Lets finish this! Numbers do not lie.

reply to post by 4nsicphd

It's like painting a 150 mm thick window with5mm of black paint and saying it's only going to cut down on 3% of the light coming in.

Not exactly. In that example, no matter what path the light takes to pass through the window, it will encounter 5mm of paint. Carbon dioxide molecules are not spread out in a film like paint; rather they are distributed more or less randomly among the troposphere. Thus, a light ray may strike a carbon dioxide molecule, or it may not. Since the increase in carbon dioxide molecules amounts to 0.01% of the atmosphere, that means there is a 1 in 10000 chance that energy will strike a carbon dioxide molecule that would not have been there if not for man.

Bear in mind that I am showing the potential increase in energy retention based only on the increase in carbon dioxide since pre-industrial times.

It ignores totally the absorption spectrum of the substance.

Actually, it assumes 100% absorption of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide.

Think about it. The sun warms one=half of the earth 's atmosphere by 15 degrees K in 4 months every spring and summer.
Yes, in certain latitudes. But that is a repeating cycle. The same amount of energy is then lost throughout the rest of the year.

The question is whether anthropogenic carbon dioxide is causing Global Warming. I believe my OP answers that question. Other questions may not be answered.

Your post is going to be a good exercise for my class this weekend. I'll let them dissect the wikipedia references and double check the caculations.

I am honored, sir! Understanding the difference between the classroom and real-world calcs used to prove or disprove theories, however, I am also sure they will get a more than a few chuckles out of it.

A few chuckles at my expense is a small price to pay for the chance to make someone think and help them learn.

Offhand, it appears that you have used a specific heat value for fresh water.

Yes, I am. Salt water will have a slightly higher specific heat capacity, meaning the energy requirement for single degree warming is conservative.

Yor approach is actually conceptually correct for the first part of the problem = find out the total rnergy budget. But it's only a start. Next look at absorption spectra The absorption spectra must be applied And the specific heat and relevant albedos. Then you look atthe real world and see if it fits your model.

I'll make no argument about my using conservative assumptions; that was mentioned several times in the OP. However, as long as those assumptions are conservative, meaning the resulting temperature increase predicted, small as it is, is still larger than a more detailed result, the end results are the same: carbon dioxide cannot be causing the warming trends of the last few decades. To discount that statement would require a discrepancy of 500% in either the energy available or the energy needed, or both combined. I don't believe you will find any overall deviation in the direction of greater warming.

i'm afraid your work is not quite ready for prime time.

I would agree with you. It wasn't written for prime time, but for ATS. Judging by the speed at which this thread is growing, I would say it may have been ready for this venue.

But keep working. I like the effort.

I will, and thank you!

But before your next effort you should study the concept of significant figures and computational accuracy. 8,694,154 km, huh. How sure are you that it's not 8,694,153 or 8,694,155? There is a difference between precision and accuracy.

You know, I saw a cartoon at work one time. It was of an engineer and a draftsman struggling, each one with their hands around the other's throat. Two men were standing off to the side watching, and one of them was saying to the other, "They're discussing tolerance".

Yes, that bit of criticism I will gladly take; an obsession with exact precision numerically is one of my faults. Even when calculating based on conservative assumptions.

You should see some of the crackpot stuff we get at the journals for which I review. Yours is not crackpot, just fatally flawed. For now. Keep working, tho.

My thanks for your opinions. I will consider them with an open mind.

TheRedneck

reply to post by wx4caster


Here is a link That explains more in depth. Even though it is from an IPCC report it is just an explanation of feedback mechanisms.

