All Solar, Et Al, In 12 Years?

[Randolph Kinney]

quantitative link between precipitation and sea ice is poorly understood
researchers reached no conclusion on whether the increased precipitation will fall as snow or rain
increased precipitation affecting radiative forcing likely has an order of magnitude similar to that of the forcing from doubling carbon dioxide

http://phys.org/news/2015-12-sea-ice-arctic-precipitation-complicates.html

Gee, they are saying increased rain or snow is equal to doubling the radiative forcing of CO2. Water vapor is more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. Who knew?

 

[Meandering]

Who knew?




Wait a minute!

Does that mean that steam rooms create global warming because they put moist air into the atmosphere?

Doesn't heated water cause excessive evaporation?

Does this mean that poor children in Indonesia who are forced to study astrophysics in the dark are suffering the dark because too many Americans heat their swimming pools?

OMG, where will the next generation of scientists come from if children can only learn during day light hours?

.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

It means the hydrogen powered car will emit water vapor into the air and has double the effect of doubling the existing CO2 in the air.

Anything that emits water into the air needs to be taxed to prevent global warming.

All water has to be covered to prevent water vapor escaping into the atmosphere. Just imagine how cold the planet will get if you covered all the oceans with a thin film of petroleum or anything that reduces water evaporation from the oceans into the air.

400 ppm CO2 today in earth's atmosphere will need to go to nearly 100% CO2 (no oxygen, no nitrogen) so that we can have surface temperatures similar to that of Mars (atmosphere is nearly 100% CO2).

 

[Pittsburgh Pete]

• climate change models underestimate methane gas escaping from the ground in the Arctic tundra during the cold months September through May (yes there is actually more methane than predictted
• finding challenges critical assumptions in current global climate models (True, see above. They are underestimating the output)
• results are opposite of what modelers have been assuming (true, they assumed no methane escaping during winter but they were incorrect--more methane)
• Arctic tundra and boreal forest continue to emit methane to the atmosphere at high rates, long after the surface soil freezes (true, condition worse than anticipated!)
• climate model predictions are bogus (only in so far as they underestimate the extent of the volume of methane released! Needless to say this line isn't in the article but is your editorial comment, incorrect and misleading but definitely yours!)

http://phys.org/news/2015-12-methane-emissions-arctic-cold-season.html

"These results are opposite of what modelers have been assuming, which is that the majority of the methane emissions occur during the warm summer months while the cold-season methane contribution is nearly zero."

Surprisingly, the researchers also found that during the cold season, the relative methane emissions were higher at the drier, upland tundra sites than at wetland sites, contradicting yet another longstanding assumption about Arctic methane emissions. Upland tundra was previously assumed to be a negligible contributor of methane, Zona said.

The freezing of the surface inhibits methane oxidation, resulting in significant net methane emissions during the fall and winter," she said. "Plants act like chimneys facilitating the methane's escape through the frozen layer to the atmosphere."

Oechel and Zona stressed the importance for climate modelers to have good baseline data on methane emissions and to adjust their models to account for Arctic cold-season methane emissions as well as the contributions of non-wetland areas, including upland tundra.

"It is now time to work more closely with climate modelers and assure these observations are used to improve model predictions, and refine our prediction of the global methane budget," Zona said.

It is particularly important, Oechel added, for models to get methane output right because the gas is a major driver of atmospheric warming."If you don't have the mechanisms right, you won't be able to make predictions into the future based on anticipated climate conditions," he said. Steven Wofsy of Harvard University added: "Now that we know how important the winter is to the methane budget, we are working to determine the long-term trends in greenhouse emissions from tundra and their sensitivity to winter warming."

 

[Meandering]

You're a genius!

That's the next "New Best Thing"!

Toilet water cooler. Prevent your open toilet water bowl from warming the climate, by cooling the water in the bowl to slow down evaporation.

Oh nice, we could go on Shark Tank!

Maybe Barb Corcoran will invest in that!

Nice, a back door out of appraising, with someone you can talk shop to.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Just wait until you hear about how Colorado marijuana grow houses - which use mucho energy - is matching all the greenhouse gas emissions from all the cars in New Hampshire. Hmm. Add that to all the methane belches from Dorito gas from the stoners....

 

[Meandering]

Breakthrough In Hydrogen Cracking Could Create Clean Fuel

The German team showed that “methane cracking could achieve costs of 1.9 to 3.3 euros per kilogram of hydrogen at current German natural gas prices.” In the U.S., that price would likely be even lower, but the key is to make sure that the new reactor works reliably and consistently over time.

If the reactor runs into problems too often and maintenance issues start to crop up (like carbon clogging), then the technology won’t get past the starting gate. Methane cracking is a much greener technology approach than current standards like steam methane reforming or alternative methods of generating hydrogen. The new reactor then could be a very big deal from an environmental standpoint. There are a number of unanswered questions still remaining, but the most important one is can this trial be replicated by other facilities elsewhere in the world.

The problem with Hydrogen Fuel cells dripping water onto the road is

ice.

Poor DOT salt trucks trying to keep the roads ice free and all those cars leaking more water onto the road.

Not good.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Poor DOT salt trucks trying to keep the roads ice free and all those cars leaking more water onto the road.

If I spread as much salt on my fields as the state spreads on the roads, the EPA would hang me.

 

[Meandering]

We used to spread slag from Cadmium smelting. Now we spread salt or sand. Turns out, slag isn't good. Darn, and they filled in the spaces between rail road ties with it, for generations. It's also pretty good at keeping the weeds from growing.

.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Here is an article I know Pete can't comprehend but Terrel should really enjoy it.

Holocene Thermal Optimum

Andy May

The Holocene Thermal Maximum, also called the Holocene Thermal Optimum, occurred at different times in different parts of the world but generally between 10,000 BP and 4,000 BP. I use BP to indicate years before 2000. The world ocean was probably 0.7°C warmer than today 8,000 BP. This is remarkable because the ocean heat capacity is 1000 times larger than the atmosphere’s according to the IPCC and NOAA. Simple high school physics is all that is required to verify this, the calculation is described here. What this means is that if you heated the atmosphere to 1000°C and transferred all of that heat to the ocean, the ocean would only warm 1°C once the heat was well mixed. We can draw two conclusions from these facts. First, the world was much warmer 8,000 BP than today and the total heat stored in the atmosphere and in the oceans was much greater. That 0.7°C represents the heat required to warm the atmosphere to over 700°C. This would never happen, of course, ocean-atmosphere heat transfer processes would work to move heat from the ocean to the atmosphere and back again to keep temperatures moderate and stable.

The second conclusion is that there is no magic 2°C tipping point. Raising todays atmospheric temperature 2°C involves an insignificant amount of heat relative to the total ocean/atmosphere heat present only 8,000 years ago. If the oceans absorbed 2°C worth of atmospheric heat, the ocean temperature would only go up a trivial and unmeasurable 0.002°C.

http://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2015/12/20/holocene-thermal-optimum/

The article goes on and on with lots of data to support his findings.

Now for Pete, here is the link, there will be a quiz later to see if you comprehend basic high school physics.

Climate Science for Everyone: How much heat can the air and ocean store?

http://scholarsandrogues.com/2013/05/09/csfe-heat-capacity-air-ocean/