The data I find for air composition is 0.04% CO2 and 3% water vapor. One particular number I came across was that considering water vapor as a greenhouse gas, anthropogenic CO2 makes up very little of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. I think it was less than 1%, but unfortunately, I don't remember exactly where I came across the number.
Whoops! You're right, the concentration of water is greater than the concentration of carbon dioxide. I had their relationship mixed up. Carbon dioxide is more potent, but present in lower concentration, whereas water is present in higher concentrations but is less potent.
Anyways, what are your thoughts on solar causation?
Possible, but the sun changes on much larger timeframes than the atmosphere does. It would take time on the order of thousands of years at the minimum for solar changes to take effect, while the changes that we're seeing now have been localized to only the past two centuries.
Weird, isn't it water vapor that has the greatest greenhouse effect of all greenhouse gases?
Per mole, that is in fact the case. Carbon dioxide is less potent as a greenhouse gas than methane, nitrous oxide, or cfc-II as well.
However, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is much higher than the concentrations of these other gases. Since absorbance is directly proportional to concentration (according to Beer's law, absorbance = concentration x distance radiation travels x absorption coefficient), the total absorbance of CO2 in the air is more than the total absorbance of any other gas.
In addition, it should be noted that humans are also the source of methane, nitrous oxide, and cfc-II, especially the last one, which is entirely anthropogenic. We may also be causing the atmospheric water vapor concentrations to increase, since any heating we cause through the emissions of other greenhouse gases will cause more water to evaporate from the oceans, becoming water vapor. There is not yet sufficient information to support that last hypothesis (so far as I know), but it makes sense from a theoretical standpoint.
The workings of nature are, as I see it, all about evolution towards a highly adapted organism, often more and more complex. My morality is to allow evolution to continue, that is, to allow life to experience extinction and extinction events for the benefit of the future of life, rather than hold onto our own life to the exclusion of all else.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Evolution is NOT about progress. It is NOT about making things better. There is no Gaia using evolution and natural selection to make life better/more complex/more intelligent.
Evolution is defined as a change in gene frequency over time. Any basic biology textbook will tell you, quite clearly, that this change is essentially random. You seem to be laboring under the impression that we are hindering some primeval force by preventing our own extinction, when nothing could be further from the truth.
The speech was, in large part, about the frightening lack of care for fact in our society. We want to act now to save the environment when we don't have a good knowledge of it. A great example is when the US National Parks Service stopped all forest fires, to well-known disaster.
We don't look into the facts, we don't examine the science for ourselves - trusting the experts to do it for us - and then demand action. When I looked into the science of it, I found most everyone didn't offer the facts, and what facts were offered don't really line up or don't cover the whole thing.
You seem to be ignoring the theory behind evolutionary biology. I hesitate to say facts, since we don't know for sure, but that theory is our current best guess, and is backed up by a plethora of evidence. What you are using instead of that educated guess is a pseudo-druidic dogma of "improving life in general" that is entirely unsubstantiated by data.
Here is one set of points to prove that will convince me that my ideas are wrong (not the only possible path): show that people are a major contributor to CO2 (I ceded as much for the sake of this debate), show that CO2 is the predominant cause of global warming, show that global warming has catastrophic results, show that catastrophe to be bad, and finally, show that catastrophe to be preventable.
I thought I had done so, but ok.
I believe I have presented sufficient data for the first point, so I'll ask you to refer back to my last post.
As for point 2, let me explain the science. Experimentally, it can be shown that CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and cfc-II are all transparent to solar radiation, which is primarily short-wavelength, high-energy radiation. To do this, do UV-vis spectroscopy. This is performed by taking a sample of one of these gases, putting it in a cuvette, and shining energy through it. Measure how much energy goes through the cuvette and emerges from the other side, and you will see how much is absorbed by the gas. In the case of solar radiation, practically none of the energy is absorbed.
