Study of hemispheric CO2 timing suggests that annual increases may be coming from a global or equatorial source

I always knew it was just a quirk of nature!

Simply amazing!!
These severe problems for the CO2 hypothesis just keep coming!
Tick tick tick

It’s not clear that a simple model would tell much, since CO2 fluxes from fossil fuels are small relative to uptake and release from plants and bacteria, while the net changes are primarily due to burning fossil fuels. Using isotope ratios is still the best way to trace ancient carbon from fuels versus carbon in circulation.
Sandy–I just did a Google quick Google search and found that World wheat production in on the order of hundreds of millions of tons. Gigatons are billions of tons, so CO2 release from fossil fuels is a 1000 times higher than wheat production. Check you numbers before posting.

hi just to say Christchurch n.z on the 22nd march 2009 had a new record cold max air day temp by my records. max temp of 11.3c.

Well it’s not related to human activity because Mongolia is surely not the Hub of Asia nor Adelaide the hub of Australia.
Doesn’t the equatorial air rise as it’s heated, move north and south to around latitude 30 where it finally falls and returns to the equator as the trade winds?
The equator and the Southern Hemisphere haven’t warmed one bit over the past 30 years – the only temp increase is in the northern hemisphere.

Bill D.,
The paper acknowledges the sources you refer to, but suggests that in the scheme of things, that are not that significant.
The paper suggests that emissions from fossil fuels and many other sources are fixed locally.
The increase in carbon dioxide is driven by something else …

If I summarize this:
– the guy says it takes one year for CO2 to reach the south pole
– then he says that there is “no delay” between Mauna Loa and the South pole
So what about this:
– if it takes one year for CO2 to reach the south pole, then the south pole will show increases and decreases of the CO2 exactly at the same period of the year as Mauna Loa.
Maybe it’s more subtle that that, but the paper is paying ($18), even the editorial of this “special issue” (by Bob Foster, who would have guessed?)…

“Sandy–I just did a Google quick Google search and found that World wheat production in on the order of hundreds of millions of tons. Gigatons are billions of tons, so CO2 release from fossil fuels is a 1000 times higher than wheat production. Check you numbers before posting.”
100s of millions of tonnes to single gigatonnes is of the order of ten (add in rice et al. !)
For the millionth time don’t exaggerate 😛

Bill D – a quick check with references shows:
A gigatonne according to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_ton is 1000 million tons.
Also from Wiki, manmade CO2 in 2004 was about 27 000 million (=27Giga) tons of which the carbon content was 7 400 million (=7.4giga) tonnes.
The worldwide production of wheat in 2008-2009 is about 656 million tons
http://deltafarmpress.com/wheat/wheat-outlook-0611
and the grown biomass at harvest is probably an order of magnitude larger – at least 7 000 million tonnes.
Hence the two values are comparable and surely the total biomasss grown and harvested by humans across all crops must be much greater than the mass of carbon in the manmade CO2 production.
Not all human grown biomass becomes CO2 of course, but I am sure that the AGW crowd have already worked out the numbers needed to show that biomass CO2 from any and all sources are negligible.

Co2 being absorbes locally is a possibility, we know that increased co2 causes an immediate growth response in plants, on a calm sunny day over the amazon the co2 content of the near atmosphere is almost zero, the plants remove it all and are in fact starved for co2, similar effects have been observed over growing crop fields, till the wind sturs things up.
For the argument that some global or equatorial source is the cause of observed co2 levels at the equator and at the pole being similar within a close timeframe then the mechanism must involve the oceansin both absorbing and releasing co2.

Did the IPCC write that very roughly 97 percent of annual CO2 release is natural and 3 percent is anthropogenic? Of that 100 percent, roughly 98.5 percent is naturally absorbed (by various mechanisms). Only 1.5 percent remains to cause a rise in Global CO2.
Some people seem to be saying that the 1.5 percent all comes from the human 3 percent — so, we’re to blame. That nature could single us out so precisely seems unlikely. Rather, it seems to me the sources of the “excess” 1.5 percent are distributed over all of nature. Thus, human causes are a tiny part of the equation. The above study seems to confirm that. If so, human solutions are likely to be ineffective.

Who is Tom Quirk? Jennifer has a small bio on him but it doesn’t appear that he is a “climate scientist”. I am afraid that will kill his cred with the AGW crew.
“Tom Quirk has a Master of Science from the University of Melbourne and Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford. His early career was spent in the UK and USA as an experimental research physicist, a University Lecturer and Fellow of three Oxford Colleges.”
Can anyone point me to more on his background? I am curious.

OT: “…It’s also becoming clear that Obama’s controversial global warming initiative has experienced a setback as neither House nor Senate Democrats are directly incorporating Obama’s controversial “cap-and-trade” initiative into their budget plans…Obama’s plan to combat global warming would impose higher energy costs on consumers and businesses through a so-called “cap-and-trade” system for auctioning permits to emit greenhouse gases. But so many Democrats have recoiled at the plan—which would sharply raise energy costs for consumers and businesses—that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and other environmentalists were forced to step back.”
Keep your fingers crossed.

Even if true,which is very interesting, the EPA will regulate us and the government will tax us for our very existence. The agenda is settled, the science is not.

If, as has sometimes been suggested, this saw toothed annual variation in atmospheric CO2 is a seasonal vegetation overprint
could this not also be due to the fact that the globe warms during northern hemisphere summer (more land mass in the northern half of the globe) resulting in variations in ocean absorption or outgassing?
due to the sheer size of the oceans, I would think it more likely an ocean-related signal.

Sandy (22:00:56) : “So in wheat alone Man strips more CO2 out of the air than he replaces with fossil fuels.”
But “Man” puts it back in the form of respiring and those pesky bean and cheese burritos with flour tortillas. Well, actually that latter part is methane, which “they” say is a more powerful GHG.

Part 2:
Section 3:
Again no problem with Fig. 10, but the same problem with Fig. 11, where the derivative of the decrease is compared to the ENSO events, leading to the conclusion that the ENSO events are the dominant cause of the d13C decrease (which is impossible, as the oceans are positive contributors to d13C), while the only conclusion that may be made is that ENSO events (or with other words, _sea surface_ temperature) are the dominant cause of the variability around the d13C decrease…
Section 4:
Much is made from the supposed absence of change in seasonal variation. But that seems to be in error, as the seasonal cycle described is around the trend. In reality each end of a full seasonal cycle (as good as near each monthly average compared to the previous year) ends higher than the start of the same seasonal cycle. Thus the seasonal cycle shows a (continuous) addition of CO2, about half what the emissions added over a year, or with other words the seasonal cycle shows the same increase as the yearly averages, see the following graph of Mauna Loa values:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/mlo_co2_seasons.jpg
Of course, again modulated by temperature variations… The rest of the emissions is absorbed by increased oceanic and biogenic uptake, but that has little to no effect on the amounts which are exchanged between the atmosphere and the oceans (90 GtC in / 92 GtC out) or the biosphere (60 GtC in / 62 GtC out), which are in seasonal opposing directions. The difference is visible mainly in the trend, not in the amplitude of the seasonal cycle.
Section 5:
Figure 17 shows an about 1.6 year half life time for a pulse of 14CO2 levels in the NH to mix with the SH. That is true for a one-time pulse. But a continuous addition, as is happening with CO2 in the NH, takes indefinitely to mix into the SH. That is the case as well as for absolute CO2 levels as for d13C levels.
In the case of absolute levels the (increasing) delay nowadays is about 12 months:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends.jpg
The correlation comparison doesn’t see a difference for multiples of 12 months, thus the conclusion that there is no lag is wrong… One need to compare trends, not correlations in this case, and the CO2 levels at the south pole reach the same values as the Mauna Loa values about one year later.
Something similar for the d13C trends, but here even with longer delays (due to relative much smaller changes), as well as in altitude as in latitude and between the hemispheres:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/d13c_trends.jpg
The delay between Barrow (ground level North Alaska) and La Jolla (ground level, mid-latitudes) is 1-5 years, with Mauna Loa (3,400 m) 5-8 years and with the south pole (3,000 m) 7-10 years.
If the increases in atmospheric CO2 are being driven by fossil fuel emissions then changes in the isotope ratio would be expected to occur first in the Northern Hemisphere and then move to the Southern Hemisphere. The result suggests that the changes in the isotope ratio start in the Southern Hemisphere. This suggests an equatorial or Southern source of CO2 emission.
This conclusion is wrong, as it is based on the variability around the trend, not the trends themselves. As one can see in the above trends, it is clear that the d13C decrease (from the emissions) is in the NH.
Section 6, conclusions:
Most of the conclusions are based on the variability around the trends and not on the trends themselves and a wrong approach of the real delay. That leads to conclusions which have no connection with the real causes of the CO2 increase and d13C decline…
Ferdinand Engelbeen and Jack Barrett

