Global Warming, is it simply CO2 at fault?

What is causing global warming.

  • CO2 is the direct cause of global warming.

    Votes: 1 10.0%
  • CO2 affects it some.

    Votes: 4 40.0%
  • CO2 has little to no affect on it. The oceans pull in any extra CO2.

    Votes: 1 10.0%
  • The sun is the main culprit for global warming.

    Votes: 4 40.0%

  • Total voters
    10
ol' man said:
I'm sure the pollution emissions (not pollution levels) of Mexico City are below many other cities in your country ;)

Check here, nope Mexico City leads the pack.
http://www.sbg.ac.at/ipk/avstudio/pierofun/mexico/cities.htm

You need a reading comprehension course, the link provided presents information about air quality (aka pollution levels) and no information about pollution emissions.

Pipes, maybe crack pipes Those would need to be some big dang PIPES THis must be your master thesis material eh?
Yes, thouse would have been very big pipes probably over 50m wide.

Now, let's talk a bit about thesis
ol' man said:
FACT:
If one burned all of the hydrocarbons and coal reserves at once that would equal the same amount of energy the earth recieves from the sun in just ten days. The sun never stops!

[attachment]http://www.otcentral.com/forum/attachment.php?s=&postid=113704[/attachment]
 
Now, let's talk a bit about thesis
ol' man said:
FACT:
If one burned all of the hydrocarbons and coal reserves at once that would equal the same amount of energy the earth recieves from the sun in just ten days. The sun never stops!

Yeah I just heard that from environmental geology on Wednesday. You don't believe that the sun puts out that much energy in ten days?

I believe hydrocarbons have around 7~9 kcal/gram. Now you just need to figure out how much carbon is stored in the form of hydrocarbons etc.....
 
Dude, the thing i can't believe is that you present such thing in a debate, sure the sun never stops, and the fussion reactions there are big enough to destroy the earth in an instant. So what?, even my little sister knows that.

What do you suggest?, turn off the sun?
 
Luis G said:
Dude, the thing i can't believe is that you present such thing in a debate, sure the sun never stops, and the fussion reactions there are big enough to destroy the earth in an instant. So what?, even my little sister knows that.

What do you suggest?, turn off the sun?

It was merly to represent the amount of energy the sun emits in relation to the atmosphere and that to think CO2 is solely resposible on earth for global warming seems absurd.
 
Isn't that supposed to scream its obviousness?

Sure the CO2 doesn't produce heat by itself, however, it traps it in our planet, too much CO2 and you have global warming ;)
 
ol' man said:
yeah we got planes flying into buildings here. I think the paranoia is called for. I have been hearing the ballanced debates etc...... for some time. It always leads back to the same thing though. The more I learn about it in school the whole global warming BS makes less sence.

Forgive me for being dense but I really don't see what terrorism has to do with global warming.... unless of course it's just one more method by which the terrorists intend to inflict economic damage on your country. Which given that global warming will actually make large areas of unproductive land in the US productive, thereby increasing your GDP, seems rather counterproductive on their part. :lol:
 
HeXp£Øi± said:
--Basically i believe that we do have some negative affect on the atmosphere but the evidence as to how great this is is inconclusive.

Exactly. And paranoid delusions about it all being one big political plot detracts from the fact that there may be something in it and basically calls the scientists who originally highlighted the possibility quacks, when it actual fact we really don't know one way or the other.

The political agendas of your teachers seem to be getting in the way...
 
Aunty Em said:
HeXp£Øi± said:
--Basically i believe that we do have some negative affect on the atmosphere but the evidence as to how great this is is inconclusive.

Exactly. And paranoid delusions about it all being one big political plot detracts from the fact that there may be something in it and basically calls the scientists who originally highlighted the possibility quacks, when it actual fact we really don't know one way or the other.

The political agendas of your teachers seem to be getting in the way...

Everything anymore is one big political plot. Global is but one of them. Why did the UN kick the US out of the Human Rights division? Politics as usual. History has shown the temps on earth have been much higher so I would not worry about the world caving in.
 
I don't know enough about this subject so I've stayed out. Today I found this to add to the confusion.

Middle Ages were warmer than today, say scientists
By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent (Filed: 06/04/2003)


Claims that man-made pollution is causing "unprecedented" global warming have been seriously undermined by new research which shows that the Earth was warmer during the Middle Ages.

From the outset of the global warming debate in the late 1980s, environmentalists have said that temperatures are rising higher and faster than ever before, leading some scientists to conclude that greenhouse gases from cars and power stations are causing these "record-breaking" global temperatures.

