Global Warming Felt By Space Junk and Satellites

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Global Warming Felt By Space Junk and Satellites

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday November 11, 2012 @10:08PM from the it's-getting-hot-in-here dept.

An anonymous reader writes in with a story about another side effect of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. "Rising carbon dioxide levels at the edge of space are apparently reducing the pull that Earth's atmosphere has on satellites and space junk, researchers say. The findings suggest that man made increases in carbon dioxide might be having effects on the Earth that are larger than expected, scientists added... in the highest reaches of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can actually have a cooling effect. The main effects of carbon dioxide up there come from its collisions with oxygen atoms. These impacts excite carbon dioxide molecules, making them radiate heat. The density of carbon dioxide is too thin above altitudes of about 30 miles (50 kilometers) for the molecules to recapture this heat. Cooling the upper atmosphere causes it to contract, exerting less drag on satellites."

50 of 224 comments (clear)

Faulty headline by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-11 22:14 · Score: 3, Insightful

So global warming has nothing to do with it? It's all about the carbon dioxide buildup?
1. Re:Faulty headline by approachingZero+ · 2012-11-11 22:17 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Good insight. I didn't pick up on that. Heretic.
  
  --
  'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
2. Re:Faulty headline by Kokuyo · 2012-11-11 23:08 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  No, no, no... we are quibbling as much about the actual cause as we quibble about semantics... and if we can't quibble about those things, we'll quibble about the effects. And during all those shenanigans, we're playing the blame-game.
  You didn't really think this was about identifying and solving a problem, did you?
3. Re:Faulty headline by tgd · 2012-11-12 00:38 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  No, no, no... we are quibbling as much about the actual cause as we quibble about semantics... and if we can't quibble about those things, we'll quibble about the effects. And during all those shenanigans, we're playing the blame-game.
  You didn't really think this was about identifying and solving a problem, did you?
  Joe six-pack, politicians and the media are quibbling about those things. There aren't any scientists trained in relevant fields who are, about the cause, semantics, or effects unless they're doing so for money or a bizarre reaction to "publish-or-perish".
Re:One is not like the other. by gagol · 2012-11-11 22:23 · Score: 5, Informative

The process cool the upmost strata, but keep heat inside. RTFA

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Tomorrow is another day...
Re:One is not like the other. by TapeCutter · 2012-11-11 22:23 · Score: 3, Funny

So you're saying hot grits are not cool?

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And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-11 22:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's because you like a number of people think that CLIMATE CHANGE only causes warming. It causes a rougher cycle of warmer highs and colder lows. Overall it causes the planet to warm, but the effects felt are not always to warm.
On the other hand, if this might effect american's TV channels perhaps we can get the majority of people in the US to start believing in science....
Ok maybe not, but a boy can hope.
No, headline is right. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-11 22:48 · Score: 5, Interesting

Because there's no extra heat coming in from the sun (indeed, slightly less), but because the CO2 is trapping heat in the lower atmosphere, the heat input to the upper atmosphere is reduced.
And what happens when heat input is reduced?
Cooling.
What happens in the lower atmoshere, where the heat input is increased?
Warming.
Indeed, one of the fingerprints that shows it ISN'T the sun doing it is the cooling upper atmosphere: in a warming sun, the entire atmosphere is being warmed because the heat input and throughput is increased.
Whereas the fingerprint of a greenhouse effect is that there is no extra input, but the throughput has changed.
In other words, this is yet more evidence of AGW.
1. Re:No, headline is right. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-11 22:58 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  ...
  In other words, this is yet more evidence of AGW.
  Umm, no.
  Strictly speaking, it's just evidence of more CO2 in the upper levels of Earth's atmosphere.
  Of course, you are free to leap to conclusions...
2. Re:No, headline is right. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-12 01:17 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Why is it even relevant? What if there is a naturally occuring global climate change that will make this planet inhabitable for humans? Should we just let it happen becasue it is "natural"?
  Oh wait, I tend to forget that the cause, the problem and the solution was decided upon even before the research was done.
3. Re:No, headline is right. by tbannist · 2012-11-12 01:31 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It's about "net production". Nature's net production of CO2 is nearly zero and currently over long periods it's slightly negative. Humanity's CO2 production is almost entirely net positive, we sequester very little CO2, so we are increasing the CO2 level in the atmosphere. It may represent only a small amount of the total carbon in the atmosphere each year but we're putting all of the extra CO2 into it.
  It's a like a guy standing by a half-filled swimming pool with a hose pouring water into the swimming pool. While we can't show that any particular molecule of H2O came from his hose, we can observe that the water level is rising and few people would doubt that the reason the level is rising because of the hose pouring water into the pool.
  If there are 720 gigatons of carbon in the atmosphere and humans add 10 gigations of carbon a year, you should be able to figure out roughly how long it takes to double it.
  