Lucy Skywalker,
That Al Gore article is obviously humor. Check the rest of the articles on the site. Also, why would Gore suddenly kill that goose (that lays his golden eggs)?

Connecting the dots: Earth’s Magnetic Field and Climate Variability
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/EarthMagneticField.htm
Tunguska – Connected to Global Warming?
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/Tunguska.htm

Lucy,
It’s NEXT Wednesday that’s April Fool’s day, girl. NEXT Wednesday.

“Bill D (22:34:01) :
Sandy–I just did a Google quick Google search and found that World wheat production in on the order of hundreds of millions of tons. Gigatons are billions of tons, so CO2 release from fossil fuels is a 1000 times higher than wheat production. Check you numbers before posting.”
Not that I know anything about wheat production, but the difference between “hundreds of millions” and “billions” is only a factor of 10, not 1000. I agree, check your numbers before posting. 😉
Mark

Laurence Kirk “That the longer term, steady increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide may simply be due to another, bigger vegetative signal: our year-on-year, relentless destruction of the global forest cover.”
My understanding is that forest areas are growing in North America, Europe, and the New York Times had an article on Jan.30 indicating that tropical forests around the world are growing at a very fast pace, because many farmers are moving to the cities.

Lucy Skywalker:
Report that Al Gore has recanted
Looks like a hoax to me, though it states truth and thus might be a good way to convey it in a cartoonish way, which is what Gore essentially is anyway. Why not use his prime asset?

OT: I wish someone would explain to me how spending a trillion on Healthcare ( as a down payment) will save money.
The tax will be collected, then Healthcare will be rationed in an amount less than the tax. But you knew that. It sounds like the “down payment” will go towards setting up the bureaucracy to try to get everyone’s medical records, “adminsister” the rationing, and decide what is “worth” actually treating and in whom, and when treatment will occur, delay generally being “good”.
Taxing the taxpayer then starving the taxpayer of Healthcare is the model. That’s the way Obama’s “economic growth” will occur – of course adding in the effects of the always popular green energy “jobs”, apparently at the expense of fossil fuel and nuclear energy development, and the hand-waving “education” panacea, which the Gov’t has already so skillfully manipulated to everyone’s great benefit over the past 40 years, and in fact standing as “proof” that the Healthcare model will “succeed” in like manner.

I’ve heard that Hansen was involved in the study and theory which says that the oceans can’t absorb that much CO2 because they get saturated. Do anyone know which theory and/or study this is?

CO2 is clever: It is going southward, far away from those who want to capture it!
🙂
Tell it Cap and Trade does not go anymore, it is dead.

Baron von…
Smokey (06:52:27) :
The drive-bys don’t often return for more punishment when you let ’em have it.
Love your stuff.
Ron de Haan (06:46:57) :
Tesla caused Tunguska….
http://www.world-mysteries.com/sci_tesla1.htm
…and, lastly in the spirit of Lucy’s post…..

(there is no less than a whole minute’s worth of warning about the impending profanity at the beginning of this hilarious out-take about deep-sea ichthyologists complaining of the cold but I fully understand if it doesn’t get past moderation)
Building up to April 1st…..

John A (03:20:04) :
Can someone explain why the countries of Northern Africa have a persistently higher CO2 concentration that the heavily industrialized nations of Northern Europe?
Anyone?
Good question. Next question…why is the CO2 over China and India nice and low?

Smokey correctly characterizes the AGW situation, I think.
Tracking carbon isotopes through the atmosphere is a worthwhile endeavor, no doubt, but it does seem evident that humanity’s contribution of CO2 is fact.
The question is whether the result is drowning polar bears, withering crops and no decent ski-hills.
Obviously, my incentive to disbelieve is the regular check from Exxon. What is not so obvious is the warm glow of self-importance felt by the burgeoning legions of graduate students spilling across the tundra and atolls. Combine that with a well-developed sense of guilt in a prosperous public and you don’t need a conspiracy.
The psychology of impending doom is interesting, but so too, is the behavior of water.

A little too much was deleted of the duplicate messages, here follows the first part, the second part is at (06:21:57)…
Part 1:
Sorry that I have to put some objections in…
A few of us had an extensive discussion about this paper by Tom Quirk. We had preferred to have a background discussion about his work with him before the publication, but it was already published.
As this is a long reaction, I suppose that I need to send it in parts…
Ferdinand Engelbeen
—————-
There are several assumptions in this work which render the conclusions void:
From the introduction:
If there are two sources of CO2, the ocean and a biogenic or fossil fuel source then the average implies that some 4% to 33% of atmospheric CO2 has been derived from biogenic or fossil fuel sources.
One needs to look at the history of the d13C values: measurements in ice cores, firn and recently direct atmospheric, show a near steady state of d13C levels in the atmosphere of about -6.3 +/- 0.1 per mil in the period before 1850, decreasing faster and faster after 1850 with a d13C level below -8 per mil nowadays. Thus there was, except for a temperature induced variability, no change in d13C level until about 1850, neither in total CO2 (again derived from ice cores, firn and direct measurements). This shows that there was some kind of dynamic equilibrium between atmospheric and biogenic/oceanic compartiments with continuous and seasonal exchanges only modulated by temperature.
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif
As long as the conservation of mass holds, and the measured increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is less than what is calculated from fossil fuel use, it is impossible that there are two sources of CO2, without at the other side larger sinks which remove the “second source” completely plus near halve the human emissions in total mass of CO2. The oxygen balance (see Battle et.al.: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/287/5462/2467.pdf ) shows that the biosphere is removing about half of the total amount removed, thus the other about halve the amount is removed by the oceans, all other possible sinks being much too slow. Thus both the biosphere and the oceans are net sinks for CO2 and can’t be the cause of the CO2 increase of the atmosphere. Thus the above implication can’t be right, as there is no average of additions, but an average of one addition with two seasonal exchanges (between the atmosphere and the biosphere and between the atmosphere and the oceans surface) and one continuous exchange (with the deep oceans)…
Section 2:
No problems with figures 1 and 2. The problems start with fig. 3 and 4: By looking at the year by year change in d13C and CO2 levels, in fact one removes the trend which is of interest, and mainly looks at the variability around the trend. The main problem is in figure 9: The correlation between ENSO and d13C variability is relative good, but that only means that ENSO (in part) is responsible for the variability around the trend, not the trend itself! The same jumping to (wrong) conclusions was made by others, comparing temperature trends with the variability of the year by year increase of CO2: these have a quite good correlation, as there is a short term response of CO2 increase speed to temperature changes, but a only a small influence of temperature on the CO2 trend itself. Thus temperature is not the cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, neither is temperature (or ENSO events) the cause of the d13C decrease.
Have a look at the difference in appearance between looking at the variability of d13C on itself and the variability of d13C around the trend:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/d13c_var_trend.gif
The standard error of the measuring method is about 0.03 per mil, the standard deviation of the measurements around the trend line is about 0.038 per mil. The graph makes it clear that one is studying the cause of the noise around the trend and not the cause of the trend itself…

Better check the comments from Ferdinand Engelbeen on Jenifer’s post.

