Personal environmental monitor/logger/tracker

HarveyH55 wrote:
I've been playing with the idea for a while....... true believers...

still learning wrote:

HarveyH55 wrote:
I've been playing with the idea for a while....... true believers...

I'm what you call a "true believer" and would not be interested.

With respect to climate change/global warming, local carbon dioxide readings are no more significant than are local temperature readings.

When you read something of the history of climate change/global warming you are made aware that an early problem was the variability of near ground-level atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. It couldn't really be shown that atmospheric CO2 concentration was really increasing until Charles Keeling started his measurements in 1958. Even then it took several years of making the same measurements in the same way in the same place, as ideal kind of places as he could find, to show a clear trend. Too much variability near ground-level most places. Cities producing net CO2 and vegetated areas removing CO2 and variable wind directions made consistent measurements too hard. Mauna Loa, almost unvegetated and away from populated areas and with reliable tradewinds was/is one spot. South Pole Station another. Other stations now too.

So, actually, CO2 readings, from 1958, until now, have come from just one place, to represent the entire planet, few more later? It's a huge planet, and CO2 only makes up about 0.04% of the planet, not a lot to go on, yet hundreds of brilliant scientists consider that a reliable source and representation? Yeah, I think individuals might still have some interest, even as a novelty. Don't think it'll be cheap, though. Parts a lone, for a single basic unit, looks to be close to $150. Already have most everything sitting around, except the CO2 sensor, maybe the barometric pressure (might have).

Some folks claim that CO2's greenhouse effect is saturated and more has no effect. That's close to true in the lower atmosphere, but get high up where air has thinned out enough, then increased CO2 does have an effect.

But isn't CO3 measured at ground level near Hawaii? So no real way to measure the upper atmospheric CO2, on a regular basis. If the air is thinner up there, why would CO2 be at a higher concentration? It's not a special gas, it follows the same rules as everything else.

Go ahead though. A sucker is born every minute, to (not) coin a phrase.

HarveyH55 wrote:

....So, actually, CO2 readings, from 1958, until now, have come from just one place, to represent the entire planet, few more later?....

HarveyH55 wrote:
I've been playing with the idea for a while, occasionally get an itch to start building something, but the CO2 sensor turns into a roadblock. They are kind of expensive, for what will in all actuality be a random number generator. The readings will of course change all the time. I do want an actual sensor, that if you blow on it, the level increases, as you'd expect. I'm not looking at a fraudulent device, it will take actual readings, and keep track. Thing is, most of the sensors are for indoors use, sort of make sense, need the air flow. A few I found, can have hose fittings installed, so you can pump air in, over $100 range.

Mostly, I thought it would be interesting to track CO2, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, do some nice graphs. I think such a device might be appealing to the true believers, and others as well. There are many choices for home weather stations, been a hobby for a century or more. Think there would be a market for Climatology as well, and people could share and discuss the numbers online, social media. Plenty of options too, simple unit that fits in the pocket, something you hang on a fence or wall, something on a pole, with a solar panel. Could add GPS and WiFi, so it's pretty much automatic. Mostly, though, it will just show that the readings change all the time, regardless of where in the world you are. Why rely on the scientifically adjusted approximation, when you can see it in your own backyard.

still learning wrote:

HarveyH55 wrote:
I've been playing with the idea for a while....... true believers...

I'm what you call a "true believer" and would not be interested.

With respect to climate change/global warming, local carbon dioxide readings are no more significant than are local temperature readings.

When you read something of the history of climate change/global warming you are made aware that an early problem was the variability of near ground-level atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. It couldn't really be shown that atmospheric CO2 concentration was really increasing until Charles Keeling started his measurements in 1958. Even then it took several years of making the same measurements in the same way in the same place, as ideal kind of places as he could find, to show a clear trend. Too much variability near ground-level most places. Cities producing net CO2 and vegetated areas removing CO2 and variable wind directions made consistent measurements too hard. Mauna Loa, almost unvegetated and away from populated areas and with reliable tradewinds was/is one spot. South Pole Station another. Other stations now too.

Some folks claim that CO2's greenhouse effect is saturated and more has no effect. That's close to true in the lower atmosphere, but get high up where air has thinned out enough, then increased CO2 does have an effect.

Go ahead though. A sucker is born every minute, to (not) coin a phrase.

still learning wrote:

HarveyH55 wrote:

....So, actually, CO2 readings, from 1958, until now, have come from just one place, to represent the entire planet, few more later?....

