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Paper: CO2 is a very weak greenhouse gas.


lost_shaman

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This Paper is interesting in that it attempts to give some upper limits of the thermal effects of CO2 in the atmosphere. 

Infrared absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide F. K. Reinhart, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

Here is the Abstract.

Quote

 

  The well-known absorption properties of CO2 and the physics of thermal radiation permit to estimate the infrared absorption of the atmospheric CO2. The earth is considered as a homogeneous spherical black body emitter with a temperature of 288 K. An idealized atmosphere, the CO2 content of which is the only infrared absorber, surrounds the emitter. The CO2 concentration at sea level amounts to 400 ppm and the density exponentially tapers off with height. Accordingly, the average black body temperature contains the so-called greenhouse contribution. Over 200’000 discrete absorption lines of CO2 are used for the numerical calculations. If the absorbed energy is converted entirely into heat, we deliberately overestimate the heat retention capability of CO2. The thermal occupation statistics of the CO2 energy states plays a key role in these calculations. The calculated heat retention is converted into a temperature increase, ∆T. Doubling the present CO2 concentration only results in ∆T < 0.24 K. At the present rate of CO2 concentration increase of 1.2% per year, it will take almost two hundred years to reach ten times the present concentration yielding ∆T < 0.80 K.

 

 

Edited by lost_shaman
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Oh how wonderful, I can see this being used by the climate change sceptics as proof global warming is not a man made issue.  Of course they will ignore the fact the carbon dioxide is only one of the greenhouse gases - methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and even water vapour are the others.  On top of that I am extremely dubious of the methodology used here: 

6 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

The earth is considered as a homogeneous spherical black body emitter

 The Earth is not considered a spherical black body emitter (Not meaning to quote you lost_shaman, just for speed purposes).

6 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

An idealized atmosphere, the CO2 content of which is the only infrared absorber, surrounds the emitter

Which isn't actually the case with the Earth.

I'll leave it here as I'm no scientist but this seems a very suspect way to measure CO2's effect on Earths temperature.

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Each greenhouse gas by itself could be described as not alarming but when we take all of them together, than, picture is ( or could soon be ) very alarming.

Given enough time, the change of amount of different gases in the atmosphere could spark all sorts of interactions ( which were not observed earlier ) between those gases which could possibly make much more problems? Just an uneducated guess but i hope that things are not overlooked and that effort will be made to prevent future disasters.

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The main thrust of the paper is that the more CO2 that is discharged into the atmosphere, the less the affect will be on temperature.  Several other papers have found similar results over the last few years, so it is starting to look like some changes will have to be made to the climate "constant" - like:  it's not a constant.  Temperature rise will likely not be as bad as previously predicted (like by the IPCC First Assessment).

This is good news, but not good enough that we can ignore atmospheric pollution.  Ocean acidification will be just as bad.  Neither can we ignore the CO2 rise that has already occurred.  Warming is already affecting crop yields around the world.  CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere is distorting tree growth and may soon uncouple the connection between ring width and climate.  And forests are dying in large numbers.

 

On a different note:  my warming history of Oklahoma City is proceeding.  Temperatures are doing pretty much the same thing in OKC as they are elsewhere, except that they are lagged three years.  Why?  Probably takes that much time for a change in ocean circulation to carry the heat inland.  There is also a two-year lag between what the North Atlantic Oscillation does and the temperatures in the interior of North America.  This gives us another way to predict weather two-to-three years in advance.  More on this later.

Doug

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I'll let ya know when I quit choking on wildfire smoke.

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13 hours ago, I'mConvinced said:

 The Earth is not considered a spherical black body emitter

What do you mean by this? Earth certainly isn't a Potato shaped black body emitter like Mars moon Phobos. So if not Spherical then what would you call it. (Yes I know the Earth isn't perfectly Spherical, but it's Spherical for all intents and purposes.)

13 hours ago, I'mConvinced said:

Which isn't actually the case with the Earth.

 

Of course it is not the actual case, however the Paper is only calculating CO2 and it's role as a greenhouse gas. 

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3 minutes ago, ChaosRose said:

I'll let ya know when I quit choking on wildfire smoke.

