EPA document supports ~3% of atmospheric carbon dioxide is attributable to human sources

the Hockey Schtick link doesn’t work.
Possibly because the blog post was retracted. The chart does not say that 3.75% of the 400ppm is man-made. Those numbers in the charts refer to annual emissions. The theory is that earth was in a perfect balance before mans fossil emissions and now 50% of that 3.75% is what is causing the 2-3 annual ppm rise in CO2.
The above blog post should be rewritten or deleted.

Oh. My. God. You are stupid.

I’d take this whole post down quickly before anyone else notices it. Confirmation bias much?

How about delete it off WUWT also!!!

To GeeJam: It is well documented that atmospheric CO2 had been fairly constant at 280 ppm in the time prior to the industrial revolution, at which time CO2 has exponentially increased to its current level of just over 400 ppm. 400 – 280 = 120 …. sorry for the somewhat sloppy sig figs ;). I’m not sure you understand what the values are representing on the table provided.

It would be a serious cause for concern if anthropogenic CO2 input to the atmosphere is not responsible for a significant fraction of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
CO2 starvation is a serious threat to the biosphere in the long term and, unlike moderate global warming, has the potential to cause extinction of life on earth.
Anyone interested in biosphere extinction scenarios should read Franck et al 2006:
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/29/75/42/PDF/bg-3-85-2006.pdf
This paper points out that CO2 starvation might cause biosphere extinction before heating from solar expansion.
Basically, without human intervention during the next glacial period, as in the last, CO2 levels can be expected to drop below 200 ppm and approach levels that will limit plant growth. Below 150 ppm and you are looking at major plant die-offs.
This might be a situation facing the world population in a few tens of thousands of years time. At that time it might literally be a matter of life and death whether or not we can materially increase CO2 in the atmosphere.
Thus if all the output of the world’s industry, power generation and transport at present is only increasing the atmospheric CO2 level by 3 percent or so, burning fossil fuel as fast as reasonably possible, it suggests we are at the mercy of oceanic exchange processes for CO2 and cant do much about it. This would be bad, not good, news.
Since over the long timescale we are moving toward deepening glaciation, this CO2 starvation scenario might become a reality within the next few glacial cycles.
For this reason I for one sincerely hope that Ferdinand Engelbeen is correct that a substantial fraction of the recent CO2 increase is indeed anthropogenic. If this view is correct it means humanity has some defense available against CO2 starvation, providing our technical-industrial knowledge and infrastructure are preserved.

glenncz says: July 29, 2014 at 12:27 am
The chart does not say that 3.75% of the 400ppm is man-made. Those numbers in the charts refer to annual emissions. The theory is that earth was in a perfect balance before mans fossil emissions and now 50% of that 3.75% is what is causing the 2-3 annual ppm rise in CO2.
The above blog post should be rewritten or deleted.
Retraction is no use – the harm is done. But your remark should be added to the original blog post.

This post and the comments that follow bring up some questions.
1) Why do we suppose that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere before the industrial revolution was perfect? If it was not perfect then, what is perfect?
2) How much of the 400 parts per million is there because of nature and how much is really there because of mankind’s activities — and how sure of that are we?
3) What average temperature is perfect? How do we know that?
4) Has the earth ever had much more than 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere? If so, did it lead to “runaway warming” leading to the devastation of life on earth?
5) Does more CO2 lead to a “greening effect” that gives us more plant mass? If so, does the more plant mass use up CO2 from the atmosphere? If so, is that a negative feedback to increased CO2?
I wonder if our understanding of the dynamics of all of this is on par with our lack of understanding of “continental drift” was back when I was in school. (now renamed “plate tectonics)

markstoval says: July 29, 2014 at 4:04 am
This post and the comments that follow bring up some questions.
You have every right to ask those questions.
But when citing / quoting a paper, one should at the very least correctly convey what the authors’ claims are.

markstoval says: July 29, 2014 at 4:20 am
I made no claim at all as to what the cited paper said. Why would you suggest that I had incorrectly conveyed the author’s claims?
Not you – I meant the original blog post. And it would seem that The Hockey Schtick already retracted their review, as numerous posters pointed out their blunder.

