> In reply to Mitch. You’ve ignored my post regarding the “faint young sun” paradox (do a web search)
> and the fact that the feedback in the past has been NEGATIVE.

I don’t think this is much of a paradox — remember we have a twin planet Venus and likely our atmosphere initially was much like Venus’s. So when the sun was young we would expect the earths atmosphere to be about 2,500 times as much CO2. It certainly seems this greenhouse effect would be large enough to keep the earth warm enough for liquid oceans, and these liquid oceans are required for converting the CO2 into limestone.

I’ll find a good example of a carbon isotope ratio article that was used to calibrate oceanic CO2 cycling, volumes and rates.

I wasn’t trying to make any point. It’s just a comparison of magnitudes, for people who have difficulty grasping the scale of numbers.

The absorption of CO2 by polar oceans not being mentioned isn’t out of convenience. You can do the comparison with either – I don’t mind. If I had mentioned only the scale of absorption of CO2 by the polar oceans, would that have been ‘convenient’ too?

I presume the point is that one shouldn’t ever post scientific facts and comparisons that only tell one side of the story – that lean entirely in one direction. You are swift to correct the perceived inclination of my question with some counterbalancing observations. Would you say this is a general principle? Does it apply to all sides of the debate?

It will take a while to find both the total CO2 moles cycling, rate of cycling, and variance in cycling, which is what is need to estimate the oceanic capacity to sequester impulses.

But we can do a quick observational reality check: it is certainly plausible that the oceanic cycling has capacity to sequester one extra Mt. Pinatubo a century over background, and probably 10, and even remotely one extra every year. But +100 extra a year for a quarter millennium? That is stretching the range of plausibility, and is far, far above the statistical background. Furthermore if the oceans were far enough out of equilibrium to rapidly sequester that CO2 impulse, they would have done so before the CO2 stores were released, and the planet would have never left the last ice age. Besides would you really want to see the oceanic acidity raised that much?

Look, the some odd ~30000 equivalent Mt. Pinatubos that have been released would have taken around 3 million years to add the CO2 to the atmosphere, and some 3 million years to sequester through biological sedimentation. We have cut the whole thing down to a quarter of a millennium.

If you really believe that oceans can buffer the CO2 impulse then can you explain how deep current turn over will increase, and surface temperatures will decrease, so as to dissolve more CO2?

A good calculation!

Can you calculate for me, on the same basis, how much CO2 the tropical oceans have emitted in total since 1751? And what the ratio of that to man’s contribution is? Thanks.

http://bit.ly/hzeY59
http://bit.ly/crUpsa

If you grind through the numbers you reach this startling conclusion:

Since the dawn of industrialization, in 1751, our accumulated to present day industrial CO2 production is equivalent to 1 Mt. Pinatubo eruption in every nation in every year since 1751, and accelerating.

This number is statistically far and beyond the background geological CO2 production rate, and likely beyond the rapid sequestering capacity of the planet, though obviously within the millions of years sequestering time scale. I think this is on the same order of magnitude as the volcanic activity during the Permian–Triassic extinction but without the cooling aerosols and SO2, that provided a short term, and catastrophic to life, buffer against CO2 greenhouse warming.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I see valid evidence that I’m wrong to believe AGW is an impending disaster I’ll scratch it off my list of problems quicker than you can say chronosynclastic enfundibulum.

And, therein, lies the fundamental asymmetry of this “debate.”

I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I see valid evidence that I’m wrong to believe AGW is an impending disaster I’ll scratch it off my list of problems quicker than you can say chronosynclastic enfundibulum.

To answer Bobito’s question, I’m one of those rare liberal skeptics. My politics is pretty much to the left of Obama on most issues other than climate. Long ago I once assumed the science behind the climate alarmism was solid. Once I started looking into it, I find it’s more like swiss cheese on moldly wonder bread. I guess I’d be called a skeptic because I seriously doubt the overall climate science consensus on net warming from CO2. I think the actual data and evidence indicates that CO2 greenhouse effects will be quite modest and not much more than 1C of warming for a doubling of CO2. Nor is that hazardous to the planet or to humans. In general, it’s fairly positive. There are always winners and losers whenever anything changes, but in this case I think there’s more winners than losers. Past a certain level of warming that would reverse, but I don’t see that as in the cards.

