Talk:Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere

Poor Sentence Construction

The following sentences need to be rewritten. " These timescales are so short with respect to the timescale of the evolution such there is little doubt these concentrations will be reached soon barring any drastic behavior changes.[citation needed] Indeed, the lifetime of for instance power plants can be 40 to 60 years.[32] To avoid these concentrations, an immediate reduction of the concentration growth of 3.5% per year rather than a growth of the concentration growth of 1.7% per year needs to be achieved for the foreseeable future." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.27.121.68 (talk) 23:30, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Concentration - Global Warming Statement

You state that "Increased amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere tend to enhance the greenhouse effect and thus contribute to global warming.". This is a theory, not a proven fact (albeit a much hyped theory). Could you make that clear, please?

It's also a "theory" that the sun will rise tomorrow.24.47.61.206 (talk) 02:25, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Jqlr 12:05, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I tried to make it more neutral and linked it to the appropriate page. Sln3412 22:14, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The statement that "Increased amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere tend to enhance the greenhouse effect and thus contribute to global warming.", is really misleading.

No it isn't. While water vapor is more abundant, significant (10%) increases in C02 will certainly produce significant warming. Of course one might argue that a 3 degree celsius increase in temperature, converted to degree Kelvin, would be "insignificant'. But it's certainly significant compared to the normal range of temperatures, and in terms of biological and even geological effect. One might equally argue that running a high fever is "insignificant".24.47.61.206 (talk) 02:25, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

To fairly represent the potential of CO2 as a greenhouse gas for all non technical readers of this article, this article should mention the fact that on average, CO2 atmospheric concentration constitutes a very small overall percent of total greenhouse gas. To better explain my point. H20, "on average" exists in the "troposhere" in the 1.5% to 3.0% levels or (15,000 ppmv to 30,000 ppmv) range. (http://www.netl.doe.gov/KeyIssues/climate_change3.html) Even if all other greehouse gases are ignored, CO2 concentrations of 400 ppmv when compared only to water vapor would represent only 2.7% to 1.3% of all of the greenhouse gas. This is a key issue since CO2 and H2O both absorb IR energy in the 2.7 and 15 micron spectra. Therefore, most of the IR energy which is reflected from the earth in these two IR spectra will be absorbed by H2O. The only spectra att which CO2 uniquely absorbs IR energy is a narrow band centered at 4.7 microns. http://brneurosci.org/co2.html

I think that this statement would most accurately represent reality if it were restated to read as follows:"Since H2O, the most powerful greenhouse gas, exists at concentrations which are 40 to 70 times greater than CO2, increasing CO2 would slightly enhance the greenhouse effect which could contribute to global warming." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Beegdawg007 (talk • contribs) 19:02, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, no. See Talk:Global warming/FAQQ14. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:57, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

---

In a similar vein, the following statement needs a lot of work "The Northern Hemisphere dominates the annual cycle of CO2 concentration because it has much greater land area and plant biomass than the Southern Hemisphere. Concentrations peak in May as the Northern Hemisphere spring greenup begins and reach a minimum in October when the quantity of biomass undergoing photosynthesis is greatest.[3]". A lot of research has been done on the atmosphere/ocean carbon flux, and there is abundant research showing seasonal temperature drives the cycle. The Southern hemisphere has vastly more heat-moderating ocean and reflective ice surface than the north which has more absortive land mass. It's not only the northern growing season that is in sync with the seasonal CO2 cycle - the average temperature of the globe is in sync with seasonal CO2 as well. A lower average global temperature causes the ocean to absorb more CO2. In either case, the sun is the cause of the CO2 fluctuation. But for balance in the contentious climate-change debate, it is relevant to point out that this is a natural phenomenon where temperature drives CO2 levels rather than the reverse. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.64.6.58 (talk) 02:25, 19 July 2009 (UTC) global warming is from mndg; —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.163.43.190 (talk) 16:19, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Concentration - figures and reference

The references for this aren't very good, neither one lists the % by weight nor the number of tonnes. What "pre-industrial" is isn't defined either. Obviously, that's supposed to be an average of 228 - what years were the average 228?

As of January 2007, the earth's atmospheric CO2 concentration is about 0.0383% by volume (383 ppmv) or 0.0582% by weight.[1] This represents about 2.996×1012 tonnes, and is estimated to be 105 ppm (37.77%) above the pre-industrial average.[2]

Sln3412 22:18, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

In fact, I don't know why the weight is important for a gas. I think the weight can be dropped and only ppm by volume used. --Sln3412 22:44, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

alexselkirk1704 suggests; More could be said about the natural mechanisms that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and some estimates of its duration therein.

Timothy Ball disagrees with this article...

(Red collar 02:42, 7 October 2007 (UTC))

There is a line in this article: Carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, under the sub-title Historical variation.

It is mentioned that "Present carbon dioxide levels are likely higher now than at any time during the past 20 myr[17] and certainly higher than in the last few hundred thousand."

I believe this to be misleading, or at least it's only part of the truth.

I've just hear a podcast available on this page: http://splatto.mypodcast.com/2007/05/Dr_Tim_Ball_Why_Theres_Nothing_New_About_Climate_Change-19494.html

That podcast is more than an hour long. At 44:28, Timothy Ball says this:

...(this 600 million year graph for CO2) what it shows you, um, is that the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is 385ppm. And then you go back in time, you see that we're ac... The world is actually at the lowest level of CO2 in the atmosphere in 600 000 000 years. Not the highest as they want you to believe.

And if you look at the CO2 in the past, ...(garbled)...at the 4000 ppm... You know there's thing out of the west coast, they've got these greenhouses, they're pumping in a thousand parts per million of CO2 because the plants grow four times more efficiently and use less water.

It suggests that the plants have evolved on a planet that had at least 1000ppm of CO2. CO2 is a natural gas (that is) very important to vegetation. Did the plants get a vote on Kyoto (Kyoto Protocol)? (laughter) Not a scrap of it...

The podcast is dated Saturday, May 26, 2007, and it's called "Dr. Tim Ball: Why There’s Nothing New About Climate Change"

It's a conference from Tim Ball where he mentions that historically, CO2 levels have reached 4000 (four thousand)ppm.

This is even confirmed by the actual texte.

In the Carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere text, we are told...

While these measurements give much less precise estimates of carbon dioxide concentration than ice cores, there is evidence for very high CO2 volume concentrations between 200 and 150 myr BP of over 3,000 ppm and between 600 and 400 myr BP of over 6,000 ppm.[16]

...but in the same paragraph, we are told...

Present carbon dioxide levels are likely higher now than at any time during the past 20 myr[17] and certainly higher than in the last few hundred thousand.

I'm getting the impression that the article is misleading.

If we did reach the level of 1000ppm of CO2, plants worldwide would thrive and need less water. The direct effect of that would be that plants would consume more CO2 and CO2 in the atmosphere would taper off or decrease and we'd enter a new cycle.

