Excerpts from Murry Salby's Slide Show

A couple of months ago I gave a one hour, dumbed-down (a little less atmospheric physics), presentation on Salby’s work on CO2 to a group of retired university types who call themselves “The Eggheads.” They’ve been meeting on a regular basis for several decades now.
Salby’s information was very well received and caused a fair stir among a couple of gentlemen who I knew to be avid alarmists. They looked, and sounded, like they had just had a core belief shaken.
The following is a Dropbox link to a copy of the Powerpoint presentation I created using screen captures from Salby’s lecture. The quality turned out to be quite good, and I used my 55 inch Samsung for the viewer.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/603s1zbrtffxtgf/Egghead%20Presentation%20on%20Salby%27s%20Work.ppt

http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=233
Some other views on dCO2 vs temp

I really wonder when Salby is going to publish something (even just an internet article) where we can properly asses what he’s got to say.
C. Monkton’s snapshots of Salby’s presentation … it’s all getting rather farcical.

Who cares? CO2 does NOT drive temperature/climate. There is no empirical data demonstrating that CO2 drives climate, climate models do but model output is not proof of anything only the ability of the programmer. Present model runs do NOT agree with reality so all FAIL.

‘CO2 is absorbed and emitted at the surface’…what about rain ?…CO2 is fairly soluble in water…with the tiny volume of a cloud droplet…and the very high ratio of surface to volume..all raindrops should be saturated with CO2…IMHO this should be the main mechanism for removal of CO2 from the atmosphere…and the reason why CO2 has not risen as fast as emissions…assuming all the other processes remain the same

Just thinking… in the movie “the untouchables” Sean connery says “it’s just like a whop to
Bring a knife to a gunfight”…….
Today ” it’s just like a denier to bring science to a political fight”
Of couse Without the work of all you we could not fight this b.s. ,,,please carry on and thanks,

http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=259
Since 1995 , when global temps have been in pause, the rate of increase of air-borne CO2 seems remarkably constant 2ppmv/year with an inter-annual variation that is almost a perfect match for AO lagged by 3.5 years , whilst human emission have been steadily climbing.
That would suggest near total absorption of emissions and CO2 out gassing to redress an imbalance due to century long warming. One point for Salby’s line of thinking.
I don’t have an explanation for that but the degree of correlation or the lag, just a probably significant observation.

It’ a good idea to show Salby’s lecture notes. I would like to have seen mention of Salby’s final point, which is that whereas temperature does not track co2, co2 does correlate very well with the integral of temperature. When this is plotted alongside co2, they are virtually identical.

Greg Goodman said:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=259
“Since 1995 , when global temps have been in pause, the rate of increase of air-borne CO2 seems remarkably constant 2ppmv/year with an inter-annual variation that is almost a perfect match for AO lagged by 3.5 years , whilst human emission have been steadily climbing. ”
The AO appears to have an effect on global cloudiness via changes in jet stream behaviour.
If the primary source of oceanic CO2 emissions is the sun warmed ocean surfaces beneath the subtropical high pressure cells as appears to be the case from the AIRS data then it may be significant that those high pressure cells expand and contract with changes in the AO.

Samuel C Cogar says:
November 23, 2013 at 7:18 am
Every raindrop that falls to earth contains CO2 in the form of carbonic acid.
“Pure water has a pH of 7.0 (neutral); however, natural, unpolluted rainwater actually has a pH of about 5.6 (acidic).[”
Thus, rainwate “scrubbs” the air of CO2.

It isn’t just rainwater – fog and condensation are highly acidic and are a commercial problem.
http://www.taylortechnologies.com/ChemistryTopicsCM.ASP?ContentID=82
http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/repositoryfiles/ca4204p6-68791.pdf
This absorbtion of CO2 also true for sea spray, the shimmering rainbow filled mist from waterfalls, wind swept fetches of lake water, and anywhere natural forces cause mixing between water and CO2.

I am struggling to understand this. From my naïve POV, a key question is how the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere affects the rate at which the sinks absorb CO2. If there were no impact, then ISTM that any amount of extra anthropogenic CO2 would remain in the atmosphere and add to its CO2 concentration.
However, I think we know that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere does affect the rate at which the sinks absorb CO2. We’re told that the oceans are acidifying (really,becoming less alkaline), because the higher concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere means that the oceans absorb more CO2. To the degree that higher atmospheric CO2 leads to more plant growth, plants will also take more CO2 out of the atmosphere, as its CO2 concentration increases.
In short, it seems to me that in order to make use of the speed of CO2 absorbtion, we need to know how changes in atmospheric CO2 affect the rate at which the sinks absorb CO2.

UAH Tropics v Mauna Loa:
http://postimg.org/image/orvcqgsyx/full

The excerpts (provided by CM) of a Salby presentation forced me to get a complete and technically validated context; namely the excerpts forced me to review in detail the whole context provided by the video presentation of Murry Salby in Hamburg in April.
Salby deserves a complete context.
I strongly support concerns that biased IPCC centric gate keeping at journals is still something Salby must overcome to get his current research (profoundly critical of the IPCC) published.
John

Part 2 about the trends:
Variation in human emission, at only 1 or 2% a year, is thus uncorrelated with changes in net emission, which are independent of it.
The graphs are rather misleading, by displaying the emissions and the increase in the atmosphere in different graphs. If one combines them, that gives a quite different impression:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
Thus while the changes in the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere are not correlated with the emissions, these changes are changes in sink capacity, not in source capacity…
Human emissions are twice the amount of the average increase in the atmosphere, thus about halve the human emissions (in mass, not individual molecules) disappear in oceans and vegetation. In warm years somewhat less, in cold years somewhat more. But in all years of the past 50 years, nature was a net sink for CO2…
The circulation-dependent naturally-caused component in atmospheric CO2 concentration (blue above), derived solely from temperature and soil moisture changes, coincides with the total CO2 concentration (green). Also, the naturally-caused component in δ13C coincides with observed δ13C (below).
The first graph is simply curve fitting, which isn’t even that good if you compare the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere with the accumulated emissions over the past 50 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_acc_1960_cur.jpg
The second graph is completely wrong, as there is none natural source of low δ13C at work. Only humans emit low δ13C CO2…

“Or is it likely that Salby’s numbers don’t hold up, and a
valid peer-review is preventing publication?”
that is also a possibility that would prevent him wanting to publish outside peer-review.
About time he put his cards on the table.

@gymnosperm: “C4 plants also prefer 12C, they just need a bit less of it.”
Right, so if we’re attempting to shoehorn the argument for normative bio-activity, then a preference for C4 plants as a food source will fixate the 13C elsewhere over time. Remember: The assumption underneath the argument presented is that natural processes dwarf anthropogenic considerations. And that’s certainly true during the summer photosynthetic condition no matter where you stand in the debate. But given the preconditions here, then the winter season returns similar or less 13C then was present during the previous cycle. So: Where does it fixate? That needs a good argument. Maybe there is one, I’ve only got the graphs; so consider it thinking out loud.
@davidmhoffer: “Jquip’s answer is in regard to CO2 created by humans breathing”
Is entirely the point of attack, not defense. eg. Which would you give up? Breathing or smart phone? Which do you discard? An entire nuclear family or a single refrigerator. Don’t let them put you on the defensive about ‘belief’ statements when facts have error bars wider than the Atlantic. Put them on the defensive for what they think we should do about ‘their’ belief. It’s their religion, let them spell out the Levitical diet to stave off the Lake of Fire.

