualified statement that "more is better" is obviously nonsense
henry says
I wonder why you keep saying that I make unqualified statements.
I did my own research because clearly I cannot trust anyone of you here?
FYI I will repeat it to you again
I first studied the mechanism by which AGW is supposed to work. I will spare you all the scientific details. I quickly figured that the proposed mechanism implies that more GHG would cause a delay in radiation being able to escape from earth, which then causes a delay in cooling, from earth to space, resulting in a warming effect. 

It followed naturally, that if more carbon dioxide (CO2)  or more water (H2O) or more other GHG’s were to be blamed for extra warming we should see minimum temperatures (minima) rising faster, pushing up the average temperature (means) on earth.

I subsequently took a sample of 47 weather stations, analysed all daily data, and determined the ratio of the speed in the increase of the maximum temperature (maxima), means and minima. Here you can see the results.

http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/

You will find that if we take the speed of warming over the longest period (i.e. from 1973/1974) for which we have very reliable records, we find the results of the speed of warming, maxima : means: minima

0.036 : 0.014 : 0.006 in degrees C/annum.

That is ca. 6:2:1. So it was maxima pushing up minima and means and not the other way around. Anyone can duplicate this experiment and check this trend in their own backyard or at the weather station nearest to you.

Having found no evidence of CO2 induced global warming, and finding only benefits, of more CO2 causing more greenery and increased crops (remember in the dutch greenhouses where they add CO2 to 1500 ppm?)

I say more CO2 is better,

Now who does not understand that?

If you BC, want to maintain your current viewpoint, you must qualify why you say that more CO2 is not better?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 09/07/2013 19:36:43

henry says
I wonder why you keep saying that I make unqualified statements.
Because you said
"more carbon is OK, in fact it is better."
without qualifying it. In doing so, you made an unqualified statement.
Evidence that, in some cases more CO2 may be beneficial to some things is utterly beside the point.
And repeating it by saying "I say more CO2 is better, " just shows that you don't even understand why you are wrong.


I wonder why you don't find out what the phrase means.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 09/07/2013 20:08:29
henry@BC
to be able to make qualified statements you have to do your own research.

which is where?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 09/07/2013 22:45:24
From alancalverd:(reply #213, following on from 211 and 212)
Quote
Just to quote a bit of the article that MCOK referenced:

Quote
In findings based on satellite observations, CSIRO, in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU), found that this CO2 fertilisation correlated with an 11 per cent increase in foliage cover from 1982-2010 across parts of the arid areas studied in Australia, North America, the Middle East and Africa, according to CSIRO research scientist, Dr Randall Donohue.

“In Australia, our native vegetation is superbly adapted to surviving in arid environments and it consequently uses water very efficiently,” Dr Donohue said. “Australian vegetation seems quite sensitive to CO2 fertilisation.

11% hardly represents "greening of the Australian desert", especially compared to a 200+% greening associated with a few seasonal floods! The headline on the article henry linked is a blatant overstatement, and might well cause confusion in readers other than myself!
Especially in the light of a few nature documentaries that have recorded the spectacular blossoming of the Australian desert in response to recent floods.

11% greening in response to 15% CO2 increase over the same period is hardly unexpected in desert plants that are not water-limited in their photosynthetic response. Fact is that most plants, including over 90% of food crops, are water-limited.
 
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 10/07/2013 18:13:48
Never mind the article - I have little respect for journalism. I'm interested in the numbers quoted from CSIRO and ANU. 11% increased foliage over 18 years is a significant change in arid vegetation, and it's not just flood cropping in Austraila that they studied, but arid regions worldwide. If the figures are honestly reported, that looks to me like a signficant and unsurprising trend, in keeping with all we know about plant growth.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 11/07/2013 20:05:22
I don't know about the other members of this forum, but I'm not a plant.
What's good for plants in some arid areas may well not be good for me, or for the planet as a whole.
Rapid changes in climate are generally bad for people- whichever direction the change takes.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 11/07/2013 22:30:52
You may not be a plant, but as you can't synthesise sugars or proteins, your life depends on plants. The Irish potato famine, the Oklahoma dustbowl, Lysenkoism....killed millions of people, and the same stories recur every year throughout Africa and Asia: Bihar,the Sahel....