So wildfires didn't happen pre-industrial revolution?

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Just now, lost_shaman said:

So wildfires didn't happen pre-industrial revolution?

The wildfires, hurricanes, etc., people are experiencing right now are unprecedented. 

To ignore that is to shoot yourself (and everyone else) in the foot. 

I like my foot. 

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Just now, ChaosRose said:

The wildfires, hurricanes, etc., people are experiencing right now are unprecedented. 

To ignore that is to shoot yourself (and everyone else) in the foot. 

No they are not. 

Quote

However, palaeotempestological research allows reconstruction of pre-historic hurricane activity trends on timescales of centuries to millennia. A theory has been postulated that an anti-phase pattern exists between the Gulf of Mexico coast and the East Coast of the United States.[1] During the quiescent periods, a more northeasterly position of the Azores Highwould result in more hurricanes being steered towards the Atlantic coast. During the hyperactive period, more hurricanes were steered towards the Gulf coast as the Azores High—controlled by the North Atlantic oscillation—was shifted to a more southwesterly position near the Caribbean. In fact, few major hurricanes struck the Gulf coast during 3000 BC–1400 BC and again during the most recent millennium; these quiescent intervals were separated by a hyperactive period during 1400 BC and AD 1000, when catastrophic hurricanes frequently struck the Gulf coast, and their landfall frequencies increased by a factor of three to five.[2] On the Atlantic coast, probability of landfalling hurricanes has doubled in the recent millennium compared to the one and a half millennia before.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlantic_hurricanes_before_1600

Sedimentary records show that in the past there were storms that dwarf anything we've seen in modern times.

 

 

 

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6 hours ago, Doug1029 said:

Temperature rise will likely not be as bad as previously predicted (like by the IPCC First Assessment).

They actually go much further than that Doug.

Quote

Our upper limit of the temperature increase is considerably lower than even the lowest one given by the recent IPCC report of 2014 (AR5). We agree with their functional form, but strongly disagree with their magnitude. In a test calculation, we use the identical HITRAN data without taking the occupation probabilities of the CO2 energy states into account. In this fashion, we get ∆Fmax and ∆Tmax close to six times higher than the ones given in Table I, thereby approaching the ones of the IPCC reports 2-5 . Also the contribution by the Band B2 becomes over 3 times that shown in Table I. We also suspect that the omission of the cos ϕ factor in Eq. (8) contributes to overestimating by at least another factor of two. Therefore, we conclude that the temperature increases predicted by the IPCC AR5, lack robust scientific justification. The main problem is probably caused by the lack of considering the occupation probabilities of the energy levels.

Bold emphasis mine. 

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8 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

What do you mean by this? Earth certainly isn't a Potato shaped black body emitter like Mars moon Phobos. So if not Spherical then what would you call it. (Yes I know the Earth isn't perfectly Spherical, but it's Spherical for all intents and purposes.)

Of course it is not the actual case, however the Paper is only calculating CO2 and it's role as a greenhouse gas. 

Well Earth isn't a black body emitter. I don't know what affect that might have on results but it seems a weird starting point for an analysis of CO2's affect on our planet.

The Earth is a system, it doesn't stand alone and to measure the affect of CO2 on its own and external to the system it is impacting seems inconclusive at best.

Quote

A black body is an idealized object that absorbs all electromagnetic radiation it comes in contact with. It then emits thermal radiation in a continuous spectrum according to its temperature. Stars behave approximately like blackbodies, and this concept explains why there are different colors of stars.

 

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13 hours ago, I'mConvinced said:

Well Earth isn't a black body emitter.

All matter with a temperature above absolute zero is a black body emitter. This would obviously therefor include the Earth, and this is where the long wave radiation that CO2 absorbs and re-emits comes from (the surface of the Earth). You must have ignored that first sentence from the page you quoted it says.. "All objects emit electromagnetic radiation according to their temperature."

 

16 hours ago, I'mConvinced said:

I don't know what affect that might have on results but it seems a weird starting point for an analysis of CO2's affect on our planet.

Since this is where the energy originates, it is THE only logical starting point.

