Green House Gases  by Roger King  

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Green House Gases
  3. Methane
  4. CO2 - (Linked to CO2 Page)
  5. Methane

Introduction

Biofuel Madness: Environmentalism exploited for political purposes   by Dr. Tim Ball  in CFP April 8, 2008   The goal of reducing CO2 was pushed by exploiting people’s fears and lack of knowledge.   Everyone needs to know that reduction of levels has more serious implications. Current levels are 385 ppm. At 200 ppm plants begin to suffer and at 120 ppm they begin to die. Increasing the level has great benefits for all life. Research shows most plants function best between 1000 and 1200 ppm, Commercial greenhouses are pumping these amounts in and achieving four times better growth and yield with significantly less water use.   

The Real 'Inconvenient Truth'  at  JunkScience.com   Updated August 2007   Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth’s greenhouse effect — perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth’s total greenhouse effect. The remaining portion comes from carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and miscellaneous other “minor greenhouse gases.”   ...

The potential planetary warming from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from pre-Industrial Revolution levels of ~280ppmv to 560ppmv (possible some time later this century - perhaps) is generally estimated at less than 1 °   

Climate Change: Breaking the "Political Consensus"  by Andrew G. Marshall   August 7, 2008   I want to briefly cover what factors affect our weather on Earth and what greenhouse gases are so that we can better understand the science of climate change. Weather takes place in the atmosphere, which is the layer of air directly surrounding the Earth. Air is simply a mix of gases, the most plentiful of which is nitrogen, making up 78% of the air we breathe. Oxygen is 21% of the air we breathe, and the other 1% is a variety of different gases.

 

Weather tends to occur in the lowest level of the atmosphere, the troposphere. Air temperature, air pressure and humidity are the three factors that determine weather in the troposphere. The most important factors in determining temperature in the atmosphere are radiation arriving from the Sun and flowing from the Earth.

 

The Sun sends energy into space in a variety of ways. There is visible light, infrared heat rays and ultraviolet rays. Roughly 30% of solar radiation coming into the Earth’s atmosphere is reflected back out to space by clouds, while the remaining 70% is absorbed into the atmosphere, increasing the temperature. This is what is known as the greenhouse effect. Air temperature changes from day to night and season to season, as the amount of radiation from the Sun changes, largely determined by our planet’s tilt towards the Sun. The equator is the exception to the changing temperature with seasons, because it generally receives equal radiation from the Sun year-round.

 

Air pressure, the second determining factor in weather, is “the weight per unit of area of a column of air that reaches to the top of the atmosphere,” with pressure decreasing the higher you get, because there is less air above you. Humidity, the third main factor in determining weather, is a measure of the amount of water vapor in the air. The amount of water vapor that air can hold increases with temperature increases and decreases as temperatures decrease. When relative humidity is at 100%, water vapor condenses and forms droplets, changing from a gas to a liquid.    

 

Greenhouse Gases

A Global Warming Primer at Nation Center for Policy Analysis  Greenhouse gases make up no more than 2 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere.   Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon and other gasses make up the rest of Earth's atmosphere.    About 95% of the greenhouse gases is water vapor.   CO2 is only 3.62% of the Greenhouse gases.   Since CO2 is such a small percentage of the atmosphere its called a Trace Element. 

Humans contribute approximately 3.4 percent of annual CO2 emissions. However, small increases in annual CO2 emissions, whether from humans or any other source, can lead to a large CO2 accumulation over time because CO2 molecules can remain in the atmosphere for more than a century.  

Does CO2 really drive global warming?   at Is it Getting Warmer   May 4, 2007   the dominant source and sink for CO2 are the oceans, accounting for about two-thirds of the exchange, with vegetation as the major secondary source and sink     

Myths / Facts Common Misconceptions about Global Warming  at Is It Getting Warmer   April 13, 2007  Greenhouse gases form about 3 % of the atmosphere by volume. They consist of varying amounts, (about 97%) of water vapour and clouds, with the remainder being gases like CO2, CH4, Ozone and N2O, of which carbon dioxide is the largest amount. Hence, CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere. While the minor gases are more effective as “greenhouse agents” than water vapour and clouds, the latter are overwhelming the effect by their sheer volume and – in the end – are thought to be responsible for 60% of the “Greenhouse effect”    

Cold Facts on Global Warming  by T. J. Nelson  April 19, 2008   ...  consider a simple estimate based on well-accepted facts, that shows that the expected global temperature increase caused by doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is bounded by an upper limit of 1.76±0.27 degrees Celsius. This result contrasts with the results of the IPCC's climate models, whose projections are shown to be unrealistically high.  ...   However, the buffering capacity of the oceans is enormous. The oceans currently contain about 50 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere.    