Now, when the solar radiation hits the ground, it is absorbed by the Earth. It is later re-radiated as infrared energy, or heat. This is where it is trapped by the greenhouse gases. We can experimentally determine how much heat is trapped by each gas in a manner similar to how we determined how much solar radiation was trapped. We put some of the gas in a cuvette and put infrared energy through it. We measure how much comes back out the other side, and we will see how much was absorbed by the gas. This time, we will find that the amount absorbed by the greenhouse gases is substantial. We can even find out how much changes in concentration affect the absorption, by adjusting the concentration of gas in the cuvette.
Using this, we can see how much heat is being trapped worldwide by carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and cfc-11, since we know the concentration of these gases in the atmosphere, as well as the volume of the atmosphere. From that, we can see how much each gas is contributing to the warming effect, and that carbon dioxide is the primary cause of warming.
I'll leave the rest up to others, but I hope I've made the science here clear.
First point: If one values human life as the only important life, certainly these things have negative effects and we should prevent them if possible. But to get to that point, you have to show that climate change is not inevitable.
With a longer view that does not hold this value, this is irrelevant as it benefits life in general.
Of COURSE climate change is inevitable. The climate changes every year, back and forth as the result of the Earth being tilted with respect to the sun. Rapid, directional climate change such as that currently going on is not inevitable.
Second point: That analogy almost works, except it assumes we can stop climate change. I assume we cannot. So my argument is more like telling someone with intractable hiccups that don't respond to medical treatment to learn to cope as it isn't going away, or telling someone with a terminal illness to enjoy what remains of their life and to set their affairs in order.
So much more easily avoided? In what way is preventing climate change easier than preparing civilization for it?
If you assume you cannot stop the climate change, you are condemning us to living with it. And it is preventable. If we reduce our carbon emissions, natural processes can begin to take the carbon in the air and return it to the ground. But that can't happen unless we take action.
Third point: We're operating under different sets of morals. You argue that as we're human, humans are the only lifeforms of importance (and, of course, those other lifeforms we depend on). I argue that we should value the progression of all life above any single species. Thus, unless one of us will accept the other's values, which I don't see much hope for, we are at an impasse - just as my arguments fail under your values, your arguments fail under mine.
My morals, if you wish to call them that, are far more practical and scientific than yours. I can point to some global process and say, with a fair degree of certainty, whether that process will help humans or harm humans. Can you do the same?
Fourth point: As the vast majority of CO2 in the air is not anthropogenic, assuming CO2 causes warming, this warming is not chiefly anthropogenic. The point here is that this supports my idea that climate change is inevitable.
Your fallacy here is that you are saying that an increase in warming is being caused by stable levels of CO2. Certainly, the majority of atmospheric CO2 is natural. However, the rate of INCREASE in CO2 over the past 150 years is decidedly unnatural. If you dispute that, it is quite easy to show. Atmospheric carbon has high levels of carbon-14 and carbon-13 isotopes relative to fossil fuel carbon, since carbon from fossil fuels has been dead for a long time, whereas carbon in the atmosphere is more recently released from living organisms. Over the past 150 years, the concentration of these carbon isotopes in the atmosphere has been steadily decreasing, indicating that more and more of the carbon is coming from fossil fuel combustion.
Prizm: I'd like you to explain how climate change will hurt our species, how that means we should focus on stopping global warming rather than focus on an ability to adapt to climate change, and how this is a reason to act against it if it's not in the best interests of life in general. Sorry about my mistake in the case of the peppered moth, I'd assumed it would only be brought up if destroyed through the use of fossil fuels. Now I'm just baffled as to why it was brought up at all.
Don't you find it significant that 85% of CO2 in the air is not anthropogenic?
Climate change will hurt our species because:
1. It will result in more extreme weather patterns, causing stronger storms, stronger droughts, and more of them.
2. If the terrestrial ice floes melt, many millions of people will have to be evacuated from coastal areas.
3. Crop productivity will be impacted, since growing patterns are strongly dependent on climate and temperature.
4. Fishery productivity will be impacted, since warmer waters tend to be less productive than cold waters.
5. Disease will become more prevalent, since warmer temperatures are preferred by many microbes.
This all seems like fairly bad stuff to me. As to your second part, that just seems naive. That would be like telling someone with high blood pressure, "Hey, don't worry about getting your blood pressure down. Just make sure you're prepared and ready to make the life shift when that heart attack hits you." Prevention is MUCH easier than repair, in pretty much everything that I can think of. Why would you want to go through all of this crap, when it can be so much more easily avoided?