Originally posted by 4nsicphd
Oh-Oh. a concepual problem - the sort my physics students have when they haven't studiedfor the final . You multiply Radiant energy times the % increase in CO2 per Wikipedia. That's a big fail. It's like painting a 150 mm thick window with5mm of black paint and saying it's only going to cut down on 3% of the light coming in. It ignores totally the absorption spectrum of the substance. Think about it. The sun warms one=half of the earth 's atmosphere by 15 degrees K in 4 months every spring and summer.
Your post is going to be a good exercise for my class this weekend. I'll let them dissect the wikipedia references and double check the caculations.
Offhand, it appears that you have used a specific heat value for fresh water. That is enough to get you a reject from a refereed journal. You need to use the correct value for the correct salinity. And specific heat also varies with pressure. What Q are you using? ISA? And what values for the albedo from all surfaces?
Yor approach is actually conceptually correct for the first part of the problem = find out the total rnergy budget. But it's only a start. Next look at absorption spectra The absorption spectra must be applied And the specific heat and relevant albedos. Then you look atthe real world and see if it fits your model.

i'm afraid your work is not quite ready for prime time. Or a refereed journal. But keep working. I like the effort.But before your next effort you should study the concept of significant figures and computational accuracy. 8,694,154 km, huh. How sure are you that it's not 8,694,153 or 8,694,155? There is a difference between precision and accuracy. To the layman, the purported exactness seems impressive. To a scientist, it screams poseur. I'm not going to tell my class where this little homework exercise in critical analysis came from. Unless you want me to.
EYou should see some of the crackpot stuff we get at the journals for which I review. Yours is not crackpot, just fatally flawed. For now. Keep working, tho.

These are all very valid points and renders your hypothesis redundant Redneck. Can you address these points?
There are so many flaws in your little theory. Move on people.

reply to post by Hastobemoretolife


not alot of explanation there, other than talking about the reflectivity of different terrestril things such as water snow and clouds. but clouds are not the same.

surface based clouds and other low level clouds are much warmer and less dense, consisting of water droplets, and has a tendency to absorb more than say, a thick cirrus anvil top of a big ol' mammatus, which being frozen and cold and all that, has a much higher albedo and reflects much more than absorbs.

reply to post by TheRedneck


Red, you wanna do a calculation with just CO2?

x amount of CO2 diffused in air can absorb x amount of heat over 100 years from the sun.


Adding the ocean just skews the entire calculation by a very large value.


This calculation is extremely complex, if it was this easy, then someone should have figured it out already.

If supposedly, an increase in 0.01% of CO2 is causing the global warming, then according to my contribution table...

That CO2 contributes only 50% x 0.01% or 0.5% of the greenhouse effect since the industrial revolution.

CFC's on the other hand, is 100% manmade, and it currently contributes between 8-14% of our problem.





[edit on 12/1/2009 by die_another_day]

Originally posted by TheRedneck
Carbon dioxide molecules are not spread out in a film like paint; rather they are distributed more or less randomly among the troposphere.

Not really. There's some interesting patterns. geology.com...

Bear in mind that I am showing the potential increase in energy retention based only on the increase in carbon dioxide since pre-industrial times.

Anthropogenic factors, though, aren't ONLY carbon dioxide. There's also methane (large factory farms, drilling operations) which has increased dramatically in the last 300 years.
Methane

And there's also deforestation:
www.moorlandschool.co.uk...

(and by the way, changing prairies into farmland. Crops and grass for animals tend to sequester less CO2 than prairie switchgrass.)
www.netl.doe.gov...

heat islands:
www.epa.gov...
en.wikipedia.org...

Desertification of formerly green lands (and subsequent dust storms) :
en.wikipedia.org...

the end results are the same: carbon dioxide cannot be causing the warming trends of the last few decades. To discount that statement would require a discrepancy of 500% in either the energy available or the energy needed, or both combined.

It's a complex picture, and CO2 isn't the only gas. Using only CO2 and ignoring things like methane, deforestation, desertification, heat islands (and other heat sources like factories and oil processing plants) and so forth will not give you the accurate picture you desire:
en.wikipedia.org...

You need to add those into your calculations... and you probably should use calculus since you're looking at multiple values that change over time (you can do it with multiple calculations but that's tiresome and leads to the accusation you've cherry picked data.)

reply to post by wx4caster

ok sounds good so far, although i am not sure where the 0.01% is coming from.

