ENGINEER 1P03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Svante Arrhenius, Joseph Fourier, Core Data

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Engineering (General)
• Course: ENGINEER 1P03
• Professor: Elizabeth Hassan

Document Summary

Climate change: joseph fourier 1824: ghg effect, john tyndall 1859: first reliable experiment proving ghg"s, svante arrhenius 1896: quantitative ghg and man"s increase of co2 leading to climate change. If no ghg"s, earths mean temperature would be about -18 deg instead of +15 deg. c. Methane plus oxygen yields carbon dioxide plus water vapour, over a period of about a decade. Co2 280/180 = 1. 555 = 5 degrees when long term changes are included. Doubling co2 = 3 degrees (proven accurate for time periods of 1 century) The ipcc in 2009 decreed in copenhagen that we should limit our warming to 2 deg. C allowing for an increase to 450 ppm using charney"s constant. The two-degree threshold is a tipping point that would cause irreversible damage to the planet"s ecosystems and economy. The iea"s analysis is based on conventional models which do not fully account for amplifying feedbacks such as methane releases from permafrost thawing.