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Global Warming's OFF Switch.  Here it is.  The Data In Graphic Form  The data 

A simple diagram of the entire global CO2 situation:  The diagram to the right shows the world's total atmospheric CO2 flow for a recent year. 
1. The end-to-end red up arrows on the left show different CO2 sources adding their CO2 to the atmosphere for an annual total of 36.7 billion tons of CO2. 
2. The downward green arrows show how much CO2 land plants and oceans were able to remove from the atmosphere during that same year. 
3. The single red up arrow shows how much excess CO2 is left over in the atmosphere every year and is added to the approximately 800 BILLION tons of excess CO2 already accumulated since about World War II. 
           That's almost a TRILLION tons of additional CO2 buildup, folks!

Your body needs the right balance of many trace chemicals to be healthy.  Like your body, our living planet is a complex system, using a little CO2 to capture a little of the sun's heat.

CO2 needs to be a TRACE gas in the atmosphere at around 300 ppm (parts per million) to keep the world's temperature normal.  As long as the world's annual production of CO2 is less than 20 billion tons per year, nature is able to keep CO2 in the 300 ppm range by slightly increasing or decreasing CO2 levels through plant growth and water respiration. 

Man's extremely rapid and persistent addition of massive amounts of excess CO2 is overwhelming nature and thus overheating our planet.  (14,000 times faster CO2 than nature according to Richard Zeebe in the journal "Nature Geoscience.")  We have already pushed CO2 to about 387 ppm.  James Hansen suggests 350 as max.  Most climate experts are saying all hell will break loose before 450 ppm is reached.

(Left red up arrows: IPCC - Global Energy Flows 2004 IPCC 2004 .pdf ; Blue Fossil Fuel Power Plants arrow:   CARMA's Data ; Deforestation, other arrows: NOAA - Carbon Tracker NOAA's Data;  Diagram by Marilyn Holm.)   (Divide CO2 by 3.7 to find Carbon.)

The above graph depicts the general amounts and flows of non-carbon-neutral CO2 in the earth's atmosphere.  The following cross-check verifies the accumulation of that CO2 and the overall accuracy of what the graph is portraying.  It clearly indicates the quickest and least disruptive CO2 mitigation actions available to us.

CROSS-CHECK: Can this possibly be correct? 

A cross-check on the 16.3 billion tons of CO2 "typical annual" CO2 accumulation number used in the graph above is provided by ORNL data and Wikipedia's "annual CO2 change" scatter-plot graph at right.  Carbon dioxide 

THE DATA SOURCE: "Q. In terms of mass, how much carbon does 1 part per million by volume of atmospheric CO₂ represent?   A. Using 5.137 x 10¹⁸ kg as the mass of the atmosphere (Trenberth, 1981 JGR 86:5238-46), 1 ppmv of CO₂= 2.13 Gt [billion tons] of carbon." ( http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html  Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge Nat. Labs.)

THE CHECK: A typical year is about 2 ppm.  2 x 2.13 billion [giga] tons carbon = 4.26 billion tons carbon per year.  Converting 4.26 billion tons of carbon to carbon dioxide: 4.26 x 44/12 = 15.7 billion tons CO2. --- Jim Holm, August 11, 2008

15.7 (cross-check number) vs. 16.3 (graph's number, above) --  When you arrive at the same answer by two completely different methods never using the same data twice - it's an answer well worth considering.

There is an excellent chance these simple calculations identify mankind's best, and perhaps only, opportunity to actually halt the gathering storm of Climate Change.

Coal2Nuclear ______________________________________________________________________    Are environmentalists to blame for "Global Warming"?    Top

The OFF Switch.  Review   Adding the CO2 numbers up.

By the Numbers

 ● to NOAA's CO2 Data That Reveals This Opportunity    ● to CARMA's Power Plant CO2 Data   IPCC's

Ending Global Warming Fast: NOAA and CARMA Numbers  This is a difficult concept the first time you encounter it.  To help keep things organized, I've color-coded "bad" red, "good" green, "what we can do" blue.  (From data (1)  and (2), detailed below.)

