Meat of the Problem

Once in a while someone unloads with a suitcase of shoddy science that is really annoying. There is only one word to describe it and that is rubbish. There are two arguments here, both are cow manure.

The first argument is that we are using grain to feed cattle that could be more efficiently be fed to people. I will give you a hot tip. What people are going to eat what is euphemistically called feed grade grain. There is a good reason it is called feed grain. Our millers do not want it, nor will they pay human grade prices for it. The point is that cattle represent an essential element of the whole agricultural equation by consuming all the stuff that fails to make the cut for human consumption. What cattle cannot consume, the hogs get. And then the cattle only get it for fattening in the last part of their lives. Most of the time they are out consuming grass or perhaps converting grass and some feed grain into milk.

The second argument is even more specious, but I have run into my share of true believers. It is that they produce copious amounts of methane which is magically a green house gas. Well, yes it is, and if it actually accumulated enough, besides killing you it would also warm up the environment. In fact if you lit a match, the environment would become red hot.

The catch is that it is a very light gas that heads for the troposphere above the working atmosphere and neatly removes it self once and for all. Lest we have any doubts a global map of atmospheric content shows its presence disappearing down wind and offshore pretty well confirming a fast rising gas.

Otherwise ammonia production is very welcome as a fertilizer and we need more.

So before anyone jumps on this particular band wagon, please investigate how cattle fit into the big picture. It was the be all and end all of European agriculture for an amazing nine thousand years and in spite of some of our less wise practices is likely to be there for us for another nine thousand.

The Meat of the Problem

By Ezra Klein
Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The debate over climate change has reached a rarefied level of policy abstraction in recent months. Carbon tax or cap-and-trade? Upstream or downstream? Should we auction permits? Head-scratching is, at this point, permitted. But at base, these policies aim to do a simple thing, in a simple way: persuade us to undertake fewer activities that are bad for the atmosphere by making those activities more expensive. Driving an SUV would become pricier. So would heating a giant house with coal and buying electricity from an inefficient power plant. But there's one activity that's not on the list and should be: eating a hamburger.

If it's any consolation, I didn't like writing that sentence any more than you liked reading it. But the evidence is strong. It's not simply that meat is a contributor to global warming; it's that it is a huge contributor. Larger, by a significant margin, than the global transportation sector.

According to a 2006 United Nations report, livestock accounts for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Some of meat's contribution to climate change is intuitive. It's more energy efficient to grow grain and feed it to people than it is to grow grain and turn it into feed that we give to calves until they become adults that we then slaughter to feed to people. Some of the contribution is gross. "Manure lagoons," for instance, is the oddly evocative name for the acres of animal excrement that sit in the sun steaming nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. And some of it would make Bart Simpson chuckle. Cow gas -- interestingly, it's mainly burps, not farts -- is a real player.

But the result isn't funny at all: Two researchers at the University of Chicago estimated that switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading in your gas guzzler for a Prius (PDF). A study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that the average American would do less for the planet by switching to a totally local diet than by going vegetarian one day a week. That prompted Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to recommend that people give up meat one day a week to take pressure off the atmosphere. The response was quick and vicious. "How convenient for him," was the inexplicable reply from a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. "He's a vegetarian."

The visceral reaction against anyone questioning our God-given right to bathe in bacon has been enough to scare many in the environmental movement away from this issue. The National Resources Defense Council has a long page of suggestions for how you, too, can "fight global warming." As you'd expect, "Drive Less" is in bold letters. There's also an endorsement for "high-mileage cars such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids." They advise that you weatherize your home, upgrade to more efficient appliances and even buy carbon offsets. The word "meat" is nowhere to be found.

That's not an oversight. Telling people to give up burgers doesn't poll well. Ben Adler, an urban policy writer, explored that in a December 2008 article for the American Prospect. He called environmental groups and asked them for their policy on meat consumption. "The Sierra Club isn't opposed to eating meat," was the clipped reply from a Sierra Club spokesman. "So that's sort of the long and short of it." And without pressure to address the costs of meat, politicians predictably are whiffing on the issue. The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, for instance, does nothing to address the emissions from livestock.

The pity of it is that compared with cars or appliances or heating your house, eating pasta on a night when you'd otherwise have made fajitas is easy. It doesn't require a long commute on the bus or the disposable income to trade up to a Prius. It doesn't mean you have to scrounge for change to buy a carbon offset. In fact, it saves money. It's healthful. And it can be done immediately. A Montanan who drives 40 miles to work might not have the option to take public transportation. But he or she can probably pull off a veggie stew. A cash-strapped family might not be able buy a new dishwasher. But it might be able to replace meatballs with mac-and-cheese. That is the whole point behind the cheery PB&J Campaign, which reminds that "you can fight global warming by having a PB&J for lunch." Given that PB&J is delicious, it's not the world's most onerous commitment.

It's also worth saying that this is not a call for asceticism. It's not a value judgment on anyone's choices. Going vegetarian might not be as effective as going vegan, but it's better than eating meat, and eating meat less is better than eating meat more. It would be a whole lot better for the planet if everyone eliminated one meat meal a week than if a small core of die-hards developed perfectly virtuous diets.

I've not had the willpower to eliminate bacon from my life entirely, and so I eliminated it from breakfast and lunch, and when that grew easier, pulled back further to allow myself five meat-based meals a month. And believe me, I enjoy the hell out of those five meals. But if we're going to take global warming seriously, if we're going to make crude oil more expensive and tank-size cars less practical, there's no reason to ignore the impact of what we put on our plates.

Ezra Klein can be reached at kleine@washpost.com or through his blog at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ezraklein.

Catalytic CO2 Recycling

This seems to be the day for talking about CO2. A correspondent brought this paper to my attention and it is intriguing because it represents significant investment and serious engineering effort.

My problem stems from the reality that CO2 is already at the bottom of the energy well in any universe unable to produce perpetual motion. Yet here we have a serious effort to convert CO2 back into exothermic products. Going through the work I see nothing to think otherwise so far except to assume that the external inputs described will drive the system. After all that is what happens with Mother Nature thanks to the sun.

Otherwise, pushing water uphill is a lousy business bet.

I left the diagrams out and I do not have the link for the article itself, but there is enough here.

It ultimately needs an efficient way to split water, and we have had recent progress on that front. That at least might result in an efficient system that may in some manner be useful. The nano tube reactor needs explanation as does the proprietary catalyst at least as to performance. I would have expected to see more on this already.