It’s not very difficult to point out massive sources of CO2 producing events world wide.
Number one is population growth.
One of it’s side effects can be observed here:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/category.php?cat_id=8
This is the planet of earth, wind, water, fire and ice.
CO2 is now used to gain political control over humanity and the world’s resources putting our blue planet in green shackles.
http://www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=IS0gccWYLKQK
The AGW/Climate Change proponents who parrot the UN IPCC consensus tune are not only wrong, they are also stupid. They must know that the shackles will also be applied on them. They too will pay the price in terms of a further reduction of civil liberties, the loss of democracy and the enormous bills to be paid for using energy.
They help to establish a world wide elite that believes that a reduction of the world population is necessary to save Gaia.
It’s one minute to twelve to stop them so please, start usning your brain and stop being stupid.
http://green-agenda.com

Thank you for the post. The CO2 fluences are the soft underbelly of AGW.

Sandy (22:00:56) :
” to 7.0 gigatonnes in 2000″
I thought World production of wheat was around 100 gigatonnes, suggesting a biomass at harvest of around 700 gigatonnes.

* in 2003: 549,433,727 Mt where Mt is “metric tons” or 549.4 million metric tons.
* in 2003: 560.3 million metric tons
* There may be a difference of 10% to other tons.
I don’t know if the wheat plant weighs 6 times more than the seeds (thus biomass would be 7 times harvest), but even if everything above the root were harvested the farmers could encounter biomass difficulties. How much of the plant comes from the soil, rather than from CO2 and water? The soil has to be replenished, and usually the wheat roots and some of the stalk are returned to the soil.

Smokey (06:52:27) :
Nailed it!

Smokey (06:52:27) :
Wrote
“Eric,
AGW is not debunked; it is simply inconsequential. Rather, it is the AGW/CO2-runaway global warming-climate catastrophe hypothesis that has been repeatedly debunked. So please don’t try to frame the argument by trying to push skeptics into that corner. We’re not stupid.
It is widely acknowledged that increases in CO2 have a *slight* effect on temperature. But as we can clearly see, that effect is so tiny that it is overwhelmed by many other effects, some quite small themselves. In fact, the AGW effect is so small that it can not be reliably measured independent of other, larger effects. Basing policy on speculating about minor effects is wrong.
Furthermore, CO2 is beneficial. It is not harmful in any way in the concentrations being discussed. More CO2 is better. We are only taking about an increase from just under 4 parts in ten thousand to around 5 parts in ten thousand of this beneficial plant fertilizer.”
I made 2 points about the abstract from Energy and Environment which is the subject of this web page.
1) The isotope analysis and analysis of timing done in Quirk’s article is nearsighted and irrelevant. It is absurd to claim that it shows that human activity is not responsible for the observed increase of CO2 in the atmosphere Simple arithmetic definitively shows human activity is responsible for the increase in CO2 since the industrial age.
If there is something wrong with this idea please explain why.
In additiion Ferdinand Englebeen’s post explains why the analysis is incorrect.
2) It shows that no idea is too absurd for some AGW ~snip~ to use to deny the reality of AGW. Their belief is so strong that simple reason has been ignored.
If you want to dispute the points that I have made please go ahead.
“No, the problem comes from all the dishonest alarmist scare-mongering. Climate alarmists are desperately trying to frighten the population into believing that a small increase in a minor trace gas will force the planet up against a vaguely described “tipping point,” followed by runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. Alarmists must take that position, and nothing less. Why?
Because if they admitted the truth — that CO2 has been many, many times higher in the past without causing runaway global warming — then they lose all the power they are trying to accumulate by their fraudulent argument.
If the truth about AGW were accepted — that it is minor, inconsequential, and temporary — it would merit no more than a few obscure articles, and the authors would point out that the beneficial effects far outweigh any harmful effects, if there even are any. No one would care about AGW if the truth about it were being told.
So which is it, Eric? Is it your belief that an increase in CO2 will cause runaway global warming? And if so, what evidence [outside of always-wrong computer models] do you have to support your case? What empirical, real world evidence exists for your mythical “tipping point”?
You’ve taken your AGW position. Now defend it.”
I haven’t taken any AGW position in my above post. Why don’t you go back and read it.? I only pointed out that this argument made by some ~snip~ is so contrary to logic that it casts doubt on their ability to reason on the basis of simple arithmetic.
Arguing the general question of AGW is not the subject of this web page.

Hi,
As to higher CO2-levels over north africa, arabia and western united states.
Theese are dry places and CO2 is soluble in rain water, in high school we were sent out with ph-paper when it started to rain and after a few ours of raining.
The observed lowering of ph in the early rain were probaly due to SO2 and NO2 in the air,
However I think the principle to explain part of the CO2-map of the earth is there.
Can this explain why the CO2 level is lower over antarctica and greenland? Or what is the physical reason? More sinks than sources?
/Fredrik

Well I see in that color map, a global variation of more than 15 ppm of mid tropospheric CO2 abundance. (why do people keep on saying “by volume”). If they can identify the molecules as being of different species; why not just report abundance by molecular species. In the atmosphere there is only one volume; the total sample volume, so to measure any individual species by volume, you have to extractr every last specimen of a species from the sample, and none of any other species, and then reduce each to STP before you can measure its volume.
Simply counting molecules allows you to use an infinitesimally smaller sample.
But to get back to my point. The total range of CO2 abundance in this plot is about 15 years worth of annual baseline increases.
That does not make me comfortable that the 15 ppm global spread is simply a lack of adequate mixing time from some transient event. That 15 ppm spread would seem to be a stable global pattern that is being maintained by global variables.
Every time I have asked real world official actual accredited “climatologists” or “climate scientists”; you know those with the sheepskin that says they alone know what they are talking about, when it comes to climate; what is the variation of CO2 abundance, both over the globe, and with altitude in the atmosphere; the response has been:- “The atmosphere is well mixed, and CO2 has the same abundance everywhere.”
Well my reasons for asking were of course to get clues as to where it is coming from and going to, and from time to time.
Well obviously the atmosphere is NOT well mixed, and CO2 is certainly not the same everywhere in the atmosphere. And I dare say, that evidence that this is so, is of rather recent vintage.
Like much of climate science, and its areas of interest; the Science is far from settled, and new revelations are taking place at an increasing clip.
Maybe one day, climatology will be able to leave its brothers; astrology and economics, and join the mainstream of real science.

Smokey,
You ask Eric to defend the AGW theory.
He doesn’t need to. Reds and greens like it because of the policies it suggests, not the science.
AGW is the default so it for us to falsify it and to propose better theories.

To my mind it doesn’t matter if it is human produced or not. Nobody has shown that the CO2 is a problem of any kind.
THAT is real problem with all of this. We can argue all day about how many angels can rest on a pin, but in the end does it really matter?
There is no proof to date that there is any harm in the CO2 emissions. Oh, and how do you tell the difference between CO2 generated by coal seam fires and CO2 generated by coal power plants?

