800,000 Year Record Of Atmospheric CO2
 

I don't pretend to know much about the scientific basis of the global warming debate, but I am trying to educate myself. So this news story caught my eye.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/04/AR2006090400451.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm

I'll summarize:

For the past 800,000 years, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has ranged from 180ppm to 300ppm. The level today is 380ppm.

In past periods of rising CO2 levels, the rise was very slow, 30ppm per 1000 years. In the past 200 years, CO2 levels have risen very fast, by 100ppm.

The increased CO2 is from fossil fuel origin.

Anyone have good, readable, fact-based URLs to share, on the issue of global warming's cause, existence, and effects, or conversely the lack of same?

1) How do we know what the atmospheric CO2 level was 800,000 years ago? We've only been measuring it since the 1950s.

2) Volcanoes put out more CO2 every year that all human activitiy combined...and I'm talking a scale of magnitude more. Was it a very active year for volcanoes?

What I'm getting at is these alarmist news articles usually leave out a whole bunch of directly relevant information.

It is measured using core samples of ice, dirt, rock,etc from the time period we are looking at. You should see if you can find some figures on what it was 65 million years ago when the oxygen content of the atmosphere was much higher than it is now. In the late Cretaceous period, you had temperate climates in places in Alaska and Northern Canada where you know have sub-arctic tundra. The question is not whether climate changes......it does. We are not that far out of the 'little ice age" that lasted for several hundred years and only about 12,000 froma MAJOR ice age that saw glaciation all the way to the Ohio River valley. The question is what effect, if any, we are having and how much.

you can measure atmospheric CO2 levels by looking at ice cores

http://www.earthsky.org/shows/edgeofdiscovery.php?date=20041129

I realize that; I'm just trying to introduce the idea that there is an often overlooked difference between direct measurment and infering a measurement based on studying something else.

Let me put it to you this way: What would hold up in court? A cop giving you a speeding ticket based on measuring your speed with a radar gun, or a cop giving you a speeding ticket based on his estimation of the speed you were going based on engine noise with his back turned to you...

CO2 isn't much of a greenhouse gas.

Methane- now that is a greenhouse gas.

Water-vapor is a better greenhouse gas

There cannot be an 800,000 year record of anything...

Don't the creationists peg the age of the earth at something around 6,000 years?

Motion....P.S. The trapped gases and sediments in ice cores are quite accurate. Tests done on samples that can be corroborated over the past 50 years show the degree of accuracy. Things like Krakatoa, Pompeii and such, actual historically recorded events can be found in these cores.

Maybe if we all hold our breath for a few seconds. OK,...NOW!

Make farting a punishable offense......:eek:

All I know about this is what I read, and two things worth noting are:

1) I've read that ice core data are, in fact, quite inaccurate. When you de-pressurize the air sample, its chemistry changes. Other errors comes in during sampling amd handling. Therefore, the results have a plus/minus component, and the alarmists just report the lower end of the error scale. The upper end of the error scale gets you well above 300 ppm.

2) Even if we have caused CO2 levels to go higher than anytime in the last 800,000 years, some climatologists say, "So what?" CO2 has a very small role in global warming, with maybe 2.5% of warming attributed to CO2. Water vapor is by far the most important green house gas, as red-beard alluded.

If you insist that all measurements be "direct" rather than "inferred/indirect", then you cannot believe in the majority of modern physics and a substantial amount of current technological achievements.

The mass of planets, stars, etc is measured from observing their effect on other things, e.g. light rays and other bodies. Obviously - we can't drop Jupiter on a bathroom scale. But NASA can slingshot probes around distant planets thanks to these indrect measurement.

The behavior and existence of subatomic particles is determined from observing their interaction with other particles via collision, decay, energy release, etc. A quark doesn't show up directly on a photographic plate.

And so on.

So, I see no reason to disbelieve scientific investigation simply because it uses indirect measurements.

Anyway, are the measurements taken from these deep cores really "indirect"? As I understand it, they are extracting and measuring the actual atmosphere that was trapped in arctic ice layers as they formed 800,000 years ago.

[Edit - as just pointed out, I guess any type of measurement has to be examined for experimental error. I imagine you should take numerous measurements from a given depth and look at how consistent or inconsistent the results are.]