Catalytic CO2 Recycle (CCRTM) Technology

Mega Symposium, August 25, 2008
Manuscript Control #8

AUTHORS:

*John Ralston, Director, Recycle CO2 (RCO2) Inc., P.O. Box 3442, Kingsport, TN, 37664 USA

Erik Fareid, CEO, RCO2TM AS, Berghagen 8, 1403 Langhus, Norway

ABSTRACT

A process has been developed and patents have been applied for in most of the countries of the world for the recycling of CO2 from the flue gas produced in hydrocarbon combustion. The CO2 is catalytically converted to two useful products, methane and water, both of which have market value. Oxygen is also generated in this process. The methane produced can be used to generate electricity. This is an energy efficient process for the recycling of CO2. This process consists of three chemical reactions; the combustion of methane, the splitting of water, and the hydrogenation of CO2. All these reactions are described below.

INTRODUCTION

RCO2 AS is a small research company located in Norway. Investors from Europe, Eastern Europe, and the USA have invested money in RCO2 AS to develop a technology that will recycle CO2 into useful products. Nalco/Mobotec have invested in this development. Most of the technologies in use and being developed today to capture or sequester CO2 require the isolation, compression, and transport of the CO2 to a burial site. The CCR technology will eliminate these requirements.

The KEY word concerning the CCR technology is the word “RECYCLE”. This is a new concept relating to CO2 that many people cannot understand and/or accept. Today many waste products are recycled. The most prominent are aluminum, plastics, and paper. Why do we recycle these waste products? The answer is to conserve energy. When energy is conserved, CO2 is reduced. By recycling aluminum 95% of the energy needed to produce aluminum is saved. By recycling plastics 70% of the energy is saved and by recycling paper 40% of the energy is saved. CO2 is also a waste product. By recycling CO2 up to 76% of the energy can be saved.

EXPERIMENTAL

Chemical Reactions

There are three basic chemical reactions involved in the CCR technology. These are:

combustion of methane

CH4 + 2O2 = CO2 + 2 H2O ΔH300K= -803 kJ/mol

splitting of water

4 H2O = 4 H2 + 2 O2 ΔH300K= +242 kJ/mol

hydrogenation of carbon dioxide (methanation)

CO2 + 4 H2 = CH4 + 2 H2O ΔH300K= -165 kJ/mol


Brief descriptions of these reactions are as follows:

1. Combustion of Methane

The combustion of methane will take place in a gas turbine and consists of the burning of the amount of methane produced in the methanation reaction mixed with the amount of natural gas that will need to be added to keep the turbine at capacity. The oxygen produced in the splitting of water reaction will be mixed with the combustion air to reduce the amount of nitrogen resulting in mainly CO2 and water in the flue gas. The gas turbine will produce electricity using about 35 % of the energy generated in the gas turbine. The remaining 65% of the energy generated will be combined with the excess energy generated by the hydrogenation of CO2 reaction and will be used to drive the water splitting reaction. The result will be that at least 90% of the energy generated will be used efficiently in an optimized system.

2. Splitting of Water

The splitting of water to produce “green” hydrogen is the key reaction of this process. It is absolutely essential that the energy used to split the water is not energy that will generate additional CO2. There are several ways to generate “green” hydrogen. These are:

1. Electrolysis of water using a combination of solar and wind energy.
2. Photo chemical reaction using energy directly from the sun
3. Thermal chemical reaction using membrane separation
4. Production of hydrogen from biomass gasification

From this list we will be operating pilot plants using the first three possible ways to produce “green” hydrogen. The first and the last ways are commercial processes already. In an actual commercial installation it may be necessary to use a combination of two or more of these ways to generate hydrogen depending on the unit generating the CO2.and the location of this unit In this paper we would like to briefly describe the other two ways to split water that are under consideration. One of the most interesting is the photo chemical reaction using free energy from the sun. It is expected that this process will be a commercially available during the first quarter of 2009. The diagram below shows how this process will operate.

With this process the energy from the sun is collected and magnified and sent to the nanotube reactor. The collector/magnifier has the capability to generate energy up to the equivalent of 50 suns. The collector/magnifier is programmed to follow the sun as it moves across the sky. The reactor consists of many nanotubes and a proprietary catalysis that will split water at ambient temperature. The water for this process is the water that has been generated and separated from the combustion of natural gas and methanation reactions. This water has been heated using the waste heat from the combustion of natural gas and the heat generated from the methanation reaction. The hydrogen generated is sent to the methanation reactor to be mixed with the flue gas coming from the combustion of natural gas. The oxygen generated is sent to the combustion reaction to be mixed with the combustion air. It will be necessary to store both the hydrogen and oxygen to maintain a supply of both during periods of time when the energy of the sun is not available. The storage of both hydrogen and oxygen will be necessary no matter which type process is used to generate “green” hydrogen. The hydrogen can be stored at 200 psi without any compression necessary.

This reaction will take place in a specifically designed reactor in the presence of an efficient membrane and a proprietary catalyst. The energy required to drive this reaction will come from the excess energy developed by the combustion of natural gas and the methanation reaction. No additional energy will be added to complete this reaction. The amount of hydrogen produced will depend on the amount of excess energy from the combustion of natural gas and energy developed during the methanation reaction that is available. For 100% conversion of CO2 to methane additional energy will be needed to produce more hydrogen. The oxygen generated will be mixed with the combustion air to the turbine to reduce the formation of NOx and make the turbine more efficient. It is estimated that enough hydrogen will be generated by the combination of two or more ways to generate “green” hydrogen will convert between 55 to 70% of the CO2 generated to methane.

3. Methanation

Methanation is a well known chemical reaction used in the production of urea. It is also know as the Sabatier reaction. Shown below is one way this reaction will be used in the CCR technology.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

The CCR Technology will improve the energy efficiency of a gas turbine. It will also result in a more efficient use of energy compared to a gas turbine with combined cycle. In the diagram below it can be noted that a gas turbine with combined cycle will be 59% energy efficient.

However, a gas turbine with CCR will increase the efficiency of the turbine to more than 90% because 61.5% of the energy is returned in the form of methane recycled from the CO2. The amount of CO2 recycled to methane can be increased by adding more renewable energy such as sun energy to the water splitting reaction. The gas turbine with CCR will reduce CO2 emissions compared to combined cycle. The CO2 emissions will be reduced by 61.5%


STATUS OF DEVELOPMENT

Currently three pilot plants are in operation to develop the necessary information to continue onto the commercialization step. These pilot plants are located as follows:

NTNU, Norway
CNRS, France
Desert Research Institute, USA

Each pilot plant will be using a different way to split water to produce hydrogen which will be reacted with the CO2. At an actual installation one or more ways to split water may be used depending on type of installation and its location. Once the way or ways that will be used has been determined, material and energy balances can be developed. It is estimated that the development work at these three pilot plants locations will be completed by the end of 2009. An additional pilot plant will be built in Smithfield, VA using at least two different ways to split hydrogen.

