there is a discussion on CO2 over at a Forum of Lucy
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Forum/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=22 .

The format is easier than a blog because recent items come up on the list and it is easier to follow.

Low co2 readings are recorded at times of historic lower temperatures so would we automatically expect ice cores to reflect that or are we talking two completely issues here?

I think it is two different things, and it depends on whether CO2 is homogeneous over the globe and in the atmosphere. We know the temperatures are not. Up to the publication of the AIRS maps I have not read of anybody seriously challenging this. There have been challenges on the ice core method and whether it retains information from the past or is contaminated by the process of extraction.

When we look at the ice core temperature record do we accept that this is the temperature of the whole globe? Below 4 degrees C? It is the temperature of the region where the ice formed. The same holds for CO2, is all I am saying.

I think that the whole CO2 record is at the stage the temperature records were before the scrutiny of people like Anthony: people trusted the scientific expertise and integrity of the climate science community.

It needs auditing.

Interesting thoughts. Have you ever come across any references to confirm your ideas?

Low co2 readings are recorded at times of historic lower temperatures so would we automatically expect ice cores to reflect that or are we talking two completely issues here?

Any links to articles will be read with interest

TonyB

“I do not trust ice cores that tell us that pre industrial levels were 280ppm”

What I am trying to say referring continuously to the AIRS maps, is that maybe the ice core measurements were 280 because they were in regions where there was a dearth of CO2 a la AIRS maps. In addition I would expect that close to the ground/ ocean surface the latitude/longitude differences would be much greater, and considering that ice forms where the temperature is less than 0 centigrade I would expect a huge ocean sink next to that ice that was being formed to be later sampled and measured.

So the ice cores might be accurate, for the arctics.

I do not trust ice cores that tell us that pre industrial levels were 280ppm for the same reason I don’t trust global temperatures nor the Mann hockey stick-they are all there to give us their version of the narrative of global warming.

It is a fact we know temperatures can be as high or higher than todays at levels said to be 280ppm. If we find that co2 levels could be as high as today that destroys the ice core readings and the narrative. Until I check the 15 readings that Beck have given me I can’t comment as to their accuracy. However I can ceretainly state categorically that the idea that NONE of the thousands of readings taken prior to 1958 are accurate is fanciful in the extreme.

The figures produced by GS Callendar around 1955 were highly selective in order to support his own theory of AGW and Charles Keeling did not have the knowledge at the time to dispute them.

One thing in Becks favour is that he publishes all his references on line, unlike those who refuse to divulge their information and have caused a number of requests to be made under the Freedom of information Acts to try and dig the information out.

TonyB

And again, we know we have accurate measurements at various isolated places around the globe ( http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-keel-flask/sio-keel-flask.html ) which all match each other. In none of them do we see more than a few ppm seasonal variation year to year during a 5 decade steady rise.

In the AIRS data, http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/ there are up to 15ppm variations of CO2 due to longitude and latidute at a given time, and these measurements are rather high up and not near surface.

I do not trust the measurements of CO2 going thorough the same channels that give us measurements of ground temperatures. If they have managed to make such a mess of such a simple reading as a temperature, I would triple audit any CO2 results.

Lets look again

Holocene warm periods at 280 ppm warmer than present

Roman warm periods at 280ppm warmer than present

MWP at 280ppm warmer than present

The middle of the LIA age (I did not say 1660 look at the other periods in the graph) around as warm as present

I think history is telling us something about;

Either
a) The overall importance of CO2 related to temperature

OR
b) Our knowledge of past CO2 readings is faulty

You cant have it both ways;.

In all previous warming instances CO2 wasnt even at the scene of the crime.

I do not agre with your ‘obvious one’. Have you actually studied the history of how and why measurements were taken and the credentials of the numerous scientists who took them. Do you really think our forefathers were that dumb that they couldnt take ANY accurate measurements?

I would be intereested in hearing from you how much and where all the CO2 is sequestered and the relative ‘half life of Man made and natural emissions and also why ‘OUR’ emissions- although smaller than natures- are the ones that distrub the equilibrium

You can also tell me the source of your 1660 ‘Global’ temperatures-the ones these days are a farce let alone any concocted back to 1660.

TonyB.

First: the CET temperature record does not come close to being a good representation for global temperatures. 1660 was _not_ at today’s temperatures globally.

Second: CO2 is _not_ the only factor involved in climate change. Everything from volcanoes to solar changes to ocean current changes to orbital changes to aerosols to methane to… well, the list goes on. You need to look at all the known forcings to decide what is responsible for what temperature change. (recently, CO2 has been the largest positive change in forcing, followed by methane and black carbon, with aerosols and the occasional volcano being large negative forcings)

Third: Man-made emissions are small compared to _gross_ natural emissions, but are large compared to _net_ natural emissions. Man is emitting, on average, twice as much CO2 as we see in terms of atmospheric increase, with the balance ending up in the ecosystem and oceans.

