Image: IPCC at www.ipcc.ch
click this link to see a large readable graphic
http://www.ipcc.ch/present/graphics/2001syr/large/02.17.jpg

Image: IPCC at www.ipcc.ch
click this link to see a large readable graphic
http:/ arch.rivm.nl/env/int/ipcc/pages_media/SRCCS-final/graphics/jpg/large/Figure%20TS-02a.jpg

If you click on the large graphic look at France! Why are they so clean? Yes! Westinghouse Reactors. And the French have improved on them!

Join me and Xomba here, and we can discuss the French connection!

http://www.xomba.com/referral/77777d6e

=========================================================

CO2 Arithmetic

Wallace S. Broecker, at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY, writing in Science for 9 March 2007, Vol. 315. no. 5817, p. 1371, (Policy Forum,CLIMATE CHANGE) --flatly states a first-order change in the way the 'problem' is viewed must be made if mankind is ever to succeed in capping the buildup of C02 in the atmosphere.

Broecker points out that most 'policies' discussed have contained some kind of "cap-and-trade" system, as under the Kyoto treaty wherein the "problem" is exclusively treated in the terms of 'incremental reductions in C02 emissions. As is clear, however, these solutions do not even address the problem, do not even begin to stabilize the levels of C02 in the air -- they only slow the 'rate of increase' of C02.

Broecker writes, "Instead, to actually stop the increase, we must develop the concept of what might be called a "carbon pie." Currently, for each 4 gigatons (Gt) of fossil carbon burned, the atmosphere's C02 content rises about 1 ppm; including deforestation, we now emit about 8 Gt of carbon per year. Further, this four-to-one ratio will only change slowly in the coming decades. Hence, if we set a desirable upper limit on the extent to which we allow the C02 content of the atmosphere to increase, then this fixes the size of the carbon pie. If, for example, this limit were to be double the preindustrial C02 amount (i.e., 560 ppm), then the size of the pie would be 720 Gt of carbon [i.e., 4 mult (560 - 380)]. Were the limit to be set at 450 ppm, the size of the pie would be only 280 Gt."

"Once the size of pie has been established," Broecker writes, "each of the world's nations would be allocated a slice. In an ideal world, the size of these slices would be based on population. In this case, the world's rich countries would get only about 20% of the pie. If the limit agreed upon were 560 ppm, then the rich nations' share would be about 150 Gt. As these countries together currently consume about 6 Gt of fossil carbon per year, if they continued at this pace, their allotment would be consumed in just 25 years. Faced with this limit, each of these rich nations would be forced to rapidly reduce its emissions. Poor nations would be able to sell portions of their pie slice to the rich countries and still have enough left to permit them to industrialize.

Broecker posits "[A] Hypothetical scenario for use by rich nations of their 150-Gt wedge of the carbon pie. . . As time passes, the excess of fossil-fuel burning over the diminishing permissible emission limit will likely grow, requiring an increase in the amount of C02 to be captured and buried."

Broecker earnestly evaluates the hypothetical scenario, writing, "If this scenario were to be implemented, I find it highly unlikely that any combination of increased efficiency in energy use, implementation of non-fossil fuel energy sources, and capture of C02 produced in coal gasification plants would be capable of meeting the required reduction schedule: An additional element would be necessary. The gap (see figure) between actual and allowed emissions would have to be made up either by purchase of C02 allocated to poorer nations or by burial of C02 captured from the atmosphere. Stemming the rise in C02 would require participation of rapidly industrializing nations such as China and India."

Broecker writes, "Under the pie concept, there would be an incentive for them to join for they would have a considerably longer period of time to adjust their C02 emissions than rich nations. The sooner such an agreement was put into force, the better the situation would be for these nations. Until this is done, the size of the carbon pie will continue to shrink at a rate of 70 to 80 Gt per decade."