CO2 equivalents in the Climate Change Connection  

The following table shows the global warming potentials (GWP) for all of the greenhouse gases reported by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) .

  Greenhouse Gas Formula 100 year GWP
1. Carbon dioxide CO2 1
2. Methane CH4 21
3. Nitrous oxide N2O 310
4. Sulphur hexafluoride SF6 23,900
  Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)
5. HFC-23 CHF3 11,700
6. HFC-32 CH2F2 650
7. HFC-41 CH3F 150
8. HFC-43-10mee C5H2F10 1,300
9. HFC-125 C2HF5 2,800
10. HFC-134 C2H2F4
(Structure: CHF2CHF2)		 1,000
11. HFC-134a C2H2F4
(Structure: CH2FCF3)		 1,300
12. HFC-143 C2H3F3
(Structure: CHF2CH2F)		 300
13. HFC-143a C2H3F3
(Structure: CF3CH3)		 3,800
14. HFC-152a C2H4F2
(Structure: CH3CHF2)		 140
15. HFC-227ea C3HF7 2,900
16. HFC-236fa C3H2F6 6,300
17. HFC-245ca C3H3F5 560
  Perfluorocarbons (PFCs)
18. Perfluoromethane CF4 6,500
19. Perfluoroethane C2F6 9,200
20. Perfluoropropane C3F8 7,000
21. Perfluorobutane C4F10 7,000
22. Perfluorocyclobutane c-C4F8 8,700
23. Perfluoropentane C5F12 7,500
24. Perfluorohexane C6F14 7,400

The Great Global Warming Hoax?   Dr. Roy W. Spencer has one of the best comments we've read on this subject: "Al Gore likes to say that mankind puts 70 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day. What he probably doesn't know is that mother nature puts 24,000 times that amount of our main greenhouse gas -- water vapor -- into the atmosphere every day, and removes about the same amount every day.  While this does not 'prove' that global warming is not manmade, it shows that weather systems have by far the greatest control over the Earth's greenhouse effect, which is dominated by water vapor and clouds."   

Man-Made Global Warming Hoax  January 25, 2005  A single eruption the size of the Mt. St. Helens eruption released more of these gases, dust and ash into the atmosphere than all such emissions by human activity since the beginning of recorded human history. And there are numerous volcanic eruptions yearly.    

300 Million US Population in Light of Kyoto, Global Warming and Other Created Hysterias by Joseph A. D’Agostino, LifeSiteNews.com   January 2nd, 2008   Wrote Joel Schwartz in the Summer 2003 issue of Regulation, “Between 1981 and 2000, carbon monoxide (CO) declined 61%, sulfur dioxide (SO2) 50%, and nitrogen oxides (NOx)14%. Only two among hundreds of the nation’s monitoring locations still exceed the CO and SO2 standards. All areas of the country meet the NOx standard. For all three pollutants, pollution levels are well below the EPA standards in almost all cases.” Indications are that our air has continued to get cleaner in the last three years. Emissions from cars and SUVs less than ten years old have dropped to a fraction of older cars’ levels. As older cars get junked and government-mandated clean technologies are implemented, car and SUV emissions are expected to drop by a further 90% over the next 20 years. Breathe deep.

* Water has become similarly cleaner, and the United States’ drinking water is generally considered the best in the world. (I am not claiming that our water supply is free of pollution, just that it is cleaner than it was 30 years ago.) Reports the EPA, “The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 has helped our citizens enjoy one of the safest and cleanest water supplies in the world. . . . In the last 30 years, we have significantly increased the number of individuals and communities receiving water that meets public health standards. More than 273 million people receive water from 53,000 community water systems. There has been a three-fold increase in the number of contaminants regulated under the Act since it was passed in 1974. Close to 92% of the nation’s water systems provide drinking water that meets all public health standards, and state and federal regulators are working to ensure that all systems meet standards.” 

