The Missing Carbon Problem (Part 4)

Hi Shawn - Saw a documentary on U.S. National Geographic channel, within the past 2-3 years, that presented the idea that the oceans were absorbing much of the planet's excess carbon dioxide, and this, along with warming in the oceans, could lead to acidification and accelerating death of life beneath the ocean. Once the life is gone, the nightmare scenario is that the oceans, starved of oxygen, will turn sour with bacteria and start emitting toxic gases into the atmosphere. The death of lakes in the Adirondack Mountains, that produce the same type of toxic-gas emitting bacteria, was used as a small-scale example of what was possible on a much larger scale. Too many folks get hung up on Al Gore as a personality, and forget about the science behind what the IPCC is doing. Hopefully this will change over time. Thanks for writing on this topic. - Larry

The answer of that question just struck me yesterday morning like a bolt of lightning!

I was staring at a pile of that morning's mail and the local newspaper. There was a huge pile of mail and almost all of it was junk!

Paging through the newspaper yielded page after page of junk ads. There was virtually no stories amongst the pages of junk!!!

I did a little fact digging and sure enough:

• Each year, 100 million trees are used to produce junk mail;
• 250,000 homes could be heated with one day's supply of junk mail; and
• Americans receive almost 4 million tons of junk mail every year.

The missing carbon is right there under our very noses! It's locked up in junk mail and junk ads.

Most junk mail seems to be made of recycled paper these days...too late though.

100 millions trees will use up a LOT of CO2. If you include all the rain forests in SA that are being cut down to make pasture land for methane producing cattle to feed Europe it doubles the output of greenhouse gases!

Hi Shawn -

One more note, for those interested in following this issue further:

There was a very good, respectful debate, sponsored by BBC World TV, with both sides represented fairly, taking place within the past week or so (last Saturday?) in NYC at a venue called Symphony Space - the motion was:

"Major reductions in carbon emissions are not worth the money"

URL for the debate organization: http://www.intelligencesquared.com/announcements.php?ann=19.

The side wishing not to spend much money on this scored some good points during the debate - I think by bringing up many of the same points you're making, Shawn - so I would say it was "Fair and Balanced".

Not sure where to find the debate video - BBC/i-squared may wait a for a few weeks or so before making this public, if they choose to do so - BBC TV has a YouTube channel where they may end up posting it, but it wasn't there just now when I checked.

Looks like EPA or Congress may be taking some kind of action in April, and so this issue is something I'm following a little more closely at the moment.

Thanks for letting me share this.

- Larry

The largest contribution to carbon dioxide on this planet is not mankind, it is termites and volcanoes.A volcano can spew out more greenhouse gasses in one eruption than mankind can generate with all of his industry.With sunspot activity at an all time low, the present warming trend may stall an impending ice age for a decade or more.The last time the sunpots were this sparse was during the "little ice age".

We need to look outside of the box to get the big picture.

It is hard to grasp how small we really are as a species.Every human being on the planet could be placed into a cube 1 mile on each side, and still have some wiggle room.

Of course, that is just my opinion, I could be wrong.What do I know? I am just a shoe shine boy.

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Volcanoes create more carbon dioxide than humans create, but they also release more heat than all of the energy produced by mankind.

Most of the volcanoes are in the oceans. The more we map the ocean floor, the more we find. We are finding vast previous unknown volcano fields. The volcanoes are heating the oceans. The oceans are heating the atmosphere.

The rise in temperature increases precipitation, which increases snow fall. Although carbon dioxide has a larger effect per volume as a greenhouse gas, there is so much more water in the air that it has a larger total effect.

Furthermore, rising ocean temperatures release large amounts of methane clathrates. Methane is another greenhouse gas. They can cause large explosions on the ocean surface, which if released fast enough would shut down most of the global transportation networks.

The area of the Earth that is covered by glaciers varies periodically, but the amount of snow and ice, the volume of glaciers is increasing. It is still cold enough to create larger glaciers and new glaciers, they just need more precipitation.

The sea levels are dropping on average. The oceans are becoming more acidic. Biodiversity in the oceans is decreasing from acidification caused by volcanoes.

In the USA we are starting into the fourth year of the warm season of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. We knew it was going to happen before it started. We know it will continue for at least another seven years. The increased temperature has caused a drought in the Pacific states for three years. Most of the western states have had droughts. As the moisture moves east and cools it causing more rain and snow than usual.

At some point the amount of moisture in the air will reach a critical mass and a phase state change will occur. At that point, imagine the worst snow storm you have seen in your area, but it happens every day for over a month.

The last glaciation wiped out the Mammoths. Many Mammoths were frozen standing up, eating the Fall flora.

