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NASA Launching Satellite To Track Carbon
An anonymous reader writes A NASA satellite being prepared for launch early on Tuesday is expected to reveal details about where carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas tied to climate change, is being released into Earth's atmosphere on a global scale. From the article: "The $468 million mission is designed to study the main driver of climate change emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes. Some of the carbon dioxide is sucked up by trees and oceans, and the rest is lofted into the atmosphere, trapping the sun's heat and warming the planet. But atmospheric CO2 levels fluctuate with the seasons and in different regions of the Earth. The natural and human activities that cause the changes are complicated. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, or OCO-2 for short, will be able to take an ultra-detailed look at most of the Earth's surface to identify places responsible for producing or absorbing the greenhouse gas."
You obliviously know nothing about science. Until we eliminate all carbon dioxide from the earth's atmosphere, humanity will be in danger.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
We must go even further than that. We must entirely eliminate all carbon and carbon-containing compounds from the earth's biosphere. Otherwise, oxidation of organic compounds will once again result in the release of CO2.
As a side effect, doing so will eliminate all danger of young children dying due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Think of the children!
carbon has nothing to do with the temperatures on earth
You're right. But this story is about carbon dioxide, not carbon. If it were all stored as carbon, we couldn't have a problem. Carbon dioxide, however, is the single biggest contributor to the temperature on earth there is. Also, I suspect you're just a troll :-)
To science denialists above, I hope you apply equal skepticism to medicine and health and food safety aspects of scientific knowledge. This way your views will have self-correcting, instead of humanity-correcting impact.
We need a satellite to get (almost) real time insight in CO2 sources and sinks and the atmospheric mixing.
In an argument between two sides, one of which says the science has been studied for a long time and is well understood and the other that says "no, it's all confusing," I'll be on the side that says "let's get more data."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
From the article, it seems like there's a couple of reasons:
- Identify areas that are actively absorbing CO2 emissions. This is important because we can use it to figure out what the best way to naturally absorb CO2 is for use in things like city planning. For instance, we know that forests and the ocean absorb CO2, but we probably don't know which plants are the most efficient at doing so. If we find out which are the most efficient, they could probably be used in "green roof" projects in cities and in urban planning to alleviate CO2 output from cars.
- Study the difference in natural CO2 emissions (ie; not from burning fossil fuels) through the seasons, presumably to better identify man-made CO2 emissions.
- Find out what happens to the CO2 we emit once it reaches the atmosphere. Obviously, there Is always going to be CO2 in the atmosphere, but where it is and how it moves is a different story.
carbon has nothing to do with the temperatures on earth
You're right. But this story is about carbon dioxide, not carbon. If it were all stored as carbon, we couldn't have a problem. Carbon dioxide, however, is the single biggest contributor to the temperature on earth there is. Also, I suspect you're just a troll :-)
I assume you are aware that the current 380ppm CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere is pretty much an all-time geological low?
Earth's CO2 levels over the past 600 million years or so have averaged about 1,500ppm, with peaks up to perhaps 7,000+ ppm:
There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today. For example, during the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 1800 ppm or about 4.7 times higher than today. The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Cambrian Period, nearly 7000 ppm -- about 18 times higher than today.
That's not a problem. The CO2 that's released by humans (and animals) is produced by metabolising carbon from food, and the food comes from plants that have been grown recently. During their growth, the plants have absorbed an equivalent amount of CO2 from the atmosphere. Even when eating meat, the animals are typically only a few years old and were fed on recently grown plants. In contrast, the cars run on fossil fuels that are hundreds of million years old.
co2 isn't uniformly mixed throughout the atmosphere. The satellite will give a better picture of where it is.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If my feet are cold, that means I can't possibly have a fever. Fact.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Remember, sending up this satellite might just help us learn that AGW is not a problem, proving that you were right all along.
Don't be mad at Science. Someday, your incomplete in freshman physics will not matter any more.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You are aware that isn't true, right?
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
carbon has nothing to do with the temperatures on earth
You're right. But this story is about carbon dioxide, not carbon. If it were all stored as carbon, we couldn't have a problem. Carbon dioxide, however, is the single biggest contributor to the temperature on earth there is. Also, I suspect you're just a troll :-)
I thought solar radiation was the biggest contributor to the temperature of the Earth!
Thank you, thank you. I'll be pedantic all week.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Frankly I am glad to see someone actually doing some real research on the carbon cycle so we can understand the real issues and plan accordingly.
As opposed to what usually goes on where someone fancies up a computer model based on thirty year old assumptions backed up with shitty data from terrestrial monitoring stations down wind of localized heat sources and carbon emitters. Finally using their 'results' to push some political agenda and grab some more grant money.
This is a good thing it will put some hard facts on where the real problems are. I for one continue to suspect the biggest driver of climate change and CO2 levels will prove to be deforestation not humanities use of hydrocarbon fuel sources.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Less than half what humans create in hydrocarbon buring and cement making stays in the atmosphere. The ocean is suspected as the major sink, as it turns into something like soda. A more active plant biopshere could be another sink.
Furthermore we dont know all the non-human sources. Is there a significant amount being released from melting permafrost marshes? Some onsite studies suggest the possibility. Volcanoes, melting sedimate methane hydrates too. This satellite could help constrain unkown sources and sinks.
The resuting data is likely to fuel both pro and anti AGW factions. A significant group prefers not to know whatis happening at all and blocked these kind of satellites in the 1990s and 2000s. I wish to know what is happening.
This is not joking matter! Next up on the agenda is Oxygen sequestration, a noxious, highly reactive, corrosive gas that instantly kills most cells it comes into contact with and, in high enough concentrations, can set just about anything on fire!