  --
  Fanatically anti-fanatical
4. Re:No, headline is right. by drinkypoo · 2012-11-12 01:35 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  There is an utter lack of explanation for this extra CO2. Humans don't produce that much CO2 relative to nature each year
  Citation needed. Have fun, because you're dead wrong. For example, we produce on average two orders of magnitude more CO2 than volcanism. Are you getting paid to spout this shit, or are you telling lies for free? That's not a very good deal.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
5. Re:No, headline is right. by hamburger+lady · 2012-11-12 02:07 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  isotope analysis shows increases over time of fossil carbon as a percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere.
  add to that the fact that we pump gobs of fossil carbon into the atmosphere every year, and can find no other natural phenomena doing such on that sort of scale.
  
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  Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
6. Re:No, headline is right. by slim · 2012-11-12 02:40 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Even after a major eruption event? I know these don't happen very often, but I have a hard time believing that we output more CO2 than a volcano can potentially output.
  Yes, even after a major eruption event. For example when Pinatubo blew in 1991, it released about as much CO2 as 10 days of human activity.
  Here:
  
  The published estimates of the global CO2 emission rate for all degassing subaerial (on land) and submarine volcanoes lie in a range from 0.13 gigaton to 0.44 gigaton per year (Gerlach, 1991; Varekamp et al., 1992; Allard, 1992; Sano and Williams, 1996; Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998). The preferred global estimates of the authors of these studies range from about 0.15 to 0.26 gigaton per year. The 35-gigaton projected anthropogenic CO2 emission for 2010 is about 80 to 270 times larger than the respective maximum and minimum annual global volcanic CO2 emission estimates. It is 135 times larger than the highest preferred global volcanic CO2 estimate of 0.26 gigaton per year (Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998).
  Is that really surprising? Think about how many billions of cars, homes, offices and factories there are, spread across the whole world, all directly or indirectly burning fossil fuel and releasing CO2.
7. Re:No, headline is right. by tmosley · 2012-11-12 03:02 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  In my experience, no-one wants to take corrective measures to reduce global temperatures because "that would be the easy way out" or some such nonsense. They instead want to shut down industry and starve Africa.
  
  I don't think that CO2 causes global warming (from my own calculations, for which I have been repeatedly ridiculed by simpletons who don't even know what IR and Raman spectra represent, but which seem to match what is happening in the upper atmosphere), but I wouldn't be opposed to a little geoengineering to reduce global temps by a half a degree. Much better than trying to artificially limit CO2 emissions.
  
  If you REALLY want to get rid of CO2 emissions, you have to find a CHEAPER source of energy. Doing anything else will simply drive industry to non-compliant countries, or, lacking those, will shut it down, or make all goods more expensive, especially food commodities, which means Africa starves.
8. Re:No, headline is right. by moderatorrater · 2012-11-12 03:45 · Score: 2
  
  While the GP is wrong in his conclusion, he's right in saying that humans don't product that much CO2 relative to nature. From http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions-intermediate.htm -
  
