Conclusive physical evidence for AWG?

[Raveninghorde]

Al Gore was Vice-President in 1998, and no less interested in the
farming vote than Dubbya has been more recently. The ethanol
initiative - what ever it was - doesn't seem to have been on anything
like a large enough scale to do any serious damage.

There are biofuels that do make sense - Brazil's ethanol from sugar
cane apparently does reduce fossil carbon emissions - and there
schemes to exploit plants that grow on marginal land (that is useless
for growing food) which make even more sense, if they can be ever made
to work.

So you are happy for the Amazon rain forest to be torched because it
is marginal land? How about the rain forest in Indonesia for palm oil
for bio fuel?

 

[Raveninghorde]

On Feb 6, 8:01 pm, [email protected] wrote:
=

we are burning fossil carbon and producing carbon dioxide. the amount
of carbon dioxide we have produced since the beginning of the
industrial revolution can be calculated, and it is equal to about
twice the increase of carbon dioxide in the air. the time curve of the
increase of carbon dioxide in the air parallels the time curve of the
combustion of fossil carbon. the isotope composition of the carbon in
the carbon dioxide in the air resembles that produced by burning
fossil carbon. the drop in oxygen in the atmosphere corresponds to
that caused by the burning of fossil carbon forming carbon dioxide.

how much more evidence do you need, to reasonably eliminate the
hypothesis that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is disappearing but there
is another, completely unknown and unpredicted source of carbon
dioxide, that fits the above criteria but is completely unrelated?
this is a serious question; if you guys would specify what particular
conclusive piece of evidence you are looking for which is not being
supplied, then we could supply it. in the absence of that, you are
just a two year old going "no no no no!"

How well do we know the base line 280ppmv CO2 level?

The figure is based on ice core measurments. These measurements don't
give a point reading per year. The data is more an average over
several years. The trapped air is from 40 to 80 years after the ice
was formed. It seems reasonable to assume it is actually a mix of air
from when the ice formed to 40 to 80 years later. That's a big time
constant.

We have no idea how CO2 varied in the short term historically. There
are chemical measurments from 1810 onwards showing large fluctuations
in atmospheric CO2 although the reliability of this data is
questioned.

 

[Martin Brown]

No it didn't. Uranium is a far more common element than most people
imagine. It is trivial to detect in tap water with modern
instrumentation. Commercially minable ore deposits are rare but the
element itself is as common as muck with average crustal abundance about
2ppm (2g/tonne). Tungsten and Molybdenum are both rarer metals.

Why did you even say salt mine? Salt domes are a kilometer or two
underground. Humans tend to get salt from more convenient sources than
salt domes!

In the UK we do have an active and very large salt mine in Cheshire.
EXtremely busy too at the moment thanks to the cold snap. It has been
approved as a toxic waste dumping site. The neighbours are not
impressed. I used to work just around the corner from it. Almost all
older homes there are timber framed and cock-eyed.

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=1650

The salt domes are much closer to the surface in Cheshire. So close in
fact that the old Roman method of extraction by pumping water into the
ground still has consequences on the surface.

UK plans to dump its nuclear waste permanently under Windscale - not
because it is geologically suitable (it isn't) but because the
neighbours will not object since their jobs depend on the nuclear plant.

Ideally you should put nuclear waste somewhere surrounded by impervious
rocks without ground water and in a long term geologically stable zone.
Salt mines or deep gypsum mines are not far off meeting that criteria.
There is a good geological location in the South of England but the
Nimbys won't wear it.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

Mssrs. Gore and Clinton proposed, promoted, laid out and passed
a plan that corn ethanol production be exactly what it is today.

Bush supported, and carried out their plan.

But it is all about getting US grain farmers votes, and being seen to
"do something". It has no net benefit.

This paper cited by Martin in the earlier discussion
says ethanol from cane sugar is a loser too:


http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/Biofuels/NRRethanol.2005.pdf

"Until recently, Brazil had been the largest pro-
ducer of ethanol in the world. Brazil used sugar-
cane to produce ethanol and sugarcane is a more
efficient feedstock for ethanol production than corn
grain (Pimentel and Pimentel, 1996). However, the
energy balance was negative and the Brazilian gov-
ernment subsidized the ethanol industry. There the
government was selling ethanol to the public for
22c / per l that was costing them 33c / per l to pro-
duce for sale (Pimentel, 2003). Because of serious
economic problems in Brazil, the government has
abandoned directly subsidizing ethanol (Spirits Low,
1999; Coelho and others, 2002)."

That was true during that period when oil was cheaper. When the price of
oil rises then their C4 sugar cane to ethanol method is reasonable. And
although there are environmental problems with it there is a significant
net energy gain. The Brazilian processes have improved since that paper
was written. The same is not true of ethanol from grain.