Last year, scientists working for the UK Climate Impacts Programme said that global temperatures were "the hottest since records began" and added: "We are pretty sure that climate change due to human activity is here and it's accelerating."

This announcement followed research published in 1998, when scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia declared that the 1990s had been hotter than any other period for 1,000 years.

Such claims have now been sharply contradicted by the most comprehensive study yet of global temperature over the past 1,000 years. A review of more than 240 scientific studies has shown that today's temperatures are neither the warmest over the past millennium, nor are they producing the most extreme weather - in stark contrast to the claims of the environmentalists.

The review, carried out by a team from Harvard University, examined the findings of studies of so-called "temperature proxies" such as tree rings, ice cores and historical accounts which allow scientists to estimate temperatures prevailing at sites around the world.

The findings prove that the world experienced a Medieval Warm Period between the ninth and 14th centuries with global temperatures significantly higher even than today.

They also confirm claims that a Little Ice Age set in around 1300, during which the world cooled dramatically. Since 1900, the world has begun to warm up again - but has still to reach the balmy temperatures of the Middle Ages.

The timing of the end of the Little Ice Age is especially significant, as it implies that the records used by climate scientists date from a time when the Earth was relatively cold, thereby exaggerating the significance of today's temperature rise.

According to the researchers, the evidence confirms suspicions that today's "unprecedented" temperatures are simply the result of examining temperature change over too short a period of time.

The study, about to be published in the journal Energy and Environment, has been welcomed by sceptics of global warming, who say it puts the claims of environmentalists in proper context. Until now, suggestions that the Middle Ages were as warm as the 21st century had been largely anecdotal and were often challenged by believers in man-made global warming.

Dr Philip Stott, the professor emeritus of bio-geography at the University of London, told The Telegraph: "What has been forgotten in all the discussion about global warming is a proper sense of history."

According to Prof Stott, the evidence also undermines doom-laden predictions about the effect of higher global temperatures. "During the Medieval Warm Period, the world was warmer even than today, and history shows that it was a wonderful period of plenty for everyone."

In contrast, said Prof Stott, severe famines and economic collapse followed the onset of the Little Ice Age around 1300. He said: "When the temperature started to drop, harvests failed and England's vine industry died. It makes one wonder why there is so much fear of warmth."

The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the official voice of global warming research, has conceded the possibility that today's "record-breaking" temperatures may be at least partly caused by the Earth recovering from a relatively cold period in recent history. While the evidence for entirely natural changes in the Earth's temperature continues to grow, its causes still remain mysterious.

Dr Simon Brown, the climate extremes research manager at the Meteorological Office at Bracknell, said that the present consensus among scientists on the IPCC was that the Medieval Warm Period could not be used to judge the significance of existing warming.

Dr Brown said: "The conclusion that 20th century warming is not unusual relies on the assertion that the Medieval Warm Period was a global phenomenon. This is not the conclusion of IPCC."

He added that there were also doubts about the reliability of temperature proxies such as tree rings: "They are not able to capture the recent warming of the last 50 years," he said.
 
I made this graph today,
piegraphcarbonstores.jpg



with data from this site.
http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html


Notice how much of the worlds carbon is actually in the atmosphere? Most of this is going to be CO2 probably to the extant of 95% or better. Its not hard for me to believe that one of the other factors beside fossil fuels could be leading to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere looking at this graph and figuring the area of the ocean;) Doing the math and the increase in total temperature of the ocean from 1850~2003 one may find a almost perfect correlation between the amount of CO2 in the Atmosphere vs. Ocean Temperature from 1850~2003. The carbon in the ocean is probably going to be also to the amount of >80% CO2 as dissolved species and ionic according to the CO2 +H2O <--->Carbonic Acid equation etc...

Doing the math the Ocean has 273 times the amount of dissolved carbon stored in it in which most of it is the form of CO2 or ionic species. The ionic species upon heating release CO2;)
 
Killer Belching Lakes in Cameroon Poised to Erupt With Lethal Gas

10.43 a.m. ET (1443 GMT) September 14, 1999 By Amanda Onion NEW YORK —

It emerged like a giant phantom from the lake, slinked down the valley for 13 miles and killed almost every living creature in its path, including 1,746 people and thousands of cattle.
When the gas cloud struck at about 9 p.m., livestock and people laid down and died by asphyxiation.....

