If CO2 is 60% heavier than air, how does it rise in the atmosphere to trap heat?
CO2 in air is like a sand-clay mixture in stagnant water, settling into layers based on weight.
Zonk! CO2 is a gas, which is like a collection of zillions of hard bouncy balls whose kinetic energy comes from the overall temperature.
When CO2 is mixed with other gases, they all bounce against each other so fast that the heavier ones never have any time to settle out. In scientific terms, CO2 is subject to entropy of mixing, meaning that once it mixes with non-CO2 molecules it can’t unmix.
Read more at antarcticvolcanoesproject.blogspot.com
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geran
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T.L., obviously you are a practitioner of “Brevity is the soul of wit”.
“Hence the Earth’s atmosphere is not a greenhouse but a giant chimney, and all the elaborate claims of CO2 greenhouse warming theory are moose hockey.”
Well stated!
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T L Winslow
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Yes. I spent my youth thinking I was the new Shakespeare, and still don’t like to miss a chance to turn a memorable phrase. 🙂
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Herb Rose
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Actually its easy to separate CO2 from the other gases in the atmosphere. Just add water.
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Robert Beatty
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Well said Herb,
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is solely due to the sea temperature. If you want to reduce the CO2 level, just figure out how to cool the sea! It might prove easier to increase it by heating the sea?
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Herb Rose
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Hi Robert,
Rain works well too. The fresh smell after a rains from the CO2 being washed from the air.
I read somewhere that some people were trying to create an artificial tree to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. At first they used a caustic soda solution to convert the CO2 to sodium bicarbonate but then found using just water was equally effective. I would think that most of the CO2 in the atmosphere is in the form of carbonic acid.
Herb
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Robert Beatty
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Hi Herb,
Interesting point. Rainwater has a pH of 5 to 5.5 (assuming no sulphur present). At this pH only about 10% of the CO2 gas combines with the water drops to form carbonic acid. However, I have heard gardeners say their plants do better when watered with rain water rather than tap water, because rain includes some CO2 fertilizer.
A much different situation occurs with sea water where the pH is around 8.2 at which point around 97% of CO2 combines to form the bicarbonate radical – at ambient temperatures. This is why sea water absorbs so much of the atmospheric CO2, but can be very dangerous if a large meteor should land at sea and raise the sea temperature above 50oC at which temperature the bicarbonate radical returns to the gaseous state. This can result in suffocating levels of CO2 being released back into the atmosphere.
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jerry krause
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Hi Robert,
I believe the rainwater to which you refer is that of thunder storms. Lighting naturally converts (fixes) some molecules of nitrogen and oxygen into nitrogen oxide molecules which dissolve in water droplets where they become the molecule termed nitric acid. Nitrogen compounds are an essential nutrient (fertilizer) needed by plants. Which is why gardeners find rain water is better than tap water.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Robert Beatty
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Hi Jerry,
No doubt thunderstorm N2 adds to the fertilising benefits. CO2 will always combine with atmospheric moisture to the extent quoted, regardless of thunderstorm activity. I wonder how much of these fertilising agents are removed during the water treatment process?
jerry krause
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Hi Robert,
Why should a chemist and a former farmer know anything about the fixing of atmospheric nitrogen so it could be used by plants?
Have a good day, Jerry
Herb Rose
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Hi Robert,
Carbonic acid is a weak acid so in water only 10% of the dissolved CO2 is present as carbonic acid. Considering that CO2 only makes up .04% of the dry atmosphere while water content can vary greatly is most of the CO2 in the atmosphere sequestered in the water in the atmosphere?
I have been thinking about the mechanism by which CO2 is absorbed by plants and have some question maybe you know the answer to. A tree takes ground water and through evaporation from its leaves converts it into atmospheric water .During photosynthesis the leaves also emit O2 as they convert CO2 and H2O into hydrocarbons. Since these emissions by the leaves (especially water) would inhibit the absorption of CO2 by the leaves wouldn’t it be more plausible that trees absorb CO2 in the ground water rather than atmospheric CO2? The CO2 and water are carried to the leaves by the evaporating water where photosynthesis converts them to hydrocarbons using the energy from the sun.
An experiment could be done comparing the growth of plants in a greenhouse where the atmosphere is 1200 ppm CO2 to the growth of plants where the CO2 is contained in the water irrigating the plants or by using tracer C14 in CO2 in water to see if it is transferred to the plants.
Herb
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Robert Beatty
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Hi Herb,
“When referring to gas concentrations in the atmosphere, values in parts per million are typically understood to mean parts per million volume (abbreviated ppmv) as opposed to parts per million mass. This volume concentration essentially tells us what fraction of all atmospheric gas molecules are carbon dioxide molecules.” Ref. https://scied.ucar.edu/carbon-dioxide-400-ppm-diagrams All gasses get more rarified with lowering pressure, but the volumetric proportion of CO2 does not change – assuming there is no significant density settling of the heavier gasses. CO2 in solution is a pH control function. As you pointed out we get a carbonic acid solution which lowers the rain to 5-5.5 pH where further absorption of CO2 does not happen. However, sea at 8.2 pH can take in huge quantities of CO2, but in this case it is temperature limited. Hence atmospheric CO2 gas is in balance with SST.