True, most of these disasters have been caused by a failure of the water supply or seriously bad science, but it's difficult to imagine how a few percent more foliage could be a Bad Thing. 400 ppm CO2 won't do you any harm, and it may just help to avert then next major agricultural catastrophe.

Rapid changes in climate are inevitable, as the historical record shows. For the first time since life began, one species  is able to anticipate and mitigate its effect, but most people prefer to argue about its cause. 
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 12/07/2013 02:16:37
From alancalverd (reply #220):
Quote
True, most of these disasters have been caused by a failure of the water supply or seriously bad science, but it's difficult to imagine how a few percent more foliage could be a Bad Thing. 400 ppm CO2 won't do you any harm, and it may just help to avert then next major agricultural catastrophe.

True, but it is also hard to imagine how it could be a good thing:

From damocles (reply #217):
Quote
11% greening in response to 15% CO2 increase over the same period is hardly unexpected in desert plants that are not water-limited in their photosynthetic response. Fact is that most plants, including over 90% of food crops, are water-limited.

Meanwhile there is an argument that more CO2 will lead to global warming, rising sea levels, and more erratic weather, which definitely is a bad thing. It is not an overwhelming argument, but it is a position supported by over 90% of the serious scientists working in the area, which at least means that it must be seriously considered by any rational person.

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: alancalverd on 12/07/2013 11:22:21
There are very good, logical, scientific and political reasons for limiting and eventually abolishing the emission of CO2 from fossil fuels. Global warming is not one of them.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 13/07/2013 15:38:22
"it's difficult to imagine how a few percent more foliage could be a Bad Thing. "
If anyone had said that it was, then that wouldn't be a strawman.

"There are very good, logical, scientific and political reasons for limiting and eventually abolishing the emission of CO2 from fossil fuels. Global warming is not one of them."
Says you, but the experts disagree; and they have actual evidence.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 14/07/2013 17:57:44
damocles says
Meanwhile there is an argument that more CO2 will lead to global warming, rising sea levels, and more erratic weather, which definitely is a bad thing. It is not an overwhelming argument, but it is a position supported by over 90% of the serious scientists
bored chemist says
Says you, but the experts disagree; and they have actual evidence.

henry says

I am not serious? what evidence are you guys referring to? I am interested to hear from you which information you find convincing for this type of reasoning of those in the 90%?

Truth is that most data sets including my own, i.e.  both my global set and my set for South Africa,
show that we have dropped by about 0.2K, on average over the last 12 years.

That is the reality. It is not an "opinion". It is a figure. We, on earth, are almost a quarter degree cooler now as it was 12 years ago.

it does not yet sound like a lot. but I know we are further accelerating downwards, simply because I cannot find another best fit for my data, other than the one reported here:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/


Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 14/07/2013 18:41:19



henry says

I am not serious?

No.
A serious researcher wouldn't try to fit a sine wave through the data like you did.
They would look at scientific evidence, like the stuff cited here.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11639-climate-myths-the-cooling-after-1940-shows-co2-does-not-cause-warming.html#.UeLiTY3_l7g

or here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 14/07/2013 19:20:14
BC quotes
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11639-climate-myths-the-cooling-after-1940-shows-co2-does-not-cause-warming.html#.UeLiTY3_l7g

henry says
come on BC?
we were talking about post 2000,
nothing to do with 1940-1970
(which btw had a lot of atomic bombs going off, especially in the Pacific, causing widespread de-foliation,
a tell-tale sign....)

anyway, show me your best fit, on, e.g. the end results of my first table here,
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/

i.e. drop in T in K/annum versus time?

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 14/07/2013 19:48:50
I am so amused now.
Over the past year, I have pursued everyone in the south african media who claimed "global warming" due to CO2 increase, to provide me with proof of that, showing them my own results (of SA weather stations) since 2000.....
(on the threat of going to the broadcasting complaints commission)

I have not heard about "global warming" for a long time here in the media...
LOL

how backwards they still are in Britain

You only need one man to stand up....

like we had Mandela...


Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 14/07/2013 21:24:44
Sorry, I had forgotten that you didn't listen when told this earlier
"That's weather, not climate, and it's local weather; we already covered that."

So,  I'd not bother fitting anything to that small a data set.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 15/07/2013 15:00:40
henry@BC
and I told you a few hundred times now that most major data sets agree with my own
here you can see this, where I put this into a graph.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2014/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2014/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend
namely that the trend is NEGATIVE from about 12 years ago.

Now here you can see the average trend from 1980
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1980/to:2012/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:2012/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2012/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2012/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/to:2012/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/to:2012/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1980/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:2012/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/to:2012/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2012/trend

we  discussed this in detail, and in this discussion I agreed with you, that, on average, we rose by between 0.3 and 0.4 degrees C since 1980.

now go back to "my little, insignificant data set" and in the 2nd table (on means) you will see that I determined an average warming rate of ca. 0.013K/annum since 1980.
That also works out to 0.4 degrees C since 1980.

Did you see how accurate my small data set was?

Now, the reason I asked you to look again at the first table and do that fit, is because, stupid enough, nobody in the data sets is looking at maxima and minima, yet there is where you can learn most. "Means"  is earthly chaotic, but, eventually, it follows the "maxima".  Based on that maxima trend, which such high correlation (99.7%) , I can easily predict correctly that warming has stopped and that cooling has started. Unfortunately, putting more CO2 in the air will not stop that trend.
 I hope somebody learned something here today...


Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 15/07/2013 21:06:04
"and I told you a few hundred times now that most major data sets agree with my own"
Indeed.
Now, remind me why yours is the only one that's marching in step.
And I'm going to stop reading your posts until you sort out the mess your links make of
the site formatting because your posts don't seem worth the trouble of reading.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 16/07/2013 18:14:33
...>>>....BC says

And I'm going to stop reading your posts until you sort out the mess your links make of...

henry says
true, I don't know much about computer science

and I do think you and me are good chemists, both of us qualifying in that direction.

I am afraid you lack my knowledge on statistics
which includes probability theory. Stats 1 is reasonably simple, stats 2 is difficult, stats 3 is more complicated
especially on sampling techniques, where you have to be sure of randomness and representative-ness,

but if you just grasped stats 1,  you would understand what I am saying

the problem is: you want to follow a certain line of thinking (politics? majority rules?) instead of use your own brains.

You have to stop that line of thinking.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 16/07/2013 22:02:32
Trust me, I'm not the one who needs to learn stats here.
Having a computer that can plot a sine wave through the data doesn't mean the data follow a sine wave.
The fact that you chose that function (rather than, for example a polynomial)
means that you are the one who " want(s) to follow a certain line of thinking ".
A sine wave goes back to where it starts from so your choice absolutely ruled out the idea of any long term change.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 17/07/2013 02:00:15
from MoreCarbonOK:
Quote
true, I don't know much about computer science

and I do think you and me are good chemists, both of us qualifying in that direction.

I am afraid you lack my knowledge on statistics
which includes probability theory. Stats 1 is reasonably simple, stats 2 is difficult, stats 3 is more complicated
especially on sampling techniques, where you have to be sure of randomness and representative-ness,

but if you just grasped stats 1,  you would understand what I am saying

(1) As a good scientist, I believe in dispassionately following the evidence. The evidence that MCOK is a good chemist is totally belied by the fact that in earlier posts in this lengthy interchange MoreCarbonOK posted as follows:
Quote
Smokers do not die (immediately) from inhaling  near 100% CO2
The air which smokers inhale is roughly 15% CO2 at most. The point that BC was making in his next post, which would be transparent to a good chemist, was that the nitrogen component of air, 78%, is not involved in the combustion reaction. It is also a fact that oxygen continues to be necessary to support the smokers' lives.

Quote
from henry (moreCarbonOK):
Quote
Clifford,
are you a chemisdt?
Any (good) chemist knows that there are giga tons and giga tons of bi-carbonates dissolved in the oceans and that (any type of) warming would cause it to be released:

HCO3- + heat => CO2 (g) + OH-.