380 ppmv at present levels minus 280 ppmv at pre-industrial levels equals 100 ppmv anthropogenic carbon dioxide. 100 ppmv = 0.0001 or 0.01%.

I must not have made that clear enough; if so, I apologize to the readers. The 0.01% value represents only the 'excess' CO2 above what is generally considered to be a safe level. If the industrial revolution had not occurred we would have 280ppmv carbon dioxide as we did before it occurred; we actually have 380 ppmv. That difference is what is being blamed for Global warming, not the total amount.

Again, this is not entirely true. You have to talk about the interaction with the solar radiation and the earth/atmosphere. a large portion of the suns energy is actually filtered in the thermosphere.

Yes, if 100% accuracy was needed; it wasn't. If some of that solar irradiance energy is blocked by the upper atmosphere, that means the resulting irradiance that can be affected by carbon dioxide is less, meaning again that the calculations are conservative.

You are calculating for a flat disk. Not to mention you are not taking into consideration the VOLUME of the troposphere, or the atmosphere’s above it.

Yes, no, yes.

I am calculating for a flat disk, because I am not calculating the volume of the earth, but the area of the earth as presented to the sun. solar irradiance does not come from all directions, but from what can be considered as a single point. The area which will receive solar irradiation, normal to that irradiation, is a circle, not a sphere. Your concern about surface area is included in this. Each area presented to the sun will receive the same amount of energy based on a plane normal to the sun. the area of the planet that will receive this energy, in contrast, varies greatly based on its angkle to that normal plane.

I did include the volume of the troposphere in calculating carbon dioxide amounts and in calculating the needed energy to warm it; in this case the above paragraph applies, as the troposphere itself will also be seen as a disk on a plane normal to the sun.

I did NOT take into account the atmosphere above the troposphere, because it contains almost no carbon dioxide and is irrelevant in that respect to incoming energy levels as as far as such may be trapped by anthropogenic carbon dioxide. I also purposely omitted the volume of the upper atmosphere in my calculations, to conservatively allow for the pressure gradient through the troposphere.

again you forget to correctly unit your statistic in volume, so now you have an inaccurate and debatable value that is not given in the proper units. You need to be dealing with joules per kilogram or per meters squared and then per second. Atmospheric energy is unitized in j/kg, or j/m^3.

The values given are already multiplied by the area normal to the sun which encompasses the planet and the troposphere. This is the total for the planet, not the total for a unit area.

you are now assuming a homogenous atmosphere with a homogenous ppm for co2.

Yes I am. As the earth is being considered as a whole, not as a group of individual areas, average values may be used.

Simplified? Maybe. But the differences will cancel out, as long as proper averages are used.

There are multiple layers of the troposphere and each one is heated differently.

I do not consider any heating methods other than anthropogenic carbon dioxide. Any other heating is not considered to be the cause of Global Warming, and thus must be initially discounted to disprove the exaggerated warming effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide.

I find it interesting, though, that we have experienced some warming from 1950-1998. As it clearly is not based on a rise in carbon dioxide, then it must have another source.

The volume of the troposphere is what you calculated, but that still does not take into effect that the troposphere is denser at the poles, despite being a thinner layer there.

Denser yet thinner would still yield a similar mass. Mass of the troposphere is what is important... how much there is of it.

there as you can see many many holes that under scientific scrutiny would be torn to shreds.

And a truly scientific analysis would be so involved that this would have gotten no notice on ATS. I write for my audience. Another poster mentioned that I needed to integrate the absorption of carbon dioxide over the entire spectrum. He's right. But had I done so, I would be getting posts like " " instead of analysis. I vastly prefer analysis.

Thank you for your comments. They show you are thinking.

TheRedneck

reply to post by die_another_day

Red, you wanna do a calculation with just CO2?

x amount of CO2 diffused in air can absorb x amount of heat over 100 years from the sun.

