The writer offered a simple reason why the oceans and ambient seas have failed to warm during the past dozen years: the latent heat of fusion of water.
The calorie is historically defined as the energy required to raise the temperature of 1g of water by 1 degree C. The energy required to convert 1g of ice to water is about 80 calories.
No one can argue with the fact that glaciers and polar ice masses are shrinking dramatically. That consumes a staggering quantity of energy and could well explain the recent flat change in surface temperature.He could have added that the energy added to melt ice does not raise the temperature of the water -- it all goes into tearing down the rigid structure of ice -- but his audience already knew that. Did you?
Here's a visual that every chemistry student is exposed to:
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The difference between melting and freezing is infinitely small in degrees Fahrenheit and is measured instead in degrees of freedom. link
54 comments:
No image chickl, but this message instead...
The image has been hot linked from splung.com
Offending image removed and replaced. They don't need my attention.
finding the good in liberals = I can put of reading = finding the bad in conservatives.
It's the circle of life ;)
An explanation from latent heat of fusion would make sense if the amount of water/ice in the oceans could be considered a "closed" thermal system. But it isn't.
The amount of water in the oceans is so huge that they represent many, many thermal systems, including systems that have no apparent relation to Arctic or Antarctic systems.
Here's an example: the El Nino/La Nina occilations are based on water temperatures in the south central Pacific. Water temperatures in that area have never been claimed to vary according to the amount of polar ice at either end. But, if the latent heat of fusion theory was correct the Nino/Nina pattern would vary directly with the amount of polar ice.
If the ice is melting (disintegrating), why is the term fusion used?
Perhaps that would explain why it didn't rise all those years, but it doesn't argue one way or the other about truth of global warming. If this is the mechanism it could just be one of many reasons the climate is relatively stable on earth, and why warming of the kind being panicked about is unlikely.
"BBC News reports that data from Europe’s Cryosat spacecraft shows that Arctic sea ice coverage was nearly 9,000 cubic kilometers (2,100 cubic miles) by the end of this year’s melting season, up from about 6,000 cubic kilometers (1,400 cubic miles) during the same time last year."
Increased by 50% just last year alone.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/16/global-warming-satellite-data-shows-arctic-sea-ice-coverage-up-50-percent/
Antarctica melting? Not sure the science is settled.
"No one can argue with the fact that glaciers and polar ice masses are shrinking dramatically."
No, one could argue with that 'fact', and substantially.
Drawing hard conclusions from amorphous 'facts' is a signal of self-interest, or, self-delusion.
You misunderstand - that is an order - no one can argue.
Shut up, they explained, and other prog cliches.
"I opened my latest copy of Chemical & Engineering News.."
Did you see the centerfold of the molecule of the month. Talk about your latent heat of fusion. I couldn't think of anything else afterward. And who wouldn't appreciate those perfectly balanced Silicon molecules?
We know that the arctic ice cap is melting rapidly, but what about the antarctic ice mass? What is the overall balance?
I'm pretty sure the answer to this was known, but I can forgive you for letting skepticism get in the way of your research. At least you're asking the question.
Melting the polar ice caps will not raise the temperature of the seas until the last ice is melted.
A bigger problem concerns an issue of no less interest to a chemist. That's the increased acidification of the oceans resulting from absorbed CO2's equilibrium with the carbonic acid it forms when combined with water. I think in your language you call it: CO2 + H2O <---> H2CO3.
Anyway, as if bleaching and killing the coral weren't bad enough aesthetically (or biologically), you can bet there will be some significantly unwanted consequences from this. Add to that the overfishing of the seas and it's hard to see what kind of denialist propaganda could be credible enough to actually give people hope.
The question "is the earth warming" is interesting only in the sense that it would be nice to know whether to buy coastal property.
There is no solution to it that isn't worse than the problem itself.
There is no solution to it that isn't worse than the problem itself.
Including innovation! Innovation is a horrible solution to a problem! Horrible! We've been guzzling industrial oil for thousands of years, and we'll guzzle them for thousands more, as long as we don't innovate our way to something better! Stop innovation now! Innovation NEVER works!
