What – you mean we aren't controlling the climate?

The short term data is very plain, and I had thought well understood: the data show about 6 GT Carbon emitted for every 1 C rise in temperature, with about a seven month lag, and about half of the human emissions ending in the atmosphere. What is controversial for me about his presentation is the idea that we can get CO2 levels which seem geologically very high by dint of natural processes, when temperatures are really not excessive by that standard.

I’m getting:

Embedding disabled by request
Watch on YouTube

I can’t find it on YouTube.

@commieBob
Try this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YrI03ts–9I

What, humanity is NOT killing the earthmother?
A collection of headlines from the recent past which seem to point the finger directly at humanity, implying or stating that we are the cancer that is killing the earth.
http://www.mrc.org/media-reality-check/earth-day-special-medias-top-25-worst-environmental-quotes
shortened by bitly in case the above link is broken in some way:
http://bit.ly/JmM6zK
Good reading here, h/t badblue.

RERT says:
April 19, 2012 at 1:45 pm
“What is controversial for me about his presentation is the idea that we can get CO2 levels which seem geologically very high by dint of natural processes, when temperatures are really not excessive by that standard.”
I think is strong evidence that the geological levels are probably underestimated. It makes little sense that the relatively small anthropogenic CO2 contributions compared to the natural sources have caused the atmospheric CO2 levels to be far higher than it has ever been in the last 800,000 years.
This seems nearly as preposterous as the warmist’s contention that natural CO2 sources and sinks are perfectly stable and always in balance even though they are all dependent on the climate which at the same time, they contend is rapidly changing.

I was expecting not to be persuaded, and in fact was.
While widely mis-understood, correlation, with certain caveats, is proof of causation. Its just that correlation doesn’t tell us what the causative mechanism is. The annual CO2 emissions correlation with satellite measured surface conditions of 0.93 (as I recall) is conclusive for me. And the argument put forward by Perlwitz above is irrelevant, because surface conditions (mostly temperature) explain almost all of the net CO2 emissions. Thus no other explanation is required and anthropogenic emissions are irrelevant, excepting some small residual.
The only other explanation is that intra-annual CO2 variations cause intra-annual global climate variations, and I have never heard that argument put forward. Rather the opposite, AGWers argue that short term climate variations are natural variation ‘noise’ to the CO2 climate signal.

Very fine work by Salby. Without the “A” in AGW, GW becomes moot (particularly the mitigation part) regardless of how sensitive the climate.

Philip Bradley wrote:
“And the argument put forward by Perlwitz above is irrelevant, because surface conditions (mostly temperature) explain almost all of the net CO2 emissions.”
My argument can only be considered “irrelevant”, if one thinks conservation of mass isn’t part of the laws of nature. The numbers don’t lie.
Where does all the anthropogenic CO2 (32 Gt per year) go, if the observed long-term trend is only 2 ppm increase of CO2 in the atmosphere per year, currently, AND most of the multi-decadal CO2 increase is supposed to come from natural sources? Does the anthropogenic CO2 vanish into a wormhole?
There is a year to year variability in the natural carbon dioxide flux, which is controlled by different things, e.g., ocean temperatures, biosphere activity indeed. There is also a seasonal cycle. This doesn’t say anything about what causes the long-term increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. Salby correlates the 2-year flux with atmospheric variables. He has filtered out the long-term trend with this approach. Then he draws a conclusion about the causes for the long-term trend from this? This is methodologically flawed.

It should be a relatively easy calculation to do test the hypothesis. We know the termal expansion of water per degree and we know the change in solubility of per degree of temperature rise.
Thus, the maximum amount of CO2 could be released by ocean heating can be calculated using the known change in sea level. As this is quite pathetic, my guess is that the CO2 didn’t come from the oceans and the heat isn’t hiding there either.

One consequence of this work is that it confirms the accuracy of the satellite lower troposphere temps. Which I had some doubts about.

Thanks for the links guys.

There was much discussion of this on Climate, Etc. last fall, and this winter some asked if the promised paper had been killed or rejected. I wrote Salby, and got this reponse on Feb. 20:

Dear Brian,
Apologies for the belated reply; we’re on summer break here.
The technical paper underpinning my presentation to the Sydney Institute
has certainly not been withdrawn. The cycle of scientific publication is slow,
typically about a year. For a subject as political as this one, it can
be very slow.
The fiasco surrounding Spencer and Braswell (2011), a thinly-veiled exercise
in coercion, didn’t help. But, with patience, we will eventually get there.
Upon formal release, a notice will be sent to the numerous interested parties.
In the meantime, a couple of matters of possible interest:
(1) About half of the material in the Sydney Institute presentation
is developed in Physics of the Atmosphere & Climate,
a peer-reviewed volume that is now out.
Although developed for a technical audience,
elements should be comprehensible to the non-specialist.
Highlighted in the attached is material of relevance.
(2) In the coming weeks, a video of the presentation will be made available
through the Sydney Institute – inclusive of full graphics. Stay tuned.
Murry Salby

I saw this video a few weeks ago, and didn’t find it too impressive. As stated in other posts, he shows that there natural perturbations which affect the year to year additions of CO2 to the atmosphere. If you plot the year to year changes in CO2 from the Mauna Loa data, you will see that there is an upward trend in them. Take this plot and add how many ppm CO2 man has been adding and you’ll see that this line accounts for the upward trend. I’ll link where you can find the data you need below. If you subtract the amount of CO2 that humans are adding to the atmosphere you end up with a relatively flat curve whose natural oscillations basically add up to zero (about 8ppm).
This argument is pointless to have anyways, as we know the following to be true.
1) We know that we are adding CO2 to the atmosphere. To claim otherwise is to deny reality.
2) We know that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause some change in temperature (the magnitude of this effect is in question).
Here are the links to the data you need if you want to make the graphs I mentioned:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.html
One note on making the plot, I used a went with the assumption that 50% of our CO2 is adsorbed into natural sinks. If you use 40%, you will find that the natural variation would have a total impact of about-4.6ppm.

Thylacine says
April 19, 2012 at 2:35 pm
The AGW folks seem to want to suck and blow at the same time when it comes to oceans and CO2. I don’t think one has to be a board-certified climate scientist to assess the merits of that conjecture, does one?
—————-
Good point in contrasting the decrease in ocean CO2 since the ice age with current concerns about increasing CO2 leading to ocean pH increases.
I think it comes down to the numbers. I’ll have a go even though I have no clue.
CO2 during the ice age was about 250ppm.
After things warmed up it was 350ppm.
So this means there was100ppm equivalent dissolved in the ocean.
It was pushed into the oceans by the low temps.
Currently we are above 450ppm.
If we reduced our consumption so that it stayed at 450ppm, eventually the ocean would absorb 100ppm worth of CO2, in effect returning ocean CO2 to its ice age value..
It is being pushed into the oceans by high atmospheric concentration.
This might be OK if we could ignore temperature. I am not sure we can, since pH and a whole lot of chemical and biological processes have a strong dependency on temps.
The notion that we can keep the value at 450ppm depends on us producing CO2 at the same rate as the ocean absorbs it. Except we are not doing that, we are doing it faster. Therefore it seems likely that we will eventually push more CO2 into the oceans than was present during the ice age. Hence ocean pH rises will happen. How much will depend on how much CO2 we put into the air and any countervailing temperature rise.
There is deep time evidence that this can happen, high temps, high CO2 and low pH. A lot of things died.

Jimmi_the_dalek says:
“Sorry Bart, but simple maths is exactly what is needed here. The statement 4>2 is all that is required.”
If I remember the mass flux argument correctly, you start out with a soil dam that is partly full of water. Over a given set period of time, say one month, there are natural losses (e.g. by soil absorption or by evaporation) and gains (e.g. by inflow from the surrounding soil or by water being added to the dam by rainfall and runoff) of water to the dam. These losses and gains either produce a net inflow or a net outflow of water from the dam, with the water level changing accordingly.
The analog of what is observed in the real world.
Someone, adds a small amount of “anthropomorphic” water over the month, half of which is lost (e.g. by soil absorption or by evaporation), and half of which is retained in the dam. The observer notices that at the end of the month, the water level in the dam increases slightly.
The question now becomes, “What type of underlying natural losses and gains must be taking place during that month to produced the observed result when “anthropomorphic” water is added to the dam?
Clearly, If a NET NATURAL GAIN of water to the dam is assumed, then an observed water level rise that is less than that expected by the NET “ANTHROPOMORPHIC” ADDITION of water to the dam, would rule out a NET NATURAL GAIN of water from the dam.
I think that the problem for the Salby model is that the observed rise in CO2 p.p.m.in the atmosphere is less than the NET ADDITION of “anthropomorphic” CO2 in p.p.m. This means that according to the water mass flux dam model, there can be NO NET NATURAL GAIN of CO2 by tthe atmosphere (e.g. by emission of CO2 from the oceans).
Of course, this model assumes that ALL of the natural CO2 has the same sources and sinks
as the “anthropomorphic” CO2, and that all of these sources and sinks were absorbing/emitting both types of CO2 at the same rates. This is the Achilles Heel of this argument.

