World is at its hottest since prehistory, say scientists

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Berzerker


Demonstrate then



So 4% of .04% is man made? Oh the humanity...

No. 4% of the annual production is manmade. The manmade part of that in the atmosphere is ~25%

[KrazyHorse]

Listen up, kiddo. The effect of enhanced CO2 on the thermal equilibrium is well understood. And increase from 0.03% to 0.04% is significant and can have a measurable effect on the global mean temperature. That's straight-up thermodynamics.

But you can continue to deny well-founded science because it doesn't fit in with you personal ideology.

[Kuciwalker]

Even if only 4% of the total in the atmosphere were manmade, that would represent a significant deviation from equilibrium.

[Datajack Franit]

make that greenland around 1500

I'm sure I read that at Reykjavik's museum of natural history

[KrazyHorse]

Not particularly significant due to annual fluctuations.

I love it how we have tens of thousands of years of data, that today's mean global temperature is higher than at any other point in this record, that the carbon dioxide level is higher than at any other point in this record, that we have an obvious mechanism for our effect on the CO2 level (industrial production), that we have an almost as obvious mechanism for the trapping of heat by CO2 (opacity at ~10 micrometers), yet people without even the first sense of the solidity of this experimental and theoretical framework are able to tell me that all this is mere coincidence.



We're well beyond 4 sigma in both CO2 measurements and global mean temperature, by the way. I was being conservative when I said 2.5 sigma.

That is solid ****ing science. It conforms to the most rigorous standards of objective statistical analysis of the data in support of a hypothesis with a well-understood mechanism.

[KrazyHorse]

In twenty years we'll be at 600 ppm and rising CO2 levels and Berzerker et al will still be denying the connection between our activity and the CO2 level.

[Straybow]

I don't know how accurate that 4% CO2 production is, much less a claim that 25% of .04% content is due to man. We do know that content has gone up from .03% to .04% in the last couple decades. To say it is all anthropogenic is begging the question.

But we do know that based on similar estimates, by the same general population of scientists, the Kyoto treaty was projected to decrease the temperature rise by a paltry ~6% over 100 yrs. (More specifically, the Kyoto 100th year levels were comparable to the non-Kyoto 94th year levels.)

[KrazyHorse]

The 4% annual overproduction is pretty solid. About half the cycle comes from water absorption/desorption, which is a pretty simple process to model. Whatever's left over comes from plant and animal respiration. Given some decent measurements of biological abundance at a number of sampling points then this number should be reasonably good too. Industrial production isn't too hard to estimate (it might underestimate certain rapidly-developing industrial economies, though). All in all, we can come to the conclusion that we are, for the first time ever, producing enough CO2 to actually measurably alter the entire atmosphere's contents.

I never said that I was a Kyoto supporter. I am a Kyoto agnostic, as it were.

I have no problem arguing the relative merits of different control mechanisms. Hell, I'm not even certain that the global warming will be catastrophic, or that we definitely need to control it in the near future. I have much less faith in microclimatological models which claim that X region will undergo Y change due to Z rise in global mean temp than I do in the fundamental truths of the greenhouse model: that we produce enough CO2 and other associated gases to measurably impact their abundance in the atmosphere and that the abundance of these gases has a measurable effect on global mean temperature.

[Straybow]

"which is a pretty simple process to model"

Yeah, kinda like the weather. Which we're lucky to forecast a week into the future.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Straybow
"which is a pretty simple process to model"

Yeah, kinda like the weather. Which we're lucky to forecast a week into the future.

No, because it's not a predictive process for isolated spots. We're looking for a global contribution, remember?

You keep coming up with bull**** arguments. To get the oceanic contribution what you need (probably) is:

Temperature (both of water and of atmosphere at suface)
CO2 concentration (both of water and of atmosphere at the surface)
Wind speed
possibly some cloud cover data

at a number of indicative points across the world's oceans. You then use this data and the physical properties of the interaction between water and CO2 to figure out the integrated absorption rate at each point. You then approximate the total over a year by integrating over the surface of the oceans.

Not at all like predicting the weather. But thanks for playing.

[KrazyHorse]

At a guess, the oceanic rate is probably known to within tolerances of less than 5%

The plant/animal rate is probably more fuzzy. I'd be leery of anybody who told you that the relative error on that was lower than the 10-20% range

And say we can only know the industrial production rate to a relative error of 20% also

Now apply the method of partial derivatives and tell me what you think the propagated error on the 4% number is...

[KrazyHorse]

R = I/(I + O + B)

I = 0.04 +/- 0.008
O = 0.5 +/- 0.025
B = 0.46 +/- 0.1

[KrazyHorse]

=> R = 0.04 +/- 0.0093

[Capt Dizle]

I just think we need to plant a few more trees and give those that we have a few more hugs and everything will be okay.

[Straybow]

I just think we need to plant a few more trees and give those that we have a few more hugs and everything will be okay.

/me gets misty

R = I/(I + O + B)

I = 0.04 +/- 0.008
O = 0.5 +/- 0.025
B = 0.46 +/- 0.1

Very good! You've shown that .04/1 = .04

Except that it could really be .03-ish and we're doing good to even have 2 significant digits.

My main point was in response to techumseh that our small contribution (he said 1%) to the production was the source of the 25% increase in atm content. Even at 4% it does not follow.