Methane

Cow ' Emissions ' More Damaging to the Planet Than CO2 From Cars   by Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor  December 10, 2006   A United Nations report has identified the world ' s rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.   ...   Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world ' s emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.  

Methane Origin

Methane on ice: a climate shock in store?   February 21, 2003   Vast stockpiles of frozen methane on the seafloor are more unstable than previously thought, and their sudden release may have been linked to global warming in the past.  Led by Dr Kai-Uwe Hinrichs of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, USA, the new evidence is published in this week's issue of Science.  The researchers examined the by-products of ancient methane-using bacteria in sediments of the Santa Barbara Basin, off the coast of California. They found evidence that methane trapped in ice crystals (known as methane hydrates) on the seabed was released into the water 44,000 years ago - at the same time there was a rapid, but as yet unexplained, rise in global temperatures.    

Methane Matters    by the World Climate Report  April 13, 2007   Here is the latest twist to the methane story – methane is not increasing in atmospheric concentration! We have highlighted this fact many times before at World Climate Report, and a new article in Environmental Science and Technology reveals that global methane concentration is not behaving the way the IPCC and the global warming advocates would have us believe. The Khalil et al. team from Portland State University and the Oregon Graduate Institute start the article interestingly noting “Methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled over the last century, raising concerns that it is contributing to global warming and will continue to do so in the future. Although these past increases were alarmingly rapid, subsequent measurements showed a persistent slowdown in the trends to nearly zero at present.”  

Global warming: blame the forests    by Alok Jha, science correspondent  of The Guardian,   January 12 2006   Frank Keppler, of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, who led the team behind the new research, estimated that living plants release between 60m and 240m tonnes of methane per year, based on experiments he carried out, with the largest part coming from tropical areas.

David Lowe, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, said the new work, published in Nature, is important for two reasons. "First, because the methane emissions they document occur under normal physiological conditions, in the presence of oxygen, rather than through bacterial action in anoxic environments," he wrote in an accompanying article. "Second, because the estimated emissions are large, constituting 10-30% of the annual total of methane entering Earth's atmosphere."   

Pasturing Cows Convert Soil To Source Of Methane, Potent Greenhouse Gas  by ScienceDaily  Oct. 14, 2007  The cow as a killer of the climate: This inglorious role of our four-legged friends, peaceful in itself, is well-enough recognised, because, with their digestion, the animals produce methane, which is expelled continuously. Now, however, a team of German scientists from the Institute of Soil Ecology of the GSF – National Research Center for Environment and Health (Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) and Czech colleagues at the Budweis Academy of Science have been able to show that bovine animals can also boost the production of this climate gas in soil. 

Methane: A Scientific Journey from Obscurity to Climate Super-Stardom   by Gavin Schmidt with NASA September 2004  First some basics: methane (CH4) is a very simple molecule (one carbon surrounded by four hydrogen atoms) and is created predominantly by bacteria that feed on organic material. In dry conditions, there is plenty of atmospheric oxygen, and so aerobic bacteria which produce carbon dioxide (CO2) are preferred. But in wet areas such as swamps, wetlands and in the ocean, there is not enough oxygen, and so complex hydrocarbons get broken down to methane by anaerobic bacteria. Some of this methane can get trapped (as a gas, as a solid, dissolved or eaten) and some makes its way to the atmosphere where it is gradually broken down to CO2 and water (H2O) vapor in a series of chemical reactions.   ...  he changes over the last century seem to be mostly related to increased emissions due to human activity: leaks from mining and natural gas pipelines, landfills, increased irrigation (particularly rice paddies, which are essentially artificial wetlands) and increased livestock producing more intestinal CH4 (!) among other factors. However, over the last ice age, and particularly in the turbulent world just prior to the modern Holocene period (roughly the last 11,500 years), methane was observed to oscillate almost hand-in-hand in response to rapid climate changes such as the Younger Dryas cold interval (a return to almost full ice age conditions 12,500 years ago).   