COMPARISON WITH OTHER CO2 CAPTURE TECHNOLOGIES

With the CCR technology being developed by RCO2 there is no isolation, no compression, no transportation, and no sequestration of the CO2. This immediately can be equated to a considerable savings. It will also produce revenue since by using the CCR technology the amount of natural gas needed for combustion in a gas turbine can be reduced by at least 55% and still produce the same amount of electricity. As a result, the CCR technology has the potential to produce revenue. It will be commercially advantageous to use the CCR technology even if CO2 reduction regulations are not put into effect.

SUMMARY

The sole objective of the CCR technology being developed by RCO2 is to reduce the current cost of removing CO2 from flue gas. The laboratory phase has been completed. Pilot plants will be operated in France, Norway, and the USA as the next step to commercialize the CCR technology. When fully developed the CCR technology will not only recycle CO2, but also will result in a more energy efficient way to generate electricity using natural gas.

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Clathrate Stable through Younger Dryas

This work is the sort of news that perhaps a few would understand. We have unbelievable amounts of methane sequestered in the form of clathrates. This is a methane water ice combination that shows up in permafrost and deep enough in the ocean, usually on the continental shelf. It represents methane accumulation that encompasses millions of years and the volumes are naturally mind boggling. It is the ultimate reserve of fossil fuels.

It turns out to be difficult to recover and this article confirms nicely that Mother Nature has problems getting it out also. It may not be as safely sequestered as granite but it is doing a good imitation.

Rather importantly, this work has shown that during a period of unusual methane concentration and violent climate change, that the methane did not originate from the clathrates. They are still there but they are not now anyone’s first suspect.

Like most, I had assumed that the sharp increase in atmospheric methane was likely forced by the release of this particular form of trapped methane.

This work has removed that source from consideration and leaves us with the ample supply been produced by wetlands. The excess methane may have been associated with an excessive increase in boreal forest wetlands been created as the ice rapidly retreated. It obviously takes a long time for a freshly started muskeg to stabalize to the conditions that are now present and it is reasonable to conjecture that this process is methane producing.

Greenland Methane Danger Far Less Than Feared

by Staff Writers
Canberra, Australia (SPX) Apr 28, 2009

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Greenland_Methane_Danger_Far_Less_Than_Feared_999.html

Ice core research has revealed that a vast, potential source of the potent greenhouse gas, methane, is more stable in a warming world than previously thought. Based on international research published in Science, the finding includes Australian contributions from CSIRO and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO)

Wetlands in the tropics and emerging from under receding Northern Hemisphere glaciers have been considered the primary source of rising atmospheric methane in a warming world. But scientists have known of another potential source.

Massive quantities of methane are locked away in permafrost and in the ocean floors as methane clathrate - an ice-like material which can return to gas if temperatures increase or pressures drop. Just a 10 per cent release of methane would have the equivalent impact on global warming of a ten-fold increase in carbon dioxide concentration.

So began a US, New Zealand and Australian research project to understand ice core records spanning hundreds of thousands of years, profiling periods of high-methane increase and focusing on the Younger Dryas period. The cause of the large increase in methane 12,000 years ago as the Earth warmed and the Younger Dryas ended has been a source of much debate among scientists.

"The result is a good news outcome for climate scientists monitoring greenhouse gases and investigating the likely sources of methane in a warming world," says CSIRO's Dr David Etheridge, from the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research who helped show how the air could be extracted from polar ice to measure past methane changes and identify their causes.

"There are vast stores of methane clathrates beneath the ocean and in permafrost and there is evidence that millions of years ago release from these storages caused significant climate change, although none in more recent times.

"The objective of the research was to determine how stable the clathrate methane stores were as the Earth warmed rapidly from its last glacial state and whether clathrates might be a source of future climate change as global temperatures rise."

Dr Andrew Smith, from ANSTO, studied the source of methane by using a technique called accelerator mass spectrometry to detect individual radiocarbon atoms from ancient atmospheric methane samples over the Younger Dryas period.

"Radiocarbon provided the key insight to decide whether the extra methane was derived from clathrates or from wetlands," Dr Smith says.

"A multi-disciplinary team of scientists from the US Scripps Institution of Oceanography, New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmosphere, and from Australia's ANSTO and CSIRO combined their resources to tackle this challenging project."

The project involved years of field-work in West Greenland where scientists accessed samples located in 'outcropping' ice, a cross-section of ice formed over tens of thousands of years that is exposed at the surface. A tonne of ice was excavated to provide sufficient air from trapped bubbles for each measurement of the methane carbon isotopes.

Extremely sensitive analysis was required because of the low concentration of methane in air and because only about one trillionth of that methane contains radiocarbon - the carbon-14 isotope that is the key indicator of clathrate emissions. The analysis was undertaken at ANSTO in southern Sydney.

The methane isotope change accompanying the jump in concentration confirmed that the emission was not from clathrates, but from ecological sources such as wetlands.

"We know that emissions of methane are increasing now and that some sources might emit even more with warming, causing a positive climate feedback, or amplification. But this finding suggests that the clathrate source is less susceptible than recently feared," Dr Smith says.

Climate Changing NOx

I am showing this item as a reminder of the not well known fact that huge amounts of methane and other gases are locked up in the permafrost and as usual much is made of the green house gas potential.

I have seen the methane factor beaten on before in regard to this same issue and again it is largely irrelevant.

Firstly CO2 is an end product of the carbon oxidation process and it is heavy enough to hang around looking for a plant to absorb it. It is a real possible factor to consider for greenhouse gas fame.

Methane however, puts on its rocket pack and heads straight for the troposphere, unless it happens to be oxidized into CO2 first. If there is ever an accumulation please do not light a match. Actual maps of land based methane show it disappearing downwind and offshore as it escapes to the troposphere.

And now someone wants to get excited over NO2. Firstly, there isn’t much of it and likely the frozen conditions helped in preserving it. If it does get free, it will immediately combine with any available water molecule and produce nitric acid and reduce something tougher. Recall that lightning produces millions of tons of this stuff to fertilize our fields. Perhaps we need to launch an initiative to stop lightning to prevent global warming.

I think they are finally running out of ideas.

And by the way, how do we know exactly how much CO2 is absorbed by the ocean and how do we measure variability? This article suggests a degree of precision that seems to me to be plainly impossible.