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7 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

All matter with a temperature above absolute zero is a black body emitter. This would obviously therefor include the Earth, and this is where the long wave radiation that CO2 absorbs and re-emits comes from (the surface of the Earth). You must have ignored that first sentence from the page you quoted it says.. "All objects emit electromagnetic radiation according to their temperature."

That is muddying the definition somewhat I feel:

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Black-body radiation is the thermal electromagnetic radiation within or surrounding a body in thermodynamic equilibrium with its environment, or emitted by a black body (an opaque and non-reflective body). It has a specific spectrum and intensity that depends only on the body's temperature, which is assumed for the sake of calculations and theory to be uniform and constant

So is the Earth a black body? No.

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Although planets and stars are neither in thermal equilibrium with their surroundings nor perfect black bodies, black-body radiation is used as a first approximation for the energy they emit

So, in terms of the Earth emitting black-body radiation then yes, you could approximate I suppose.  How useful this is in telling the overall effect of CO2 in a much more complicated system involving multiple other greenhouse gasses is anyone's guess. 

On 10/26/2017 at 5:18 AM, lost_shaman said:

The earth is considered as a homogeneous spherical black body emitter with a temperature of 288 K. An idealized atmosphere, the CO2 content of which is the only infrared absorber, surrounds the emitter

They might consider it so for the purposes of this paper but that doesn't actually make it so.  

gw-science-heat-trapping.png

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If all the energy emitted from the Earth’s surface (orange “thermal up surface” arrow in Figure 2) escaped into space, the planet would be too cold to sustain human life.

Fortunately, as depicted in Figure 2 (orange “thermal down surface” arrow), some of this energy does stay in the atmosphere, where it is sent back toward Earth by clouds, released by clouds as they condense to form rain or snow, or absorbed by atmospheric gases composed of three or more atoms, such as water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), and methane (CH4).

Long-wave radiation absorbed by these gases in turn is re-emitted in all directions, including back toward Earth, and some of this re-emitted energy is absorbed again by these gases and re-emitted in all directions.

The net effect is that most of the outgoing radiation is kept within the atmosphere instead of escaping into space.

 

I think the statement in bold above should offer some explanation as to why I think the analysis is flawed.  If we take the earth as a perfect black body and we only take the energy absorption rate of CO2 then there is indeed an upper limit to the heating CO2 can cause.  This isn't how the world and our atmosphere actually works however and I'm unsure what they are trying to prove with these figures.

As I've said before though I'm just an armchair scientist without the knowledge to really argue this - it just seems that conclusions are being drawn that don't match the results of the study, from my limited perspective.  Maybe you can explain it to me in a way that I might understand? 

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On 26/10/2017 at 0:19 PM, I'mConvinced said:

Oh how wonderful, I can see this being used by the climate change sceptics as proof global warming is not a man made issue.

 

 

As far as I can see, even the sceptics have ignored this (unpublished) paper written by a retired engineer.

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CO2 is, of course, an entirely natural gas that is beneficial to the planet.

Edited by Black Monk
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7 minutes ago, Black Monk said:

CO2 is, of course, an entirely natural gas that is beneficial to the planet.

Like all things, it is only beneficial in moderation ;)

One of the problems with CO2 is that when organic lifeforms absorbs it, they usually then emits oxygen, which is a deadly corrosive substance ......

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On 10/27/2017 at 0:44 PM, lost_shaman said:

No they are not. 

Sedimentary records show that in the past there were storms that dwarf anything we've seen in modern times.

 

 

 

Yes, Gore after his last "An inconvenient Truth Part 2" bombed, said that parts of New York getting flooded was proof that MMGW was real, but it took a cyclone to do it.

4 hours ago, Essan said:

 

As far as I can see, even the sceptics have ignored this (unpublished) paper written by a retired engineer.

Ferris, who used to be in charge of the Climate Committee is Australian during the Gillart years, and who has said for 30 years about one impeding disaster after another, (which didn't happen) that he got it wrong speaks volumes about all of this.

NOAA data also shows the outright lies about this subject, also does likewise.