Sorry if I’m being dense, but are the numbers being discussed up-thread correct?
The “Table 3” chart above shows total (annual) CO2 emissions of 793,100 E6 metric tonnes of gas, being 770,000 E6 natural and 23,100 E6 anthro. If there were no anthro element the emissions would have been just the 770,000 E6 tonnes. Assuming (am I correct?) that absorption is essentially proportional to total atmospheric CO2, the pro-rata absorption would have been 758,640 E6 tonnes, with no athro element. So: without any anthro element these figures anyway show an annual increase of 11,359E6 tonnes.
Doesn’t this mean that the (suggested) anthro annual increase is just 340E6 tonnes, representing at most 3% of the natural annual increase and just 0.043% of total atmospheric CO2? How is it possible realistically to account for a signal as small as that?

Anthony,
If there is a mistake here then it should be stated now, and further comments are thus unnecessary.

MikeB says:July 29, 2014 at 4:56 am
Although the conclusions drawn by the Hockey Schtick were a load of junk, the table produced by the IPCC is quite reliable.
Quite so, but I’m also sure mr. Anthony Watts knows very well the difference between “annual CO2 emissions in the atmosphere” and “annual CO2 concentration in the atmosphere”.
Then why repost that “load of junk” of the Hockey Schtick here? Very hight trust can be too much of a good thing.

Question, Mauna Loa ticks up 2ppm it seems every year, this does not come even close to mans increased output? If man caused it to increase 2ppm in the 60’s, should it now not be going up by 10ppm now as our output increases?

GeeJam says: July 29, 2014 at 5:21 am
Man-made CO2 is 3.225% of 400 ppm.
GeeJam, can you please tell us the difference between “CO2 emissions in the atmosphere” and “CO2 concentration in the atmosphere”, and in what units both are measured?

As has been pointed out innumerable times on WUWT and every other skeptic web site around, plants need CO2 to live and survive and to provide the carbon component from the splitting of the CO2 molecule in the photosynthetic process for the sugars they produce that provide the plants with the energy that allows them to grow, flower and set seed.
Without plants there would be no sentient life on this planet.
Again as has been pointed out innumerable times, the pre industrial atmospheric levels of CO2 are claimed to have been around 280 ppm.
Plant biologists looking at fossilised leaves and counting the stomata that are the pores on the underside of the leaves through which CO2 is taken in by the plant and O2 left after the splitting of the CO2 molecule for it’s carbon component, plus water vapour, is expelled through those same leaf stomata.
High CO2 concentrations mean that the plant needs fewer stomata to access it’s needs for that essential CO2. Fewer stomata also means the plant conserves water better leading to more growth but less water requirements per growth mass to achieve that extra growth.
Consequently plant biologists who have studied the stomata numbers in fossilised leaves have claimed that the pre-industrial CO2 was around the 310 -320 ppm, or 30 or 40 ppm above that long standing claim of 280 ppm of pre-industrial CO2.
But that 280 ppm claim does make the supposed anthropogenic / humanity contribution to atmospheric CO2 by raising the CO2 levels to 400 ppm seem a much greater contribution than is likely the case.
At around the 180 ppm level of CO2 a lot of plant species start to suffer severe slow downs in growth as they become starved for that essential CO2 to split for its carbon component to make those growth essential plant sugars.
Below 150 ppm of atmospheric CO2 some plant species die due to CO2 starvation..
So if we take 180 ppm as the minimum plant requirement for survival then at that pre-industrial level of CO2 of 280 or 300 PPM, the plant kingdom had a pre-industrial CO2 buffer of about 100 to 120 ppm over it’s minimum for survival 180 ppm CO2.
At 400 ppm of CO2 that CO2 buffer stretches out to 220 ppm
Effectively if the increase in plant essential CO2 to 400 ppm is accepted as anthropogenic in origin, we humans have doubled the amount of the available plant useable CO2 from it’s previous buffer of 100-120 ppm pre-industrial levels to a healthy for plants, 200-220 ppms today..
Plants have got to love us for that and as we sentient beings of every calibre are in fact utterly dependent on the plant kingdom for our very existence then that doubling of available and plant useable CO2 over the last 40 or 50 years is of immense benefit to ALL life on this planet.
And if there is a fraction of a degree warming included then that also is of very considerable benefit.
May it long continue although sadly the warmth part of the equation might be coming to an unfortunate end for the next few generations of mankind.