Climate change: 'Feedback' triggers could amplify peril

by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) Feb 15, 2009

New studies have warned of triggers in the natural environment, including a greenhouse-gas timebomb in Siberia and Canada, that could viciously amplify global warming.

Thawing subarctic tundra could unleash billions of tonnes of gases that have been safely stored in frosty soil, while oceans and forests are becoming less able to suck carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere, according to papers presented this weekend.

Together, these phenomena mean that more heat-trapping gases will enter the atmosphere, which in turn will stoke global warming, thrusting the machinery of climate change into higher gear.

Researchers in Finland and Russia discovered that nitrous oxide is leaking into the air from so-called "peat circle" ecosystems found throughout the tundra, a vast expanse of territory in higher latitudes.

CO2 and methane account for the lion's share of the gases that have driven global temperatures inexorably higher over the last century.

Nitrous oxide, or N2O, is far less plentiful in volume, but 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. It accounts for about six percent of total global warming, mainly due to a shift toward chemical-intensive agriculture.

In experiments near the Russian city of Vorkuta, Pertti Martikainen of the University of Kuopio in Finland and colleagues found that N2O leaked as a result of cryoturbation, a process that occurs when frozen soil is thawed and then refreezes.

"There is evidence that warming of the Arctic will accelerate cryoturbation, which would lead to an increased abundance of peat circles in the future," said their paper, published on Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"This would increase N20 emissions from tundra, and therefore a positive feedback to climate change."

Research presented Saturday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago suggested that the frozen soil of the tundra stored far more greenhouse gas that previously thought.
"Melting permafrost is poised to be a strong foot on the accelerator pedal of atmospheric CO2," said Chris Field, a professor at Stanford and a top scientist on the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).

"The new estimate of the total amount of carbon that's frozen in permafrost soils in on the order of 1,000 billion (one trillion) tonnes," he said.

By comparison, the amount of CO2 that has been released through the burning of fossil fuels since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is around 350 billion tonnes.

The greenhouse gases in the tundra, which also includes methane, come from the decayed remains of vegetation that died long ago.

Meanwhile, new research on the Southern Ocean surrounded Antarctica suggest that the sea, a vital "carbon sink," is sucking up less CO2 than before.

Nicolas Metzl, a researcher at the French National Research Institute, said fierce winds -- aggravated by climate change and gaps in the ozone layer -- were churning the sea, which brought CO2 to the surface and released it into the air.

This adds to previous research that points to the sea's drooping effectiveness as a carbon sponge, he said.

"Today, human activity injects about 10 billion tonnes of CO2 per year into the atmosphere, compared to around six billion in the early 1990s," said Metzl.

"Before we had an ocean that captured some two billion tonnes -- about a third. Today we are below two billion tonnes," less than a fifth of the total, he added.

earlier related report

Climate change could be even worse than feared

It seems the dire warnings about future devastation sparked by global warming have not been dire enough, top climate scientists warned Saturday.
It has been just over a year since the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a landmark report warning of rising sea levels, expanding deserts, more intense storms and the extinction of up to 30 percent of plant and animal species.

But recent climate studies suggest that report significantly underestimates the potential severity of global warming over the next 100 years, a senior member of the panel warned.

"We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we've considered seriously in climate policy," said Chris Field, who was a coordinating lead author of the report.

"Without effective action, climate change is going to be larger and more difficult to deal with than we thought."

Fresh data has shown that greenhouse gas emissions have grown by an average of 3.5 percent a year from 2000 to 2007, Field told reporters at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

That's "far more rapid than we expected" and more than three times the 0.9 growth rate in the 1990's, he said.

While increased economic activity could have contributed to the growth in emissions, Field said it appears as though the bulk of the growth is "because developing countries like China and India saw a huge upsurge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal."

Further complicating the problem is that higher temperatures could thaw the Arctic tundra and ignite tropical forests, potentially releasing billions of tons of carbon dioxide that has been stored for thousands of years.

That could raise temperatures even more and create "a vicious cycle that could spiral out of control by the end of the century."

"We don't want to cross a critical threshold where this massive release of carbon starts to run on autopilot," said Field, a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University.

The amount of carbon that could be released is staggering.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution an estimated 350 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) have been released through the burning of fossil fuels.

The new estimate of the amount of carbon stored in the Arctic's permafrost soils is around 1,000 billion tonnes. And the Arctic is warming faster than any other part of the globe.

Several recent climate models have estimated that the loss of tropical rainforests to wildfires, deforestation and other causes could increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 10 to 100 parts per million by the end of the century.

The current level is about 380 parts per million.

"Tropical forests are essentially inflammable," Field said. "You couldn't get a fire to burn there if you tried. But if they dry out just a little bit, the result can be very large and destructive wildfires."

Recent studies have also shown that global warming is reducing the ocean's ability to absorb carbon by altering wind patterns in the Southern Ocean. Faster winds blow surface out of the way, causing water with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide to rise to the surface.

Sea levels are also rising faster than previously estimated as ocean temperatures warm and melting ice in mountain glaciers and at the poles flows into the ocean, warned Anny Cazenave, of France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales.

Fresh analysis using satellite imaging has shown that in the past 16 years, average sea levels have risen at a rate that is twice as fast as the last century: more than three millimeters a year.

Some regions have seen levels rise as much as one centimeter a year, Cazenave told reporters.

The expanding use of biofuels could also contribute to global warming because farmers are cutting down and burning down tropical forests to plant crops, said Holly Gibbs of Stanford University.

"If we run our cars on biofuels produced in the tropics, chances will be good that we are effectively burning rainforests in our gas tanks," she warned.

Snowball Earth Musings

A lot of this theoretical thinking is premature at best, but we have seen snowball earth and other models enthusiastically picked up on over the years.

A look at the various moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus promises no simple answer. Any early model of earth’s atmosphere must add in methane at least and a lot of it, all of which with carbon dioxide would have established a gaseous atmosphere with maximum greenhouse heat retention while sponging up the oxygen been produced by emerging life.

Yet I have seen little mention of methane in the literature. Since I am unaware of any Precambrian oil deposition, or coal deposition, this seems a bit curious because it begs the question of where might it be hiding besides the atmosphere?

The oceans produced oxygen and grabbed carbon from somewhere to sequester in the sediments. It is a pretty good bet that methane was a big atmospheric factor up to the point that life was able to leave the ocean and its final decline may in fact been the initiating event.

My point is simply that there is an incredible amount of carbon tied up in the sediments that has made it there solely as a result of biological processes. It was tied up in the form of CO2 and Methane at the beginning just like every other planet we are able to look at.