 

I dunno withether believers are still falling for this MMGW nonsence to save face, or because they have a psychological need to believe in it.

But this train has well and truly gone off the cliff, and it is becoming hilarious than anything else.

All of the damage they have done and continue to do to our country and utility costs, isn't funny thought, it is sicking.

 

Shows what happens when an idiot politician listens to experts that are idiots with their hands out!

:sleepy:

Edited by tmcom
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12 hours ago, I'mConvinced said:

That is muddying the definition somewhat I feel:

So is the Earth a black body? No.

 

Yes! The Earth is certainly a black body emitter. Everything is. I'm not sure what exactly your hang up here is but this is introductory level Science. I suggest you spend some time reading about this and try to understand it.

 

12 hours ago, I'mConvinced said:

So, in terms of the Earth emitting black-body radiation then yes, you could approximate I suppose.  How useful this is in telling the overall effect of CO2 in a much more complicated system involving multiple other greenhouse gasses is anyone's guess. 

No it's not just anyone's guess! Your handwave calling the Earth a "complicated system" doesn't dismiss the fact that we can calculate CO2s thermal contribution to the Atmosphere. 

 

12 hours ago, I'mConvinced said:

They might consider it so for the purposes of this paper but that doesn't actually make it so.  

Of course that is not true however the Paper is only calculating CO2s thermal contribution. 

 

12 hours ago, I'mConvinced said:

I think the statement in bold above should offer some explanation as to why I think the analysis is flawed.

What you've Bold emphasized,..."Long-wave radiation absorbed by these gases in turn is re-emitted in all directions, including back toward Earth, and some of this re-emitted energy is absorbed again by these gases and re-emitted in all directions." is a well known fact and absolutely not being ignored by anyone, nor does this in any way falsify the Paper or it's calculations. 

 

13 hours ago, I'mConvinced said:

As I've said before though I'm just an armchair scientist without the knowledge to really argue this - it just seems that conclusions are being drawn that don't match the results of the study, from my limited perspective.  Maybe you can explain it to me in a way that I might understand?

I would but I'm not even sure you agree with the FACT that the Earth is a black body emitter. Given that where would I even start?

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9 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

Yes! The Earth is certainly a black body emitter.

Although a black body does not really exist, we will consider the planets and stars (including the earth and the sun) as black bodies. ... According to the above definition, a blackbody will emit radiation in all parts of the EM spectrum, but by intuition, we know that one will not radiate in all wavelengths equally.

As a result, the Earth's actual average surface temperature is about 288 K (15 °C), which is higher than the 255 K effective temperature, and even higher than the 279 K temperature that a black body would have.

9 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

I would but I'm not even sure you agree with the FACT that the Earth is a black body emitter. Given that where would I even start?

I quite clearly stated that Earth does indeed emit black body radiation. However Earth is not a black body and is certainly not a perfect black body. This wasn't the main thrust of the argument though, just clearing up a definition.

9 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

Long-wave radiation absorbed by these gases in turn is re-emitted in all directions, including back toward Earth, and some of this re-emitted energy is absorbed again by these gases and re-emitted in all directions.

My point here is that CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas and it's total effect can't be taken independently as it re-emitts that radiation. This is in turn reabsorbed and emitted by other greenhouse gases.

Quote

Like Goldblatt’s team, Kasting’s group studies Earth’s climate using a one-dimensional model that simulates the absorption, transmission and reflection of sunlight by a single surface-to-space strip of atmosphere. These models’ sophisticated treatment of light’s interactions with air closely reproduce the observed warming effects of carbon dioxide, water vapor and other greenhouse gases, yet they contain only the crudest approximations of Earth’s changing weather and surface. Such models are particularly poor at accounting for the complex effects of clouds, which, depending on where and how they form, can either cool or heat the planet

What point are you and the study trying to make in this thread? Yes there is an upper limit on the amount of heating CO2 can cause in an isolated system...but the Earth isn't an isolated system or a perfect black body. 

Perhaps if you could clarify your position in all this? Are you simply denying man made climate change? If so is this the evidence you are presenting?

Edited by I'mConvinced
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How concrete jungles affects the global climate shift ...
 