For your third question, I thought I had made myself quite clear. I care about the deleterious effects on human life, of which there are plenty. Life in general will of course continue, no matter what we humans do. I would like to make sure that it continues with humans as a part of it, because I am a human. You can call me selfish if you want, but that's the plain and simple truth.
Finally, your point about "85% of the CO2 is non-anthropogenic" is not well thought out. So what if it is? 15% is anthropogenic, and it's not something that we can just ignore.
35% does not make global warming anthropogenic even if you prove CO2 causes the warming. I'm still unconvinced of that one. But supposing it is, we're still not the leading cause of warming. Also, looking at the graph, the spike near 350,000 years ago looks like it breaches the 280ppm number.
Going off the numbers from one of these links, though, we produce 15-25% of the CO2 in the air.
15%, over a mere 150 years, is a hugely significant increase. And those numbers are still climbing.
The more pertinent question is why is the extinction of the peppered moth morally wrong? On the same line, what's wrong with our impact on the environment?
Because it will hurt OUR species in the long run. I don't know how else to explain it.
Besides which, the peppered moth didn't go extinct. I don't even know why you keep bringing that up. The peppered moth adapted in response to an environment change. The frequency of moths that have a darker coloration increased to the majority, where it was previously in the minority. Peppered moths can still be found in England, and they are far from endangered or threatened.
I'm so happy to see numbers! I'm glad to see an actual statistic rather than unsupported or vague claims. A few more and we might get closer to the truth of things.
So let's use 300 as the lowest estimate for where it could get without human activity, and, say, 320 as a high estimate. With the 300 number, you find that people have pushed it about 25% higher, and with the 320, 6%.
I'm sorry, I may not have been quite clear when I said we are inching towards 380 ppm. The 2004 atmospheric CO2 concentration was 377.74 ppm. Assuming the natural levels would be at about 320, which is itself 40 ppm higher than the highest CO2 levels for the past 400k years, that's an increase of 17%, not of 6%. Now if you use the much more likely figure of 280 ppm being the natural level, that's an increase of 35%.
Certainly I'm familiar with that graph, and with the Milankovitch cycles that cause those fluctuations. However, the changes we are experiencing have occurred within the past 150 years, and you're using a graph that displays 400000 years. It's not going to show up.
Now, in the graph, it shows how the carbon dioxide levels for those peaks seen range between 280 and 200 ppm typically. Even during the hot periods, the CO2 concentrations do not hit 300 ppm. Currently, we are inching towards 380 ppm. In other words, we're off the charts.
Anyways, CFC-related ozone depletion is not at all change in climate. In the former, the cause was quite clear. In the latter, the cause is not at all clear. The former is a fairly isolated incident easily found to be largely anthropogenic, where the latter happens constantly, in notable cycles predating humanity and it'll continue happening whether we act against it or not, i.e. not largely anthropogenic.
We can impact the environment, but we can't control it, especially not climate.
The cause is clear now, because we repaired the damage (or at least, stopped causing additional damage and allowed nature to repair it).
Once again, here is my suggestion: Cut back on carbon emissions and allow them to return to pre-Industrial Revolution levels. If temperatures fall with them, then humans can affect the climate through CO2 emissions. If they stay the same or continue to rise, then it's a natural phenomenon that we aren't affecting.
That would seem to me to be the scientific thing to do.
I believe that a) we can't stop it and b) we shouldn't even if we could. I said above that it's not our place to stop it. But even if we wanted to, we can't. It's not caused by our activity alone, so all our measures to halt our own work is meaningless. It might make it slightly less severe, but it would have no significant impact. And even if you did manage it somehow, the climate will continue to change.
Rather than fight it, let's adapt and move on with life, and let all life do the same.
