Posted on 05/31/2012 8:27:32 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (AP) — The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.
Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.
So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.
"The fact that it's 400 is significant," said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. "It's just a reminder to everybody that we haven't fixed this and we're still in trouble."
Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and most of it lasts about 100 years in the air, but some of it stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
” - - - - There is a theoretical cause and effect, but it’s so small that it would get lost in the chaotic noise of normal natural processes.”
First there is an idea, then a speculation, then an hypothesis and finally after exhaustive testing the idea becomes a theory. Rarely is anything tested enough to become a Law.
If it does become a Law, then someone finds exceptions to it and the process starts all over. The two Laws of Gravity is a recent example: Newton’s and Einstein’s.
Since Global Warming is still in the statistical inference stage, Global Warming is an idea that is struggling to become a speculation.
Testing the idea of Global Warming is maintained at the impossible level by “experts”increasing the number of factors to be independently tested. Last year there were over 200 such variables - - - .
ALL TOGETHER NOW: “GLOBAL WARMING IS JUNK SCIENCE!”
BTW, since CHON is found in all life, and the main source of C is from CO2, is it not true that CO2 is an Environmentally Essential and Friendly Gas?
Ping.
More ecowacko BS, even if they are Govt employees.
I love the stupidity in the line about plants will absorb some CO2 in the summer which might lower the recorded level to below 400 ppwhatever.
I guess the plants that started to grow in my garden in February/March, April, and May didn’t absorb any CO2 during that time. I wonder how they grew without it.
Also, if there is increased plant growth due to global warming, then they are available to reduce any increase in CO2 levels.
I’ve always wondered why these so-called scientists are above my pay grade when they are so wrong so often. If I did that in my job, I would have been fired 20 years ago (and I wouldn’t have saved the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in liability costs).
Go figure! Up is down; down is up. God knows everything; Obama is God. Issue settled.
George Orwell just crapped in his grave.
Actually, there is a correlation. Rising temps have been shown by ice core data to be followed by a rise in CO2 concentration. In other words, CO2 rises always lag behind rises in temperature, by a fairly noticeable margin.
Doubling CO2 from the “safe” 350 to the “dangerous” 700 will cause the atmosphere to heat up about 1 degree C.
The disagreement concerns “Forcings,” or secondary events.
“Warmists” claim that 700ppm will set off a chain reaction of other events (like drought) that will ADD at least 3.0 degrees C more.
“Skeptics” claim that 700ppm will set off a chain reaction of other events (like clouds) that will REDUCE warming by at least 0.2 degrees C.
Wow.
I wonder how they decided that?
Does that mean we're dead? No? So they made a mistake. The real number is now 400 ppm. Never mind why. You're not qualified to understand complex computer modeling and integrating the vertical lapse rate of the framistan reciprocal of the alternating rapid global freezing and global warming.
These joker will need a few more gazillion$ to look further into it to find out how much time we really have left. But it's unlikely to be very long.
Cigar smoke is the chief emission of burning cigars. Some stays in the air for fortnight but some remains in the atmosphere for a millenum.
BZZZZZZZT! WRONG! Water is. Thanks for playing.
Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.
I wonder what the levels were before fermentation? By the way, just how much CO2 does the fermentation process to manufacture Ethanol produce??
Could 'renewable fuels' be a culprit?
Are these guys having a cold one while they are measuring?
Well, how 'bout that? They get the scientific strawman built early in the article. At least we don't have to wander through two paragraphs of tulips before stepping in the Bullpoop.
http://www.miltonconservative.blogspot.ca/2011/02/simple-chemistry-and-real-greenhouse.html
Because it is relatively evenly distributed so it has no effect on the weather. OTOH the distribution of water vapor measured by satellite is a critical input to weather models.
However, satellite depictions of CO2 are available, like this one from 2009:
It shows that CO2 is modulated by weather. There is less in colder regions. There is a bit less east of the Amazon rainforest. But there is more in some parts of the NH where the weather patterns allow it to stack up. But unlike water vapor, these are all relatively small variations.
Because there are a number of very strong negative feedbacks such as the increase in the water cycle, concentrated convection and subsidence, increased air exchanges between the tropics and poles and others (clouds are a possibility). In any case the weather will cause a few tenths fluctuation in global average temperature in a week or two. Or cause a 5C fluctuation in some localized area, not balanced by an "opposite" fluctuation elsewhere. You are absolutely correct, there is no such thing as a tipping point, quite the opposite.
About 800 years, plus or minus a few centuries. But that is a minor effect of rising or falling temperatures. The current rise in CO2 would have required about 7C in warming (a 16K increase would cause roughly a doubling of CO2). So the bulk of the increase can be seen to be man made.
All of the CO2 capture by growing corn should be released during processing and burning the fuel. It should be essentially CO2 neutral.
That link has some things backwards. The cooling effect of evaporation at the surface and condensation at higher altitude is a countering force to the greenhouse effect, not part of it. The fact that CO2 does not condense is what gives it its greenhouse abilities.
There is very little heat actually captured by gasses in the atmosphere. That is why it is really cold up there!
The issue is the amount of energy captured at the surface and then transferred into the atmosphere as vibrational and translational energy. It is this relative ability of water compared to CO2 that generates our temperatures.
The greenhouse effect is generated by the glass keeping that energy confined. Open the windows of your car and see if it gets cooler.
More to the point, any greenhouse effect from CO2 would mainly act to produce milder weather in winter, which seems like a good thing.
Increased water vapor is self-limiting, since more evaporation results in more rain, and more clouds that reflect sunlight back into space.
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