The Mauna Loa CO2 trend gives some clues as to how much of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is man-made.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Although atmospheric CO2 has increasing by 2 ppm each year for many years, every northern spring, CO2 concentrations actually fall by 7 ppm followed by a 9 ppm increase in the northern autumn. This cycle repeats every year without fail. Obviously seasonal changes in temperature are causing the seasonal fluctuations in atmospheric CO2. This raises two points:
1. Natural effects causes atmospheric CO2 to fluctuate hugely every year. Even if you accept that all the 2 ppm net annual increase each year is man-made, the natural annual fluctuations are much greater than the annual man-made effects. Without understanding the natural long term CO2 cycles, to assume that all the long term CO2 increase in the last 100 years is man-made should not be accepted as very likely at all.
2. The seasonal CO2 fluctuations clearly show that the temperature changes first, followed by changes in atmospheric CO2. Temperature is the independent variable and CO2 the dependent variable. This is the opposite of what the IPCC claims. Could someone among the many informed WUWT readers please explain how a dependent variable can also be an independent variable? I did not think that was mathematically possible.

At one Utah site CO2 varies by 150ppm between summer and winter.
http://co2.utah.edu/co2tutorial.php?site=7&id=1
Rotting vegetation probably explains the yearly variation … not fossil fuels.
So the cycle we are getting all excited about:
LIA recovery = more vegetation = more CO2 when it rots

“I don’t think this should disappear from WUWT”
Nor is it in any danger of doing so. Good time to ponder alarmist sites with their penchant for disappearing mistakes, and contrast that with most of the skeptic sites I know about. Who doesn’t make a mistake from time to time, especially on such a high volume site? Kudos Anthony.

Wow.
I’m really disappointed to see such misinformed “analysis” appear here, but I’m encouraged by the fact that so many commentators have promptly weighed in to correct the errors in understanding.

Anthony Watts says:
July 29, 2014 at 7:42 am
Anthony:
My kudos to you sir for responding to this error in an honest and open way that these days seems to be totally opposite of the way the CAGW alarmists react when they know that they’re wrong. It is refreshing to see and It serves to reinforce my belief that the truth about the CAGW issue does indeed lie here at your blog.
It is my belief that CAGW alarmists are totally off the mark if they think that they are morally and ethically right these days to engage in lies and the perverse manipulation of science to achieve what they feel is a just and righteous end. Among other things, history teaches us that it is technological advances and improvements that usher in new eras in human history. Thus it will be technological improvements and advancements that will someday usher in a post-fossil fuels world (probably a nuclear powered one among other things) and not CO2 taxes, cap-and-trade-schemes, solar and wind boondoggles, and scientifically bogus climate scare campaigns. A campaign built on lies is one built on quicksand.
Anthony, keep up the great work at this blog. You are worth your weight in gold. Let’s see…gold is around $1300 the ounce right now multiplied by……how much do you weigh Anthony?
REPLY: Thanks. I try not to be like John Cook – Anthony

“The level is now 400 ppm, the highest level for 800,000 years. In the absence of any other theories to the contrary, it is reasonable to suppose that the current enhanced CO2 levels are due to human activity.”
Huh? Every time I see a house fire I drive up and sure as hell the fire department is there, so I reasonably suppose that these fires are due to fire department activity.
The Vostok ice core graphs also show a major decline in temps over the holocene, with larger temperature swings as we get closer to present time. It also shows temperature rise preceding CO2 rise. It also shows a metric crap ton of temperature swings, all but ONE of which happened before industry showed up. So why would I be out of line to complain when CO2 attribution is used to artificially raise energy costs and reduce my standard of living? The climate “scare” started with the hippy/greeny anti SUV attitude and went on from there. Now it has morphed into a cosmic money and power grab. Need more science please, less MSM and IPCC.

Regarding the “right” level of CO2: obviously, there isn’t a per se “right” level. But we do have a planet’s worth of infrastructure that is based on certain assumptions we’ve made about rainfall, temperature, available water supplies and sea level. If those assumptions prove to be incorrect, we will have to do something about it: relocate cities, convert arable land to passive uses and vice versa, and on and on.

Nick Stokes says:
It can’t be sustained, whereas our continual additions are.