I agree that innovation is the solution. Lets try something innovative and skip the hubris. Tell me what global problem that the "international community" has ever solved through law. Now imagine a problem we don't even understand, and aren't sure exists. Innovation would be to use our heads instead of just giving in to the modern human ailment: Emotive Global Hypochondria.
I'm pretty sure the answer to this was known,
Interesting link, but it only discusses sea ice. The question concerned the net gain or loss of total polar ice.
"There is no solution to it that isn't worse than the problem itself."
Including innovation! Innovation is a horrible solution to a problem! Horrible!
Let me introduce you to a concept called "verb tense". The word "is" is in what as called "present tense", meaning that it refers to the world today. In the world today, there is no alternative to fossil fuels and thus no solution to global warming.
The discovery of a solution in the future would be described using what is called "future tense", as in "in the future, there will be a solution to global warming". Feel free to make a faith-based prediction along those lines.
Now, *might* a solution be innovated? Well duh, of course that *might* happen. But hope isn't a plan, now, is it. People have been feverishly searching for a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels for a couple of centuries now. They will continue to do so -- not out of an abiding concern that their great-great grandchildren won't be able to live in Florida, but out of a desire to simultaneously improve the lives of billions of people TODAY and, not coincidentally, become the richest person in the history of humanity.
But until that innovation is nice enough to actually happen, my statement that there IS no solution will remain true.
Forgive my stridency, but are you really that much of a dummy? It says "Arctic sea ice loss is three times greater than Antarctic sea ice gain." Arctic + Antarctic = POLAR.
One has to have a lot of disrespect for humanity and a hatred of history to believe that not innovating our way around significant problems is more likely than finding solutions.
Forgive my stridency, but are you really that much of a dummy? It says "Arctic sea ice loss is three times greater than Antarctic sea ice gain." Arctic + Antarctic = POLAR.
Sigh.
No. Arctic sea ice + Arctic land ice + Antarctic sea ice + Antarctic land ice = polar ice caps.
The link you gave discusses sea ice exclusively. Most of Antarctica's and Greenland's ice, and some of the Arctic's, is on land.
I make no claim about the overall growth or shrinkage of the caps. I was just observing that your data are incomplete for the claim you're trying to make.
Well, point taken, Dear Sir. But if they say:
"Land ice at both poles and in glaciers around the world is sliding into the ocean at an accelerating rate."
Then that leads one to rationally conclude that the utility of measuring land ice decreases more and more as time goes on as compared to what you can deduce from measuring sea ice. But there are nits in life and they will need picking, so what can I say?
One has to have a lot of disrespect for humanity and a hatred of history to believe that not innovating our way around significant problems is more likely than finding solutions.
Silly Ritmo, you're forgetting there's a time limit. The question isn't "will humanity ever find a superior alternative to fossil fuels", it is "will humanity find, within the next decade or so, an alternative to fossil fuels so compelling that even poorer nations will hasten to adopt it".
Anyone familiar with history can find countless examples of problems that went unsolved for hundreds or thousands of years, and countless more that have yet to be solved at all. Innovation is a great thing, but it turns out that it doesn't magically happen just when you need it. :)
Then that leads one to rationally conclude that the utility of measuring land ice decreases more and more as time goes on
The only point I was making was that if you want to claim you found an answer to the question of whether the ice caps were growing or shrinking, you should cite a link that *doesn't* leave out something like seventy percent of the polar ice. :)
I'm not disputing your claim, merely pointing out that you failed to support it with evidence.
I dunno, man. I just find it incredible that we can send people to the moon, and use printers to create organs (another video I'm flipping through currently) but somehow we'll never be able to innovate our way into a more responsible energy mix. Well, not if people pay to keep their land rights to minerals with access more easy to control than it is to control access to the sun and the wind.
I'm not disputing your claim, merely pointing out that you failed to support it with evidence.
And I'm not disputing the existence of your nit, just noticing that you pick it with the energy you might want to put into other things - such as understanding that broken up ice pieces that fall into the sea are not as significant as the huge masses anchored onto the land. All that water in the sea has a way of melting things more easily, you know. There's a reason ice melts on a river before it does on a sidewalk.