Corn and cane ethanol: two examples of AGW-hysteria going
awry, with "fixes" for it wreaking the exact opposite, at
great cost in lives and treasure.

Brazil didn't have than much choice they were short of oil, and foreign
currency to buy it. It wan't about going green it was about running cars
on a domestically manufcactured fuel.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Sylvia Else]

Now some egghead pulls a map out of his pocket, and on the map, printed
in big letters, is a note that the freeway ends at a brick wall.

It's known that the egghead gets his kicks from issuing warnings about
brick walls on freeways, that the map was printed by an orgnanisation
that has its own motives for pushing the idea that there are brick walls
on freeways, and that if the egghead stopped issuing warnings about
brick walls on freeways, he'd have to get a proper job.

Sylvia.

 

[krw]

You wouldn't expect an Aussie to know about beer. Their stuff's just
as bad.

I did not say "clueless about beer". You, and he, are simply sans
clue.

 

[Richard Henry]

Many years ago when I worked for Coulter Electronics I spent a bit of
time in Hialeah, Florida. Most of the stuff in in the bars was served
at around freezing point in glasses stored in the freezer! Truly
awful.

However I did find something quite good, I think it was called Samuel
Adams. It had a decent flavour but was spoilt by being served freezing
cold and full of dissolved CO2. After warming it up a bit and shaking
out the CO2 it tasted almost as good as an English beer!  

Samuel Adams started as a micro-brewery, but becqme so popular that it
was brewed under contract by megabreweries such as Stroh's and
Miller. The company claims that all the production sites use the same
ingredients and processes.

 

[Richard Henry]

In <[email protected]>,













  There are solutions for nuclear waste.  One is to dump it in a salt
dome, such as one that used to have oil but had the oil pumped out.  Those
have been stable long enough to hold oil formed many million years ago.

  Once the borehole is plugged up with concrete over most of its depth,
security requirements should be minimal.  Redrilling into the salt dome
would be visible to surveillance satellites.

  I also think that dumping it into a depleted uranium mine would be OK,
since uranium stayed there safely for tens or hundreds of millions of
years.

  It appears to me that the main barriers are political.  There are the
NIMBYs, and also anti-nukers who don't want a solution for waste disposal
since a solution would enable more nuclear power.

 - Don Klipstein ([email protected])- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Do you imagine that "once the oil is pumped out" there is an oil-
pumped-out-sized cavity in the salt dome?

 

[krw]

On Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:24:23 +0000, Martin Brown
[snip]

The oldest reference I can find to lumped thermal and self heating SPICE
models goes a lot further back in time than I imagined when I made the
comment. It even includes some basic suggestions for how to do it
longhand with sample networks as requested. It is in Intusofts
newsletter for July 1988!

http://www.intusoft.com/nlpdf/nl10.pdf

For IS-SPICE/386 with the tagline "faster than a VAX 11/780"
(a claim I find rather surprising and a bit unlikely)

Except it's true. Virtually all Spice variants on a modern PC run
much faster, as in at least an order of magnitude, than on a VAX
11/780.

I would never have considered "faster than a VAX 11/780" to be
anything spectacular. VAXen were turtles.

 

[[email protected]]

[email protected] wrote:
Which doesn't mean that the hockey stick isn't real. Mann's curve has
been replicated by a dozen other researchers, all using statistical
tools that would satisfy McIntyre and McKitrick's idiosyncratic
criteria.
[Citation Needed]

How to make a hockey stick graph:
1. Take a bunch of historical data:
http://mysite.verizon.net/richgrise/images/gw-1.gif

2. Cheerry-pick some of it:
http://mysite.verizon.net/richgrise/images/gw-2.gif

3. And extrapolate:
http://mysite.verizon.net/richgrise/images/gw-3.gif

Cheers!
Rich

That's spot on.

It's actually total nonsense. Mann's graph has been reproduced
repeatedly by people who were being careful to avoid McIntyre's
criticisms - the hockey stick was always in Mann's data.

The noise in the "random" data from which McIntyre extracted his
hockeystick wasn't quite as "white" as denialist websites would lead
you to believe - it was in fact "red" noise or 1/f^2 noise where the
amplitude of the lower frequency components of the noise increases in
inverse proportion to the square of the frequency.

 

[Martin Brown]

On Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:24:23 +0000, Martin Brown
[snip]
The oldest reference I can find to lumped thermal and self heating SPICE
models goes a lot further back in time than I imagined when I made the
comment. It even includes some basic suggestions for how to do it
longhand with sample networks as requested. It is in Intusofts
newsletter for July 1988!

http://www.intusoft.com/nlpdf/nl10.pdf

For IS-SPICE/386 with the tagline "faster than a VAX 11/780"
(a claim I find rather surprising and a bit unlikely)

Except it's true. Virtually all Spice variants on a modern PC run
much faster, as in at least an order of magnitude, than on a VAX
11/780.

