NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory Set For Launch Tomorrow 183
bughunter writes "The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) is slated for launch tomorrow, February 24, 2009. OCO is the first earth science observatory that will create a detailed map of atmospheric carbon dioxide sources and sinks around the globe. And not a moment too soon. Popular Mechanics has a concise article on the science that this mission will perform, and how it fits in with the existing 'A-train' of polar-orbiting earth observatories. JPL's page goes into more detail. And NASA's OCO Launch Blog will have continuous updates as liftoff approaches and the spacecraft reports in and checks out from 700km up."
Am i the only one... (Score:5, Funny)
It will be all fine (Score:5, Funny)
War of the Deniers (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoever wins, we lose.
Broad brush (Score:5, Funny)
Very classy there. Oh, sure, go ahead -- lump us in with those two groups of anti-scientific, peer-reviewed-research-denying kooks. But I can assure you, we'll be getting the last laugh when you sail off the edge of the Earth.
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The greatest pain of reading at +4 is that when something like this comes up I can't mod it any higher. I salute you, sir.
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the creationists who believe that man cannot corrupt the Earth since it was created by a loving God
Automatic -5 Flamebait (or something) for me, but being a creationist, I can say that I have never heard of the position you just laid out. Incidentally, as a creationist, I think I actually have more of a reason to care about the earth, as most Christians that believe the book of Genesis will also believe that man was put on the earth as a caretaker of it. That definitely implies using it wisely and not destroying it.
On the other hand, I don't exactly know what obligation I have to do anything for the ea
Re:War of the Deniers (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, I don't exactly know what obligation I have to do anything for the earth if there is no God and I'm a product of evolution.
The earth will be fine. Life will go on, probably with a small loss of diversity (probably won't even register compared to some of the mass extinctions in the past). The motivation is that our actions on this matter may have drastic effects on the living conditions of our children and grandchildren.
Re:War of the Deniers (Score:5, Informative)
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Some of us love our kids, not because some divine entity told us we must, but simply because we love our kids. Anyone that says loving one's children is conditional on a belief in God is a fool or a lier.
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On the other hand, I don't exactly know what obligation I have to do anything for the earth if there is no God and I'm a product of evolution.
Your obligation according to evolution is to maximize the survival of your descendants.
Ruined planet = no descendants, or no descendants of descendants, etc.
No descendants equals evolutionary failure.
So, your obligation is not to screw it up.
Seems obvious?
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But why do I care if my genes are evolutionarily successful?
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As a farther of tow adult childeren and soon to be one grandkid I say you won't know the answer to that until your genes ARE evolutionarily successful.
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That is presuming a fundamental and rather unfounded proposition: that I have a [moral?] obligation to do my best to let my descendants live. Why should I personally care if "evolutionary failure" occurs? I live, I die, and I'm gone from the world. If my descendants die and evolutionary failure occurs... well, that would imply a few things, at least to my mind/amount of education in evolutionary thinking. (1) I and my descendants were not fit to survive, and thus evolution didn't "fail" but rather succe
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If it talks like a Nihilist, smells like a Nihilist and quacks like a Nihilist then it IS a Nihilist.
You're not the first or the last to feel this way. However let's put it like this: estimates are that the changes we are making are so drastic, that YOU, not your children will begin to feel the impacts.
Case in point: current bushfires in Melbourne, Australia. Record heat and drought, predicted by climate models, due to weather pattern changes (man-made or not is irrelevant), has created the worst fire condi
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By time Monday rolled around many in the press where blaming the very people who fortold of such a disater, ie: (rational) environmentalists. One particular anti-science hate m
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If you want to believe there is a "higher authority" that has already done that for you then fine but please refrain from critizing others who find meaning without serving said authority, for that is the sin of arrogance.
An excellent book on the subject is "Unweaving the rainbow" by R. Dawkins. The book quite clearly demonstrates that like most humans, the current king of the Atheists also experiences the feeling that you might desc
Re:War of the Deniers (Score:5, Insightful)
those who don't find the need to protect themselves, their descendants or their environment are going to kill themselves off.