Unless I am missing something, most of it was accumulated post Precambrian when life was already established on land.

It may have been snowball earth, but the liquid ocean certainly existed and was slowly growing and brewing up the necessary changes that set the stage for life to transition onto land. It may have been associated with Deep Ocean and volcanism to begin with, because the early snowball earth must have comprised both ice and frozen methane as in the arctic permafrost. And as in Antarctica, regions would even have had frozen CO2.

In the end, life had to strip carbon and produce water from the mostly frozen gas mix from the very beginning and this process dominated until the methane and CO2 was almost fully reduced. This makes exploring similar planets very interesting.



Modern day scourge helped ancient Earth escape a deathly deep freeze

http://www.astrobiology.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=27242

The planet's present day greenhouse scourge, carbon dioxide, may have played a vital role in helping ancient Earth to escape from complete glaciation, say scientists in a paper published online today.

In their review for Nature Geoscience, UK scientists claim that the Earth never froze over completely during the Cryogenian Period, about 840 to 635 million years ago.

This is contrary to the Snowball Earth hypothesis, which envisages a fully frozen Earth that was locked in ice for many millions of years as a result of a runaway chain reaction that caused the planet to cool.

What enabled the Earth to escape from a complete freeze is not certain, but the UK scientists in their review point to recent research carried out at the University of Toronto. This speculates that the advancing ice was stalled by the interaction of the physical climate system and the carbon cycle of the ocean, with carbon dioxide playing a key role in insulating the planet.

The Toronto scientists say that as Earth's temperatures cooled, oxygen was drawn into the ocean, where it oxidized organic matter, releasing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The review's lead author, Professor Phillip Allen, from Imperial College London's Department of Earth Science and Engineering, says that something must have kept the planet's equatorial oceans from freezing over. He adds:

"In the climate change game, carbon dioxide can be both saint and sinner. These days we are so concerned about global warming and the harm that carbon dioxide is doing to our planet. However, approximately 600 million years ago, this greenhouse gas probably saved ancient Earth and its basic life forms from an icy extinction."

Professor Allen, whose previous research has found evidence demonstrating hot and cold cycles in the Cryogenian period, says a plethora of papers has been published and much debate has been devoted to the Snowball Earth theory since it was originally proposed. He says:

"Sedimentary rocks deposited during these cold intervals indicate that dynamic glaciers and ice streams continued to deliver large amounts of sediment to open oceans. This evidence contradicts the Snowball Earth theory, which suggests the oceans were frozen over. Yet, many scientists still believe Snowball Earth to be correct."

Professor Allen hopes his review in Nature will prompt climate modellers to realign their thinking about the Cryogenian period and review their models to reflect a warmer Earth during this time. He adds:

"There is so much about Earth's ancient past that we don't know enough about. So it is really important that climate modellers get their targets right. They need to build into their calculations a warmer planet, with open oceans, despite lower levels of solar radiation at this time. Otherwise, climate models about the Earth's distant past are aiming for a target that never existed."

Us Geological Survey on Global Warming

This report was pieced together over the past two years and we can assume a strong bias toward the global warming orthodoxy. Even with that, this report is muted if this article is a sample of the best interpretation of the reports contents.

The statement is made that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing 48 cubic miles per year. How that is calculated with the slightest confidence escapes me. That it is no longer likely to be true does not.

More importantly, they are advising that greater volatility is to be anticipated. They likely could have got that from the geological record, because we have had pretty serious shift in climate over the millennia and cooling in particular has shown it to be sudden which is not true of warming.

Over the last eighteen months we have lost a global 0.7 degrees. Imagine this going on for another three years. That would be a total 2.8 degrees. That is a lot and it is abrupt. Yet three volcanoes going of in the tropics could do it nicely or perhaps one Volcano in Kamchatka could do it nicely for the Northern Hemisphere.

In fact, the Little Ice Age needs one nasty volcano. Our real problem is that there are so many to choose from out of Alaska.

Anyway, this report surely started with the global warming premise, so judge it accordingly.

"Faster Climate Change Feared"

... New Report Points to Accelerated Melting, Longer Drought

(Source: Washington Post, 12/25/08)

The United States faces the possibility of much more rapid climate change by the end of the century than previous studies have suggested, according to a new report led by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The survey -- which was commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and issued this month -- expands on the 2007 findings of the United Nations Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change. Looking at factors such as rapid sea ice loss in the Arctic and prolonged drought in the Southwest, the new assessment suggests that earlier projections may have underestimated the climatic shifts that could take place by 2100.

However, the assessment also suggests that some other feared effects of global warming are not likely to occur by the end of the century, such as an abrupt release of methane from the seabed and permafrost or a shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean circulation system that brings warm water north and colder water south. But the report projects an amount of potential sea level rise during that period that may be greater than what other researchers have anticipated, as well as a shift to a more arid climate pattern in the Southwest by mid-century.

Thirty-two scientists from federal and non-federal institutions contributed to the report, which took nearly two years to complete. The Climate Change Science Program, which was established in 1990, coordinates the climate research of 13 different federal agencies.

Tom Armstrong, senior adviser for global change programs at USGS, said the report "shows how quickly the information is advancing" on potential climate shifts. The prospect of abrupt climate change, he said, "is one of those things that keeps people up at night, because it's a low-probability but high-risk scenario. It's unlikely to happen in our lifetimes, but if it were to occur, it would be life-changing."

In one of the report's most worrisome findings, the agency estimates that in light of recent ice sheet melting, global sea level rise could be as much as four feet by 2100. The IPCC had projected a sea level rise of no more than 1.5 feet by that time, but satellite data over the past two years show the world's major ice sheets are melting much more rapidly than previously thought. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are now losing an average of 48 cubic miles of ice a year, equivalent to twice the amount of ice that exists in the Alps.

Konrad Steffen, who directs the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder and was lead author on the report's chapter on ice sheets, said the models the IPCC used did not factor in some of the dynamics that scientists now understand about ice sheet melting. Among other things, Steffen and his collaborators have identified a process of "lubrication," in which warmer ocean water gets in underneath coastal ice sheets and accelerates melting.

"This has to be put into models," said Steffen, who organized a conference last summer in St. Petersburg, Russia, as part of an effort to develop more sophisticated ice sheet models. "What we predicted is sea level rise will be higher, but I have to be honest, we cannot model it for 2100 yet."

Still, Armstrong said the report "does take a step forward from where the IPCC was," especially in terms of ice sheet melting.

