CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION FOR 2012

The New Year is a time for longer visions for action. Here's one area with a lot of concern and absolutely no action.  

                                     CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION FOR 2012

The geologic record, showing Earth Temperatures for the last million years should dominate the climate change discussion.  And, indeed it shows a close correlation between World temperature and CO2 levels.

For the relationship between CO2 and temperature,go to

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

where a graph shows the correlation between CO2 and Earth temperatures over the last 500,000 years. CO2 and dust levels for the last 400,000 years.  It shows a very exact correlation between temperature and CO2 level, with dust concentration having lesser correlation.

It also shows a very sharp spike in temperature for the three earlier warming periods, but a plateau of 10,000 years today, corresponding to the growth of Human population.

Unfortunately it does NOT show whether climate change causes CO2 change, or whether CO2 change caused the climate change.

And no one in the global warming debate seems to be aware of these much larger changes in recent times!

A more fundamental understanding is necessary.

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Fortunately, this is provided by the Malenkovitch cycles, which are the principal cause of the variations above.  They show major climate change of 8 degrees C (15 F) every 110,000 years, driven by various interactions of the solar system, primarily earth axis tilt, earth orbit ellipticity, caused primarily by the relative positions of Earth and Jupiter.

Unfortunately, no one i know of (except myself) is paying any attention to the Malenkovitch cycles.

In particular, the current data for the last 10,000 years suggest that we may be escaping from the ice ages that have dominated the last three million years of Earth's history, and it could be that Humans are causing this. Note the plateau top left.  

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There is no doubt from the data that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is very important in the  functioning of the Earth.  After all, we animal species depend on oxygen for our survival, and oxygen is a synthetic molecule made from CO2 by the plant kingdom as a waste product.  It is astounding to me that the CO2 level today of ~ 0.04% can support the plant kingdom's prolific growth.   It is accomplished by the large leaves on plants which collect sunlight and CO2.

And it is more astounding that 100 years ago the level Was 0.028%! , and plants grew as adequately for our grandparents as they do for us.  There must be some lower level of CO2 below which plants cant function, but it must be below 0.01%!  At that point, all vegetation would stop growing,mand that would be the end of the animal kingdom and us.  

Enhanced CO2 levels, as found in a greenhouse, significantly improve plant growth- and oxygen production.  

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Two years ago there was a scandal in the climate community when someone leaked a number of Emails at The East Anglia University Climate Change Center.  The leaked letters seemed to show that some scientists had an agenda to prove that CO2 was drastically changing our climate, AND that they were manipulating the data to make sure it did.  I was horrified.

Today in the news the same hacker has unleashed another spate of Emails showing similar dishonesty in the East Anglia Center.

                               CLIMATE CHANGE WORRY IS A BIG INDUSTRY
                                BUT CLIMATE CHANGE FIXING HASN'T BEGUN

We are making everyone nervous about something which can only be solved by a few in the government making unpopular decisions, possibly amounting to political suicide.   ( Al Gore for instance).

While there is a lot of handwringing about climate change, there is NO suggestion of what we can do about it, and well organized resistance to doing anything from entrenched power centers.

There are two ways to counteract it:

1). We can reduce  CO2 emissions by driving our cars less, (switching to electric cars) and heating our homes more efficiently.  Why are electric cars lower in CO2 emissions?  It takes the same amount of power at the drive shaft to move a electric car as it does with gasoline or diesel.

Gasoline cars are typically less than 20% efficient in converting gasoline Btus to power.  Diesel engines are closer to 30%. But a modern power plant converts natural gas or coal to electric power with efficiencies exceeding 60%, and hydroelectric or wind power produce NO CO2.  Further, the cost and availability of electric power charging electric vehicles at night benefit both the power company and the commuter.  A win-win situation.  



2). We can begin sequestering CO2 in the form of Biochar and Biocoal.  

Charcoal is an excellent permanent soil amendment. If farmers had Pyrolysers they could put all waste biomass into them, convert the waste to Biochar, and double the productivity of their soil.

Biodegradable biomass is converted back to CO2 and H2O or CO2 and CH4 (methane) by aerobic and anaerobic digestion.  Alternatively, it can be converted to BioCoal, a non biodegradable product made by heating biomass only up to 300C with a yield of 70% vs the typical 20% for Biochar made at 400-800C.  Again, each ton of BIOCOAL produced and used replaces a ton of polluting coal.  

Our energy and environmental future is either bleaker or brighter than it has been for fifty years.  It's up to us to choose.  

Tom Reed

REALLY BIG NUMBERS

The  Alpaca Fiber Felted Brain 

A 20 year-old male has around 176,000 km of myelinated axons in his brain.  This sounds like a very large number, but isn't so big in similar contexts. 

A typical Alpaca fiber is 20 Microns in diameter, 10 cm long, and has a 
volume/weight of   10x(20E-8)^2 = 4E-13 cm3 or g,  assuming a density of 1.0 g/cm3.  A typical blanket weighs 2,000 g and contains 
    2000/4E-13 = 5 E 15,  Five Quadrillion fibers.  They would have a length of 5 E 16 cm or a combined length of 5 E 11 km or 500 billion km.   This is about 1/20 light year

The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.5 light years away.  

It would take the fibers laid end to end from about 90 alpaca fleeces to reach this star.  

9.5 E 12 km = 1 light year.  

So Where did the 100 atm of CO2 go?

Yesterday I said it seemed reasonable that Earth started 4.6 Billion years ago with an atmosphere 100 times the current pressure and almost all CO2.  (About 10^18 tonnes).   Where did it all go?

Photosynthesis only evolved about 3.5 billion years ago, so there were no plants waiting to grow like crazy.   The answer was in the oceans.

When CO2 dissolves in water, it makes carbonic acid, H2CO3, the fizz in soda water.  It is pleasantly acid when the CO2 pressure is 1.2 atmospheres and bubbles away in the wine glass or beer stein.

However, with a pressure of 100 atmospheres, it is 100 times as strong, and becomes a strong acid with a pH of 2.9, like very strong vinegar.  It then dissolved many of the original silicate rocks, making sand and limestone.  Initially the limestone was an inorganic sludge, but when life emerged it was converted to the limestone fossils we have today.

Awake AT 3 AM -

For some reason, I seem to get along with much less sleep than the 8 hours my sainted mother recommended.   I go to sleep at 10-11 PM, and typically wake at 2-3 AM, fully rested and ready to think about interesting things (but avoiding worrisome ones).

As a Physical Chemist I'm equipped to understand the macrocosmos and the microcosmos.  I read a lot and ask myself questions never asked before.  I then put things together that have never been joined before.

For instance, "Venus is Earth's sister planet, but she was born too close to the sun and lost her water - and life, while we retained our water and generated life.  But we were both born from the same cloud of stardust/gasdust.

Our spacecraft have been to Venus and they find that the atmosphere is composed of 89 atmospheres of carbon dioxide, CO2, and 3 atm of nitrogen, N2.  From this I infer that when Earth was formed 4.6 Billion years ago, we probably had a similar atmosphere, slightly denser because we are larger.  Let's say Earth had 100 atm of CO2 and 3 of nitrogen. It is hard to concieve of an atmosphere 100 times as dense as we have today.  A 1mph wind would blow you over!

If Earth started with such a large quantity of CO2, where did we put it?

This and other questions will be the subject of this blog.