From my point of view as an atheist and a scientist [I am an evolutionist but also a gravityist, relativityist etc...] the answer as to why someone suc has myself would bother helping anyone other than myself is that I feel good doing so. Just as any other normal, rational human being would. Part of the reason why this is the case is because of all of that natural selection combined with genetic change that has been going on for billions of years.. those species that had a tendency to cooperate of their own free will no doubt had an advantage than those who exercised their primitive ignorant self interest instead. This is likely a point you would agree with yes? That voluntary cooperation is better than pure ignorant selfishness? The point is this: cooperative behavior is not dependant on the belief of your subservience to a deity of some sort. It is a rather useful set of adaptive behaviors that assist our species to exist and function normally in society. It is normal for human beings to cooperate because they know that doing so makes them feel good about their actions.
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Why should I personally care if "evolutionary failure" occurs?
If, and only if, you're of the belief that tendencies toward intelligence, altruism, responsibility, etc have absolutely 0% zero none nada no genetic component at all, then thats a perfectly consistent belief. Also have to believe that there is zero none nada social/cultural component that trains those attitudes. Its a pretty peculiar set of beliefs, if you think about it, since it implies that intelligence, altruism, responsibility, etc, for all individuals comes completely independently from "nothing" o
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I don't accept any theistic beliefs, and I do accept the validity of evolutionary theory. I don't recognise any universal, absolute and arbitrary morality. I (like most people I imagine) voluntarily subscribe to a personal ethical framework that I refine and revise the more I experience. Why do I bother? It turns out that I'm not some kind of rapist murdering thief because it's glaringly self evident that that kind of behaviour wouldn't do me any favours. Looking at it from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, it
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Ah, philosophy; always great material for discussions :)
The answer to what you're looking for is "existentialism." Indeed, in a universe without inherent meaning, there is no meaning behind any action. Or any emotion, or anything. If it were to make me "happy" to take care of a child, to what meaning would even that happiness have? None.
But at the same time, if you live in a universe without meaning, what is the meaning of even going on living? None. Of course, there's no meaning to dying, either. Th
Re:War of the Deniers (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't exactly know what obligation I have to do anything for the earth if there is no God and I'm a product of evolution.
Well then you should give that one some thought, since at least the latter half of your statement is undeniably true.
Re:War of the Deniers (Score:5, Informative)
I have never heard quite that argument either, but I have heard the argument that the earth's resources were put here by God for our use and so, well...we'd better get to it! I know I've heard Mitt Romney say that, and I think (without much evidence) it is actually a relatively mainstream Mormon position.
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Well, to expound a bit on the Biblical principle there... the actual idea is that yes, the earth's resources were put here by God for our use but we were put here to care for it... or, in Christian lingo, to be stewards of it. And, obviously, the idea is to be a good steward, not a bad steward.
It's not so much a mainstream Mormon position as a literal-Genesis position, whether that's in a mainstream Christian church, Mormon group, Catholic church, conservative church, evangelical Christian church, etc.
Actu
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Interesting. Thanks. (I'd mod you as such if I could)
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The "intelligent design" advocates are a related problem, since their argument is "it's all too hard to understand, the God ate my homework". Unfortunately people that take a very simplistic veiw of faith object strongly to those that want to find out how
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On the other hand, I don't exactly know what obligation I have to do anything for the earth if there is no God and I'm a product of evolution.
Your existence is due to the efforts of others, intelligent and not. You decide how much of an obligation that means you owe. Society will impose its own obligations on you. Any gods that happen to exist might attempt to impose their own as well.
Having said that, the grand parent has some absurd and useless caricatures.
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Well, let's see here. Seems most parents get divorced these days, most kids pretty much hate their parents for ~20 years...
Hmmm. I'm not seeing much of a reason to leave the world a better place than I found it.
Realize, though, that I am arguing from an attempt at looking at the world without presuppositions. I have them. You have them. In fact, I would venture to say that most of American's presuppositions about morality, ethics, etc., actually come more from my worldview than their claimed worldview.