Seems kind of harsh to expect Salby to publish in his current circumstances; however, he has said enough to allow others to reconstruct his work. There’s a brief report at The Hokey Schtick with links to a fuller article. This may provide the documentation that some have been looking for.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/07/swedish-scientist-replicates-dr-murry.html

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 23, 2013 at 10:39 am
“But in all years of the past 50 years, nature was a net sink for CO2…”
There you go again. Meaningless “mass balance” argument. It says nothing on its own regarding whether it would have been a net sink without anthropogenic forcing.

The first graph is missing C13 data points between ~ 1953 and 1979 and the time scale is truncated at 1980 + ( by eye) where is the up to date data.
I think someone published Salby’s paper after the lecture in Germany.

Bart says:
November 23, 2013 at 11:19 am
There you go again. Meaningless “mass balance” argument. It says nothing on its own regarding whether it would have been a net sink without anthropogenic forcing.
It would be meaningless if there were no other indications. But your (and Salby’s) theory of a huge increase of natural emissions + sinks is completely dismissed by all known observations.
And since we are some 110 ppmv above the temperature controlled equilibrium, it is quite certain that if we stop all emissions today, the CO2 level will drop with a decay rate of ~50 years or somewhat less than 40 years half life time…

Ferdinand Engelbeen says, November 23, 2013 at 10:39 am

… there is no natural source of low δ13C at work. Only humans emit low δ13C CO2.

And we know this how, exactly? What proportion of the annual incremental change of CO2 concentration is due to human emmissions and how much of the remainder has been adequately characterised in this manner? Would 4% and a big fat zero sound about right?

AJB: “And we know this how, exactly? ”
This one is actually easy. Fossil fuels are low 13C and so it’s humans. Fossil fuels are low 13C because they’re made of plants, essentially. And, of course, modern plants are low 13C, so future fossil fuels made of current plants will be low 13C.
Point of fact, the question isn’t really what things are low 13C, it’s how 13C ever got high in the first place. The standard notion is that photosynthetic life preferentially grabs the 12C, depletes it from the atmosphere, and there you have it. And so by returning the 12C by burning fossil fuels we are — in essence — returning to a prehistoric atmosphere. Which is where Salby’s theory runs into issues in dealing with the 13C ratio. The rest is all pleasant.

AJB says:
November 23, 2013 at 11:45 am
And we know this how, exactly? What proportion of the annual incremental change of CO2 concentration is due to human emmissions and how much of the remainder has been adequately characterised in this manner? Would 4% and a big fat zero sound about right?
AJB, as said before: there are two main sources of low δ13C at work: (human) CO2 from fossil organics and (natural) CO2 from recent organics. Recent organics are a proven sink for CO2 as deduced from the oxygen balance. Thus not the cause of the recent decline in δ13C. Rests human CO2.
But if you have knowledge of any substantial source of low δ13C that strictly follows the same decline as seen in the atmosphere and the ocean surface, I stand corrected.

Bart says:
November 23, 2013 at 11:58 am
Bart, we have been there before. Your take on anything that doesn’t fit your theory is that the data must be wrong. Or the interpretation of the data must be wrong. Just like Salby does for ice core data.
You dismiss the fact that the whole biosphere is a net sink for CO2.
You dismiss the fact that any substantial emission from the oceans would increase the d13C ratio in the atmosphere, while we see a firm decrease.
These two points are proven facts, not interpretations. If you have some information that these facts are wrong, I like to see some proof of that…
Temperature influenced, not controlled, and we are very close to it.
800 kyr of ice cores show a CO2 level for the current temperature of ~290 ppmv, not 400 ppmv. Over that period, there was a very strict, near-linear ratio between CO2 and T at about 8 ppmv/K. That even holds over the MWP-LIA transition in the medium-resolution (20 years) Law Dome ice core.
According to your theory, the current equilibrium must be over 400 ppmv for the current temperature, because CO2 levels still increase in the atmosphere from natural emissions…
But of course, the ice cores must be wrong, because they don’t fit the theory?

Bart says:
November 23, 2013 at 12:04 pm
So, they do fit his theory assuming migration such as he shows fits well with the data.
His calculated migration is physically impossible, as that implies and ever increasing peak back in time for every interglacial and an ever decreasing CO2 level in the glacial periods in between. The latter simply destroys all life on earth if sustained over even one period of 90,000 years.
Thus his theoretical huge migration doesn’t exist and his match is not based on any existing physical process. Thus hereby his theory completely failed.

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 23, 2013 at 12:24 pm
These are mere assertions on your part. I do not care enough to look into it myself, because modern data is already enough to confirm that CO2 concentration in recent history is driven by natural conditions. But, I trust that an eminent climatologist like Dr. Salby, with a reputation for painstakingly scrupulous work, has carefully evaluated his model and has not made any elementary mistakes such as you allege.

davidmhoffer says:
November 23, 2013 at 10:36 am
James V says:
November 23, 2013 at 10:25 am
Jquip and William Astley Thanks
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Jquip’s answer is in regard to CO2 created by humans breathing which has pretty much nothing to do with the debate since it is so small. The debate is in regard to CO2 from anthropogenic sources. My more detailed explanation is upthread, inadvertently in moderation due to my copy/paste of your use of the “d” word. In any event, the numbers you are looking for are 280 ppm for pre-industrial and 400 ppm current.
——————————————————————————————————
The question was:
“what % of total atmospheric C02 is man made right now?”
You have indicated the overall increase in CO2.
The answer surely is the human CO2 say 7 Gt/yr divided by natural CO2 150 Gt/yr as a percentage: 4.6 %
i.e still “peanuts”

Stephen Wilde says:
November 23, 2013 at 12:18 pm
As it happens the 1850 start point used by Ferdinand correlates not only with the industrial revolution but also a recovery phase from the LIA though there was another dip around 1900.
About the (far) past: the change in δ13C over a glacial-interglacial interval was a few tenths per mil δ13C. That is for a huge change (5-10 K) in temperature, land and ice area, biological life in oceans and over land.
Over the whole Holocene, the variability of δ13C also was a few tenths of a per mil.
Since ~1850 we see a drop of near 2 per mil. Ten times more than over a galcial-interglacial transition. Do you think that is all natural? See again the change over 600-150 years ago and after that:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif
More oceanic biological activity involving photosynthesis and plankton when the climate system warms could be a better candidate than human emissions for the decline in C13 relative to C12.
Is there any evidence to the contrary ?
Yes: the fact that large areas of the oceans are net CO2 emitters in summer and net absorbers for the rest of the year. Just contrary to land plants. The emissions hapens in summer, despite a decrease in DIC (total carbon) caused by biolife and emissions to the atmosphere.
See Fig. 4 in:
http://www.biogeosciences.net/9/2509/2012/bg-9-2509-2012.pdf
and FIg. 1 in:
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/30/12235.full.pdf
and Fig. 5-2 in:
http://www.umeoce.maine.edu/docu/Fujii-JO-2009.pdf
Moreover, biolife in the ocean surface layer increases the δ13C ratio of that layer compared to the deep oceans, as part of the produced organics drop out of the surface layer.
Including some partitioning at the ocean-air border (and reverse), any substantial emission from the oceans would increase the δ13C of the atmosphere, thus the oceans are not the cause of the δ13C decrease in the atmosphere.

fine…..as long as you ignore carbon life forms….and never admit CO2 was limiting
If you pretend CO2 was not so low it was limiting…..you can wonder about sinks

Stephen Wilde: “Is there any evidence to the contrary ?”
If you dig into the ice core records you’ll see that the ratio can vary as Ferdinand mentioned in his response to you. By the same token, it can vary, both ways, at the maximal extent mentioned during a flat line period of CO2 ppm. So… yes, seems it can vary quite a bit and independent on ppm changes. To do so requires that there are natural processes running directly the contrary. Doesn’t make any difference what it is necessarily. Simply: It’s permissible to state in some respect.
But this puts Salby in the same position as the normative theories. “It’s different now.” Each have their own take on what was, what is, and what necessarily changed in the now to make it all work. About the strongest I’ll commit to on Salby’s case is that it’s a ridiculously good correlation to temp+soil (however that’s derived) and the CO2 derivative. Beyond that I find as many problems with his as with the normative considerations.