"Because C02 sales would serve only as a temporary stopgap, capture of C02 from the atmosphere would be necessary. C02 capture from the atmosphere is feasible, but has yet to be implemented, and faces several technological challenges. If the C02 carried by the air streams used to drive wind turbines were to be captured, then on an energy-equivalent basis, the physical dimensions of the C02 capture devices would be only 1% of the sweep of the turbines (1). In other words, in a sense, air streams carry 100 times more C02 than kinetic energy."

"In addition to allowing the gap between actual and permissible emissions to be filled, air extraction has other attractive features. (i) It could be done at sites far from population centers and close to the sites of C02 storage. (ii) Once the rise in C02 had been stemmed, the C02 content of the atmosphere could be drawn back down to a level at which the earth's ice caps were stabilized. (iii) It would provide a mechanism by which the thorny issue of compensation for past C02 emissions by richer nations could be negotiated."

Broecker continues with this evaluation, "While there is no question that C02 capture from the atmosphere is doable, the cost is still unknown. Capture would be affordable if it caused the price of fossil fuel energy to increase by 10 to 30%. However, a large fraction of the operating cost would be for the purchase of the energy required to accomplish the capture and burial. If the cost of sufficient fossil fuel to generate this energy is too high, then this strategy would be impractical."

Broecker points out here, some potential mechanisms, "The largest of the costs associated with air-capture will be those associated with the release of the C02 from the capture material and with the recycling of any chemicals used. As sodium hydroxide, an obvious choice, holds onto C02 too tenaciously, a better option would be a material that would be able to pick up C02 but would release it more readily. Regardless of what material is to be used, it is absolutely essential that research on capture and sequestration be carried out to determine whether the energy costs can be brought down to an acceptable level. Capture from coal gasification plants should also be implemented."

Wallace Broecker concludes, "In the present political climate, any attempt to achieve an agreement on either the size of a carbon pie or its allocation among the world's nations would be difficult. However, unless we advance beyond thinking only in terms of conservation and alternate sources and begin to think in terms of a carbon pie, we will have no chance to stop the rise in atmospheric C02."

======================================================
(1) Broecker's note on the wind carrying more energy is a citation from the:

Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Coal Utilization & Fuel Systems, B. Sakkestad, Ed. (Coal Technology Association, Clearwater, FL, 1999 --

By: K. S. Lackner, H.-J. Ziock, P. Grimes, pp. 885-896.

===================================================
Les Porter's Note:

The 'tipping point' is probably behind us, we just do not know it yet. Basically the situation is this:

Without austere and severe measures and recovery of the cost to civilization to remediate the atmosphere from those who have been responsible for the climate change and warming, little progress will be made toward reaching a level of stability let alone a sustainable level of human activity.

Broecker's analysis above does not begin to intimate what the damage to our ecosystems, and the rise of sea level engendered by an agreed upon level of 750 ppm or even 450 ppm will likely become. We now have 383 ppm C02 in the atmosphere and are beginning to see serious to human scale catastrophic effects. No "business-as-usual" is going to address the major problems of recovering from the atmosphere all the excess C02 we have placed in it. But, of course, a solution will be reached, and it may not be anything sustainable. Nature will reach a new equilibrium because of us, and we may not have any part in determining the outcome, unless we do seriously address the problem. 750 ppm? Likely? Let's hope not.

see: www.xomba.com/a_diamond_made_from_air

I use the figure of 5,135.2 trillion tons for the dry weight of the Earth's atmosphere.

This value appeared on an NCAR website.

To rough check it, I looked for the Earth's surface area -- for example, so I could somehow take 14.7 lbs/sq inch and arrive at something close to their value. It works very well when you compute the number of square inches on the Earth and multiply it by the weight piled on each square inch to get a total. You can do this with your calculator.

The diamond post shows that. And I claimed wet air. Which is what we have pretty much at sea level.