Entirely unsupported assertion, contrary to known facts. When we started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, only half of what we figured we were adding stayed in the atmosphere. That demonstrates that Nature’s carbon sinks can change capacity. As anthro CO2 emissions have gone up, the proportion of them apparently sequestered has remained constant, indicating that the increase in sink capacity has not only been sustained, but has grown.
No one knows the mechanism by which this annual vanishing CO2 operates. Our concept of the earth’s carbon budget remains unbalanced, and not by a small amount. Until our great grandchildren succeed in sorting it out, pronouncements about carbon sources to the atmosphere are merely the results of political inkblot interpretation.

What’s really the point behind these IPCC figures adopted by the EIA in the table above? In the end they’re just numbers burdened by interpretations with the interpretations themselves burdened by the numbers. I assume the listed anthropogenic source of 23,100 million metric tons of CO2 is probably modestly accurate since the records on fossil fuel extraction, sales, and consumption are likely well documented. Unless they’re not, because the stated increase in atmospheric CO2 is considered to be from anthropogenic sources, and that stated increase of 11,700 is almost exactly 1/2 of that 23,100 source. Oh, I know, the biosphere takes up the other 11,700- million metric tons of that 23,100 source! Now, of course that same biosphere can suck up a whopping 770,000 million metric tons (a number itself subject to measurement error and interpretation) of CO2 from natural sources with such precision that there is no net gain whatsoever but add to that volume a mere 23,100, or 3% and, by golly, it just can’t suck up any more. But, it can somehow eat up the first half of that and then it’s belly is full? No further distention than that? Why not? No one knows? Every single one of the numbers in that table; 770,000 million metric tons of CO2 naturally sourced; 23,100 mmt anthropogenic; 793,100 mmt natural and anthropogenic total, 781,400 mmt absorbed, and 11,700 mmt of CO2 annual growth; can be interpreted and explained in more ways than there’s numbers shown. And every one could be wrong.

Mistake and embarrassment or not, this was a good airing out of the issue and a good chance for those with the knowledge to share it with others. An educational moment for all.
All things considered, a good post.

A regular person should figure out that humans probably contributed one more CO2 molecule per 10,000 atmospheric parts. That one CO2 molecule joined the other 3 that were already there, making four CO2 molecules per 10,000 atmospheric molecules. That is quite the accomplishment for little ole man. If he keeps adding more CO2 molecules like that, who knows what could happen?

Mr. Watts,
First, I apologize for any embarrassment or misunderstanding my post may have caused. I wrote the post before Hockey Schtick took down their post.
It seems that I, and several commenters, did not appreciate or catch the distinction between annual emissions attribution and annual concentration increases.
The comments have been both interesting and helpful. They also show that there is still controversy about the “balance of Nature.”
Jonathan DuHamel

Article says:
“This new work supports an old table from the Energy Information Administration which shows the same thing: only about 3% of atmospheric carbon dioxide is attributable to human sources.
Look at the table and do the arithmetic: 23,100/793,100 = 0.029.”
————————————————-
Table 3: Global and Anthropo Sources and Absorption of G-h Gases in the 1990s
………Gas ……………. Natural ….. Human Made … Total ….. Total …. Annual Increase
Carbon Dioxide Emissions Absorption
(Million Metric Tons) … 770,000 ……. 23,100 …..… 793,100 …. 781,400 …….. 11,700
Human made emissions of 23,100 MMTs and distribution of these emissions (atmospheric absorption 11,700 MMTs, ocean absorption 6,200 MMTs, and land absorption 5,100 MMTs)
—————————————
Given the above Table data, humans are responsible for an annual 11,700,000,000 metric ton increase in atmospheric CO2 during the 1990s.
But the Mona Loa record shows that atmospheric CO2 was 357.29 ppm in 1990 … and was 371.51 ppm in 2000 …. for a total increase of 14.22 ppm in the 1990s ….. or an average 1.422 ppm/year during the 1990s.
And if the average mass of the atmosphere is about 5 quadrillion (5,000,000,000,000,000) metric tons ….. and the atmospheric CO2 was at 357 ppm ….. there was approximately 1,785,000,000,000 (1.785 trillion) metric tons of CO2 in the atmosphere in 1990.
Thus, each one (1) ppm of CO2 is equal to 5,000,000,000 (5 billion) metric tons of CO2
And if there was an average 1.422 ppm/year increase in CO2 during the 1990s then that means there was an average yearly increase of 7,110,000,000 metric tons of CO2.
Which is only 7,110 Million Metric Tons of CO2 …. and which is 4,590 MMT (40%) less than what the above Table is claiming to be the Annual Increase was (11,700 MMT).
Does anyone know what happened to that average yearly loss of 4,590 Million Metric Tons of a decade’s worth of Anthropogenic CO2 emissions?
That’s roughly 45,900 Million Metric Tons of missing Anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