Philip Bradley wrote:
“If short term factors explain the CO2 changes, there is nothing to explain in the longer term. There is no methodological flaw. It is that simple.”
No, it’s not. Different processes respond on different time scales. The year-to-year variations in the atmospheric CO2 mole ratio have a magnitude of about 3 ppm, compared to the long-term increase of CO2 from 280 ppm from pre-industrial to 394 ppm today. You can’t simply presume that the processes that dominate small magnitude short-term fluctuations also govern long-term changes with the same weight, which have a magnitude the multiple of the short-term fluctuations.
So, if you claim a 0.8 increase in the globally averaged temperature causes an increase in the CO2 atmospheric mole ratio by 114 ppm, where is the Medieval Warm Period in the CO2-record from ice cores then, which many here believe had globally averaged higher temperatures than present day?
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/lawdome.gif
And don’t many here claim “global warming has stopped” since 1998? Why is the CO2 mole ratio still increasing year to year, if it was controled by the temperature by such a large degree, then, and if it was true what you say, that when you have explained the short-term fluctuations you have explained the longer-term change?
Also, what was the CO2 mole ratio in the atmosphere during the glacials, when it was 3 to 4 Kelvin colder on global average than today, if a 0.8 K temperature change causes a change of the CO2 ratio of 114 ppm?

LazyTeenager says:
April 19, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Ah, but the bank, seeing you have more money to give away, hires more middle managers and starts charging fees to pay them. So that $10 a week becomes a $20 deficit, and by 100 weeks you’ve gotten an overdraft warning.

jimmi_the_dalek says:
April 19, 2012 at 9:34 pm
That’s where the error is – the ocean capacity is not lower, because although it is slightly warmer, which means the solubility of CO2 at a constant pressure would be slightly less, the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere has actually increased by nearly 40%. The solubility is directly proportional to the pressure (Henry’s Law) so the oceans are absorbing CO2, not releasing it.
So getting back to my question: If oceans are absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere now that temps are rising, why were they releasing it (at an 800 year lag) when temps were rising historically (according to the ice cores)? I still do not see how you can have increasing ocean acidification due to net absorption of CO2 at the same time as net outgassing of CO2 due to temperature increases. If the outgassing of CO2 is not correct, then how do the AGW folks account for the lag in the ice core records?

“So getting back to my question: If oceans are absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere now that temps are rising, why were they releasing it (at an 800 year lag) when temps were rising historically (according to the ice cores)? I still do not see how you can have increasing ocean acidification due to net absorption of CO2 at the same time as net outgassing of CO2 due to temperature increases. If the outgassing of CO2 is not correct, then how do the AGW folks account for the lag in the ice core records? ”
I’m not a climate scientist, so no comment on the lag, but the basic point is that the solubility of CO2 depends more on the pressure than on the temperature, and the partial pressure of CO2 was different then.

“We put +8Gt up every year, but only +4Gt change is seen in the air at the end of each year. Arithmetic says +4.0 – +8.0 net effect of nature on atmosphere is negative. Nature is presently a net sink of CO2 from the atmosphere, no other conclusion is compatible with observations.”
That is not evidence that nature is a net sink.
The ocean surfaces have been warming since the LIA so throughout that period of time the capacity of the oceans to hold CO2 has been falling naturally.
It is more likely that ever since the LIA nature has been a net source of CO2 when the warming oceans are taken into account.
Nature itself could be producing the extra 4Gt with the human contribution negligible after it has been taken up by local or regional sinks such as nearby vegetation.

You can’t simply presume that the processes that dominate small magnitude short-term fluctuations also govern long-term changes with the same weight, which have a magnitude the multiple of the short-term fluctuations.
Explain to me how long-term fluctuations are more or less than the sum of the short term fluctuations for the short time periods that comprise the long-term period.
Until you can do that, I am afraid you have no argument.

Professor Salby shows that man’s emissions are not the cause of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Further, he demonstrates that CO2 rise follows temperature. Our entire energy policy in this country is based upon the opposite of this and Al Gore and his acolytes still dominate the media coverage of weather and climate.
Why has there been no wider coverage of this comprehensive debunking of the whole AGW theory?
Any ideas?

“Look up the phrases “partial pressure” and “Henry’s Law”, then come back when you have learned that the solubility depends on the partial pressure and that the density of water is irrelevant”
The density of water becomes relevant as regards the much larger energy content than air.
The temperature effect on absorption capability for the more dense water is likely to outweigh any pressure effect in the much less dense air.
I want to see empirical evidence that the effect of the increase in CO2 in the air more than outweighs the effect of warmer water temperatures as regards CO2 absorption / emission rates.
Simply referring to Henry’s Law is irrelevant as only half the story.
Which process dominates out in the real world ?
Evidence please.

lazyteenager~
As of April 5th, CO2 is 394.45 PPM http://co2now.org/ (an alarmist page)
And you are saying 450?
FAIL.

Blade says:
April 20, 2012 at 3:13 am
“”LazyTeenager [April 19, 2012 at 8:34 pm] says:
Currently we are above 450ppm.”
”
Where are these numbers from?
The little gadget there in the right hand column says 392 ppm currently.”
His alarmism is getting the better of him. Duck, he’s about to gleick.
By emitting 8 GT a year we increase CO2 partial pressure by a certain amount, increasing the speed of adsorption into the ocean. If we stopped emitting CO2, the balance of adsorption and outgassing would shift. It’s a dynamic process, not some simple fixed sums.

Allan McRae wrote:
“Several of you are arguing the “material balance argument” which has been well-ventilated here and elsewhere between Ferdinand Engelbeen (for) Richard Courtney (against). I agree Richard on this question. This is not a static situation where a “bank balance” argument works.”
Who is Richard Courtney?
What you say is equal to saying that first principles, in this case the conservation of mass, do not always apply.
Any change in the balance of the atmospheric carbon dioxide mass needs to be accounted for by the same change in the sum of all the flux terms.
dMc is the change in the total CO2 molar ratio in the atmosphere.
dMc = Fin(a) + Fin(n) – Fout(n)
(Approximations for present day: dMc = 2.4 ppm/a; Fin(a) = 4 ppm/a)
where Fin(a) is the total flux from anthropogenic sources to the atmosphere, Fin(n) the total flux from natural sources to the atmosphere, and Fout the total flux into the natural sinks (ocean/biosphere).
If dMc < Fin(a), like it is the case in present day, then
dMc – Fin(a) = Fin(n) – Fout(n) < 0
If follows that
Fin(n) < Fout(n)
The CO2 mass flux from natural sources to the atmosphere must be smaller then the CO2 mass flux from the atmosphere to natural sinks in present day (with dMc = 2.4 ppm/a and Fin(a) = 4 ppm/a).
q.e.d.
First principle must apply. Always. "Dynamic time cycles" can't help you with going around this.

Jan P. Perlwitz says:
April 20, 2012 at 4:49 am
“If follows that
Fin(n) < Fout(n)
The CO2 mass flux from natural sources to the atmosphere must be smaller then the CO2 mass flux from the atmosphere to natural sinks in present day (with dMc = 2.4 ppm/a and Fin(a) = 4 ppm/a).
q.e.d.
First principle must apply. Always. "Dynamic time cycles" can't help you with going around this."
Okay, again in simple words for GISS employees:
Fin(n) and Fout(n) are not natural constants.

Stephen Wilde wrote:
“It would appear that the ice core record is too coarse to reproduce the atmospheric CO2 changes during the 1000 year cycle from MWP to LIA to date.”
This was the graphic with the data, which I referenced.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/lawdome.gif
Apparently you didn’t even bother to look at it. You just come up with excuses why the data should be dismissed.
“Trends
The atmospheric CO2 reconstructions presented here offer records of atmospheric CO2 mixing ratios from 1006 A.D. to 1978 A.D. The air enclosed in the three ice cores from Law Dome, Antarctica has unparalled age resolution and extends into recent decades, because of the high rate of snow accumulation at the Law Dome drill sites (Etheridge et al. 1996). Etheridge et al. (1996) reported the uncertainty of the ice core CO2 mixing ratios is 1.2 ppm. Preindustrial CO2 mixing ratios were in the range 275-284 ppm, with the lower levels during 1550-1800 A.D., probably as a result of colder global climate (Etheridge et al. 1996). The Law Dome ice core CO2 records show major growth in atmospheric CO2 levels over the industrial period, except during 1935-1945 A.D. when levels stabilized or decreased slightly.”
(http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/lawdome.html)
Well, you seem to do the thing with the hypothesis and the data the other way around. You test the data with the hypothesis. If the data are in contradiction to the hypothesis, you conclude the data must be wrong.