This is the actual reason we are alive today. Cause and effect, get it? There is a causal relationship. More warming naturally causes more CO2. Without warmth and carbon dioxide there would be nothing, really. To make that what we dearly want, i.e. more crops, more trees, lawns and animals and people, nature uses water and carbon dioxide and warmth, mostly.

Wake up out of your dream worlds. More CO2 is better. I hope you at least agree with me on that.


Henry are you a chemist? Any (good) chemist knows that there must be a stoichiometric balance in an equation system like the one you have been quoting so frequently to justify your simplistic assumption.

If the equation that you are relying on to account for the increase in atmospheric CO2 as the result of increasing temperature, then the alkalinity of sea water would be rising in accordance with the increase in atmospheric CO2. In fact it has been falling. This is more in line with the conventional explanation of a steady increase in atmospheric CO2 in line with human activity, with approximately one third of the additional CO2 burden being taken up by the world's oceans. An analysis of the global sources and sinks of CO2 also matches the conventional explanation: CO2 is mostly generated over land, and much more over populated industrialized land, and is mostly absorbed in the oceans. The models now have a fine enough resolution to pick out specific areas of ocean, e.g. the Behring Strait, where CO2 is being released to the atmosphere. But they are more than compensated for by the overall effect of the oceans in absorbing CO2. (By the way this has been confirmed by direct measurement).
Any good chemist should be able to do a simple calculation to show that the equation itself is far from correct as quoted:
HCO3(aq) + heat --> CO2(g) + OH(aq)
It should read:
HCO3(aq) <==> CO2(g) + OH(aq) + heat
Moreover it is closely linked with another step:
OH(aq) + HCO3(aq) <==> CO32–(aq) + H2O(l) + a little more heat
to provide an overall result of:
2 HCO3(aq) <==> CO2(g) + CO32–(aq) + H2O(l) + even more heat.

Provision of more heat should, on the face of it, result in the absorption of atmospheric CO2, although this will depend on the availability of aqueous carbonate.

(2) MCOK's claim to be well versed in statistics also appears, on the evidence, to be rather optimistic.
He says:
Quote
I am afraid you lack my knowledge on statistics
which includes probability theory. Stats 1 is reasonably simple, stats 2 is difficult, stats 3 is more complicated
especially on sampling techniques, where you have to be sure of randomness and representative-ness,
His sampling techniques might be spatially representative, but they are certainly temporally unfortunate, to say the least. Why? Because they are based on a cooling from a peak in 2002-3 to a trough in 2010-12. But the peak corresponds to an El Niño event in 2002-2003 declining to two consecutive La Niña events in 2011 and 2012. The corresponding ENSO indices can be found at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml (http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml).
When the ENSO influence is removed from the (Australian) data, it is found that there is still a warming trend:
http://www.aussmc.org/documents/waiting-for-global-cooling.pdf (http://www.aussmc.org/documents/waiting-for-global-cooling.pdf)
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 17/07/2013 07:10:43
Henry@damocles
clearly you are no chemist at all,
otherwise, you would have known that to make a standard solution of, say,  0.1 n NaOH,  you need to boil the DI water for 10 minutes to remove all CO2
so the reaction
HCO3 - (bi carbonate) +heat => CO2 (g) + OH-
is therefore quite correct, to describe what we are doing in the lab..
Since there are giga tons of bicarbonate in the oceans it follows clearly that (more) CO2 follows (more) warming.
As I have shown to you before from the records.
(if you were worried how the OH- is balanced out, in my standard solution, we know that as we boil the water, H2CO3 + H2O=> HCO3- + H3O+ which precedes the quoted reaction)


BC says
The fact that you chose that function (rather than, for example a polynomial)
means that you are the one who " want(s) to follow a certain line of thinking ".
A sine wave goes back to where it starts from so your choice absolutely ruled out the idea of any long term change.