This makes me realize that what is "direct" and what is "indirect" depends on how technologically advanced the period is.

50 years ago, the cop with this radar gun would never have been considered a "direct"measurement, much less allowed in court. "Direct" speed measurement would have meant timing the car over a measured mile, no ifs ands or buts.

But after 50 years experience w/ radar we now think of the radar gun as a direct measurement.

I question the results and the measurment techniques.
Another question, how do they know this isn't part of a normal cycle?
They say we are transitioning out of an ice age, is this a normal cycle?

What about the late 17000s when they say we had a mini ice age?

I say we don't have enough long term information to answer those questions or to panic over a theory that global warming is a result of man's interference. i suggest there may be alterior motives or possibly a bunch of jumping on the bandwagon going on.

Heck, that will never work.

Here's the real solution. Pick one day where everyone turns on their A/C and opens all the doors and windows.


Problem solved....

I'd say humans cant' be much older then 8,000 years, but as to how old the universe is - beats me.

Hehe.

I heard a story of a boss who put a bunch of portable AC units into the server room.

1. No, global warming is a myth, a scare tactic
2. O.k. there could be, but it's all a natural cycle
3. O.k. there could be, but the causes are, and will remain, uncorrelated, much like cigarettes and cancer
4. Yes there is, and you should thank us for doing it. Earth is too cold anyways.

Yep, the age of the earth and universe is unknown to man.

800,000 years is just a guess. Another guess...


KT

And all the fossils were placed there to fool us and take us down the wrong road.

We have been given brains and logic, and clues to follow. If we decide to ignore these, we do so at our own peril.

My own take is a simple one: Nothing is impossible. Improbable, yes, but not impossible. If one wishes to enter religion into the equation, declaring something impossible would limit the power of a Creator.

For some reason this statement is commonly given as fact... as far as I can research the statement appears to be grossly inaccurate???

The CO2 output of volcanoes doesn't seem to come close to artificial output ... let alone exceed in a single year the entire CO2 output in all history by any "scale of magnitude".



"Volcanoes and Greenhouse Gases: Do Volcanoes Put Out as Much Carbon Dioxide as We Do?
Terry Gerlach, US Geological Survey, Cascades Volcano Observatory

The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most abundant gas (after water) emitted by volcanoes. Volcanologists estimate an annual global output of 200 million tons of volcanic CO2 per year. This natural source is balanced by natural processes that remove CO2 from the atmosphere-specifically by the weathering of rock into soil by atmospheric CO2 dissolved in rain and surface waters.

By comparison, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation produce 130 times more CO2 than all the world's volcanoes put together (adding 26,000 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of 8,000 Kilaueas (Hawaii's most active volcano). This comparison suggests humans are producing CO2 at a rate unprecedented in a geological history stretching back many millions of years. Clearly, there is need to think seriously about the implications of human CO2 emissions and to consider how current energy policy and land use practices may impact our collective future."

http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/press/2001/pr284.htm "

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At Mount St Helens the maximum measured emission rate was 2.2X10^7 kg per day. The total amount of gas released during non-eruptive periods from the beginning of July to the end of October was 9.1X10^8 kg . I do not have an estimate for the volume of CO2 released during the Plinian eruptions. As a long-term average, volcanism produces about 5X10^11 kg of CO2 per year; that production, along with oceanic and terrestrial biomass cycling maintained a carbon dioxide reservoir in the atmosphere of about 2.2X10^15 kg. Current fossil fuel and land use practices now introduce about a (net) 17.6X10^12 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere and has resulted in a progressively increasing atmospheric reservoir of 2.69X10^15 kg of CO2. Hence, volcanism produces about 3% of the total CO2 with the other 97% coming from man-made sources. For more detail, see Morse and Mackenzie, 1990, Geochemistry of Sedimentary Carbonates.

Scott Rowland, University of Hawaii Steve Mattox, University of North Dakota "

Ok, so if it's the highest now that it's been in 800k years, what made it so high 800k years ago? Who got the blame when the last ice age ended? Who's gonna get blamed when the sun's becoming a red giant boils away our oceans and the moon's orbit, which grows a few inches per year, ruins our tides and floods the Earth? Whose political football will that one become?