The severity of the glaciations alternates every other period. This next glaciation will be worse than the last. Was there a glacier in your area during the last glaciation? Unless you live in the tropics, you may be surprised.

How much snow will your roof hold?

Does your community have an emergency shelter? How can you get to the shelter in deep snow?

How much water does the shelter have? We can only survive for days without water. Where does the food in your community come from? We can only survive for weeks without food.

When the snow is deep enough it compacts into ice. How much ice will the roof of the local emergency shelter support (if there is a shelter)?

When there is enough ice is moves. That will be the next glaciation period of the current Ice Age. Glaciers pulverize what is beneath them. They carry what is trapped in them and what falls on them. Glaciations are fairly predictable in geological time, it is time for the next one to start.

There are solutions to mitigate these problems. And there are things that individuals, communities, and governments can do to prepare.

BEHAVIOR The most important thing in preparing for any emergency, disaster, or catastrophie is our behavior. Don't panic. Take wise planned actions.

INFORMATION The next most important thing in preparing is information. Become informed in order to make wise decisions. Do not do what authority figures say just because they are the authority; take the information they present as guides to find out for yourself what is happening. They will not be there to hold your hand when what is unplanned inevitably happens. Remember to communicate the information.

ENERGY The third most important thing is energy. Chemical (think of food), kinetic (think of feet), heat (think of fire), and photonic (think of flame) energies. Symbolically think of food, feet, fire, and flame.

MATERIALS The materials are the last important things. If you are wise and do the most important things first you will find that most (over half) of the materials you need will be falling on your head when they are needed, if you haven't moved to the tropics.

Behavior, Information, Energy, Materials: BIEM.

But what do I know? I am just a human who takes up an insignificant cubic meter of space in this vast universe. Glad we are in the same small cube ShoeShineBoy.

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Glaciers are melting, 70% of the world's ice volume is located in Greenland and Antarctica. Large massive amount of CO2 released by volcanoes have only been witnessed in short periods of earth's history where it is believed that ash and soot clouded our atmosphere blocking solar radiation, the prime source of heat for earth's surface.

Decadal periods of climate oscillation, like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), occur but our distinctly different than the Milankovitch Cycles which with a large degree of certainty correlate strongly with the earth's climate. Such models predict that we are entering a cooling trend; yet glaciers are retreating, greenhouses gases are being elevated to the highest level in modern history, and surface mean ocean water (SMOW) is being enriched in lighter isotopes.

Shown by sedimentary deposits near alluvial fans where erosion increases exponential with increased storm frequency, periods in earth's history with increased storm frequency have been closely correlated with rapid changes in earth's climate. Sporadic weather patterns are indicators of climate change.

The increased amount of snow in the northeast this winter is like the spreading of butter on toast. As a thick slice of butter is spread over warm toast it quickly melts.... As our glaciers erode away arctic winds carry the moisture over our continents where it is distributed and melts with the spring thaw.

Your right about one thing the rise in ocean temperature will destabilize methane hydrates. In most cases in our intermediate oceans this is absorbed before reaching the surface increasing the acidity and killing algae and coral that could sequester large amounts of carbon dioxide.

Beyond everything the thing that alarms me the most is how quickly our rain forests are shrinking. Deforestation has dropped the acreage of rain forest from 6 million square miles to 2.4 million square miles...

I agree with nearly everything that you have said. What you have pointed out is what happens at the start of nearly all glaciation periods. There is a strong correlation of volcanic activity to the Milankovitch Cycles.

"greenhouses gases are being elevated to the highest level in modern history". This modern historical period started before the industrial revolution, before the widespread use of fossil fuels. CO2 has increased linearly while human production of C02 has increased exponentially. The data indicates that mankind so far has had an insignificant impact. The increase in CO2 levels is due to increased volcanic activity.

The area covered by glaciers world wide is shrinking as the majority of the ice is located in Greenland and Antarctica. This is because they are bordered by oceans which are rising in temperature. However, those continents are not ice cubes floating in the oceans. The volume of glaciers is rising world wide with the increase in precipitation. The reports are always correctly pointing out that the area covered by glaciers is shrinking; they fail to mention that the volume of ice world wide is increasing. Even with the rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures, we are still in an Ice Age, and we are starting into a period of glaciation.

To use your analogy, there is so much butter put on the corners of the toast that they are only melting on the sides. The toast has more solid butter now than it had before. The largest ice cubes are getting thinner and taller; all the ice cubes are getting bigger.

Predictions from data from ice core samples and other data sets indicate that there will be a state phase change in which the glaciers will get much, much wider.

