One need to make a distinction between what happens with an addition of extra CO2 above a (dynamic) equilibrium and the (natural) variability around an equilibrium.

The first is a matter of differential pressure between CO2 in the atmosphere and the oceans (the main sink) and vegetation (the second sink). As CO2 increases in the atmosphere, the upwelling of CO2 from the deep oceans (mainly in the equatorial Pacific) is somewhat reduced (the partial CO2 pressure difference is reduced), while at the poles the pressure difference towards more absorption is increased. If we stop all emissions today, the pressure difference (and thus the uptake of CO2 by the oceans) will drop at a rate of 50% in 38 years, thus 25% after 76 years, 12.5% after 114 years,…

But as the emissions are increasing more or less exponential, the partial pressure difference between atmosphere and oceans increases further and in average about halve of the increasing emissions are absorbed by the oceans (and vegetation). That was the case over about the whole past century until now, see:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1900_2004.jpg
A good explanation of the CO2 partial pressure difference between oceans and atmosphere is here:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml

The second is mainly a matter of temperature (and precipitation): warmer oceans absorb less CO2, but warmer (and wetter) weather gives more vegetation growth. In this case, the oceans have the highest influence over a year and longer. The temperature influence is practically independent of the increase in CO2, but is the cause of most of the variability around the trend. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg

The CO2 curve with sufficient resolution is rather short, but it looks like that natural variability is about +/- 1 ppmv around the trend which is currently at around 2 ppmv/year. It doesn’t look that the natural variability changed much over the past 60 years, with only a few extremes like the 1992 Pinatubo eruption (cooler ocean surface, more absorption, less increase in the atmosphere) and the very warm 1998 El Niño.

Thus all together: the 38 half life time is only for the extra CO2 above the (old) equilibrium, while the about 50% variability around the trend (the variable “plughole”) is compared to the current emissions, but as these are steadily increasing, the ratio between natural variability (the “noise” in the system) and the emissions/increase (the “signal”) in the atmosphere will dwindle further.

But this discussion indeed is OT, as in any case the contribution of the European/US countries in the CO2 emissions increase is negligible and any reduction of CO2 in these countries wil have a futile effect on the increase…

So, the quality of life is higher because incomes are more equal? Not sure about your claim about health care, but I think it rests on the same canard.

If everybody is poorer, does that make the quality of life higher? If everybody gets the same mediocre health care, does that make quality of life higher? Is the feeling of envy so intolerable that making an entire country poorer is required to treat it? Is crime lower in France where income is so equal? Is your car safe from being burned now? Have you ever had to squat over a hole in the floor as a “toilet” in the US the way you might in downtown Paris? I readily admit that the food is better their, in the main.

Any body wonders about how efficient the US has become in energy only has to remember back to the Carter administration. I remember when it was a big deal for houses to get insulated. I remember scratching images in the ice that formed on the *inside* of the bedroom window, and nobody had ever heard of a four cylinder engine, except in a joke, or on the Jack Benny show.

The US is also 17.5 times larger in land mass than France. How do you compare the energy that citizens MUST expend when they live 2 hours from a major shopping center. Also, in northern parts of the US, winter is long and really, really cold. Like -40 celsius (which I’m sure you must know if you did live in Colorado for awhile) for 6-8 months of the year. Hard to keep energy consumption down when you are trying to survive. You absolutely cannot compare energy use of large geographical countries to Europe where everything is small and squished together. You also cannot compare countries that are in the far north with countries around the equator.

Greenhouses add CO2 into their greenhouses because CO2 is a plant NUTRIENT. If CO2 levels actually rose significantly (in terms of atmospheric levels) the plant life would respond in a significant manner. Supporters of the climate change mantra base their scientific findings on many assumptions – none of which are concrete. It is the utmost of human arrogance to suppose that we could have that much influence on mother nature. The earth is an amazing thing and climatology has the least facts and the most assumptions of any science I’ve ever seen. The truth is that scientists do not understand climate yet. They aren’t even close. There are so many variables to do with climate that it is utterly unpredictable.

You say;
” I have now created a two-ply thread to richardscourtney’s satisfaction!”

Sorry, but I now (yes, now) leaving for overseas so I will be unable to participate until I return.

I write this so it is clear that I am not avoiding the debate.

Richard

You now seem to concur that the “plughole” is variable, but restricted to 50% of the human emissions. Having now read Peter Dietze’s excellent essay I suggest that the variability is 100% of the human emissions, subject to a time delay of 38 years. This is supported by the graph atop this thread which shows the total human emissions in 1971 to be half what they are now. Nature doesn’t divide by two but it does take its time.
If we can tell whoever turns up at Copenhagen that, even if releasing CO2 is harmful in some way, its effects are finite and restricted to 38 years’ worth of emissions, they can put a proper perspective on the subject without admitting that were wrong in the first place!
I hope I have now created a two-ply thread to richardscourtney’s satisfaction!

