I for one believe that it is. I've believed this for a long time, but I found that a documentary called "
An Inconvenient Truth", which features for Vice President Al Gore prominently, was very persuasive. I know there are those who believe that the Climate isn't changing as well, including some people like James Corbett, who I respect immensely for his work on other subjects, but we simply don't agree when it comes to climate. Recently, a poster in another thread of mine expressed his belief that the climate isn't changing so I thought it might be good to create this thread and see where it goes. I ask that people support any assertions that haven't already been made by another poster with at least one link.
Of course the climate is changing it never does anything but. The question we are facing is not whether or not it's changing but whether we are causing it to change more rapidly than it has in the past. There are two major bones of contention here and I dare say nobody has enough expertise to select one over the other.
1.) Are we retaining more heat because we're producing more carbon dioxide? 2.) Are we producing more carbon dioxide because we are retaining more heat? You do see the dilemma here yes?
T
The ocean's CO2 dissolution tolerance is a direct function of the water temperature. Since the world's ocean's form the largest CO2 sink on the planet even a slight change of temperature in some of those bodies would release trillions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Are we very certain that it is not the heat creating the excess CO2 rather than the other way around? I'm not sure that we can nail that one down 100%. I will add a link to this shortly.
jo
My computations:
The Misrepresentation of Ocean Acidification
CO2 (aq) ↔ H2 CO3 (aq) K1 = 1.70 x 10-3
H2 CO3 (aq) + H2O ↔ H3O+ + HCO3- K2 = 2.5 x 10-4
CO2 (aq) ↔ H3O+ + HCO3- K1 K2 = 4.25 x 10-7
Of this extremely small concentration of carbonic acid, only .00025 of it ionizes to form one hydronium ion, which is the acidic portion, and a bicarbonate ion.
If it disagrees with observations, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.
It doesn’t’ matter how beautiful your guess is or how good it makes you feel.
It doesn’t matter how smart you are, or who made the guess or what his name is.
If it disagrees with observations, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.
Given the small value of Ka1 for carbon dioxide, less than 1% ionizes to form a hydronium ion. Moreover, the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide is trivial to the point of insignificance. So you have an insignificant increase of 1.36 parts per million annually, in the atmosphere, which has insignificant CO2 content compared to the oceans, and an insignificant 1% of that ionizes. School children are frightened of “ocean acidification” based on gross exaggeration which kids cannot hope to properly understand inasmuch as few adults can do so.
Compounding all these tempests in environmentalists’ tea pots is the decline of CO2 solubility in water with increasing temperature. So as the oceans allegedly get hotter, they give up more and more of their CO2.
Solubility of CO2 at mean ocean surface temperature of 23 degrees = .15 g/100 g water, or .15%.
Air has a specific heat
cp of 1 kilojoule per kilogram at constant pressure, and 0.7 kilojoule per kilogram at constant volume
cv.
Mass of the atmosphere is 5.148 x 10 18 kilograms.
1 calorie = 0.004184 kilojoules
A kilogram of water is 1,000 grams and has a specific heat of 1(calorie per gram), or 4.184 kilojoules per kilogram.
The mass of oceans is 1.4 X 10 21 kilograms, 200 times as massive as the atmosphere.
Water’s heat capacity is four times as great as air. Therefoere, the oceans hold 800 times the heat of the atmosphere. And the addition of a miniscule fraction of carbon dioxide is somehow meaningful?
Water is 49 times as abundant in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, as well as being 7 times more powerful a greenhouse gas, i.e. absorbing infrared radiation.