What is most alarming to me is that we are doing practically nothing to mitigate the situation. I use the PDO as an example of this, governmental subsidies and tax policies have led to agricultural lands moving from the Mid-west to the Pacific states here in the USA. The Pacific states have been suffering from a three year drought, and will continue for at least another seven years; but there is no change in policy to mitigate the problem the drought is causing. The federal government's response is to increase foreign trade in order to increase the food supply. Our problem is being placed onto third world countries. Nothing is being done to avert the effects of the current PDO cycle, few citizens even know about the PDO.

Nothing practical is being done to decrease CO2 levels. Water vapor has a much larger effect than CO2 has as a greenhouse gas because there is so much more of it. The level of atmospheric water has been increasing for a while, and that is all that is needed at this time to enter a period of glaciation.

Deforestation is very alarming. The biodiversity of the rain forests is too precious to be measured, not only to us greedy money grubbing humans, but to life on this planet as a whole.

The main reason for deforestation is to convert the forests into pasture lands by slashing and burning (producing more carbon dioxide in the process). We humans are responsible for that. The main use of that pasture land is to raise cows. The major purchaser of those cows is McDonalds. The major use of that beef by McDonalds is for hamburgers (the Big Mac). I know this is an oversimplification, but I like to put a face on it. Picture a menu in your hands, the round earth in one hand, and the round Big Mac in the other, which do we choice? We choose short term profit and convenience, we have chosen the Big Mac.

Pastures and Cows are extremely inefficient at converting sunlight into protein. We have the technology to efficiently and inexpensively convert sunlight into a whole protein suitable for human consumption without decreasing biodiversity, and sequester carbon dioxide in the process. The USA Department of Energy has known how to do it for over thirty years, but Japan (if I remember right) is the only major government to change policies that would support such an economy. But they have only changed their policies to increase energy production, not to increase food production nor to sequester carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide sequestration is an unconsidered by-product of OTEC energy production.

Thank you for your quick response Shawn. You are a thoughtful and responsible person, and I enjoy your blog. Hope to speak with you again soon.

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I'm diving into world ice volume, I have yet to find a solid reference on current world ice volume. I am inferring that there was a slight recover since 2011 where arctic ice volume was reduced to 54% of what existed in 1955. This graph shows plausibly how decadal periods of oscillation create noise that masks the true pattern.

I am intrigued by the idea that the world is correcting itself and ice volume is back on the increase, but am still skeptical to believe it.

This graph is normalized; but what is it normalized to? What was the original baseline? Can you provide a reference to an article about this graph?

Is not the amount of ice more significant than the area that it covers? Why is it so extremely difficult in this scientific age, this information age to get the original data sets? Is the lack of references to world ice volume significant in itself?

My education on these subjects started with a scientific inquiry into the data presented by the IPCC. If their predictions about Global Warming are true, the severity of the crisis is being down played. But the original data sets showed a different picture, as did the scientist's conclusions.

Good science requires scientific review. In hind sight, I should have copied everything. It was very, very hard to get the data and reports back then. Who knows what is required to access the information now.

Schweiger's work is modeling sea ice, not total ice volume. As far as I have seen, for his papers on Ice Volume Anomaly, the baseline is the model.

Try a search on Global Ice Volume instead of World Ice Volume.

Instantaneous carbon footprints of natural processes, like the aforementioned super-volcanoe may for an instant produce more greenhouses than mankind... and we are talking one super-volcanoe to do this even for an instant, but no natural process in modern history have persisted for over a hundred years and had the effects that the anthropogenic footprint has left.

I do agree with April, that awareness of the IPCC's actions without screaming the name, Al Gore is a step in the right direction. I'm really hoping my lovely nation, The U.S.A., starts taking advantage of carbon-nuetral energy sources and address the problems we have with public transportation.

It's an uphill battle to suggest you have the answer but it is a no brainer that wind energy, solar energy, nuclear energy, electric vehicles and viable public transportation could start to limit the damage we are doing to the environment.

"Uncertainty in the carbon cycle is greater than computer-generated models account for."

Hi,

if the modeling is incomplete or partially wrong or missing essential information - why is this to be refined model a problem?

We are urged to act with big efforts to try to limit climatic changes which are likely to occur.

So what shall we do here:

- discuss the probabilities of right or wrong or where to correct the model?

- decide what action to support or not to support despite incomplete knowledge?

I think we should compile all the necessities (climate is one among ? how many?) to ensure a survival of culture, civilisation and modern life of human communities.

Then we should discuss the different topics and select the most important ones where action may be successful.

RHABE

Check out this link for an effect larger than the carbon in the atmosphere.Bundle up, it's gonna get cold!

http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31:vanishing-sunspots-prelude-to-global-cooling&catid=1:latest

Last time this happened was 400 years ago....