Why do you massively over-rationlize the hell out of every social and philosophical idea but can't seem to grasp the tiniest bit of reasonable common sense when it comes to understanding the natural world?
deborah said...
If the ice is melting (disintegrating), why is the term fusion used?
Because when water freezes (fuses), heat (80 cal/gram) is "given off."
bagoh20 said...
Did you see the centerfold of the molecule of the month. Talk about your latent heat of fusion. I couldn't think of anything else afterward. And who wouldn't appreciate those perfectly balanced Silicon molecules?
Have you ever seen a really hot molecule jiggle and translate spontaneously?
A bigger problem concerns an issue of no less interest to a chemist. That's the increased acidification of the oceans resulting from absorbed CO2's equilibrium with the carbonic acid it forms when combined with water. I think in your language you call it: CO2 + H2O <---> H2CO3.
The oceans will never irreversibly acidify because they are buffered by CaCO3 which comes from eons of sea shells falling to the bottom. It's like having a beaker of water with a pile of buffer at the bottom.
That being said, local disequilibriums can and do occur where mixing is not thorough enough. This leads to localized acidification.
bagoh20 said...
Did you see the centerfold of the molecule of the month. Talk about your latent heat of fusion. I couldn't think of anything else afterward. And who wouldn't appreciate those perfectly balanced Silicon molecules?
And if you've never contemplated ammonia's skirt flipping when it "inverts" you should give it a gander.
But those "localized" problems still seem not worth provoking. And as far as CaCO3 in solution rather than as shell pieces and shell dust (sand! Imagine that in an ocean!), here's something that says your CO2/H2CO3 will help it reach a saturation state. Not much good it can do then, I guess. Fun!
The buffer does have to be in the solution for it to work, right? Do precipitates still buffer?
And if you follow the logic of the chart, you'll realize that after the seas reach a temperature of around 100 degrees C, there will be a welcome respite from further temperature rises as the latent heat of vaporization kicks in.
The buffer does have to be in the solution for it to work, right? Do precipitates still buffer?
CaCO3 has a measurable solubility and will dissolve according to it's equilibrium solubility. Plus CaCO3 is continually subducted into the mantle (or wherever the the crust dives back under at tectonic faults).
Yes. In a saturated solution of bicarbonate buffer, the precipitate will continually feed the beaker of water as need as acid is added.
Oh joy.
So then why the bleaching of the corals, locally or otherwise? It must be the heat. Since sand is ubiquitous there shouldn't be any pH fluctuations whatsoever.
Sand is not a buffer. It is mostly SiO2. To the extent that there are seashells mixed in the sand, you get the buffering effect.
Andromeda Strain (1971)
Guard: Howdy.
Dutton: Howdy Doody.
Guard: You got the time?
Dutton: My watch stopped at 11:46.
Guard: Darn shame.
Dutton: Must be the heat.
I knew sand was primarily silicon dioxide but misinterpreted your 12:48 to mean that the carbonate was produced extensively enough from shells dissolving into the sand that it was a greater component than I'd thought. Your explanation makes sense then, re: local peculiarities.
A buffer is a mixture of a weak acid and it's conjugate salt. For example acetic acid and sodium acetate. What happens when you add a strong acid? The H+ combines with the sodium acetate to make more acetic acid and sodium chloride. The strong acid is consumed to make a weak acid. The pH falls back.
In sea water, the weak acid is bicarbonate (HCO3-) and the conjugate salt is the CaCO3. Feeding more CO2 in makes H2CO3 which is immediately consumed to make HCO3-, unless of course the CaCO3 is exhausted or unavailable.
@Ritmo: Some really screwed up chemistries happen when CaCO3 is unable to keep up.
This Is Calcium's Finest Hour
I'd love to stay up chat but I just got in and have to get up early tomorrow.
I'll read through any responses.
'Night!
I dunno, man. I just find it incredible that we can send people to the moon, and use printers to create organs (another video I'm flipping through currently) but somehow we'll never be able to innovate our way into a more responsible energy mix.
Again, nobody is saying we'll NEVER do such a thing, just that there's no reason to ASSUME we'll do so in the immediate future.
