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The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-07
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
Related:
Interview with Iran's Foreign Minister Javed Zarif:
"It’s a Disaster for Europe To Be So Subservient to the U.S" –Spiegel
Related:
The OPCW Scandal and the Silence Cartel (pdf) English translation by Michael Kobs of the German report below
Der OPCW-Skandal und das Scheigekartell – Multipolar Magazine
Other issues:
Hong Kong:
"Protesters"? Or U.S. funded terrorist …
Hong Kong protesters torch planned virus quarantine building – Reuters
>A group of protesters set alight the lobby of a newly built residential building in Hong Kong on Sunday that authorities planned to use as a quarantine facility for the coronavirus outbreak.
A Reuters witness saw several masked protesters, clad in black, rush into the public housing block in the Fanling district near to the border with China, and set alight a Molotov cocktail before running out. Black smoke could be seen pouring out of the building to the sound of fire alarms. Windows were smashed.<
Palestine:
Only Zionists and Nazis believe that Jews are a race.
Israeli High Court Allows DNA Testing to Prove Judaism – Haaretz
>Petition filed by Avigdor Lieberman, Yisrael Beitenu and several individuals asking for the DNA testing to prove Judaism to be disallowed is struck down<
Law:
The U.S. no longer cares for international law. Others continue to do.
The US’s Inalienable Right to Violence – Fair
The Troubling Decline of International Law – Craig Murray
EU, China, 15 Others Form Alliance to Settle Trade Disputes – Bloomberg
Use as open thread …
Climate change is real. Over 2 million years ago Planet Earth became a snow ball as it entered the ice age. Over the last 800,000 years we have had 7 glacial periods of around 100k years and as many shorter but warmer interglacials of 10-15K. We are 15 k years into the current interglacial. The optimum was reached 6000 years ago with higher temperatures and sea levels than today. The previous interglacial was warmer than this one with higher sea levels. Another glacial period is in our future, and this will destroy food production and results in a global famine. This seems more likely than runaway global warming, but predictions are difficult.
Section 14.2.2. of the Scientific Section of Third IPCC Assessment Report, (2001) titled “Predictability in a Chaotic System” says:
“The climate system is particularly challenging since it is known that components in the system are inherently chaotic; there are feedbacks that could potentially switch sign, and there are central processes that affect the system in a complicated, non-linear manner. These complex, chaotic, non-linear dynamics are an inherent aspect of the climate system.”
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible”
Human produced CO2 is a tiny 4 % of total CO2 emissions. The oceans contain 37,400 billion tons (GT) of suspended carbon, land biomass has 2000-3000 GT. The atmosphere contains 720 billion GT of CO2 and humans contribute only 7 GT/yr of C The oceans, land and atmosphere exchange CO2 continuously.
IPCC has grossly underestimated the future oceanic CO2 uptake. They assume only 50% of mans emissions are absorbed despite these 2 facts:
1. Much more carbon flows through the ocean than the amount produced by burning fossil fuels;
2. An amount of carbon equal to to the total amount stored in the atmosphere cycles through the ocean in about eight years [(750 GT) / (92 GT per year) = 8.3 years]
In essence they are stating that the approximately 3.5 GT C/yr accumulated by the atmosphere is all of mans C from CO2 emissions and none of natures 89 GT C/yr emissions.
As to CO2 levels past and present comparisons, ice core evidence suggest CO2 levels change with changing temperature with temperatures driving CO2 levels and not vice versa
Geological and ice core samples don’t translate directly to atmospheric C02 levels except as a very rough estimate of a several hundred years or millennia average, so the effect is to smooth out the CO2 levels and erase spikes due to short term warming spells such as we have see recently since 1850
As for the GHG analogy. By far the most important greenhouse gas is water vapor. However, water in the form of clouds can reflect back solar radiation, causing temperature reduction. Clouds are nature’s screen reflecting some portion of incoming SW and outgoing LW. We have little idea how clouds work to modify temperatures.
We can see what the absence of clouds does . In the cloudless desert the day – night temperature range is the highest anywhere due to lack of water vapor. The lack of the greatest atmospheric GHG (H2O) results in the loss of LW heat into space (aka LW radiational cooling). Cold clear winter day/nights with low humidity show similar effects with plunging temperatures due to little obstacle to LW radiation to space. CO2 levels are the same in cloudless and cloudy days and nights. Its interesting but much of the increase in average temperature is due to an increase in night time temperatures. Maybe this is due to more CO2, especially in urban areas where CO2 levels at the surface are much higher than the 412 ppm measured on the top of Mauna Loa
Clouds are the wild card of climate change. In the 2001 IPCC Report it says:
“In response to any climate perturbation the response of cloudiness thereby introduces feedbacks whose sign and amplitude are largely unknown.”
So we have a model of the atmosphere that doesn’t know how clouds work but is the basis for climate predictions of global warming.
As for ocean PH. Henry’s Law requires that the partial pressures of atmospheric and dissolved ocean CO2 equilibrate. Rising atmospheric CO2 must increase dissolved seawater CO2. That is long established simple physical chemistry. This lowers pH by increasing carbonic acid, all else being equal. Furthermore anthropogenic carbon comprises less that 3% of the combined CO2 entering and leaving the ocean surface each year.
However, Ocean pH is not a linear chemical system driven only by Henry’s law; it is a system highly buffered by dissolved minerals and seafloor carbonates. Taking seawater chemical buffering into account, IPCC AR5 3.8.2 suggested that doubled atmospheric CO2 might cause surface pH to decline by Δ0.15-0.2. This is well within the normal diurnal and seasonal biological seawater pH variation for almost all ocean waters.
Ocean surface pH is not uniform. It varies diurnally, seasonally, by ecosystem, and by underlying ocean depth. The Moderately fertile Southern Ocean surface seasonality is Δ0.5 pH. Seasonal surface variation can be as high as Δ1.43 pH in biologically fertile waters
Near the surface, we expect to find the highest pH values, with progressively lower values downwards. At the surface of the Pacific, values run from pH 8.05 in the tropics to pH 7.6 in the Gulf of Alaska while, at 1000m in high latitudes and 250m at the equator, water of around pH 7.5 occurs at mid-‐depths; a similar pattern occurs in the Atlantic.
Near-‐surface, the pCO2 difference between gas and water phases controls gas CO2 exchange across the surface, while in the interior of the ocean pCO2 values are controlled by respiration and carbonate dissolution.
Some of the alarming reports concerning ‘corrosive sea water have been based on observations of commercial shellfish cultures in which the oysters have failed to produce normal shells; this syndrome has popularly been ascribed to changing pH of ocean water due to increasing CO2 levels in atmosphere due to Man, especially on the Oregon and California coasts.
The failure to produce normal shell material is due to very low levels of calcite saturation that results in abnormal calcification of larvae and adult shells that appear to be eroded.
In the pacific northwest, the corrosive waters are due to colder more acidic waters welling up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean in the summer and fall and streaming ashore in the fjords, bays, and estuaries of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. The extent varies depending on the strength of the PDO and other currents responsible for this upwelling. Besides having a low pH these cold deep waters are depleted in carbonate and saturated with CO2, causing calcite undersaturation and outgassing of CO2 to the atmosphere in accordance with Henrys Law.
So its hard to justify mans CO2 being to blame here.
The entire subject of the response of the marine ecosystem to increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 is in such an early stage of investigation is that it is not yet possible to achieve any level of certainty about what the future holds for the marine ecosystem.
Posted by: pft | Jan 28 2020 21:40 utc | 218
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