Dr. Timothy Ball is a retired weather expert who has published and has been reviewed by peers. Since he does know something about the environment, I do not want to ignore his opinion offhand. This being said, I do not know the copyright status of that podcast. If I can use it here on Wikipedia, I'm uncertain as to how I can use it. That's why I haven't edited the main page.

I'm not an expert, I don't understand why C4 plants are mentioned on that page. That, and the importance of saying that current levels are at their highest (when they're really not).

Ball's comments are a mishmash of red herrings and incoherent raving. (How's that for a mental image?) What happened several hundred million years ago is utterly irrelevant to the present day. Hint: this is what a map of the world looked like back then.[1] Raymond Arritt 03:07, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Here's the mental image I'd like to leave you with. You need about one and a half pounds of food every day. Each day when you look in the cupboard you see only three pounds of food. That's not a lot compared with what most Americans are used to looking at when they're hungry. It's more like what those living in poverty in third world countries experience. But that is just what each and every plant on Earth sees every day when it comes to the staple of their existence, carbon. If there were half has much CO2 as there is in the atmosphere, everything, including you, dear sir, would start to die. blackcloak (talk) 05:26, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

"If we did reach the level of 1000ppm of CO2, plants worldwide would thrive and need less water. The direct effect of that would be that plants would consume more CO2 and CO2 in the atmosphere would taper off or decrease and we'd enter a new cycle." This is not a valid conclusion because it is grossly simplistic. To create a net sink of carbon in terrestrial plants you'd have to store that extra carbon somewhere. But there is no reason to believe that would happen. Yes, presumably plants would grow faster but they would also shed leaves and decompose faster in the yearly cycles. This would tend to balance the net carbon budget over a year. To the contrary, if increased CO2 led to warming in the polar latitudes this could trigger mass decomposition of the accumulated peat which would then increase CO2 concentrations even more. On the other hand, however, increasing CO2 concentrations could stimulate oceanic phytoplankton to grow faster, which could then sink to the bottom of the ocean, thus sequestering carbon. However, the response of the ocean to increased CO2 is a very complicated issue and nobody really knows for sure what will happen since there are several other scenarios which would have the opposite effect. That is what scientists right now are trying to better understand. --Kram-bc (talk) 06:40, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Image Issues

Hey guys... The graph that starts at 1960 to the present is horribly biased and obviously trying to push an axe to grind (an agenda...) Could you guy please uphold Wikipedia's reputation of being credible by getting a graph that more accurately describes the trends of global warming? Starting the graph at 1960 makes the increase in CO2 seem much larger than it is relative to the Earth's holistic history...—Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.92.123.190 (talk • contribs) 18:21, 13 December 2007

but the observatory only started monitoring CO2 in 1957. I don't think that's bias, it's just a graph of what the CO2 is at? Further down the page there's a graph of CO2 over the last 400,000 years (much of the Pleistocene) and one of the last 500M years or so too... I'm not sure why mentioning current CO2 levels is 'bias', seems quite a reasonable thing to include. 129.215.24.8 (talk) 16:39, 23 June 2008 (UTC)(lionfish)

The article is about Carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, not Carbon Dioxide rise in the past 50-60 years. I agree that the graph as presented is biased.216.13.37.10 (talk) 16:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

The graph (mauna loa) is the most accurate measurement of CO2 that exists, it starts at that point because that is the starting point of direct measurements (as opposed to proxy data). Any apparent "axe to grind" is in the eye of the beholder, rather than in the graph. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 16:57, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Relationship with oceanic concentration

"The vast majority of CO2 added to the atmosphere will eventually be absorbed by the oceans and become bicarbonate ion, but the process takes on the order of a hundred years because most seawater rarely comes near the surface."

That last part can't be true for two reasons. First the churning of the sea surface mixes atmospheric gases with the water quite well. We know this because sufficient oxygen gets into sea water to support life- especially in the top 100 meters or so. Second there is rain. Time to do a little back of the envelope calculation. Let average rainfall per year be 200mm over the entire surface of the globe. So the volume of water that washes the atmosphere in one year is: pi*D^2*200mm=3*8000*8000*5280*5280*300*300*200mm^3=10^23mm^3. Let an average raindrop be 1mm in diameter, so its volume is .5mm^3. So the number of rain drops that fall in a year is 10^23/.5=2*10^23. And the total surface area of all the raindrops that fall in one year is 2*10^23*3*1^2=6*10^23mm^2. Finally, how many times larger is this number than the entire surface of the globe? The Earth's surface area is 5*10^20mm^2, so one years worth of rain presents a water to atmosphere surface that is 6*10^23/(5*10^20)=1000 times the surface area of the Earth. That sounds like plenty of opportunity for trapping co2 to me. We then assume that amount of co2 that enters each raindrop is a modest .001 by weight (although the major path for disolution may be in the formation of the raindrops), (1cc is one gram) so 10^20gm*.001=10^17grams of CO2=10^14kg=10^11metric tons, which compared with 3*10^12metric tons of co2 in the atmosphere, means 3% of atmospheric co2 is removed from the atmosphere by rain every year. And it also means that, effectively, all atmospheric co2 is cycled out of the atmosphere every 33 years. Of course there still is the ocean surface, which can probably be considered to be in equilibrium with the atmosphere at the surface, so movement either way is likely to be balanced. An of course, I used one tricky number (part by weight absorption) that easily could be way off and could dramatically effect the calculation. blackcloak (talk) 08:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

CO2 (a nonpolar gas) is only poorly miscible in water (a highly polar solvent). For sea water the result is ~90 mg/kg, or 90 ppm by weight. So it is likely your guess for the amount of CO2 in rain is too high by more than an order of magnitude. Further, isotopic and mass balance studies suggest about 11 gigatonnes CO2 shifts from the atmosphere to the ocean per year under current conditions, rather than the 100 gigatonnes you suggest.

Also, even if your analysis were correct, Wikipedia's policy on original research requires that analysis be previously published rather than our own interpretations. Dragons flight (talk) 10:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

While you are right about the policy, in practice what happens is wiki authors describe their interpretation of what they read in published material, and they often get it wrong, especially as they dumb it down. I'm convinced that many wiki authors are not well trained hard scientists, and easily fall into traps about definition and logic. blackcloak (talk) 06:56, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

In this case, back of the envelope calculations are done as sanity checks, not as original research. There are several respects with which my numbers could be wrong. I have not seen any published work that specifically says that rain is not a significant factor in the removal of CO2. So using your number (.0001 for seawater, instead of my guess of .001 for rainwater) for the ratio by weight, my computed estimates correspond quite closely to your numbers. But the question that has to be asked is: Is rainwater significantly different from seawater when it comes to CO2 concentration? I can imagine that rainwater strikes the oceans at pH 5.7, along with its load of CO2, mixes with the top layers of the ocean during the rain storm, then is slowly dissipated back to the atmosphere as equilibrium is returned to the seawater/atmosphere boundary. Of course some of the CO2 would stay, feeding life in the upper layers, a proportion of which is then captured in solid form and falls to the ocean floor. blackcloak (talk) 07:13, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Erroneous Comparisons

The differences between the 1832 ice core and the more recently determined Mauna Loa atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide should not be used to argue for or against any trends. Mauna Loa is a subtropical to tropical volcanic island over a major oceanic hot spot that is releasing gases into the ocean and into the atmosphere. We've been measuring the carbon dioxide atmospheric changes in this area for only 48 years, hardly long enough to know if it is part of a multidecadal, or multicentury cycle involving oceanic or wind currents, varying vulcanism in the earth's crust, or to some other yet unknown or undiscovered factors. The ice core comes from an environment most likely devoid of carbon dioxide producing vegetation at a much higher latitude with insignificant vulcanism in the vicinity. Furthermore, the water temperatures are different in these enviroments. The amounts and types of precipitation are different as well. In my opinion, comparing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in these very different environments as if they represented some 180 year trend for the entire earth, goes way beyond ludicrous.