But trying to find the surface area of the Earth from a reliable government source in this Bush II dumbed-down government is embarrassing -- for me , one who remembers a plethora of useful "close to" values, that are now inaccessible under the direction of appointees trying to keep the truth from everyone to pump more oil and burn more fossil Carbon. It doesn't matter that millions of people will be affected. From health to life itself. (See the IPCC WGII 4th assessment.) In a just world we would hold them upside down to help empty their pockets, to recover from them that through theft and fraud and lies and deceit they wrongly took from our national treasuries, and hold them also to justice for the torture and murder of thousands around the world. Oh well. Don't mind me.

The surface area value 196,937,500 square miles is one I found as a dumbed down answer, from NASA JPL, and we know it isn't exactly correct. But it gives us a ball park. You suppose the CIA, or NSA knows? Should that have been +/- 10 sq miles or something?

Well, in the air over 10 square miles there is only 155,845 metric tons of C02. And that works out to 42,503 metric tons of pure C, a Diamond of Carbon 22.941 meters (75.268 feet) tall, wide, and deep! [See what you compute and get back to me through xomba, if it is substantially different. Hey, show me the error of my back-of-the-envelope ways!]

Okay. I feel better. I used to do geodetic calculations with 7 place log tables, well that just reveals my age.

To figure out how much 1 part per million of C02 weighs should not offend anyone.

Since the 1 ppmv is a "volume" quantity we have to look at how much 1 part per million "weighs" as a proportional volume amount when considered with the 28.96 average molecular weight of air. C02 is half-again as heavy as ordinary air, as follows. . .

44.01/28.96=1.5197 so this factor is what the C02 needs to be multiplied by to convert parts per million to actual weight of the C02 in the air.

so. . . 1.5197 x 0.000001 x 5135.2 trillion tons tells what C02 weighs as a part per million. and that is = 7,803,963,440 tons. So for C02that is 1 part per million in the atmosphere by weight. Let's cut the O2 loose and get back to the C, so that is12/44.01 x 7,803,963,440 = 2,127,870,058 tons of pure diamond-quality Carbon!

To convert that to a "Diamond Visualaire" 2,127,870,058 ton of Carbon in diamond form is 3.52 times as heavy as water. So to come to the physical volume of our Diamond Visualaire we divide 2,127,870,058 by 3.52 to get a volume of 604,508,539.38 cubic meters of pure Carbon diamond.

As a perfect cube, the Diamond Visualaire is 845.54 meters on a side or 2774.07 feet on a side.

A cube a little more than half-a-mile tall, wide, and deep. That is a chunk of "rock" from 1 ppm C02. Is that Human Scale enough to communicate?

This is just Carbon that is "free" to get around. Sure, you pump or dig some of it.

There has been talk about the effect of 'doubling' the C02 to nearly 800 ppm. It is not that there is a "shortage" of Carbon.

NASA's take on it:---------------------------------------------My Diamond Take on it:

Deep Ocean Carbon---= 38,000 Billion Tons----------22,101.09 m --75,509.98 feet
Fossil Carbon Oil/gas ==- 5,000 Billion Tons----------11,241.11 m --36,880.20 feet
Land Plants / Soil=====--2,000 Billion Tons---------- 8,282.52 m --27,173.56 feet
Ocean, shallow--------------- 800 Billion Tons-----------6,102.61 m --20,021.65 feet
Atmosphere------------------- 760 Billion Tons-----------5,999.16 m --19,682.24 feet
Total considered here = 46,560 Billion Tons---------23,649.58 m --77,590.33 feet

Total considered here = 46,560 Billion Tons---------23,649.58 m --77,590.33 feet

So doubling 383 ppmv to 766 ppmv, means adding as much C02 to the air as there already is in it. 1-ppmv x 7,803,963,440 x 383 =2,988,917,997,520 C02 but only 27.3 % of that is pure Carbon.

27.3% x 2,988,917,997,520 = 814,974,232,214 (call it 815 billion tons of Carbon.)

So to double the amount of CO2 in the air means the 815 billion tons of Carbon get to be burned and oxygen added to it and exhausted into the air.