DirkH:
“Okay, again in simple words for GISS employees:
Fin(n) and Fout(n) are not natural constants.”
Your statement does not contain any argument. Of course, they are no constants. Who says they were? Since when does the mass balance equation only needs to be fulfilled, if one, some, or all of the terms were constants? The mass balance equation is one of the most fundamental equations in physics. Like the energy balance equation. The time dependence of the various terms in it doesn’t change this.

The argument is not pointless, but I will agree that it is not the one which will drive a stake through the heart of AGW. Unless and until the two time series start to diverge substantially in morphology, the superficial resemblance will be enough to convince most people that there is a cause and effect relationship.
Well said, Bart. One could go further and note that the function one is plotting is almost certainly multivariate, not single variable, which makes things far worse because your argument applies for each variable for which the superficial relationship exists, and because one then can actually choose which of them to emphasize when making the fit. Correlation is not causality, but often it is all we have, and we’re used to using the former to infer the latter even when we cannot really directly prove it. However, having multiple variables, and having causal relationships and covariance among those variables, is a ripe opportunity for omitted variable fraud — ignoring the other variables to focus attention on the correlation associated with the single variable we want to be the cause.
However, it isn’t really necessary to wait until the two time series diverge in the future, because they already diverge in the past. CO_2 as a sole driver is a lousy explanation — so far — for the climate variation observed over the last 5 million years, let alone the last 600 million. Furthermore, trying to analyze the dynamics of CO_2 balance in the atmosphere over a geological past where atmospheric CO_2 spent hundreds of millions of years at concentrations over 1000 ppm (or one part per thousand, a tenth of a percent or more!) is enough to give one a headache. CO_2 is sequestered in the oceans, in the soil, in the crust, carbon in various organic (non-CO_2) forms is bound up in rocks, in clathrates, in oil and gas and coal deposits. Because biology steadily and “irreversibly” depletes carbon (reversibly only on truly long time scales) without an equally steady source CO_2 levels would drop to where plant biology itself becomes rate limiting. This may have in fact happened at the coldest parts of the last glacial period.
Carbon dioxide does not explain the variability of the climate over paleontological time. It does not explain the variability of the climate over recent paleontological time, e.g. the Holocene. It might be a proximate cause associated with the recent gradual return to ice age conditions 3 million years ago, if long time scale modulation of e.g. volcanic and crustal CO_2 sources (one of the only sources of “new” carbon to replenish that which the biosphere steadily depletes) is a reality, but I find it difficult to assess this given the enormous and somewhat violent disagreement concerning just how much CO_2 is being released now by crustal activity. One group asserts that it is a tiny fraction of human emissions. Other groups point to studies that suggest that it is larger than human emissions (including studies that predate the CAGW controversy, which I am more inclined to believe but assessing bias of this sort is very difficult for a non-expert).
What is certain is that there is a lot of carbon bound up in the dynamic biosphere, and a lot more passively bound into the ocean, and still more bound into the soil and the Earth’s crust, and that many factors affect the way that carbon is moved around as CO_2 or otherwise. It may well be that the greatest impact humans have had on the CO_2 levels of the atmosphere comes from deforestation and land use changes, not from burning fossil fuels, and it may yet be that humans are still not the largest factor in the observed changes.
What is certain is that even when the CO_2 levels were as high as they are projected to rise over the next century if nothing at all is done about them, the Earth did not experience a climate catastrophe. It did, however, experience a serious climate catastrophe the last time CO_2 levels where close to half what they are now — ice age and a perilous dance between land-based plant die off and CO_2. Indeed, it may be that the progressive loss of land flora in ice ages may be the negative feedback that ultimately prevents snowball Earth — the cold increases until biological uptake by photosynthesizing plants cannot match e.g. crustal production of CO_2 and a dynamic equilibrium of sorts is reached. Without new CO_2 the very real greenhouse effect could easily have a negative “catastrophe”, and ice ages might well be the biological/geologically stable cold phase that persists until events that de-sequester large amounts of the stored carbon occur, e.g. increases in volcanism, warming that degasses the oceans and soils.
Calling all of this settled science is a bit of a joke, and trying to look at 200 or 300 years of data and interpreting two generally upward trending curves with very different patterns of fluctuation is proof of cause is a much bigger joke, when those patterns are not persistent and do not explain much larger excursions in the still recent geological past. The data suggest that CO_2 is probably responsible for just about the minimum warming that the GHE theory predicts, that overall climate sensitivity is neutral or even negative, and that something else is responsible for most of the temperature variation observed over geological time scales.
I have yet to see truly convincing data and physical arguments to explain the latter. There is a tantalizing very long time scale correlation between cosmic ray flux and geological temperature over the last 600 or so million years, back to the limits of what we can infer using biologically derived markers in combination with radioactives, but this is hard going and not necessarily clear. There are variations in other proxies (including CO_2) that have some degree of synchronicity with this, but identifying cause and effect is difficult.
One thing that does indeed seem to be a possibility is that if we did reach 1000 ppm of atmospheric CO_2, this might be enough to re-stabilize a warm phase and put an end to the current ice age, so that the Holocene does not end but just keeps on going, as the Earth warms back up to the 1-2C warmer temperatures it had 5 million years ago and which appears to be the stable upper bound of geological temperatures on Earth. However, I suspect that the biosphere and oceanic sinks will not permit the CO_2 levels to remain that high unless whatever natural source was responsible for the high levels observed over most of the last 600 million years comes back into play.
rgb

– as explained right in the first comment 447ppm by MASS, 392ppm by VOLUME as CO2 is heavier than air on average.
– also note the 392ppm is pretty suspect anyway as it’s a guess from measuring one area, it’s not like the whole atmosphere has been measured. (the 447ppm was a calculation)

– just make that clear the entire CO2 pattern comes from that one measuring station in Hawaii.

Allan MacRae wrote:
“I think Ferdinand’s “material balance argument” is incorrect because it inherently assumes that the climate-CO2 system is static, but it is dynamic, and the relatively small humanmade fraction of total CO2 flux may not be significant in this huge system, as it continues to chase equilibrium into eternity.”
The mass balance equation always applies whether it’s a “static” or a “dynamic” system, whether you write the equation as differential equation with time dependent terms, mass balance still applies, or whether you are writing it as an integral over a time period, it still applies.
There is no way around the laws of physics. A hypothesis that violates the laws of physics is bogus. The increase in carbon dioxide mass in the atmosphere can’t be explained as coming from natural sources, since the flux from anthropogenic sources is larger than the carbon dioxide mass change in the atmosphere. The present day net flux – anthropogenic emissions is directed from the atmosphere to the oceans/biosphere. Not the other way around. It’s basic math. If you think first principle and math don’t apply, then I don’t really know what else to tell you.

Thanks for that Superb video. It inspired me to write a letter to the first minister of Scotland (to which I doubt I’ll get a reply), together with a dozen FOI questions .. along the lines of “has anyone in the government ever met any of the scientists x,y,z. who know anything about this?” … “does the government have a clue what they are doing” … “are you even aware that a quarter of Scots died in the 1690s due to cold, and what’s your best estimate of how many die today and will die in the future if there is a maunder minimum”.
Howmany people in Scotland will die early if it gets warmer?

The Debunker No 2 BS (@No2BS) says: “just make that clear the entire CO2 pattern comes from that one measuring station in Hawaii.”
No, this is not correct, there is a global network of CO2 monitoring stations, they all say pretty much the same thing, the Mauna Loa series is the one most frequently used, but only because it is the first and hence longest of the reliable observational records.

“It is actually only about 5 gt per year according to the ipcc- a nitpick, I know. In any case, what happens to it is the same thing that happens to all C02. It becomes a very small part (roughly 3.3%) of the total C02 emissions available for carbon sinks. The big point here, that Alarmists don’t want to hear is that natural sources and sinks of C02 are dynamic, not static. A very small change in one can and does dramatically affect the overall balance. Man’s very small contribution of C02 simply gets lost in the noise.”
Sorry, I should have said 30 gt carbon dioxide, not carbon, as 30 gt of carbon dioxide is 5gt of carbon. But anyway, roughly half of that carbon/carbon dioxide is taken out of the atmosphere by carbon sinks, mainly the ocean.
You still haven’t explained how nature can be the source of the roughly 15 gt per year increase in atmospheric CO2, which Salby claims, when we are emitting 30 gt per year, meaning nature must be absorbing the other 15 gt. The dynamism of sinks can’t explain it away – in fact its dynamism surely explains why the more carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere, the more in absolute terms the sinks absorb. Even though we pour more CO2 into the atmosphere, roughly half is still absorbed by the fast carbon cycle.
The other problem for this theory (apart from the declining oxygen, decline in C-14, recent increase in carbon dioxide accumulation but slowing of warming, and need for negative concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere at the last glacial maximum) is that after being relatively stable at around 280 ppm through the Holocene, carbon dioxide started increasing when fossil fuels started being widely burnt in the industrial revolution and then increased in accumulation as more and more fossil fuels have been burnt, and also just happened to match the rate at which the fuels have been burnt.
To believe that it just happened to start increasing then, because of increasing temperatures (no physical reason given for this mysterious warming, which is large enough to warm the Earth but too enigmatic to pinpoint), and to disregard all the other independent lines of evidence isn’t skepticism, it’s plain refusal to accept reality.
The fact that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is due to anthropogenic emissions is so widely scientifically accepted it isn’t really questioned. I think the onus is on those who want to challenge it to provide evidence against it – are there any peer-reviewed sources that cast doubt on it?