Willis Eschenbach (20:34:22) :

[...]

As I said above … if you think CO2 is a problem, you should put money into ameliorating your fancied consequences, because a significant reduction in CO2 is not going to happen, no matter what comes out of Copenhagen.

The only thing that might come out of Copenhagen is the USA and other capitalist democracies of the world getting stuck with the bill for the failed efforts to reduce global CO2 emissions.

Friends:

A discussion of the carbon cycle had started and I tried to stop it. However, it seems I put parafin on the fire.

I again write in attempt to keep attention focussed on the very important point that is clearly depicted by Willis Eschenbach’s graph.

The very important point is that

ANY ATTEMPT AT EMISSIONS REDUCTION BY DEVELOPED COUNTRIES IS POINTLESS

because total emissions will continue to increase even if all the developed countries were removed from existence and, therefore, their emissions were reduced to zero.

To highlight this, I have calculated the average annual increase over the period. For the entire globe, the emissions have increased on average by about 120,000,000 tonnes of carbon per year.

Without the US and Western Europe, emissions have increased on average by about 103,000,000 tonnes of carbon per year. This, of course, is a huge annual increase, and it shows no sign of stopping.

So Richard is quite correct. Even if there were no emissions at all from the US and Western Europe, not even one kilo of carbon, the global total would still be skyrocketing at over a hundred million tons of increased carbon emissions per year.

And since the graph clearly shows that the EU with Kyoto has not done any better at holding down emission growth than the US without Kyoto, the idea that Congo and Cambodia and Cameroon and Costa Rica and China and all the rest will be able to hold down their emissions is clearly a pipe dream.

As I said above … if you think CO2 is a problem, you should put money into ameliorating your fancied consequences, because a significant reduction in CO2 is not going to happen, no matter what comes out of Copenhagen.

A discussion of the carbon cycle had started and I tried to stop it. However, it seems I put parafin on the fire.

I again write in attempt to keep attention focussed on the very important point that is clearly depicted by Willis Eschenbach’s graph.

The very important point is that
ANY ATTEMPT AT EMISSIONS REDUCTION BY DEVELOPED COUNTRIES IS POINTLESS
because total emissions will continue to increase even if all the developed countries were removed from existence and, therefore, their emissions were reduced to zero.

Yes, the carbon cycle is important.
Yes, Ferdinand and I have had scientific disagreement about the carbon cycle for several years.
Yes, as Keith Flanders says, the problem with the ‘bathtub’ analogy is that it makes the improbable assumption that the ‘plughole’ (and the natural flow into the tub) has fixed size that does not vary.

All of these matters deserve investigation and debate. But, in the context of this thread, they are a distraction.

In practical terms for negotiations at Copenhagen, it matters not all if, for example, I or Ferdinand is right. And, in that context, it matters not at all if the AGW-hypothesisis right or wrong.

The only thing the negotiators need to know is that something other than emissions reductions needs to be decided. And somehow we need to tell them that.

So, can anybody suggest a way we can tell them such that they understand and accept it before it is too late?

Richard

Dear Mr. Peterson, I know the objections of Dr. Jawarowski against ice core measurements, formulated in 1992. But most of these objections were carefully examined and answered in 1996 by the work of Etheridge e.a. on three ice cores at Law Dome. Ice is not a solvent of CO2 at all. There is some liquid water at the surface of the ice in the bubbles until about -30°C (which excludes e.g. the Vostok ice core at -40°C), but no migration over the past 800,000 years of ice cores. Clathrates formed under pressure are decomposed under (up to a year) relaxation of the ice cores and measurements are done under vacuum over a cold trap (at -70°C), effectively separating any water and CO2.

As the Law Dome snow precipitation is extremely high (1.5 m ice equivalent per year) both firn and ice core measurements down to bubble closing depth could be performed: no difference in CO2 levels between the ice core bubbles and direct gas measurements of the still open air bubbles in the firn. And an overlap of about 20 years with the South Pole CO2 atmospheric measurements.

A direct question: Jaworowski says that CO2 escapes through (micro)cracks in the ice, but how can one find 180-280 ppmv in the bubbles when the outside air contains 380 ppmv? Kind of reverse osmosis?