Fourth: CO2 does not degrade with a “5 to 50 year” half-life. It goes into three places: the atmosphere, the ocean, and the ecosystem (with a very small component being lost to the system through weathering and deep ocean sediment formation). In the whole system, additional carbon (from fossil fuel combustion) has a half-life due to the weathering component of thousands of years. If you care about the atmosphere, the half-life is complicated, because it will start out fast and then slow down as the various uptake (ocean + ecosystem) mechanisms approach equilibrium with the atmosphere. The common simplification is around 100 years, though again, a half-life is not a good measure.

And again, we know we have accurate measurements at various isolated places around the globe ( http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-keel-flask/sio-keel-flask.html ) which all match each other. In none of them do we see more than a few ppm seasonal variation year to year during a 5 decade steady rise. Compare this to Beck’s record, where CO2 jumps all over the place. And there is no theoretical explanation for Beck’s record… other than the obvious one, which is that there were a large number of bad measurements back then.

Let us step back a bit.

Recorded temperatures back to 1660 show similar values to todays without added co2. The previous warm periods have risen to greater levels without added co2. So is man made CO2 the ‘guilty ingredient’ when the suspect was actually missing from the scene of the crime?

Co2 is a small part of overall greenhouse gases and man made emissions a small part of that. It is the notion of ‘Equilibrium’ that has decided that the increase in man made co2 levels has nothing to do with the greater natural amount being emitted annually-and is the tipping point .

Co2 is said to degrade with a half life of anything from 5 to 50 years-depending on who you believe- so much of what we have put into the air has gone into a sink.

If man has added 100 ppm over 250 years that equates to 10 parts per 100,000. In UK terms it means we have added half a part since we started industrialisation in 1750, much of which has subsequently gone into a sink.

Now co2 is stored in all sorts of places according to Eli Rabbetts concept of ‘boxes’. Do we really know exactly how big those ‘boxes’ are and the rate at which they release co2 back, according to the temperatures of say the ocean? Can we be certain we have identified all the boxes-let alone their size?

The thing about Becks work is that it does provide us with a historic record and the historic temperature spikes make no sense unless there are historically higher and lower co2 readings.

Even in Victorian times Co2 analysing methods could be perfectly accurate and measurements were commonly taken for medical and employment reasons-the cotton industry had particular problems with co2 because of ventilation concerns, and the first factories act set a limit of 900ppm in 1889. This had been debated by the British Parliament for twenty years prior to that and its success reviewed in Parliament 15 years after.

Levels aren’t set unless they can be enforced.

Levels were commonly taken- including by many higly experienced scientists including nobel winners. Those by Buchanan and Benedict seem particularly interesting. Not all measurements would be correct of course. Many that were correct may seem high to us but may have been taken in a known ‘polluted’ area precisely because it was polluted, and in order to see if co2 conformed to agreed limits.

We greatly underestimate the abilty of our forefathers scientific abilities-on which the modern age is founded- if we think that NONE of the hundreds of thousands of measurements from around 1820- when Saussure took readings around Geneva-can be accurate.

The modern level of 295ppm set by Callandar as the 1900 benchmark was an arbritary figure set to support his own theory that Man was responsible for causing the ‘greenhouse’ effect.

I am currently investigating some 15 readings which Beck believes can be termed ‘reliable’ in order to determine if they really are. Until then I would say his work is very interesting but needs to be fully proven.

TonyB

Think systems. If you have an ice cube in an insulated jar and the ice cube melts, yes, the air temperature in the jar will drop. But the total energy in the system stays the same. Which means you are just shifting energy around in the system. On Earth, that means you won’t get long term cooling just by throwing salt on all your ice and melting it. You’ll get short term cooling, but the next winter the ice will all refreeze and release all the heat right back out again.

Long term heating (or cooling) requires somehow changing the energy balance of the system. Black carbon does this by lowering the albedo, thereby absorbing more sunlight instead of reflecting it out to space. In this case, you probably won’t even get short-term cooling, because the heat of fusion is being supplied by the heat the the black carbon is capturing which wouldn’t have been in the system otherwise. And if enough snow melts to expose dark ground… well, there’s your positive feedback.

Regarding the original question: the reason for satellite monitoring of CO2 is not because we don’t know global mean CO2, or that the rise is anthropogenic, but rather because there are important details we still don’t have a good grasp of. The biggest of which are natural emissions and uptake: where is the ocean taking up carbon? Releasing it? Which forests are sucking carbon up? How much CO2 does land use change cause to be released? How much carbon does no-tillage agriculture sequester? We have a good bound on how much we emit from fossil fuels, because that is an easy calculation: just weigh the oil + coal + natural gas that you burn, and you know how much CO2 you produce. And yes, we can measure the atmosphere quite well at multiple sites around the globe. So we know what the sum of the ocean + ecosystem + land use change is pretty well, but we don’t know how to partition between them.