That's actually what I did. I simply applied that heat energy absorbed to the mass that was exposed to it.

Adding the ocean just skews the entire calculation by a very large value.

But if you omit the oceans, then the result assumes that no heat is applied to the oceans. The oceans are the main source of heat absorption on the planet, as my calculations reflect. If anything is skewed, then it is an overestimation of the actual temperature rise that could be possible, based on the omission of the land masses as you earlier pointed out.

But if you just want an answer: there would then be plenty of heat available to heat only the troposphere. several times over as a matter of fact.

This calculation is extremely complex, if it was this easy, then someone should have figured it out already.

This calculation has been presented many times before, in several places. The one you read in the OP was original in that I used the values and set the assumptions myself. But the information presented and the conclusions reached are far from new. They get covered up by masses of websites showing the opposite effect using 'creative' mathematics, so they don;t even show up on search engines after a few weeks. Or they are published in some journal that never sees media attention because the results are not what is wanted.

In a few weeks, this too will die off and probably be forgotten. However, due to ATS's policy of archiving inactive threads so they are still accessible, I can now point to it.

If supposedly, an increase in 0.01% of CO2 is causing the global warming, then according to my contribution table...

That CO2 contributes only 50% x 0.01% or 0.5% of the greenhouse effect since the industrial revolution.

I think I understand your question. I'm just not sure how to answer it. I have established that only 0.1°K can be accounted for per century by present carbon dioxide levels. That would indicate that perhaps that 50% figure is somewhat off the mark. Could it be that the other greenhouse gases are responsible for more? Or could there be another heat source besides the sun? Could it be volcanism, perhaps seafloor-based? Friction between tectonic plate activity?

Just some food for thought.

[quote[CFC's on the other hand, is 100% manmade, and it currently contributes between 8-14% of our problem.
Agreed, and again, I side with you on the CFCs.

TheRedneck

Amazing thread , i was waiting for a literate being to come out with factual information to prove this topic is debunked + k man love the work .May i ask your profession?

Nice try but not only does it LOOK like a bunch of crap, it simply adds up to that also.

Its a tempreture rise of 1/2 to 1 degree according to the OS.

A Kelvin is -457.87 degrees Fahrenheit.

This is about to go viral. And if everyone who saw it traded just 1% of a carbon credit, you, my friend, would be eating Al Gore's lunch tomorrow at the watergate.

TheRedNeck: How do you want this credited?

reply to post by Byrd

There's some interesting patterns.

Yes, there are, based primarily on differences in carbon dioxide production among different areas and prevailing wind patterns. But the principle is still relevant: there will be more solar rays that do not encounter carbon dioxide molecules than do encounter them, the difference being in proportion to the number of of carbon dioxide molecules in a given volume of air.

Anthropogenic factors, though, aren't ONLY carbon dioxide.

I never stated otherwise. But the calculations were never intended to show those effects, only the difference that carbon dioxide increases to date could have under the worst possible conditions.

I will try and find time to calculate for the different other pollutants. Since the number of pollutants is into the hundreds, perhaps a list of the ones people want to see would help? Or maybe I could work up a formula based on the OP that would account for each one people wanted to plug the average values in for...

TheRedneck

A little link to see where it came from....


NASA Goddard studys center

reply to post by mikelee

A Kelvin is -457.87 degrees Fahrenheit.

0°K = -457.87°F = -273.15°C

273.15°K = 32°F = 0°C

A degree Kelvin is identical to a degree Celsius, which is equal to 9/5 of a degree Fahrenheit. The only difference between degrees kelvin and Celsius is the location of the freezing point of water. I never mentioned absolute temperature readings; I mentioned temperature change. In that context, 1°K change = 1° Celsius change.

The kelvin and the Celsius are often used together, as they have the same interval, and 0 kelvin is -273.15 degrees Celsius.