I would never have considered "faster than a VAX 11/780" to be
anything spectacular. VAXen were turtles.

But at that time in 1988 the 386 wasn't all that quick - especially so
on larger problems. In the 1980's VAX 11/780's were the work horse of
quite a few major international astronomical software projects.

The good thing about a 386 PC was that you could leave it running over
the weekend and it was all yours. You tended to get into trouble for
hogging a VAX overnight (although I have done it).

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[[email protected]]

As always you avoid the question.

The EU has a 5.75% bio fuel obligation for 2010 and a 10% bio fuel
obligation for 2020.

You blamed Bush for the US bio fuel plans. Who do blame for the EU
plans?

In fact I blamed US politics - buying votes with special interest tax
breaks and subsidies has such a long history in US politics that
they've got an idiom for it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel

I've not looked into the source of the EU bio-fuel schemes. I'd
suspect French farming interests, as I'd already pointed out in the
post to which are responding.

Which question do you imagine I'm avoiding?

 

[[email protected]]

How well do we know the base line 280ppmv CO2 level?

The figure is based on ice core measurments. These measurements don't
give a point reading per year. The data is more an average over
several years.  The trapped air is from 40 to 80 years after the ice
was formed. It seems reasonable to assume it is actually a mix of air
from when the ice formed to 40 to 80 years later. That's a big time
constant.

What processes can you invent to produce big year-on-year variations
while maintaining a more r less steady 280ppm for the longer-term
level?

How would they affect our interpretation of the current situation?

It is all very well for you to parade some minor fact that you have
dug up from your rather indiscriminate browsing, but if it doesn't
advance the discussion it is a waste of bandwidth.

We have no idea how CO2 varied in the short term historically. There
are chemical measurments from 1810 onwards showing large fluctuations
in atmospheric CO2 although the reliability of this data is
questioned.

Stronger yet, the fluctuations are roughly what you would have
expected, based on the the early work in the late 1950's with
instrumental CO2 detectors which could - for the first time - sample
more or less continuously and show the variation through the day (and
night). The first long term monitoring of CO2 levels was carried out
at Manua Lao and in the Antarctic at locations where precisely this
kind of large local variation wasn't a problem.

 

[Raveninghorde]

What processes can you invent to produce big year-on-year variations
while maintaining a more r less steady 280ppm for the longer-term
level?

I don't need to invent processes. I leave that to the AGW crowd.

How would they affect our interpretation of the current situation?

We currently have a rising CO2 level. The question is is this
atypical? Or has it happened before? If CO2 did vary during the period
where we only know the long term average it would be relevant.

It is all very well for you to parade some minor fact that you have
dug up from your rather indiscriminate browsing, but if it doesn't
advance the discussion it is a waste of bandwidth.

The minor facts I keep digging up, and that you would rather ignore,
do cast doubt on the validity of some of the AGW data.

Yes my browsing is indiscriminate, I even look at realclimate.org.
Unlike you I am actually interested in both sides of the argument.

Stronger yet, the fluctuations are roughly what you would have
expected, based on the the early work in the late 1950's with
instrumental CO2 detectors which could - for the first time - sample
more or less continuously and show the variation through the day (and
night). The first long term monitoring of CO2 levels was carried out
at Manua Lao and in the Antarctic at locations where precisely this
kind of large local variation wasn't a problem.

As you know I have difficulties with the Mauna Loa location but the
overall data is broadly consistent with other sites such as Barrow,
Antartica, and Samoa. Note consistancy and accuracy are different
things, the results could be consistantly wrong, a point you made
about German chemical analysis a while back.

 

[krw]

On Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:24:23 +0000, Martin Brown

[snip]
The oldest reference I can find to lumped thermal and self heating SPICE
models goes a lot further back in time than I imagined when I made the
comment. It even includes some basic suggestions for how to do it
longhand with sample networks as requested. It is in Intusofts
newsletter for July 1988!

http://www.intusoft.com/nlpdf/nl10.pdf

For IS-SPICE/386 with the tagline "faster than a VAX 11/780"
(a claim I find rather surprising and a bit unlikely)
Except it's true. Virtually all Spice variants on a modern PC run
much faster, as in at least an order of magnitude, than on a VAX
11/780.

I would never have considered "faster than a VAX 11/780" to be
anything spectacular. VAXen were turtles.

But at that time in 1988 the 386 wasn't all that quick - especially so
on larger problems. In the 1980's VAX 11/780's were the work horse of
quite a few major international astronomical software projects.

Your point?

The good thing about a 386 PC was that you could leave it running over
the weekend and it was all yours. You tended to get into trouble for
hogging a VAX overnight (although I have done it).

I had no troubles hogging a VAX overnight. That's what it took to
get *anything* done. What a POS.