But we can change it. What humans do has a significant impact on the environment.
The ozone hole is the best example of this. Many years ago, we enacted the Montreal Protocol, banning the use of chlorofluorocarbons as refrigerants. Now, we are seeing the ozone hole shrink and the ozone layer return to pre-CFC levels.
We CAN change this. But to do so, we must first accept that it is happening.
I'm not advocating any effort of accelerating our extinction, just that allowing our extinction to come to pass would be more moral than delaying it. And yes, your position is hard to understand, or at least to agree with. Consider, as a hypothetical situation, how many other species would you allow to become extinct before you allowed our own to do so. I doubt anybody would say all, even if we could hypothetically live without them, as that's, by the systems I've come across, immoral. So what percentage of the total number of species would you sacrifice to ensure the survival of the human species? (My answer - even 1% is too much for me. Maybe 0.1%.)
That would depend on how many species we can wipe out and leave the planet as a habitable place for humanity. If the answer is 99%, I would kill 99% if necessary. If the answer is 1%, I would kill no more than 1%.
Nothing is more important than ensuring the survival of one's own species. Billions of years of evolution have generally removed all alleles that are detrimental to that goal from the gene pool.
Prizm - Not all actions are taken solely to benefit oneself, and several morals require one to act opposite to that for the benefit of all people. It's the nature of society.
Seeing as you are the one advocating the extinction of "all people", I feel fairly justified in claiming the moral high ground here. Humanity is more important to me than other species, because I'm human. Is that so very hard to understand?
Sabbath_fiend: It's posts like yours that make people not believe in global warming.
1. The danger from global warming, while definitely serious and potentially catastrophic, is not going to destroy the world. It will alter the world severely, and on average will make it a less pleasant place to try to live, but we're not looking at Judgment Day here.
2. The US is not responsible for the entirety of CO2 emissions. More than our share of it? Certainly. If you wish to blame us for that, then go right ahead. We deserve it. But we're starting to repair our damage. It would have been better if we had started 20 years ago, but at least we're doing it. Now, I notice you have a Brazilian flag under your avatar. I don't know whether that's your true location or if you just like the flag, but I do know that the Brazilian government actively supports (and subsidizes) the burning down of the rainforest, which both releases a tremendous amount of carbon into the air and removes one of the largest carbon absorption sites on the planet.
Don't believe extinction can benefit life in general? I'd say you haven't thought it through. Let's look into two extinction events, and conduct a thought experiment.
I don't believe that human extinction will benefit me. I should hope the reasons for said belief are obvious.
Whoops! You're right, the concentration of water is greater than the concentration of carbon dioxide. I had their relationship mixed up. Carbon dioxide is more potent, but present in lower concentration, whereas water is present in higher concentrations but is less potent.
Possible, but the sun changes on much larger timeframes than the atmosphere does. It would take time on the order of thousands of years at the minimum for solar changes to take effect, while the changes that we're seeing now have been localized to only the past two centuries.
So 97.4 kJ are being released from the solution.
97.4 kJ/1 kg = 97.4 J/g
-97.4 J/g * (K*g/4.18 J) = -23.3 K
since the J and the g will cancel out.
The temperature of the solution will go up 23.3 degrees celsius, giving a final temperature of 48.3 degrees.
I may be wrong, since it's been a year since I had general chemistry. But I think that's right.
Per mole, that is in fact the case. Carbon dioxide is less potent as a greenhouse gas than methane, nitrous oxide, or cfc-II as well.
However, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is much higher than the concentrations of these other gases. Since absorbance is directly proportional to concentration (according to Beer's law, absorbance = concentration x distance radiation travels x absorption coefficient), the total absorbance of CO2 in the air is more than the total absorbance of any other gas.
In addition, it should be noted that humans are also the source of methane, nitrous oxide, and cfc-II, especially the last one, which is entirely anthropogenic. We may also be causing the atmospheric water vapor concentrations to increase, since any heating we cause through the emissions of other greenhouse gases will cause more water to evaporate from the oceans, becoming water vapor. There is not yet sufficient information to support that last hypothesis (so far as I know), but it makes sense from a theoretical standpoint.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Evolution is NOT about progress. It is NOT about making things better. There is no Gaia using evolution and natural selection to make life better/more complex/more intelligent.