I expect it reasonable to predict that as the Earth cools, atmospheric CO2 will spike sharply from natural causes. (Of course the alarmists will then argue, when this occurs, that poor Mother Nature can no longer choke-down the anthropogenic emission – she has had her fill from us. But that will be a misinterpretation of this natural process.) Further explanation below:
During the Little Ice Age, natural sinks had overtaken sources so atmospheric CO2 fell (caused by cooling). The warming since then has stimulated natural sources which, in turn, have stimulated natural sinks. And the sources are now out in front, with our modest help to be sure. But both sources and sinks have been growing far more rapidly than our anthropogenic contribution in absolute terms. So if our contribution were to be removed in its entirety, there would be little identifiable change. Microbial and insect emissions would more than make up the difference if we let them**. And had we not contributed our 2%, the vegetative sinks would have been most likely under-stimulated by a somewhat similar amount such that there would be little identifiable change. (The water tub analogy where a spigot is filling the CO2 tub, while a drain is draining it, is entirely misleading in the way it is often presented as there is a clearly coupled relationship between changes to the rates of input and output – at least till a saturation event occurs.)
And if the Earth continues to be warm but then starts to cool, at some likely predictable point the photosynthetic sequestering sinks will saturate (so that their increasing capacity to sink CO2 will quit increasing; and then for the same continued cooling causes, these sinks will subsequently and rapidly reverse to a decreasing capacity to absorb CO2; while the emission sources more slowly respond; and the oceans, in particular, fail to respond for many decades). Then very steep atmospheric spiking will ensue just as it so often has in the past. It is very likely that photosynthetic sequestering (biological response) provides an enormous (geologically real-time) negative feedback to additional atmospheric CO2 until such time as it saturates. This predicted saturation event is not likely very near if the planet continues to slide sideways on temperature. However, a near-term solar-driven mini ice age may likely accelerate this predictable spiking event into the near term (i.e. atmospheric CO2 will likely increase sharply soon).

Let us do this very simply; we use a very simple three box model which consists of the atmosphere, the surface layer of the ocean and the deep ocean, where CO2 is represented as a volume of fluid, and it attempts to reach steady state or dynamic equilibrium, due to gravity.
http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w318/DocMartyn/reseviours_zps4776b7df.png
Before we began burning fossil fuels the atmosphere had 600 GtC, the well mixed surface waters 1000 GtC and the depths 37,000 GtC.
Now carbon from the atmosphere mixes with the surface layer at rate A; at steady state the overall rates of transfer between the two reservoirs was identical, 600*efflux rate = 1,000*influx rate.
The surface layer also talks to the lower bulk ocean and at steady state the influx and efflux rates were identical.
Then we did two things, we burnt a lot of fossil fuels and we exploded nuclear weapons in the atmosphere generating a pulse of 14CO2 in the atmosphere.
We know the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (Keeling), the amount of CO2 we placed in the atmosphere (Andre) and the 14CO2 ratio in the atmosphere (Levin and Kromer) for the 1970-2003 period.
http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w318/DocMartyn/DecayofEuropean14C1970-2003_zpsaf4cba3c.png
Now because we inject 12CO2 in the atmosphere, we dilute the 14CO2 ratio, so we have to do a correction for this, to work out the rate that 14CO2 is transported from the atmosphere into the ocean.
After the dilution effect we get a half-life for atmospheric 14CO2 of 12.3 years.
Now on our reservoir figure we have two rates, the rate of transfer from the atmosphere and the upper ocean and from the upper ocean into the depths. In such a simple system one of those rates is going to be rate limiting, but we cannot immediately state which is limiting.
We have a little problem in that we do not know what the levels of 14CO2 are in the upper oceans. Imagine that Rate A, is very fast, say that half of the total CO2 in the atmosphere exchanges with the surface in one month. This would mean that the atmosphere and upper oceans exist as a single system with respect 14CO2; during the period of the bomb tests both reservoirs reached dynamic equilibrium before 1970 and the disappearance rate after 1970 is Rate B, the transfer rate between the upper surface and the very large depths.
We do something about the relative sizes of Rate A and Rate B. Firstly, neither can be lower than 0.0563 per year; the only place for atmospheric 14CO2 to go to is the upper surface, and the only places CO2 in the upper surface can go to is up or down. If Rate B is slow, we quickly reach a dynamic equilibrium between the atmosphere and upper ocean, it saturates, and we would see a biphasic 14CO2 decay curve, an initial rapid rate (which we might have missed if Rate A is large) and then a slower rate due to limiting transfer between the upper ocean and the depths. We observe no biphasicity, and we observe 2.8 half-lives up to 2003, and we know from other series that first order kinetics continue for at least a decade.
So the bottom lines are that Rate A and rate B are equal to or greater than 0.0563 y-1.
So what is the rate of bulk transfer of excess, fossil fuel derived CO2?
Essentially, 50% of the CO2 we inject into he atmosphere disappears each year, the kinetics of this I will do later

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 23, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Thanks for the various links and I’m sorry if I’m a bit obtuse but could you refer me to the specific portion(s) that suggest that oceanic emissions of CO2 are not predominantly of the C12 isotope.
Just speculating that :
“bio life in the ocean surface layer increases the δ13C ratio of that layer compared to the deep oceans, as part of the produced organics drop out of the surface layer.”
needs something in support, I think.
Is it in those links somewhere?

About the new added parts:
This stochastic variability is uncorrelated with the near-monotonic increase in anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.
If we follow this reasoning: because there is no correlation between the monotonic increase of temperature, meltwater, tectonic movements or whatever may influence sealevel and the tide gauge measurements, these are not responsible for the rise in sealevel, but the waves, tides, storms and whatever further causes the stochastic variability in tide gauge measurements are responsible for the sealevel changes.
We are talking about a multivariate system, where human emissions and temperature are the main driving variables and the increase in the atmosphere is the dependent variable. Temperature is the main cause of the short term variability of 4-5 ppmv/K and of the (very) long term variability of ~8 ppmv/K. Humans are responsible for the bulk of the increase since ~1850.
Natural temperature change and variability in soil moisture, not anthropogenic emission, is the chief driver of changes in CO2 concentration.
Everybody agrees that the fast temperature changes and soil moisture are the main drivers for the fast changes in sink capacity of vegetation and oceans. See Pieter Tans in:
http://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/co2conference/pdfs/tans.pdf from sheet 11 on.
But that doesn’t tell you anything about the cause of the increase in the atmosphere.

ferdberple says:
November 23, 2013 at 2:52 pm
that is the IPCC argument that CO2 must be the cause of warming because we can’t think of anything else. Your argument is a logical fallacy.
Except that in the case of δ13C, the amounts which are emitted by humans are already good for three times the δ13C decline which is observed in the atmosphere and the δ13C decline in atmosphere (and ocean surface) exactly follows human emissions over time.
We can’t say that of the temperature trend and human emissions…
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_zero.jpg

