Pointing out bullshit is not very convincing.
the original conjecture in context is that some few parts in 10,000 increase from anthropogenic CO2 sources will raise global temperature several degrees.
Now see, this is nonsense. That can be observed. And has been observed. Both in real time and in the geological record.
You can check it yourself. Take a glass box of air. Shine a light on it. Measure the temperature. Raise the CO2 level some. Measure the temperature again. It will be higher. Those experiments were done over a century ago. This isn't new science.
You are being distracted by the fact the concentrations are low. And you, in your ignorance, can't really believe that it would make a difference. But it does. Let me break it down into simple concepts. Which you seem to need.
Think of it this way. If the Earth had no atmosphere, its average temperature would be below 0 degrees C. Sort of like the Moon.But it isn't. It is something like 15 degrees C. That difference is caused by the greenhouse gasses. Of which CO2 is one of them. Now granted, things like water vapor is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. And there is more of it. But, and this is an important point, the amount of water vapor in the air is a function of the temperature. So it doesn't change unless the temperature goes up. So, what happens when you increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere? The temperature goes up. What happens when the temperature goes up? The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere goes up. What happens when the amount of water vapor goes up. What happens when the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere goes up?
See where this is going? Now the model is more complex than this. But this is the basics. One thing not mentioned is when the temperature goes up, the atmosphere expands. That increases the volume of the atmosphere and that increases the amount of heat that gets radiated. So things eventually reach equilibrium at a higher temperature.
That is the basic science here. Each of those components can be and have been measured. You don't need a complicated computer model for that. However, if you want to understand what happens when the CO2 level reaches a particular level, that is where the complicated computer model comes in. Because there are a lot of factors in play. We are in an interglacial. That means we are between glacial periods. And that means the climate is unstable and, more importantly, there is an awful lot of stored carbon in various forms throughout the system. If the past few cycles are any guide, we probably should be headed back to a glacial period. And, in fact, there are reasons to believe that we would, in fact, be headed there if we hadn't of discovered the knack of extracting and burning fossil carbon. So, crisis averted. Time to party!
But, there is a fly in the ointment. What happens if we jostle the temperature higher than it is now? Just a couple of degrees? It seems that there is not only the already discussed mechanisms in play. There is a lot of carbon stored in various forms across the globe. Some of it is all the plant matter that got covered with the ice that is now melting and the plant matter that accumulated in the tundra. When it gets exposed and dries out, it gets oxidized by the atmosphere. That means carbon in it gets turned into, you guessed it, CO2.
But wait, there is more! There are things called "bogs". These are great carbon sinks themselves. It seems that, as the area they are in warms, they tend to dry out. And when they dry out, the carbon in them turns into,,,
Well, you know. But, we aren't finished here. Certain types of bacteria can produce methane. If there is water present and temperature and pressure is right, chlathrates are formed. Which is methane getting trapped in an ice matrix. This can occur in pipelines and makes the engineers very unhappy when they do. This regularly happens in tundra and in the oceans. Over time, quite a bit of it can and has built up. Now, what happens when a chlathrate is pushed outside of its pressure and temperature envelope where it is stable? It releases the methane rather violently. There are these mysterious holes that have been popping up in Siberia where great plugs of earth get farted out of the ground because of this.
sciencealert.com
Now methane is a really, really potent greenhouse gas. Fortunately, it is only resident in the atmosphere for a few decades to a couple of centuries before it oxidizes into...
And then there are the oceans. They store an awful lot of CO2. The thing about water and dissolved gases is that the warmer it gets, the less gas it can hold. Which is why things like Cokes get bottled as close to freezing as they can get it.
So that is what the models are for. To get some idea of what temperature we will have at a given concentration. To be honest, they don't model all of what I detailed here. So they are to be considered conservative, with a surprise upside.
Unless you understand these issues, and you clearly do not, you don't really have an opinion worth considering on climate change. You are just cold, stone ignorant and the poster boy for Dunning Kruger. |