Lets be clear: if nature was a net source of atmospheric CO2, the observed increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would be greater than the rate at which it is emitted by man.
We emit 30 gt of CO2 per year. Therefore for nature to be a net source of CO2 at the moment, we would have to observe more than a 30 gt/yr increase in the atmosphere. Yet we only measure a 15 gt/yr increase. It’s simple arithmetic.
Either the CO2 content of the atmosphere measured by many stations at isolated points all over the world is wildly wrong, or the records of fossil fuel production is wildly wrong or there is some unexplained disappearance of 30 gt/yr of CO2 that isn’t into the atmosphere or rest of the fast carbon cycle, or Salby is wrong. Take your pick.

– isn’t this OLD NEWS : the lecture was in August 2011 & was discussed on Judith Curry’s blog August 4th just as the video came available. ..And the paper has still NOT BEEN PUBLISHED… normally going straight to the media & having a press conference before publishing in a peer reviewed journal is a sure sign of suspect science.
– Although in the video Salby was very very convincing. All through I expected him to come out and say “fooled you I haven’t really been converted, actually I love the IPCC & found no errors in their reports”, but he just continued rubbishing their attitude without being insulting.
– Over on SkS (NON-Skeptical, NON-sense) I expected them to have found flaws in the science, but right from the start without even beginning to get into the lecture their strongest argument was “the guys obviously an idiot cos everyone know in the last 200 years climates been following CO2”.The way they can be SO CERTAIN without debunking the details really knocks their own credibility …as ever.
… I see the same suspects making the same type of posts they did there 8 months ago.
– Pity the paper isn’t out I would have liked to have seen them getting their teeth into it.
… is it being SUPPRESSED cos it’s too hot ? Or HELD BACK cos it’s too flawed ?

“To add to what Ed says, Prof. Salby is very clear in his talk that the CO2 measurments and fossil fuel emissions data are reliable. I agree with him there.”
In that case, the fossil fuel emissions must disappear somewhere outside the carbon cycle, or Salby must have overturned elementary arithmetic if he’s correct that nature is a net source of CO2!

Plants breath out carbon dioxide. Which is why the Japanese study makes sense, more plants, more carbon dioxide breathed out and more from all the associated processes and there are more plants than anthropogenic burning of them.
Which is how levels of carbon dioxide lag temperature rises after sudden rises into interglacials, it takes time for plant life to develop from the small beginnings in warmer conditions to the spread of forests. Life produces carbon dioxide and uses it to produce it.

Mrrh, I seem to recall that WUWT published a very good series of articles a while back (by Willis?) explaining why the CO2 data are reliable, even though Mauna Loa happens to be a volcano. Note also that Mauna Loa isn’t the only station where CO2 measurements are made, and you get essentially the same result if you look at the other stations not sited on volcanos.

@Debunker Actually SkS did point out the flaw in Prof. Salby’s argument. Several articles have been written there addressing this particular canard, one of them was written by myself as a result of having published a peer-reviewed article adressing the errors in a previous paper by Prof. Essenhigh. Prof. Salby’s conclusion, as Ed and others have pointed out violates the principle of conservation of mass. If the natural environment were a net source of CO2 into the atmosphere then CO2 levels would be rising faster than anthropogenic emissions (as both the net natural and anthropogenic sources would be contributing to the rise). However, we know that isn’t the case, so the hypothesis cannot be correct.

I can understand the difficulty some commentators have in accepting that the man-made contribution to the atmospheric CO2 contribution is small, especially given that we have emitted our the past thirty years or so about twice as much as the CO2 level has actually increased. Wny its just not logical.
But the real point of this is that atmospheric CO2 is just a fraction of the CO2 in the oceans: 662 billion tonnes vs 37,200 billion tonnes.
So the amount we add may matter hugely (if equilibrium is reached very slowly) or matter not at all (if equilibrium is reached very quickly). Of course the answer is somewhere in between and the critical parameter is how quickly the CO2 levels in the atmosphere respond to alterations in the climate system. The key point of Salby’s presentation for me is that he seems to have proven that the CO2 interchange between ocean and atmosphere is rapid (a couple of years).
CAGW seems to muddle cause and effect more often than not. An open mind is called for on this one I think.

dikranmarsupial says:
April 20, 2012 at 9:50 am
Mrrh, I seem to recall that WUWT published a very good series of articles a while back (by Willis?) explaining why the CO2 data are reliable, even though Mauna Loa happens to be a volcano. Note also that Mauna Loa isn’t the only station where CO2 measurements are made, and you get essentially the same result if you look at the other stations not sited on volcanos.
=========
If you read the description of how they measure it, in that article by Willis, you’ll see they arbitrarily decide what is volcanic and what the mythical ‘man-made well-mixed background’ that’s supposedly coming in across the ocean to drop into their measuring pots..
Anyway, all ended up being controlled by Keeling and his son and now taken over in ‘central’ control. Has anyone looked at these other stations? I’d read somewhere that several had been taken out of the mix a few years ago, and, some are also not in the claimed “pristine” sites if this geologist has his information right: http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/ From which:
“1.2 The Location of CO2 Monitoring Station in regions enriched by volcanic CO2
Volcanic CO2 emission raises some serious doubts concerning the anthropogenic origins of the rising atmospheric CO2 trend. In fact, the location of key CO2 measuring stations (Keeling et al., 2005; Monroe, 2007) in the vicinity of volcanoes and other CO2 sources may well result in the measurement of magmatic CO2 rather than a representative sample of the Troposphere. For example, Cape Kumukahi is located in a volcanically active province in Eastern Hawaii, while Mauna Loa Observatory is on Mauna Loa, an active volcano – both observatories within 50km of the highly active Kilauea and its permanent 3.2 MtCO2pa plume. Samoa is within 50 km of the active volcanoes Savai’i and/or Upolo, while Kermandec Island observatory is located within 10 km of the active Raoul Island volcano.”
But, my biggest gripe about it is that the AIRS data for both the upper and lower troposphere still hasn’t been released – why not? The scant information which came out with the mid troposphere results was that carbon dioxide was not “well-mixed”, much to their surprise, but lumpy, and that they’d have to go away and look at wind systems to understand what they were seeing. What ‘pictures’ they released are sleight of hand, because not showing this conclusion…
There are two things to bear in mind about carbon dioxide, the first that it is heavier than air – it will not readily rise into the atmosphere, this is very well known and understood in real physics:
“Usually the large amounts of carbon dioxide released by Kilauea get dispersed by winds so we can breathe nice, healthy, oxygen-rich air on the caldera floor. Because CO2 is heavier than air, it doesn’t readily rise into the atmosphere and, instead, tends to pool in low areas.” From – Don’t daydream in low-lying places in Kilauea caldera
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/2005/05_06_02.html
This happens to all carbon dioxide released by coal burning too. It will sink. It takes wind to disperse it, but when that wind stops, it will sink to the ground, and, it won’t be able to rise back into the air under its own volition, because it is heavier than air. Gravity.
The second thing to bear in mind about carbon dioxide, is that as a real gas and not the imaginary AGW ‘ideal gas’, it has real attraction, and in the atmosphere gets attracted to any water vapour and water, all pure clean rain is carbonic acid – carbon dioxide is fully part of the water cycle – which somewhere I read was 9 days? Whatever, it does not get to stay ‘accumulating in the atmosphere for hundreds and thousands of years well-mixed’, because that is against its nature.
I think the reason we’re not getting the AIRS data released is because the real carbon dioxide is shown. That’s why Beck’s, and the thousands of different measurements over a couple of centuries, show this nature. It will be found in greater number where it is produced in greater number, locally, and dispersed by local winds – which don’t cross hemispheres. The ‘background well-mixed’ is not seen from their data, because they won’t produce the data.

“CO2 from fossil fuels discerned from natural sources”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17784055
“Researchers have demonstrated a way of distinguishing between carbon dioxide in the air coming from fossil fuel burning and that from natural sources”
It relies on the fact that Carbon 14 has a half life of 5730 years. the carbon in fossil fuels would have virtual no carbon 14 due to decay.The piece seems to suggest that the only natural source of CO2 is from plants.
So what about the CO2 ejected from volcanos???