This entire article doesn't pass my credibility test and, in my opinion, should be removed from Wikipedia.

Norm (talk) 03:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

CO2 is globally well mixed, in general William M. Connolley (talk) 08:14, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Since CO2 is about 50% more dense than the vast majority of the molecules of the atmosphere, in principle, it should slowly sink towards the earth. It seems reasonable to conjecture that there is a CO2 density profile with the greatest concentration at the surface of the earth. Has anyone published mearsuremnts that might confirm this trend? blackcloak (talk) 04:53, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

You may have noticed the weather. The stirring of winds and large scale convection totally overwhelm density driven seperation. And yes, CO2 profiles have been measured versus altitude. Dragons flight (talk) 18:45, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Look at the graph. If what you say is true you would not see anything so consistent from year to year, in both yearly fluctuations and yearly upward trend. If volcanoes in fact biased the measurements on Mauna Loa, as you suggest, then you'd see lots of yearly fluctuations. Furthermore, if CO2 had a vertical concentration gradient, which it doesn't to any significant degree, then if anything the measurements on Mauna Loa would underestimate its concentration because it is on a mountain.--Kram-bc (talk) 06:51, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Concentration Metric

This sentence from the Concentration section of the article just doesn't make sense: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration describes current levels "...as a dry mole fraction defined as the number of molecules of carbon dioxide divided by the number of molecules of dry air multiplied by one million (ppm).

Maybe it should say The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines concentration as "...as a dry mole fraction defined as the number of molecules of carbon dioxide divided by the number of molecules of dry air multiplied by one million (ppm).

Even then it's self referential since normal dry air contains carbon dioxide, so may be it should be normal dry air less the carbon dioxide content - in any case it's just inconsistent as is. Unfortunately I don't know enough to make a correction. Furthermore other sections refer to concentration by volume, which is fine so long as the implicit assumption of the ideality of carbon dioxide and other components of air is taken as read, which one shouldn't have to do.Fizzackerly (talk) 15:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I rephrased it to what I think it means, roughly equivalent to your version. I don't see why its self-ref though... dry air is (not-CO2)+(CO2) and the fraction is (CO2)/((not-CO2)+(CO2)). Since the not-CO2 bit is pretty constant, this seems OK. CO2 is only 0.04%, so it wouldn't matter much if you did CO2/not-CO2 William M. Connolley (talk) 18:58, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

how much ppm can atmosphere take + amount of daily emissions by man

please add the quote that we are putting 70 billion ton co2 in the atmosphere daily (see the an inconvenient truth film; or refer to http://www.climatecrisis.net/ and mention how much the atmosphere can still take before there are very serious consequences (I believe the IPCC mentioned around 500 ppm). This data would also allow a graph based on "business as usual" to see how long we can still continue our emitting at present levels before there are bad things to happen (500-present level= ? -70 ton co2 x 356= ? year; this can be shown on graph)

thanks, 81.244.207.221 (talk) 12:00, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

The actual number is closer to 70 million ton of CO2 daily. 70 billion would make for more than 10 ton per capita, which is a bit much. 10 kg daily per capita is about right. Pierre-Normand (talk) 02:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

deceptive phrasing

"These natural sources are balanced by natural sinks, which remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.[8] The increase in carbon dioxide concentration arises because the increase from human activity is not balanced by a corresponding sink."

The over-simplified explanation above leads to misunderstanding, in two respects. 1) Natural processes do not remove all co2 from the atmosphere. Natural processes normally send into the atmosphere more co2 than can be removed by other natural processes. (It's a balance.) 2) co2 produced by human activity is indistinguishable from co2 produced naturally. With greater co2 concentrations, there is an increase in the sinks (more co2 is removed) because there is a greater concentration of co2. The wording suggests, to the uncritical reader, that there is no natural sink to take up (at least some, if not the majority of) the extra carbon. blackcloak (talk) 18:07, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

--very true. anyone with even a high school knowledge of chemistry and chemical reactions should be able to tell you what happens when you have an equilibrium like that one and some factor changes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.237.50.106 (talk) 05:18, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Article Topic?

Is this an article about carbon dioxide in earth's atmosphere, or an article about anthropogenic global warming theory? The green house gas role of CO2 is very well described, but there is very little mention of what good CO2 does in our atmosphere, i.e. being essential for life. Please revise the article to cover 10% about global warming and 90% about CO2s role in the biosphere. There are plenty of article on Wikipedia about AGW. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.207.143.91 (talk) 04:18, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Fair Point. However much of this is covered in Carbon cycle which link i have added to /* See also */ *Carbon cycle. However please feel free to "revise the article to cover 10% about global warming and 90% about CO2s role in the biosphere." and get a wikipedia account while you are at it.--Theo Pardilla (talk) 11:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Anthopogenic CO2

I've heard from many global warming naysayers that the human race's contribution to the amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere from all sources is very small. I have not been able to find any data on this. Could someone clear this up for me? Just how much CO2 do we actually contribute? Phasmatisnox (talk) 01:07, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

The human-caused flux of CO2 into the atmosphere is about 6.5 gigatons per year. This is fairly small relative to the total of natural sources and sinks, which if memory serves is something over 100 gigatons per year. The more important point is that natural sources and sinks are in balance as reflected in the fact that CO2 concentrations were remarkably steady for the 10,000 years or so preceding the Industrial Revolution (less than +/- 5% variation). The CO2 increase has occurred because the human-caused source is not balanced by a corresponding sink. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:46, 27 December 2008 (UTC)re

I am confused by your use of the word 'flux'. In a given year, how much of the CO2 going into the atmosphere is manmade in origin? Phasmatisnox (talk) 04:34, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

That's the 6.5 gigatons, or roughly 5% of the total input. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:52, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

It's just as important to ask what is the magnitude of the human-caused C02 sinks. Agriculture, forestry (wood and paper production), irrigation of marginal lands, use of fertilizers to stimulate growth should tie up more CO2 than the grasslands or forests now converted to agricultural use. blackcloak (talk) 03:49, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