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I'm cool with offtopic conversations... :D
Does it mean that if their faith falters, they will go on a rampage. No more than anyone else who has a breakdown in their worldview. And no more of a rampage than those who don't believe that God is watching or that they are accountable to God for what they do, right? If they suddenly decide they aren't accountable to God (that is not to say they actually are or aren't, they have just decided it in their own minds) and go on a rampage, then they will only be hel
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Ah, did not catch the irony... but I still disagree that I don't think that's what a lot of Theists believe. I suppose some do. I can't speak for everyone, obviously, that believes in God. As far as what I think would happen, though... I already explained the rampage thing. I think a lot of 'religious' people do believe that morality and ethics will slowly degrade into very base and behavior. From a Biblical standpoint, this is essentially prophesied. From a more philosophical standpoint, when the onl
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It scares me too, because that is not Christianity is all about though many people think so. As a Christian, I love because God first loved me. God loves each of us even though we have messed up our lives and this world we live in. It is out of gratitude for what Jesus did for all of us I try to live a life worthy of him. I am not better than anybody else. I am not perfect. I am just thankful for what God through Jesus has done fo
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I may be wrong, but it looks like to me from your response that you are concerned about Christianity. Do you feel Christianity is wrong and somehow harmful to society? If so how? Or did you have a bad experience?
If God does not exist, then why should you worry about a few do-gooders that follow Jesus? Reality is Christians are a minority in America though many people will say they are Christian and yet they really don't have a clue of what the Christian faith is all about. Unfortunately they have som
It's All Magic Anyhow! (Score:5, Interesting)
Its interesting that no matter how much knowledge, data, statistics, etc, are gathered, there will always be those that are never convinced. Be the subject, evolution, global warming, or that the earth is round.
I can find people that will vehemently deny the validity of all three of the above. Sometimes you just want to throw your hands up in the air and quit trying.
My favorite one in the right here and now is "Clean Coal" - Well, if you want to convince us that coal is clean energy, then why don't you build a clean coal plant, and let people come in and measure and analyze your work? If they can demonstrate just one "Clean Coal" plant, then that would be worth more than the tens of millions of dollars put into advertising for clean coal. Sorry, but when this OCO gets running its going to be interesting to see the patterns and observations received on the coal plants spewing CO2, NOx, trace Mercury, Sulfur, and other goodies into the air.
But that doesn't mean it will convince some people...
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Can we add a new corollary to Godwin's Law?
Ignorance Really Is Bliss (Score:2, Interesting)
Its interesting that no matter how much knowledge, data, statistics, etc, are gathered, there will always be those that are never convinced. Be the subject, evolution, global warming, or that the earth is round.
What you don't understand, as you triumph evolution or the round earth, is how many times scientists have been WRONG. Before the earth was round, it was flat, it's been shaped like a disk. It's been hollow, filled with magma, it's had a liquid core, a solid core, and now it might have two cores orb
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"Before the earth was round, it was flat, it's been shaped like a disk."
The idea that 'people in the past thought the Earth was flat' is an invention of the 20th century. Stephen Jay Gould has an excellent article discussing this fact. The Egyptians, Greeks, Incas, etc all had a very good idea about the shape of the earth. Using it as an ad-hominem is ironic.
I think as far as the scientific method goes, it is almost always better to be a denier then a cheerleader.
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The thing that Gould missed was that yeah, some smart people, were clued into the Earth being round, but by and large most people were pretty stupid. I mean, before we go and bestow great piles of brains on our middle ages ancestors, we do need to be reminded that even some of the kings could not read. Like some Vikings, they were going to sail off the edge of the planet...
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The basic tennet of the philosophy of science is scientists are never "right", the basic tennet of Bush was that he was ne
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The Core II: Raping Science Harder
Coming this summer!
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Your post amounts to one very long winded series of straw men and non-sequiters.
Before the earth was round, it was flat, it's been shaped like a disk. It's been hollow, filled with magma, it's had a liquid core, a solid core, and now it might have two cores orbiting each other.
what you've very neatly laid out there is the progression of scientific knowledge gradually refining the consensus towards something more and more accurate. Notice how that sequence didn't go "first it flat then it was round then it
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Considering how often knowledge, data, and statistics have changed fundamentally the way we understand various subjects over the millenia why is it that you think now we have all of it correct? Not that I think the earth is flat, cool, and 10,000 years old, but get some perspective.