William Astley says:
November 23, 2013 at 1:10 pm
To explain that observation using the IPCC’s model, the missing sink must magically increase hiding more CO2 which does not make sense. How does one explain that observation?
Both the oceans and the biosphere are expanding sinks when the pCO2 (~ppmv) in the atmosphere increases: the absorbance of the oceans (and plant alveoles water) inreases in ratio with the pCO2 difference between atmosphere and water. As CO2 increases, the uptake increases.
For the oceans, at the warm upwelling zones, an increase of pCO2 in the atmosphere will decrease the pCO2 difference, thus reducing the influx of CO2 from there.
Both human emissions and increase in the atmosphere are slightly quadratic increasing over time. That leads to a slightly quadratic increase in sink capacity over time and an incredible fixed ratio between human emissions and increase in the atmosphere.
Some warned for a saturation of the (deep) oceans, decreasing the % uptake of human emissions, but for the moment there is not the slightest sign for such a decrease.
A temperature increase of 1 K causes a CO2 increase of ~16 ppmv in seawater, the 100+ ppmv increase caused by human emissions by far exceeds that.
When detailed CO2 change latitudinal analysis is done on the CO2 rise, the rise occurs in the Southern hemisphere which does not make sense as the majority of the anthropogenic source is in the Northern hemisphere.
I suppose that theory comes from Tom Quirk? It is anyway wrong: the NH CO2 measurements lead the SH measurements with 6 months to 2 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends_1995_2004.jpg
CH4 is primary inorganic
I don’t think many geologists will agree with that, but that is not a point of interest for me. Even if it is all inorganic, there are no signs (in atmospheric levels) that it is increasing rapidely.
And indeed we will see what happens if the earth cools, I am pretty sure that CO2 levels still will increase, be it somewhat less fast…
[ .. “(and plant alveoles water)” .. ? Phrase missing? Mod]

We know the half-life for CO2 in the atmosphere is about 5 years based on bomb 14C (rate constant k= -0.1354 /yr). That provides information about the magnitude of the total flux from sinks and sources. My estimate of the total flux of CO2 out of the atmosphere then is about 413 Gton/yr based on 400ppmv CO2 and 5.3×10^6 Gton total atmosphere [1]. This CO2 flux quantity compares well with the IPCC estimate of about 450 Gton/yr [2,3].
The anthropogenic contribution is about 36 Gton/yr [4].
The Mauna Loa net flux is about 2ppmv/yr which is about 16 Gton/yr increase [5]. This CO2 increase is 0.5% of total CO2, and about 4% of the CO2 flux. Is it anthropogenic?
A claim that 57% of human CO2 (hCO2) is absorbed [2] doesn’t make much sense. Is it 57% of hCO2 over all time? Each year? We can estimate the steady-state amount of hCO2 if the rate of production is constant as Co and the rate constant of absorption is k. The steady-state amount would be Co/k. The value is about 7.39 *Co using the k from 14C decay (see above). Using ORNL CO2 estimates of world CO2 production [6] from 1751 to 2010, we can estimate the current (2010) amount of hCO2 in the atmosphere since 1751. A correction factor of 0.935 is applied to the input hCO2 quantities to correct for discrete calculation by year rather than say daily. Atmospheric hCO2 increases exponentially, just as the yearly human inputs increase exponentially. The constant ratio is 1/k.
The total hCO2 emitted is 1303 Gton worldwide since 1751. My estimate for the amount of hCO2 in the atmosphere is about 200 Gton, which equates to 85% absorbed. If the 2ppmv CO2 increase were due to hCO2, or 16 Gton/y. Since most of the hCO2 in the atmosphere is from prior years, the yearly increase of hCO2 is much lower, only about 4.5 Gton/yr currently. However, the Mauna Loa increase is about 4 times the yearly hCO2 increase. The rate constants for hCO2 increase and atmospheric CO2 increase differ by an order of magnitude.
I attempted to fit atmospheric CO2 with the known change in hCO2 (assuming the 14C rate constant is correct, half-life ~5 years). A differential equation assuming a fixed natural outgassing of natural CO2 (nCO2) plus exponentially increasing hCO2 was solved [Eq. 1, see Notes] to fit the Mauna Loa data. A value of 342 Gtons/yr nCO2 fits 1959, or 400 Gtons/y nCO2 fits 2010. The conclusion is natural outgassing has increased from about 340 Gtons/y in the first half of the 20th century to about 400 Gtons/y in the latter half. The nCO2 outgassing rate could be much higher now.
CO2 total = No/k * (1 – e ^ -kt ) + Ho/(h+k) * (e ^ ht – e ^ -kt ) + (No + Ho) * e ^ -kt [Eq. 1]
The bomb CO2 flux estimate could be a bit low since it was derived from old data. The rate could be higher now because organisms could easily respond to higher CO2 levels and net consume more of it than they did 40 years ago. A hallmark of life is homeostasis. If the biosphere were not capable of handling perturbations, life would have largely gone extinct long ago. Only simple organisms in stable environments like underground would persist.
It is much more likely biology is quite capable of handling a slight imbalance of CO2 such as the human contribution. The increase in CO2 is probably due to a shift in the equilibrium. Perhaps the various rate constants associated with different fluxes are affected by temperature. We know average temperatures have increased very slightly over the last century. Some ascribe this increase to CO2 increases. It is very hard to believe the slight change in CO2 can affect the radiation of energy to space at night significantly. Clearly, water vapor would dominate any changes in IR emission and re-radiation back to the surface. Consequently, it is more likely CO2 changes are an interesting footnote in climate change, but not a driver.
Notes
In equation 1, No is nCO2 outgassing rate from sources, -k is the CO2 loss rate constant, i.e. CO2 to sinks. Ho is the starting hCO2 amount, and h is the rate constant for hCO2 increase per year. The parameter t is the number of years since 1751. -k = -0.13541, h = 0.03482, Ho = 0.005, and No varied as described. It is important to start the time well before 1959 to have the nCO2 values stabilized by 1959. See the basic solution strategy in my post a few days ago [8].
Refs
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere
3 http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/contents.html
4 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Carbon_Emissions.svg
5 http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
6 http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/CSV-FILES/
7 ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_annmean_mlo.txt
8 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/21/on-co2-residence-times-the-chicken-or-the-egg/#comment-1481426

eric1skeptic says:
November 23, 2013 at 5:17 pm
“From Bart’s “hard evidence” graph looking at 1997-1998, I see about 0.26 ppm CO2 rise for about 0.18K temperature rise which is a little under 1.5 ppm/K.”
You aren’t using the right units. The equation is dCO2/dt = 0.19*T + 0.14. The derivative is in units of ppmv/month, so the scale factor is 0.19 ppmv/month/K.

Fredinand,
“The average from plant decay and of fossil fuel burning is around -25 per mil, thus hardly distinguishable.”
Doesn’t Salby suggest that temperature increases biological activity in the soil, which would have the same effect as burning fossil fuels ?
“But there are two possibilities to differentiate between fossil fuel emissions and plant decay:
– the 14C content of fossil fuel is zero:…”
From what I can see 14C follows temperature over the past thousand years. It looks well removed from the graph of man’s C emissions.

