Glassman: Accumulation of CO2
Revised 3/14/10.
Ed Note: Glassman offers a more detailed rationale for ACO2 and that found in nature. His estimate for AOC2 is 0.025% of GHG of which water vapor is the largest.
The Acquittal shows that carbon dioxide did not accumulate in the atmosphere during the paleo era of the Vostok ice cores. If it had, the fit of the complement of the solubility curve might have been improved by the addition of a constant. It was not.
And because the CO2 presumably still follows the complement of the solubility curve, it should be increasing during the modern era of global warming in recovery from Earth's various ice epochs. These conclusions find support in a number of points in the IPCC reports.
So the answer to the post begins with supporting background on why CO2 is known not to accumulate in the atmosphere, and then goes on to other aspects of the model that global warming causes increases in CO2, which accounts for the last 100 years or so.
1. Estimates vary, but climatologists in the Consensus say that the atmosphere contains 730 Gtons (PgC) of carbon and the uptake to the oceans alone is at least 90 Gtons/year. It's a ninth grade algebra problem to calculate how long it takes to empty a bucket with 730 units at the rate of 90 units per year. If you throw in uptake by photosynthesis at 120 Gtons/year and perhaps leaf water at the IPCC figure of 270 Gtons/year, thus including everything in the IPCC's Third Assessment Report, 480 Gtons a year is pouring out of the bucket.
{Rev. 6/5/09a}
Turnover time (T) (also called global atmospheric lifetime) is the ratio of the mass M of a reservoir (e.g., a gaseous compound in the atmosphere) and the total rate of removal S from the reservoir: T = M / S. For each removal process, separate turnover times can be defined. In soil carbon biology, this is referred to as Mean Residence Time. AR4, Glossary, p. 948.{end Rev. 6/5/09a}
Now throw in approximately 100% replenishment, and you have an eleventh grade physics or chemistry problem where the level in the bucket is only slowly changed but the solution is quickly diluted. {Rev. 6/5/09b} This is a different question from residence time, elevated to a mass balance problem. {end Rev. 6/5/09b}
Regardless of which way one poses the problem, the existing CO2 in the atmosphere has a mean residence time of 1.5 years using IPCC data, 3.2 years using University of Colorado data, or 4.9 years using Texas A&M data. The half-lives are 0.65 years, 1.83 years, and 3.0 years, respectively.
This is not "decades to centuries" as proclaimed by the Consensus. Climate Change 2001, Technical Summary of the Working Group I Report, p. 25. See The Carbon Cycle: past and present, & Introduction to Biogeochemical Cycles Chapter 4 UColo Biogeochem cycles.pdf; The Carbon Cycle, the Ocean, and the Iron Hypothesis,
730 GtC in atmosphere
90 GtC Uptake to oceans
120 GtC uptake by photosynthesis
270 GtC by leaf water
480 GtC pouring out of the atmosphere
In 1985, Keeling provided two estimates of the residence time (the reciprocal of his global air-sea transfer coefficient) and uptake of CO2 in the entire oceans, based on different methods from different locale. They were 7.9 years for 2 Gtons/year and 5.2 years for 4.35 Gtons/year. Keeling, C.D. and R. Revelle, Effects of El Nino/Southern Oscillation on the Atmospheric Content of Carbon Dioxide, Meteoritics, Vol. 20, No.2, Part 2, June 30, 1985. No one today uses such small numbers for the uptake, so the residence time must be much less than Keeling suspected.
PgC is GtC 1:1
In the final analysis of the AGW conjecture, proponents model their chosen phenomena on the margins and without justification.
They admit the overwhelming greenhouse gas is water vapor, probably 30 to 50 times more important than CO2. They admit the CO2 attributed to man is minuscule, about 6 to 7 PgC/yr (calculated) into an atmospheric reservoir variously estimated between 720 and 760 PgC. That's around 1% of 2.5%, or 0.025% of GHG. /p>
They estimate the uptake of CO2 by the ocean from 92 to 107 PgC/yr, an error of about ±7 PgC/yr, approximately equal to the anthropogenic total. They estimate the outgassing of CO2 from 90 to 103 PgC/yr, an error of roughly another ±7 PgC/yr.
Without putting too fine a point on the method, and in consideration of the range of values by other, undiscovered authorities and the sources and methods employed by any of them, the net difference between uptake and outgassing estimates is about 3PgC/yr, ±14 PgC/yr.
Nonetheless, the climatologist use a figure of 2 PgC/yr as their estimate of the oceanic uptake of the manmade CO2 of 7 PgC/yr. Regardless, they then proclaim that CO2 persists in the atmosphere 50 to 500 years.
Water vapor is not only dominant among the greenhouse gases, it, like CO2, increases with increasing temperatures. Increase in water vapor should bring increases in cloud cover, decreasing solar radiation, and shutting down the warming effect.
We should revisit occasionally what the proper role of government is. As the constitution was a good sense of direction, we need a core set of principles to add in order to deal with the future.
So many want to engineer society, remove risk, assist certain groups, rather than let individuals thrive and raise communities. Why?
Is Democracy where we all "get it good and hard" or is it the best means to a free society?
Should we roll with the special interests, or make the government achieve its proper role, what is that role, and how to do this?
When do deficits and governments become too large?
Government is becoming more elitist while trying to sell corrections to problems it created, what makes this possible?
This could also be inserted into the field above, or erased
Currently as a society, we are having a most difficult time discussing political issues. What is driving this? And why a rebirth in political culture would be a good thing.
Are "markets" dead as some would conjecture? Or is free enterprise what got us here?
At the heart of economics there are several possible economic schools of thought, the essence of these schools of thought and how they relate to our lives.