PMHinSC says:
July 29, 2014 at 9:42 am
Even if these assumptions are correct cities such as Las Vagas [sic] with average July temps of 105 Deg F and annual rainfall of around 10″, use a disproportionate and unsustainable amount of water and energy.

When the Colorado River rights were carved up in 1924, California got approx 4 million acre ft per year, Arizona approx 2.2 million acre ft/yr, Utah a little less, and Nevada got 400,000 acre ft/yr because they thought no one would live there.
The entire state of Nevada makes do on 400,000 acre feet of water each year, 1/10th that of California.
So who are the water conservation experts In Nevada? The casino owners. Specifically Steve Wynn, who decided to solve it as soon as he got to town in the 80s. The Mirage and Treasure Island, built in the 80s, were double-plumbed to catch all the grey water (shower, bath, sink). Wynn built water-treatment plants in the basements so that he could use the water to irrigate his golf courses and fill his fountains.
Then he invented, or had someone invent, an absolutely revolutionary way to water the golf courses and lush gardens he wanted for his resorts. (That heat evaporates 60% of the water from over-the-ground sprinklers.)
Las Vegas soil is caliche and as hard as tooth enamel. It contributes to lethal flash floods when it rains because it’s like raining on marble. The soil is ‘hard’ and super alkaline. You can’t put a metal pipe into the ground without deposits forming, clogging them.
Wynn invented irrigation grids of PVC piping placed 20″ below the surface to draw the roots down, and run his grey water through them. The problem was the “+” attachment connecting each square in the grid pattern. They would clog, and he couldn’t dig up his golf courses to fix them. Whatever it was he invented to fix the problem gave him an instant patent. He runs the entire system with a computer monitoring system.
Wynn got the other casino owners to build their casinos his way, and as a result, all the Las Vegas casinos (except the old dives) are so efficient in their water and electrical use, they return 1/3 of their water to the Colorado River every year. They only use 3% of Southern Nevada’s total water usage, even with all their perfectly green golf courses and bright lights. Residential customers used 60% to 75% of the remainder, and industry the rest. So the Southern Nevada Water District went on a campaign to pay people to give up their lawns and embed 3 ft PVC pipes vertically beside each tree’s rootball. Watering whatever remained is on strict schedules monitored by water police. Southern Nevada now supplements their water supply by buying from counties in the middle of the state.
Las Vegas is about the most water and energy aware city in the country.

Yes folks, the natural CO2 molecules from the table know they should devote themselves to absorption, so the man-made ones can stay in the atmosphere. (Do I need to put a sarcasm warning?) Because, you know, only the man-made component has changed. Sheesh.