“Nick Stokes
It is much more likely biology is quite capable of handling a slight imbalance of CO2 such as the human contribution.”
Slight? The amount of C we’ve emitted is about equal to the entire mass of vegetation. How can it be hidden?”
Nick, just for a moment imagine that that Faraday, playing with electrodes and water, came up with cold-fusion and that humankind was able to generate electricity from surface nuclear fusion (in a fictional universe). Now human-kind continues it progress in much the same way, but there amount of fossil fuels burnt is trivial, and they never quite get into concrete.
What would the atmospheric CO2 level be?
My guess is that in the fictional world the Greens would be worrying about global cooling caused by human emission of phosphates and nitrates into the worlds oceans.
The sheer mass of primary nutrients supplied to photosynthetic marine organisms in cold-fusion world would drop atmospheric [CO2] below 250 ppm. The loss of this green house gas would cause global cooling, with no bounce back from the little ice age and now all our food plants would by carbon restricted, as the pCO2 drops, the ability to feed the population is becoming increasingly difficult. Cold fusion world is in a bind, the only way to grow enough food is to keep mining phosphates and making nitrates, to put on he fields, but this ends up in the aquasphere, making CO2/DIC the limiting nutrient. The seas bloom and the world cools.
Some heretical climate scientists suggest digging up coal and burning it, but these geoengineers are treated with scorn as the amount of coal needed to raise the steady state level of CO2 back to 280 ppm is huge, and calculations show that the residency time is only 12 years.

gopal panicker says:
>‘CO2 is absorbed and emitted at the surface’…what about rain ?…CO2 is fairly soluble in water…with the tiny volume of a cloud droplet…and the very high ratio of surface to volume..all raindrops should be saturated with CO2…IMHO this should be the main mechanism for removal of CO2 from the atmosphere…and the reason why CO2 has not risen as fast as emissions…assuming all the other processes remain the same
++++++
Thank goodness this is getting some attention. It is amazing to see such a large CO2 stripping mechanism missing from the conversation.
Greg Goodman says:
>Salt water absorbs much more but rain must help the reaction rate by scrubbing the air.
Um….no. I think fresh water presently absorbs (very rapidly) 1128 ppm at sea level and the oceans are about 620 ppm because they are a) salt water and b) full of CO2-strippers.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
>Fresh water may absorb some CO2, but with 0.0004 bar in the atmosphere the quantities are very low.
I think 1128 ppm is high. Water sucks it in like a molecular sponge. You can taste the difference by boiling some water and leaving it to cool in a closed cup, and tasting the same boiled water open to the air for 24 hours. The taste difference is the change in pH by absorption of CO2. Henry’s Law and alla that.
>I calculated it some time ago: if the rain absorbs CO2 to saturation at the (cold) place of formation, drops to the ground and evaporates again, 1 mm of rain (1 l/m2) will give an increase of 1 ppmv in the first meter (1 m3) of air. That is all. Simply negligible…
Well, most rain falls into the ocean. Rain that falls and runs into rivers has by definition not evaporated. Rain is, net, a CO2 stripping mechanism. When water droplets form they are very small and absorb CO2 rapidly with a huge surface area per gram. Then they join hands to fall. Clouds >0° C are full of CO2 – far more concentrated than open air per cubic metre.
fhhaynie says:
>I think the absorption of CO2 in tropical clouds is controlling the global concentration and distribution. Water droplets get colder with altitude. Equilibrium between air and water is maintained as the air rises. Some of that water falls as rain but some at the top of the clouds freezes. When it freezes, it releases CO2 into the upper atmosphere where it is transported toward the poles where it is absorbed by cold polar water (not ice).
Lots of CO2 is transported north within the clouds using water droplets as vehicles. The Northern Hemisphere loses liquid water and accumulates a great deal of winter ice and snow which of course contains no CO2. This applies to all soil that freezes, lake surfaces (which have less CO2 than water drops, BTW) resulting in a rather obvious NH Winter increase in the global CO2 level. It is not plants breathing that we see at Mauna Loa, it is the cryosphere.
The ‘cold polar water’ is only uncovered in summer which allows it to absorb CO2. Combined with the melting of all the ice and snow, the CO2 level drops – and it drops far more than anything we do or do not emit. I saw it claimed years ago by some alarmist that the rise in NH winter CO2 was caused by, ‘industrialized nations burning fossil fuels to keep warm’. No number attached, of course.
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/evidence-that-oceans-not-man-control-co2-emissions/ has the quote: “The relatively low CO2 quantities above the equator are due to the clouds and rain of the Intertropical Convergence Zone.”

If a temp dip does cause a flattening or reversal of CO2 concentration, the game will be once and truly over. By that time (whenever it comes) China alone will likely be exceeding all current Anthro-emissions.

Janice Moore: “Is the reason so few of you watch this because the introduction is made in Deutsch? Dr. Salby speaks in English. The lecture is in English.
Is it the fact that I, someone you detest and or whose opinions you do not respect, is the one posting Salby’s lecture?
PLEASE DO NOT LET THE MESSENGER (me) DISTRACT FROM THE MESSAGE (Salby’s lecture).”
Firstly Janice, I’ve seen you name a few times here but have no idea what you stand for and have no reason not to have the neutral ‘respect’ for your opinions that anyone gets until they denote themselves one way or the other. I was unaware you were associate with the presentation. I generally skip the obligatory intro guff on such speeches and fast forward to the meat. Don’t over-rate your own importance.
Germans are generally a rigorous and serious lot (with characters like Ramnsdorf showing that are capable of being rigorously and seriously foolish too. ). German is generally a positive prejudice for me.
My first introduction the Salby’s was his Hamburg lecture, which I found very interesting but annoyingly superficial. I assumed there would be more in publications somewhere. But no.
I listened to it twice in a row to make sure I had not missed the crucial bit where he proved it or referred us to other work. But no.
After seeing the lecture I searched out his email and sent him some suggestions and questions. I got no reply but was later see the U. Macquerie fiasco and realised they would have binned any emails they received to his account.
So yes I did listen to it all (twice). I’m not put off by who introduced it nor by the german language or the fact it happened in Germany. My opinion is based on what he has and HAS NOT presented.
Since you presumably have some means to contact Murry Sably, perhaps you can pass on the message that his credibility is being damaged by his lack of putting something concrete up for inspection. If he is being blocked by gate-keeping he needs to go public via other means. He was claiming to be “weeks away” for publication about 2 years ago. It’s wearing thin.
If he has something that stands up to scrutiny, it could knock AGW hypothesis for six. With the IPCC pushing hard to endebt us for hundreds of $BILLIONS each year for generations to come we need to see it NOW.
TIME TO SEE WHAT HE’S GOT.

UPDATE says: “Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.”
There is a strong correlation of dCO2 and SST, that has been established several times by different authors. But that does not preclude a different component being present in long term change.
It’s a bit like not removing the seasonal variation and then saying there’s no correlation between other factors which only becomes apparent once you improve the signal to noise ratio by filtering out the annual cycle.
This is a complex interaction and will not be understood by make trivial statements like the above.

thanks for the paper link Nick.
” Including these processes, the western equatorial Pacific CO2 flux is modified from an ocean source of +0.019 mol CO2 m−2 yr−1 to an ocean sink of −0.078 mol CO2 m−2 yr−1. ”
Enough to reverse the role of ocean from source to sink in that region.
Unfortunately pay-walled as usual at JRL

http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=651
The rates of change we see in the annual cycle 14 ppmv/year OUT for about 0.6 of the year and 19 ppmv/year IN for 0.4 of the year and the magnitude of the annual cycle in volume (150Gt) both suggest that annual emissions equivalent to 4ppmv could be absorbed totally, unless things have evolved to just fit the required natural swing.
There will be factor of out-gassing due to steady increase since LIA.
Put the two together and you see a net sink of CO2 due to the presence of emissions as well as a residual long term rise determined by SST. This is the Salby description.
Now whether the natural sinks can absorb that magnitude each year every year without saturating and reducing their capacity to absorb is less clear.
This leads to a less than total absorption of emissions and a long term rise that is a mix of residual and out-gassing. This will still carry a strong correlation with changes in SST.
It has been noted that the percentage of residual emissions has been falling since around 1990. That could indicate that atm CO2 is getting further from equilibrium leading to faster correction (this argues against total absorption) or it could be the result of a more active biosphere (which could be consistent with total absorption).
Sadly not black and white answers, probably a mix of all of those in unknown proportions.