Evolution is defined as a change in gene frequency over time. Any basic biology textbook will tell you, quite clearly, that this change is essentially random. You seem to be laboring under the impression that we are hindering some primeval force by preventing our own extinction, when nothing could be further from the truth.
You seem to be ignoring the theory behind evolutionary biology. I hesitate to say facts, since we don't know for sure, but that theory is our current best guess, and is backed up by a plethora of evidence. What you are using instead of that educated guess is a pseudo-druidic dogma of "improving life in general" that is entirely unsubstantiated by data.
I thought I had done so, but ok.
I believe I have presented sufficient data for the first point, so I'll ask you to refer back to my last post.
As for point 2, let me explain the science. Experimentally, it can be shown that CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and cfc-II are all transparent to solar radiation, which is primarily short-wavelength, high-energy radiation. To do this, do UV-vis spectroscopy. This is performed by taking a sample of one of these gases, putting it in a cuvette, and shining energy through it. Measure how much energy goes through the cuvette and emerges from the other side, and you will see how much is absorbed by the gas. In the case of solar radiation, practically none of the energy is absorbed.
Now, when the solar radiation hits the ground, it is absorbed by the Earth. It is later re-radiated as infrared energy, or heat. This is where it is trapped by the greenhouse gases. We can experimentally determine how much heat is trapped by each gas in a manner similar to how we determined how much solar radiation was trapped. We put some of the gas in a cuvette and put infrared energy through it. We measure how much comes back out the other side, and we will see how much was absorbed by the gas. This time, we will find that the amount absorbed by the greenhouse gases is substantial. We can even find out how much changes in concentration affect the absorption, by adjusting the concentration of gas in the cuvette.
Using this, we can see how much heat is being trapped worldwide by carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and cfc-11, since we know the concentration of these gases in the atmosphere, as well as the volume of the atmosphere. From that, we can see how much each gas is contributing to the warming effect, and that carbon dioxide is the primary cause of warming.
I'll leave the rest up to others, but I hope I've made the science here clear.
Of COURSE climate change is inevitable. The climate changes every year, back and forth as the result of the Earth being tilted with respect to the sun. Rapid, directional climate change such as that currently going on is not inevitable.
If you assume you cannot stop the climate change, you are condemning us to living with it. And it is preventable. If we reduce our carbon emissions, natural processes can begin to take the carbon in the air and return it to the ground. But that can't happen unless we take action.
My morals, if you wish to call them that, are far more practical and scientific than yours. I can point to some global process and say, with a fair degree of certainty, whether that process will help humans or harm humans. Can you do the same?
Your fallacy here is that you are saying that an increase in warming is being caused by stable levels of CO2. Certainly, the majority of atmospheric CO2 is natural. However, the rate of INCREASE in CO2 over the past 150 years is decidedly unnatural. If you dispute that, it is quite easy to show. Atmospheric carbon has high levels of carbon-14 and carbon-13 isotopes relative to fossil fuel carbon, since carbon from fossil fuels has been dead for a long time, whereas carbon in the atmosphere is more recently released from living organisms. Over the past 150 years, the concentration of these carbon isotopes in the atmosphere has been steadily decreasing, indicating that more and more of the carbon is coming from fossil fuel combustion.
Manliest song ever, imho.
Climate change will hurt our species because:
1. It will result in more extreme weather patterns, causing stronger storms, stronger droughts, and more of them.
2. If the terrestrial ice floes melt, many millions of people will have to be evacuated from coastal areas.
3. Crop productivity will be impacted, since growing patterns are strongly dependent on climate and temperature.
4. Fishery productivity will be impacted, since warmer waters tend to be less productive than cold waters.
5. Disease will become more prevalent, since warmer temperatures are preferred by many microbes.
This all seems like fairly bad stuff to me. As to your second part, that just seems naive. That would be like telling someone with high blood pressure, "Hey, don't worry about getting your blood pressure down. Just make sure you're prepared and ready to make the life shift when that heart attack hits you." Prevention is MUCH easier than repair, in pretty much everything that I can think of. Why would you want to go through all of this crap, when it can be so much more easily avoided?