Ed says:
April 20, 2012 at 9:54 am
“Plants breath out carbon dioxide.”
Well, they do in the sense that they respire, so they take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and they put it back in at the same time. Yet, when growing they take more out than they put back. That’s where the carbon plants are partly made of comes from.
Or are you claiming that plants are a net source of CO2? If so, where do the carbon compounds they are made from come from? Again, it’s elementary conservation of mass and arithmetic.
======
They’re using carbon dioxide in photosynthesis, using visible light for a chemical change to sugars, releasing oxygen in the process, they don’t even do this all the time the Sun’s visible light is available to them, but certainly not in all the hours of darkness. Like us, when they are not creating food out of it, they are breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide.
Are they a net source? Well I think so, but how the heck are we ever going to tell from corrupt data and corrupt physical processes as promoted by the AGWScience Fiction department?
Take us for example, we’re around 20% carbon and the rest mainly water – we need carbon dioxide in large amounts to be able to breathe at all – every lungful of air has to contain an optimum 6% of carbon dioxide to efficiently transport oxygen through the blood, as well as for other processes – we certainly don’t get this from the atmosphere – we create it ourselves, out of our own processes from what we get by eating plants, our Carbon Life Cycle.
As some have pointed out in these discussions, we’re at a historic low in the amount of free carbon available and below a certain level all plant life will die and we with it, and, here’s the rub, there’s a theory among biologists that plants created fauna to diversify their own propagation – if so, that we’re actively introducing more into the atmosphere from the carbon dioxide sequestered in fossil fuels is part of God the Plant’s greater plan… 🙂

Ed_B said:
“If plants are accelerating their growth rate as a result of higher CO2 then your statement [that the natural environment isn’t a net carbon source] can be falsified.”
You’ve got things the wrong way round and are actually arguing the same thing as me and the mainstream view of the carbon cycle and against Salby without realising it!
If plants accelerated their growth they would be *more* of a sink for CO2 rather than less (and there is evidence that this is happening). This is the exact opposite of what Salby claims, that the natural environment is the cause of the increase in atmospheric CO2.

Phil. says:
April 20, 2012 at 12:25 pm
“But no-one’s doing a static analysis, which is why your comments are wrong.”
That is exactly what they are doing. They are not taking into account the permanent sequestration into land and ocean sinks which are dynamic with unknown response time. Stop embarrassing yourself. You do not understand the argument. I get it.

Bart, the mass balance argument is as follows:
(i) Assumption: The cabon cycle obeys conservation of mass, such that any carbon that is emitted into the atmosphere that is not taken up by the environment remains in the atmosphere.
[This is essentially saying that carbon dioxide doesn’t spontaneously appear or dissapear, if it is in the atmosphere it had to come from somewhere, if it leaves the atmosphere it has to go somewhere.]
(ii) Assumption: The carbon cycle is a closed system, with natural sources and sinks and anthropogenic sources (anthropogenic uptake of carbon is essentially negligible – we are not doing any significant carbon sequestration at the current time).
[This is a statement of the obvious. If there are other sources or sinks that are not natural and not anthropogenic, then they would have to be either supernatural or extraterrestrial, so if you dis agree with this assumption it is basically like saying space pixies are stealing CO2 from the atmosphere. Note we do not assume we know what the natural sources or sinks are, or how they operate, just that they exist.]
(iii) Assuming conservation of mass and that the carbon cycle is a closed system, then we can write that
dC(t) = Ea(t) + En(t) – Un(t)
where dC(t) is the change in atmospheric CO2 in year t, Ea(t) is anthropogenic emissions in year t, En(t) is total natural emissions (from all natural sources) in year t and Un(t) is total natural uptake (from all natural sinks) in year t.
[This is a simple restatement of (i) and (ii) in mathematical form, and you will find the same thing stated in Prof. Salbys’ presentation, so he would agree with the mass balance argument at least this far. Note that this does not assume any of the sources or sinks are static, nor do we make any assumption about the values or behaviour of En(t) or Un(t). ]
(iv) We can rearrange the equation to give
dC(t) – Ea(t) = En(t) – Un(t)
furthermore if the left hand side is negative (i.e. Ea(t) > dC(t)) then we know that the right hand side must also be negative (i.e. Un(t) > En(t))
[this is basic algebra, so I doubt anyone will question this step]
(v) We have good data for both dC(t) (from the network of CO2 monitoring stations) and of Ea(t) fas fossil fuel use is taxed. Prof. Salby explicitly states in his presentation that both sources of data are reliable. They tell us that the left hand side of the equation IS negative and has been every year for at least the last fifty. Thus we know that for at least fifty years total natural uptake has exceded total natural emissions.
[if you disagree with Salby on the reliability of the data, then make your case. If you doubt the data show what I say they show then download the data from the carbon dioxide information and analysis center and plot them for yourself.]
(vi) if the natural environment has been taking more CO2 out o the atmosphere each year than it has put in then it has been opposing the rise in CO2, not causing it.
[If you disagree with this you are using a non-standard defintion of “causing” something to rise than generally agreed]
There you are, seven steps. If the mass balnce argument is wrong then point out in which step the flaw appears.

Bart, did you not read the bit where I wrote “Note that this does not assume any of the sources or sinks are static, nor do we make any assumption about the values or behaviour of En(t) or Un(t).”
The mass balance argument makes no assumptions about the values of En(t) or Un(t). It makes no assumptions about the physical mechanisms governing the behaviour of the natural sources and sinks. The mass balance equation is not a model of the carbon cycle. It is a constraint on the behaviour of En(t) and Un(t) that is imposed by conservation of mass, nothing more. Your repeated efforts to intepret it as a model of HOW the carbon cycle works merely indicates that you don’t understand the argument.
It tells us that if we know that anthripogenic emissions exceed the observed rise in CO2 then natural uptake (whatever it was) must have been greater than natural emissions (whatever they were), because if it didn’t then the principle of conservation of mass would be violated. This ought to be pretty obvious to anyone capable of operating a bank balance.
So, which step (i)-(vi) is incorrect?

Why can you not understand? The sinks can absorb whatever mass they like. They are not constant!
If Ea(t) = Una(t), then the increase is entirely natural!

Bart, nobody is saying that that the sinks are constant. The mass balance argument makes no assumption whatsoever about the mechansisms governng the natural sources or sinks. If you look at the data, as you were asked to do on the previous thread, you will find that the inferred difference between natural emissions and natural uptake is highly variable.

Un(t) has a part which is responding to the natural forcing, and a part which is responding to the anthropogenic forcing!
If Ea(t) were zero, then and only then would En(t) – Un(t) be entirely natural.

Here is a plot of the data, produced by Ferdinand Engelbeen:

Note that the difference between natural emissions and natural uptake, inferred from the observations of anthropogenic emissions and atmospheric CO2 using the mass balance argument, are constantly changing. Note however that they are always negative (as the natural environment has been a net carbon sink) and that there is a downward trend, which is the response of natural sources and sinks to increasing atmospheric concentrations. The mass balance doesn’t tell you anything about the mechanism involved, it just telss you what Un(t)-En(t) is if you happen to know what dC(t) – Ea(t) is (which we do). It really isn’t rocket science.

Bart wrote: “En(t) – Un(t) is not entirely natural!!!
En(t) and Un(t) were defined as being total natural emissions (from all natural sources) and total natural uptake (into all natural sinks) then En(t) – Un(t) is the net response of the natural environment. If you think this is not entirly natural it just means that you don’t understand the argument.

Just because the “uptake” is natural does not mean it is taking up only natural emissions. Un(t) has a part which is induced by anthropogenic forcing Ea(t).

There is a part of Un(t), which I called Unn(t), which takes up natural emissions. There is another part, which I called Una(t), which takes up anthropogenic emissions. Un(t) responds dynamically to both En(t) and Ea(t).

Sorry to be obtuse, but the argument that CO2 absorption into the oceans is a different process than CO2 outgassing from the oceans cannot account for the acidifiction problem. If atmospheric CO2 is being sucked out by plankton in the oceans, which die and take the carbon to the bottom of the oceans, that would not cause ocean acidification. CO2 locked in plankton or other sea life does not change the chemical properties of the ocean water – at least not until the life decays and the molecules are taken up into the water.
The explanation I was looking for seems to be this: Cold, CO2-rich water from the ocean bottom circulates to the surface, and outgasses CO2 as it warms. But when the atmosphere has a higher partial pressure of CO2 due to man-made emissions, LESS CO2 from the CO2-rich cold water outgasses as it warms than it otherwise would. Thus the warmer water that is retained near the surface will retain more CO2 and thus be more acidic. On this explanation, the ocean surface water does not take in atmospheric CO2 on a net basis, causing acidification; it is simply that less outgassing happens, so the formerly colder water retains more CO2 in solution – increasing the acidity near the surface.
Does that make sense to anyone else?