Re:It's All Magic Anyhow! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm usually too disgusted by these threads on Slashdot to post anymore. This time I'm posting rather early in hopes that at least a few people will read this.
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People on Slashdot throwing around the word "denialist" is starting to annoy me now though. What, was heretic too strong of a word for you?
We call them "denialists" because it's an accurate description of their ideology: deny, deny, deny, no matter what the evidence says. They're not "heretics" because there's no holy doctrine for them to deviate from. They like to call themselves "skeptics," but that's not really accurate either, because "skeptic" implies that although you may be very dubious about a pr
It's only magic if you don't ask about the tricks (Score:2)
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My favorite one in the right here and now is "Clean Coal" - Well, if you want to convince us that coal is clean energy, then why don't you build a clean coal plant, and let people come in and measure and analyze your work? If they can demonstrate just one "Clean Coal" plant, then that would be worth more than the tens of millions of dollars put into advertising for clean coal.
There's no such thing as clean coal, because even if it didn't release tons of CO2 (hint: "clean" coal doesn't reduce CO2 emissions, just all the other kinds) you'd still have to mine it and that is a horribly environmentally negative process.
We can ALREADY find smokestacks spewing out more than they are permitted to as quickly as we can pay people to climb them and stick probes in the smoke. The real issue is deciding to do something about it.
First observation (Score:2, Insightful)
OCO being the rough shape of CO2 :) (Score:5, Insightful)
Anthropogenic CO2 maps (Score:2, Interesting)
Launch failed (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/oco/main/index.html [nasa.gov]
Ohwell...?
Anyone Else Surprised? (Score:2)
Did this fail because they wanted it to fail, or because NASA couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a bass fiddle?
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"Fairing failed to separate"???
This is one of the most basic pieces on a launch vehicle. Even SpaceX can get this part right.
Wonder what the turnaround time on a new satellite is. Obviously this would be insured.
This will be a BIG impact on orbital (Score:2)
It Just Crashed.... (Score:2)
Launch Failed this morning. Fairing around satellite failed to separate and it went into the ocean down near the Antarctic.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/02/24/nasa.launch/index.html [cnn.com]
Re:What Are They Gonna Say? (Score:5, Insightful)
I presume by "they", you mean atmospheric scientists? Presumably, they'd follow the scientific method and adjust their theories to fit the new data.
If by "they" you mean career warming deniers, then they will use it as "evidence" when they go on talk shows and sell their newest book to the ignorant on the internet.
If you fall into the latter camp, I wouldn't get your hopes up.
Deniers will use any discrepancy. (Score:2, Interesting)
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Everyone follows the scientific method. (Score:3, Interesting)
presume by "they", you mean atmospheric scientists? Presumably, they'd follow the scientific method and adjust their theories to fit the new data.
Or, they would have just been wrong. Hansen, Gore, etc, wrong. Just like everyone else who gets up on the soap box, makes a statement about the universe, and comes back down smacked down by reality. Wrong.
If you fall into the latter camp, I wouldn't get your hopes up.
Hey, I'm hanging onto my lack of sunspots. 2008 came in cooler, and we'll see how 2009 does.
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Being an armchair scientist can be fun, but why in the world do you think that all the scientists have missed something so simple as the effect of the sun on global warming? Do you really think that almost every scientist is hopelessly corrupt? Can you imagine something similar in any other occupation?
I would also
It's pretty simple (Score:2)
Being an armchair scientist can be fun, but why in the world do you think that all the scientists have missed something so simple as the effect of the sun on global warming
I would say its pretty simple. There's not actually that many scientists that are building climate simulation engines and the result is so vague that it is easy to experimentally verify. The basic output is that the earth is getting warmer since the industrial revolution coincident with a rise in CO2, and that really means, to people in
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Or, they would have just been wrong.
Of course they are "wrong", in the same sense that Newton or Darwin were "wrong". Science is no fun at all if we have all of the answers. In fact, it would be completely obsolete. Science is just a method used to try to understand nature. Climate science is young, and it's only been in the last decade that any real consensus has arisen regarding global warming.
2008 came in cooler, and we'll see how 2009 does.
That's not considered to be a long-term trend. Look at the data from the past 100 years... lots of down years, yet the general trend is upward.
