Reply To: Remnant heat of Focus Fusion

[Brian H]

Breakable wrote:

Somehow i have a bad feeling about going back into Cambrian era:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png
Probably a lot of factors were different back then, like the sun being younger and smaller

More recent data shows that we are in a peek of co2:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png

I assume you mean “peak”, not “peek”.

1) The time period you select is a dot at the tail end of the geological scale measured in ’00s of millions of years. Most of that time was spent with numbers in the ‘000s of ppm.
2) The ice core data has been subject to considerable re-evaluation and doubt recently, as it appears that the cold water film in the pressurized air bubbles has been responsible for dissolving and leaching out about 20% of the CO2 in them.
3) The Cold Sun Paradox has been resolved much more elegantly recently with water vapor/high cloud models, with no reference to CO2.
4) The more CO2 the better. Bring it on!
1)The question is not what it is in the lifetime of the planet, but what it is in the lifetime of humans. The second chart is more relative to that, unless you want dinosaurs back.
2)Until this effect has been verified, peer-reviewed, and the data adjusted it is not very important. Yes, the data could be transformed, but there is no way you can transform the second chart so we would be at a non-peek without proposing a natural phenomenon that reproduces our current consumption of fossil fuels. Previous civilizations anyone?
3)I am not a scientist, but it looks strange to me for water vapor to protect water from becoming ice and ignore any other forcing’s. Why would water vapor in this situation not produce so much vapor that all other water would vaporize?
4)If you cant do photosynthesis – probably not.

PS:A nice alternative to Wikipedia http://www.conservapedia.com/Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia
1) Not so. The “humans” issue begs the question (circular reasoning). The question is how the planet deals with wide ranges of CO2 concentration. BTW, that CO2 plot doesn’t show the really interesting sequence info: temperature rise precedes CO2 rise. Oops!
2) The point is that the error bars, especially on the potential upside, are much larger than previously assumed. And it’s still “peak”, not “peek”.
3) Water vapour and the atmospheric hydrological cycle are VASTLY more potent and important than the narrow-band “sympathetic” CO2 IR effects. High cloud blocks heat escape with full-band black-body reflection, and has far more feedback potency than any other mechanism.
4) What would interfere with photosynthesis? It’s been going on since algae and fungus got together in lichens and in the seas in blue-green algae for at least 3 billion years.