No, not really. What we grow, we grow for consumption. The carbon dioxide that becomes the wheat in our hamburger buns is released again when we eat that hamburger and breath. Fertilization and irrigation may increase the rate of plant growths, but we are using nearly all of that plant matter in the very short term. And a field of wheat fixes a lot less carbon that a forest of the same size, and probably even less than a grassland. Land use change overall has contributed towards carbon dioxide increase. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:27, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

An (old) forest is in equilibrium with its environment. It takes in as much CO2 as it gives off. Perhaps a significant amount of CO2 leaves the forest through ground water, the CO2 becoming sequestered elsewhere (underground, ocean floor). The only land sink of CO2 I know of is peat, which can lock up carbon for millenia. In a stable environment, even glaciers must be in equilbrium (the case where sea levels don't change). In this case, just as much CO2 is captured in snow/ice as melts from snow/ice, though water runoff may result in C sequestering elsewhere. Good quality wood (as opposed to fire wood) removed from forests and used for most human purposes locks up CO2 for decades, if not centuries. Perhaps you could supply your favorite reference justifying your comment about human land use and the net carbon dioxide increase. blackcloak (talk) 06:21, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are right with respect to the equilibrium of mature forests. I was talking about the one-off effect of converting a forest to agricultural lands (or vice versa). Even though its only one-off, considering that e.g. much of Europe and the eastern US was covered in forests, the overall effect is significant. Yes, i we convert wood to long-lived products, that CO2 is locked away for the life time of the product. But that is only a very small part of the biomass in a forest, and sustainable timber production is only a very small human endeavor. As for reliable sources, see e.g. this new statement from the Royal Society of New Zealand [2]: "The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration since pre-industrial times are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land use change" and "About 2/3rds of these anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions since 1750 are estimated to have come from fossil fuel burning and about 1/3 from land use change", or check the IPCC reports. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:37, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I read much of your referenced article. This a secondary source (summarizes results collected from primary sources). "The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration since pre-industrial times are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land use change." Certainly fossil fuel use increases the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere, where presumably it will be partially responsible for increasing in a long term time averaged sense the CO2 concentration. As for land use change, that can go either way. The authors seem to be implying that the long term average concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is partially due to the net effects of human based changes in the use of land. While this may be true, I'd like to see a primary source that attempts to fully quantify changes in the sink component due to human based land use change. Regarding the second occurrence of the term "land use" in the article, quoted here fully: "About 2/3rds of these anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions since 1750 are estimated to have come from fossil fuel burning and about 1/3 from land use change. About 45% of this carbon dioxide has remained in the atmosphere." I have a problem with the last sentence because it implies that somehow anthropogenic CO2 is not recycled in the same way naturally occuring CO2 is, or that the entire 45% is directly due to anthropogenic actvity. In particular the sentence does not appear to allow for natural feedback processes which drive CO2 into the atmosphere as a consequence of temperature rise (CO2 release from oceans). I'd rather they just say the average long term concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen xx% since 1750. Consider as a thought experiment the following: Suppose man's activities only emitted excess H2O into the atmosphere. The additional H2O would serve as the agent for warming the atmosphere, and the ocean reservoir of CO2 would start to enter/re-enter the atmosphere. I assert that there is an amount of H2O that could be injected into the atmosphere that would result in the present level of CO2. blackcloak (talk) 06:28, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

See e.g. [3], [4], or any number of other sources. The 45% does not refer to the increase in atmospheric concentration, but relates the amount of anthropogenic CO2 to the amount of extra CO2 in the atmosphere. At the moment, natural sinks still increase with atmospheric concentration (the big, fast-acting sink is the ocean, which will absorb CO2 until the equilibrium between dissolved CO2 in the water and atmospheric CO2 has been reached - the result is Ocean acidification, something we can and do observe), they just cannot keep up. Also see here for how we know were the CO2 is coming from. Your assertion is interesting, but I doubt it. Water vapor is removed from the atmosphere very fast - it does not act as a climate forcing, but rather as a feedback. You would certainly need some magic super-tech to keep water vapor up in a cold atmosphere without massive cloud formation. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:21, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I could not load ref 3 (some cookie problem) and ref 4 was IPCC which I consider secondary. Nonetheless is quickly checking a few areas, I found nothing on the carbon sink budget. I still can't figure out unambiguously what the 45% really means. In thought experiments you have to accept the premise, for the purpose of running the experiment. Apparently you consider the premise so absurd that you don't want to waste any time trying to understand what would happen under those conditions. But, as for your observation that water leaves the atmosphere rapidly, let me try to convince you that relatively small water vapor concentration increases may be significant. As I understand it, the average H2O concentration in the atmosphere is 1%. Most of the time this is not enough concentration (depending on temperature of course- and probably pressure) for clouds and/or rain to form. The Greenhouse effect has to be dominated by average greenhouse gas concentrations, i.e. largely when clouds have not formed. Note, the cooling half of the equilibrium cycle depends on the IR radiation leaving the earth (which clouds significantly impede). So what would happen if the H2O concentration simply increased from 1% to 1.01%? That additional 1% (of 1%) would, since H2O is the dominant greenhouse gas, increase thermal energy transfer by 1%, to and from, the thermal energy temporarily stored in the atmosphere. An average 1.01% H2O would not change the "appearance" of the earth's atmosphere- i.e. there would be an imperceptively small increase in cloud formation. But that "little" extra H2O would increase heating and cooling rates by 1%. Nominally the two effects would cancel in the daily temperature cycle. So we have to consider secondary effects. Slightly higher daytime temperatures might mean more wind, and more evaporation, as well as an increase in CO2 release rates from the oceans. The corresponding lower nighttime temperatures might reduce average wind speeds enough to reduce ever so slightly CO2 take up by the oceans, and slow down evaporation. And BTW, that 1% (of 1%) increase in water vapor concentration is roughly the equivalent to the magnitude of the greenhouse effect due to the entire amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. blackcloak (talk) 09:08, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The first ref was . Also see . You should be able to find them via Google Scholar, or a library. Or just type "land use change greenhouse" into Google Scholar yourself. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:28, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The first ref is about, based on a reading of the abstract, which is all I can get to, the unintended consequences of using current cropland for biofuels. It does not discuss the topic of sinks directly, so does not address my question. The second reference is getting very close, for my purposes. In rereading my comments, it occurs to me that I need to know more about absorption cross-sections for H2O and CO2, and relaxation times. Presumably these are wavelength dependent and pressure/temperature dependent. Do you have any good sources for these topics? blackcloak (talk) 19:08, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

This figure provides information on the full atmosphere absorption, which is principally a convolution of the concentrations with the wavelength-dependent absorption cross-sections. Temperature and pressure variation have relatively little impact on absorption over the range of the atmosphere where there is enough mass to be important. One can usually make the further approximation that the spontaneous relaxation time is much longer than the intermolecular collision time, so any energy that is absorbed is effectively coupled as heat to the rest of the local atmosphere. The file's description links to an online calculator if you want more detail though it would take some effort to extract the full details from that.