Hear, hear,

Finally, some sensible people on this site. Check the article in New Scientist, Sept 21, 209 called "An Inconvenient Truth About Climate Change". The bloke Mojib Latif, an IPCC author, is now questioning the models and confirms the cooling tat is taking place.

The text is as follows. Sorry, I don't know how to insert a PDF ibto this post.

An Inconvient Truth About Global Warming
Posted by Kevin
Published: September21, 2009 - 1:08 AM

According to the scientists at the forefront of the climate change dogma, things arent going as predicted. From New Scientist:

Forecasts of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter. One of the worlds top climate modellers said Thursday we could be about to enter one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.

People will say this is global warming disappearing, he told more than
1500 of the worlds top climate scientists gathering in Geneva at the UNs
World Climate Conference.

"I am not one of the sceptics, insisted Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, Germany. However, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it.

Few climate scientists go as far as Latif, an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But more and more agree that the short-term prognosis for climate change is much less certain than once thought.

Latif predicted that in the next few years a natural cooling trend would dominate over warming caused by humans. The cooling would be down to cyclical changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, he said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. But how much? The jury is still out, he told the conference. The NAG is now moving into a colder phase.

In fact the globe has been cooling since the peak temperatures reached in 1998, and now the IPCC has realized that their models dont measure the observed decline and the coming declines.

G'day, there is a website that is run by an overnight radio host on Sydney, Australia's 2UE. THe URL is jimball.com.au. Jim, and many contibutors, has some interesting insights into the AGW acare, among other topics. Nothing is his or our opinions, just references and links to interesting articles. It is well worth a read, but allow plenty of time.

Ca-Vin

Oh yeah, if you can, have a look at "heaven and Earth", Global Warming: The Missing Science by Professor Ian Plimer. It is published in Australia by Conner Court and I know it was released in The U.S. in May/June. It sold out 5 printings in two months here, even thought the big publishers and distributors wouldn't touch it. I am talking 100's of thousands of copies. It is all factual with references throughout and is explained in a non-scientific manner. Ian is a professor of geology. Good read.

Ca-Vin

If carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming then let us sequester it, at a net profit. The technology was developed in the 1970's, paid for by the United States Citizens; developed by the Department of Energy; and is in the public domain at all large USA public libraries on microfilm and microfisce.

Not only could it sequester gigantic amounts of carbon dioxide, it is the foundation for the hydrogen economy our government keeps talking about. Or if we are willing to not focus on the production of hydrogen (think about using compressed air for most transportation), it is the foundation of a clean, safe, renewable, natural, massive source of energy, massive amounts of food, massive amounts of drinking water, and lots of precious metals without mining.

The turbine design was solved long before the 70s, and can be manufactured with modern materials. The bio-fouling can be completely avoided instead of needing to be remove it. There is a manufacturer for the large tubes. And the inexpensive production of platforms was solved centuries ago, of course we have modern designs that are more efficient and stable.

If Global Warming predictions were real, us Mammals will face a mass extension by the end of this century, we can't survive the rise in temperature. I would think that would be serious enough for the U.N. and all major governments to start doing something about it, a decade ago! If they are really concerned about saving us.

Global Warming is a political term. Real scientists look at the data before they determine the cause, they don't have a cause before they manipulate the data. The IPCC manipulates the data to prove that us humans are at fault. You want proof? Compare the original source data to IPCCs graphs (pay attention to the scales), and the conclusions of the scientists before the phrase Global Warming was created, including the scientists who collected the data that the IPCC originally used. When a government pays for research, it gets the conclusion that it pays for.

I'll tell you what. If emissions trading ever becomes the norm, I will show the company who will give me a fair percentage of the profits how to sequester large amounts of carbon, and the emissions trade that is collected will be very small compared to the profits. I will need the income then to pay for basic necessities like food and water (it always costs more when a government gets involved; the bigger the government, the more it costs). ;-)

"Will the ideas of emissions trading, clean development mechanism, and joint implementation help solve our crisis?", no. The Global Warming crisis is caused by the IPCC. And they can not solve Climate Change, look at all of the other planets in our solar system. There are solutions to mitigate the crisis, but they will not come from the UN, nor large governments, they are already safe, and believe that we sheeple can't rationally deal with the truth of where the missing carbon dioxide is coming from.

"When will there be solid proof that we have decreased our burden on Earth?" When we can no longer afford to pay for any big governments. :-)

[getting off my soap box now]

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I found the missing carbon!!!!

https://www.google.com/search?q=carbon+fiber+pics&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=G1EAVbjQO_TdsASDtoKwAw&ved=0CB4QsAQ&biw=990&bih=469