I think that all the “skeptics” who jump on the “CO2 rise isn’t anthropogenic” bandwagon and similar poorly-supported memes really don’t help the cause of those skeptics who actually understand the science.

I personally happen to believe that the mainstream climate science consensus is fairly good, but I also believe there is value in websites to keep the consensus honest by documenting poorly located weather stations etc. I’m looking forward to seeing the analysis on the top quality sites, and seeing how it matches the standard temperature records. Also I’m looking forward to seeing comparisons between the Climate Reference Network and USHCN when that is on line. But I think the noise level at these sites can get pretty high, and sometimes I wish the skeptic community could filter out the really junk stuff so we can argue about the stuff that is actually worthwhile…

Reading the actual text of the article, for a 4.5 degrees C warming by 2100, the cumulative carbon emission overestimation from Australia for the century would be 135 Tg of carbon. Australia is about 5% of the world’s land mass, so let’s be generous and assume that this overestimation is both valid and globally applicable. 20*135Tg = 2.7GtC. That’s, um, less than half of this year’s total carbon emissions – spread out over 100 years!

Whoopee. That will reduce projections a whole heck of a lot.

Now I learn that you burn a forest and black carbon accumulates in the soil, and takes forever to release its charge of CO2. But what gushes into the atmosphere during the burning process? Surely copious volumes of CO2?? And from the next fire that occurs next day?

What is being measured is the carbon which remains after burning. Plants take carbon from the air while they’re growing. Eventually they burn or rot, both releasing some carbon to the atmosphere. Frequent burning leaves a lot more carbon in the soil than trying to stop burning because a fire after 40 years is both more destructive and leaves less carbon in the soil (indeed, intense fire burns carbon out of the top layer). Much land used to be burned often, trapping large amounts of carbon. In the Americas this was reduced after 1492 and actively stopped in much of the world around 1900 for various reasons.

Not sure how you determined this upper limit, but most studies indicate a number close to 2 Pg C / year for wildfires and anthropogenic fires combined. That is almost 1/4 instead of 1/1000. True, real “wild” wildfires are a relatively small fraction.

Good point about most of it being just “fast respiration” (CO2 emitted that was previously captured by photosynthesis). Still, the fraction associated with deforestation or an increase in fire activity is considerable. This is a net source.

Fires also play a role in explaining interannual variability in growth rates of CO2 and CH4, for example the large fires in Indonesia mentioned earlier in the thread in 1997/1998 explaining part of the high CO2 and CH4 growth rates that year.

Well, the release of 210 GtC (= 100 ppmv) in 7 years time is theoretically possible as result of a huge release from volcanoes, (undersea) vents, meteorite impacts, etc… Or burning 1/3th of all vegetation on earth… There is no sign that something like that happened, but it is possible. But the opposite way: that 210 GtC were absorbed in ten years time, either by vegetation (that is one third of all vegetation as extra growth) or oceans, is physically impossible. There simply is no process in the natural world which can absorb such a quantity of CO2 in such a short time. This in fact refutes the probability of such a peak value around 1943.

Why is there no mention of the fact that in 1943 the world was at war, which resulted in very rapid industrialization, along with the incineration of entire cities? Omitting that world event seems to have been a major oversight in the Beck critique, particularly since the critique assumes, as an unarguable fact, that human production of CO2 is the reason for its rise — even though it has been shown that rising CO2 levels follow centuries-earlier rises in temperature.

As the war wound down, CO2 levels of course diminished; daily bombing runs by multi-thousands of heavy aircraft stopped, fires were extinguished, factories were taken off 24/7/365 schedules, etc.

To unequivocally state that there is ‘simply no process’ that could possibly account for declining CO2 levels is to assume that all knowledge of CO2, including its persistence in the atmosphere, is currently known.

As Prof. Freeman Dyson has pointed out, we know little about the effect of topsoil in absorbing carbon dioxide. Microbes in the soil multiply rapidly, many times per day. Their growth could easily increase if sufficient food were available. CO2 is, of course, plant food.

Englebeen’s critique also ignores the much larger CO2 peak and subsequent decline in the very early 1800′s, when the industrial age was just beginning. That also appears to be a glaring omission.

Not all of Beck’s data was collected from cities. His site shows pictures of locations where CO2 data was collected. Many of those locations were very isolated places like the rural Scottish coast, and islands in the Baltic sea, with very little human habitation. Data was also collected from ships crossing the open ocean. To arbitrarily discard Beck’s entire data set simply because some locations probably had higher than normal levels of CO2 is almost as sloppy as reversing the critique’s CO2/year chart’s x and y axes.

Beck’s reconstruction has problems. But it also has value. It is one of the few historical CO2 data sources available. And as we know, the Vostok source has accuracy problems, too.

Finally, scientists of the day did not receive lucrative financial grants in return for peddling their case; they were people who were truly interested in the atmosphere, and they recorded data for their own knowledge. That in itself is quite different than the current state of affairs. The work of Einstein’s contemporaries had more integrity than what government entities produce today.