I’ve been getting a lot of requests to cover this story, probably 20 or so now with wonderings about “why haven’t you covered this yet?”
How quickly you all forget. WUWT was the very first to cover this story back on November 10th, 2009.
Everybody else in the media today is playing catch-up. So if you’d like to read the original press release and participate in the already ripe comments left then, see this WUWT story:
Does anybody know if there is a replacement CO2 sensing satellite in the works?:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5796656.ece
I am not surprised
take a look at this side
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/realCO2-1.htm
Le Chatlier strikes again!
If the same percentage of an increasing amount of CO2 emissions (and CO2 emissions have and are increasing) stays in the atmosphere then atmospheric CO2 concentration will increase – this is what we see.
Besides, surely every accepts CO2 is increasing.
Move along, nothing here 🙂
see whut story link not working 🙂
No, Anthony, you were not the first, The IPCC AR4, Chap 7, Exec Summary, said:
“… since routine atmospheric CO2 measurements began in 1958. This ‘airborne fraction’ has shown little variation over this period.”
And in Sec 7.3.2:
7,3,2:” From 1959 to the present, the airborne fraction has averaged 0.55, with remarkably little variation when block-averaged into five-year bins (Figure 7.4)”
later referring to:
“The consistency of the airborne fraction …”
In Chap 2:
“Assuming emissions of 7 GtC yr–1 and an airborne fraction remaining at about 60%, Hansen and Sato (2004) predicted that the underlying long-term global atmospheric CO2 growth rate will be about 1.9 ppm yr–1, a value consistent with observations over the 1995 to 2005 decade.”
A lot of “Bombshells” there!
REPLY: Are you dense? Some days I think so. The story is about the University of Bristol paper, not the IPCC. For example as quoted in Science Daily on 12/31/09 (which is one of the many tips presented here on WUWT).
And my 11/10/09 story “Bombshell from Bristol: Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing? – study says “no””….quoting the same Wolfgang Knorr.
So your interpretation of reporting (news articles/press releases -vs- IPPC government reports) is skewed into some alternate inverted thinking where you inject the IPCC when it was never part of the story we are discussing. Go Ahead, argue all you want that WUWT was not the first to report the Bristol story, we’ll love the entertainment. – A
WUWT was the first to cover it, and I may have been the first to point that out!
/brag_off
We know that temperature varies with
1. day and night,
2. summer and winter,
3. ice ages and warmer periods.
Consequently the heat balance for our planet:
m∙cp∙dT/dt = Qin – Qout,
cannot be in equilibrium. Here T is temperature, t is time, m∙cp is thermal mass, Qin heat added from the sun and Qout heat dissipated back to space. Temperature is constant when Qin = Qout (equilibrium), increases for Qin > Qout and decreases for Qin < Qout. We know that the input from the sun is constant equal 1366 ± 0.5 W/m² and that the heat dissipated back to space is given by the Stefan-Boltzmann law. Thus,
m∙cp∙dT/dt = K – σT^4,
where K is the constant heat added from the sun and the last term is the well-known radiation term back to såpace. Also we know that:
1. The Swedish army marched across the ice between Sweden and Denmark in 1658.
2. Anthropogenic CO2 became significant after 1950.
Questions:
* What caused the global warming from 1658 to 1950?
* Why shouldn’t the global warming from 1658 to 1950 continue after 1950?
Let us assume that we do not know the origin of the little ice age. How long would it take to establish equilibrium again in the heat balance for our planet? 1 day? 1 week? 1 year? 300 years? Remember the thermal mass for the ocean is huge! According to the heat balance the temperature will increase even if the input from the sun (K) is constant as long as the temperature T is below the equilibrium temperature. Trenberth seems to assume that the heat budget for our planet is balanced or almost balanced, what is the empirical basis for his assumption?
I think Wolfgang Knorr re-submitted his paper just recently and that might be why it’s making the rounds again.
Maybe it’ll actually get some media attention this time around ?
I know, I know wishful thinking.
Can we reconcile this?
From another discussion about AGW on another forum:
Here’s a direct quote from Dr Knorr when an interviewer asked whether his results undercut AGW
QUOTE
“That would be a very superficial interpretation of these results. Half the CO2 we emit stays in the atmosphere and that’s enough to cause global warming.”
Recent Global Cool-Down Challenges Validity of Climate Change Models
http://www.examiner.com/x-32936-Seminole-County-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2010m1d1-Recent-global-cooldown-challenges-validity-of-climate-change-models
The simplest explanation is one the paper itself suggests: that “land use emissions are systematically overestimated”. So just more alarmist exaggeration.
Everybody should note that the paper does not say that CO2 levels are stable, but that the increase is well below (25% to 43% of) the alarmist scenario.
Anthony (10:40:36), yes, of course the IPCC (2007) didn’t report the Knorr paper (2009) saying that the airborne fraction (AF) was not increasing. What they did say, unequivocally, was that the AF was not increasing. It showed “remarkably little variation”. So how is the Knorr paper a “bombshell”?
