Timothy Birdnow

This comes from Tomer D. Tamarkin. It's very technical, but worth reading if you want to understand why the current theory on carbon dioxide driving climate change is just wrong:

Henry’s Law controls atmospheric CO2 concentration, not humans

In physical chemistry, Henry’s Law is one of the gas laws. It defines the solubility of a gas within a liquid which is in contact with the gas. It was formulated in the early 19th century by the English chemist William Henry who described the results of his experiments. In the 21st century, Henry’s Law is the foundation science for multi-billion per year industries, for example the multi-billion dollar per year scientific instruments business of gas chromatography. Henry’s Law also explains why the theory of human-caused global warming /climate change is not even plausible science and should be shunned by knowledgeable people.

Henry’s Law is specifically limited to a phase state equilibrium reaction of a gas and that same gas which is in contact with a liquid solvent, for example CO2 gas in the atmosphere which is in contact with ocean water. Henry’s law only applies to low concentrations of a gas in the mixed gas phase and in the liquid phase. Henry’s Law does not apply to the series of carbonate chemistry reactions occurring in ocean water after the CO2 gas reacts with water and hydrates and disassociates into ions. CO2 gas in atmosphere and in ocean surface satisfies these conditions.

Henry’s Law is dominantly dependent on the temperature at the interface of the gas with the liquid. Rearranging Henry’s Law as d(ln(kH))/d(1/T) defines the temperature dependence parameter in Henry’s Law partition co-efficient, where kH is the Henry’s Law constant and T is temperature in Kelvin. Henry’s Law is explained on the website of the U.S. National Institutes of Standards and Technology.

"The chemistry of carbon dioxide is quite complex, but it boils down to reactions as in Eq. (I). In the first step, CO2 of the atmosphere dissolves into the ocean CO2(g)⇌CO2(aq). (I)
In water the CO2 molecules combine with water molecules to form H2CO3 , and this reaction can be written as CO2(aq)+H2O(l )⇌H2CO3(aq). (II)
Here the ratio of the two concentrations of Eq. (I) is given by Henry’s Constant, that depends on the temperature (see Table 6-7 of Lide and Frederikse (1974)), 𝐾h(𝑇)= [CO2(g)] / [CO2(aq)]. (3)” (Stallinga, P. (2018). Carbon Dioxide and Ocean Acidification. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 14(18), 476. https://doi.org/10.19044/esj.2018.v14n18p476 )

Since the concentration of net global CO2 gas concentration is routinely measured, then Henry’s Law can be used to calculate the concentration of aqueous CO2 gas in ocean surface water.
If net global CO2 concentration in air is 400 ppmv, then, per Henry’s Law KH, at STP, 400 x 10-6 atm. [CO2] = P/KH = 4.00 x 10-4 atm/29.41 atm M-1 = 1.36 x 10-5 M (moles of aqueous CO2 gas per liter of surface ocean water.)

Theoretically, this concentration of aqueous CO2 gas then can be used to roughly calculate the concentration of the carbonates in the series of acid-base reactions in ocean water which occur subsequent to the Henry’s Law phase-state equilibrium reaction, but there are many different equilibrium constants and ocean and atmosphere are very dynamic.

It is incorrect to use average global temperature in Henry’s law calculations, unless that temperature average is weighted by surface area of ocean at a given temperature. However I have not found that information in the scientific literature. Use of global average temperature results in unexplained errors in CO2 concentration. For example, global average ocean temperature is about 17 C, which in the Henry’s coefficient would define ocean as absorbing CO2, which leads to the question: how could global average CO2 concentration be increasing? But the average temperature of the tropical ocean surface is above 26 C year round, which implies tropical ocean surface is emitting CO2 gas year round. The Henry’s Law constant for CO2 and ocean surface water is different at 17 C and 26 C. The Henry’s constant is not constant for different temperatures, which means the ratio of CO2 gas in air versus CO2 gas in ocean water is different at different temperatures. Thus Henry’s Law constants in chemistry text books vary by temperature. A few examples of common errors in the climatology literature are provided below.

One example is in the following graph, the carefully measured net global CO2 concentration trend (measured at Mauna Loa) versus the RSS satellite-measured global mean surface temperature. The two trends are diverging which by itself immediately falsifies anthropogenic global warming theory. Temperature, density, solubility, pH, specific volume, specific entropy, thermal conductivity, thermal expansion, compressibility are intensive properties in thermodynamics; an intensive property depends only on the type of matter and not on the amount of matter and may vary from place to place within the system at any moment. The average temperature of the earth and the average temperature of earth’s troposphere provide no useful information regarding CO2 flux nor CO2 concentration change nor Henry’s Law and result in errors in calculating CO2 concentration and flux. For example, using Henry’s Law and average ocean temperature of 17 C results in an average global CO2 concentration of about 312 ppmv, which is obviously a large error based on Mauna-Loa-observed net global average CO2 concentration of about 417 ppmv.

Read more and view data, graphs, & images at: https://climatecite.com/henrys-law-controls-co2.../

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:25 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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