Wow, I’m quite surprised to see this post at WUWT 6 days after I temporarily put my post back in draft mode while I continue to correspond with the lead author before re-writing my post. This was disclosed in the tip to WUWT from Mr. DuHamel, the author of the Wry Heat post quoted here. Note the EPA document on emissions was added by Mr. DuHamel to his post and nowhere in the Hockey Stick post were emissions conflated with background levels of CO2 as many commenters above have incorrectly blamed upon the Hockey Stick post.
The correspondence with the lead author has been delayed waiting ~5 days for a reply from the author to questions, including about the following.
The Hockey Stick post quoted the conclusions of the paper which state “…the 6-month average CO2ff concentrations in the lower 1 km of the atmosphere across Western Europe are between 1 to 18 ppm” and earlier in the paper stated the mean of CO2ff across Western Europe was 15 ppm. The paper defines CO2ff as “CO2 mole fractions of particular origin, expressed in the index as follows:… ff – fossil fuels…”, thus CO2ff is defined as the mole fraction of CO2 in the lower atmosphere of fossil fuel origin.
I have asked the author if she instead meant to write in the 1st conclusion of the paper, “…the 6-month average CO2ff gradients in the lower 1 km of the atmosphere across Western Europe are between 1 to 18 ppm” and I am still waiting for a reply from her before re-writing the post.
There’s obviously a big difference between absolute concentrations/mole fractions and gradients, and thus could be quite misleading if the paper uses the two interchangeably.
I’ve also asked the author if she has a reply to this comment at Wry Heat before re-writing the post:
http://wryheat.wordpress.com/2014/07/19/only-about-3-of-co2-in-atmosphere-due-to-burning-fossil-fuels/comment-page-1/#comment-5149
As soon as I receive her replies, I will re-write the post incorporating her replies.
Thanks to several other commenters above including richardscourtney, johnmarshall, philjourdan, steve short, fhhaynie, Bernard Lodge, Jeremy Shier, and others demonstrating that the EPA & IPCC assumptions that all of the rise in CO2 levels is anthropogenic is based upon little to no evidence and there are many unanswered questions.
As to the claim that Salby has never written about his work in this area is false. It appears in his textbook, Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/05/climate-textbook-explains-why-man-made_21.html
In addition, I ask all the “know it alls” here to explain why the airborne fraction of man-made CO2 has declined 20% over the past 60 years, according to none other than James Hansen:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/03/hansens-mea-culpa-says-man-made-global.html
A decreasing airborne fraction of man-made CO2 over the past 60 years as man-made emissions increased by 4 times is inconsistent with man-made CO2 as the primary source of the increase atmospheric CO2.

Bernard Lodge says:
July 29, 2014 at 6:50 am
Could someone among the many informed WUWT readers please explain how a dependent variable can also be an independent variable?
Not so difficult: it is not because one is the major driving force for the other, that the second one can’t have an influence on the first. The point is that both influences should be moderate: the combined reinforcing factors must be below unity to prevent a runaway process.
In the case of temperature and CO2, the influence of temperature on CO2 is 8 ppmv/°C as can be seen in ice cores over the past 800,000 years (Vostok, Dome C) and the MWP – LIA cooling (Law Dome DSS ice core).
The opposite influence should be – according to line by line absorption tests – about 0.9°C for 2xCO2, without taking into account any (positive or negative) feedbacks.
Both are modest influences, so it is possible that they influence each other without a runaway effect. Here a plot which shows the difference between a one-sided influence of temperature on CO2 with and without feedback from CO2 on temperature:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/feedback.jpg
The only difference is that both temperature and CO2 end somewhat higher than without influence of CO2…

“Regarding taking down this post: if you removed this post all the comments would go away.”
Not so, I’ve saved all the comments and will repost them as well, although none of them relate to the issues the lead author initially brought up and the possibly incorrect statement in the paper’s conclusion “…the 6-month average CO2ff concentrations in the lower 1 km of the atmosphere across Western Europe are between 1 to 18 ppm,” which it appears should have said “gradients” not “concentrations”.
I have been corresponding with the author via email, received a partial reply after waiting 5 days, and now am still waiting for clarification of the statement above in the conclusion prior to re-writing the post.
If the author wrote “concentrations” when she meant “gradients” and everyone wants to point fingers at the Hockey Stick for reading “concentrations” and then putting the post in draft mode until this issue is clarified by the lead author, then so be it.

“But there’s no future in arguing with the author of the study here. You’ve invoked her as the authority for your claim. She says you have grossly misinterpreted. Even if you can proved that she has worded something incorrectly or whatever, you’re never going to be able to claim her authority for the statement.”
You once again assume things that are simply not true. I am not arguing with the author at all and in fact wrote to her an apology for misunderstanding her paper, that I was temporarily taking down the post for a re-write pending her reply, and would she kindly answer a few questions to clarify prior to that re-write.
Although I still haven’t received a reply on the issue regarding her statement in the conclusion, it appears there is a significant erroneous statement in the first conclusion which conflates “concentrations” with “gradients”. If you want to blame me for quoting her conclusion in my post including this apparently incorrect conclusion in the paper, and for assuming she meant what she wrote, then so be it.
Apparently, you have an issue with a blogger reading an incorrect statement in the major conclusion of a paper, assuming it was true, but after correspondence with the author realizing she apparently made a significant incorrect statement in the conclusion, and then asking the author if this needs to be corrected. If you want to blame me for the apparent error written in the conclusion, then so be it.