Scientists also looked at the prospect of prolonged drought over the next 100 years. They said it is impossible to determine yet whether human activity is responsible for the drought the Southwestern United States has experienced over the past decade, but every indication suggests the region will become consistently drier in the next several decades. Richard Seager, a senior research scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said that nearly all of the 24 computer models the group surveyed project the same climatic conditions for the North American Southwest, which includes Mexico.

"If the models are correct, it will transition in the coming years and decades to a more arid climate, and that transition is already underway," Seager said, adding that such conditions would probably include prolonged droughts lasting more than a decade.

The current models cover broad swaths of landscape, and Seager said scientists need to work on developing versions that can make projections on a much smaller scale. "That's what the water managers out there really need," he said. Current models "don't give them the hard numbers they need."

Armstrong said the need for "downscaled models" is one of the challenges facing the federal government, along with better coordination among agencies on the issue of climate change. When it comes to abrupt climate shifts, he said, "We need to be prepared to deal with it in terms of policymaking, keeping in mind it's a low-probability, high-risk scenario. That said, there are really no policies in place to deal with abrupt climate change."

Richard Moss, who directed the Climate Change Science Program's coordination office between 2000 and 2006 and now serves as vice president and managing director for climate change at the World Wildlife Fund-U.S., welcomed the new report but called it "way overdue."

"There is finally a greater flow of climate science from the administration," Moss said, noting that the report was originally scheduled to come out in the summer of 2007. "It really is showing the potential for abrupt climate change is real."

The report is reassuring, however, on the prospects for some potentially drastic effects -- such as a huge release of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas, that is now locked deep in the seabed and underneath the Arctic permafrost. That is unlikely to occur in the near future, the scientists said.

"It's unlikely that we're going to see an abrupt change in methane over the next hundred years, but we should worry about it over a longer time frame," said Ed Brook, the lead author of the methane chapter and a geosciences professor at Oregon State University. "All of these places where methane is stored are vulnerable to leaking."

By the end the century, Brook said, the amount of methane escaping from natural sources such as the Arctic tundra and waterlogged soils in warmer regions "could possibly double," but that would still be less than the current level of human-generated methane emissions. Over the course of the next thousand years, he added, methane hydrates stored deep in the seabed could be released: "Once you start melting there, you can't really take it back."

In the near term, Brook said, more precise monitoring of methane levels worldwide would give researchers a better sense of the risk of a bigger atmospheric release. "We don't know exactly how much methane is coming out all over the world," he said. "That's why monitoring is important."

While predictions remain uncertain, Steffen said cutting emissions linked to global warming represents one of the best strategies for averting catastrophic changes.

"We have to act very fast, by understanding better and by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, because it's a large-scale experiment that can get out of hand," Steffen said. "So we don't want that to happen."

Water Vapor

I have steered clear of directly tackling the CO2 causation theory and its mechanisms except to merely maintain that the linkage is unnecessary in terms of human decision making. After all, it is obviously not smart to jack up CO2 levels blindly and to then hope for the best. And changing weather within its historical parameters is not a compelling argument either.

I thought that it would be worthwhile however to copy these two items that addresses the issue of water vapor and indirectly the use of its omission to seriously overstate the effect of other greenhouse gases. This is a subtle way to manipulate data that will get past all but the most informed insiders to the debate.

The fact is the CO2 linkage was controversial and challenged during its early promotion. I have seen little in the way of answers to these criticisms, but time and expanding public acceptance of what essentially is a great story has silenced most serious critics, or at least outlived them.

I have observed this effect repeatedly were a fairly weak theory is accepted and removed from serious criticism for a great span of time. Usually this is a harmless pastime as was the silly idea of rising and falling land bridges when any school child could observe the obvious existence of crustal separation. It is not harmless when governments divert resources toward wrongheaded schemes in pursuit of these ghosts.

This came out in 1999 through the Fraser Institute and is part of a larger review article.

Exaggerated warming

The computer projections are exaggerating the greenhouse warming by a large factor, partly because they are subject to major errors due to the assumption that water vapor is a strong, positive feedback.

But the effect of water vapor is not understood.

In calculating the response to climatic forcing it is important to note that the computer simulations rely on a positive feedback provided by water vapor in the upper troposphere to amplify the small warming directly resulting from the increase in carbon dioxide and other minor greenhouse gases.

This amplification is the predominant source of temperature gain in the computer simulations.

"This feedback operates in all the climate models used in global warming and other studies". (IPCC I 1996: 200, 4.2.1).

However, note: "Intuitive arguments for the feedback to apply to water vapor in the upper troposphere are weak; observational analyses and process studies are needed to establish its existence and strength there" (200, 4.2.1).

Also: "Feedback from the redistribution of water vapor remains a substantial uncertainty in climate models" (201, 4.2.1). The assumption that the feedback from water vapor is positive has been challenged by theory (Sun and Lindzen 1993: 1643) and by observations (Spencer and Braswell 1997: 1097).

Without the assumed gain from the water-vapor feedback, there would be little amplification of the warming caused by the increases in the minor greenhouse gases (Lindzen 1994: 353).

What, then, is the maximum amount of warming due to increased greenhouse gases that can be expected to occur, if the exaggerated forecasts are reduced to the limits allowed by the actual temperature measurements?

The answer is that the corrected warming in the next century, at present rates of increase in the greenhouse gases, will be less than a few tenths of a degree Celsius.

This second item was published in 2003 by Monte Hieb and tackles the subject with appropriate calculation.

Water Vapor Rules
the Greenhouse System

Just how much of the "Greenhouse Effect" is caused by human activity?

It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account-- about 5.53%, if not.

This point is so crucial to the debate over global warming that how water vapor is or isn't factored into an analysis of Earth's greenhouse gases makes the difference between describing a

significant human contribution to the greenhouse effect, or a negligible one.

Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many "facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.

Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).

Human activites contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human missions would have a very small-- perhaps undetectable-- effect on global climate.

For those interested in more details a series of data sets and charts have been assembled below in a 5-step statistical synopsis.

Note that the first two steps ignore water vapor.

1. Greenhouse gas concentrations

2. Converting concentrations to contribution

3. Factoring in water vapor

4. Distinguishing natural vs man-made greenhouse gases

5. Putting it all together

Note: Calculations are expressed to 3 significant digits to reduce rounding errors, not necessarily to indicate statistical precision of the data. All charts were plotted using Lotus 1-2-3.

Caveat: This analysis is intended to provide a simplified comparison of the various man-made and natural greenhouse gases on an equal basis with each other. It does not take into account all of the complicated interactions between atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial systems, a feat which can only be accomplished by better computer models than are currently in use.