Ferdi, two problems with you back of envelop figures:
“If water evaporated from a surface of around 30°C, there will be a drop of about 2% water in air into droplets at near 0°C (at sealevel pressure).”
a) Clouds do not usually form at SLP but at the tropopause.
b) what are you calculating anyway?
This not a once in a lifetime event , it is a continual process. What you need to show is the integral of how much per year is removed or how this will affect the equilibrium.
Your result has the right units but what does it represent physically?

“BTW, the CH4 levels in the previous interglacial were around 700 ppbv at higher temperatures than today. We are currently at 1800 ppbv, the difference certainly is man-made too…”
Oh certainly! So by the same logic the fact that the length of day is now longer than during that period is our fault too? OMG we’re going stop the Earth turning unless we act NOW !

” I can explain the C13 changes if someone is interested.”
I’m interested.

“If Bart and Salby are right, then we have different CO2 rates for every period in time: 0.002 ppmv/K/yr for a glacial-interglacial transition (100 ppmv over 5000 years and 10°C), zero ppmv/K/yr for a glacial period over 90,000 years and zero ppmv/K/year over an interglacial period of 10,000 years, 0.15 ppmv/K/yr for the MWP-LIA transition (6 ppmv, 0.8 K, 50 years) and again zero ppmv/K/yr for most of the Holocene. But nowadays we have a sudden increase of 1.5 ppmv/K/yr over the past 50 years…”
Ferdi, you are trying to make it sound ridiculously complicated and thus illogical and improbable.
Here’s a more sensible way to look at the same figures:
zero ppmv/K/yr for a glacial period over 90,000 years and zero ppmv/K/year over an interglacial period of 10,000 years
0.002 ppmv/K/yr for a glacial-interglacial transition (100 ppmv over 5000 years and 10°C)
> 5000 years system has equilibrated. Circa 800 y lag in ice record suggests a circa 800y time constant. Five time constants (4000y) >99% final value.
The last interglacial transition was not a one way 5000 year event , it included an almost total reversal in Y-D event so that time period may be shorter for 0.002 ppmv/K/yr but of the order of 1000 years.
“and again zero ppmv/K/yr for most of the Holocene.”
Within the resolution of the data a fairly stable period in moderate equilibrium. We don’t have decadal scale resolution to compare with recent years, so we can’t do it.
” 0.15 ppmv/K/yr for the MWP-LIA transition (6 ppmv, 0.8 K, 50 years) ”
Unlike 5000 years, 50 years will not equilibrate with the deep oceans. What we are seeing here is the smaller volume of moderate depths. This will result in strong , faster response. We are not looking at a 800 time constant here !
My plots of dCO2 vs SST derived 8ppm/K/year as an even shorter inter-annual response an 4ppmv/K/year inter-decadal.
All that seems totally consistent and simply implies different time-scales for different depths as would be expected.
Your suggestion that a one-size-fits-all model can be applied to 10 and 50 year change as well a 5000 years is, on the other hand, clearly unrealistic physically.

Greg Goodman says:
November 24, 2013 at 3:14 am
a) Clouds do not usually form at SLP but at the tropopause.
Agreed, but it is maximum 3% water in air at evaporation in hot equatorial waters, if that all drops out, it is 50% more than calculated, still negligible for local measurements.
b) what are you calculating anyway?
This not a once in a lifetime event , it is a continual process. What you need to show is the integral of how much per year is removed or how this will affect the equilibrium.
I have calculated it on the base that in the past several insisted that e.g. the Mauna Loa readings may be affected by (local) rain and local levels near-ground. But locally the change in levels is completely unimportant.
Because the total mass on the move is gigantic, the CO2 mass movement indeed (as Nick says) is not negligible. But the residence time of water is only a few days in the atmosphere. Thus any change in water circulation (and transported CO2) will rain out in a few days. If there are no changes in difference between inputs and putputs, which is hardly possible for the water cycle, there is no change in CO2 levels of oceans, atmosphere, rivers, etc.
Even if global warming increased the water cycle with 10%, it doesn’t make a difference in CO2 levels and the 10% increase in CO2 mass circulation may increase rock weathering, but that still is negligible for the carbon balance…

Thanks Ferdi. You have some useful stuff. It would be great if I did not have to prod you for sources all the time.
Doesn’t CH4 match the ‘plateau’ in temps quite well too?

Greg Goodman says:
November 24, 2013 at 4:16 am
“but the e-fold decay rate from an injection of extra CO2 is ~50 years:”
Where do you get that figure from?
I should have learned to give the references by now, but as the responses come at high speed, it takes to much of my time. But anyway:
The current increase in the atmosphere is 230 GtC(110 ppmv) above equilibrium (of ~290 ppmv) for the current temperature. The observed absorbance is ~4.5 GtC/yr (~2.15 ppmv/yr). That gives an e-fold time of 230/4,5/yr or ~51 years.

Greg Goodman says:
November 24, 2013 at 5:23 am
Doesn’t CH4 match the ‘plateau’ in temps quite well too?
Hardly:
http://www.aemet.izana.org/images/stories/news/CH4_IZO_1984_2009.pdf
Not even an effect of the 1992 Pinatubo or 1998 El Niño and little difference in slope for 1990-2000 and after 2000.
What I have heard is that the change in slope is mainly from better maintenance of natural gas lines/leaks, reduction in direct methane releases from oil exploration and transformation from traditional wet rice plantation to “dry” rice growing.

Ferdi: “The current increase in the atmosphere is 230 GtC(110 ppmv) above equilibrium (of ~290 ppmv) for the current temperature. The observed absorbance is ~4.5 GtC/yr (~2.15 ppmv/yr). That gives an e-fold time of 230/4,5/yr or ~51 years.”
Thanks,
You appear to have assumed that the assumed pre-industrial value of 280 plus the assumed 10 ppm rise you attribute to temp increase is the current equilibrium without emissions.
You also assume all increase is residual emm. If those assumptions are not correct there is more thermal rise and more complete absorption of anth.em. , then the decay time will fall a lot.
That may be useful somewhere.

” http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
again ~8 ppmv/K sustained over ~200 years for the temperature variation over the LIA until ~1800.”
Law Dome DSS, there is about 8ppm drop across two data intervals (34y ) and then about 7ppm rise [from] 1750 -1800
I see no reason to believe that either rapid event lead to an equilibrium state. That gives average rate of change of 0.24 and 0.14 ppm/year. But Law Dome does not have a temp proxy , what are you using for that?

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.fr/2013/09/mathematical-observational-proof-that.html
“If you can’t explain the ‘pause’, you can’t explain the cause…”
Neat.