Henry says
The truth is that on the last 4 figures in Table 1, I did do a binomial fit and it gave me an incredible correlation coefficient of 0.997.
(if you put the speed of warming out against time)
After obtaining this result, I did not bother to take more samples (i.e. weather stations), because it simply would not matter:
in statistics you simply cannot get things better than that, to prove a relationship, from a sample.


However,  if you use that binomial fit to predict the future, even just a few years ahead, where will we end up? Can you tell me?

FYI the data (MAXIMA) are

0.036 - LAST 38 YEARS
0.028 - LAST 32 YEARS
0.015 - LAST 22 YEARS
-0.013 - LAST 12 YEARS

just check it out...
please.

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: evan_au on 17/07/2013 10:39:34
I'm sorry, but I don't understand the use of a binomial fit to climate data. Please clarify.

I regularly use the Binomial Distribution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution), but I don't see how this relates to climate prediction.

Please provide some more information about how this curve fitting was done. The Binomial Distribution can provide a few curve shapes, based on it two input parameters:

Please describe:

 
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: damocles on 17/07/2013 12:34:18
From Henry (reply #234):
Quote
Henry@damocles
clearly you are no chemist at all,
otherwise, you would have known that to make a standard solution of, say,  0.1 n NaOH,  you need to boil the DI water for 10 minutes to remove all CO2
so the reaction
HCO3 - (bi carbonate) +heat => CO2 (g) + OH-
is therefore quite correct, to describe what we are doing in the lab..
Since there are giga tons of bicarbonate in the oceans it follows clearly that (more) CO2 follows (more) warming.

umm... No, Henry! You are confusing two thermodynamic quantities here -- whether a reaction takes in or gives out heat (∆Hrxn = enthalpy of reaction) , and the direction of spontaneity of a reaction (∆Grxn = gibbs free energy of reaction). In most cases the reaction that gives out heat is the spontaneous one, but in this case the situation is reversed, and especially if you want to involve hydroxyl and bicarbonate! For the reaction that I described for solution/release of CO2(g) the ∆H°rxn is around -36 kJ/mol (i.e. energy released), but the ∆G°rxn is around +8 kJ/mol. Of course the activities of the various substances come into play in deciding the direction of spontaneity, but they have no part in the enthalpy change (and this post provides even more empirical evidence that you are not seriously a chemist).

From evan-au (reply #235):
Quote
I'm sorry, but I don't understand the use of a binomial fit to climate data. Please clarify.

I regularly use the Binomial Distribution, but I don't see how this relates to climate prediction.

Please provide some more information about how this curve fitting was done. The Binomial Distribution can provide a few curve shapes, based on a single probability parameter:
   •   Declining towards zero
   •   Increasing towards one
   •   A bell-shaped curve, which starts at zero and ends at zero, with a peak in the middle

Evan I think that what Henry means by "binomial fit" is a 2nd order polynomial fit (which guarantees a catastrophe in one direction or the other!) -- but I cannot be sure. Notice though how everything is expressed in terms of "last x years" so that his data remains firmly anchored on the last two years, which have both been La Niña years.
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 17/07/2013 19:08:11
henry@damocles

I am sure I told you before.
You have rain, there in AU, right?  Where did it come from? how did it form?


heat is an outlet for bicarbonate from the seas
HCO3- => CO2 g + OH-

cold is a sinc for CO2

CO2 + 2H2O => HCO3- + H3O+

that this happens is provable from measurements at cold and warm places.

Damocles says
Notice though how everything is expressed in terms of "last x years" so that his data remains
firmly anchored on the last two years, which have both been La Niña years

Henry says
 how misleading this statement is, which really makes me doubt your honesty and integrity
clearly you can see the falling speed in maximum temperature from 38 years ago to now?
(i.e. from 38 years ago, and NOT two years)

Henry@all

pity there is no one here who understands stats, even if it were just first year.


If you have a set of data from a sample, like the one quoted to you
you can first try a linear fit
(which, on maxima, gave me correlation of 0.96)
then you can try a polynomial fit, first 2nd order (0.995), than higher order
lastly you can try something like a sine wave fit
Thankful to God, I decided on the last option, giving me the least upheaval,
although some problems will be coming up when we reach the bottom of the sine wave.


