Chemistry Expert: Carbon Dioxide can’t cause Global Warming

[Free Vulcan]

Scarcely a day goes by without us being warned of coastal inundation by rising seas due to global warming.

Why on earth do we attribute any heating of the oceans to carbon dioxide, when there is a far more obvious culprit, and when such a straightforward examination of the thermodynamics render it impossible.

Carbon dioxide, we are told, traps heat that has been irradiated by the oceans, and this warms the oceans and melts the polar ice caps. While this seems a plausible proposition at first glance, when one actually examines it closely a major flaw emerges.

In a nutshell, water takes a lot of energy to heat up, and air doesn’t contain much. In fact, on a volume/volume basis, the ratio of heat capacities is about 3300 to 1. This means that to heat 1 litre of water by 1˚C it would take 3300 litres of air that was 2˚C hotter, or 1 litre of air that was about 3300˚C hotter!

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. If you ran a cold bath and then tried to heat it by putting a dozen heaters in the room, does anyone believe that the water would ever get hot?

The problem gets even stickier when you consider the size of the ocean. Basically, there is too much water and not enough air.

The ocean contains a colossal 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 litres of water! To heat it, even by a small amount, takes a staggering amount of energy. To heat it by a mere 1˚C, for example, an astonishing 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy are required.

Let’s put this amount of energy in perspective. If we all turned off all our appliances and went and lived in caves, and then devoted every coal, nuclear, gas, hydro, wind and solar power plant to just heating the ocean, it would take a breathtaking 32,000 years to heat the ocean by just this 1˚C!...

Read more at: http://principia-scientific.org/chemistry-expert-carbon-dioxide-cant-cause-global-warming/

[Suppressed]

The total energy released through cloud/rain formation of a single hurricane (not counting winds) is 200 times that energy-generating capacity of all of humanity.  This "chemist" has no clue on the scale of the earth or insolation.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Even if it did cause warming, why is that bad?

Lot more farmland in Siberia and Canada

[r9etb]

Even if it did cause warming, why is that bad?

Well, yeah.... the assumption is that different=bad.  Politically, and in pursuit of government grant money, that's a pretty useful assumption.

Still, this "expert chemist" doesn't seem to have a very good grasp of heat transfer mechanisms...

[Suppressed]

Even if it did cause warming, why is that bad?

Lot more farmland in Siberia and Canada

Warmth alone won't create farmland.  There's little soil cover in those areas, so it would take quite a long time to form the soils needed.

[the_doc]

Let’s put this amount of energy in perspective. If we all turned off all our appliances and went and lived in caves, and then devoted every coal, nuclear, gas, hydro, wind and solar power plant to just heating the ocean, it would take a breathtaking 32,000 years to heat the ocean by just this 1˚C!...

Read more at: http://principia-scientific.org/chemistry-expert-carbon-dioxide-cant-cause-global-warming/

I'm a bit confused by the argument.  The AGW alarmists have correctly argued that the sun definitely does bombard us with the "astonishing" amount of energy necessary for noticeably raising the ocean temperature (most certainly at the surface of the ocean, of course).  In fact, I would argue, along with the alarmists, that the warming that was measured in the 20th Century was definitely caused by the sun. 

To be more specific, I am aware that physicists have shown that the increased sunspot activity in the 20th Century likely reduced the cloud cover that ordinarily keeps excessive radiant heat from reaching the earth in the first place.  If that is correct, the mechanism of the warming was evidently not re-radiation trapping, but a matter of increased incident infrared radiation.  And the sunspot increases that we saw in the 20th Century have nothing to with anthropogenic CO2. 

Thus, although I disagree with the CO2 alarmists, I would respectfully say that I am not sure that the article is all that helpful.  (Maybe I just missed the point.  I will check out the link later.) 

[Suppressed]

If that is correct, the mechanism of the warming was evidently not re-radiation trapping, but a matter of increased incident infrared radiation.

@the_doc

No, the incident radiation is still shorter wavelength radiation. There would just be more of it.

[the_doc]

@the_doc

No, the incident radiation is still shorter wavelength radiation. There would just be more of it.

Hi, Suppressed!

The heat from the sun is from the infrared component of the sun's radiation.  (Mere visible light does not cause heating.)

The chart is a little bit confusing, since the red area (energy from the sun) and the blue area (re-radiated energy from the earth) are widely separated on the diagram, as are the labels "Visible" and "Infrared."  But if you will look carefully at the diagram. you will see that a fairly large proportion of the sun's energy (the red area on the chart) is to the right of the "Visible" light label.  In other words, that part of the sun's energy--which does heat the earth--is in the "Infrared" part of the spectrum (as the chart actually says, but not very clearly).

Re-radiated energy is always IR energy, always invisible, and always higher in the IR part of the spectrum than the sun's IR radiation in the same invisible part.   

[MajorClay]

Love it!!!!!  Who doesn't believe in science now?