Global Warming-letter and Internet comments/responses

Published May 13, 2007 in North County Times

All CO2 is not the same

Conservative radio personalities and Fox News hosts tell us global warming is a hoax. They use the following false argument. "We all breathe out CO2. Since CO2 is the greenhouse gas problem that the environmental wackos whine about, then they must want us to all stop breathing." Keep breathing. The CO2 you exhale is part of the normal carbon cycle. You remember the carbon cycle from elementary school. Animals breathe out CO2; then plants, in the presence of sunlight, absorb and combine it with water to make carbohydrates (food). Animals then eat those plants, converting the carbohydrates back to CO2 to be breathed back into the atmosphere. ...

At least that was the case until about 150 years ago, when we started burning fossil sources of carbon. First coal was burned and then oil. Today fossil carbon is being released into the atmosphere in massive, unprecedented quantities. This fossil carbon from coal and oil has been sequestered in deposits in the Earth since the Carboniferous age that ended 280 million years ago. ...

The only CO2 to be worried about is the CO2 produced from this long-buried fossil carbon. It is adding huge new amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere. It is the culprit in the global warming problem.

Peter Welch

former science teacher

Vista
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Global warming skeptic wrote on May 13, 2007 6:00 PM:
" Peter Welsh (retired science teacher) says today that the CO2 we exhale is different from the CO2 coming from combustion engine exhaust and burning of fossil fuels. I don't believe it. Is Welsh talking about carbon monoxide (CO)? If this is true, what business does the U.S. Supreme Court have to claim that CO2 is a pollutant that must be regulated? How Orwellian. Snow is black, peace is war and CO2 is not CO2 because that only depends on "what is, is." "
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To global warming skeptic, of course all CO2 is chemically the same. The American Petroleum Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute have made lovely commercials to say this. But this is a fact meant to deceive. The source of CO2 is different. This difference has led to an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere that is at least 1/3 higher than at any time in the last 600,000 years during the warmest of warm interglacial periods.

Both the API and the CEI are well aware that we have actually physical samples of atmosphere trapped in Greenland and Antarctic ice going back over 600,000 years.

Air is trapped by snowflakes that then freeze permanently entombing the air sample. Another layer of snow falls, more air is trapped. There are changes in the deposits over a single year resulting in annual layers. Coring those deposits allows one to not only sample old air, but one can actually see the annual layers in the core just like one can see annual tree rings in a core from an ancient tree.

Using these samples we can demonstrate by direct physical testing of old atmosphere samples that there is a third more CO2 in the atmosphere now than at any time in the last 600,000 years. Those years encompass warm times and ice ages.

The point of my letter is that silly oil industry’s campaign about CO2 all being the same is misleading. CO2 from ordinary sources like breathing and plant decay and even volcanoes has been relatively stable until recently. The huge increase in CO2 in our present day atmosphere is as a direct result of burning FOSSIL CO2 that has not been in the atmosphere for more than 280,000,000 years since before the age of the dinosaurs. (It was taken from the atmosphere during the carboniferous age by plants now extinct and deposited in swamp sediments that have after much aging turned into coal and oil.)

It is the burning of this fossil carbon and releasing it as CO2 in our atmosphere which is changing the climate.

About your other question, Carbon Monoxide is a potent greenhouse gas but is not nearly as important as CO2 because it is chemically unstable and does not last in the atmosphere for anywhere near the length of time that CO2 does.

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global warming skeptic wrote on May 16, 2007 7:16 AM:
" To former science teacher: Your article leads the reader (or student) to believe their are two kinds of CO2. You need to clarify because it is misleading. You argue that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, not because of "ordinary sources" such as breathing, etc., but due to the burning of fossil fuel. Considering (as you say) all CO2 is chemically the same, you need to show how you can tell the difference and how you determine the source. It is my belief that "prehistoric" temperatures can not be extracted from tree rings or ice cores. Only estimates of wet-dry or warm-cold periods. Scientific analysis of ice cores can only be taken where ice exists which is only a small portion of the earth's surface, therefore I don't believe an accurate estimate can be obtained to make accurate conclusions about the cause and effects of global warming. "
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to global warming skeptic

You understand that air is trapped between snowflakes? That should be easy to visualize. Big soft irregular flakes of snow plop down and bits of air are trapped. That air is from our atmosphere. Therefore bits of atmosphere are trapped. The snow freezes on the surface. More snow falls. It also traps more air giving more samples of atmosphere.

There is no need to have ice on every inch of the earth to get good ancient air samples. The atmosphere is made of many gases. Gases mix. They mix uniformly. It does not matter where an atmosphere sample is taken, the percentages of gases will be very similar.

However perhaps a local volcano spewing gases or forest fire could skew the results a little bit, so scientist compare the samples of air in the cores at the South Pole to samples of air found in Greenland cores near the North Pole. There are also glaciers at ever latitude including the equator if one climbs high enough.

Core samples from glaciers in the Andes (South America) have also been compared to those polar samples as have samples from many other latitudes, where the cores overlap they all agree. The farthest back in time one can go is in the oldest glaciers which are found in Antarctica (South Pole). The Greenland samples are nearly as old. Even the glaciers at the equator are tens of thousands of years old.

Because snow does not fall equally year around, annual layers are formed. During a part of the year more snow falls, during part of the year there is more dust. The temperature, at which the snow falls and freezes, changes during the year. Different temperatures alter the size and structure of the snow/ice particles. Coring through the snow and holding it up to strong light shows repeating annual layers of big and small ice particles and more snow compared to more dust. The layers are visible to the naked eye. They can be counted. They are annual layers. New annual layers can be seen to be formed on top at research stations where long term observations have been done. Counting the layers is one way to determine how old the air in the snow is.

Counting thousands of layers that get ever smaller (due to compression) the deeper one looks down the core is a bit tedious. Another way to determine the age of the air is by measuring a radioactive isotope of carbon called carbon 14. C14 is constantly being produced in the top of the atmosphere by solar radiation. But it disappears over time (radioactive decay). Because C14 is unstable, measuring the percentage of C14 left in the ancient air samples and comparing the amount in the current atmosphere, tells us the age of the ancient air. The less C14, the older the air sample.

Remember the air is made of many gases. Gases unrestrained by boundaries mix uniformly. The amount of C14 in the lowest layer of the atmosphere is virtually the same at every place on earth due to the uniform mixing.

The only source of C14 on earth is the production of C14 from solar radiation at the top of our atmosphere. (It takes massive amounts of radiation to produce C14, there is no other source of the kind of radiation needed to make C14 on the surface of the earth other than the sun.) The rate that C14 breaks down is steady. The rate of breakdown does not change with heat or cold or pressure. It provides a clock which goes back thousands of years. Measure the C14 and find out the age of the air.

I hope that answers your questions.
Former science teacher