To further clarify the point, the study assumes that CO2 will just keep “backing up” like water going down a drain with too much hair in it. I haven’t read the study but it sounds like there’s some assumin’ goin’ on when there needs to be some provin’ goin’ on. That’s also known as begging the question.

GeeJam, philcp, courtney, fhhaynie and hockeyschtick are correct. The EPA numbers are good enough estimates to show that human CO2 is about 3 or 4 percent of natural fluxes.
Atmospheric CO2 never “accumulates” because the enormous surface sources and sinks are constantly exchanging 30 to 40 times the anthropogenic CO2 fluxes.
Anthropogenic CO2 can never exceed the 3 to 4 percent now in the atmospheric 400 ppm, until the human flux exceeds 4 percent of the natural fluxes.
Read the fhhaynie post again. He is correct.
Also Tom V. Segalstad at http://www.co2web.info/ who knows something about CO2 isotope ratios. Also Salby, who knows something about the global biogeochemical carbon cycle.
The overwhelming amount of scientific understanding says that human contribution to the global carbon cycle has been around the 3 or 4 percent level for the last few decades.
In 1900, the human proportion of CO2 added to the atmosphere was much less. Maybe 1 percent. So the 300 ppm atmospheric CO2 was 297 ppm natural and 3 ppm anthropogenic.
in 1950 the human proportion of CO2 had risen to 2 percent. Therefore the atmospheric CO2 level of 315 ppm was about 300 ppm natural and 6 ppm anthropogenic.
In 1980 the human porportion of CO2 reached 3 percent of the natural flux. Therefore the atmospheric CO2 level of 340 ppm was 330ppm natural and 10 ppm anthropogenic.
Atmospheric CO2 is a flowing river, from sources to sinks.
The 14C bomb CO2 shows that the longer time period natural loss is 50 percent every 10 years.
50 percent of the atmospheric CO2 from 1980 was lost by 1990. By 2000 the amount of CO2 remaining in the atmosphere since 1980 was 25 percent. As of today, no more than 10 percent of the 1980 CO2 level in the atmosphere remains in the atmosphere. Thats 34 ppm of the total 1980 CO2, so the remaining 306 ppm from 1980 are “forever” gone into slower sinks.
Some CO2 does recycle, about 80 percent annually. So the amount of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere today is more than 4 percent of the 400ppm at 16ppm, but certainly less than the 120 claimed by the IPCC and englebeen.

Jeremy Shiers says:
July 29, 2014 at 9:23 am
Have a play and tell us what you find
I have played with the data too, but added the δ13C derivative data to the derivatives of temperature and CO2:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
If the source of the CO2 variation is by the oceans, the δ13C will go slightly up with CO2 increase, as the oceans have a higher δ13C level than the atmosphere. If it is from vegetation decay, then δ13C will go strongly down with increasing CO2 and up with falling CO2, which is the case here.
Thus the response of (tropical) vegetation on temperature variations is at work here. But vegetation is NOT the cause of the increasing trend of CO2 over the full period, as vegetation is an increasing net sink:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
The temperature derivative shows the same variability, but precedes the CO2/δ13C variability with pi/2, which is the result of taking the derivatives (where CO2 changes follow T changes with pi/2). Important is that there is zero trend in the temperature derivative, thus that is not the cause of the dCO2/dt slope either. But if we look at the slope of the human emissions rate of change, that slope is double that of the slope of the increase rate of CO2, simply because human emissions and increase in the atmosphere both increase slightly quadratic over time, giving a linear slope in the derivatives:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_acc_1900_2011.jpg
In conclusion: the match of the variability of (d)temperature and dCO2 is real, but the match of the slopes has nothing to do with temperature…

bw says:
July 29, 2014 at 1:44 pm
bw, it seems one of the most difficult points to explain to people, although most housewives (and -men) know the difference from their household budget…
What the article is about is some small addition in a large cash flow of money in and out of a factory (in the form of raw materials till finished products). Interesting, but largely irrelevant for the gain (or loss) of a business.
If you invest 10,000 euro/year in stock from a factory and the net gain of that factory at the end of each year is 5,000 euro, better sell as fast as possible and look for other opportunities, no matter if your investment is 0.1% or 10% of the capital turnover in that factory.
Turnover and gain (or loss) are quite independent items with little – if any – connection with each other.
BTW, the loss of 14C from the atomic bomb tests in the 1950’s is accelerated by the deep ocean exchanges of ~40 GtC, which release 14C depleted pre-bomb test CO2 of ~1000 years ago. That gives a decay rate of ~14 years. The real decay rate for an extra shot CO2 in the atmosphere is over 50 years:
http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
Calculation from Peter Dietze already near 2 decades ago. Recent calculations give a slightly shorter decay rate.

