Friday, April 11, 2014

Not Quite 30 Pieces of Silver...

Global Warming For Beginners, or Ten Thousand Pennies
A Guest Post by Leonard Jones

I was inspired by Anthony Watts, who used stadium seats to show the quantity of the gases that make up our atmosphere. I thought it was a good effort, but that it could be made simpler for the benefit of low-information types.
I later came across an article on another blog that became the basis for my project. This line comes from Veeshir at DoubleplusUndead:

"A trace gas (less than .04, or under 4 parts in 10,000) is driving the climate more than that great glowing orb of nukular fire whose effects (noon in a desert), or lack thereof (northern cold areas), can kill you in a matter of hours from 93,000,000 miles."

That caused me to consider a simple means of pointing out what 3.5 vs 9,996.5 looks like. But first, here's a pie chart I found on the Internet showing how much of what gases are in the atmosphere:


You will note that, at less than 1 percent, Argon dwarfs CO2. In fact, CO2 doesn't even register as a thin line, hence the second pie chart showing the lesser gases. CO2 represents .035 percent of the atmosphere, which adds up to 350 parts per million, or as Veeshir put it, less than 4 parts in 10,000.
Here's what that looks like in pennies:
There are only three types of people in this debate. First are the ignorant people in this world who are scientifically illiterate and will believe anything the media tells them. Secondly, there are the honest scientists and people like me who were actually paying attention in high school science classes. Lastly are the people who are becoming wealthy selling bogus "carbon credits," like Al Gore and any scientists prostituting themselves for government research grants.

No honest scientist will ever claim that a trace-level gas, at 350 parts per million, can have any effect whatsoever on global climate. The promoters of this fraud are not only wrong, they know they are wrong.

For anyone not convinced, it gets even better. Of the CO2 represented by those 3 1/2 pennies, 96 percent is contributed by nature. So just 4 percent of that is from human activity.
(Editorial aside: Since "Weepy" Bill McKibben urges his Thermageddon acolytes to "do the math," here you go: .04 x .0035 = .00014, or 14 parts per million.)
 It would be like calculating the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin.  In other words, it is meaningless.

Bravo Leonard. I couldn't stack $100 in pennies if I took a month.

7 comments:

Eric Praline said...

Leonard, you're doing the Lord's work. This should be in every science textbook.

Unknown said...

I was seeing pennies in my friggen' sleep! I think it really did
display the scale involved in a way the average layman could
understand.

I love what Soylent did near the end with his editorial aside.
I concluded by stating that man is only responsible for 4%
of the .035%, or about 14/100 of the 3-1/2 pennies. He
carried the math out to it's logical conclusion.

To say that CO2 levels are so damn minute that they cannot
have any effect whatsoever is a massive understatement!

LC Aggie Sith said...

Thank you, Leonard! I am having my kids read this (uh, JUST the link ;) ). I will be posting this on social sites, as well.

Oh, and a hearty "FUCK OFF!!" to Bill Nye, too.

Leonard Jones said...

Bill Nye, my favorite alarmist dork! I remember seeing him
with some aerosol cans on an ozone hole rant a few
decades ago.

This was about a decade after CFC propellants were banned
in America and the idiot was making the case that a heavier
than air compound could make their way to the ozone layer
simply because laboratory test showed CFCs were capabile
of destroying O3.

So in order to solve a problem that never existed, Peggy
Bundy had to give up her fucking hair spray? Hell no!

Anonymous said...

Awesome work Leonard, really well done. Wish I could find a G-rated link to share...

ooGcM taobmaetS said...

Add to the idiocy of CO2 crap by realizing that the "warming effect" of CO2 is NOT LINEAR. Doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere does NOT double the effect - its much less, and gets even tinier the more you add. We are already far enough along the flat of the curve (from natural sources) that increasing CO2 a buttload really will not do a whole lot.

Anonymous said...

Most excellent work, LJ!!!
And thanks, McGoo, for that reminder about the Double double boil and bubble part. That gets lost in the ongoing argie bargie.
-DV