Another point: Jaworowski doesn’t seem to understand the difference between the age of the ice layers and the age of the gas bubbles in the ice. As gas migration still occurs until the density of the ice is above a certain level, the ice is already 40-600 years old at that depth (depending of precipitation levels). But he compares the ice age, not the gas age of ice core CO2 levels with the outside Mauna Loa figures, to accuse the scientist of “arbitrarely” removing 80 years difference to match the ice core with Mauna Loa records.
More objections against what Jaworowski says, here:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html

Then the historical measurements of Ernst Beck. To my regret his enormous work has one big problem: wrong places. One can find the same (with a seasonal amplitude and a N-S lag) CO2 levels in 95% of the atmosphere over all oceans, high in the mountains, in deserts, but not in the first few hundred meters over land near vegetation, factories or traffic. Of the 93,000 historical measurements, over 90,000 are worthless as taken in the middle of towns, near forests, for agricultural purposes (rice and soy fields), etc… These give enormous diurnal and day by day variations, without any resemblence to “background” or “global” CO2 levels of that time. Measurements done over the oceans or coastal areas with wind from the oceans or mountains (Ben Nevis) show much lower CO2 levels and include the ice core values.

Think about the following: when the much more precise and accurate Mauna Loa and South Pole measurements started, followed by tens of other places on earth and regular measurements in the higher atmosphere, the large variations in CO2 levels (including the Pinatubo eruption) ended suddenly. So what caused the large variations (sometimes within minutes at the same place!) found in historical measurements?

More about Beck’s historical data at:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html

One may have a lot of critique on certain methods and proxies used by some “climate scientists”, but ice cores and direct measurements are not proxies and subject to rigorous calibration and testing. I only could wish that e.g. temperature measurements were at the same level of quality control.

You base you entire assessment on historical views of what ice cores tell us. But the foremost authority of ice cores and a chairman on the IPCC ice core group until he resigned, disagrees. You see, Ice is a solvent of CO2 and under increasing pressure, as in compacted ice, it becomes an even better solvent, and then stabilizes, at some lower level.

Dr. Zbigniew Jawrowski says all the analysis of ice core air bubble atmospheres for CO2 content, unless corrected for this CO2 hydrate formation problem, produce CO2 atmospheric measurements far too low like 270-290 ppm. Scientist Georg Beck went back and looked at 18th and 19th century scientific measurements of the composition of the atmosphere, then. In contrast to the ice cores that show a uniform 280 ppm, since defined as “Natural” and Pre-industrial levels, the measurements by scientists of the 1800s and 1900s, show CO2 varying periodically with a high of 450 ppm (today it is 388 ppm) in response to the Volcano eruptions at Tambora and Krakatoa, half a century apart. The average seems to be about 345 ppm, but the Sigma includes 200 and 380 ppm. Note few if any ice cores are corrected for this hydrate formation as Dr. Zaborowski maintains is necessary, and thus produce the stabilized but depleted figure of 280 ppm.

In this case, the scientific laboratory records of over 93,000 measurements are discarded in favor of reading the equivalents of tea leaves, animal entrails, and ice core proxies. It is not as if the various teams of 18th and 19th century scientists were fools or incompetants, either. Four Nobel prize winners in chemistry have had their work discredited and ignored, in favor of ice core proxie phenomenology.

Of such ” Science” is the AGW constructed. Hoax and myth piled on hoax and myth.

Embarrasing for the modern CO2 measurements, the Scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries identified and annual variation that was unrecognized by our Moana Loa experts. This variation is recorded in Moana Loa records, and of a minor percentage change, but long went unrecognized. It speaks volumes for the accuracy and veracity of the18th and 19th century measurements.

Indeed, if we should stop all emissions, the CO2 levels would go back to the initial (temperature dependent) equilibrium. And if we should maintain the emissions to a fixed level, we would see a new equilibrium emerge, where input and outputs in/out the atmosphere are again in equilibrium. These are the principles of all types of dynamic (chemical, physical) equilibria: the balance of a chemical or physical equilibrium shifts to counter a disturbance.

But as humans put more and more CO2 in the atmosphere (increasing year by year), about twice of what is absorbed by nature, the balance shifts to higher CO2 concentrations and we don’t see an new equilibrium yet. If we should reduce all CO2 emissions to 50% of current, that is 2 ppmv (~4 GtC) per year, we should see a new equilibrium at current CO2 levels. If we stop all CO2 emissions today, the CO2 level would sink rapidely at a rate of about 50% per 40 years, much faster than the IPCC model predictions, see Peter Dietze’s essay at the late John Daly’s web site:
http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm

Per capita CO2 emissions have not been 0.12 tons per year since the 1860′s.

Since most of the recent growth in CO2 emissions is coming from the developing world; which will not subject itself to “80 by 50″… Any effort on the part of the developed world to achieve “80 by 50″ would be pointless.