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Presumably, they'd follow the scientific method and adjust their theories to fit the new data.
Just like Mann et al did when it turned out some of their tree ring proxies were problematic, and it only took them a decade to replace them with better ones, which produced a conclusion that was similar to but far less sound-bite-worthy than the original.
This is the way science actually works: people generally defend their favoured belief kicking and screaming until they are absolutely forced to give it up. To s
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There are plenty of reasons to be sceptical about climate science
Well, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the exact numbers and timelines that their models come up with, but I don't think that there are any serious detractors in the scientific community to the basic concept of anthropogenic warming... most of the debate revolves around data and the models - will the warming be 2 degrees or 5 degrees in 100 years... not, will there be warming.
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Because the models can be made better?? When the models can predict sea level rise to the nearest mm in each region of the globe, the exact quantity of ice during the winter of 2094, or the new ocean currents after a 3 degree rise in average temperature, there will still be improvements that can be made.
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I doubt these models. Computer models predicted that the financial crash would never happen. The derivatives were just too advanced to ever possibly crash, right?
[citation needed]
Look at the weatherman. He has a hard time predicting rain 48 hours from now. You think you really know anything about the weather 50 years from now? Give me an f'in break.
It is not unreasonable to predict with a high degree of certainty that a person who drives to work will arrive on time and without incident when required. This should be true three years from now, as well as ten years from now. This assumes that the individual is not fired or does not lose their job some other way. However, one can predict that isolated events will occur in ten years, traffic accidents, unusually slow traffic, or their car not starting due to a -35 deg F morning. What y
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In regards to Global Warming, I think we need to look at the ocean floor. Some seashells contain carbon records that are quite contradictory to the ice core measurements Gore hyped up.
Sign of a climate crackpot: he brings Al Gore into the discussion as if he's relevant to the science.
But go ahead, please explain what ocean cores are inconsistent with the ice core record of the glacial-interglacial cycles. (Also explain why ocean cores are more reliable than ice cores, considering that ice cores actually store trapped atmospheric gas.)
There are astronomical functions that researchers are blowing off. The Earth's axis shift (precession), the earth's elliptical degree of orbit, and the sun's position in galactic space all play roles in the climate cycle.
Researchers aren't blowing off orbital factors. The Milankovitch cycles are far too slow to act appreciably on century timescales. As for the Sun's posi
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Seeing everything as a dichotomy = your problem. A lot of others suffer from the same disease.
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If NASA suddenly spotted a large asteroid and told us that there was a 85% chance of it hitting earth, would that make them "nuts"?
This isn't some crazy dude sitting in a basement reading tea leaves... and while the science isn't as solid as using telescopes to predict orbits as in my analogy, the science is getting pretty darned good.
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The article clearly states that the scientist can only find 40% of the carbon in the atmosphere that they were expecting.
That's not true. It says that only 40% of our emissions remain in the atmosphere, and the land and oceans take up the rest. Scientists knew that, and they also know the rough partitioning: about 25% go in to the land and 25% into the water. (The article clearly states that about half of the remaining 60%, or 30%, goes into the oceans.) But there's still uncertainty in the total sink; the land sink might be a little bit larger than that, or the ocean sink smaller. That's one of the questions OCO is sup
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Your "genuine feelings" are exactly what science is supposed to address. If the sunspot theory has any merit, then a proponent of the theory will create a model that fits existing data well. To my knowledge, this has not occurred and so I still consider it conjecture.
Someone else already addressed your misunderstanding of the 40% "missing" carbon.
Re:What Are They Gonna Say? (Score:5, Informative)
Stop and figure out which one is right, just like when the satellite troposphere temperature data disagreed with everything else. But the main point of this mission is to gather new data that can't readily be collected from the ground.
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I dunno. What will the climate change critics do when it shows that the theories are spot on?
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Most of the life on earth today is evolved for the current conditions, not the conditions that existed when that carbon as sequestered from the environment. At a minimum going back to those levels of CO2 would be uncomfortable. Studies have shown that when the CO2 level in a room is 1000 ppm then over 20% of people feel discomfort from it. With business as usual we could reach that level around 2100.
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Whoa, dude, you just freed my mind.