No.

Definitely not. Don't think I or anyone else suggested that.

The Mauna Loa station is just where daily measurements of CO2 have been made longest. Since 1958.

Other regular monitoring is done, just not for as long or as often. Scripps monitors at eleven stations. See http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/

Other organizations monitor too. For instance: https://theconversation.com/how-is-atmospheric-co2-measured-in-the-southern-hemisphere-14219

Maybe look here for some history:http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/history_legacy/early_keeling_curve

"But isn't CO3 measured at ground level near Hawaii?"
Yes, high on a mountain. The side facing the reliable tradewinds coming across thousands of miles of ocean. And, yes when the winds do shift and come from across active Kiluea they don't include those high CO2 measurements in the average.

"So no real way to measure the upper atmospheric CO2, on a regular basis."
See https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/aircraft/

"If the air is thinner up there, why would CO2 be at a higher concentration?"
It's not and I didn't say it was.
The parts per million concentration varies little with altitude, at least until you get many miles high into the thermosphere. That 400 ppm (relative concentration) is spread out more with increasing altitude along the other gasses so the absolute concentration (weight of CO2 per given volume) decreases. The "saturation effect" that some people mention is reduced with the decreased air pressure at higher altitudes.

HarveyH55 wrote:
Basically, still just 60 years of actual data, from just a few places, and we have an accurate measurement of CO2, since before the Industrial Revolution? There should be an equal span of data, before the period, to set a base to compare with. What happened to the ice core bubbles, and the petrified tree growth rings? Haven't seen those used much, past couple of years.

Anyway, I don't expect my monitor device idea to represent or replace actual science, but it's something for the common folks to play with in their spare time, a gadget. As you pointed out, a little data can be dangerous...

Into the Night wrote:


Some stations are at sea level, others are at 11000 ft, like at Mauna Loa.

CO2 is heavier than air. It will tend to sink. Decreased air pressure also means decreased CO2. Air pressure has no effect on CO2 concentrations.

HarveyH55 wrote:

Into the Night wrote:


Some stations are at sea level, others are at 11000 ft, like at Mauna Loa.

CO2 is heavier than air. It will tend to sink. Decreased air pressure also means decreased CO2. Air pressure has no effect on CO2 concentrations.

I was trying to leave that one alone. Didn't make any sense, figured it was another super-CO2 thing. If it's even better at warming the upper atmosphere, then in can't be doing much for the surface, can't create energy, only change it.

Into the Night wrote:

HarveyH55 wrote:
I've been playing with the idea for a while, occasionally get an itch to start building something, but the CO2 sensor turns into a roadblock. They are kind of expensive, for what will in all actuality be a random number generator. The readings will of course change all the time. I do want an actual sensor, that if you blow on it, the level increases, as you'd expect. I'm not looking at a fraudulent device, it will take actual readings, and keep track. Thing is, most of the sensors are for indoors use, sort of make sense, need the air flow. A few I found, can have hose fittings installed, so you can pump air in, over $100 range.

Mostly, I thought it would be interesting to track CO2, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, do some nice graphs. I think such a device might be appealing to the true believers, and others as well. There are many choices for home weather stations, been a hobby for a century or more. Think there would be a market for Climatology as well, and people could share and discuss the numbers online, social media. Plenty of options too, simple unit that fits in the pocket, something you hang on a fence or wall, something on a pole, with a solar panel. Could add GPS and WiFi, so it's pretty much automatic. Mostly, though, it will just show that the readings change all the time, regardless of where in the world you are. Why rely on the scientifically adjusted approximation, when you can see it in your own backyard.

Such sensors are only good for higher concentrations of CO2 then 400ppm. They are used to measure indoor air quality (above 1000ppm people start to feel a bit more lethargic). When you get to 2000 ppm people start having real problems, including headaches and confusion. As concentration increases towards 5000ppm, nausea and vomiting set in. Much above that starts to become fatal.

Fortunately for Earth, the more CO2, the more plants and plankton. That means more vegetation scrubbing the air for us. This stabilizing effect also helps to feed us.

You can use such sensors to monitor air quality in your home or business (which is what they're for), but they are not good enough to measure atmospheric CO2 levels. CO2 is not uniformly distributed in the atmosphere, so even sensitive instruments like what Mauna Loa uses can't measure global CO2 levels.