There are far bigger problems we've faced for a lot longer than this one without finding a solution!
Fascinating thread. One thing I do not understand. What, if any, domestically viable "innovation" has occurred before a strong public "demand," near universal, (think "transportation") for it arrived? Was any of such innovation driven by laws and regulations?
Rockefeller initially became rich on kerosene, only one of the multiple distillates from fractionation of crude oil. Raw gasoline, which "boils off" earlier than kerosene, or diesel oil, which "boils off" later than kerosene, did not find a demand until machines made its volatility harness-able. A particular favorite of mine in the days messing around with it all was ether. You can make people do funny shit with that stuff.
No law, regulation, or government edict caused this innovation to occur. This is why I am highly skeptical about government involvement with windmill generators and solar panel technology. Both have been around for a very long time...windmill conversion of energy in particular dates back centuries. The greatest government energy effort was the Manhattan Project. Yet, we are shy of utilizing nuclear power generation today.
Where is the "demand" driver for wind power or solar power? Joe Sixpack wants his home warmed and his automobile to run. Until an innovation occurs that makes both of these functions very notably cheaper, and very noticeably more efficient (think oxen & horses versus autos, trucks & railroads) the "demand" will not evolve.
A good friend of mine is presently revisiting Vietnam, a place he spent 6 years long ago under ugly conditions. He's there for two months and has sent me photos of the north part of the country none of us ever saw during wartime. In some I see the same charcoal block stove (cooking) unit, built in to the concrete, that also heats the dwelling by radiant heat through the floor....e.g., the "chimney" is a ductwork through the floor, then out, to capture the heat from the stove post cooking.
In my time in Asia over 40+ years ago I had a house with the same set up there. So long as the majority of a populations have such basic needs, the demand will be for the least cost most efficient upgrade to a very crude system still in use today. Fossil fuels so far are the only potential sources of that efficiency. We in the comfortable west underestimate the rest of the world's primal issues of survival, such as a warm place to sleep.
Go ahead, if you are a true believer, go out in to the hinterlands of Asia and tell those people they need windmills. Advise them how to do all that without a subsidy necessary in the west in place of actual demand.
Pssst: I think I am in total agreement with Revenant's take on all of this.
I am, however, ever the skeptic, including of cures promoted as panaceas in political terms. Edicts never heated a home or fed a population.
Double Psssst: I want to thank Chickenlittle for his explanations and even R & B for his inquiry, even if a solution is sought prior to real demand. Bagoh20 also puts most of this in to terms I can understand.
I need to add that I have worked inside a nuclear power generation plant... DTE Fermi II), on the machines that enable it. I have never felt more safe from workplace hazards. The mere process to enter & egress from the facilities is awesome. I am somewhat puzzled why nuclear energy generation is not widely favored. It is far less contaminate of our air day to day, other than disposal of waste, what is the issue?
What, if any, domestically viable "innovation" has occurred before a strong public "demand," near universal, (think "transportation") for it arrived?
Nuclear fission and fusion. The initial drive was militarized, but the power generation was realized early on and later put to use. In fact, a fellow named Frederick Soddy realized the enormous amounts of energy held inside atoms link. He warned the British government about atomic weapons before the First World War.
Solar panels and such were developed for space missions.
The best domestic example of technology is probably the initial discovery of magnetic resonance in 1946 by Bloch and Purcell. This led directly to an analytical method which revolutionized chemistry --especially organic chemistry. Later, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) came about as an outgrowth. There was always a partnership between government and industry, bringing these technologies to market.
The government sucks at commercialization, and industry tends to think too short term. It's a balancing act, really.
ChickenLittle....I appreciate your answer as far as it goes. None-the-less, whether solar panels or nuclear power generation, (windmills are pure folly) it has NOT been adopted in any measurable magnitude by the general public. In short, the domestic "demand" is not yet there for future innovations of those capabilities (latent demand I suppose)...while it certainly was there for the innovations that lead us to automobiles and railroads and aircraft.
I should clarify my comment above...the "demand" per se is there, for "heat" for example, however, the means proposed by government have not been shown to be efficient, or cost effective, thus have not been adopted by the general populace.
