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RE: Makes sense to me
By 3minence on 1/12/2010 11:00:13 AM , Rating: 3
Sorry about the apostrophes, hopefully Firefox will soon include a grammar checker along with it's spell checker. That's why I focused on science and not the humanities.

Their is still a lot of argument over what causes the most change. CO2, Methane, or what? I think we will find CO2 is not as big of a culprit as we've made it out to be. As your question points out, it is only recently that CO2 and temperature increase match up.

The focus on CO2 is (once again) politicians trying to overly simplify a complex issue. Banning CO2 may improve things, but I don't think it will "fix" anything (my opinion only).

Gasses are not the only way to effect the climate. For instance, deforestation also has an effect. I read somewhere the drought in Somalia was intensified by the deforestation on the west coast of Africa caused by farming. We've been farming a long time in a lot of places so multiple small changes globally can result in an overall global climatic shift. The question is, how much (if any)?

We've been luckily the last 1000 years in that we've had a (relatively) stable climate. It has allowed are ancestors to advance to our current state. Looking over geologic time that is not always the case. If the one lecturer I heard is correct, calm periods like the one we've enjoyed these past 1000 years are the exception, not the rule.

The fact is, we don't understand the earth's natural climatic processes enough. We have some good ideas, but the earth is a complicated thing. To try to figure our influence while also figuring out a "baseline" makes it harder. The highly polarized political environment makes it harder still.

RE: Makes sense to me
By mcnabney on 1/12/2010 12:10:56 PM , Rating: 2
You are correct that the Earth is a very complex system. It has lots of buffers and inherent randomness. It is impacted by numeorus cyclical patterns (orbit, precision, sun spots, magnetic field) as well as geological events that make prognostication difficult.


Why? Because we have uncorked a whole lot of stored carbon since the industrial age and have been ramping that production every year. The world appears to be able to absorb a lot of that, but the buffers are getting full. I personally think that the conservative thing to do would be to stretch-out the world's supply of fossil fuels and utilize them in a way that the Earth can better manage. It takes a long time for the oceans to precipitate all of that stored carbon out into inactive carbonate solids. It would also be nice to stop sending the nations wealth to the Middle East.

RE: Makes sense to me
By FITCamaro on 1/12/10, Rating: 0
RE: Makes sense to me
By porkpie on 1/12/2010 3:23:54 PM , Rating: 2
"Atmospheric CO2 is 4-5 ppm."

Um, its about 380 ppm actually. But it used to be more than ten times that...and we never had runaway global warming.

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"I agree that CO2 is a problem"



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RE: Makes sense to me
By JediJeb on 1/12/2010 5:51:38 PM , Rating: 2

The problem with this though is that as the water in the ocean warms, it will absorb less CO2. If increased amounts of CO2 are causing global warming, then the oceans should be releasing vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and becoming less acidic.

If the oceans are becoming more acidic and the temperatures are rising, then something other than CO2 must be causing the increase in acidity. But if increased CO2 absorbed in the ocean is causing the rise in acidity then the oceans must be cooling. It is a given fact that as the temperature of water rises that the partial pressure of the absorbed gasses above the water will increase which means the gasses are migrating from the liquid phase( ocean ) to the gasseous phase ( air ). This will happen with all gasses that are normally absorbed in the water. If the global temperatures are rising then we should see a rise in O2, CO2, N2, Ar, Methane, Water Vapor, and any other gasses in the air while at the same time they are falling in the oceans. To behave otherwise would mean that global warming has the power to over-ride the Laws of Thermodynamics and Solubility of Gasses. The only way to force more gasses into the water would be to increase atmospheric pressure, which I haven't seen reported.

Another problem I see is when people talk about burning fossil fuels releases stored carbon into the atmosphere. That is true, but most will make it sound as though it somehow increases the amount of carbon on the Earth. Conservation of Mass says that matter is neither created or destroyed in a chemical reaction. So the amount of carbon that is on the Earth today, should be equal to the amount of carbon that was on the Earth millions of years ago. If the change of CO2 in the atmosphere is what causes global temperature change, then before the carbon was captured by the plants and stored underground as fossil fuels, then the Earth must have been many times hotter in the past, or if not much hotter than now, we should be frozen in a global freezer now because of all the carbon that has been captured.

Water vapor is a much stronger green house gas than CO2, and if you want to test that do a simple experiment. Go outside just after sunset on a clear night and then again on a cloudy night and see which night the temperature falls the fastest. What you will find is that on a clear night the temperature will fall very quickly, yet on a cloudy night the temperature falls slowly. The reason is the water in the atmosphere works like a blanket. If CO2 was any where near as strong a greenhouse gas then since it has increased almost 50% in the last few hundred years we should be cooking by now.

Just my simple observations interpeted with my knowledge of chemistry and physics. Doesn't mean I'm right, but I have never seen it explained away either.

RE: Makes sense to me
By fofelix on 1/13/2010 12:27:06 PM , Rating: 2
Your argument sounds quite convincing , but I think there is a mistake in it.

You're right , that a higher temperature leads to worse solubility of any gasses in the water .
So at a constant C02 conc. in the atmosphere , rising temperature leads to higher C02 output of the oceans and thereby to less acidic oceans.

But we are measuring C02 conc. in ppm that means relative C02 conc. in the atmosphere.
So the solubility per Mol is worse at higher temperatures, but the acidity of the oceans is influenced by the relative C02 conc. --> the higher partial pressure of C02.
So acidity can increase together with the temperature and be caused by C02 solved in the ocean as carbon acid although the solubility of all gasses gets worse with higher temperature.
The oceans are not saturated yet. If it was, you would be right.
I hope you can see my point. English is not my mothertongue.

Auf Deutsch:
Es stimmt zwar, dass die Löslichkeit von sämtlichen Gasen bei steigender Temperatur sinkt. Allerdings gilt diese Aussage nur bei konstantem relativen Atmosphärenanteil dieses Gases. Durch einen höheren rel. Atmosphärenanteil steigt der Partialdruck des gesamten C02s und es löst sich absolut gesehen mehr C02, der Ozean wird saurer.
So kann steigende Temperatur mit saureren Ozeanen einhergehen, wenn man annimmt, dass die pH Änderung hauptsächlich durch C02 verursacht wird.
Wenn die Ozeane bereits gesättigt wären mit C02 würde mit der maximalen Aufnahmekapazität an CO2 zwangsläufig auch die gespeicherte Menge CO2 und damit die Azidizität nach unten gehen.

Greetings from Switzerland

RE: Makes sense to me
By JediJeb on 1/13/2010 5:42:24 PM , Rating: 2
Yes, that would be one variable that could drive the equilibrium into the aqueous phase. I will have to run some calculations to see how much affect a higher molar concentration would have on the partitioning between the gas and liquid phases.