I don't know how I can help you, if don't understand that.

Either fit will show that we changed sign from warming to cooling around 1995....
just looking at energy coming in.

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 17/07/2013 20:02:31
perhaps I should again explain what you are looking at in the tables
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/


The (black) figures you are looking at  represent the average change in degrees Celsius (or Kelvin) per annum,
from the average temperatures measured during the period indicated.
These are the slopes of the least square fit equations or “ linear trendlines” for the periods indicated, as calculated, i.e. the value before the x.

The average temperature data from the stations were obtained from http://www.tutiempo.net
I tried to avoid stations with many missing data. Nevertheless, it is very difficult finding weather stations that have no missing data at all.
If a month’s data was found missing or if I found that the average for a month was based on less than 15 days of that month’s data,
I looked at the average temperatures of that month of the preceding- and following year, averaged these,
and in this way estimated the temperatures of that particular month’s missing data.
The last point is important:in normal stats, one is inclined to fill in long term averages for missing databut here that would be wrong,
if you want to study the change in temp. / weather over time
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 17/07/2013 20:06:43
OK, seconds out.
Both of you are wrong about CO2 water, bicarbonate, hydroxide etc.

Henry's assertion that
HCO3 - (bi carbonate) +heat => CO2 (g) + OH-
is wrong.
And so is this
2 HCO3–(aq) <==> CO2(g) + CO32–(aq) + H2O(l) + even more heat.

I invite you both to go to the kitchen, get some bicarbonate of soda and stir it into a cup full of boiling hot water.
That way you can both verify that
2 NaHCO3  --> Na2CO3 + H2O + CO2

Heating drives the equilibrium to the right (because of the large delta S term)
You don't get carbonates decomposing to hydroxides in aqueous solution.
The reaction
2 NaOH + CO2  --> Na2CO3  + H2O
goes essentially to completion
So does the reaction
NaOH + NaHCO3 --> Na2CO3 + H2O

There's very little OH- in sea water.

Now, perhaps Henry could answer my point that his choice of a sine wave 
(which will never show a long term trend) is anything other than a,
possibly unconscious, attempt to ensure that his "model" agrees with his beliefs.
Then, having chosen a model which forces the conclusion that there is no change
(in the long term), he claims I'm not open minded.
Why is that?
Why choose a model which excludes the possibility of what is widely thought to be the right answer?
Had you (with your asserted understanding of Stats 3) not realised that?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 18/07/2013 15:04:46
Henry@BC

I think there is nothing wrong with my first reaction
to show how CO2 came from the oceans to become part of the life cycle,
There is also nothing wrong with my reaction showing how the carbondioxide dissolves in cold water

this is a quote from wikipedia

The solubility pump is driven by the coincidence of two processes in the ocean :
The solubility of carbon dioxide is a strong inverse function of seawater temperature (i.e. solubility is greater in cooler water)
The thermohaline circulation is driven by the formation of deep water at high latitudes where seawater is usually cooler and denser
Since deep water (that is, seawater in the ocean's interior) is formed under the same surface conditions that promote carbon dioxide solubility, it contains a higher concentration of dissolved inorganic carbon than one might otherwise expect. Consequently, these two processes act together to pump carbon from the atmosphere into the ocean's interior.
One consequence of this is that when deep water upwells in warmer, equatorial latitudes, it strongly outgasses carbon dioxide to the atmosphere because of the reduced solubility of the gas.

end quote

the quote shows exactly what I have been trying say......
This sinc-ing of CO2 becomes a problem of course during an ice age where the CO2 in the atmosphere falls below 200 ppm and life ends.
There is no vegetation or life when the CO2 drops below 180.

That shows you how intricate creation is. So more carbon dioxide is ok.
CO2 and H2O are like your father and mother: cursing either is like cursing your own life
A bit more warmth is good as well (although I do not believe that more CO2 causes more warmth, unfortunately)

As to your other question: I did mention in my previous post as to why I chose the sine wave fit for the drop in the speed of warming (maxima).
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 18/07/2013 21:09:11
There is nothing wrong with this reaction
HCO3 - (bi carbonate) +heat => CO2 (g) + OH-

apart from the fact that it doesn't happen.
It's just wrong.
Nothing you can post will change that.