We could totally turn the oceans back into primordial soup, man. It'll still be all the same, right? Better maybe - we could all be trippin on our oceans of carbonic acid, and snorting ammonia. Transcendental Peace, brother.
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I know where it went; it is called the carbon cycle. All that CO2 is either in the oceans, in plants/animals and in the air as CO2. I just saved you $273 million dollars, and I take a 10% cut. Check please.
The point is to know precisely where it's going, to know how much its future capacity to soak carbon will be. For example, here's a known case: the oceans. Since we know that a lot of it is going to the oceans, and how much, we can determine what it's carbon soaking capacity will be in the future as it
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Assuming all the free carbon in the cycle now was available then; wouldn't the amount of CO2 in the air 100's of millions of years ago been far greater than it is today?
An answer to that question can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_Earth's_atmosphere [wikipedia.org]
Changes in carbon dioxide during the Phanerozoic (the last 542 million years). The recent period is located on the left-hand side of the plot, and it appears that much of the last 550 million years has experienced carbon dioxide concentrations significantly higher than the present day.
We are adding it back quickly; but bringing it to levels where it previously has been. An we went through ice ages AND heat spells then. Are we really changing anything?
I am going to paraphrase your question:
It gets warm in the
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I hope you're right. If the climate in the future is cooler, I would admit that global warming does not seem to be caused by greenhouse gasses. I wonder if you will admit you're wrong if the climate does keep warming. If there's less Arctic ice in twenty years than there is today, will you admit it?
The earth may get cooler but that would NOT be evidence that greenhouse gases had no warming effect, just as a warming earth is not evidence of a greenhouse gas warming effect. The temperature change, by itself
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I'm not assuming anything. One person made a prediction that the Earth will get cooler, based on the natural cycle global warming hypothesis. I asked if that didn't happen, would he admit he was wrong. I predict that the Earth will get warmer, based on the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. If the Earth gets colder, I will freely admit I was wrong.
It's called the scientific method. You know, use hypotheses to make predictions, then see which prediction matches our observations.
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No, I did not assume the climate model would cause warming. How can a model cause warming anyway? I used the hypothesis that excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause warming, which is the consensus among climatologists. If the predicted warming is not observed, I will admit that the hypothesis does not seem to be accurate.
My question is simply if the cooling predicted by the OP is not observed, is he willing to admit that his hypothesis might be wrong. It's very simple. Two predictions from the hy
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Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has increased from 290 ppm in pre-industrial times to 365 ppm today and that increase is NOT having a significant effect on climate.
Day length has increased from 9.2 hours on the Solstice to 12.5 hours today and that increase is NOT having a significant effect on weather. February tends to be colder than December even though the days are longer. Is this evidence that the seasons are not caused by the Earth's position with respect to the Sun?
Re:CO2 not a killer gas (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems impossible to have any reasoned discussion about carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has increased from 290 ppm in pre-industrial times to 365 ppm today and that increase is NOT having a significant effect on climate.
Oh really? [duke.edu]
In the 'global warming' scenario, short wavelength radiation from the sun passes through the atmosphere and warms the earth. The warmed earth then re-radiates long-wavelength infra-red radiation back into space, or at least tries to but is allegedly stopped by carbon dioxide. So...what's wrong with this? CO2 absorbs infra-red radiation in only a narrow wavelength band and it will not absorb any infra-red radiation with a wavelength outside of its absorption band. There is already far more CO2 in the atmosphere than is needed to effectively absorb ALL infra-red radiation in the CO2 absorption band. (A much bigger absorber of infra-red radiation in the atmosphere is...water vapor...but that's another movie.)
Sorry, but you should really start reading peer-reviewed research and stop listening to viscounts. First off, for something to be a greenhouse gas, it *needs* to be selective on what it blocks. An optimal greenhouse gas is *transparent* to light in the visible and near-IR spectrum, and *opaque* to far-IR. You need to let the sun's energy in (mostly visible and near-IR) while making it harder for what the Earth radiates (mostly far-IR) out. A gas that blocks everything evenly is not a greenhouse gas.