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Greenhouse Gas Concentrations:
Natural vs man-made (anthropogenic)

1. The following table was constructed from data published by the U.S. Department of Energy (1) and other sources, summarizing concentrations of the various atmospheric greenhouse gases. Because some of the concentrations are very small the numbers are stated in parts per billion. DOE chose to NOT show water vapor as a greenhouse gas!

TABLE 1.

The Important Greenhouse Gases (except water vapor)
U.S. Department of Energy, (October, 2000) (1)

(all concentrations expressed in parts per billion)	Natural additions	Man-made additions	Total (ppb) Concentration	Percent of Total
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)	68,520	11,880	368,400	99.438%
Methane (CH4)	577	320	1,745	0.471%
Nitrous Oxide (N2O)	12	15	312	0.084%
Misc. gases ( CFC's, etc.)	0	2	27	0.007%
Total	69,109	12,217	370,484	100.00%

The chart at left summarizes the % of greenhouse gas concentrations in Earth's atmosphere from Table 1. This is not a very meaningful view though because 1) the data has not been corrected for the actual Global Warming Potential (GWP) of each gas, and 2) water vapor is ignored.

But these are the numbers one would use if the goal is to exaggerate human greenhouse contributions:

Man-made and natural carbon dioxide (CO2) comprises 99.44% of all greenhouse gas concentrations (368,400 / 370,484 )--(ignoring water vapor).

Also, from Table 1 (but not shown on graph):

Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 additions comprise (11,880 / 370,484) or 3.207% of all greenhouse gas concentrations, (ignoring water vapor).

Total combined anthropogenic greenhouse gases comprise (12,217 / 370,484) or 3.298% of all greenhouse gas concentrations, (ignoring water vapor).

The various greenhouse gases are not equal in their heat-retention properties though, so to remain statistically relevant % concentrations must be changed to % contribution relative to CO2. This is done in Table 2, below, through the use of GWP multipliers for each gas, derived by various researchers.

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Converting greenhouse gas concentrations
to greenhouse effect contribution
(using global warming potential )

2. Using appropriate corrections for the Global Warming Potential of the respective gases provides the following more meaningful comparison of greenhouse gases, based on the conversion:

( concentration ) X ( the appropriate GWP multiplier (2) (3) of each gas relative to CO2 ) = greenhouse contribution.:

TABLE 2.

Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases (except water vapor)
adjusted for heat retention characteristics, relative to CO2

This table adjusts values in Table 1 to compare greenhouse gases equally with respect to CO2. ( #'s are unit-less)	Multiplier (GWP)	Pre-industrial baseline(new)	Natural additions (new)	Man-made additions (new)	Tot. Relative Contribution	Percent of Total (new)
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)	1	288,000	68,520	11,880	368,400	72.369%
Methane (CH4)	21 (2)	17,808	12,117	6,720	36,645	7.199%
Nitrous Oxide (N2O)	310 (2)	88,350	3,599	4,771	96,720	19.000%
CFC's (and other misc. gases)	see data (3)	2,500	0	4,791	7,291	1.432%
Total		396,658	84,236	28,162	509,056	100.000%

NOTE: GWP (Global Warming Potential) is used to contrast different greenhouse gases relative to CO2.

Compared to the concentration statistics in Table 1, the GWP comparison in Table 2 illustrates, among other things:

Total carbon dioxide (CO2) contributions are reduced to 72.37% of all greenhouse gases (368,400 / 509,056)-- (ignoring water vapor).

Also, from Table 2 (but not shown on graph):

Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions drop to (11,880 / 509,056) or 2.33% of total of all greenhouse gases, (ignoring water vapor).

Total combined anthropogenic greenhouse gases becomes (28,162 / 509,056) or 5.53% of all greenhouse gas contributions, (ignoring water vapor).

Relative to carbon dioxide the other greenhouse gases together comprise about 27.63% of the greenhouse effect (ignoring water vapor) but only about 0.56% of total greenhouse gas concentrations. Put another way, as a group methane, nitrous oxide (N2O), and CFC's and other miscellaneous gases are about 50 times more potent than CO2 as greenhouse gases.

To properly represent the total relative impacts of Earth's greenhouse gases Table 3 (below) factors in the effect of water vapor on the system.

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Water vapor overwhelms
all other natural and man-made
greenhouse contributions.

3. Table 3, shows what happens when the effect of water vapor is factored in, and together with all other greenhouse gases expressed as a relative % of the total greenhouse effect.

TABLE 3.

Role of Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases
(man-made and natural) as a % of Relative
Contribution to the "Greenhouse Effect"

Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics	Percent of Total	Percent of Total --adjusted for water vapor
Water vapor	-----	95.000%
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)	72.369%	3.618%
Methane (CH4)	7.100%	0.360%
Nitrous oxide (N2O)	19.000%	0.950%
CFC's (and other misc. gases)	1.432%	0.072%
Total	100.000%	100.000%

As illustrated in this chart of the data in Table 3, the combined greenhouse contributions of CO2, methane, N2O and misc. gases are small compared to water vapor!

Total atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) -- both man-made and natural-- is only about 3.62% of the overall greenhouse effect-- a big difference from the 72.37% figure in Table 2, which ignored water!

Water vapor, the most significant greenhouse gas, comes from natural sources and is responsible for roughly 95% of the greenhouse effect (4). Among climatologists this is common knowledge but among special interests, certain governmental groups, and news reporters this fact is under-emphasized or just ignored altogether.

Conceding that it might be "a little misleading" to leave water vapor out, they nonetheless defend the practice by stating that it is "customary" to do so!

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Comparing natural vs man-made concentrations
of greenhouse gases

4. Of course, even among the remaining 5% of non-water vapor greenhouse gases, humans contribute only a very small part (and human contributions to water vapor are negligible).

Constructed from data in Table 1, the charts (below) illustrate graphically how much of each greenhouse gas is natural vs how much is man-made. These allocations are used for the next and final step in this analysis-- total man-made contributions to the greenhouse effect. Units are expressed to 3 significant digits in order to reduce rounding errors for those who wish to walk through the calculations, not to imply numerical precision as there is some variation among various researchers.

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Putting it all together:
total human greenhouse gas contributions
add up to about 0.28% of the greenhouse effect.

5. To finish with the math, by calculating the product of the adjusted CO2 contribution to greenhouse gases (3.618%) and % of CO2 concentration from anthropogenic (man-made) sources (3.225%), we see that only (0.03618 X 0.03225) or 0.117% of the greenhouse effect is due to atmospheric CO2 from human activity. The other greenhouse gases are similarly calculated and are summarized below.

TABLE 4a.