Now, about that sine wave, and the fact that it means
you have chosen a model which is predestined to disagree with all the experts in the field.
Was that deliberate, or did you not know what you were doing?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 19/07/2013 18:30:01
henry says\

There is nothing wrong with this reaction
HCO3 - (bi carbonate) +heat => CO2 (g) + OH-

BC says
apart from the fact that it doesn't happen.
It's just wrong.
Nothing you can post will change that.

Henry says

wow
I thought you believed in wikipedia


clearly, some hydroxyl ions are left in the oceans when CO2 escapes,
and some hydronium ions are added in the oceans when CO2 sincs,
which, btw, is part of another claim by most environmentalists,
that more CO2 adds to  the acidification of the seas,
which, in its turn, btw, I think is more due to human manufacturing rather than CO2,
but all of that would be a different discussion on another thread, OK?

Suffice to say, that the chemical reactions I quoted are just all ok.






Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 19/07/2013 19:17:33
BC says
Now, about that sine wave, and the fact that it means
you have chosen a model which is predestined to disagree with all the experts in the field.
Was that deliberate, or did you not know what you were doing?\

henry says
First thing to learn in life:
don't believe everything the experts tell you

Just believe in your own science, and ability to understand.

Unfortunately< if you do not understand stats, you will not be able to follow me...
Nevertheless, I will try again
1 I took a random sample of weather stations that had daily data
2 I made sure the sample was globally representative (most data sets aren't)
a) balanced by latitude (longitude does not matter)
b) balanced 70/30 in or at sea/ inland
c) all continents included (unfortunately I could not get reliable daily data going back 38 years from Antarctica,
so there always is this question mark about that, knowing that you never can get a "perfect" sample)
d) I made a special provision for months with missing data (not to put in a long term average, as usual in stats)
e) I did not look only at means (average daily temp.) like all other data sets, but also at maxima and minima...
3) I determined at all stations the average change in temp. per annum from the average temperature recorded,
over  the period indicated.
4) the end results on the bottom of the first table (on maximum temperatures),
 clearly showed a drop in the speed of warming that started around 38 years ago, and continued to drop every
other period I looked//...
5) I did a linear fit, on those 4 results for the drop in the speed of global maximum temps,
ended up with y=0.0018x -0.0314, with r2=0.96
At that stage I was sure to know that I had hooked a fish:
I was at least 95% sure (max) temperatures were falling
6) On same maxima data, a polynomial fit, of 2nd order, i.e. parabolic, gave me
y= -0.000049x2 + 0.004267x - 0.056745
r2=0.995
That is very high, showing a natural relationship, like the traject of somebody throwing a ball...
7) projection on the above parabolic fit backward, (10 years?) showed a curve:
happening around 40 years ago,
8) ergo: the final curve must be a sine wave fit, with another curve happening, somewhere on the bottom...

Now, what is not to understand about that?



 

Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: MoreCarbonOK on 19/07/2013 21:16:31
This is an interesting point: what happens when we reach the bottom of the sine wave:?
...well I did not get any answer to that question here <Removed>
<External link to a scientifically unsupported site, where the comment you make then links to you own blog
 - flying in the face of previous multiple warnings by the moderators.>
and I wonder if anyone of you would like to give it a try?
Title: Re: What is the meaning of 400 ppm (0.04%) atmospheric CO2?
Post by: Bored chemist on 20/07/2013 12:17:31
"This is an interesting point: what happens when we reach the bottom of the sine wave:?"
It turns round and goes back up again.
That's why it's an implausible model.
Now, rather than trying to evade the issue, can you please answer the question.
Why did you choose to fit the data to a function which will not permit a trend?

BTW, this
" ergo: the final curve must be a sine wave fit, with another curve happening, somewhere on the bottom..."
is plainly bollocks, you could have used a higher order polynomial rather than a sine wave.
Or you could have accepted that you are trying to "model" the noise in the system.
That's what happens if you fail to distinguish between weather and climate.