REPLY...ah ah ah…whoa there shifty, you can’t change the question without apologizing for your mistake first.
“Are you dense? Some days I think so.”
Anthony, what is the airborne fraction? Answer the fraction (%) of the CO2 emitted that stays in the atmosphere. So, if the amount being emitted increases so does atmospheric Co2 – surely?
So, Nick Stokes is right, nothing really new – interested readers might want to check this out.
REPLY: The issue is he said I was not the first to report the story, and the story I reported, and what is being reported on now (see the Science Daily link) is from the University of Bristol paper by Knorr. You are so busy trying to obfuscate with “move along…” that you miss the flaw in Stokes argument just like he has. Welcome to density. -A
Perhaps Archibald is correct: Earth presently is in a C02 deprived state, and 385 ppm is a paltry figure that represents a scarcity, not an overabundance of, the stuff of life.
So what?…we just don´t care after “Climate-Gate”!
I thought some mountain in Hawaii was measuring CO2 concentrations, and has shown a steady 2 or 3 ppm per year increase since measurements started in the 1950s.
You mean this Bristol study says it aint so?
Someone expalin this? I’m lost.
What have we really learned?
If a prestigious journal posts an article online, where it can be easily changed or withdrawn if feedback shows that peer-review has failed to catch errors, it is hardly noticed. When it is published on paper, setting it in stone, then it becomes noticeable and noteworthy.
Oh, and it may not be so much that people have forgotten the earlier article, as post-Climategate the site has gained brand new readers and new regular readers (like me) who have not studied the archives thus didn’t know of it.
Anthony,
OK, I apologise for thinking that your story was about there being no increase in the airborne fraction of CO2. But given that the IPCC was clearly saying that there was no increase over the period of observations (since 1959) and Knorr has, I guess, extended that back to 1860, how is this a “bombshell”?
REPLY: You must have a new years hangover, you still missed it. -A
“The issue is he said I was not the first to report the story, and the story I reported, and what is being reported on now (see the Science Daily link) is from the University of Bristol paper by Knorr. You are so busy trying to obfuscate with “move along…” that you miss the flaw in Stokes argument just like he has. Welcome to density. -A”
Oh, no I don’t dispute you reported this first (well, first to the blogsphere, clearly Science Daily beat you 😉 ) but I do agree with N.S. that it’s nothing really new because it is nothing really new.
And, thanks, but my ‘move along’ comment refers to the point that if CO2 emissions increase (and they are) then if the fraction of those emissions remaining in the atmosphere stays the same the atmospheric concentration will rise.
Less CO2 less intelligent species, more abundancy of Gaia believers.
Invariant (10:44:02) :
1. The Swedish army marched across the ice between Sweden and Denmark in 1658.
2. Anthropogenic CO2 became significant after 1950.
Questions:
* What caused the global warming from 1658 to 1950?
* Why shouldn’t the global warming from 1658 to 1950 continue after 1950?
The frost fairs on the thames,
Great Frost of 1683–84, the worst frost recorded in England,[1][2][3] the Thames was completely frozen for two months, the ice 11 inches (28 cm) thick at London. Solid ice was reported extending for miles off the coasts of the southern North Sea (England, France and the Low Countries)
The frost fair of 1814 began on February 1, and lasted four days. An elephant was led across the river below Blackfriars Bridge. A printer named Davis published a book, Frostiana; or a History of the River Thames in a Frozen State. This was to be the last frost fair. (The climate was growing milder).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_frost_fairs
“I thought some mountain in Hawaii was measuring CO2 concentrations, and has shown a steady 2 or 3 ppm per year increase since measurements started in the 1950s.
You mean this Bristol study says it aint so?
Someone expalin this? I’m lost.!”
It does, and no it doesn’t.
It’s about how much (% – the airborne fraction) of the increase emissions stays in the atmosphere? Answer the same percentage, BUT if the amount being emitted increases then the same percentage is more in absolute terms so the atmospheric conc increases. Eg if we, say, emitted 1Gt then 45% of that = .45gt. If we emitted 2 Gt 45% =.9Gt.
Let’s establish some things which this paper does prove:
A) There is no evidence we are anywhere near a “tipping point” where the natural sinks will no longer be able to contain our miniscule additional yearly contribution of CO2 to the overall flow
B) These results demolish the hypothesis that the dominant time constant for anthropogenic CO2 persistency in the atmosphere is on the order of hundreds or thousands of years
Do any of the alarmists out there have any substantial objections to these points?
JonesII (11:17:46) :
So what?…we just don´t care after “Climate-Gate”!
We do.
We need and will use every sound scientific argument to stop the warmist’s and their sick policies like the C&T and as CO2 is at the core of their argument it would be plain stupid not to use it.
There are legal scores to settle with EPA and the UN IPCC.
We have to deal with the precautionary principle.
Just think of it. We will need any sound argument and the “Bombshell from Bristol” is exactly what we need to defeat them.