The point in asking about absorption cross sections (and related physical characteristics like relaxation times and paths) is to understand why H2O absorption (and re-emission) doesn't so dominate CO2 absorption as to relegate CO2 concentrations to having no more than a 3% effect on overall (thermal) energy transfer rates. I'm looking for data/information that I have not found anywhere on Wikipedia. blackcloak (talk) 07:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Relative to the larger conversation, it is important to note that the atmospheric abundance of water vapor only represents about two weeks of rainfall. As a result, perturbations to the water system will literally rain out over short time scales. Hence, a water vapor excess can't accumulate over years they way a CO2 excess can, but rather would have to be driven by a fast acting, persistent process. One can legitimately wonder whether any environmental perturbations (for example in land use) have that effect, but most direct emission processes are simply too slow to get to even 1% in the limited time available. Dragons flight (talk) 20:11, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm using very long term averages for H2O concentrations, so things that happen on the two week time scale are irrelevant. A 1% increase in evaporation rates means that the long term average H2O concentrations must increase by 1%. That's the way linear systems work. You could probably write a EXCEL spreadsheet simulation that would convince yourself that this indeed would be the case. blackcloak (talk) 07:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Old discussion, but I'd like to just make one correction here: If water evaporation is increased by 1%, that does not mean the atmospheric concentration of water vapor will increase by 1%. Rather, it means that the amount of precipitation will increase by 1%, since the atmosphere is in equilibrium; any extra water you add to it will be eliminated in the form of precipitation. Think of the atmosphere as a clogged sink, and the water evaporation as the water pouring into it. After reaching equilibrium, the water will be at the edge of the sink, overflowing it. That overflow is equivalent to precipitation. If you nudge the faucet up just a bit, enough to increase the water influx by 1%, that doesn't mean the water will reach 1% above the edge of the sink, it just means 1% more water will flow over the edge. Sakkura (talk) 15:34, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Can the origins section be made more quantitative?

The origins section lists sources of CO2 but doesn't give any sort of breakdown as to which sources are large and which are small and what the relative amounts of them are. I recall seeing a breakdown of these sources by percentage at one point, but I can't remember where I read it and a brief Google is not helpful. Can we add some more info here about what the relative amounts of emissions from each of these sources are? If someone can point me at a source, that would help. Oren0 (talk) 20:23, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

"Without these sources..."

The current article says: "Currently about 57% of human-emitted CO₂ is removed by the biosphere and oceans; without this effect CO₂ levels would be even higher." I thought removing the end of this statement would be pretty uncontroversial but apparently not. Isn't this statement redundant? This is like saying "The Earth's temperature is rising. Without this rise, the temperature would be cooler."? Oren0 (talk) 20:35, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

People often ask, what proportion of CO2 rise is human caused, and seem surprised when I say "more than 100%", so I don't think it is well known or well understood; some degree of repetition may be desirable William M. Connolley (talk) 21:53, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

It'd be one thing if the statement was "without human emissions, the net effect of the biosphere and oceans would cause CO2 to decrease," assuming that's true and can be cited. But all this sentence says is that if CO2 wasn't removed from the atmosphere, there'd be more CO2. It seems to me that this goes without saying. Oren0 (talk) 21:56, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

You fail to miss the point. The natural sinks, at least for the moment, increase with CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The primary mechanism is that CO2 solution into the ocean water increases with the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:20, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Halflife of CO2

I was wondering why this article doesn't mention the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere, in the same way that the half-life of methane is mentioned in the lead of that article? I found this which says

“ The result is that a simple “half-life” model doesn’t work for carbon dioxide – the physical system has too many variable and components to claim that CO2 has an single atmospheric lifetime... The half-life of radioactive waste cannot be simply and easily defined, and neither can the half-life (lifetime) of CO2 in the atmosphere. ”

That sounds reasonable, the author brings up a point about the IPCC changing the definition as well, so obviously there is some debate about how best to explain the half-life concept in the context of atmospheric CO2. Could someone knowledgeable about this please add an explanation to this article? 78.105.234.140 (talk) 16:11, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

There is a half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere in the sense that CO2 molecules move between the atmosphere, the land (vegetation and detritus mostly) and the upper ocean (carbonic acid) with a half-life of on the order of a decade or two. However that half-life is often misinterpreted to mean that if we stopped pumping more anthropogenic CO2 into the atmosphere, that it would settle back to pre-industrial levels on that time scale. In fact, it would take much, much longer, on the order of a century or a few centuries (the calculations are rather uncertain), to go down by half, since that total reservoir of atmosphere/land/upper-ocean is in equilibrium compared to the time scale of exchange with the deep ocean and other responses to the increased CO2. So the CO2 that is absorbed by the land and upper ocean is re-emited by them at the same rate. Therefore the decade-ish half-life of atmosphere CO2 is not relevant when considering how to deal with the excess CO2 we are pumping into that total, three-part reservoir.

The time scale for the removal of CO2 from that total reservoir is not exponential -- the amount of time to get halfway back to 280 ppmv (taking that to be the "equilibrium" value) is not the same as the time to get another quarter of the way (half of the remaining way) back to 280 ppmv, so it cannot be described as a half-life. To make it even more confusing, I have seen the term "single half-life" used to describe the time to get 50% of the way to the equilibrium value, acknowledging that the time for that "single" or first half-life is not the same as the time for the second half-life. Since it isn't, the term "half-life" shouldn't be used in the first place. Mark Adler 21:46, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was page moved.  Skomorokh, barbarian  19:18, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

---

Carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere → Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere — - [I find it awkward and superfluous to have "the" in the article name.] --Shirifan (talk) 01:15, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

• Atmospheric carbon dioxide would be even more concise. (It's already a redirect to this page.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Snottywong (talk • contribs) 13:34, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

• Problem is "atmospheric" doesn't make it specific to Earth. For example there is a lot to be said about carbon dioxide in Venus' atmosphere. Another point is that the "parent" article is called Earth's atmosphere. --Shirifan (talk) 02:21, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Content

Too many different units, try settling on megatonnes. The teratonnes, gigatonnes, short tons, etc are too confusing, even for my EE brain. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.100.46.254 (talk) 15:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Partial Pressure

How can this article not have the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere listed? It's the most relevant measure of CO2 content, much more so than gigatonnes or megatonnes etc. I'd assume it's somewhere in the region of 300-500 Pa, but obviously adding this to the article requires a better source than, say, multiplying the fraction of CO2 with the total atmospheric pressure (even though such a calculation might make sense, it's OR). Sakkura (talk) 15:47, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, the statement at the very start of the article, "Carbon dioxide (CO2) forms approximately 0.04% of the nominal 5,000,000 gigatonnes of gas and aerosols that comprise the Earth's atmosphere." is wrong. The 0.04% refers to the volume fraction (currently about 0.039%), not the mass fraction. The mass fraction is about 44/29 of the volume fraction, where the molecular mass of the CO2 is 44 g/mol, and the average dry molecular mass of the atmosphere is 29 g/mol. So the mass fraction is more like 0.06%. So that first statement is not only original research, but incorrect original research. It should instead it should say something like "Earth's atmosphere (dry) contained 3xx ppmv (parts per million volume) Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in 2010, rising at approximately yy ppmv per decade." with the right numbers and a reference. If you want to put the total mass of the CO2 in the atmosphere in there, then find a source and put it in. However it would also need to say when that number was the estimated mass, since it's increasing at a pretty good clip. Mark Adler 21:48, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Article probation