“Simple arithmetic definitively shows human activity is responsible for the increase in CO2 since the industrial age.”
This is an assertion about simple arithmetic, yet the simple arithmetic suggested is not actually included in the post.
In the interest of Science, please show us what simple arithmetic you are talking about. Should be easily postable by you, since it’s so simple.
Andrew

We must be thankful to Gwrs, and their prophet himself, that such a brainstorming place as WUWT exists.

But this isn’t the kind of story that will make its way into the MSM, this is
All-women team set for South Pole
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7962311.stm
“The group plans to travel 800km (500 miles) over six weeks, braving sub -30C (-22F) temperatures to reach the heart of Antarctica, in an attempt to raise global awareness on global warming.”
The only way it will change is when the lights go out, the old and vulnerable start to die and the polititions start fearing for their jobs

@ Smokey
Can anybody justify the IPCC using ice core data to estimate CO2 levels during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when many direct measurements were recorded? Any justification other than that was the only way to get data to support the predetermined conclusions?
A related question: Has anybody ever studied whether Vostok is a location that is representative of global CO2 levels? How can it be claimed that ice core samples from one location accurately represent global CO2 levels?

Pamela Gray (10:22:12) :
What if the CO2 we now have in the atmosphere is another necessary ingredient for the oscillating plankton bloom that produces the oscillating fish population boom? Were we to somehow (not likely but I am just musing here) reduce this CO2 and then the plankton bloom were to happen, it would be short lived due to insufficient CO2.
Pamela, the ocean waters are extremely CO2 rich, compared to the atmosphere. CO2 is not the limiting factor there, even if it is largely bound CO2 (as -bi-carbonates). Iron and other nutritients in general are the limiting factors…
Any idea how much algal blooms add to the ocean sink of CO2? The bloom itself does reduce (temporarely) the partial pressure of CO2 in the upper ocean waters, but indeed that ends mostly up in the food chain. Only what drops out towards deeper oceans is what makes the ultimate difference.
For the North Atlantic, the “net community production” (as CO2 uptake) was measured over a longer period (18 years), thus including algal growth effects on CO2 uptake. See:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/5602/2374
Fig. 4 in the full article shows the relationship with climatological circumstances, where a negative NAO gives more mixing with deeper layers (more nutritients) and higher productivity, thus a higher sink.
This results in a variability of about +/- 50% around the average sink capacity of the North Atlantic.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/
The White House is inviting you to post your questions on the economy and vote on submissions from others. The President will answer some of the most popular in an online town hall on Thursday.
Note to US people: Not much time left to send in questions

@Laurence Kirk (23:12:15) :

“As anybody who has worked in the field in SE Asia, Indonesia, PNG or South America can attest, a great deal of this destruction is taking place in the equatorial regions and in the major southern hemisphere forests. And not only would this rob the land of an immense CO2 sink, mostly replacing it with mud and the occasional oil palm, but a lot of what is cut down is then immediately burnt.”

I have worked extensively in the field in sub-tropical Brazil, the mouth of the Amazon near Belem, also Indonesia, and for many years in the hot southern U.S. states. The concept of cutting tropical forests down and having them “replaced with mud and the occasional oil palm” is a bunch of bull-****. It is dang near impossible to keep a bare patch of ground bare wherever there is warmth, sun, and rain. Ask any farmer. Some of the plant growth and re-growth is very fast. Kudzu plants in the southern U.S. grow at roughly one foot per DAY.
One Brazilian company, a former client, harvests and plants a special Eucalyptus tree that grows one foot per month, twelve feet per year. (see http://www.Aracruz.com) When I was there in the early 1980’s they harvested 10,000 acres each year and replanted seedlings immediately. There was substantial unwanted growth of foreign plants that required removal, what we refer to as weeds.
@nvw (06:46:01) :

“While I understand your concern over rainforest destruction, I think the debate is far from settled over whether there really are few and fewer trees. This article below caused sparked a debate at the NYT and there is quite a literature on regrowth rates in the Amazon. .”

See above. Regrowth rates are very high.
Even in drought-stricken Southern California, where I live and work, burned areas from the frequent wildfires are green and growing within a year. I see this all the time, every year. This regrowth occurs with no assistance from humans, just natural processes of seeds blown by wind or carried by animals. This occurs even on very poor soils, such as steep hillsides with rock outcroppings.
The existence proofs of short-lived bare dirt areas from deforestation or clear-cutting are yet another reason I find so many of the AGW positions are not credible. Who am I supposed to believe, the AGW scientists, or my lying eyes?
Please, somebody tell me again that when the Amazon forests are cut down, that CO2 in the atmosphere goes up.
City-boys, these AGW scientists. Somebody ought to take them on a field trip to a farm. Ask them to find and photograph the bare dirt areas.
@ Pamela Gray,
Pamela, I enjoy your comments immensely. However, I have a question regarding the trade winds blowing the hot surface ocean water away, then allowing cold underlaying water to rise. This seems rather implausible to me, as the warm surface water extends many feet deep, actually hundreds of feet from the temperature-depth maps I have seen. Is this truly the mechanism, and could you explain that more fully?

Oliver Ramsay (08:14:54) :
Oliver! Where do I sign up for a regular check from Exxon, so I can have a reason to be a denier? Well, other than the fact that I don’t suffer from projection bias, and the fact that I can look at evidence with a halfway open mind and say: Hey, I don’t know for sure about AGW, and based on the evidence, neither do the alarmists.
So to all alarmists out there:
Until you have given all of your money to support AGW research and mitigation, and have given up all of your freedoms to live a carbon free lifestyle, git yer hand outta my pocket, and quit telling me how to live.

JeffK (08:18:04) :
“…..The *whole* mass of the plant needs to be accounted for (root, stalk, leaves, etc.) & not just the fruit which is harvested (wheat & corn kernals, etc.). This is especially true for corn. The weight & mass of the whole plant is much larger than what is harvested off of the cob.”
I remember seeing a display at the University of Illinois when I was a kid where some incredibly patient person had painstakingly excavated and cleaned off the entire root system of a cornstalk. It was old style, non-hybrid corn which used to grow 10-12 feet high. The root system extended down about 15 feet below ground. Indeed, more of the plant mass was below than above ground.

CO2 goes up, releases its heat and comes down back. It would be interesting to see how this graph changes with time at different altitudes. (Provided it is not “classified”)

Andrew (10:36:17) :
“Simple arithmetic definitively shows human activity is responsible for the increase in CO2 since the industrial age.”
This is an assertion about simple arithmetic, yet the simple arithmetic suggested is not actually included in the post.
In the interest of Science, please show us what simple arithmetic you are talking about. Should be easily postable by you, since it’s so simple.
Andrew
Andrew, the simple arithmetic is as follows:
natural carbon sources + emissions = natural carbon sinks + increase in the air.
Of this equation, only the emissions are known with reasonable accuracy and the increase in the atmosphere is known with good accuracy. Thus in average per year:
natural carbon sources + 8 GtC = natural carbon sinks + 4 GtC
or:
natural carbon sources – natural carbon sinks = -4 GtC
Or in other words, nature is a net sink for carbon and didn’t add one gram in total mass to the increase of carbon in the atmosphere over the past 50 years. But nature did exchange a lot of individual molecules between the oceans/biosphere and the atmosphere…

maksimovich
“The graph indicates that in the time period between 1998 and 2003 the average chlorophyll concentration in the Global Ocean reached its minimum in 1998.”
Interesting indeed. The following paper confirms the well known fact, for us witnesses of el nino that sea “gets ill” during these events and then it happens what fishermen call the “red tide” (died plankton and other sea organisms) tinting the sea of red color.
The following paper explains this phenomena as a result of acidification by H2SO4:
http://www.scielo.org.pe/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1561-08882005000200002&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es
(you can get a good translation of it with google translator)

Ferdinand,
Thanks for saving me the trouble.
I find it a strange phenomenon that seemingly intelligent people can’t grasp a simple concept like that. It cannot be lack of intelligence, but some emotion must be blocking the use of their intelligence. An unbiased 8 year old child could easily grasp the arithmentic.