Bart, do you agree that once a molecule of CO2 is in the atmosphere, that there is no difference from one CO2 molecule to any other? (other than of course the fact that some are 12CO2 and others are 13CO2)

“Whether the natural environment is causing the rise or opposing it depends only on the difference between natural emissions and natural uptake of natural emissions ONLY.”
The natural uptake of anthropogenic emissions would not occur without the input of the anthropogenic emissions in the first place. Therefore, that portion is not natural. It is not a given. You are implicitly assuming that the sinks are static, that they only take up natural emissions.
This is your error. This is your flaw. I have stated it explicitly. You are accounting Un(t) as being completely in the “natural” column. But, it ceases to be assignable there when it is taking up unnatural emissions.

Peter says:
April 20, 2012 at 3:38 pm
“…do you agree that once a molecule of CO2 is in the atmosphere, that there is no difference from one CO2 molecule to any other?”
You should be asking the other guy that question. The very fact of it underlies my argument. The sinks respond the same to both anthro and natural concentration. They expand to consume all. Only by ignoring the natural uptake of anthropogenic input can you arrive at such a silly argument as this “mass balance”, which isn’t really a mass balance at all.
If you are going to balance them, you have to break it up the way I showed:
dC(t) = (Ea(t) – Una(t)) + (En(t) – Unn(t))
Ea(t) – Una(t) is the net anthropogenic input, and En(t) – Unn(t) is the net natural input. And, we have no idea what the proportions are of one to the other.

Colin says:
April 20, 2012 at 3:48 pm
“… you can say that both contributed to the increase.”
And, that is ALL you can say. You cannot say how much of one or the other did without knowing the nature of the sink dynamics.
I’ve got things to do. No doubt, more stupid words will be written against what I am explaining. It is really depressing.

I am going to repeat this just once and depart for now:
If you are going to balance them, you have to break it up the way I showed:
dC(t) = (Ea(t) – Una(t)) + (En(t) – Unn(t))
Ea(t) – Una(t) is the net anthropogenic input, and En(t) – Unn(t) is the net natural input. And, we have no idea what the proportions are of one to the other.

Mrrh, volcanic emissions of CO2 are tiny (I agree that they will be C14 depleted). As Fred Singer points out anyone who thinks vocanic emissions produce significant amounts of CO2 need to explain why there isn’t even a blip in atmospheric CO2 ollowing even major volcanic eruptions. Now if you think that volcanic emissions explain the observed isotopic changes, then run the numbers and see if it pans out.

dikranmarsupial says:
April 20, 2012 at 4:52 pm
Mrrh, volcanic emissions of CO2 are tiny (I agree that they will be C14 depleted). As Fred Singer points out anyone who thinks vocanic emissions produce significant amounts of CO2 need to explain why there isn’t even a blip in atmospheric CO2 ollowing even major volcanic eruptions. Now if you think that volcanic emissions explain the observed isotopic changes, then run the numbers and see if it pans out.
=======================
Because, firstly, carbon dioxide is heavier than air, it isn’t capable of ‘accumulating in the atmosphere’ to be measured.. Secondly, Keeling had no way of telling what was his mythical ‘background’ CO2 from the volcanic CO2 produced in great abundance every day in Hawaii.
The conclusion: no one knows what they’re talking about here re the figures because the measurements of CO2 have been corrupted because the basics about it are a mess. For example, again from link above:
—–
It seems that Gerlach (2011) drew his interpretation (quoted above) from a preference for the “global” “magmatic” carbon dioxide emission estimate of Marty and Tolstikhin (1998) which was devoloped from the generalisation of isotope ratios across provinces of varied geochemistry. This multimodal generalisation, as I have shown in the example of Laki (Section 2, above), can be spectacularly inaccurate. Gerlach reports this figure in the following contrastive statement:
“The projected 2010 anthropogenic CO2 emission rate of 35 gigatons per year is 135 times greater than the 0.26-gigaton- per-year preferred estimate for volcanoes.”
In the units I am using here, that translates to a “preferred” estimate of worldwide volcanic carbon emission at 0.071 GtCpa. At this point, I think it worth contrasting this with a quote from Cardellini et al. (2011) who are actually engaged in some real research:
“Quantitative estimates provided a regional CO2 flux of about 9 Gt/y affecting the region (62000 km2), an amount globally relevant, being ~ 10% of the present-day global CO2 discharge from subaerial volcanoes.”
That 9GtCO2pa translates to 2.45 GtCpa for just one region, which is more than 34 times the latest personally “preferred” “global” estimate offered by Gerlach (2011). One may well be keen to ask how it is possible that anyone would prefer to propagate a “global” estimate which is almost 35 times smaller than only one of the many provincial figures that must be summed in order to arrive at a worldwide estimate in the first place?
—–
What does Singer know? He’s pushing AGW fisics without providing any evidence that carbon dioxide is capable of doing what he claims. And, as he is visciously against those questioning this lack of evidence of the physical mechanism, calling them deniers and wanting to shut them out rather than provide answers, he is not someone I would give any credibility in the figures he provides. Your mileage may vary.

Smokey says:
April 20, 2012 at 4:40 pm
Thanks for the moral support, Smokey. I really am shocked that something so elementary can fly over the heads of so many.

Alan;
don’t bother. Many have battered themselves silly trying to educate Myrrh. It can’t be done. In any case, by now he has asserted his idée fixe (one of several) so many times that he can’t possibly change his story, to himself or anyone else.

Brian H wrote “There was much discussion of this on Climate, Etc. last fall, and this winter some asked if the promised paper had been killed or rejected”
Actually the speculation was that Salby had withdrawn the paper, not that it had been killed or rejected.

Bart wrote “Ea(t) – Una(t) is the net anthropogenic input, and En(t) – Unn(t) is the net natural input. And, we have no idea what the proportions are of one to the other.”
I now see the error in your thinking more clearly. It is straightforward to show by analogy why it is wrong.
Assume I share a savings jar with my wife as before. I put in four euro per month, all in Belgian minted coins [corresponding to Ea(t)] and my wife puts in 90 euro a month [corresponding to En(t)] all in Fench minted coins so you can tell who put them in the jar. However my wife thinks that the jar would be neater if it only contained French coins, so each month she takes out all of the Belgian coins she finds in the jar [i.e. Una(t) = Ea(t)] plus an extra 88 french minted coins [Unn(t)]. Our savings still rise by 2 euros per month, but at the end of the month all of the coins are French, there are no Belgian coins, yet most rational people would agree that I am responsible for the rise in our savings as I am saving more than I take out, and that my wife is opposing the rise because she is taking more out of the jar than she is putting in.
Following you argument, my net input to the savings is Ea(t) – Una(t) = 4 – 4 = 0 euros per month, and my wifes net input is En(t) – Unn(t) = 90 – 88 = 2 euros per month, so you would conclude that my wife is causing the rise in our savings even though she is taking more out of the jar than she is putting in. That is clearly absurd, and shows that your reasoning is faulty.
Note in this analogy I have made it a dynamic system as my wifes withdrawals depend on my deposits. However the argument is valid whether the fluxes are static or dynamic,
Your error is to concentrate on where idvidual molecules of CO2 rather than what is causing the imbalance between total emissions and total uptake, and and Prof. Salby explains very clearly in his presentation, it is this difference that causes atmospheric CO2 to rise or fall. Each year about 1/5 of the atmospheric reservoir is exchanged with CO2 from the oceans and terrestrial biosphere. However this is merely an exchange, it has no effect at all on atmospheric CO2 levels.
If you read my paper in Energy and Fuels, you will find it is very well known that only a small proportion of the additional CO2 is of directly anthropogenic origin as a result of this exchange flux, however it is anthropogenic emissions that cause the difference between total emissions and total uptake to be positive, and hence is responsible for the rise.
[Moderator’s Note: Mr. Marsupial, if you want people to read your paper, you will need to provide a reference or link. Somehow I doubt the paper was published under the nom-de-plume of “Marsupial, D.” -REP]

Atmospheric CO2 is a “Catch and Release” system.
Rainwater has the ability to wash CO2 out of the atmosphere, and may be an important mechanism in the ocean – atmosphere exchange. Rainfall over land could contain 49 to 68 Gt CO2/yr (as Carbon so we can compare to the atmospheric CO2 estimates). And for the ocean rainfall, it comes to 183 Gt/yr to 252 Gt/yr (as carbon). Compare with of 6 – 8 Gt/yr man made CO2/yr (as Carbon).
If those estimates are correct, it is likely that virtually ALL of the man made CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, then re-released by natural surface processes. That certainly fits with Dr Salby’s presentation, and would be consistent with a temperature and soil moisture correlation.
The land rainfall could end up ’stored’ in a river or lake, go into the soil or plants, or could splat on a parking lot and re-release the CO2 to the air when the water evaporates. My guess is the ocean rainfall could most likely be incorporated into the ocean and the CO2 with it (there is way more CO2 dissolved in the oceans than ‘free’ in the atmosphere), then released in natural temperature processes, or sequestered in biological exchanges.
My estimates used 10 to 20 deg C rain temperatures. From a global water balance, I found an estimate of total global rainfall that came to about 100,000 Gt/yr (as H2O) over land, and 400,000 Gt/Yr over the oceans.