Plants revealed as methane source by Tim Hirsch BBC News environment correspondent   January 11, 2006  Scientists in Germany have discovered that ordinary plants produce significant amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas which helps trap the sun's energy in the atmosphere.  The findings, reported in the journal Nature, have been described as "startling", and may force a rethink of the role played by forests in holding back the pace of global warming. ...  The amount of the gas produced increased when the air was warmer, and when there was more sunlight. The paper estimates that this unexplained phenomenon could account for 10-30% of the world's methane emissions. 

Greenhouse Basics by Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute 11/20/06   Water vapor, not carbon dioxide (CO2), is the most important greenhouse gas. Computing the exact contribution of each type of greenhouse gas to the overall greenhouse effect is complicated, because the gases "overlap" in some of the spectra in which they absorb infrared radiation. Taking the overlaps into account, RealClimate.Org concludes that "water vapor is the single most important absorber (between 36% and 66% of the greenhouse effect), and together with clouds makes up between 66% and 85%. CO2 alone makes up between 9 and 26%, while the O3 and the other minor GHG  absorbers consist of up to 7 and 8% of the effect, respectively."

Gore editorializes when he says that we have "vastly" increased the amount of CO2.  The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is so small that CO2 is referred to as a "trace gas." Over the past century and a half, atmospheric CO2 levels have risen from about 280 parts per million (ppm) to about 380 ppm—from roughly 3/100ths to roughly 4/100ths of one percent of the atmosphere.   

Breathe Easy on Air Quality  by H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D.  January 29, 2007  Most of what Americans "know" about air pollution is false.  Polls show most Americans believe air pollution: 1) has been steady or rising during the last few decades, 2) will worsen in the future and 3) is a serious threat to people's health.  Yet, as a recent NCPA study by air researcher Joel Schwartz shows, air pollution across the United States has been declining for decades - and was declining even before passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act.   Schwartz argues that most information Americans receive on air pollution comes from environmentalists and regulators who have incentives to paint a false picture: their budgets, power and prestige last only as long as there is a "crisis" to be solved.  ...   Air quality in America's cities is better than it has been in more than a century, with levels of air pollutants declining substantially from 1980 to 2005.   

Calculating the Greenhouse Affect in RealClimate.org 01/26/06    

  1. The combined effect of these greenhouse gases is to warm Earth's atmosphere by about 33 ºC, from a chilly -18 ºC in their absence to a pleasant +15 ºC 

  2. The effect of water vapour and clouds is between 66 and 85% - the range being due to the spectral overlaps with the other absorbers.

  3. CO2 on its own is between 9 and 26% of greenhouses gases.

  4. CO2 is around 30% higher than it was in the pre-industrial period, and all of that rise is due to human emissions (fossil fuel use and deforestation principally).

  5. The probable effect of human-injected carbon dioxide is between 3 and 8%.

  6. If you doubled CO2 the best answer so far comes from looking at the difference between the last glacial period and the modern era - this gives a number around 3 +/- 1 ºC at doubling.

On Global Warming Heresy   by By Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT March 16th, 2007    There is little argument that

  1. Levels of C02 in the atmosphere have risen from 315 ppmv when we began systematic measurement in 1958 to about 380 ppmv today.

  2. That preindustrial levels were about 280 ppmv.

  3. That C02 is a gas with important absorption bands in the infrared.

  4. There is widespread agreement that over the past century there has been net warming of between 0.50 and 0.75C .

  5. Even the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges that greenhouse forcing is currently about three quarters of what one would expect from a doubling of C02, and yet we have seen much less warming at the surface than the models project - even with models that have oceans which are supposed to delay the response.  Here the argument amounts to one between those like me, who think that the most likely reason for the discrepancy is that models are exaggerating the response, and those who think the models are correct, but that aerosols have cancelled much of the warming. However, even the IPCC acknowledges that our confidence in the aerosol cooling is low.

  6. Agreement goes even further: there is general agreement that the famous blanket picture of the greenhouse effect that Gore likes to present is, in fact, misleadingly wrong. Rather, the real greenhouse climate effect requires most warming to occur in the middle of the tropical troposphere (cooling at the surface is mainly by motion systems, with the heat deposited in the middle of the troposphere where it is then radiated to space), and as a recent report of the National Research Council notes, warming trends at this level in the tropics appears to actually be even smaller than at the surface.