And don't even get us started on dihydrogen monoxide!
All the more reason to plant and keep more trees, especially oaks and similar trees that will continue to grow for one to several hundred years. The more carbon they store long-term in the wood, the more CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, as long as we continue to grow more wood than we burn or allow to decompose. Decomposing wood should be buried a few feet beneath the soil to trap most of the CO2. The slower release of carbon into the soil also makes the soil richer for living plants (see also biochar).
Regardless of whether or not CO2 is really a problem, there are known hazards with extracting fossil fuels, such as the risk for oil spills, natural gas fires and explosions, cancer and poisoning from contact with petroleum, lung disease from inhaling coal dust, and questionable practices such as fracking that may pose risks of earthquakes, sinkholes, and contaminated ground water.
The "experts" assure us that these practices are safe and reliable. But we also had "experts" telling us that smoking was healthy for our lungs, x-rays were safe for checking the fit of our feet in our shoes, asbestos was a safe fire suppressant, sun bathing was healthy for our skin, etc.
This was the coldest winter this country has ever seen. Fact.
Not a fact.
The winter of 2013 - 2014 was one of the ten coldest winters in history in the Midwest U.S.
It was the warmest winter on record in California, and set records for high temperatures in Alaska.
Overall, it was the 34th coolest winter in the contiguous U.S. since records began in 1895. The contiguous United States comprises 1.5% of the surface area of the Earth. One season, in 1.5% of the Earth's surface: this is weather, not climate
http://www.wunderground.com/bl...
http://www.weather.com/news/wi...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The contempt for curiosity held by one side of this conversation is alarming. You start by noting how numerous and complex the sources of carbon dioxide are but conclude that gathering data on this is pointless.
More information will not change that. I've watched those people in Congress and their questioning of climate specialists. There's no amount of new information that will change their minds. I think it is an unholy influence of religion (Christ will save us), anti-Science (Science is some sort of dodge), economics (it will cost money to change), right-wingnut politics (if the left wants it, it must be bad), and finally, sheer ignorance (they never took a Science course they liked, and in most instances it appears they've never taken a Science course).
Congress is not a bunch of enlightened individuals. As individuals, they appear well-intentioned. However, put Klieg lights on them and their "questions" are really campaign points. And they usually have law backgrounds. That isn't bad in itself but they appear more intent on the form of an argument than on the basis for an argument. And then there is the lack of academic honesty: instead of admitting they do not know, they will accuse everyone else in the room of not knowing.
The amount of CO2 released by burning fossil fuels is about twice the observed atmospheric increase, so it's hard to imagine that it's not the primary driver. Nevertheless, I think it's a good idea to launch this satellite and learn more about the details.
"... they are convinced that government funding of scientific research is one of the factors contributing to their tax liability."
The people who say that are just making up excuses to dismiss the conclusions of scientific research.
... And they don't even consistently apply their "government money" argument: You never hear them make those sorts of complaints about the results from the LHC (that costed about ~$9billion split across many nations).
In that way they're no different than Creationists who claim that Evolution is "just some secular hoax to fool the faithful".
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It doesn't. On the short time scale because the radiation changes are overwhelmingly cyclical (the increase is on the order of 1% per 100 My), on the longer time scale because the feedback loops compensate the radiation increase by CO2 decrease (through increased absorption by various means) so that the temperatures remain roughly the same.
The point is that itzly was talking about Ordovician CO2 concentrations (thousands of ppm, but hundreds of millions of years ago), but geekidiotoid has "countered" this argument by linking a page describing the events of a few recent decades. See the problem yet?
Ezekiel 23:20
I assume you are aware that the current 380ppm CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere is pretty much an all-time geological low?
It's lower than in much of the Earth's history, but no, not anywhere near an all-time low. The all-time low is about half the current value... which, as it turns out, also was a much colder time in Earth's history.
Earth's CO2 levels over the past 600 million years or so have averaged about 1,500ppm, with peaks up to perhaps 7,000+ ppm:
And temperatures were much hotter, too. For most of Earth's history, the planet does not have ice caps.
There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today. For example, during the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 1800 ppm or about 4.7 times higher than today.
And temperatures were about 3 degrees C above what they are today.
The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Cambrian Period, nearly 7000 ppm -- about 18 times higher than today.
And temperatures were 7 degrees C above current temperatures.
Carbon dioxide, on the average, was higher during the Ordovician, and average temperature during Ordovician period was 2C above modern levels (with sea levels 180 m higher). There was indeed a brief ice age-- about half a million years-- during the Ordovician. (for reference, the Ordovician lasted about 45 million years) But, guess what? That ice age corresponded to a low level of carbon dioxide. http://www.newscientist.com/ar...
Every single one of the examples you cite supports the basic observation that increased carbon dioxide correlates with increased temperature.
Yes, correlation is not causation. Nevertheless, you certainly can't point to this as evidence that carbon dioxide isn't related to global temperature
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
My understanding is that ice cores don't go back that far. Best so far is 800,000 years, with the bare possibility of more than that.
It's not, and it also annoys me when people say that.
No single hurricane, heat wave, tornado, flood, wildfires due to drought, storm surge, hot summer, rainy winter is due to global warming, just as no single cold snap, hurricane free season, unseasonably cool spring, early winter storm is evidence that global warming isn't real.
Those are all weather. Climate is long term.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
How can you tell the difference between a [scientist] and an islamic extremist? You can't.
If you can't tell the difference it's because of you, not because of any inherent similarities between scientists and islamic extremists.
If you feel threatened by science, feel free to bow out of this society built on the innovations of science and return to you cavemen roots.