 

[James Arthur]

[email protected] wrote:

There are biofuels that do make sense - Brazil's ethanol from sugar
cane apparently does reduce fossil carbon emissions - and there
schemes to exploit plants that grow on marginal land (that is useless
for growing food) which make even more sense, if they can be ever made
to work.

This paper cited by Martin in the earlier discussion
says ethanol from cane sugar is a loser too:


http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/Biofuels/NRRethanol.2005.pdf

"[...]sugarcane is a more efficient feedstock for
ethanol production than corn grain (Pimentel and Pimentel,
1996). However, the energy balance was negative[...]

That was true during that period when oil was cheaper. When the price of
oil rises then their C4 sugar cane to ethanol method is reasonable. And
although there are environmental problems with it there is a significant
net energy gain. The Brazilian processes have improved since that paper
was written. The same is not true of ethanol from grain.

That 2005 paper says the sugarcane ethanol energy balance was
negative. So, making it destroys energy while trashing the
environment, and--at least in their case--destroying capital too.
(That paper says the US *subsidy* on corn ethanol was $3/gallon
in 2003.)

Gore's mantra in 1998 was that money and magic would fix the
negative balance. It hasn't.

AFAICT a basic problem with all bioethanol is that, whatever
the feedstock and fermentation process, fermentation stops
around 10% concentration, and it takes 3x distillations to purge
the 90% that's water. Distillation is energy intensive, ergo
the negative energy balance.

Plants capture only about 0.1% of the sun they receive; even
10% efficient photovoltaics are 100x better. Fermenting and
distilling ethanol just makes things worse.

Brazil didn't have than much choice they were short of oil, and foreign
currency to buy it. It wan't about going green it was about running cars
on a domestically manufcactured fuel.

Regards,
Martin Brown

I stand corrected on Brazil's motives. But they're often held
up as an ethanol example to emulate, and they should not be.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Rich Grise]

You wouldn't expect an Aussie to know about beer. Their stuff's just
as bad.

I was in some "rain forest" cafe, and they had Foster's. It was awful.
I also got a grilled salmon fillet, and it tasted exactly like the stuff
that comes in a can.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Rich the Newsgroup Wacko]

.

I find past decade warmer than height of MYP by splicing smoothed
HadCRUT-3 or smoothed HadCRUT-3v (latter is good enough for The Register

The last time I had CRUT, a little penicillin cleared it right up. ;-D

Cheers!
Rich

 

[[email protected]]

It's known that the egghead gets his kicks from issuing warnings about
brick walls on freeways, that the map was printed by an orgnanisation
that has its own motives for pushing the idea that there are brick walls
on freeways, and that if the egghead stopped issuing warnings about
brick walls on freeways, he'd have to get a proper job.

You've pretty much described the denialist camp, but they are the ones
who run around denying that our society is creating a problem for
itself by pumping a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere with such
enthusiasm that we have raised its concentration in the atmosphere by
38% since 1750, with half the rise since 1975.

The people who are telling you about this have pretty much all got
university jobs with tenure, and publish papers on the subject because
they can get them into peer-reviewed journals, which how you progress
in academic life. Every last one of them knows very well that if they
could publish a good paper that genuinely disproved anthropogenic
global warming, they'd become rich and famous.

Quite a few people have published papers aimed at winning this prize,
but none of the papers have turned out to be particularly persuasive.
In fact, most of them have turned out to be total rubbish that should
nevr have got through the refereeing process - the prospect of fame
and fortune is seductive.

 

[bw]

Where do you get that? From provably bad numbers in the "mhieb" site?
From similar bad numbers in the "Great Global Warming Swindle" movie?
(Their errors are in comparing gigatons of carbon from fossil fuel
burning to gigatons of CO2 in the atmosphere, while a CO2 molecule has
3.66 times as much mass as a carbon atom has.)

I mis-spoke, I meant that fossil fuel CO2 is a fraction of the global carbon
cycle.

<SNIP what was said after talking about carbon and CO2>

Atmospheric CO2 gain is actually less than fossil fuel burning would
account for - nature is actually removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

Fossil fuel burning (and cement production) accounts for a goodly 6-plus
gigatons of carbon or 22-plus gigatons of CO2 annually and has done so at
that rate since the mid 1990's, rising to about 7.5 gigatons of carbon
(27.5 gigatons of CO2) annual rate around 2005, with preliminary figures
for 2007 or so getting to about 8 gigatons annual carbon usage (29.3
gigatons annual CO2 contribution).

Atmosphere annual CO2 gain since 1995 has averaged about 4.8 gigatons of
carbon content (17.6 gigatons more CO2 per year).

http://lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk/lequere/co2/carbon_budget.htm

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])

I'll check those numbers. It will take some time to examine the Le Quere
site. Thanks for the link.