  Manmade CO2 emissions are much smaller than natural emissions. Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Respiration by vegetation emits around 220 gigatonnes. The ocean releases about 332 gigatonnes. In contrast, when you combine the effect of fossil fuel burning and changes in land use, human CO2 emissions are only around 29 gigatonnes per year.
  You're right that volcanism is a very small modern source of CO2, but human activity is still a very small minority of global output. Choosing to use volcanism as the comparison is misleading at best. The science is conclusive in favor of global warming, so accuracy and facts are enough to combat bad conclusions.
9. Re:No, headline is right. by drinkypoo · 2012-11-12 04:22 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year
  And consumption of CO2 by vegetation accounts for what? Here's a hint, plants are made almost entirely out of carbon, and almost all of the carbon comes from the atmosphere. Rainforests produce about as much CO2 as they consume, their "job" is to filter. But other types are carbon sinks. And the ocean is a net carbon sink; it takes in CO2 from the air, which makes the ocean more acidic. It's fixed out from the ocean primarily by reaction with subaquatic limestone. It's disingenuous in the extreme to discuss CO2 production of the ocean or of vegetation without simultaneously discussing the fixing of CO2 in the ocean or by vegetation, or foolish in the extreme to believe it when someone else does it.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
10. Re:No, headline is right. by SleazyRidr · 2012-11-12 04:45 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Well, to be completely accurate, it's raining, but there's a drain that's only big enough for the rainwater to drain out. When the man comes along with his hose (it doesn't have to be a big hose, we can be patient) he breaks the equilibrium and it starts to rise.
  
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  Is 1563649 a prime number?
11. Re:No, headline is right. by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 04:55 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I recently tracked it down and the major eruption of Pinatubo in 1991 released around 40 million tonnes of CO2 over several days compared to around 23 billion tonnes of CO2 released by humans that year. Current human emissions in 2012 are around 30 billion tonnes of CO2.
12. Re:No, headline is right. by almitydave · 2012-11-12 08:46 · Score: 2
  
  "-1 Overrated" with no other mods? Is this the mythical "-1 Disagree" I've heard so much about?
  
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13. Re:No, headline is right. by Genda · 2012-11-12 09:38 · Score: 2
  
  Depends on what you attribute to human activity. For instance beside burning fossil fuels there's the burning down of the global rain forests. There's the methane produced by agriculture (a gas 20x stronger than CO2 in its greenhouse effect), and then there's all the secondary effects, warming is uneven, it strikes the poles hardest melting permafrost all over the planet and liberating unprecedented amounts of both CO2 and methane (potentially more than caused be the initial burning of fossil fuels.) There are even strong indications that temperature and chemical changes in the oceans are beginning to liberate methane ices at the bottom of the ocean. All of these things are a result of the initial human activity, resulting in shifting critical natural tipping points. You can't talk about this without looking at the big picture which is why when scientists talk about this, it isn't just climatologists. Its biologists, chemists, atmospheric scientists, oceanographers, climatic paleontologists, geologists... hundreds of different diverse fields and tens of thousands of individual researchers.
  Really, I'm sorry all that science has gotten in the way of your "Atlas Shrugged" belief system. It put a smack down on the Flat Earthers too and they never recovered. Rather than ignoring the simple fact that the process of living produces excrement, and that the cost of living BIG produces a lot of excrement, which must be dealt with sooner of later. Perhaps you would all be better advised to figure out a clever way to use that excrement, there must be very bright children who can make silk purses from these sows ears (that's a hint son, there are geniuses working on turning industrial waste and effluents into the next gold mine.) That would acknowledge to growingly obvious while also applying your penchant for human enterprise. By all means, have at it.
Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by flyingfsck · 2012-11-11 23:01 · Score: 2

Oh, no, hell will freeze over after all: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/09/peat_ice_age_coming_only_co2_can_save_us/

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Re:What is CO2 doing up there? by aug24 · 2012-11-11 23:19 · Score: 5, Informative

Even if it is heavier stochastic processes will push a proportion of it up. Increase the total proportion and the proportion at high altitudes will increase.

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You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Re:less drag? by gagol · 2012-11-11 23:26 · Score: 2

Imagine a ball, now imagine it contracts... the ball get smaller, right? This means less atmosphere radius and thus more satellites sits above it. Someone correct me if i am wrong.

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Tomorrow is another day...
Re:less drag? by gagol · 2012-11-11 23:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

You forgot to factor in gravity and density.