Please note that, by a decision of the Wikipedia community, this article and others relating to climate change (broadly construed) has been placed under article probation. Editors making disruptive edits may be blocked temporarily from editing the encyclopedia, or subject to other administrative remedies, according to standards that may be higher than elsewhere on Wikipedia. Please see Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation for full information and to review the decision. -- ChrisO (talk) 13:38, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

copyedits

I restructured some paragraphs in the origins and sources sevtions, and combined those two sections. The section still needs some copyedits--Work permit (talk) 10:33, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

methane-carbon dioxide-water clathrates

An unknown, though probably large, quantity of CO₂ is in the ocean sediments as a methane-carbon dioxide-water clathrates, one of the family of gas hydrates.

I removed the above uncited claim from Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere#Relationship with oceanic concentration because a Google Scholar search did not help verify "unknown", "probably large", nor indeed any evidence of existence in the sediments. Please re-insert the claim, possibly reworded, with a precise cite. Here's a list of possible, but ultimately insufficent, sources:

• [5] Energy Fuels, 1998, 12 (1), pp 183–188. DOI: 10.1021/ef970172q . January 12, 1998. American Chemical Society. "liquid CO2 the released globules appeared to form a hydrate skin ... we observed an apparent complete dissolution of the liquid CO2 mass"
• [6] J. Phys. Chem. B, 2003, 107 (15), pp 3507–3514. DOI: 10.1021/jp0263370 . March 20, 2003. American Chemical Society. "experimental structure-I clathrate hydrate (methane, carbon dioxide, and methane−carbon dioxide)"
• [7] Fixation of carbon dioxide by clathrate-hydrate. Saji, A | Yoshida, H | Sakai, M | Tanii, T | Kamata, T | Kitamura, H. Energy Conversion & Management [ENERGY CONVERS. MANAGE.]. Vol. 33, no. 5-8, pp. 643-649. 1992.
• [8] Transformation of Methane Hydrate to Carbon Dioxide Hydrate: In Situ Raman Spectroscopic Observations Ji-Ho Yoon, Taro Kawamura, Yoshitaka Yamamoto, and Takeshi Komai. J. Phys. Chem. A, 2004, 108 (23), pp 5057–5059. DOI: 10.1021/jp049683l . April 30, 2004. "phenomena of the coexistence of methane and carbon dioxide hydrates"
• [9] Microscopic observations of formation processes of clathrate-hydrate "lms at an interface between water and carbon dioxide. Tsutomu Uchida*, Takao Ebinuma, Jun'ichi Kawabata, Hideo Narita. Journal of Crystal Growth 204 (1999) 348-356.

-84user (talk) 11:47, 7 February 2010 (UTC) added more sources -84user (talk) 19:58, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

After looking at sources [10] and [11] provided to me, the following is the best that I can source so far.

• [12] Venting of Carbon Dioxide-Rich Fluid and Hydrate Formation in Mid-Okinawa Trough Backarc Basin. H. Sakai et al. Science 1 June 1990. Vol. 248. no. 4959, pages 1093-1096. DOI:10.1126/science.248.4959.1093 . "Carbon dioxide-rich fluid bubbles, containing approximately 86 percent CO2, 3 percent H2S, and 11 percent residual gas (CH4 + H2), were observed to emerge from the sea floor at 1335- to 1550-m depth in the JADE hydrothermal field, mid-Okinawa Trough. Upon contact with seawater at 3.8°C, gas hydrate immediately formed on the surface of the bubbles and these hydrates coalesced to form pipes standing on the sediments." (cannot obtain full paper to determine what is meant by "gas", abstract does not give the composition of the clathrate)
• [13] refers to the above paper by H. Sakai and claims "In the sea of Japan geothermally heated fluids containing very high concentrations of carbon dioxide at depths greater than 1500 m [19] have been discovered. These have been observed to precipitate on cooling once the temperature is less than 10°C, thus confirming solid clathrate as the equilibrium state of carbon dioxide in the NaCl-CO2-H2O ternary system." (I am unable to verify this is a valid summary of Sakai's paper)
• Tsutomu Uchida's 1999 paper states that "At pressures higher than 4.45 MPa and temperatures lower than 283.4 K, hydrates form when CO2 reacts with pure water [1]. In seawater, salts shift the formation condition to higher pressures or lower temperatures. In general, CO2 hydrate forms in the oceans below 400 m [4]" Uchida then points out that "However, Aya et al. [5] showed that CO2 hydrates appearing as thin films on the surface of a CO2 droplet somewhat weakened the dissolution rate of CO2 but never thickened nor protected the inner liquid CO2." (an experiment with a water drop in liquid CO2)
• Clathrate hydrates of natural gases. E. Dendy Sloan, Carolyn Ann Koh. Edition 3, illustrated. CRC Press, 2008. ISBN: 0849390788 ISBN-13: 9780849390784. page 1: "Natural gas hydrates are crystalline solids composed of water and gas. ... Typical natural gas molecules include methane, ethane, propane, and carbon dioxide."

-84user (talk) 19:58, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Absorption Spectrum?

Could the absorption spectrum of carbon dioxide be added to this page? I am basically thinking of something like the graph on http://www.te-software.co.nz/blog/augie_auer.htm If someone can point me to that data in machine readable format, I would be happy to create a graph, but I have not found it yet. Thank you. Jrincayc (talk) 15:28, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

One possible old source: Howard, J. N., D. E. Burch, and D. Williams, 1955 : Near-infrared transmission through synthetic atmospheres. Geophys. Research Papers, No. 40, AFCRC-TR-55-213. (Available from Library of Congress Photoduplication Service Publication Board Project, Washington 25, D. C; OTS No. PB 121048. Price: microfilm $11.10; photocopy $39.60. Jrincayc (talk) 22:34, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Global

I don't understand this [14]. This article is about the global CO2 (first) not the ML CO2, so we shouldn't be talking about the ML specifically in the first sentence. But the global avg is ~390, so all is well without that edit. There is already a section on "Current concentration" which says that the value isn't totally uniform William M. Connolley (talk) 06:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

That was a drive-by WP:BRD edit. I was about to revert the earlier change to 290 but, in rechecking the cited source, I noticed the caveats there which I thought it might be useful to make more visible in assertions supported by that source. I'm no expert here, and won't argue the point. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:49, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Misleading charts and graphs

All four of the charts/graphs in this article are misleading, using a rather pedestrian set of graphic tricks. It seems to me that this should be of particular concern to the proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), because common sense suggests that if the scientific case is solid, there should be no lead to use misleading statistics or graphs.