Source: en.wikipedia.org...

TheRedneck

Particulates play a crucial roll as well. When the clean air act was initiated they removed large amounts of particulates in the atmosphere. They found out these particulates actually cooled the surface of the planet because radiant energy was being deflected back into space. Now that the air was cleaner more radiant energy was filtering through and warming things up. This is why you see them spraying the skies today. They did such a good job at cleaning up the atmosphere that it cause another problem all together. Great work on the part of the OP. I believe their are many variables involved. In order to get the most accurate of measurements all variables must be calculated which is a monumental task. Getting a ball park figure is also important.

My personal opinion is to many trees are being cut down. This is a crucial variable that I hear nothing about. In South America alone their are huge swaths of acreages being leveled to plant soy beans and other crops. This takes oxygen levels out of the system and trees are carbon scrubbers.

reply to post by TheRedneck



I DO admire the work & effort you put into it. However it remains nothing but superfluous due to many already realize what your end conclusion states. In short, it was reaching around your elbow to scratch your backside.

reply to post by mikelee

Are you saying you discount it because of the conclusion and not because of the calculations?

TheRedneck

"Yawn". Boring. I'm going to bed. G'night all

Mod edit - Please review one line rule

[edit on 12/2/2009 by yeahright]

I must not have made that clear enough; if so, I apologize to the readers. The 0.01% value represents only the 'excess' CO2 above what is generally considered to be a safe level. If the industrial revolution had not occurred we would have 280ppmv carbon dioxide as we did before it occurred; we actually have 380 ppmv. That difference is what is being blamed for Global warming, not the total amount.

No problems, no need for apologies, just wanted to clarify.

Yes, if 100% accuracy was needed; it wasn't. If some of that solar irradiance energy is blocked by the upper atmosphere, that means the resulting irradiance that can be affected by carbon dioxide is less, meaning again that the calculations are conservative.

No I mean to say that the upper atmosphere changes the wavelength of certain incoming radiations. Either way, it is of no real consequence as you say you are ony making a general statement. Perhaps you should make that clear. By giving calculations that have some accuracies down to the 10x10^-3 you are suggesting accuracy via the very nature of your proposed calcs.

I am calculating for a flat disk, because I am not calculating the volume of the earth, but the area of the earth as presented to the sun. solar irradiance does not come from all directions, but from what can be considered as a single point. The area which will receive solar irradiation, normal to that irradiation, is a circle, not a sphere. Your concern about surface area is included in this. Each area presented to the sun will receive the same amount of energy based on a plane normal to the sun. the area of the planet that will receive this energy, in contrast, varies greatly based on its angkle to that normal plane.

The area of a circle is less than the area of a half of a sphere. Allow me to demonstrate.

If I have a circle whose diameter is say 3m then the area of my circle is nearly 7.1 m^2

If I have a sphere with the same diameter, the area for one half of my sphere (assuming it is a perfectly round sphere) is 14.3 m^2

Therefore the surface area of the earth that would be privy to incoming solar radiation is nearly doubled from your initial value.

Also each area does not receive the same amount of energy. You forget that not only does the solar radiation have more atmosphere to attenuate through before reaching the earths surface at the poles before it can be reflected and or absorbed and re-emitted, but the very albedo of the poles themselves state that there is very little solar radiation that is effecting the polar regions. The areas near the equator between the tropics receive the most solar radiation.

I did include the volume of the troposphere in calculating carbon dioxide amounts and in calculating the needed energy to warm it; in this case the above paragraph applies, as the troposphere itself will also be seen as a disk on a plane normal to the sun.

No. there is much more attenuation through the poles than the equator because of the angle of incidence. Thus the poles are cold. This is why your flat disk approach is not only off wrt surface area but volume as well when considering the amount of distance that solar radiation must travel from entering the troposphere to reaching earths surface, all the while it is being scattered, absorbed, and refracted/reflected, reducing the amount of energy incident upon earth.