.........Shake up a can of soda and fast-escaping gas can make a mess. That's because once CO2 is released from solution, it rises. As it moves upward, pressure above decreases, it gains speed and more gas is released, causing it to rise even faster.
When Lake Nyos degassed 13 years ago, fast escaping carbon dioxide from the lake's bottom created a fountain that rose nearly half a mile above the surface of the lake. That fountain then produced an 80-foot surface wave.
Kling believes there were two explosions at Nyos. The first released a steamy cloud of CO2 into the lake's basin that spilled down into the valleys below. Then a second, more powerful burst occurred when even more gas-heavy water was disturbed at the lake's bottom. Eyewitnesses reported hearing a giant rumbling from the lake at the second explosion.
http://www.belch.com/news/belchinglake.htm

Can you imagine a fountain of water raising itself 2,000 ft above a lake. That is some power! Some are wondering if this was from dissociation of CO2 hydrates. If so it shows us some clues as to the destructive power the hydrate gases contain.

Its depths are very close to the fringe between the hydrates of the gas and it dissolution which may be a reason it keeps bUrPing up the gas like it does.

Another lake in Africa called Lake Kivu is even deeper and contains a great deal of methane apparently.

CO2 forms hydrates at a higher level than CH4(methane) this may explain why there is a abundance of methane in Kivu since also they are biogenic in origin. Essentially there are bacteria that convert CO2 into CH4 living at the bottom of this lake as also the ocean which is a great source of much of these hydrates.
 
i'm a bit confused about your posture in this, you say CO2 isn't responsible for global warming, plus you're saying that the levels we produce are "nothing", then telling that the atmosphere has almost no CO2.......i'm just lost.
 
What I am saying is that the only thing we can measure is the amount fo CO2 we produce world wide and not the amount being emitted by natural sources such as the above gas hydrates and simply the amount dissolved in the ocean.

Given the amount in the oceans and gas hydrates which account for around 60% of the "atmosphericaly immobilized" carbon even very slight 0.5% mobilation into the atmosphere will raise CO2 levels drastically like we are seeing.

It is well know that the gas hydrates are highly unstable and rasing or lowering of sea levels, temperature differences and salinity differences affect their disassociation.

At the begining of Quartenary Biology my teacher was asking the class their thoughs on the sudden increas eof methane in Vostok and GISP ice core data. He suggested increased fermentation of swamplands and such during warming periods but in the end he said it still did not add up close to the amount of methane appearing in the atmospheric record. I suggested methane hydrates as being a possible source and he pretty much shut me down immediatly saying they are located several miles under the ocean so they cannot affect global CH4 levels but my recent research has been finding that they are found in a fresh water called Lake Baikal in Siberia at depths as close to the surface as 150m which are currently degassing as we speak. Any change in the temperatures around these hydrate formations and there can be a very explosive release of methane. Since the globe is warming it naturally should release its hydrate stores. 0.5 deg. C could equate to thousands of giga tons of methane and CO2 released from these researves in a very short time. Especially if the zone of formation is above a free gas formation. Once again if you want to see how violent a similar eruption can be check out the Lake Nyos CO2 eruption above.

In 1995 the world produced 25 gigatons of CO2 yet still at any given 1 time the atmosphere contains only 3.6 gigatons of CO2? Where does this CO2 go? plants use it but mostly the ocean absorbs it. The ocean has the capacity to absorb very very great amounts of CO2. The amount of Calcium and Magnesium carbonates settling to the ocean floor each year is astonishing allowing for more CO2 to be absorbed and this is in ionic equilibrium. The more CO2 the ocean absorbs the more it is precipitated in the form of Ca,Mg(CO3)2 and CaCO3. It is all in equilibrium and any excess of CO2 will allow it to be precipitated accordingly.

By the time these equilibriums would have been affected by humans we will have found a energy source that burns better and with less polution or one that does not burn at all.

Once again where is the 25 gigatons of CO2 going since at any given 1 time the atmosphere contains only 3.6 gigatons?

I think there are other things to worry about beside CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. For starters the lead in Mexico City would head the top of my list;)


Lake Baikal .pdfs if interested.

http://www.copernicus.org/EGS/egsga/nice01/programme/abstracts/aai2232.pdf

www.cosis.net/abstracts/EAE03/05795/EAE03-J-05795.pdf
 
Here are links to the data for amount of CO2 produced from fossil fuels in 1995 as also the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at any 1 given time.

www.cosis.net/abstracts/EAE03/05795/EAE03-J-05795.pdf

gas-hydrates-3.gif

http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/gas-hydrates-3.gif
Yes indeed the graph above is where I got my graph data. i just made it spiffier IMHO;) I have top put this graph in a presentation I am preparing so I had to make the graph anyway. It looks tacky when you cut and paste a graph into powerpoint.
 
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