Indeed, two of the charts -- the first and third -- expressly violate the principal rule stated in the Wikipedia article on the subject, titled "Don't Draw Misleading Graphs." This article explains: "The most commonly seen 'sensationalization' of graphs in the popular media is probably when the graph is drawn with the vertical axis starting not at 0, but somewhere just below the low point in the data being graphed. Both upward and downward trends are exaggerated, for a more exciting look." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 010114692a (talk • contribs) 00:45, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

The first chart is the "Keeling Curve," which shows the increase of atmospheric CO2 levels from 315 ppm in 1959 to 385 ppm in 2008. Note that the horizontal (x) axis of the graph crosses the vertical (y) axis at 310 ppm, and that the range shown on the vertical axis runs from 310 to 390 ppm, the effect of which is to greatly exaggerate the apparent increase. Optically, the graph suggests that CO2 levels have increased by a factor of about 14 (i.e. 1400%), while the real increase is 22%. The chart is technically true, but gives a false impression by restricting the range displayed.

The second chart is "Global fossil carbon emissions," which shows an increase in CO2 emissions from burning of fossil fuel, from near zero in 1800 and 1850 to a little under 9 billion metric tons per year in 2007 -- the text indicates that the true figure for 2008 was 8.67 billion metric tons (of carbon). This is misleading because these emissions are dwarfed by natural CO2 emissions, which the article states are about 220 billion metric tons per year (of CO2) -- which is 60 billion metric tons of carbon -- from the decay of organic material alone. I understand that the proponents of AGW contend that the global carbon cycle had been in equilibrium before recent human activity, and that the increases in overall CO2 levels should be attributed entirely (or almost entirely) to human activity. But this chart seems to mislead by omission. The fact is that fossil fuels make a relatively small contribution to overall carbon emissions -- indeed, the fossil fuel contribution is only about 16% of the contribution of decaying vegetation.

The use of units in the section accompanying the second chart is also confusing, as the chart and parts of the text use tons of carbon as the measurements, while other parts of the text use tons of carbon dioxide. This is noted, though not explained, in a part of the text that -- properly -- equates 8.67 gigatonnes of carbon with 31.8 gigatonnes of CO2. I understand that some sources report the mass of CO2, while others report the mass of carbon alone (about 27.3% of the mass of the CO2 molecule). It would be helpful if the text and charts were consistent in the units used, or at least uniformly reported both units of measurement.

The third chart is "Carbon Dioxide Variations," which shows shows CO2 levels varying in approximately the 200-300 ppm range for the past 400,000 years, then increasing to about 380 ppm in the past 200-250 years. Like the "Keeling Curve" noted above, this chart also misleads by manipulation of the horizontal axis -- indeed, it manages to mislead twice in a single chart. In the main chart, horizontal axis of the graph crosses the vertical axis at about 175 ppm, and that the range shown on the vertical axis runs from 175 to 400 ppm, the effect of which is to greatly exaggerate the apparent increase. In the insert titled "The Industrial Revolution Has Caused A Dramatic Rise In CO2," the misleading effect is exaggerated further, as the horizontal axis crosses the vertical axis at about 250 ppm, and the range shown on the vertical axis runs from 250 to 400 ppm.

The fourth chart is "Phanerozoic Carbon Dioxide," which shows CO2 levels for the past 500 million years. CO2 levels were generally much higher in the distant past -- 10-20 times higher about 400-500 million years ago (4000-6000 ppm compared to current 385 ppm), and 3-4 times higher about 100-200 million years ago (1000-2000 ppm). This chart is misleading because the more recent period is on the left side of the chart, the opposite of the usual right-to-left convention. The explanation at the bottom of the chart points out this counterintuitive orientation and explains that "much of the last 550 million years has experienced carbon dioxide concentrations significantly higher than the present day." But the confusion could be completely eliminated by simply reversing the horizontal axis on the chart.

In summary, the creators of all four charts in this article made choices regarding the ranges presented, the information included or excluded, or the orientation of the chart, which are somewhat misleading or confusing. What arouses my suspicion is that while the misleading or confusing aspect of the four charts differ, the effect is uniformly in the direction of exaggerating the effect of human activity on CO2 levels.

Can't someone simply make some better charts? Or just refer me to the data and let me know where to send the updated charts -- it would probably take less than an hour to fix all of these issues.

010114692a (talk) 00:30, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

These criticisms of the graphs have been raised before above and they seem to be one of the staples of the contrarians, thereby revealing their absolute lack of scientific background. One rarely or ever starts a graph at 0 if none of the data are at or near 0, either in scientific literature or even school textbooks. Just as you wouldn't start a graph showing the growth of a person from the age of 10 to 18 at 0cm because no 10-year old is 0cm tall, so there is no sense in starting the CO2 graph at 0 as CO2 was not at 0 in the 1950s nor in fact in the whole geological history of the Earth. Even a schoolchild who drew a graph with a Y axis starting at 0 and the data points bunched up at the top with none close to zero would be marked down by his teacher.

I would challenge anyone who makes this point to find a graph in a reputable scientific publication that fits their view of how a graph should be drawn —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.9.132 (talk) 20:49, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Who are you Al Gore? Go take your fancy misleading charts elsewhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.5.182.34 (talk) 06:11, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Well done 78.149.9.132, and 154.5.182.34 well done as well for your perfectly cliche response.174.252.69.148 (talk) 21:50, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

The graphs are certainly misleading and against Wikipedia policy. However as I'm part of the boycott against wikipedia on climate articles I'm not touching them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.78.82.135 (talk) 09:51, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Jan 1 2010 edits

3 things: The number "41.7±0.5" seems to be a typo and/or a 'years' reference is missing.

The other is that even though the reference (and number) is correct in the sentence "In 2009, the rise-rate was 1.6 ppm/yr.", it is at odds with reference 1 in the previous sentence(i.e. for 2009 the number is 1.86) and if you are going to use a reference, 1 (a NOAA ref) probably has the most integrity. Also I verified the 2.0 number using refernce 1.

Lastly here is a more recent(than 2001)/additional reference for the last sentence (using ref 5): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091008152242.htm

p.s. really was informed by the Irreversibility and Uniqueness of Carbon Dioxide section Awikipedian42 (talk) 01:45, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

The lead section badly needs a rewrite

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lead section) says, in part

The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and summarize the most important points—including any notable controversies.

The lead section of this article does not currently fit this characterization very well. I'm sure that other editors more involved with this article than I are both better wordsmiths than I and better qualified topic-wise than I, so I'll just make the suggestion rather than attempting a ham-handed rewrite myself. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:03, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

rise of growth rate

Over the last months, I have included information about the rise of the growth rate. Namely the doubling of the growth rate from 41.6±0.5 years ago. Please note the following caveats. Interpreting the data as an exponential, as used in the article, gives 259ppm as the historical baseline, which is 20 ppm lower than historical. When using 280ppm, the main difference is that the doubling time decreases to 31.7+-0.067. The significant difference indicates that the data is not purely exponential with a 280 ppm historical baseline, which nevertheless has been established pretty well using other data. Note that the doubling time becomes much more accurate when this data is included, and has been done in [15](probably wrong reference). The doubling time in the article is thus more conservative than in this reference.