You note that there are 760 billion tons in the above NASA carbon cycle image,in the atmosphere, which is a little less than the 815 billion tons our computation yields for 383 ppmv, so the picture there is probably several years old.

760GtC x44/12=2787 Gt C02 --- brings us in the 357--362 ppmv range or The graphic is reflective of the 1995 ppm situation. So the graphic is 12 years old and 383- say 360 is at least 23 ppmv back in time.

That means in the intevening time, 55 billion tons of Carbon came from somewhere. So it should have reduced the amount in a sink/source by 55 billion tons. like some would be fossil fuel, liquid and gas, but I have not checked NASA's values to include the huge amounts of coal -- to see if the 5000 billion tons really includes all oil reserves and coal reserves like oil shale, like the peat bogs. . .and you know, you gotta trust most of those people paid in the science agencies to do science, even if the political appointees are not trustworthy, and this Admin's bunch have been actively preventing the release of truthful information, or tainting it; happy facing it, and some of that 55 billion tons could be out of the shallow ocean. . .due to warming. . .)

After Earth's oceans have boiled to space completely, by about 3 billion years from now, the roughly 100 times as much Carbon as NASA has identified here, the bicarbonates, carbonates, as well as all plants and animals will surrender their Carbon to the Air as C02 and the surface air pressure will be nearly 1500 lbs / square inch and the O2 will be locked up tight to the carbon -- and our 78% N2 will still all be here at less than 1 percent partial pressure, like Argon is now. . .

Right now, no one is worried about the far future of Earth. (I am not either) The rest of this Century will do a lot perhaps, of the changing to us that I feel needs changing. Population, of course, is going to have to be constrained. The theory has been to globally raise the standard of living, but the path and consequences of that exploitive choice with all these potential consumers has not been an intelligent course. Sustainable growth!? Only in education and learning; learning a living, some form of Bucky Fuller's vision.

(In a short section below I excerpt and quote the Congressional Testimony, of Dr. James Hansen, NASA, Director, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, National Aeronautics and Space Administration about this current Administration in interfering with science, and measurement, and funding . . .)
You can load the pdf here:

http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20070319105800-43018.pdf

"When the administration announced its fiscal 2007 budget, NASA science was listed as having typical changes of 1 percent or so. However, Earth Science Research and Analysis
actually had a staggering reduction of about 20 percent from the 2006 budget that Congress had passed. How could that be accomplished? Simple enough: reduce the 2006 research budget retroactively by 20 percent! One-third of the way into fiscal year 2006, NASA Earth Science was told to go figure out how to live with a 20-percent loss of the current year’s funds.

"The Earth Science budget was further tightened in 2007 and is almost a going-out-of business budget. From the taxpayers’ point of view it makes no sense. An 80 percent budget must be used mainly to support infrastructure (practically speaking, you cannot fire civil servants; buildings at large facilities such as Goddard Space Flight Center will not be bulldozed to the ground; and the grass at the centers must continue to be cut). But the budget cuts wipe off the books most planned new satellite missions (some may be kept on the books, but only with a date so far in the future that no money needs to be spent now), and support for contractors, young scientists, and students disappears, with dire implications for future capabilities."

"Bizarrely, this is happening just when NASA data are yielding spectacular and startling results. Two small satellites that measure the Earth’s gravitational field with remarkable precision found that the mass of Greenland is now decreasing by about 150 cubic kilometers of
ice per year and West Antarctica by a similar amount. The area on the ice sheets with summer
melting has increased markedly, major ice streams (portions of the ice sheet moving most rapidly toward the ocean and discharging icebergs) have increased; doubled in flow speed, and the area in the Arctic Ocean with summer sea ice has decreased 20 percent in the last 25 years."

"One way to avoid bad news: stop the measurements! Only hitch: the first line of the
NASA mission is “to understand and protect our home planet.” Maybe that can be changed to
“…protect special interests’ backside.”