1. CO2 emissions added to the atmosphere each year: +36.7   Billion Tons of CO2;  Net annual CO2 Surplus:                  36.7  Billion Tons of CO2

2. CO2 the Oceans and Biosphere remove each year:    -20.4   Billion Tons of CO2;  Net annual remaining CO2 Surplus:   16.3  Billion Tons of CO2

3. Converting Fossil power plants to Nuclear ends:       - 11.0   Billion Tons of CO2;  Net annual remaining CO2 Surplus:     5.3  Billion Tons of CO2

4. Ending Tropical Rainforest Deforestation ends:           - 4.1   Billion Tons of CO2;  Net annual remaining CO2 Surplus:     1.2  Billion Tons of CO2

It really is possible to END GLOBAL WARMING without disrupting everything.

It's that simple.  Check my numbers below.  The Starting Point: A simple calculation shows fossil fuel power plants are making at least 68% of the accumulating Global Warming CO2 surplus.

The oceans and biosphere are removing 55% (20.4 billion tons) of all the CO2 (36.7 billion tons) man and nature is making each year.  Global Warming comes from the remaining 45% (16.3 billion tons) CO2 surplus. 

Think obesity: Man is causing the planet to put on 16.3 billion extra tons of CO2 in the atmosphere each year and it's destroying the planet's health.

An inconvenient fact: Power plants are 68% of the CO2 accumulation problem.  We also need to persuade some Second and Third world countries to end their deforestation - which is another 25% of the accumulating Global Warming CO2 surplus.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation     

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Where the NOAA and CARMA data came from

The OFF Switch.  Data Sources In Greater Detail

Extracting and converting NOAA's scientifically more correct "Grams Carbon" into "CO2 Grams."

NOAA and CARMA: Their CO2 Data Revealed The Opportunity.

The United States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)  [ http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ ] has been keeping track of the world's atmospheric CO2 levels at their Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii since 1958.  (The thinking is that the middle of the Pacific gives a good world average.  I wonder about the influence of India and China.)  There have been sporadic measurements since the 1800s combined with recent ice core and other archeological measurements to provide historical perspective  .

[ Note: Since we are talking about atmospheric CO2, produced largely by combustion, NOAA makes it confusing when they publish their data in mole fraction carbon instead of CO2.  This is NOAA's explanation:  http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/glossary.html#gl_molefrac   This is not a trivial complaint since the IPCC publishes in Mtyr, or "millions of Metric tonnes of CO2 per year" ("long tonnes"). 

To keep things simple, I'll convert everything to "billions of U.S. (short) tons of CO2 per year."  (A Metric Tonne = 1,000 kilograms or 2,200 U.S. pounds.  A standard U.S. ton is called a "short ton" and equals 2,000 pounds.)  I have the legal right to do this since I went to school before the United States went on any metric binges. ]

(1) NOAA: The world's total accumulating Global Warming CO2 emissions

The balance sheet "educational cartoon" at the right is copied from the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) "Carbon Tracker" web site and shows the approximate situation for atmospheric carbon (not CO2) in units of 10¹⁵ grams of carbon per year.  It illustrates an excess of about 4.4 billion tons of additional carbon accumulating in the atmosphere every year. 

To convert carbon grams to CO2 grams multiply by 3.7. (The atomic weight of carbon is 12, oxygen is 16, so CO2 is 12 + 16 + 16 = 44.  This makes CO2 44/12 or 3.7 times as heavy as a lone carbon.)  In this case, the table is saying about 16 billion tons of additional CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere every year.  December, 2007, table.  For current accurate data see: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/overview.html 

Note that NOAA's atmospheric CO2 account is in GRAMS of CARBON, not CO2, so multiply by 44/12 or 3.7 to get the equivalent CO2 weight.  