Roger, it is called upwelling. The thermocline (the variably mixed water that sits on top of deeper, denser, colder water) is disturbed by wave action from trade winds and axial spin, thus allowing the more nutrient rich and colder underlayer water access to the top. Go here for a really good explanation.
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02quest/background/upwelling/upwelling.html
And while I don’t like to send people to wiki, it sometimes has a pretty good explanation, which is the case for the thermocline. But take anything at wiki with a grain of salt, since it gets edited frequently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocline

John Galt (12:55:30):
@Eric
…it’s plain ignorant for anybody to assume the world is in a natural steady state.
Check! Earth has never been in a natural steady state (as the whole Universe is not static). Take a look at this graph:
http://www.biocab.org/Geological_TS_SL_and_CO2.jpg

Tamino explains it in a way which is accessible to most. http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/03/09/its-a-gas/ . Of course, the IPCC has a massive literature on this, which I know has not been read by most here.
A few good authors to follow up include Enting, Law, Etheridge, Rayner – scientists who publish through peer review rather than E&E. Enting has even provided a nice list of his papers at http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/Staff/publications.php?PC_id=167 which include some proper CO2 inversions.

One thing I notice looking at that graph is that flooded areas and CO2 have a better correlation than delta temp. Another is that the time series is severely skewed. I wish that the periods were a little more even, but point taken, nonetheless. Also, the flooded areas is at an all time low.

“natural carbon sources + emissions = natural carbon sinks + increase in the air.
Of this equation, only the emissions are known with reasonable accuracy and the increase in the atmosphere is known with good accuracy.”
Sorry, but don’t you need one side of this equation to be solved before you can solve the other?
In other words, you have ? + emissions = ? + increase
Besides you qualify the knowns with “reasonable” and “good”
That makes the whole thing subjective, don’t you think?
Andrew

thanks to RC for this one can,t wait to sign up
http://www.realclimate.org/docs/cato_adpdf
This would be a very worthwhile effort I wonder if this is worth a story here?

I had always hoped that I would have something of substance to add to one of these threads. In regards to the biomass of crops, or any other plants for that matter, the carbon comes almost exclusively from the atmosphere. In the process of photosynthesis, carbon in the air is absorbed (in the form of CO2), and converted into sugars. See here: http://books.google.com/books?id=I49cDRX5xLQC&pg=PA184&lpg=PA184&dq=plant+carbon+weight+scientist&source=bl&ots=au1DQXmaip&sig=zPHzvznYPUkxmMuWH_3d5Bsekss&hl=en&ei=za7KScvLHYnYsAO_18G4Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA184,M1
Dan Murphy

In 1800, there were 2.9 billion hectares of tropical forest worldwide. There are 1.5 billion hectares of tropical forest remaining.
Between 1960-1990, 445 million hectares of tropical forest were cleared.
Asia lost almost a third of its tropical forest cover between 1960-1980 — the world’s highest rate of forest clearance.
Almost 90% of West Africa’s rainforest has been destroyed.
We lose 50 species every day — 2 species per hour — due to tropical deforestation.
more than 200,000 acres of rainforest are burned every day.
Is there a link.
http://www.rainforestlive.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=214

WAY OT but this video has been getting a LOT of comments on YouTube.

A speech in the EU parliament by a conservative MEP Daniel Hannan to Gordon Brown.
DaveE.

Dear Pamela Gray
Reading your post is analagous with missing a train and trying to chase it only to return to the station and miss the next train and to try to chase that one whilst you know the next one is coming and so on.
Wrong analogy reading your posts is more like being caught in a tornado wearing roller skates.
Now just like a child only yesterday I spin the globe on Google earth, and presented just the ocean and of course the memory of the earth being covered by two thirds by water came back.
You may be on to something I shall go to sleep now and cuddle up with Schrodingers Cat.

@ferdinand meeus Engelbeen:
The arithmetic that you have presented is seriously flawed. First you stated that only TWO of your terms are well defined and “known with reasonable accuracy”: Emissions (E) and the increase left in the air (I). That leaves natural carbon sources (A) and natural carbon sinks (B) undefined and as implied in you post, not known with any reasonable accuracy. Therefore our equation is expressed as follows:
A+E=B+I, where E=8 Gt/yr. and I=4 Gt/yr.
or
A+8=B+4
or
A – B = -4
Well, by the ‘simple arithmetic’ you’ve set up, mathematically speaking the difference between Natural Carbon Sources and Natural Carbon Sinks must always equal -4 Gt/yr.!
This makes for a supreme demonstration of the problem with the AGW crowd. We DON’T know enough about Natural Carbon Sources and we DON’T know enough about Natural Carbon Sinks, but – by god! – we KNOW the increase in the atmosphere has to be man made!
That is not sound science. It is conjecture. Combined with the demand to spend trillions in taxes and lifestyle changes, it has a strong degree of hubris to boot.
PS Any unbiased 8 year-olds want to double check my arithmetic?

Ferdinand
“natural carbon sources + emissions = natural carbon sinks + increase in the air.
Of this equation, only the emissions are known with reasonable accuracy and the increase in the atmosphere is known with good accuracy.”
So, by your own admission, the natural sources and sinks are not known, but you are assuming they remain constant!
Simple arithmetic indeed…
BTW, I heard Roger Harrabin reporting recently, from a suitably exotic location, that the extra CO2 was acidifying the oceans and in turn dissolving the coral. It’s some while since I did any chemistry, but I think it would require rather a lot of carbonic acid to do that, and (of course) he didn’t actually quote any figures to back up his assertion. The BBC were happy to fly him to somewhere nice and tropical, but the budget didn’t apparently run to a piece of Litmus paper.

ATTN: Ferdinand Englebeen
RE: Reporting the Concentions of Atmospheric Gases.
The concentration of gases in the atmosphere is reported for Standard Dry Air (SDA), which is air that contains only nitrogen, oxygen, the inert gases and carbon dioxide (i.e., the fixed gases) and is at STP (i.e., 273.2 K and 1 atm pressure). One cubic meter of SDA has 385 ml of carbon dioxide, i.e., 385 ppmv or 17.2 millimoles.
Standard Dry Air exist nowhere on earth because real air or local air is never at STP and _always_ contains water vapor and varying amounts of clouds, the climatologists’ worst nightmares.
The composition of real air is always site specific. In fact these is no unifrom temporal and spatial distribution of the fixed gases in absolute amounts per unit volume in the real atmosphere. The relative ratios of the fixed gases is quite uniform and is independent of site, elevation, local geography, etc. except for minor local variations, e.g., in big cities. This is origin of the term” well-mixed atmospheric gases”
The ideal gas law is usually shown as PV = nRT which upon rearrangement is:
n/V = P/TR. This means inter alia the absolute amount of the gases per unit volume will be a function of the weather.
Absolute or specific humidity of water vapor can vary from about 0-5% by volume. Actually specific humidity is never, ever 0 %. Not even in the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on the planet.
Clouds are floating pools of liquid water in the atmosphere, and as they move about can release water vapor in an instant or take execess water vapor out the air, which can come down as rain, hail, or snow.
The water droplets in clouds can readily absorb and release carbon dioxide, and these processes are a function of local temperature and pressure. Rain is sat with carbon dioxide and will bring it down to the surface of the earth.
All of the above boil down to this: It is not possible to model climate in an atmosphere of real air with any useful skill and accuracy without making a great many simplifing assumptions.