"I should say that the mission statement used to read “to understand and protect our home planet.” That part has been deleted—a shocking loss to me, as I had been using that phrase to justify speaking out about the dangers of global warming. The quoted mission statement had been constructed in 2001 and 2002 via an inclusive procedure involving representatives from the NASA Centers and e-mail interactions with NASA employees. In contrast, elimination of the “home planet” phrase occurred with no fanfare in a spending report delivered to Congress in February 2006, the same report that retroactively slashed the Earth Science research budget. In July 2006 I asked dozens of NASA employees and management people (including my boss) if they were aware of the change. Not one of them was. Several expressed concern that such management changes by fiat would have a bad effect on organization morale."

"These budgetary goings-on in Washington were noted in editorials of The Boston Globe: “Earth to NASA: Help!” (June 15, 2006) and “Don’t ask; don’t ask” (June 22, 2006), both decrying the near-termination of Earth measurements."

End Excerpt.

Load and read the whole thing here:

http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20070319105800-43018.pdf

============

(This is where the pocket emptying procedures should go, isn't it?)
============

Exploitation of our species, by members of our species will have to be constrained and both bad memes and bad genes expunged and excised from the species. This also extends to our exploitation of other species we are distant kin to, but who have as much right to this ride as we do.

And without even a moral whisper or idea of Gaian 'planetary' justice, this warming may help accelerate speciation at the viral or bacterial level and much of the effort this species has devoted to destroying natural balances will be ended in global pandemic. One thing is certain in that case. If homo sapiens is pandemic fodder there is still time, maybe 20 or 30 times, for actual intelligent life to evolve on this planet before the Sun finishes cooking the life slowly out of it. (I say that, because I felt we had a real shot at becoming our planet's future planetary species spokesman -- a now vanishing hopeful vision. . .gosh I thought We were intelligent! Wrong again. . .)

Of course, I hope those 150 human generations from now have a chance to see a better world with clearer skies, because it may fully take that long itself to clear. Perhaps the lesson of cooperation and integration that needs to be learned here, now, soon, will be learned.

It's okay. Everyone is welcome to their opinion.

Moving right along. . .

`

Image: Wikipedia, Great Sand Dunes, The mountain cover; pinion, pine, aspen you do not see close up here, will be severely stressed by the warming coming. The dunes will remain, but the mountains vegetation and everything from deer, elk, mountain lion, and bear will be stressed as this area is predicted to dry even more in the global warming ahead.

====

==========================
-
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`

One plan similar to Broecker's suggestion but at 550 ppm is perhaps not as fast:
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`

Clich here to see a larger readable version of this graphic:
http://www.ipcc.ch/present/graphics/2001syr/large/02.17.jpg

=======================================
A more pressing version of what needs to be done to accomplish a moderation of temperature increase is discussed here and below.

Image: NASA

This graphic depicts changes in 12 climate "forcings" or factors that have contributed to climate change since 1850.

(This following comes from work of Hansen and Sato)

These agents can be categorized into three areas: greenhouse gases, other man-made (anthropogenic) forcings, and natural forcings. The greenhouse gases consist of carbon dioxide C02 , methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N[=7]2['size]0) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The other anthropogenic forcings consist of black carbon (soot, formed by incomplete combustion), reflective aerosols (tiny airborne particles that reflect sunlight back to space), soil or dust, land cover changes, and forced cloud changes. Natural forcings include changes of the sun's energy and changes of aerosols from volcanic eruptions.

The total "forcing" of climate since 1850 includes a "positive" effect from all the greenhouse gases, which would have a warming effect. Of the other anthropogenic forcings, black carbon has also had a "positive" effect, whereas the other factors including: aerosols, soil and dust, cloud changes, and land cover alterations have had "negative" or cooling effects. Of the natural forcings, an increase of the Sun's brightness has caused a positive forcing, while variations of volcanic aerosols have caused both positive and negative forcings.

Although the sum of all forcings coincidentally is similar to that for carbon dioxide alone, knowledge of each of the large forcings such as methane and black carbon (soot) is needed for development of effective policies.