Greg Goodman says:
November 24, 2013 at 6:52 am
But Law Dome does not have a temp proxy , what are you using for that?
Law Dome dD and d18O can’t be used, as the moisture catch area is from the nearby Southern Oceans and the inland ice cores are too coarse (but CO2 still is global). Thus I needed one of the many multiproxy temperature reconstructions over the past millennium (Esper or Moberg, can’t remember which one I used). In any case not MBH, as you may expect…

Paul Schauble: “Could corn used to make ethanol for motor fuels make a difference?”
Not in this context. The only point of distinction between a bio fuel and a fossil fuel is whether we’re regrowing the crop or not: They’re both bio fuels. So if we harvest down corn for ethanol, and replant, then we can — crudely — consider it a zero-sum condition. It puts 12C and 13C back in circulation for diffusion and respiration certainly, but the fixation preference of C4 plants remains.
The issue of interest is whether or not we can find preferential or neutral 13C fixation in animal life. As this permits a manner for the natural variation side of 13C ratio variation. And it simply must exist, as the ice cores show such variation themselves. On that end, I was popping back in to drop off a tidbit I scoured up on the subject. Which is that for rats, and then by assumption more mammals, there is indeed a significant preference to fixate 13c in muscle, liver, and collagen tissue. But a preference for 12c in fat. The balance, for exhaled CO2 is to be significantly depleted in 13C relative the diet of the animal. But this varies significantly depending on just what the diet is in toto. Specifically it’s not so much a preference for 12 or 13 C as such, but of plant molecules that have fixed those. An interesting bit to feed the brain and stir ideas: http://intl-icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/42/1/21.full
So I’ll call it a good guess generally. Or at least something that’s worth chasing if the info can be found, or the interest and funding intersects.

Ferdinand said:
“Now if we look at the CO2 record, of the 70 ppmv over the past 50 years, maximum 10 ppmv is from the temperature increase only”
That assumes that the temperature increase in the topmost layer of sun warmed oceans in the subtropics when global cloudiness decreased during the late 20th century is limited to the average global atmospheric temperature increase (leaving out the issue of UHI and data manipulation).
In reality, more sunlight into oceans is going to result in much greater local temperature increases possibly involving the extra solar input driving out CO2 from the water whilst the thermal inertia of the ocean bulk and increased evaporation minimises any bulk ocean temperature change.
I don’t think Ferdinand’s simplistic assumptions necessarily reflect the reality.
The topmost layer of a swimming pool can get a lot warmer than the bulk below and a lot warmer relative to the air temperatures above.it on a sunny afternoon.

Dear Ferdinand, could you comment.
You offer equilibrated estimates like 5ppm/degree K, but the Earth is always in disequilibrium. If the Earth begins to cool, sinks will diminish quickly, but the primary source (oceans) will keep rolling for many decades. I predict that CO2 will spike sharply.
kingdube says:
November 23, 2013 at 1:49 pm
I expect it reasonable to predict that as the Earth cools, atmospheric CO2 will spike sharply from natural causes. (Of course the alarmists will then argue, when this occurs, that poor Mother Nature can no longer choke-down the anthropogenic emission – she has had her fill from us. But that will be a misinterpretation of this natural process.) Further explanation below:
During the Little Ice Age, natural sinks had overtaken sources so atmospheric CO2 fell (caused by cooling). The warming since then has stimulated natural sources which, in turn, have stimulated natural sinks. And the sources are now out in front, with our modest help to be sure. But both sources and sinks have been growing far more rapidly than our anthropogenic contribution in absolute terms. So if our contribution were to be removed in its entirety, there would be little identifiable change. Microbial and insect emissions would more than make up the difference if we let them**. And had we not contributed our 2%, the vegetative sinks would have been most likely under-stimulated by a somewhat similar amount such that there would be little identifiable change. (The water tub analogy where a spigot is filling the CO2 tub, while a drain is draining it, is entirely misleading in the way it is often presented as there is a clearly coupled relationship between changes to the rates of input and output – at least till a saturation event occurs.)
And if the Earth continues to be warm but then starts to cool, at some likely predictable point the photosynthetic sequestering sinks will saturate (so that their increasing capacity to sink CO2 will quit increasing; and then for the same continued cooling causes, these sinks will subsequently and rapidly reverse to a decreasing capacity to absorb CO2; while the emission sources more slowly respond; and the oceans, in particular, fail to respond for many decades). Then very steep atmospheric spiking will ensue just as it so often has in the past. It is very likely that photosynthetic sequestering (biological response) provides an enormous (geologically real-time) negative feedback to additional atmospheric CO2 until such time as it saturates. This predicted saturation event is not likely very near if the planet continues to slide sideways on temperature. However, a near-term solar-driven mini ice age may likely accelerate this predictable spiking event into the near term (i.e. atmospheric CO2 will likely increase sharply soon).

BTW, this is where Bart is going wrong IMO. He wants to regress this totally as one process (which is fine as an experiment) but then gets a rather dubious, approximate fit and declares it “perfect”.
I’d say it fits quite well but clearly there are significant variations that are not explained but such a simplistic model. This is why Salby brings in the “ground conditions” factor. I await more detail on what that is and how it is derived.

Greg Goodman says:
November 24, 2013 at 11:49 am
‘BTW, this is where Bart is going wrong IMO. He wants to regress this totally as one process (which is fine as an experiment) but then gets a rather dubious, approximate fit and declares it “perfect”. ‘
My point has always been that this process is dominant, and that it leaves little room for anything else of significance.
‘This is why Salby brings in the “ground conditions” factor. I await more detail on what that is and how it is derived.’
Me, too. I’m just a guy with a particularly applicable set of skills, and a little spare time. I look forward to the day when the professionals nail it down into a tight little ball.

kingdube says:
November 24, 2013 at 11:31 am
You offer equilibrated estimates like 5ppm/degree K, but the Earth is always in disequilibrium. If the Earth begins to cool, sinks will diminish quickly, but the primary source (oceans) will keep rolling for many decades. I predict that CO2 will spike sharply.
Depends which mechanism wins: cooling gives less uptake by vegetation and more uptake by the oceans. But normally CO2 levels follow temperature: lower temperatures = lower CO2 levels. Thus if the earth starts to cool, normally CO2 levels start to go down, in several cases with a long lag.
In the current case, probably not, as human emissions still are increasing and the uptake in oceans and vegetation can’t follow that, even with a cooloibg earth. That is the mainstream opinion and also my opinion. But that is opposed by Salby and Bart…

“It does, because the long term slope in temperature matches the long term slope in dCO2/dt.”
Bart , see my recent article on Climate Etc about filters
http://judithcurry.com/2013/11/22/data-corruption-by-running-mean-smoothers/
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/derivative/mean:24/mean:18/mean:13/plot/gistemp/from:1959/scale:0.2/offset:0.075/mean:24/mean:18/mean:13

Greg Goodman (November 24, 2013 at 1:40 pm)
> eric: “That is clear from the 1998-99 graph where CO2 is positive and temperature is negative. ”
> that’s because the primary fast relationship is with the derivative. plot d/dt(CO2)
> and it’s in phase and it works.
It works in 1998-99, but not in 1997-98 where the derivative of CO2 is essentially opposite sign from temperature: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/derivative/from:1997/to:1998/scale:0.1/plot/rss/from:1997/to:1998

@eric1skeptic: Always good to bring your best argument and not your weakest. Comparing monthly values with a yearly smoothed for Mauna Loa just isn’t good form. As well, using tropospheric temperature is a bit of whoops, especially if discussing anything that relates to ice core data or surface temps and conditions. And, of course, anyone can bust any correlation by taking the timescale low enough that the inherent noise swamps the signal. Better to have a good crack at it with a stronger showing on your part.