I did NOT take into account the atmosphere above the troposphere, because it contains almost no carbon dioxide and is irrelevant in that respect to incoming energy levels as as far as such may be trapped by anthropogenic carbon dioxide. I also purposely omitted the volume of the upper atmosphere in my calculations, to conservatively allow for the pressure gradient through the troposphere.

But the upper atmosphere such as the stratosphere contains mostly 02 and 03, which absorbs smaller wavelengths very well. You used total solar incoming radiation in your calculations, but only considered partial reasons for absorption.

The values given are already multiplied by the area normal to the sun which encompasses the planet and the troposphere. This is the total for the planet, not the total for a unit area.

The area which you miscalculated using a flat disk, cutting yourself short. Please tell me you are a tax assessor in my local area so I can have my acreage re-calculated



CONTINUED

Yes I am. As the earth is being considered as a whole, not as a group of individual areas, average values may be used.

No they cannot. Drastic changes of atmospheric content wrt not only co2 but also water vapor, density, atmospheric heights and so on can happen very rapidly over very short distances, and it is these boundaries that give us wind and weather and so on. Not to mention the available atmosphere that could be effected by co2 emissions is very very small. Pollutants in the troposphere are mixed and settled in days to a week or so. All of that source air over the oceans is like a filtration for our troposphere as the pollutants get mixed or precipitated out, and no source to return it.

Simplified? Maybe. But the differences will cancel out, as long as proper averages are used.

You hope. But you cannot be certain. And that is not the type of wager that a scientific individual looking to build credibility and support a hypothesis should be taking.

I do not consider any heating methods other than anthropogenic carbon dioxide. Any other heating is not considered to be the cause of Global Warming, and thus must be initially discounted to disprove the exaggerated warming effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide.

What type of heating method are you considering FOR your anthropogenic co2? The gas itself can be heated by several different mechanisms.

I find it interesting, though, that we have experienced some warming from 1950-1998. As it clearly is not based on a rise in carbon dioxide, then it must have another source.

I agree. If we were observing earth in a sterile environment under controlled conditions, we would still see the increase. Looking at data pools that date back farther than a few thousand years will reveal that the changes we are seeing are really well within the normal for our planet.

Denser yet thinner would still yield a similar mass. Mass of the troposphere is what is important... how much there is of it.

Some parts of the troposphere are behaving differently than others based upon the amount of mixing, radiation, and source region that the air mass is in place over. This is another dangerous generalization that threatens the credibility of your calculations.

And a truly scientific analysis would be so involved that this would have gotten no notice on ATS. I write for my audience. Another poster mentioned that I needed to integrate the absorption of carbon dioxide over the entire spectrum. He's right. But had I done so, I would be getting posts like "

" instead of analysis. I vastly prefer analysis.

But to your target audience it may appear as if you are making a hypothesis based upon scientific data and analyzed with accuracy and presented to them for review and comment. The average person would look at the very nature of the figures that you used and, if not grounded in the science itself, would assume that you are being precise with your results, when the truth is that you are making broad generalizations with long and encumbering figures that are loosely based upon even more generalized assumptions in an effort to make a near improvable hypothesis and gain some support for your initial and underlying premise that humans are not the root cause of global warming and climate change, at least not through the unnatural creation of excess co2 in the lower atmosphere. To someone who IS in the science of climate and wishes to see the farce that is anthropogenic climate change be unveiled for the hoax that it is, this type of post can be not only dangerous to the cause but also errs on irresponsibility. You would be much better off displaying the long form calculations based upon accurate data and using as few generalizations as possible, followed by a “laymen’s corner” or something to get the more unsubtle message across. Because NOW for someone who HAS had any kind of collegiate math, you end up looking less credible, and could possible give the individual that was seeking the information a false premise as to the very character of those who are trying to expose the hoax. We must not manipulate the facts, either innocently or malignantly, to make any point to our cause, no matter how important it may seem to get that point to the street.