Petagrams of Carbon

Sometimes carbon dioxide is referenced in units of ppm, and sometimes it is referenced in petagrams of carbon.  What are the meanings of these units and how does one convert between them?

In a previous post I explained how to convert to and from units of ppm.  The current post explains the units petagrams of carbon, and how to convert from ppm to petagrams of carbon.

Fixing Norton Ghost

If you are running Symantec's Norton Ghost to backup a computer, you may occasionally run into the following helpful error:

"An interaction with the catalog's database layer failed unexpectedly: sqlite3_step--5: database is locked."

Surprisingly, the Norton online help is no use at all.  This problem, however is not difficult to fix.  As I have had this same issue with multiple versions of Ghost and also it seems to occur on multiple operating systems, the solution is probably not exclusive to my environment.  However, I am running Vista 64 bit and Norton Ghost 14.

The Second Law, Radiative Transfer, and Global Warming

This post is part of a series, Nonsense and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The previous post is entitled Spontaneous Change and Equilibrium.

Does global warming violate the second law of thermodynamics?  Such a claim may seem strange.  The idea that the vast majority of physical scientists would subscribe to an idea that somehow violates a fundamental law of thermodynamics on its face seems odd.  Yet, such a claim is often made by people calling the science behind global warming into question.