Into the Night wrote:

.....It is known that Mauna Loa cooks their data. The recent volcanic eruption from a nearby volcano should have produced a spike on the Mauna Loa equipment. No such spike occurred.

Cooked data is useless data.

HarveyH55 wrote:

Into the Night wrote:

HarveyH55 wrote:
I've been playing with the idea for a while, occasionally get an itch to start building something, but the CO2 sensor turns into a roadblock. They are kind of expensive, for what will in all actuality be a random number generator. The readings will of course change all the time. I do want an actual sensor, that if you blow on it, the level increases, as you'd expect. I'm not looking at a fraudulent device, it will take actual readings, and keep track. Thing is, most of the sensors are for indoors use, sort of make sense, need the air flow. A few I found, can have hose fittings installed, so you can pump air in, over $100 range.

Mostly, I thought it would be interesting to track CO2, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, do some nice graphs. I think such a device might be appealing to the true believers, and others as well. There are many choices for home weather stations, been a hobby for a century or more. Think there would be a market for Climatology as well, and people could share and discuss the numbers online, social media. Plenty of options too, simple unit that fits in the pocket, something you hang on a fence or wall, something on a pole, with a solar panel. Could add GPS and WiFi, so it's pretty much automatic. Mostly, though, it will just show that the readings change all the time, regardless of where in the world you are. Why rely on the scientifically adjusted approximation, when you can see it in your own backyard.

Such sensors are only good for higher concentrations of CO2 then 400ppm. They are used to measure indoor air quality (above 1000ppm people start to feel a bit more lethargic). When you get to 2000 ppm people start having real problems, including headaches and confusion. As concentration increases towards 5000ppm, nausea and vomiting set in. Much above that starts to become fatal.

Fortunately for Earth, the more CO2, the more plants and plankton. That means more vegetation scrubbing the air for us. This stabilizing effect also helps to feed us.

You can use such sensors to monitor air quality in your home or business (which is what they're for), but they are not good enough to measure atmospheric CO2 levels. CO2 is not uniformly distributed in the atmosphere, so even sensitive instruments like what Mauna Loa uses can't measure global CO2 levels.

There are quite a few different sensor to choose from, and it's tough to sort through them. Some come 'pre-calibrated', which I didn't think indicated it would be good, since it implies some sort of offset, hardwired to the factory conditions, not likely outdoors, or even Florida conditions (hot/humid). Some take a 48 hour burn in, to self-calibrate, and take about two hours after that, if you power it down, seem to draw a lot of current during the reading process as well. Saw a couple that look promising, but they start out at 400 ppm, which is about the current CO2 level, so only show spikes, no dips, only half the random number generated. Quite a few chinese sensors, specs were a pain to interpret, which means unreliable. After finding something that might work, I have to go see if/what is being done with the microcontrollers I use. I'm still struggling at learning the programming language, mostly lazy. I understand programming in general, and was pretty good a long time ago, so I can follow along okay. Mostly, I'm a code pirate, cut and paste from other peoples work, and alter it a little to fit my projects. Anyway, you get to learn things about the hardware, you don't see in the specs, or reviews, like stability, or freezing up, and needing to be reset occasionally, how fast they drain what size batteries... All of these were $100 or less ($28 from china), basically I don't want to spend a lot on a random number generator, the more it cost, the higher my expectations. There are sensor over $300 dollars, but sort of drew the line at $100, expensive toy.

I know it's meaningless, but we can still apply the same Climatology math-magic, and get some interesting results. My yard is surrounded by giant oaks, so probably a low-CO2 zone. Not a high burning, industrial, traffic jam city either, shut down our coal burning, power plant a decade ago. I think with some averaging and smoothing, should show some meaningful changes, corresponding to weather conditions, and seasonal.

still learning wrote:

Into the Night wrote:

.....It is known that Mauna Loa cooks their data. The recent volcanic eruption from a nearby volcano should have produced a spike on the Mauna Loa equipment. No such spike occurred.

Cooked data is useless data.

See https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/43182/mauna-loa-observatory

Cooking? Correcting? Discarding data from a different source than the usual one (different wind direction) seems sensible to me. The "uncooked" data would seem even less useful than the cooked to see if the trend continues or not.

Into the Night wrote:

still learning wrote:

Into the Night wrote:

.....It is known that Mauna Loa cooks their data. The recent volcanic eruption from a nearby volcano should have produced a spike on the Mauna Loa equipment. No such spike occurred.