NOTE: The image depicts the growth rate of estimated climate forcings by well-mixed greenhouse gases (5-year mean, except 3-year mean for 1999 and 1-year mean for 2000). Ozone (O3) and stratospheric H2O, which were not well measured, are not included.

-
-

image: NASA growth rates of the forcings

Climate forcings, or factors that promote warming, such as emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N20) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) have increased in the world's atmosphere since the technology of the industrial revolution began pumping these into the atmosphere beginning in the 1800s.

In the graph, climate forcings due to CO2 increases are depicted in light blue, CH4 in dark blue, N20 in yellow, and CFCs in red.
In a new study, James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Makiko Sato of Columbia University found that the growth rate of climate forcings have slowed substantially from almost 5 Watts/meter2 (W/m2) per century to about 3 W/m2 since their peak in 1980.

A watt is a unit of energy and a "watt per meter squared" is the amount of energy the forcing agents have over an area of one square meter. Typically, a forcing of 1Watt after 50 years of would yield a warming of 1.35oF (3/4oC) by 2050 in changing climate model simulations. The peak in the mid-1980s and drop in the late 1980s of CFCs is evident in the reduction of the red colored area on the graph toward the end of the 1980s.

"The decrease is due in large part to cooperative international actions of the Montreal Protocol for the phase-out of ozone depleting gases," Hansen said. "But it is also due in part to slower growth of methane and carbon dioxide, for reasons that aren't well understood and need more study."

Hansen and Sato report that emission trends need to be further reduced to approximately 2 W/m2 per century for the next 50 years to achieve a "moderate climate change scenario."

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/earth/pictures/hansen010302/MethPackage_QT%20big%20progress.mov

I also include a link to the Testimony of a "Which way do you want the wind to blow? player", one Dr. Roy W. Spencer.

He provided the following Testimony to Congress. From what he has provided in his testimony he no doubt is a good 'team' player, and one the 'Team Japan' consensus builder's. In Science, your work speaks for itself. You do not need to ask, nor should you ask your supervisor's 'permission' to speak the truth. Peers will review, must review, your work and by their work their Science, refute it, or support it. Reality is the boss, not your superiors; not the political winds, not the policy in vogue.

In this regard, science is like poker, you show your hand, the cards speak for themselves. You don't play the game and need to ask if your little flush wheel beats four aces. You and everyone at the table knows the probability of the deal and the odds.

In science, of course, the only similarity is the fact that science stands on it's own. The observations and measurements stand to be validated, or refuted. Conclusions are those only the science allows. The implications these conclusions suggest are realms where more study will validate or refute them. Prediction is pro-jective, but we need it -- so far the climate prediction models are being validated by the armful after armful of data and correlations able to be drawn from them. NASA, for example, launches craft toward places in the sky where there is nothing, but when the time comes there is something and a rendezvous planned long past occurs. That is goal orientation.

Many of us would like to watch the Huge, The Monstrous Ocean Dwelling Carbon Eater rear its monstrously immense head into the air and begin inhaling and ingesting billions of billions of tons of C02 to get it down to say, 300 ppm, and then announcing,"That was sure good! I'll be back for a lunch snack or when it reaches 385 again! Keep burning it! Sorry about the tidal waves, I'll get up slower next time."

Don't you wonder how he does that? In the ancient rocks of Earth, the alloted Carbon from the Formation of Earth is still here. I allegorically allude to a "living monster" but much of the 70,000,000 billion tons of Carbon in the Earth's rocks was helped to be placed there in the rocks by "life" the organic monster, living upon Earth now for nearly 4 billion years.

But if we could call upon this monster life force perhaps we could get it's help. How long does the monster sleep or does he sleep? And where? Do we want to wake him up? We might be better able to deal with a mythological critter than we can with our profit-driven and controlled government dealing with the problems. It sure seems that way.

Dr. Roy W. Spencer's Testimony to Congressional Committee is here:

http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20070320152338-19776.pdf