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Tomorrow is another day...
Its molecular weight is irrelevant by Viol8 · 2012-11-11 23:46 · Score: 2

When 2 liquids can dissolve with each other the weight of the molecules is pretty irrelevant. How do you think alcohol and water mix when water is so much denser? You don't see the alcohol sink to the bottom in a wine bottle left for decades for example.
1. Re:Its molecular weight is irrelevant by fatphil · 2012-11-12 02:06 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Liquids and gasses are very different beasts. One has enough intermolecular forces to bind the molecules into an effectively incompressible mass, the other hasn't, and has components that only interact with each other through random collisions. You're comparing apples to class III orange stars.
  
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  Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Never mind just CO2 , what about HCFCs? by Viol8 · 2012-11-11 23:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

They have a global warming potential thousands of times higher than CO2 and are being released into the atmosphere in large quantities. HCFCs replaced CFCs because they don't react with ozone so don't destroy the ozone layer. The downside of that is they don't react with ANYTHING in the atmosphere so no one has an idea how they will ever be removed. This is a potentially major issue which isn't being taken seriously enough.
1. Re:Never mind just CO2 , what about HCFCs? by GameboyRMH · 2012-11-12 01:27 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Very good point but I wouldn't say "never mind CO2." I'd say it's an equally big problem.
  
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  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
2. Re:Never mind just CO2 , what about HCFCs? by khallow · 2012-11-12 02:08 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  HCFCs replaced CFCs because they don't react with ozone so don't destroy the ozone layer.
  HCFCs do react with ozone and more so than CFCs. But since they're more reactive, they're more likely to decompose before they get to ozone-destroying altitudes.
3. Re:Never mind just CO2 , what about HCFCs? by khallow · 2012-11-12 03:44 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  And come to think of it, another effect is that they have a shorter half-life in atmosphere and hence less of a greenhouse effect than CFCs would have in the same situation.
4. Re:Never mind just CO2 , what about HCFCs? by mcpheat · 2012-11-12 05:40 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  HCFCs generally have a shorter atmospheric lifetime than the CFCs they replace as the hydrogen carbon bonds are weaker than halogen-carbon ones. The problem is PFCs which are composed of hydrogen and fluorine atoms only. The bonds are so stable the most likely way they will be destroyed is by diffusing to the mesosphere & being hit by cosmic rays.
Re:What is CO2 doing up there? by cryptolemur · 2012-11-12 00:04 · Score: 4, Insightful

You are right, and we have all suffocated!! Or, maybe you are not right...
Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by mangu · 2012-11-12 00:05 · Score: 5, Informative

So global warming has nothing to do with it? It's all about the carbon dioxide buildup?
Why are you still trolling this bullshit?
It's all about burning fossil fuels. This has many effects, of which global warming is the most dangerous to humans right now, but raising the dangers of space junk is another bad effect.
What you are trying to imply is like saying cigarettes have nothing to do with lung cancer, because there are people who die of emphysema as well.
Go away, oil industry shill!
1. Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by Third+Position · 2012-11-12 00:28 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Climate change! Is there nothing it can't do?
  
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  American Third Position
  Finally, a real choice!
2. Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by Bigby · 2012-11-12 01:58 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  No, he is saying something more like "lung cancer doesn't cause second hand smoke". Because the title would read something like:
  Lung Cancer Affects Health Of Those Around You
3. Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by hamburger+lady · 2012-11-12 02:13 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  please prove that the commenter is 'full of shit', that this person's body is at least made up of a majority of actual dung. i want pictures of said shit, testimonials from manure experts, or pictures from an MRI or a colonoscopy.
  
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  Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
4. Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by silentcoder · 2012-11-12 02:14 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  >Please prove that the commenter was bribed by the oil industry, that there exists any attempt by oil industry companies and that any money is on the table. I want receipts, invoices or funding statements in company records. Otherwise you're just full of shit.
  Of course, because it's standard practise for companies to keep careful, public accounting records of illegal or deceitful activities (paying shills is sometimes the former and always the latter).
  
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  Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
5. Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by slim · 2012-11-12 02:54 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Or alternatively, the People know that the global warming story is white middle-class hysteria and refuse to fund fantasies any more.
  The people I've most recently encountered who were dead worried about climate change as an issue that was affecting them RIGHT NOW, were Eskimo in Northern Alaska. They're far from middle class. They see the ice fields they rely on for hunting forming later, and melting earlier, each year.
6. Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by tmosley · 2012-11-12 03:13 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  "World-raping, destructive assholes" that provide you with everything you eat, drink, wear, and use in your entire life, from the cradle to the grave. If "they" are evil, it is because YOU are evil, and produce demand for what "they" are selling.
  
