Newsgroups: lter.ced Path: LTERnet!news From: Bruce Hayden Subject: CED Oct/Nov part 1 Message-ID: <1994Oct31.192811.27383@lternet.washington.edu> Sender: news@lternet.washington.edu Organization: Long Term Ecological Research Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 18:37:22 GMT ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *********** *********** ********** *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * ********* * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** *********** *********** ********** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Vol.3 No.9 ::::: October/November Issue ::::: November 1, 1994 ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** CED METADATA ---- CED is the Climate/Ecosystem Dynamics bulletin board of the LTER network. In CED, you will find exchanges of ideas, information, data, bibliographies, literature discussions, and a place to find experts within the LTER community. We are interested in both climate controls on ecosystems and ecosystem controls on climate. As this is an inter-disciplinary activity, we hope to provide things that you might not come across in your work at your LTER site. CED is a product of the LTER climate committee and contributions to CED for general e-mail release may be sent to either David Greenland of Andrews LTER [Greenlan@oregon.uoregon.edu] or to Bruce Hayden of the Virginia Coast Reserve LTER [bph@Virginia.edu]. We expect that the scope of CED will evolve and reflect the interests of the contributors and users of this service. CED will be issued as the preparation work gets done (usually monthly). Back-issues of CED may be requested from Daniel Pommert [daniel@lternet.washington.edu] by the file name given in the masthead.Daniel can also add people to the CED mailing list. CED is now a part of the World Wide Web. Web users can link to the following URL: http://atlantic.evsc.virginia.edu/julia/CED.html Feedback on CED from LTER scientists is welcome (non-$$$$ contributions also welcome.) For example, please forward citations of climate & ecosystem publications on your site. We are keeping a LTER wide bibliography on Climate/Ecosystem Dynamics that we pass on via E-mail. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** TRACE GASES AND THE GREENHOUSE *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Now that a new IPCC report is working its way into print, it is time for CED to bring everyone up to date on the greenhouse effect. Methane, one of our favorite trace gases takes the heat first, then we report on the hunt for global warming, and finally CED looks at a new physics of the greenhouse effect. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** FLATUOSITIES *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Ever since methane became the a cause celebre of the global warming crowd I have taken it upon my self to watch the literature carefully. Word searches and data bases render this just an occasional job rather than a necessary obsession. We all got so much joy from the bovine flatulence making the evening news [Dan Rather seemed to liked just saying it.] that flatulence has become OK for polite discussion. CED hit the topic in an earlier edition. Check your back issues. If it is good enough for Dan Rather and the evening news, it is good enough for CED. The Washington Post set Marta Vogel of Takoma Park, Md. off into the ethereal aspects of the subject. She dug up hot news from the British medical journal Lancet. One Geoffrey Wynne-Jones in a 1975 Lancet article proposed the interesting hypothesis that diverticular disease and subsequent cancers are confined to modern urban areas where flatus retention is practiced. The earliest and most enduring words on harm and benefits of the subject of flatus retention come from Hippocrates in his work -- The Flatuosities: "It is best for flatulence to pass without noise and breaking, though it is better for it to pass with noise and breaking than to be intercepted and accumulated internally." Hippocrates collected the wisdom of 21 generations of Physicians on the Island of Cos. He made a synthesis of these reports and wrote his books. Once again we learn that what is socially best is not always best for your health. Geoffrey Wynne-Jones, the Lancet guy, also suggests that the urban centers of yore had less diverticular problem because release rather than retention were PC then. He notes that standards of personal hygiene were lower and horse laughs chuckled at, or in Geoffrey's words "behind the back expression of a mannerless horse" were OK. Geoffrey also states that in modern urban areas "flatus retention is also practiced." He notes that in the older more bucolic urban environs women wore voluminous and long skirts. Unfortunately, neither the diffusions physics nor acoustic niceties of this sartorial circumstance graced the pages of Lancet and the words of explanation are left to the reader to find between the lines. To be sure that CED readers know the moment and volume of this kind of thing I call your attention to The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. It informs us that in most normal persons, l liter of gas per hour is infused into the gut with a "minimum of symptoms." ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** FLATUGRAPHIC RECORDINGS *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Dr. Michael Levitt is a former-director of the VA hospital in Minneapolis. He is "unanimously regarded by his peers" as the world's authority on flatus. Levitt uses a device that produces "flatugraphic" recordings. Levitt patient's hall of fame includes a poor individual that left recordings of 70 passages per hour for one four hour period and noted that the patient suffered from "psychosocial distress." One 28 year old Levitt patient reported a 5 year average of 34 passages per day with 14 belches as a bonus. Levitt's equipment samples exhaled gases from the lungs as production in the lower intestine also makes it into the blood stream and is lost with our purging of CO2 in our continuous venting of that greenhouse gas. Our lungs put out three greenhouse gases: H20, CO2, and CH4. The methane gas gets out one way or the other. Levitt, a self-confessed, big-time producer, in the long tradition of medical self-study used his instruments to test himself on over 130 different foods. Tuna, eggs, peanut butter, lettuce, broccoli, OJ, corn chips, rice flour, and berries were, he found, his low-octane input foods. Levitt has beans at the top of his list as "the very worst" and produce 2 to 3 times as much gas per gram of carbohydrate. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** SORRY, THE FAULT LIES NOT IN OUR GENES *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Eric Rabkin and Eugene Silverman, MD type scientists at UM medical school, Ann Arbor, report that proclivities regarding the production of the greenhouse gas methane are established by the age of 8! Rabkin and Silverman tell us it is not heredity at cause but environment! Nature vs nurture debates are among our most difficult. Our dear mothers need not feel the stab of guilt when social customs are violated. Rabkin and Silverman have a book out in search of a publisher called "Passing Gas." These pathfinders report that people handicapped as lactase-deficient permit complex milk sugars to make it to the lower intestine ready for microbial action and can results in "some of the most impressive cases of excessive flatulation." These wizards also report the vegetarians produce more gas but with their high fiber intake have fast through-flow and lower intestine residence time is kept to a minimum and thus they are " less odiferous." ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** NOBEL WINTER CHIMES IN *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Nobel winner Walter Alvarez in 1942 weighed in on flatus putting onions, cooked cabbage and raw apples at the top of the list of gas producing foods. Next in his listing were radishes, beans, cucumbers, milk, the dreaded "rich foods", melons, cauliflower, eggs, chocolate, coffee, lettuce, peanuts, peas, oranges, tomatoes, strawberries, brussel sprouts, broccoli and kohlrabi. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** DOWN WITH TRAIL MIX *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** David Ehrlich and George Wolf's, in their never-on-the-New York-Times-best-seller-list book "The Bowel Book" (Shocken, 1981), note that dried fruits are suspect, especially when combined with starches, such as a mixture of granola. Talk about bad luck from your trail-mix groupies! It is so difficult these days to be working toward a lowering the earth's burden of greenhouse gases. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** FAMILY VALUES AND GLOBAL WARMING *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Family values: Former-VP Dan and current-P Bill have made it PC to have them. We are in the era of role models. If you don't have them, you are at risk. You could live a life of sloth without them. You may even live a life of depravity. You may not win tenure. I have always been lucky. My Dad was a role model. I had family values. Role models to me seemed to be everywhere! I had one in 5th grade. She made me a entomologist. I had one in 11th grade. He made me salivate over the Atlantic Monthly. I never got anything published in that rag. I had a role model as a college freshman. He made me love calculus. I had one as a Junior. Gee, I loved biochemistry then. I had one in my Masters program. Bryology was the be-all and end-all. Barbara McClintock and Sewell Wright were great for me a bit later on. Shortly thereafter I took a liking to the historians Gertrud Himelfarb and Paul Johnson. I have had a great string heros since then. They were all over the scientific map. I worked with a few and it was great. In the last three years John Tyndall has kept my life moving forward. You have to put all this greenhouse stuff on his doorstep. He is a role model for our times. He is dead too! My latest Tyndall paper find is from 1864. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** 140 YEARS AGO *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** "The part played by aqueous vapor in the economy of Nature is far more wonderful than hitherto supposed. To nourish the vegetation of the earth, the actinic and luminous rays of the sun must penetrate our atmosphere, and to such rays aqueous vapor is eminently transparent. The violet and the extra-violet rays pass through it with freedom. To protect vegetation from destructive chills, the terrestrial rays must be checked in their transit toward stellar space, and this is accomplished by the aqueous vapor diffused through the air. This substance is the great moderator of the earth's temperature, bringing its extremes into proximity, and obviating contrasts between day and night which would render life insupportable." J. Tyndall, F. R. S. (March 17, 1864). Researches on Radiant Heat. Proceedings of the Royal Society. pp. 160-168. That was 140 years ago. He told three generations, in his physics text "Heat as a Mode of Motion," just what the greenhouse effect was. If I were a Californian and thirty years younger, I would say, "Gee, that is so.... great!" Many of my meteorologist and climatologist friends don't know now what Tyndall knew in 1864 or, at least, seem to think it is some new discovery of the GCM era. What a difference 140 years doesn't make. Water in the air determines the floor below which daily temperatures do not fall. Water for evaporation, if available, determines the ceiling above which temperatures do not rise. If minimum and maximum temperatures are at atmospheric water's beck and call, how then do greenhouse gases work? For more than a year I have found this a most difficult question. People who say they are in the know, say that average temperature will increase in a greenhouse gas enriched world. They calculate their average temperature as the minimum temperature plus the maximum temperature and divide by two. So, how does your common greenhouse gas play a role if they do not control minimum and maximum temperatures? And how can we detect it if still does? ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** FINDING THE WARMING *** *** THE SEARCH CONTINUES *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** If we didn't have water in our air or any of the more wimp-like greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, N2O, O3, and biogenic hydrocarbons) our planetary surface temperature would be 255 K (That is a Trout Lake chilly -18 C). Earth's surface temperature is actually about 288 K (That is a Network Office country +15 C.). Our planetary greenhouse is 33 K strong. Now the maximum amount of water that our air can hold is a function of its temperature. The greenhouse makes us a warm and moist planet. Our atmospheric moisture determines most of the greenhouse effect. The water vapor feedback is the be-all and end-all. So where does CO2 fit in? Well, I am as sure as I was when I knew less. It is a hard question for me. CO2 contributes a small share to the 33 K greenhouse. If we had less CO2 we could have less water vapor in the air. If we increase the CO2 in the air we, theoretically, warm the air and permit it to be wetter and you get more rainfall, suppression of high temperatures and elevation of low temperatures. As Tyndall told us 140 years ago, you narrow the daily temperature range. So the the signal of greenhouse warming is narrowing of the diurnal temperature range. That gives us a more moderate world. We cut both heating and cooling bills with more greenhouse gases. Our computer-code friends, the GCMers, tell us that the air in a global warming world is indeed wetter and that global rainfall is more but they also say daily maximum temperatures go up! I don't believe that for a minute. Desertification may have that result but not a wetter atmosphere. Wetter air and more water for ET is not a formula for higher daytime temperatures. Now don't get me wrong. The greenhouse theory is great in places that have dry air and where the dew point temperature is not reached on a nightly basis. Here so little water for ET is available that day time highs rise above 32 C and night time temperatures fall but are not limited by the temperature at which condensation starts. But if you see dew on the ground then greenhouse gasses have no more role that night. Arid lands are where the theory as now understood should work in best. We should see global warming at Sevietta and Jornada before any other the other LTER sites. I hope our colleagues there will keep an eye out for it. If you want to hunt for greenhouse warming go to the arid lands of the world. It should be there if it is anywhere. However, I have looked hard but I have not found it yet! I am never shocked that the GCMs don't verify for the most non-arid parts of the world, but I can't figure why our deserts are not getting warmer at night. Perhaps it is just around the corner. This is all a great bother to me. I used to understand the greenhouse effect. Then I started working with the observational data. Now I am not so sure anymore that the textbooks are right. For example my group at UVA has been calculating the hourly cooling rates for all kinds of places where hourly data is available. If our world is experiencing global warming then the nocturnal cooling rate must have become less in the earlier decades of this century. Our keyboard fingers are getting close to the bone and we can't find any trend in the nocturnal cooling rates. When we do seem to find something it is more often in the wrong direction than the right direction.