Cooked data is useless data.

See https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/43182/mauna-loa-observatory

Cooking? Correcting? Discarding data from a different source than the usual one (different wind direction) seems sensible to me. The "uncooked" data would seem even less useful than the cooked to see if the trend continues or not.

Not sensible. That's cooking the data. Cooked data is not allowed for use in statistical analysis. Raw data must be used, due to the requirement of all data selection to be by randN.

Cooking presupposes a statistical result when a statistical analysis has not yet been run! You can't use the output as input in statistics.

HarveyH55 wrote:

Into the Night wrote:

still learning wrote:

Into the Night wrote:

.....It is known that Mauna Loa cooks their data. The recent volcanic eruption from a nearby volcano should have produced a spike on the Mauna Loa equipment. No such spike occurred.

Cooked data is useless data.

See https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/43182/mauna-loa-observatory

Cooking? Correcting? Discarding data from a different source than the usual one (different wind direction) seems sensible to me. The "uncooked" data would seem even less useful than the cooked to see if the trend continues or not.

Not sensible. That's cooking the data. Cooked data is not allowed for use in statistical analysis. Raw data must be used, due to the requirement of all data selection to be by randN.

Cooking presupposes a statistical result when a statistical analysis has not yet been run! You can't use the output as input in statistics.

The few raw data graphs I've seen, were really spikey and all over the place. I wouldn't think it useful for much of anything, of course I'm no expert climatologist, and really don't know the credibility of the data or who produced the graphs. I'd have to believe the data could be smoothed out to illustrate pretty much anything. Still don't see the science, when there is no base-line normal, to compare with. How can you show a long trend, with such limited data.

HarveyH55 wrote:
I'll have to read those 1950's papers, and see what the purpose of the CO2 monitoring was originally. Could have swore that 'Global Warming' was announced in the 80's. The bulk of the historic 'data' seems to be hijacked from other types of research, and only loosely related. Seems reasonable to look back and use whatever you can find, just a little skeptical these days of what they found, and how they used it. For a while, they really hyped the significance of bubbles in ice core samples, but I always had trouble with that. Ice isn't a sealed container, also can melt, and re-freeze. Could easily have been decades of melting, which would have wiped out a lot of years accumulation. Nothing to really compare with to verify the findings.

HarveyH55 wrote:
Wonder how many times the upgrade the Hawaii sensors and equipment?

HarveyH55 wrote:
Wouldn't think they're still using 1950's stuff,

HarveyH55 wrote:
electronics do usually last that long, without failures and repairs.

HarveyH55 wrote:
Test equipment needs calibration, how often do they check and adjust?

HarveyH55 wrote:
Could the rising levels, just be from better, moe accurate instruments of the decades.

HarveyH55 wrote:
I'd have to believe the 1950's equipment wasn't as accurate or responsive, as what we have available today.

HarveyH55 wrote:
Basically, over a hundred years ago, this guy thought that CO2 helps keep the planet warm, but didn't think we were going to kill ourselves with CO2, had no predictions of doom and destruction. The environmentalist saw some potential, and waited decades, before the Earth finally started to show a possible warming trend, and jumped on it, spread propaganda and fear. Must be a bunch of sick people these days, waiting for natural disasters, so they can blame the death and destruction on man-made CO2.

HarveyH55 wrote:
I'm no paleontologist, but most kids grow up learning about dinosaurs, schools usually take them to at least one museum of natural history. I still read the stories, when they discover a new species. Seems pretty obvious that there is a lot of supportive evidence of warmer climates, for millions of years. Lot of vegetation as well, so plenty of CO2 to go around. I don't these massive fossils grew in a single short season, took years, long life span. Really couldn't have been such a hostile climate. We survived it, also survived an ice age. The climate isn't exactly great for plants, yet. Seems like proof we still have some warming to do, not mention, still need more CO2 to feed them with. The last argument, it's not the increase that is the problem, but the rate of change. But don't see that too often, they still focus in the increases or never ending, and will lead to more natural disasters, of greater intensity. Sort of the building suspense in a horror movie. Maybe we don't know it yet, but there has to be a natural thermostat, a climate regulator that kicks in, when conditions are right. It won't get too hot, or too cold for us to survive. Still plenty of other ice age survivors, and other species that do well in the heat. Life goes on, some won't make, some we wish would die out. I don't think it will be an abrupt change, it'll stretch over thousands of years.