For your third question, I thought I had made myself quite clear. I care about the deleterious effects on human life, of which there are plenty. Life in general will of course continue, no matter what we humans do. I would like to make sure that it continues with humans as a part of it, because I am a human. You can call me selfish if you want, but that's the plain and simple truth.
Finally, your point about "85% of the CO2 is non-anthropogenic" is not well thought out. So what if it is? 15% is anthropogenic, and it's not something that we can just ignore.
15%, over a mere 150 years, is a hugely significant increase. And those numbers are still climbing.
Because it will hurt OUR species in the long run. I don't know how else to explain it.
Besides which, the peppered moth didn't go extinct. I don't even know why you keep bringing that up. The peppered moth adapted in response to an environment change. The frequency of moths that have a darker coloration increased to the majority, where it was previously in the minority. Peppered moths can still be found in England, and they are far from endangered or threatened.
I'm sorry, I may not have been quite clear when I said we are inching towards 380 ppm. The 2004 atmospheric CO2 concentration was 377.74 ppm. Assuming the natural levels would be at about 320, which is itself 40 ppm higher than the highest CO2 levels for the past 400k years, that's an increase of 17%, not of 6%. Now if you use the much more likely figure of 280 ppm being the natural level, that's an increase of 35%.
Now, in the graph, it shows how the carbon dioxide levels for those peaks seen range between 280 and 200 ppm typically. Even during the hot periods, the CO2 concentrations do not hit 300 ppm. Currently, we are inching towards 380 ppm. In other words, we're off the charts.
The cause is clear now, because we repaired the damage (or at least, stopped causing additional damage and allowed nature to repair it).
Once again, here is my suggestion: Cut back on carbon emissions and allow them to return to pre-Industrial Revolution levels. If temperatures fall with them, then humans can affect the climate through CO2 emissions. If they stay the same or continue to rise, then it's a natural phenomenon that we aren't affecting.
That would seem to me to be the scientific thing to do.
But we can change it. What humans do has a significant impact on the environment.
The ozone hole is the best example of this. Many years ago, we enacted the Montreal Protocol, banning the use of chlorofluorocarbons as refrigerants. Now, we are seeing the ozone hole shrink and the ozone layer return to pre-CFC levels.
We CAN change this. But to do so, we must first accept that it is happening.
That would depend on how many species we can wipe out and leave the planet as a habitable place for humanity. If the answer is 99%, I would kill 99% if necessary. If the answer is 1%, I would kill no more than 1%.
Nothing is more important than ensuring the survival of one's own species. Billions of years of evolution have generally removed all alleles that are detrimental to that goal from the gene pool.
Seeing as you are the one advocating the extinction of "all people", I feel fairly justified in claiming the moral high ground here. Humanity is more important to me than other species, because I'm human. Is that so very hard to understand?
Sabbath_fiend: It's posts like yours that make people not believe in global warming.
1. The danger from global warming, while definitely serious and potentially catastrophic, is not going to destroy the world. It will alter the world severely, and on average will make it a less pleasant place to try to live, but we're not looking at Judgment Day here.
2. The US is not responsible for the entirety of CO2 emissions. More than our share of it? Certainly. If you wish to blame us for that, then go right ahead. We deserve it. But we're starting to repair our damage. It would have been better if we had started 20 years ago, but at least we're doing it. Now, I notice you have a Brazilian flag under your avatar. I don't know whether that's your true location or if you just like the flag, but I do know that the Brazilian government actively supports (and subsidizes) the burning down of the rainforest, which both releases a tremendous amount of carbon into the air and removes one of the largest carbon absorption sites on the planet.
I don't believe that human extinction will benefit me. I should hope the reasons for said belief are obvious.