Secondly, your argument is akin to saying that if a reflective blanket keeps 95% of your heat in, putting another reflective blanket around you won't help much. Earth is not a simple physics problem with a surface, a single one-pass medium, and an energy input. Light is constantly absorbed and re-radiated all throughout the atmosphere. The upper layers are colder than the upper layers. The higher the absorption of far-IR, the slower energy can transfer from the lower layers to the upper layers; the lower the absorption of near-IR and visible, the faster energy can transfer from the upper layers to the surface (or even straight to the surface). In short, until a 10-meter or so column of atmosphere can absorb 95%, increasing CO2 levels is a *major* impactor on surface temperature.
Lastly, water vapor is 100% feedback, not forcing. Water vapor has a tiny residency in the atmosphere (days), while CO2 has a long residency (hundreds of years). Any disequilibrium in water vapor is rapidly remedied. Now, on *geological time scales*, CO2 is feedback, mostly to Milankovitch cycles. But that's on the scale of tens of thousands of years.
The effect of increasing CO2 concentration is therefore only to cause absorption to occur at a slightly lower altitude in the atmosphere and after carbon dioxide absorbs infra-red radiation, it quickly collides with nearby, and far more abundant, oxygen and nitrogen molecules, transferring heat to them. These then re-radiate heat out into space.
Wow, was the person you read that from a comedian or just an idiot? CO2 is perfectly capable of radiating IR. *All* objects in the universe are. It doesn't matter whether it's CO2, O2, N2, or what. There are different spectral lines (rather than a perfect blackbody), but it's not a practical distinction. The energy can be radiated in any direction -- up or down. It's almost invariably reabsorbed unless it's in the outermost fringes of the atmosphere. As mentioned before, the more transparent the atmosphere is to "incoming" radiation types, the faster solar energy can migrate to the surface. The less transparent it is to "outgoing" types, the slower far-IR energy can migrate away from the surface. I can make you a drawing or a rudimentary python script to illustrate this concept if you're still having trouble with it.
So...if carbon dioxide is not changing our climate, what is? Look to the Sun
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The upper layers are colder than the upper layers.
Erm, colder than the *lower* layers.
the lower the absorption of near-IR and visible, the faster energy can transfer from the upper layers to the surface or even straight to the surface
Poorly phrased; most visible and IR energy makes it direct to the surface (~1400W/m^2 arrives, ~1000W/m^2 hits a perpendicular plane on the surface on a clear day). And it's not such a simple correlation of altitude and temperature as I presented it for simplicity. That rel
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Poorly phrased; most visible and IR energy makes it direct to the surface
Most of the radiation with a wavelength in the visible portion of the spectrum makes it to the surface. However, the CO2 in the atomosphere would absorb infra-red radiation in its absorption spectrum regardless of whether it is coming from the sun or the earth. However, the sun is not a source of infra-red radiation, for obvious reasons.
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The sun is a strong source of near-IR. It's not a very good source of far-IR. Image. [georgetown.edu]
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But that's all beside the point; the fact is that for energy to escape from Earth's surface, it has to be absorbed and reradiated many times. Increasing the CO2 concentration significantly increases the expected number of times to be re-radiated.
No, it doesn't. The only 'energy' that would be absorbed would be that which had a wavelength lying within the absorption spectra of a 'greenhouse' gas such as H2O, CO2, CH4, or O3. The re-radiated infra-red radiation would mostly be outside of those spectra and
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The re-radiated infra-red radiation would mostly be outside of those spectra
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The frequencies which energy gets radiated is largely due to its temperature. Now, it will be concentrated within the spectral lines of a given material, but the general distribution still roughly follows the blackbody curve for that temperature. You don't have -20 degree gasses radiating visible or near-IR light (the main relevant transparent bands in the atmosphere) in any relevant quantities.
Learn. [wikipedia.org]
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Oh really?
Pointing to temperature change as evidence of a CO2 effect is circular reasoning.
An optimal greenhouse gas is *transparent* to light in the visible and near-IR spectrum, and *opaque* to far-IR. You need to let the sun's energy in (mostly visible and near-IR) while making it harder for what the Earth radiates (mostly far-IR) out. A gas that blocks everything evenly is not a greenhouse gas.
Water vapor is a greenhouse gas and a much stronger one than CO2.