Andrew (14:03:50) :
In other words, you have ? + emissions = ? + increase
Besides you qualify the knowns with “reasonable” and “good”
That makes the whole thing subjective, don’t you think?
Andrew
Andrew,
The emissions are as accurate as the fossil fuel sales inventories are known (that is a matter of taxes…). So these may be somewhat underestimated (due to under-the-counter sales…). But I have read somewhere an estimate of 4 +0.5/-0.25 ppmv for current average yearly emissions. The CO2 levels in the atmosphere are known to an accuracy of +/- 0.1 ppmv (for 95% of the atmosphere, the other 5% is undefined and practically udefinable).
That are yearly values. The 50+ year trend is +60 ppmv, similar at all measuring places with the same +/- 0.1 ppmv absolute error, while the accumulated error in emissions may be fully or only partly systematic. Anyway, in all cases the emissions are near twice the increase in the atmosphere.
And we can rewrite the formula as follows:
natural sources + emissions = natural sinks + increase in the air
(that is a matter of conservation of mass)
or
X + emissions = Y + increase
or written in a different way:
X – Y = increase – emissions
where
X – Y = 4 GtC – 8 GtC
or
X-Y = -4 GtC
No matter the real amount of carbon released by natural sources, the natural sinks MUST be 4 GtC larger than the sources, as that is what disappears from the emissions out of the atmosphere. And the real height of X (and thus of Y) doesn’t matter at all. It may be 10, 100 or 1,000 GtC which circulates through the atmosphere within a year, that doesn’t add anything to the total mass of CO2 in the atmosphere:
For X = 10 GtC, Y = 14 GtC
For X = 100 GtC, Y = 104 GtC
For X = 1,000 GtC, Y = 1,004 GtC
Thus the real value of the natural sources and sinks doesn’t matter at all for the mass balance, because we know the real difference between these two…
See for the past 50 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg

Patrick Kirk (15:28:25) :
Well, by the ’simple arithmetic’ you’ve set up, mathematically speaking the difference between Natural Carbon Sources and Natural Carbon Sinks must always equal -4 Gt/yr.!
Well, yes. It MUST be -4 GtC/yr, as that is what is missing from the emissions and not found in the atmosphere. Thus 4 GtC is gone somewhere in the oceans and/or vegetation (there is no destruction and no escape of CO2 to space…).
In reality, these are averages and there is a year by year variability in sink capacity of +/- 2 GtC, mainly as result of temperature changes (see the link in the previous message). But that doesn’t change the fact that over the past 50 years there was no net addition of nature to the atmospheric CO2 mass and all of the CO2 increase (except some 6 ppmv from ocean warming LIA-current) was caused by the emissions…

Ohioholic (13:50:52):
One thing I notice looking at that graph is that flooded areas and CO2 have a better correlation than delta temp.
Yes, the correlation is better and it is due to an increase in the release of CO2 from oceans as the oceans get warmer and reversed.
Another is that the time series is severely skewed. I wish that the periods were a little more even, but point taken, nonetheless.
I’d like it also; however, I marked the periods on the graph considering the beginning and the end of each era. Anyway, I take your suggestion into consideration, so I’ll try to scheme more even periods.
Also, the flooded areas is at an all time low.
Indeed, the trend of the Earth’s temperature is towards cooling. Each time, Earth gets colder and colder. By no means had we thought about a warming similar to the Paleocene warmhouse, not even to the warming of the early Pleistocene. With permission of Leif Svalgaard: The cooling trend of Earth is obvious.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that over the past 50 years there was no net addition of nature to the atmospheric CO2 mass and all of the CO2 increase (except some 6 ppmv from ocean warming LIA-current) was caused by the emissions…”
This statement contradicts itself.
“In reality, these are averages and there is a year by year variability in sink capacity of +/- 2 GtC, mainly as result of temperature changes (see the link in the previous message).”
If there is a range of 50% in the variability, how do you have confidence in the fixed figure?

James P (15:36:46) :
So, by your own admission, the natural sources and sinks are not known, but you are assuming they remain constant!
Simple arithmetic indeed…
I hope I made it clear that I don’t assume that the natural sources and sinks are constant, but that the absolute flows are not important at all, because we know the difference between the sources and sinks, as that can be calculated from two known variables: emissions and increase in the atmosphere. That shows that in the past 50 years, nature had no contribution to CO2 levels (except for a small increase due to a temperature increase)…

DJ
from the abstract at the link you provided at (15:43:51) :
“All of these changes characterize a carbon cycle that is generating stronger-than-expected and sooner-than-expected climate forcing.”
Which climate forcings would those be? The ones increasing the Antarctic ice? The ones making the winters colder and setting record low temperatures? The ones that are decreasing the (controversial) global temperatures since 1998? The ones causing the sea levels stabilize or decrease? The ones making the sea surface temperatures decrease?
Have you got anything that shows a forcing? From factual, measured information, not some computer-generated predictions?
Seriously. This non-peer-reviewer, just-a-blog-commenter would like to know. I am fighting my very hardest to repeal California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (aka AB 32) and if I am fighting the wrong battle, then it is high time I found that out…

Harold Pierce Jr (15:38:51) :
Thanks for the explanation,
In ground based stations where CO2 is measured, water vapor is trapped in a cold trap at -70°C, reducing water vapor over ice to very low values. In other circumstances, water vapor is measured at another IR frequency band than CO2 and CO2 values are corrected for the water vapor present.
In all cases, CO2 levels are reported for “dry air”, to make CO2 level comparison possible between different places…

Off topic, I know I’m guilty and apologize in advance but has anyone even added up the extra ppb molecules of co2 that has been building up in the atmosphere the last 50 or 60 years? The math is beyond me as well as volume of atmosphere. Does the extra amount come close to or exceed the amount generate by fossil fuel emissions? I will probably ask this question again since its so late in the thread. I doubt anyone is still reading this one. )

Ohioholic (16:53:27) :
“But that doesn’t change the fact that over the past 50 years there was no net addition of nature to the atmospheric CO2 mass and all of the CO2 increase (except some 6 ppmv from ocean warming LIA-current) was caused by the emissions…”
This statement contradicts itself.
“In reality, these are averages and there is a year by year variability in sink capacity of +/- 2 GtC, mainly as result of temperature changes (see the link in the previous message).”
If there is a range of 50% in the variability, how do you have confidence in the fixed figure?
The 6 ppmv from increased temperature is over the past few hundred years, but the real increase is about 100 ppmv in the past 160 years. Thus temperature is not the cause of the increase…
The -4 GtC in the example is not a fixed figure, it is the average of the past few years.
The +/- 2 GtC is around the trend, which is nowadays increasing with about 4 GtC/year. Thus the measured increase in the atmosphere is 2-6 GtC/yr, while the emissions are 8 GtC/yr. Thus the natural sink capacity varies between 6-2 GtC/yr, the difference between the relative stable increasing emissions and the variability of the increase. Or simply look at the emissions, increase in the atmosphere and calculated sink capacity in the graph of the past 50 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg
(2.1 GtC = 1 ppmv in the graph)

Study of hemispheric CO2 timing suggests that annual increases may be coming from a global or equatorial source
I too, seem to be generating carbon around my equator!