@mrrh wrote “In the real world, if you’d care to step back through the mirror and look around you, real gases have real weight relative to each other; lighter than air gases will rise and heavier than air gases will displace air and sink, it takes work to change that. Carbon dioxide is one and a half times heavier than air, it will sink. “
In that case, as I pointed out earlier, why is it that CO2 being heavier than air doesn’t sink into mineshafts and displace the air and suffocate the miners?

fisics of a world of fictional properties and processes. You’ve been had.
dikranmarsupial says:
April 21, 2012 at 7:57 am
@mrrh wrote “In the real world, if you’d care to step back through the mirror and look around you, real gases have real weight relative to each other; lighter than air gases will rise and heavier than air gases will displace air and sink, it takes work to change that. Carbon dioxide is one and a half times heavier than air, it will sink. “
In that case, as I pointed out earlier, why is it that CO2 being heavier than air doesn’t sink into mineshafts and displace the air and suffocate the miners?
==================
It can do, for those unaware of the dangers that it displaces oxygen to pool on the ground – instant suffocation. So also, if invited to a p*ss up in a brewery don’t fall asleep on the floor.. Methane in mines is a known hazard also, because it is lighter than air and will rise and layer at the ceiling – covering oneself with wet towels and carrying a lighted candle on a long pole to get rid of any used to be standard practice entering new mines.
The extract I posted came from the article titled:
“Don’t daydream in low-lying places in Kilauea caldera”
I really don’t know what to suggest, perhaps if you read it a few times to re-orientate yourself, and checked out other real world examples of gases layering because heavier or lighter than air you’d see how the AGWSF fisics is describing a different world.
This is very much a well known hazard around venting volcanoes, but also quite recently the unusual event at Lake Nyos where carbon dioxide responsible for the deaths of over 1700 people:
http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Nyos.html
“The CO2-rich cloud was expelled rapidly from the southern floor of Lake Nyos. It rose as a jet with a speed of about 100 km per hour. The cloud quickly enveloped houses within the crater that were 120 meters above the shoreline of the lake. Because CO2 is about 1.5 times the density of air, the gaseous mass hugged the ground surface and descended down valleys along the north side of the crater. The deadly cloud was about 50 meters thick and it advanced downslope at a rate of 20 to 50 km per hour. This deadly mist persisted in a concentrated form over a distance of 23 km, bringing sudden death to the villages of Nyos, Kam, Cha, and Subum.”
Heavier than air, really means that in the real world. In huge quantities like this or smaller volumes in confined spaces such as mines or hollows in the ground in the path of flows from venting volcanoes, it kills by suffocation, displacing oxygen.
http://www.neatorama.com/2007/05/21/the-strangest-disaster-of-the-20th-century/
However, it is absolutely essential to us Carbon Life Forms, without it we can’t live as it is the basic food and necessary for optimum body processes. http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/11Phl/Sci/CO2&Health.html

mrrh People have been mining for 5,000+ years, and digging tunnel and room pits for over 1,000 years. Can you give me a single doccumented account of a mine that has filled with CO2 and suffocated all the miners?

dikranmarsupial says:
April 21, 2012 at 7:57 am
@mrrh wrote “In the real world, if you’d care to step back through the mirror and look around you, real gases have real weight relative to each other; lighter than air gases will rise and heavier than air gases will displace air and sink, it takes work to change that. Carbon dioxide is one and a half times heavier than air, it will sink. “
In that case, as I pointed out earlier, why is it that CO2 being heavier than air doesn’t sink into mineshafts and displace the air and suffocate the miners?
============
And as I’ve answered, it’s a well known hazard in mining, it does.
http://www.everything2.com/title/Gas+in+Coal+Mines
“Carbon dioxide Besides being a part of both after damp and black damp, as noted above, carbon dioxide levels increase due to human and (in some cases, particularly in the past) animal respiration. Other sources include burning of candles or torches (less common since electricity came to mining), explosions, chemical reactions with certain rocks/minerals, even the decay of timber. One of the key tasks of a mine ventilation system is to get rid of carbon dioxide (hardly the most deadly, but the one most apt to build up in the day to day operation of a mine).”
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/smother.asp
“Yet carbon dioxide is also a deadly gas. Countless miners laboring underground have forfeited their lives to “choke damp,” the term for the oxidizing of carbon trapped within coal. When this process takes place in an enclosed space (such as the depths of a mine), the resulting carbon dioxide cannot dissipate and forms an invisible deadly cloud. Accounts given by people who witnessed choke damp in action described deaths that came so quickly the victims had no chance to escape. One person, recounting the fate of eight men and one woman who walked into an area where the gas had accumulated, said they “fell down dead, as if they had been shot.” Another narrative of a different death said the stricken miner was “without access to cry but once ‘God’s mercy.'”
Miners not only walked into deadly accumulations of choke damp; they were also sometimes lowered into them by being let down into mine shafts on ropes. If they hit pockets of carbon dioxide during their descents, they would fall from those ropes dead.”
There’s lots of info available – click a few keys.

http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/11Phl/Sci/CO2&Health.html
caerbannog666 (@caerbannog666) says:
April 21, 2012 at 10:18 am
Because CO2 is heavier than air, it doesn’t readily rise into the atmosphere and, instead, tends to pool in low areas.
Then that begs the question as to why the US Air Force has spent so much taxpayer money investigating the IR absorption properties of CO2 in the atmosphere (where heat-seeking missiles fly).
Yeah, very good question… They still won’t release the AIRS data for upper troposphere – or lower…
What carbon dioxide is found in the atmosphere will either come down because it is heavier than air, (the atmosphere isn’t churning around by constant wind…, looking out of my window now, none of the trees are moving, ah just begun a slight breeze at the very tops, stopped again), or, it comes down as rain, all pure clean rain is carbonic acid. Water vapour and carbon dioxide not being the imaginary ideal gases do not bounce off each other, but as real gases are mutually attracted to each other – so also in fog, dew, and that’s why iron rusts outside.
They really don’t want to produce any data about carbon dioxide. If I recall, a couple of satellites that were going to launched with the main brief of measuring CO2, didn’t make it, exploded or something.
Anyway, carbon dioxide has very low heat capacity, it quickly gets hot and as quickly cools down – if they’re worried about showing a trail or something? At those heights it’s cold, and oxygen and nitrogen also have low heat capacities, a little better than carbon dioxide but for all practical purposes it’s instant from hot to cold – the trails from planes are water vapour condensing out in the cold. Have to say I don’t understand what they’re doing, can you explain? afaik heat seeking missiles hit on, so to speak, the hot spots in the actual body of the plane targetted.

Bart said:
“There is no error in my thinking. You analogies are facile and inapplicable. It is apparent you have no familiarity with feedback systems, and do not understand how they work.”
I thought marsupial’s analogy seemed to fit your theory well and made it much clearer.
Rather than simply dismiss the analogy, if you think it doesn’t represent your theory, why not fix it to show more clearly your thinking? We would understand your thinking much more clearly if you could use the husband/wife coin jar analogy with your own numbers inserted.
Just hand-waving it away as wrong doesn’t help solve the problem.

Bart wrote “There is no error in my thinking. You analogies are facile and inapplicable. It is apparent you have no familiarity with feedback systems, and do not understand how they work.”
Sorry Bart, this is merely a tacit admission that you can’t address the issue raised by the analogy without making it obvious that your argument is untenable. The ad-hom about not understanding feedback systems is really no substitute for a substantive counter argument. It also demonstrates that you have not read my peer-reviewed journal paper, in which in addition to the mass balance argument, I construct a simple dynamical model of the carbon cycle, descibed by differential equations.
Forgetting for the moment whether the analogy is facile or inapplicable, in the analogy would you say that I was responsible for the rise in our savings, or my wife? If the latter, please give your justification for your answer.

It is a shame that Prof. Salby doesn’t read climate blogs. He is not the first to have made this mistake, Roy Spencer put forward essentially the same argument some time ago on his blog (it was republished here) and the “other interpretation” was explained in great detail. It is well known that the variability in the growth rate is well correlated with temperature. However it is not the variability in the growth rate that gives rise to the long term increasing atmospheric CO2, it the long term average value of the growth rate, which is not explained by changes in temperature.
I really hope that Prof. Salby realises his error before the paper is published and withdraws it, it won’t do anyone any good, especially Prof. Salby himself.

dikranmarsupial says:
April 21, 2012 at 2:57 pm
“He is not the first to have made this mistake…”
That is so farcical, given that you haven’t a clue what you are talking about.

Bart wrote ” You’ve got a static model. There is no feedback.It’s idiotic.”
You clearly didn’t read my post, I deliberately made the analogy with a feedback loop as the wife’s withdrawals are whatever my deposits were plus 88 euros. I even put in a paragraph stating that I had done this so that it would be a dynamic rather than a static example.
Your analogy is obviously an attempt to annoy me by personalising the discussion rather than making a serious point. Sorry I have no time for that sort of behaviour. However if you would like to make the point in a more scientific manner then I will respond to it.