In short, until a 10-meter or so column of a
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Pointing to temperature change as evidence of a CO2 effect is circular reasoning.
No, it's a direct counter to your claims of there not being any effect.
Water vapor is a greenhouse gas and a much stronger one than CO2
Did you even read my post? Water vapor has such a short atmospheric residency that it can only act as feedback, not forcing. And water vapor's net results are actually mixed, depending on where it is in the atmosphere, as clouds reflect sunlight.
A '10-meter' column of atmosphere is an insignif
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Pointing to temperature change as evidence of a CO2 effect is circular reasoning because the assumptions in that conclusion are that the CO2 effect would manifest itself as a temperature change and that the only cause of such a temperature would be the CO2 effect. Google on 'circular reasoning' for more information.
Water vapor has such a short atmospheric residency...
Water does not have a 'short' atmospheric residency. It is ALWAYS present in the atmosphere. And no, that is not a non-sequitur but is appa
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Pointing to temperature change as evidence of a CO2 effect is circular reasoning
It is not circular reasoning. It's how inductive science works. "Hypothesis X predicts we will observe effect Y. Alternate hypotheses W predict different effects Z. We observe Y, but not Z. This observation is evidence in favor of hypothesis X, and does not support alternate hypotheses W."
Water does not have a 'short' atmospheric residency.
Water molecules do have a short atmospheric residency.
It is ALWAYS present in the atmosphere.
That does not contradict the preceding statement.
Both water and carbon dioxide are constantly cycling in and out of the atmosphere, including from your body. That has absolutely nothing to do with the alleged effect of a longterm change in their average atmospheric concentration on the global climate unless you're trying to build a strawman.
Yes, it does have to do with the long term accumulation of gases. CO2 remains in the atmosphere for much longer
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"Pointing to temperature change as evidence of a CO2 effect is circular reasoning"
It is not circular reasoning. It's how inductive science works. "Hypothesis X predicts we will observe effect Y. Alternate hypotheses W predict different effects Z. We observe Y, but not Z. This observation is evidence in favor of hypothesis X, and does not support alternate hypotheses W."
So, to use your inductive science model, my hypothesis is that washing my car will cause it to rain. I washed the car yesterday and...gues
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Atmospheric mixing is not instant. You may have noticed that our atmosphere is not a uniform temperature. Both convection and radiation play important roles in atmospheric heat transfer.
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>So...if carbon dioxide is not changing our climate, what is? Look to the Sun.
Yes, and in particular look at the direct measurements of solar output outside the atmosphere since 1978 [noaa.gov]. Look at whether there's a trend, and look at how the current numbers compare with the numbers from the first measurements. Then look at what average temperature has been doing over the same time span.
Look to the research on proxy measurements of solar activity going back 250 years. Look at the upper bound it sets on the fra
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Yes, and in particular look at the direct measurements of solar output outside the atmosphere since 1978.
You apparently have not actually looked at the solar data but, if you did, you would see that the data is compiled by eight different platforms since 1978, the newest of which is SORCE, the solar irradiance has generally declined, and is now at the lowest levels measured. The ACRIM platform website (www.acrim.com) puts it thusly: "TSI monitoring, cosmogenic isotope analyses and correlative climate dat
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It seems impossible to have any reasoned discussion about carbon dioxide.
You're not contributing to the reasoned discussion here.
Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has increased from 290 ppm in pre-industrial times to 365 ppm today and that increase is NOT having a significant effect on climate.
A large amount of science disagrees with you. (And by the way, it's more like 388 ppm today.)
There is already far more CO2 in the atmosphere than is needed to effectively absorb ALL infra-red radiation in the CO2 absorption band.
This is false, and is directly contradicted by the line-by-line radiative transfer codes which calculate this absorption (e.g., MODTRAN [uchicago.edu]), as well as actual spectral measurements of increasing IR saturation in the CO2 bands (e.g., here [nature.com]).
In particular, this [slashdot.org] response to another poster is also false: "The re-radiated infra-red radiation would mostly be outside of
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Hmm. Lets think polar ice cap. 365 ppm / 290 ppm * 273 Celsius gives us 343 Celsius.
The unstated assumption being that temperature is a linear function of CO2 concentration. Any particular reason why that should be true ?