Robert Beatty
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Hi Herb,
I think we are not comparing apples with apples. The 0.04% figure is a volumetric figure. The 10% figure is a weight component figure. No doubt a lot of CO2 does finish up in atmospheric moisture, but the volumetric % is maintained by rebalancing against the sea’s deposit of CO2 and relevant SST.
You raise a good point regarding the detail of how CO2 is absorbed into plants. I do not know the answer, but like the thought that much of it might come through the roots.
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Herb Rose
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Hi Robert,
I think the .04 % value for CO2 is is by weight. How would yo get a volumetric % when the volume and density keep changing? Does CO2 prefer being a gas or in an aqueous solution? Given the relatively large percentage of water in the atmosphere and the solubility of CO2 in water would CO2 escaping from bodies of water be immediately absorb by the evaporating waster?
Herb
Andy Rowlands
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Very good article, I like the chimney analogy.
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Charles Higley
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“If CO2 didn’t mix with non-CO2 fast, you wouldn’t be able to lie on your stomach without suffocating, since your breath is 38K ppm or higher CO2, and the lethal concentration starts at about 50K ppm”
Nope, that not quite how it works. When you exhale, the exhalant goes out in a stream away from your face. When you inhale, you lower the air pressure in front of your face and air rushes in from all directions. That is why astronauts do not suffocate on the space station.
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T L Winslow
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I said you have to lie on your stomach, with your face pointing down. If CO2 didn’t mix fast, you’d build up a concentrated cloud of CO2 and eventually huff and puff yourself to sleep.This could also happen if you put a porous blanket over your head, especially an infant’s. The formula for the speed of mixing I misplaced on my desk somewhere, somebody tell me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B64ql759zXk
Maybe there’s some medical freak cases I missed 🙂
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JaKo
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Is OCO 60% heavier than air?
Air (830+232)/10 = 30.4 and OCO = 44 => mere 45% heavier…
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T L Winslow
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44.01 / 28.97 = 15.19
The dude got it from the Wiki article on CO2:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
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Matt
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Hi T L
I had not realized Shakespeare was such a seamless practitioner of the tuck and riposte.
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Matt
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Hi readers. The tuck was a sword used in England in the time of Shakespeare but not acknowledged in online dictionaries.
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Al Shelton
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1.519 not 15.19
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JaKo
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Sorry people, my screw-up; let’s do it again 🙂
Dry air: N2 ~78% & O2 ~21% & Ar ~ 1% => (0.78 x 28 + 0.21 x 32 + 0.01 x 40) / 10 = 29
CO2 ~ 44 => 44 / 29 = 1.517… => 52% heavier
Wikipedia used to be good for a quick reference about a subject one doesn’t know much of; but now, it became bloated propaganda outfit; I don’t bother to edit anything any more, I don’t even donate for a last few years…
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tom0mason
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Also of note is the atmosphere is NOT an isolated bio-system, it is part of the structural and biological global system of this beautiful planet.
If you attempt to ‘decarbonize’ the atmosphere then the CO2 partial pressure differential with the oceans/seas/lakes/etc. would increase, and CO2 would vent from them to reestablish an atmospheric equilibrium!
If at the current oceanic SST (sea surface temperature) and global atmospheric temperatures, the atmospheric CO2 level must be 410ppm, then that is where it will be.
NO AMOUNT of CO2 sequestration will prevent it.
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Robert Beatty
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Hi Tom0mason,
Very well said. If only this was understood by the general population, we could have put much of the world’s hard earned savings to much better uses.
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JaKo
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There was an article in one of the “Alternative News” site recently about the Fermi Paradox. Funny part is, nobody seems to realize how much arrogance or, better yet, hubris does this imply onto humanity… How could we tell, when we can’t grasp the very basics of how things work??
How could anyone think that our “civilization” (of a few thousands of years) could affect the Earth (of about 4.5 billion of years) in any profound way??? We could surely make ourselves extinct, but affecting our planet?
I’m not looking forward to the coming onset of glaciation (as most recent interglacials ended up with a spike of CO2); I’m not a medieval monk to take pleasure from the punishment of the wicked…
OTOH the only acceptable merit about the climate scare would be to preserve as much of fossil fuels as possible for the next few generations, so they can somehow streamline their agenda and try to cope…
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Tom O
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You said “OTOH the only acceptable merit about the climate scare would be to preserve as much of fossil fuels as possible for the next few generations, so they can somehow streamline their agenda and try to cope…”
In my opinion, that is exactly the position that has been taken, but it isn’t for the general population, however, just the elite and their support system. The idea of destabilizing your electric grid while pushing the average person into an all electric house coupled with the obvious onset of as a minimum, a mini ice age, can only be for the purpose of population reduction.
Though the vastly larger portion of population lives outside of the temperate zones, they are not resource users, nor will they survive without the food production from the temperate zones. However, all the carbon energy resources will be available for the transition to a safe, nuclear powered civilization after the great reduction in population.
The decision to depopulate is probably one of the reasons that nuclear energy has intentionally been suppressed, though the research for safer nuclear has been ongoing. When you really look at the way things are going, it is clear that an ice age population of 7 billion cannot survive on “real food,” so unless we are all going to belly up to the “algae pit,” billions have to be eliminated.
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