Quote

 

~

The concrete jungle overheats | New Scientist

Jul 19, 1997 - The concrete jungle overheats. By Fred Pearce ... The UN's. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change puts the industry's total contribution

~

Why the City Is (Usually) Hotter than the Countryside | Science ...

www.smithsonianmag.com/.../city-hotter-countryside-urban-heat-island-science-1809...

Jul 9, 2014 - The smoothness of the landscape and the local climate—not the materials of the concrete jungle—govern the urban heat island effect, a new ...

~

 

There is heating and cooling going on, problem is the current climate trends affects the heated end more than the cooling off ... and that adds up year upon years ...

 

Quote

 

~

The Year That Winter Forgot: Is It Climate Change? - TIME

content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2104040,00.html

Jan 9, 2012 - That's because 2012 is shaping up to be the year that winter forgot in the U.S. December and the first week of January have seen atypically ...

~

 

 

 

 

Edited by third_eye
I dunno
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22 hours ago, I'mConvinced said:

My point here is that CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas and it's total effect can't be taken independently as it re-emitts that radiation. This is in turn reabsorbed and emitted by other greenhouse gases.

Quote

So what? This is very well known and does not change CO2s thermal contribution, it does not amplify CO2s thermal contribution. That does not impede any calculation of CO2s thermal contribution to the Atmosphere. Here the Paper is calculating the upper most limit and is deliberately trying to simplify the math and slightly over estimate CO2s thermal contribution to calculate this upper limit. That is exactly why the Paper considers Earth as a "homogeneous black body emitter of T = 288 K" as this both simplifies the calculations and also is very close to the maximum amount of energy that is available to the system. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach to achieve the goal stated in the Abstract. 

 

22 hours ago, I'mConvinced said:

a blackbody will emit radiation in all parts of the EM spectrum, but by intuition, we know that one will not radiate in all wavelengths equally.

I just could not let this go. Intuition has nothing to do with this. As the temperature of an object changes so does the peak wavelengths of the black body radiation it emits according to Plank's Law and Wien's Law. 

Related image

Here you can see warmer temperatures shift the intensity and amount of black body radiation towards shorter wave lengths in a non-linear fashion. 

Image result for black body radiation profiles 288K

Look at the graph above the Black line 288K is the Earth's average temperature. That is a difference of 68 degrees K and those are actual W/m^2! So for every degree warmer the black body radiation gets it is front loaded into the shorter wavelengths, and for every degree cooler the energy is more smoothly distributed in the longer wave lengths. CO2 has it's major absorption band at ~15 um that is in the long wave spectrum where the 288K line intersects the 20 w/m^2 line of the graph above. It's very obvious that if the Earth warms even as little a a degree or so it also becomes much more efficient at radiating more energy in the shorter wave lengths outside of CO2's fixed absorption bands. 

Edited by lost_shaman
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23 hours ago, I'mConvinced said:

Are you simply denying man made climate change?

Have you ever heard of Science? I actually grew up at a time when the Scientific method was taught to Kids in Public school. Science is a journey and it leads you to facts. You don't "deny" or 'accept' you follow the data to discover what the truth actually is! 

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46 minutes ago, lost_shaman said:

I just could not let this go. Intuition has nothing to do with this. As the temperature of an object changes so does the peak wavelengths of the black body radiation it emits according to Plank's Law and Wien's Law. 

Whoops! I was simply quoting from here but forgot the link:

http://weather.cod.edu/sirvatka/blackbody.html

Feel free to argue against them though.

6 minutes ago, lost_shaman said:

Have you ever heard of Science? I actually grew up at a time when the Scientific method was taught to Kids in Public school. Science is a journey and it leads you to facts. You don't "deny" or 'accept' you follow the data to discover what the truth actually is! 

Nope, never heard of it. However CO2 levels are not the only contributing factor in a MMGW model. This paper and the previous papers stating the same thing focus only on CO2.

How is this proof of anything beyond the upper heating limit of CO2?

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3 minutes ago, I'mConvinced said:

How is this proof of anything beyond the upper heating limit of CO2?

That is what the Paper is about.

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