  How about you stop framing things in terms of "good" and "evil"? No human sees himself as a villain in his own life story. Those people who burn fossil fuels don't do them so they can audition for a spot in the new Captain Planet movie. They do it to produce the goods and services that people need to live. If you increase their costs to stop global warming, you WILL make those goods and services more expensive. This WILL result in additional starvation among marginal populations, like, say, all of Africa.
  
  If you want to stop CO2 emission WITHOUT causing mass starvation, you need to start advocating for non-CO2 emitting technologies, namely LFTRs, or whatever other promising technology tickles your fancy. Just don't demand that "they" simply stop. People will die if they do.
7. Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 07:38 · Score: 2
  
  Or like me they're not against nuclear power per se' but think more needs to be done to ensure the proper handling of nuclear waste and that currently the cost of building nuclear power plants makes it one of the most expensive ways to produce electrical power. If those things can be solved then I'd be more interested in it.
Re:Enough said... by GameboyRMH · 2012-11-12 01:24 · Score: 3, Informative

I read that article before so I know you've done an excellent job of misunderstanding it. But then The Register presented an inflammatory headline for a reason...

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"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The extra CO2 is pretty well explained. by cnaumann · 2012-11-12 01:36 · Score: 5, Informative

We add an additional 4% each year and there is nothing to balance that. We can also look at isotope ratios (fossil fuels are ancient carbon). It is our CO2.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions-intermediate.htm
So... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-12 01:56 · Score: 4, Funny

...the sky is literally falling
Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by berashith · 2012-11-12 02:04 · Score: 2

that cant be possible. I think God placed that tree there to test our faith.
Re:less drag? by silentcoder · 2012-11-12 02:31 · Score: 5, Informative

There is no contradiction.
Go put your hand behind your fridge - notice that the iron grid there is quite a bit warmer than room temperature ?
But the inside of the fridge is cold...
See to make the fridge cold, we have to MOVE the heat inside it somewhere, that grid is where it ends up being radiated away from.
The grid gets warmer, so the fridge can get colder.
Is that a contradiction too ?

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Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Re:One is not like the other. by gr8_phk · 2012-11-12 02:37 · Score: 3, Informative

When you take energy from the oxygen molecules and the radiate it, you don't get to pick a direction. Some will come down, some will go out to space. The net effect (of this phenomena) is cooling.
Re:how did they tell them apart? by slim · 2012-11-12 02:48 · Score: 2

No, no, the CO2 from "volcanoes and stuff" is a factor, I'm sure.
But we should probably deal with the 99% of CO2 that comes from humans burning stuff, before moving on to the volcanoes releasing the other 1%.
Re:What is CO2 doing up there? by You're+All+Wrong · 2012-11-12 03:04 · Score: 5, Informative

Nice, but simplifying matters, and perhaps misleading. Gasses of different densities are *perfectly* happy to settle out. It's only the continual stirring of things like what we locally call weather that makes them mostly homogeneous in the layer above the earth's surface most of us experience. The words "homosphere" and "heterosphere" thus got their names. I can't do better than wackypedia, so I'll just lift the pertinent section:
"""
Above the turbopause at about 100 km (62 mi; 330,000 ft) (essentially corresponding to the mesopause), the composition varies with altitude. This is because the distance that particles can move without colliding with one another is large compared with the size of motions that cause mixing. This allows the gases to stratify by molecular weight, with the heavier ones such as oxygen and nitrogen present only near the bottom of the heterosphere. The upper part of the heterosphere is composed almost completely of hydrogen, the lightest element.
"""

The reason we do not suffocate is not because gases do not separate out, it is because we have not just a source of O2 and a sink of CO2, but also constant stirring.

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Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by tmosley · 2012-11-12 03:25 · Score: 2

Your ability to explain any phenomena with the same cause is a strong indication that you are not a rationalist.