eric1skeptic says:
November 24, 2013 at 12:34 pm
These are superficial, and misleading, relationships. You have two increasing variables, and you scale them so they are increasing at roughly the same rate. It is a trivial exercise, but it tells you nothing about causation.
What we are talking about here is the fact that the temperature to CO2 relationship is very much of the form
dCO2/dt = k*(T – Teq)
CO2 = atmospheric CO2 concentration
k = coupling factor
T = temperature anomaly w.r.t. its own baseline
Teq = equilibrium temperature w.r.t. that baseline
This relationship indicates that temperature is driving CO2, and that human inputs have little impact. It moreover implies that temperature dependence on CO2 is, at best, negligible. Otherwise, there would be a positive feedback loop and the system would be unstable.
Greg Goodman says:
November 24, 2013 at 1:46 pm
“Bart, see my recent article on Climate Etc about filters”
Not sure if you are taking issue with my statement, or merely pointing out some considerations with regard to filtering. Are you suggesting that the slope is not what it appears to be? I would disagree.
Jquip says:
November 24, 2013 at 2:43 pm
“s well, using tropospheric temperature is a bit of whoops…”
All of the temperature sets are more or less affinely related. It doesn’t really matter which one you choose. For the purposes here, none of the temperature sets likely captures fully and faithfully the true dynamic signal we are looking for. They are all bulk, global averages, and likely miss or smudge out the pertinent signal.
“And a specific issue in any specific analysis; such as here with Salby.”
Perhaps you guys could explicitly state your concern. If you want a smoothed filter output with zero phase everywhere, here is one.

Bart, it is true that I scale one variable (CO2) but that’s only so both traces are viewable in a single URL on WFT. Your graph http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/derivative/mean:12/from:1979/plot/rss/from:1959/scale:0.19/offset:0.14 that you linked above several times shows a maximum of 4-5 ppm per degree K which you do not dispute. As temperature varies up and down due to weather the CO2 goes up and down about 4-5 ppm per degree K at most in that plot. That means your theory that 1 degree of temperature rise has caused 140 ppm of CO2 rise is incorrect.
The same ratio is clear in my plots except that my plots also show that there is no correlation between the two variables for short term periods, nor any consistent correlation between temperature and the derivative of CO2. For example, here is Jan1997-Jan98: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/derivative/from:1997/to:1998/scale:0.1/plot/rss/from:1997/to:1998 When the temperature rises in the latter half of 1997, the derivative of CO2 goes negative. IOW, the CO2 decreases with a rise in temperature. The temperature series of course has the annual correction built in and CO2 has no smoothing in my plot, but the key point is that in 1998 the opposite is true, that is, the temperature rise correlates with a positive derivative of CO2 in accord with your theory.
You can’t have a theory that includes some years, e.g. 1998, and excludes certain years, e.g. 1997, without a reason to do so (i.e. by adding another variable like a non-temperature side effect of ENSO).

“Your graph http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/derivative/mean:12/from:1979/plot/rss/from:1959/scale:0.19/offset:0.14 …”
You do realize that is a graph of the derivative? Are you acquainted with differential calculus?

Thanks for taking it in good spirit, I have a tendency to be a bit direct at times 😉

Bart: “You do realize that is a graph of the derivative? Are you acquainted with differential calculus?”
I graphed the derivative in one of my plots above but also graphed without derivative for clarity. Using the derivative graph, the Y axis units are CO2 per unit time. The highest rate of change is about 0.3 ppm / month. During 1997 CO2 rose 1.6ppm and temperature rose 0.35K for a ratio of 4.6 ppm / K.
The units for that calculation are ppm of CO2 per year divided by degrees K per year which results in ppm per degree K. Having a rise of 4.6 ppm of CO2 per degree K during a good year (1997) shows that it is impossible to achieve 140 ppm for 1 degree K. Furthermore the temperature dropped during 1998 but CO2 still rose which shows that the two are not correlated in the short run.
We also know that CO2 and temperature are not correlated in the short run because weather changes the global average temperature as much as 0.1 or 0.2C in a month. CO2 does not change that rapidly apart from a few very minor fluctuations that are visible using a 12 month moving average.
Another thing to consider is that the global average temperature does not have much meaning when considering CO2 release and uptake. The latter depends on specific conditions at the equator where CO2 is generally released and at the poles where it is generally absorbed. Thus the overall weather patterns will modulate CO2 slightly independent of the seasonal cycle and manmade secular rise.

Dear Lord Monckton,
Thanks for your kind words. I am from the old school, where science was teached as a broad field, unlike the current education system where they deliver a lot of specialists to the real world who have enormous knowledge of a very small field and virtually none outside their field…
In the case of CO2, like in many chemical and physical reactions, the atmosphere and other reservoirs (mainly oceans and vegetation) are in continuous exchange with each other. That are dynamic equilibria reactions, where temperature and pressure (difference) are the main players.
Of importance for the calculation of the e-fold decay rate is that the response to an increase of CO2 into the atmosphere is linear, which seems the case:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_acc_1960_cur.jpg
Where the accumulated sinks are the difference between accumulated emissions and accumulation in the atmosphere.
For the year by year accumulation/sink rate:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
If we compare the increase in the atmosphere of the first graph with the increase in sink rate of the second graph, there is a slight curvature in both (besides the short term variability caused by temperature variability) which makes that the relationship between them is near-linear.
If the relationship between a disturbance to an equilibrium and its response is linear then:
T = excess / outflow
Because the excess is reduced by the outflow (without further disturbance), the outflow reduces over time with an e-curve. Therefore T gives us the e-fold time for any linear process.
Some theoretical background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_folding
Specific for the decay rate of CO2 in the atmosphere from Peter Dietze at the late John Daly’s web site:
http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
Interesting to see that his calculation from 1997 and the current estimates 15 years later still are quite similar…
Further disturbances, like continuous human emissions have no influence on the e-fold time, but of course both influence how much is retained in the atmosphere. With a small T, most emissions would disappear in short term and the increase in the atmosphere would be modest. With constant emissions, the increase in the atmosphere will assymptote to a new equilibrium, etc…
That doesn’t proof that human emissions are the cause of the increase, but it is a strong indication.
The alternative view from Bart and Salby is that the e-fold time is very short and that some other huge temperature dependent process is involved.
As the human emissions are slightly quadratic increasing as does the increase in the atmosphere, any alternative temperature driven process must give a slightly quadratic CO2 response to temperature (which did more or less linearly increase) and completely parallel human emissions in the same time frame. Such a process thus also must give a 3-fold increase in turnover (a 3-fold decrease in residence time) in the period 1960-current to mimic and dwarf human emissions in the same time frame.
But there are no indications of any increase in turnover in the more recent estimates of the residence time or in changes of the 13C/12C and 14C/12C ratio trends…

Greg, my understanding of the cause is simply that ocean temperature modulates CO2 uptake and release. We all agree that there is always uptake and release going on simultaneously in various locations around the globe. With warmth there will be less uptake and more release and with cooling there will be more uptake and less release. Generally high latitudes will have uptake and low latitudes will have release so local weather is important, not just global averages.
The small fluctuations in the CO2 graph (more visible using running averages) that match the temperature graph are a manifestation of the relationship of temperature and CO2.
Looking at these somewhat correlated fluctuations, the only difference between the “anthropogenic CO2” theory and yours is that the A-CO2 theory has significant net uptake of CO2 and yours has net release, but both allow modulation of the rate. In the A-CO2 theory, the rate of uptake will rise and fall with temperature but there will always be net uptake. Thus the A-CO2 theory is coherent with the evidence that you and Bart present.