Also, 1x10¹⁵ Grams Carbon = About 1.1 billion tons C or 4.07 billion tons CO2

A second source, the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), says an excess of 3.2 billion metric tons or 3.5 billion short (U.S.) tons.  It is less clear that they are talking about just the carbon component that is accumulating each year (it's above their figure 2 on their web page):  http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html

CONVERTING NOAA's confusing   10¹⁵ GRAMS of CARBON   to   BILLION TONS of CO2:   (The promised carbon-to-CO2 conversions)

Biosphere (Land Plants):       -2*3.7*1.1 Billion tons = 8.2 billion tons of CO2 Removed from Atmosphere every year

Oceans:                                -3*3.7*1.1 Billion tons = 12.2 billion tons of CO2 Removed from Atmosphere every year

                                                                        Total: = 20.4 billion tons of CO2 Removed from Atmosphere every year

Fossil Fuel Burning:              8*3.7*1.1 Billion tons = 32.6 billion tons of CO2 Added to Atmosphere every year

Deforestation:                        1*3.7*1.1 Billion tons = 4.1  billion tons of CO2 Added to Atmosphere every year

                                                                         Total: = 36.7 billion tons of CO2 Added to Atmosphere every year

  Net CO2 Total:   36.7 billion tons - 20.4 billion tons = 16.3 billion tons of additional CO2 accumulating in the world's atmosphere every year.

(2) CARMA: 138,000 Power Plant Units Producing Most of Planet Earth's Accumulating CO₂. 

There are 138,000 power plant generating units in the world.  Some are small Chinese diesel units for isolated villages.  Perhaps 60,000 have boilers, and as such, are candidates for conversion to Coal Yard Nukes even if they happen to run on natural gas or oil instead of coal.  The bigger they are, the more likely they are candidates.  The IPCC has identified the 5,000 worst offenders and they are all in the 'convertible' category.

Note Well: Natural gas produces 2/3 as much CO2 per kWh as coal, oil as much CO2 as coal, so don't regard either natural gas or oil power plants as being anything close to "naturally clean." Data Source:  http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/environment/co2emiss00.pdf  The DOE-EIA web page (Table 4) saying 1.3 pounds of CO2 per kiloWatt hour (kWh) is made by natural gas-burning power plants.  Coal makes about 2.0 pounds of CO2 per kWh.

     Data from CARMA ( www.CARMA.org )

CARMA stated in December, 2007, that world annual electricity consumption was 16.76*10¹⁵ Watt hours causing 11.0 billion tons of CO2 to be produced. 

CARMA is the current source of my data for CO2 from power plants.  I'm confident the data they have gathered is of the same quality as NOAA. 

CARMA states some emission numbers might reflect data as old as the year 2000 and that there may be some missing data. 

Like the power plant CO2 data I developed in the past for this web site and have now removed from use, CARMA's data probably understates today's CO2 emission levels by some small amount.

CARMA makes some thoughtful projections for future electricity growth that, from a CO2 standpoint, can only be viewed with grave concern.  Please visit their web site.

Coal2Nuclear ______________________________________________________________________   Top  

The OFF Switch.  The Big Electricity Picture:

The United States' big electricity picture.

Coal @ 2 lbs of CO2 per kWh and natural gas @ 1.3 lbs of CO2 per kWh comprise the vast majority of the energy that's making both our electricity and Global Warming.

U.S. Coal + Oil produce about 2 billion tons of CO2, the gasses about 1.2 billion tons of CO2 for a total of about 3.2 billion of the world's 11 billion tons of CO2 produced each year just by making electricity. 

Them wind people are way overblown.  They aren't making as much electricity as carbon-neutral wood.

The World's big electricity picture.

(Right) Again, we have 10.935 x 10¹² kiloWatt hours of fossil fuel electricity.  At 2 lbs of CO2 per kiloWatt hour, that comes to 10.935 billion tons of CO2. 

This is one more cross-check that confirms 70% of the accumulating Global Warming CO2 is coming from fossil fuel electricity generating plants.

Coal Yard Nukes are, in fact, the only way the world can possibly hope to end Global Warming without giving up its electrical life support systems.

The world produced 16,650,210,000,000 kiloWatt hours of electricity in 2004 and made 10,935,000,000 tons of CO2

That's almost the entire annual CO2 accumulation that is causing Global Warming - 16,300,000,000 tons.

Notice how much oil is being burned globally just to make electricity?  There are also over 1,500 desalination plants in the mid-east burning huge amounts of oil just to make fresh water.  That's oil that could be better much better used for transportation and petrochemicals if the world would let them use nuclear instead of oil heat.

End of "End Of Global Warming" Presentation

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