Rick, are you making a point here?

Repeatedly statements are made in this forum without any or very little knowledge of the subject at hand. An example is questions on the veracity of the age of man or of the earth, universe, etc., which are good to have. BUT!

How much study and research have you applied before making a judgment as to the validity of any scientific answer? How much understanding of current physics, chemistry, geology, anthropology, etc. do you possess? Why do you think you can rationally question what you do not have any knowledge of or only limited knowledge of? Opinions are mostly emotional judgments made without collaborating evidence. Science does not work that way. Opinions or guesses must pass peer review and have empirical evidence to stand up to scrutiny.

The current accepted figures or theory will change if new evidence is discovered. This is often used as a criticism of science; this is a specious argument at best. Only science learns, other thought systems are static and dogmatic, with no ability for change.

If you are basing your knowledge on TV news or newspapers, and most common magazines, then you are reading entertainment not science. The answers are out there for any with the drive to learn.

Well, don't you kinda wonder what made things so bad 800k yrs. ago, if that's the last time the air was as bad as it is now? Doesn't it sound kinda silly and arbitrary when someone throws a number out like that? And don't the other tidbits about our solar system render all our whining about global warming moot?

RPKSQ, I don't pretend to know a lot abot this stuff, but I do read Carl Sagan's stuff and have more than a passing interest in the history of the universe. The entire time humans have ruled the Earth is but a blink of an eye in the entire history of the Earth, let alone the universe. So I don't get too excited when people scream the sky is falling. Someday a comet or astroid will hit us and render all this bickering totally moot and that's a 100% guarantee.

Rick, the article does not say that 800,000 years ago the CO2 level was as high as it is now.

As for your parade of cosmic horribles - yes, someday an asteroid or orbital decay or the dying sun will threaten and possibly extinguish humankind.

And I would expect us to be fighting extinction with every bit of brain and will and ingenuity we have, right up to the last minute.

If humankind is sitting around saying, hey, we had our blink of an eye, so let's not get excited, everyone hold hands and buy another SUV - that will truly be shameful.

And if we are indeed being stupid and selfish enough to hasten our own end, well, that's truly pathetic.

Jyl, exploring space is the only workable solution to our long-term doom and most folks can't even think about the next election coming up in two mos., much less bring themselves to support a NASA mission to Mars, which will take many years of planning and many billions of $$.

Just because we don't currently have a solution to the medium-term and long-term dooms (asteroid collision in 2,000 years, dying sun in many millions of years, etc) doesn't mean we should ignore, accept, or even hasten along the short-term doom (possible disruptive climate change within the next 50, 100, or 200 years).

After all, in 40 to 60 years, you will personally die of old age. Doesn't mean you don't care about what happens 10 years from now.

Of course, I care what happens 10 yrs. from now, since there's a good chance I'll live to see it. I just try to never lose sight of the fact that all of humankind is but a brief moment in the big picture and my own life, no matter how significant to family and friends, is really nothing more than a speck of space dust, smaller than a grain of sand in all the Earth's deserts. Humans, Americans especially, are incredibly arrogant in thinking we're the only ones out there and control everything. We are far less significant than we deem ourselves.

Certainly possible. Some scientist wants attention, some environment group wants donations.

But the motives for denying climate change are not ulterior at all, they are perfectly obvious.

Industry profits from CO2 generating activities and are intensely motivated to deny, confuse, mislead, and block discussion of climate change. Much like the tobacco industry spent decades denying the link between smoking and death. And industry currently has a federal government stuffed full of its loyal representatives, bougth and paid for.

I think billions of dollars in industry profits are a much more suspect "motive" than academic recognition or some grassroots fundraising.

If some of the things I have been reading are correct, climate change could be disrupting our lives in a significant way within a relatively short time.

Not 1 year or 10 years, but perhaps 20 years and probably 40 years.

20 years out is important. My kids will be young adults. 40 years is important. My grandkids will be adults.

I don't think one has to be arrogant to care about what happens over the coming 20, 40 or 100 years.

I agree there are plenty of people for whom the universe might as well be crumpled up and tossed away end after they die, since they personally are the end all and be all of everything.

Those people seem like the arrogant ones to me.