Dear Ferdinand,
I cannot resist but question your conclusions . . please have a look at some points I made:
– the dC13 ratio before 1850 are meaningless (don’t tell you anything about the CO2-concentration or its change)
– conservation of mass is not the issue here since all anthropogenic CO2 would disapear in the noice of the marine CO2-content
– “the biosphere is removing about half of the total amount removed” ?? There is no “total amount removed”, CO2 is on the raise
– “ the biosphere and the oceans are net sinks for CO2 and can’t be the cause of the CO2 increase of the atmosphere” Why not? Has to be shown! How about: Oceans dump additional CO2 regardless of the source on short time-scales until they are in near-equilibrium with the atmosphere, which they could be right now – the current level and the raise to it could be produced by the oceans and Toms paper supports that. (The fact, that the oceans turn into a net sink for CO2 if you add a source does not prove, that the current level is due that additional source – in a bucket the water level is determined by the rim, not an additional influx)
– “leading to the conclusion that the ENSO events are the dominant cause of the d13C decrease (which is impossible, as the oceans are positive contributors to d13C)” aeh well this one I perhaps didn’t understand correctly . . I thought that proves that during ENSO events less CO2 is absorbed by the oceans and thus the d13 in the atmosphere decreases
– “But a continuous addition, as is happening with CO2 in the NH, takes indefinitely to mix into the SH. That is the case as well as for absolute CO2 levels as for d13C levels.” Well, this is the strongest prove of Toms point! The depletion of C13 should be a monotonic raising function according to your theorie, but it has hickups, which means, there are other net sources of CO2 at least sometimes
– In http://www.ferdinand engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/ d13c_trends.jpg and the explanation for it, you seem to explain not a trend or variation, but compare the absolute C-ratios. Why isn’t a correlation (= time stamping the signature at different places) of the trend’s variation a valid way to find the lag? Seems good to me, there is an event, which affects the signal and I look when it shows up at different places -> lag time is found
I hope the points are clear, please ask me to elaborate if neccessary
__
Best regards,
LoN

“ Ohioholic (18:29:29) :
The estimates of CO2 emissions are based on the sales of the different fossil fuels”

I have my doubts about that method of accounting unless they are also accounting for “non-consumptive” uses of fossil fuels.
For example crude oil turned into plastic which is now sequestered in land fills.
natural gas used to produce carbon black which is now sequestered in old tires, paints and pigments.
Not all fossil fuels are “burned” much of that fuel mass is simply changed to a different form without burning it.
A few years ago they were discussing what happens to all the rubber worn off of tires? If it there should be piles of the stuff built up beside the roads. As I recall they still are not completely confident about how it degrades and where all that carbon goes.
Larry

hotrod,
“Not all fossil fuels are “burned” much of that fuel mass is simply changed to a different form without burning it.”
The amount of non-burned petroleum / natural gas is very small compared to the total of fossil fuels. When coal, oil, and natural gas are all accounted for, the amount of lube oils, petrochemical feedstocks (plastics and tires precursors), and asphalt are fairly small. In the U.S., these amount to roughly 5 percent of total petroleum consumed. The percent world-wide is even smaller, as the U.S. is different in the demands for petroleum products. So, figure around 1 percent max for world-wide un-burned fossil fuels.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_pct_dc_nus_pct_m.htm
has some data on the U.S. refinery yields.

Ferdinand Engelbeen

natural carbon sources + emissions = natural carbon sinks + increase in the air.
Of this equation, only the emissions are known with reasonable accuracy and the increase in the atmosphere is known with good accuracy. Thus in average per year:
natural carbon sources + 8 GtC = natural carbon sinks + 4 GtC
or:
natural carbon sources – natural carbon sinks = -4 GtC
Or in other words, nature is a net sink for carbon and didn’t add one gram in total mass to the increase of carbon in the atmosphere over the past 50 years.

2 points:
1. You attribute all of 4GtC to humans. Then you use this equation to prove that humans are responsible for extra 4Gt of carbon. Isn’t it a bit, well, circular?
2. If we use your line of reasoning, then without human emissions amount of CO2 would be constantly going down, causing global cooling (less CO2-lower temperature) until we either freeze to death of die of starvation (or both)?

DJ Point taken (as a skeptic) . It is quite possible co2 rising due to human activity ( still has to be proved) there is nothing about it showing that it affects climate

Turns out there are two assumptions. The isolation of fossil fuels, and at what point of the sales chain is the data taken from? That is important.
The = sign is not correct either, as you attribute a value to something outside the equation, presumably to simplify the equation, but it does not necessarily equal if there is a value outside the equation that bears upon it.

Antarctic Bottom water, flowing over a riffle box several thousand k’s long, and at times with the riffles 2000 metres high (East Pacific Rise) may be dropping C14 (and C13?) preferentially in its travels. They are heavier than C12, after all. That will sink all isotope assumptions to date, when it surfaces as La Nina up-welling, as the released CO2 will look like it is as old as that from fossil fuel. Maybe.
Plant or phyto-plankton do one hell of a lot of photosynthesis. The geophysics prof at the University of Cape Town, Louis Ahrens, told some of us rookie students, in a short meeting in a corridor in 1970, “never mind the Amazon rainforest, for the real photosynthesis, watch the marine plankton.” He was the lad who did the moon rocks for NASA, and was president of the International Union of Geochemists and Cosmochemists ( I think it was) . So who were we to argue?
See the website for an alternative model to AGW, geomag-based, and a one-page sceptics starter kit, of just two matched maps, if bored.
The Church of the Holy Molecule is in trouble, methinks.
Hooroo,
Peter Ravenscroft
Another greenie geologist and AGW sceptic
Closeburn, Queensland

Have to admit, my first thought re. the “Gore Recants?” piece was to check the date on my computer, see if it had jumped to April First. I put the note in as a good skeptic, resolutely open either way but first impulse being to doubt, with the evidence I had at the time at my disposal.
Belatedly – thank you for this thread – it’s exactly the kind of evidence I need to reply to the “manmade carbon isotopes” AGW stuff, it’s going to be added to my Primer (click my name).

Henry’s Law.

Roger Sowell (19:49:36, 3/25), thanks for your skepticism re upwelling/thermocline. I share the experience without any of the expertise. “Winds, several hundred feet above the thermocline, and wave action also far removed (vertically), influence the cold water to upwell?” I look forward to your report and your grade.
Also appreciation to Peter Ravenscroft for linking CO2 levels to the earth’s magnetic field (which is also related to the Sun’s activity in some way?), again, a connection I find in reading various scientific papers. And to Allen MacRae for his summary and paper — ST, LT, dCO2/dt and CO2 all have a common primary driver, and that is not humankind.” . And to Anthony, Jennifer Marohasy, and Tom Quirk. This essay and the comments have been a great read and have stimulated so many more questions — plus more knives in the heart of that vampiric AGW/Evil CO2.
I see that because of this thread, Lucy Skywalker is adding more to her primer, an excellent introduction for those just entering the scientist Van Helsing’s retinue. It has changed the minds of some engineer and scientist friends whose great efforts in their own fields do not leave them time to read outside the AGW takeover of the here-to-fore important scientific publications. (But they are hungry for the science, not for the blood of civilization.)

“imagine being able to forecast months ahead!”
These guys already do:
http://weatheraction.com/
They have a far better record than the supercomputer-equipped UK Met Office, who predicted a ‘mild winter’ in line with their general pitch about warming.
The don’t think much of AGW, either!
http://weatheraction.com/id4.html

Imagine another future for Mauna Loa. It measures whether or not there is sufficient build-up of CO2 and dust to predict that with upwelling, the plankton bloom should be such and such, resulting in a marine food production increase of such and such. I say this because the location of that station is right where the natural oscillating cyclic trade wind supplies all the necessary ingredients for plankton growth: Wind, CO2 and dust. The CO2 is there. The wind has kicked up and caused an upwelling of cold, nutrient rich water. Now all we need are dryer, colder windier conditions over the African/Asian/South American continents to start producing dust that will seed both a cooler Atlantic and Pacific.