Bull. When people put their minds to doing something it gets done. It was practically "edicts" that made the Manhattan Project and the Lunar Landing happen, and not some twiddling on our thumbs as they worked their way into our asses while we waited for the "worthiest" plutocrat to decide whether or not he was in the mood that day to let those projects undermine his own interests.
R&B said ....
Bull.
Really? Tell me all about the popular utilization of moon landings and atomic bombs. Just what benefit has either been to the populace, as individuals, per se? How universal has the application of said phenomena been overall?
I don't think you got my point at all. That puzzles me because you usually are more astute.
Are you seriously kidding me? The benefit to the morale of the nation and humanity of both events is so overwhelming as to beggar belief that someone would question their value. It showed that we had mastery over fundamental natural limitations that had existed since humanity (and ever) and it's impossible to see how anyone would decry the celebrations and meaning of our being able to split the atom and "slipping the surly bonds of earth", as Reagan said.
As far as what further technical applications came out of those, I'm less at liberty to say but have good reason to suspect they are legion. The discoveries to come out of NASA alone are substantial. But even so, being able to look at a picture of earth-rise from the heavens is worth it alone, just to remind diverse and warring and careless peoples around the earth of the fragility of their common inheritance.
I'm sure the ultimate rewards reaped by Columbus' voyage were greater than the immediate rewards. Great discoveries are their own reward.
Nuclear fission was a trifle? Really? I thought conservatives appreciated atomic energy… Either way, it's an important and necessary discovery. What about the medical applications? What about nuclear submarines? What about understanding how the sun works and one day maybe recreating as endless an energy supply here? Come on, man… you're just being provocative, right?
R&B ... no, you totally missed what I was trying to say. I made nothing a "trifle." Maybe I wasn't clear. It doesn't matter. You are not even reading what I wrote...such as my experience working inside nuclear power facilities....yet you comment that I make it a trifle?
If you read me much you know I am a cancer survivor, thanks to nuclear medicine and highly focused radiation. Do you think I don't appreciate the public sector contributions that lead up to such treatments?
Speaking of that, matter of fact, you should note that there is a rather wide spread "demand" for healing, thus support for it public and private. As Chickenlittle said above, vis a vis magnetic resonance, et al., it is a balancing act.
I do not see this in nonsense such as acres upon acres of solar panels and/or gigantic windmills. They both violate sundry wildlife statutes and regulations, and can only exist because politicians choose to ignore them. Some habitat is better than others I guess.
None of that is "innovation" or "invention" ... except that some wish it politically to be grand. Be sure to let me know when the poor and impoverished are lifted up by solar or wind energy, when the street people and those who can never do more than rent flats, find it compelling versus just keeping warm and lighted by long proven means. Including nuclear.
Let me go a couple steps further...vis a vis innovation & invention:
1.) I want a pair of Google Glasses. Heads up display for the common man. No need for a "smart phone" brick slab here. I see guys carrying smart phones in hip holsters that are bigger than my holster for my S&W M&P Shield. Laughable. Now something that would let me be connected hands free while working on machinery or structures...yes, I want that. I bet many many others do too.
2.) I want an electric vehicle. The minute a small SUV type, say similar to Toyota's RAV-4 size-wise, that can get 200+ miles on a charge, is available for between $40K and $60K ...it is mine! Electric propulsion has the potential to be faster, higher torque, and efficient. At under 100 mile range and over $100K cost, it is a non-starter for now...but it will come and I will be among the first to buy one. Give it a very small re-generation capability via combustion engine (increasing range to say 300 miles overall) and I'll spend over the $60K figure in a heartbeat...and I am not a rich man, but I am one who spends $100 to fill his gas tank these days.
Those are examples of the "demand" I am talking about...fundamental need (transportation) and data availability (Google Glass) instantly more or less. I'd even sell of a fancy shotgun to buy the Google Glass if necessary...and I loves my trap shootin' shotguns.
Perhaps a blog post addressing the "balancing act" and what's gone wrong with it would be in order.
Chickenlittle ... now that would interest me.
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