As for the politicizing, yes, it sucks, and the exaggerations on the left and from the scientific community are truly eggregious. Science is going to have a serious reckoning from this issue in the next few decades, and the lesson will be not to make scientists into authority figures, and not to assume one knows the answer based on what is simply a partially educated hunch. But the right is also guilty of serious exagerations and misleading arguments as well. In fact, the general impression that the right in America has become anti-science is fairly accurate on a lot of issues, such as evolution. But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and in this case I’m sorry to say that even the broken minds of Limbaugh, Palin, and their followers is right on this issue. I don’t revel in that. To the contrary, as a liberal I’m quite sad that so many on my side of the aisle have fallen for this very seductive narrative. We see some of them arguing here on this thread, and it’s really too bad they’ve painted themselves into a corner and can’t find a way out of it. Progressive are going to have a serious reckoning to come on this issue as well, just as the neocons have on the Iraq war. I just hope they can find a graceful exit, rather than stay in the trenches for decades as the neocons would have us do in the middle east.

Over the last 30 years the USA has been sleepwalking into a form of Fascism. Call it an oligarchy or plutocracy but however you label it, call it for what it is. Kakistocracy.

I’m sure most of you still think Patriotism is a good thing. Me I’m just hoping there are some people in a position to weld the silo lids down tight. Just in case this President or the probably much worse next one has fidgety fingers.

Global warming- probably a problem. Maybe even worse than the climatologists fear. Right now however there are more immediate and pressing concerns for Americans to deal with.

As to the 1.2K, Colose is in effect computing what the effect on temperatures would be if the greenhouse multiplier stayed the same as it is now, and the output received by earth increased from 240 to 244 watts. What SHOULD be computed is the effect at earth’s surface
when the output from the sun remains the same, at 240 watts, and the surface flux increases from 490 watts, (390 sensible + 100 latent), to 494 watts.

Those inconvenient truths made Al Gore, who occupies a huge ‘carbon footprint’ (giggle) the poster boy and chief punchline.

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Science/EarthsEnergyBalance.html

which I referred to earlier. The earth’s surface receives 168 watts directly from the sun, 324 in “back radiation”. Add them together, and you get 492. I rounded to 490 in my prior post.

Note that the sun started out with about 70% of its current luminosity, and with liquid water oceans, implying temperatures of over 273 K. Current temperatures, with a luminosity of 1, average about 287 or 288 K, not the over 273* (10/7)^0.25 = 298.46 we’d get with NO feedbacks. As I stated previously, we have gotten NEGATIVE feedbacks from the real world

For more, see

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0442%282001%29014%3C2976%3APBOTES%3E2.0.CO%3B2

Chris Colose is figuring that 0.3K effect from a 4 watt incrrease to a 240 watt flux. That 240 watts is what the earth receives and radiates at the top of the atmosphere, not what the earth’s surface receives, closer to 490 watts thanks to back radiation. That 490 watts includes about 100 watts in convection and latent heat of vaporization.

The Stefan-Boltzmann equation for a blackbody goes

T(degrees Kelvin) = S(constant)*(watts/square meter)^0.25. Our first step is to find that S constant.

Doing a google search, I find 1000 K implies a blackbody flux of 56790 watts/square meter.

1000K = S* (56790 watts/square meter)^ 0.25. Click on your calculator and use the scientific view. Plug in 56790
X^Y
0.25
=
and you get 15.43718 Divide 1000K by 15.43718 and you get S = 64.77867

We now know
T(kelvin) = 64.77867 ( watts/square meter)^0.25.

Let’s plug in some numbers.

At 100 watts per square meter flux,

T = 64.77867 * 100^0.25 = 204.848 K, at 400 watts per square meter,
T = 64.77867 * 400^0.25 = 289.699 K

T = 64.77867 W^0.25. From elementary calculus, the derivative of that
equation will give you the sensitivity.

dT/dW = 64.77867* 1/4 * (W^(-3/4)) = 64.77867*1/4 * (1/(W^0.75)).

At 100 watts/sq meter, you get a sensitivity of
64.77867*1/4*(100^-0.75) = 64.77867*0.25* 0.0316228= 0.512121 K/watt per meter squared

At 400 watts/sq meter, you get a sensitivity of
64.77867*1/4 *0.01118034 = 0.181062 degrees K per watt per meter squared

If you don’t know elementary calculus, just figure what the temperature increase would be
with a 1 watt increase, and you’ll get close to the same answer. You’ll get even closer by using a 0.1 watt increase, a 0.01

watt increase, etc. Using this method is actually easier than messing with that derivative equation above.