As somebody pointed out; the CO2 global map above is a snapshot at a particular time.
In the recent archives we saw a movie version of a slice of this data from pole to pole; and somewhere hidden in the NOAA archives, is a three-D pole to pole CO2 graph for about ten years or so.
The result of all of these sources of data seems to be that the CO2 over most of Antarctica (mid tropo) is about 365 ppm, (Or was in 2003),; but at ML in 2003 the level is about 375, and varies about 6ppm in the annual cycle, while at the north pole the annual cycle is 18 ppm, as was dramatically apparent in the movie version.
None of this data suggests to me that there is much north-south mixing going on at all. If the North pole is waggling around +/-9 ppm about a mean value,and there was good mixing, I would not expect to see the south pole basically static at around 365 ppm, with no more than about 1 ppm p-p cycling, which is out of phase with the northern hemisphere cycle.
The data gives all the appearance of the CO2 being emitted and absorbed locally.
As to ice not absorbing CO2; I presume that such a statement is based on the same presumption that the CO2 entrapped in atmospheric bubbles in ice cores does not propagate over time since ice is quite impervious to CO2 (it is presumed).
Now I would not choose ice as a repository for any gas sample that I wanted to preserve for geological time scales; and the implication is that not only is ice impervious to CO2, but also to any species of O2 or N2, and other trace GHGs that are found in ice core air pockets; or else those samples would be changing over time, if one or another species could migrate through the ice.
But as to CO2 being found in ice in clouds; one plausible hypothesis would be that such ice was at one time liquid water somewhere or even water vapor; and that the CO2 contamination occurred before the water froze into ice. Now I have absolutely no evidence or data for such a wild statement; which is why I say it is just a hypothesis; well I did say plausible too, so maybe it ins’t plausible; and the ice is either CO2 free or else it got there by some other means, about which I have no conjecture.
George

One of the major effects of warmer temperatures on lakes and oceans is stronger stratification and shallower mixing. This has already had substantial effects on lakes accross North America and Europe. In deep lakes and oceans, warmer winter temperatures also lead to shallower mixing and less nutrient regeneration/upwelling. This a major effect of climate warming that has been predicted and documented by limnologists and oceanographers over the last few decades. The American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO.org) is publishing a special issue of Limnology and Oceanography (L&O) on the topic: Lakes as sentinels of climate change.” Final revisions of manuscripts are due in April, so maybe the issue will be published by late summer or ealy fall. L&O is the top-rated journal in the aquatic sciences.

Well, well, well,
More proof that timing is everything, although, the real estate maxim, location, location, location, as this blog has provided ample evidence, also has much to recommend it.

Bill, in 2006 there was a flush of articles warning that the Walker Circulation would come to a stop, given that the strength of that circulation had slowed during the last part of the previous century. That circulation is part of the trade winds that blow East to West and cause the upwelling to occur. Their conclusions have been falsified, since continuously monitored data indicate a return to normal conditions on average and stronger than normal conditions in the north Pacific.
So now they turn to lakes. That will also be falsified. Wallowa County is flush with high mountain lakes, rivers, and streams that are closely monitored for stream flow and temperature as part of the fish conservation effort. All the layers have gotten colder. All the rivers are colder. The top layers are colder. The bottom layers are colder. And it makes no difference on the altitude. Last winter, the Lostine River froze from the bottom to the top! In that order! Why did it freeze like that? The top layer is a faster current and resisted freezing, whereas the bottom layer slows to swirl behind rocks and boulders, freezing from the bottom up.
Too bad the publisher spent money on the book. It’s a lot harder to ignore a stupid conclusion when it comes in book form. Journal articles that come to stupid conclusions are just buried in Ivory tower dusty library archives. Books will stick around to remind the author how wrong he/she was.

Calling all Phils
Hey Phil,
Something you said up above put a rock through some cobwebs, and got me thinking.
Specifically you said that; “Co2 is not soluble in ice.” Well so what ?
Well then it dawned on me. I know a thing or two about impurities in solids; or more specifically the sweeping of impurities out of solids in the presence of another phase.
In my case; in an earlier life, I was involved in tow different manifestations of this effect.
I worked for a company that made at the time, hundreds of kgrams of single crystal Gallium Arsenide; using a variation of the Horizontal Bridgeman process sometimes referred to as “Gradient Freeze. We sythesized the GaAs and grew the single crystal ingots in a single process from high purity (at least 6-9s purity) Gallium and Arsenic. The molten gallium Arsenide puddle was brought in contact with a seed crystal, in the presence of a temperature gradient along the container so that the seed end was colder and just about at the melting point. Then the temperature is dropped very slowly while maintaining a temperature gradient, so that the liquid/solid interface moved along the crystal as it grew.
Residual impurities in the melt, are swept ahead of the freeze interface, because of the “segregation coefficient” for those impurities in the solid/liquid phase diagram. Specifically the impurites were much more soluble in the liquid, than in the solid, so as the crystal gre, the impurities were swept into the remaining melt and kept out of the crystal, so they were concentrated right in the end of the final ingot; and that part would be cut off for recycling.
We recycled all of the materials including wafer sawing dust, and other scrap material so that we recaptured a lot of raw gallium metal; in fact we supplied about 1/2 of our total input Gallium usage from recycling. The gallium recycling of course required cleanisng processes too and one of those used in the final purification process to metal as good as 7-9s purity, was also a freezing process. Gallium was itself crystallized from a melt, and the melt residual containing removed impurities was sent back for additional chemical processing; but the segr4egation of impurities in the liquid, was by far the most powerful cleansing step, and repeated freezes (at near room temperature) worked wonders in our gallium cleansing.
So back to the ice and the CO2.
Of course we already know that when seawater freezes, the dissilved salts are largely rejected in the solid phase; once again because of the segregation coefficient, and the much higher solubility of the saltsa in the liquid phase.
Ergo pretty much the same should occur for CO2 and other gases dissolved in water as it freezes.
Now when the arctic ocean starts its refreeze process in the fall, as we all watched last year; you have ice growing at the boundary of the water/ice interface; and the salts being excluded from the solid phase there, back intoi the water, making for a saline rich interface layer, containing excess salt, and thereby having an even lower freezing temperature.
So the freezing ought to take place at a temperature which is actually below the true freezing temperature of the bulk of the surrounding sea water, and as a result, I would expect that once the refreeze gets underway, in what is essentially a supercooled liquid phase; the growth rate of ice is probably quite large, as a result of the boundary layer brine.
So now lets toss the CO2 into this mix. The ocean surface waters presumably contain the required Henry’s law concentration of dissolved CO2 for whatever temperature and atmospheric CO2 partial pressure exists; assuming a calm waters situation.
So once the water starts to freeze and exclude salts into the boundary layer brine; we should also have excess CO2 being forced out of the ice, into the boundary layer of water as well; and given that the boundary layer then likely has an excess of CO2 over the Henry’s law equilibrioum amount; that interface ought to be outgasssing almost all of the CO2 into the atmosphere.
So the period of arctic ice refreeze ought to be a period of massive CO2 emission from the arctic oceans as the surface waters give up their CO2 to become the new ice.
Now I presume that the same sort of thing would happen in the Antarctic.
So in the annual CO2 cycle in the arctic region, where does the atmospheric CO2 gain occur in relation to the ice refreeze.
Enquiring minds want to know ?
George

Nick Stokes (18:55:47) :
Howardteh “Does the extra amount come close to or exceed the amount generate by fossil fuel emissions? “
We’ve burnt about 321 Gigatons carbon since 1751. The atmosphere weighs about 5148000 Gt; an addition of 100 ppmv CO2, which is a bit less the rise we’ve seen, implies an extra 213 Gt carbon in the air. That’s about 66% of what we’ve burnt.
Thanks Nick, that was the answer I was looking for.