“I deliberately made the analogy with a feedback loop as the wife’s withdrawals are whatever my deposits were plus 88 euros.”
That is not a feedback. That is a feed-forward of a constant value, i.e., it is merely a bias input which does not partake in or influence the loop dynamics.
A dynamic feedback would be of the form where the withdrawals change as a function of deposits, e.g., as in an interest rate. That is why I fixed your “analogy” by adding a dynamic factor of the percentage the kid takes out.
The Earth’s climate system, including the CO2 governors, is a dynamic feedback system.
“…there is no third player involved…”
There are three players involved: 1) natural emissions (you) 2) anthropogenic emissions (your wife) 3) sinks (your kid). Period.
Sinks do not discriminate on the basis of “natural” or “anthropogenic,” any more than the kid in this analogy cares whether the money in the account came from his mother or his step-father. The environmental sinks gobble up CO2 from any source. And, they expand and contract dynamically based on how much CO2 is available.

I didn’t really understand this video.
I continue to believe that a drop in human emissions would lead to atmospheric CO2 increasing at a slower rate or dropping. And an increase in human emissions would lead to atmospheric CO2 increasing at a greater rate.
I think to believe otherwise you’d have to overthrow some of these common sense principles:
1. Natural sinks can’t distinguish between CO2 molecules of natural origin and those emitted by humans
2. Natural sinks work to remove CO2 at a rate dependent much more on the current CO2 level than on any of its time derivatives. (For example, plants don’t make plans to grow faster this year because they expect there to be more 0.5% more CO2 next year.)

Bart :” If humans put in another 3 ppm, then the sinks will expand eventually to take 103 ppm out, and an equilibrium is once again achieved. ”
Except that they are not reaching an equilibrium. People arguing with you are not assuming static models, they have several times pointed out that mankind is releasing CO2, but that not all of it is staying in the atmosphere. i.e. the sinks are expanding, but not fast enough. And the data is clear enough that this has been going on for some time now. So where is your equilibrium? Your position appears to be that mankind is releasing extra CO2, but that this not responsible for the observed rise. Instead it is Nature’s fault for not having CO2 sinks with a short enough response time to absorb it. Well you can argue that if you want, but it is not very convincing.

Yes indeed Smokey, it takes time for trees to grow and the ocean to absorb more CO2 etc, but where did that extra CO2 come from in the first place?

“The extra CO2 came from human emissions. So what?”
So what? The “so what” is that Bart, and the OP, and Prof Salby are denying that.
I don’t see how your hypothesis is testable, as we do not have a control planet available – mind you, I do not see that the converse, that CO2 emissions are harmful, is testable either, except by waiting a 100 years and seeing what happens.

The natural sink / source varies greatly depending on ocean surface and land moisture temperatures.
The system is well capable of absorbing ALL human emissions in very short order but in reality the natural variability is currently releasing more CO2 to the air entirely naturally and would be doing so even if our emissions were zero.
The AIRS data shows no excess CO2 over human population centres which suggests rapid local and regional reabsorption by natural sinks.
All the higher CO2 levels are over or downwind of areas of warm ocean surfaces which supports the contention that what matters most is ocean surface temperatures.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Global_carbon_dioxide_AIRS.jpg
All the highest concentrations are downwind of warm water.
The Mediterranean gets very warm in summer so you can see the plume across the Middle East.
Australia gets CO2 from the ocean between it and South Africa.
South America gets CO2 from the Pacific upwind.
Western USA from the Pacifdic upwind .
Southern Asia gets CO2 from the Indian Ocean upwind.
There is a plume of CO2 downwind of the warm Gulf of Mexico.
and so on.
There is little or no significant excess CO2 above or downwind of major population centres such as Western Europe or the North Eastern USA.
The relatively low CO2 quantities above the equator are due to the clouds and rain of the Intertropical convergence zone.
The two main bands of higher CO2 concentration are under the subtropical high pressure systems in each hemisphere where most sunshine gets into the oceans to warm the sea surfaces.
Atmospheric CO2 is clearly driven by sea surface temperatures affecting oceanic absorption capacity and the AIRS results are proof but so far as I know no one else has pointed it out as yet.
Sea surface temperatutres are in turn affected by cloudiness and albedo changes and I have extensively described the causes of that elsewhere
The true extent of natural variability does not show up in the ice core record because of the coarsness of the record which really only reproduces large changes over long periods of time and even then much of the detail is lost.
The sensitivity of the ice core record as a proxy is lost during the process of sealing a section into the ice column. During that sealing process there are multiple melts which progressively deplete the CO2 content as the temperature of the sample rises again at each event in the melt cycle.
It is no coincidence that he old chemical methods of measuring CO2 in the air gave higher results than the ice core proxy methods.
I think the ice core proxy record is and always has been way too low and the current concerns are therefore misplaced.

“Bart says:
April 22, 2012 at 12:07 am
jimmi_the_dalek says:
April 21, 2012 at 9:08 pm
“Except that they are not reaching an equilibrium.”
I never said they were.
Let me clarify that before jimmi… well, let me clarify it. What I said above wiht which he took issue was “then the sinks will expand eventually to take 103 ppm out, and an equilibrium is once again achieved.” Nature is always seeking equilibrium, even if it takes time, and even if it is tracking a moving target.
Please note that I was here talking about 103 ppm per day, and I was tossing up numbers as an example for illustration, not numbers which have any relation to reality, except insofar as I was suggesting anthropogenic emissions which were 3% of natural emissions.
Currently, we are emitting about 3% of natural emissions as they are estimated today. With strong sink feedback, we would quickly settle out to a 3% increase over what nature itself was driving us to. Indeed, we may well have settled out with regard to the anthropogenic input, but still could be being driven higher by natural emissions above and beyond the estimates. That is the whole point.

Bart says:
April 21, 2012 at 3:22 pm
Brian H says:
April 21, 2012 at 1:02 am
“Many have battered themselves silly trying to educate Myrrh.”
Yep. But, “dikranmarsupial” is a viable competitor. I’m not sure which is worse.
==============
And what precisely have you two tried to educate me about where you claim your understanding superior?
I insist on an answer because I have several posts in this thread, your ad hom attack is on all I’ve written in them.

Bart wrote: “That is not a feedback. That is a feed-forward of a constant value, i.e., it is merely a bias input which does not partake in or influence the loop dynamics.
A dynamic feedback would be of the form where the withdrawals change as a function of deposits,”
Nonsense, the wifes withdrawals do change as a function of deposits, it is just that I made (anthropogenic) deposits constant for the sake of simplicity. The analogy would work just as well if my deposits were variable instead of constant, as indeed I pointed out at the time.
“There are three players involved: 1) natural emissions (you) 2) anthropogenic emissions (your wife) 3) sinks (your kid). Period. “
Nonsense, if you want to know whether the rise is natural or anthropogenic then the natural environment consists of both the natural sources and the natural sinks, and it makes no sense to consider them separately. As Prof. Salby correctly says it is the difference betweens emissions and uptake that affects atmospheric concentrations.
Of course it hasn’t escaped my attention that you have quitely changed your argument from separating natural uptake into uptake of anthropogenic CO2 [Una(t)] and natural CO2 [Unn(t)] and after I explained why that wasn’t valid you are now trying to divide up the natural environment in a different but equally invalid method.
Sinks do not discriminate on the basis of “natural” or “anthropogenic,” any more than the kid in this analogy cares whether the money in the account came from his mother or his step-father. ”
It was you that tried to argue that we should consider them separately [Una(t) and Unn(t)], not me. I was just pointing out that such arguments were ridiculous, but it was your argument not mine.

dikranmarsupial says:
April 22, 2012 at 2:38 am
———————-
If you stopped feeding the jar it would not be long before your wife would have emptied it.
Before CAGW existed, at what point did CO2 go to zero?

@Bart
Thanks for the reply and links man. This science stuff is interesting indeed 🙂
Heggs.

Bart wrote: “To tell the truth DM, I never did anything but glance at your scenario. ”
Sadly that has been pretty much the story the whole time. While I am willing to engage with your arguments, you have not been willing to engage with mine, and everytime I have pointed out a flaw in your logic you have just evaded discussion of it and tried some other line of argument. The insults an ad-hominems just conform that you are only interested in rhetorical debate rather than seeking the truth of the matter.
If skeptics seriously want to have an effect on the debate in the real world, like Fred Singer says you need to drop the canards and adopt some self-skepticism.
REPLY: And if you want to be known as anything other than an oversized “rodent” like mammal (per your name/avatar) with a fake name who trashes and insults me regularly on other blogs, have the courage and integrity to put your name to your arguments like I do, or even your hero John Cook does. I find it hilarious that you want to be taken seriously while displaying not one iota of personal integrity yourself. – Anthony Watts