Monday, May 27, 2019

Fundamentals - Earth's Carbon Cycle By The Numbers - R.Rohde

The single most important lesson to understanding the physical reality of manmade global warming: IT’S THE ATMOSPHERIC INSULATION SILLY!  
One simply can not comprehend anything else about current climate changes without first achieving that bedrock understanding.


Today’s science-contrarian industry has made it their goal-one to muddle and hide away that fundamental physical certainty from public view - and frankly, rationalists at all levels have been compliant suckers in going along with the bully con job and turning a blind eye on the obvious.  Rather than focusing on and explaining what is known for certain.
Okay, so how to explain Earth’s Carbon Cycle to people?  
As it happens Robert Rohde has managed to put together an amazing data visualization that drives home Earth’s carbon cycle like nothing I’ve seen before.  

It’s short 1:45min - first time through it’ll overwhelm, let it flow, then watch it again and again.  I’m not a rerun sort of guy, but this one needs to be watched repeatedly, each viewing opening up a little more of its full glory and essence.  
This is one of those videos every politician, business leader and citizen ought to watch.  This is what reality looks like!
From there?  Second base, would be atmospheric fundamentals, our CO2 insulation regular through time and how the past ten millennia have been so incredibly special.
Third base, learning about and appreciating how that heat migrates through our Global Heat and Moisture Distribution Engine and how in turn that weather dictates our biosphere.

“Earth’s Carbon Cycle”
Robert Rohde – Published on May 22, 2019
Animated diagram of the Earth’s Carbon Cycle and how it has changed over time. Carbon, in various forms including CO2 and organic materials, is continually exchanged between the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere. 

In the pre-industrial period, these exchanges found a natural equilibrium such that the amount of carbon in each group remained more or less constant. 

However, human activities have perturbed the carbon cycle. The large amount of carbon added to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels has dispersed itself through the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere.
I tip my hat to ATTP for the heads up,

The Carbon Cycle
May 24, 2019  by …and Then There’s Physics

Robert Rohde, who is lead scientist for Berkeley Earth, has created a really nice illustration of the carbon cycle. It shows how the CO2 cycles between the different carbon reservoirs, and how our emissions have perturbed the carbon cycle so that atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen from around 280ppm in the mid-1800s to over 410 ppm today.
If we were to cease emitting CO2 into the atmosphere, then CO2 would continue to be taken up by the natural sinks, and the atmospheric concentration would actually drop. However, as I discuss in this post, there is a limit to how much can be taken up by the natural sinks. As a consequence, between 20% and 30% of our emissions will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years.
As Robert Rohde pointed out on Twitter, the process that ultimately draws down atmospheric CO2 is sedimentation, which is very slow. It will probably take more than 100000 years for atmospheric CO2 to return to pre-industrial levels. We’ve essentially perturbed the carbon cycle so that atmospheric CO2 concentrations will remain elevated for a very long time. …
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A look at the graphic,
each dot = 1GtC = 1012kg of Carbon

Top blue band represents our Atmosphere 

Purple block on the left is our oceans, broken up into
top left - ocean life, dissolved organics
top right - near surface dissolved CO2
bottom - Intermediate and deep ocean reservoir

Green block - Biosphere (living and dead)

Black block - Rock in Earth's Crust
  Exchange methods:
     Volcanism
     Weathering
     Rock Formation

Dots represent a gigatonne of Carbon as they move through the global system.

Created by Robert Rohde at Berkley Project
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1850 introduces a new geologic/geophysical factor.
People have learned how to harness the heat locked up in fossilize fuels.
It also achieved ever more efficient ways of accessing and burning it.
The Red Block appears which represents 
Fossil Fuels Deposits.
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 Watch the tempos of these red dots entering the system, a gigatonne at a time.







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