Anthropogenic (man-made) Contribution to the "Greenhouse
Effect," expressed as % of Total (water vapor INCLUDED)

Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics	% of All Greenhouse Gases	% Natural	% Man-made
Water vapor	95.000%	94.999%	0.001%
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)	3.618%	3.502%	0.117%
Methane (CH4)	0.360%	0.294%	0.066%
Nitrous Oxide (N2O)	0.950%	0.903%	0.047%
Misc. gases ( CFC's, etc.)	0.072%	0.025%	0.047%
Total	100.00%	99.72	0.28%

This is the statistically correct way to represent relative human contributions to the greenhouse effect.

From Table 4a, both natural and man-made greenhouse contributions are illustrated in this chart, in gray and green, respectively. For clarity only the man-made (anthropogenic) contributions are labeled on the chart.

Water vapor, responsible for 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect, is 99.999% natural (some argue, 100%). Even if we wanted to we can do nothing to change this.

Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth's greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapor). This is insignificant!

Adding up all anthropogenic greenhouse sources, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is around 0.28% (factoring in water vapor).

The Kyoto Protocol calls for mandatory carbon dioxide reductions of 30% from developed countries like the U.S. Reducing man-made CO2 emissions this much would have an undetectable effect on climate while having a devastating effect on the U.S. economy. Can you drive your car 30% less, reduce your winter heating 30%? Pay 20-50% more for everything from automobiles to zippers? And that is just a down payment, with more sacrifices to come later.

Such drastic measures, even if imposed equally on all countries around the world, would reduce total human greenhouse contributions from CO2 by about 0.035%.

This is much less than the natural variability of Earth's climate system!

While the greenhouse reductions would exact a high human price, in terms of sacrifices to our standard of living, they would yield statistically negligible results in terms of measurable impacts to climate change. There is no expectation that any statistically significant global warming reductions would come from the Kyoto Protocol.

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" There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "

Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal

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Research to Watch

Scientists are increasingly recognizing the importance of water vapor in the climate system. Some, like Wallace Broecker, a geochemist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, suggest that it is such an important factor that much of the global warming in the last 10,000 years may be due to the increasing water vapor concentrations in Earth's atmosphere.

His research indicates that air reaching glaciers during the last Ice Age had less than half the water vapor content of today. Such increases in atmospheric moisture during our current interglacial period would have played a far greater role in global warming than carbon dioxide or other minor gases.

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" I can only see one element of the climate system capable of generating these fast, global changes, that is, changes in the tropical atmosphere leading to changes in the inventory of the earth's most powerful greenhouse gas-- water vapor. "

Dr. Wallace Broecker, a leading world authority on climate
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University,
lecture presented at R. A. Daly Lecture at the American Geophysical Union's
spring meeting in Baltimore, Md., May 1996.

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Known causes of global climate change, like cyclical eccentricities in Earth's rotation and orbit, as well as variations in the sun's energy output, are the primary causes of climate cycles measured over the last half million years. However, secondary greenhouse effects stemming from changes in the ability of a warming atmosphere to support greater concentrations of gases like water vapor and carbon dioxide also appear to play a significant role. As demonstrated in the data above, of all Earth's greenhouse gases, water vapor is by far the dominant player.

The ability of humans to influence greenhouse water vapor is negligible. As such, individuals and groups whose agenda it is to require that human beings are the cause of global warming must discount or ignore the effects of water vapor to preserve their arguments, citing numbers similar to those in Table 4b . If political correctness and staying out of trouble aren't high priorities for you, go ahead and ask them how water vapor was handled in their models or statistics. Chances are, it wasn't!

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|| Global Warming || Table of Contents ||

References:

1) Current Greenhouse Gas Concentrations (updated October, 2000)
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center
(the primary global-change data and information analysis center of the U.S. Department of Energy)
Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Greenhouse Gases and Climate Change (data now available only to "members")
IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme,
Stoke Orchard, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL52 7RZ, United Kingdom.

2) Greenhouse Gases and Global Warming Potentials (updated April, 2002)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

3) Warming Potentials of Halocarbons and Greenhouses Gases
Chemical formulae and global warming potentials from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 119 and 121. Production and sales of CFC's and other chemicals from International Trade Commission, Synthetic Organic Chemicals: United States Production and Sales, 1994 (Washington, DC, 1995). TRI emissions from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1994 Toxics Release Inventory: Public Data Release, EPA-745-R-94-001 (Washington, DC, June 1996), p. 73. Estimated 1994 U.S. emissions from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, 1990-1994, EPA-230-R-96-006 (Washington, DC, November 1995), pp. 37-40.

4) References to 95% contribution of water vapor:

a. S.M. Freidenreich and V. Ramaswamy, “Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,” Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264

b. Global Deception: The Exaggeration of the Global Warming Threat
by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, June 1998
Virginia State Climatologist and Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia

c. Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Appendix D, Greenhouse Gas Spectral Overlaps and Their Significance
Energy Information Administration; Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government

d. Personal Communication-- Dr. Richard S. Lindzen
Alfred P. Slone Professor of Meteorology, MIT

e. The Geologic Record and Climate Change
by Dr. Tim Patterson, January 2005
Professor of Geology-- Carleton University
Ottawa, Canada
Alternate link:
f. EPA Seeks To Have Water Vapor Classified As A Pollutant
by the ecoEnquirer, 2006
Alternate link:

g. Air and Water Issues
by Freedom 21.org, 2005
Citation: Bjorn Lomborg, p. 259. Also: Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling, Jr. The Satanic Gases, Clearing the Air About Global Warming (Washington, DC: CATO Institute, 2000), p. 25.

h. Does CO2 Really Drive Global Warming?
by Dr. Robert Essenhigh, May 2001
Alternate link:

i. Solar Cycles, Not CO2, Determine Climate
by Zbigniew Jaworowski, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., 21st Century Science and Technology, Winter 2003-2004, pp. 52-65
Link:

5) Global Climate Change Student Guide
Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences
Manchester Metropolitan University
Chester Street
Manchester
M1 5GD
United Kingdom

6) Global Budgets for Atmospheric Nitrous Oxide - Anthropogenic Contributions
William C. Trogler, Eric Bruner, Glenn Westwood, Barbara Sawrey, and Patrick Neill
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California

7) Methane record and budget
Robert Grumbine

Useful conversions:

1 Gt = 1 billion tons = 1 cu. km. H20

1 Gt Carbon(C) = ~3.67 Gt Carbon Dioxide(CO2)

2.12 Gt C = ~7.8 Gt CO2 = 1ppmv CO2

This page by: Monte Hieb
Last revised: January 10, 2003