The other possible issue going forward is that this approach will show very late if the growth rate is curbed. This however is an even higher order effect. For now we can only conclude that the rise rate has grown.

Note that to less mathematically inclined, this all might appear to much "own research". Indeed, some might prefer only direct quotes. The problem is that NOAA only shows yearly growth rates, which fluctuate too much. That's also why now the growth rate of the last ten years is shown.

Feel free to come up with an alternative which nevertheless points out that the rise-rate is growing. However, consider the following: One possibility I considered is to just mention the growth rate in the 1960's. This has the advantage of increased transparancy, but has the disadvantage of throwing away information, and precluded the possibility of giving error bars. One might still be able to derive a growth rate of the concentration rise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.169.251.18 (talk) 07:44, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm also trying to find better references. Please try to help by looking up "accelerating carbon dioxide growth". They all use the NOAA data as well.

I found this: [16] It's not that authorative (well, it's somebody at NOAA), and the number are a bit different from above, possibly because it is a bit dated. It mentions 31, 35 and 40 year doubling times. To me these are all pretty close anyway. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.169.251.18 (talk) 08:07, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Article needs atmospheric ppmm figures

Hi. The article needs data on the current concentration in ppmm (parts per million by mass). Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 20:01, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Uh, why?82.169.251.18 (talk) 03:45, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Suggestions copied from main

Why is the size of our atmosphere not mentioned? This is easy to calculate, if you think about atmospheric pressure. The units of pressure are mass (or weight) per area, so knowing the atmospheric pressure and the area of the earth at sea level we know the weight of our atmosphere. To say "we emit 7 gigatons per year by burning fossil fuels" and then not follow through to say "the effect on CO2 concentration is this because the whole atmosphere is only this big" seems like a glaring omission to me. Why the obfuscation? This is not THAT difficult to understand. We are burning through our fossil fuels at a breakneck rate that is overloading the atmosphere with amounts of CO2 that are dangerous because CO2 "controls" the greenhouse effect. (see 2010 Best Pub at GISS)

If we look at it in terms of amounts of CO2 emitted per amount of atmosphere per person on earth it may be easier to understand. Doing the pressure times area calculation (per person), I get about 20 acres (8 hectares) of area per person, times atmospheric pressure gives about a million tons of air per person (metric or not, close enough). This is a nice round number that is easy to remember, about a million tons of air per person. Can we show that as a graphic for emphasis? The first Wikipedia graphic does clearly show about 1 ton per person per year being emitted due to extracting and burning fossil fuels (7 billion people, 7 gigatons/yr, 1 ton of CO2 as Carbon per year per person).

The final step to relate these emissions to changes in CO2 concentration requires using our Molecular Weights (MW). See the Periodic Table. Air has an average MW of 29. Since we know Nitrogen N2 (triple bonded) is 28 and O2 (double bonded) is 32, we use the percentages in the air to find the weighted average MW of 29. (This begs the question of how come heavier gases like O2 [or CO2 at MW = 44] don't settle out or stratify. Follow up for more curiosity based learning?) In any case one ton of CO2 as C is 3.7 tons of CO2 as CO2 (44/12) and adding this amount to one million tons of air should increase the CO2 concentration by 2.4 ppm (3.7 x 44/29). This can be looked at like adding pennies to a jar or mixing liquids together. The sources and sinks can be left to the side at first to simplify so readers can understand.

Then when we look at the Keeling curve we see that there must be a major sink. Further investigation leads us to conclude that the oceans have been absorbing about half our emissions, which is verified by the increase in acidity caused by Carbonic acid. Then when we consider the size of the oceans and the much larger heat capacity when compared to the atmosphere we begin to see... our collective situation as being analogous to the frogs put on to boil? Yikes! Again, do we have time to obfuscate? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.82.9.54 (talk • contribs) Moved from main article my me. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:32, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Solubility of CO2 in water

I have inserted a sentence simply stating that CO2 is water-soluble, a well known fact which doesn't need another citation since it is well described in the carbonic acid article. It is another well known sink of the atmospheric gas, and has been known for at least a century. Peterlewis (talk) 15:24, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

You have repeatedly inserted what is at best misleading. Yes, CO2 is soluble in water. That's why the oceans are currently big CO2 sinks (and thereby turn acidic). But dissolution is something happening to solid materials, not to gases, so your statement as written is simply wrong. And we mention the oceans as a sink in the very next sentence. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:22, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

So you do not deny that the gas is water soluble: the oceans, by the way, are becoming less alkaline, which is not the same as becoming acidic if you want to split hairs. Peterlewis (talk) 04:35, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

And just to correct the mistaken edits, dissolution is a generic term for one substance dissolving in another. That of course includes gases dissolving in liquids.Peterlewis. I think you are the one who is misleading our readers, at best. (talk) 17:27, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

This article is a scam

As usual the lies and deceit of wikipedia just astonishes me. Following up on a comment on a blog, I did some research for actual historical measurements of CO2. For some odd reason I started with Wikipedia ... not a hint. Then with a bit of detective work I found not one but two papers: [17] [18] To my mind the current article is out and out fraud. To not even mention these papers is fraud. I am sure there will be some critique of their methodology. I could very easily think of several reasons why the measurements may not be accurate, but the simple fact remains that these are primary data for historical levels of Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere and anyone with any integrity would mention this work if only to refer to the problems of taking CO2 measurements. This is the clearest instance of fraud I've ever seen, and I'm ashamed I ever contributed anything to this flee bitten website which has been taken over and abused by climate extremists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.78.82.135 (talk) 10:18, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

And whilst I tried to read the so called "rebuttal" from a most untrustworthy site, it failed to load. so here is a link to scamsters united where you can find all the so called "proof" that these papers are rubbish [19] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.78.82.135 (talk) 10:28, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

The papers you cite are egregiously flawed. The primary concern with them is that they rely on urban CO2 concentrations, which are not tied to the global CO2 level. Even within his own paper, Beck shows that his measurements fail to match ice core data from the same time period (Fig. 13). He fails to address this discrepancy, probably because it would expose the giant gaping holes in his hypothesis. The reason the Mauna Loa CO2 concentrations are the most reliable is due to the station siting on a high mountain far from any CO2 sources so it can measure the background (global average) of CO2, rather than just the local effect. Obviously, the global average is what matters for global temperatures/climate. Mauna Loa data continues to agree with the ice core data.... The paper you cite would have been rejected from any legitimate scientific publication because of its failure to address this serious shortcoming (and several others). A more thorough rebuttal of the paper can be found at this specific link. Sailsbystars (talk) 13:22, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Also note that Beck's paper is published in the extremely questionable Energy and Environment, while Ball's seems to be published nowhere in particular. Keeling, by comparison, has several Nature publications on the topic, plus an eclectic mix of JGR, Tellus, GRL, Science. And his make sense ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:41, 8 November 2011 (UTC)