T = 64.77867*W^0.25 for 100 watts we get
T = 64.77867* (100^0.25) =204.848. for 101 watts we get
T = 64.77867* (101^0.25) =205.358 so a 1 watt increase gives a temperature increase of
205.358-204.848 = 0.51 K per watt meter squared

At 400 watts per square meter, you get a sensitivity of
T = 64.77867* 400^0.25 = 289.699
T = 64.77867* 401^0.25 = 289.87991
289.87991-289.699 = 0.1809 K per watt meter squared.

The flux at earth is about 1368 watts. When you consider the fact
that the earth is a sphere,
with a surface area of 4 pi r^2, and the face presented to the sun
is a circle with an area of
pi r^2, the average flux is (pi r^2/4pi r^2)= 1/4 * 1368 = 342
watts.

For a blackbody, climate sensitivity would be
1/4 dT/ dS
For a surface temperature of 288 K, this amounts to
(1/4)( 288K/342 watts) = 0.21 K/watt

Earth is not a blackbody, the albedo is about 0.3
342 watts *(1-0.3) = 239.4 watts

For a “graybody” earth,
dT/dS = 1/4 (288 K/239.4 watts) = 0.3 K/ watt

That’s where Colose gets his figures, by using Boltzmann’s
equation. which gives a figure for
climate sensitivity of 0.21K/watt to 0.3 K/watt.

wow what a grumpy old man.

i’m pretty sure most of the climate-deniers, just like the gay-bashers, racists, xenophobes, etc etc are your age buddy, not youngsters.

a more materialistic generation huh? what about the one before ours who are responsible for the gluttony of america’s oil use, the rampant consumerism, the addiction to pharmaceuticals and cars, and thirty years of growing economic inequality?

everyone i know eats all their food from the dumpsters that wastefully gets thrown out by people your age eating at restaurants and by companies run by people of your age.

your generation is responsible for us having enough nuclear bombs to blow up the earth 2500 times.

your generation is responsible for perpetual war and empire building.

your generation is responsible for the building of the infrastructure that contributes to carbon in the air like freeways and suburbs and super markets.

your generation is responsible for the vile representative politics that is enthroned to big money.

it’s like you guys saw black peoples fight for civil rights, got pissed about vietnam, and then when that ended, voted for nixon and reagan and thirty years of getting more and more conservative.

don’t blame us, mister, we just got here. and can you really blame most of that our heads are always stuck to some virtual spectacle? i mean, look at the world you’ve given us …

22,000 children die because of poverty every day in the world because of your generations acceptance of inequality and clinging to privilege. former farmers starve in slums because your generation gladly supports imf restructuring and investment ‘innovations’.

however, will ours be much better? probably not. i mean, look at our parents…

Congratulations. Have you bought your tickets to Oslo yet? Having disproved 150 years of climate science, you’re a shoo-in for next year’s Nobel.
—-
OK, enough snark. You’ve put serious effort into your post, and it deserves to be taken seriously. (Though I’m not sure where you got that figure of 490W/m^2.)

Climate scientist Chris Colose writes:

“It can be shown that for every Watt per square meter radiative forcing the climate would warm by about 0.3°C without any other responses. To put this in perspective, it would take about five doublings of CO2 or a 7% increase in the total solar radiation hitting the Earth to produce the magnitude of climate change typical of glacial-to-interglacial transitions. Changes of this sort are well outside the bounds of what is characteristic of proxy records and observations, so this must mean that various feedbacks act to change the temperature much more than 0.3°C for a watt per square meter forcing. In other words, the aggregate effect of feedbacks is to be positive and enhance the so-called climate sensitivity relative to what it would otherwise be.”

Near the end of this (Part 1 of a 2-part treatment), Colose writes:

“In the context of anthropogenic global warming, all of these complex feedbacks and interactions end up boiling down to the question of how much warming you get from additional CO2 release into the atmosphere. The most recent IPCC AR4 assessment gives a range of about 2 to 4.5ºC at equilibrium. This is the so-called ‘Charney sensitivity’ which takes into account these fast feedbacks discussed above, as well as clouds which provide the greatest uncertainty in narrowing these estimates.”

In other words, the mainstream view is that these feedbacks amplify the sensitivity by a factor between 6 and 12, roughly. The problem for you, then, is to demonstrate why these feedbacks do not aggregate to a net positive effect on sensitivity, or if they do, why it is insignificant. Let us know how that works out.

Ref:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/09/introduction-to-feedbacks/