Hockey Schtick says:
July 29, 2014 at 2:08 pm
HS, in this case concentrations at ground level are gradients compared to “background” levels.
That is the way total CO2 fluxes are calculated with tall towers, where CO2 is measured at different heights:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/cabauw_day_week.jpg

Ferdinand, your plot shows absolute concentrations at different heights and doesn’t compute or graph the “gradients” between them. Regardless, the paper under discussion is about “gradients” at the same height, not different heights, but between different surface locations, and using the term “concentrations” when you meant “gradients” is misleading/incorrect.

Hockey Schtick says
“‘Regarding taking down this post: if you removed this post all the comments would go away.’
Not so, I’ve saved all the comments and will repost them as well, although none of them relate to the issues…”
Just for clarification, my real point was that the comments on posts on WUWT are enjoyable and informative. The last three hours worth of comments are a perfect example of that. I wasn’t trying to imply that anything would be disappeared or that anything shady was about to happen. I’m just a random reader of this blog who enjoys it 🙂

Hockey Schtick says:
July 29, 2014 at 3:15 pm
As Bart and others have explained to you on many threads, your mass balance argument is a single equation with two unknowns, thus proves nothing. In addition, since T leads CO2 on short, intermediate, and long-term timescales, the cause does not follow the effect
HS, as explained in the above examples, the two unknowns don’t play any role at all. It is only the difference at the end of the cycle which matters. It doesn’t matter how much water circulates over a fountain, the pool will overflow if you add only 1% or 0.1% of the circulating flow. Neither does it matter that a factory doubles its throughput: that may give more gain, less gain or even a loss.
The same for the mass balance: it doesn’t matter that one year the natural cycle was 150 GtC in and 154 GtC out and the next year 300 GtC in and 302 GtC out. In all past 55 years there was more natural out than in…
Further, Bart’s arguments were based on the fact that there was a (not so) good agreement between temperature and the CO2 rate of change. That agreement is in the variability, not in the slope, as that are the results of different processes. One can match any linear slope with any other linear slope, that is only a matter of choosing the right factor but has nothing to do with cause and effect.
The only point where Bart could be right is if the natural carbon cycle increased a 3-fold together with the human emissions: then and only then the natural cycle could dwarf the human emissions. But there isn’t the slightest sign that the natural carbon cycle even increased over the past 55 years: the residence time didn’t decrease a 3-fold, instead it slightly increased. There is no sign that the seasonal vegetation cycle increased a 3-fold or that the oceans released and absorbed 3 times more CO2…
Further T leads CO2 on seasonal and (opposite!) on year by year variations. CO2 follows temperature on decades to multi-millennia, but over the past 160 years CO2 is growing much faster than the temperature dictates (8 ppmv/°C) over the past 800,000 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_001kyr.jpg
The MWP-LIA transition is visible as a ~6 ppmv drop in the Law Dome DSS ice core:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
The same for the (reverse) HS in δ13C:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.jpg
But nature should be the cause of the CO2 increase after 800,000 years simply following temperature with exact the same timing as humans started to emit twice the amounts of CO2 as found as increase in the atmosphere?

Phil. says:
July 29, 2014 at 2:44 pm
In addition, as I explained to Richard, if you add some acid to the oceans, the total amount of carbon forms (DIC: CO2 + bi + carbonates) would decrease because of the loss of CO2, while we see an increase of DIC with decreasing pH.
That proves that CO2 is pressed into the oceans, not the other way out…
Simply add some vinegar to a solution of (baking) soda and weigh both containers before and after the mixing…

Ferdinand says “The only point where Bart could be right is if the natural carbon cycle increased a 3-fold together with the human emissions: then and only then the natural cycle could dwarf the human emissions.”
Natural sources and sinks are ~96% of the carbon cycle. Natural sinks would only have to expand by ~4% to accommodate all man-made CO2. Multiple papers show from satellite measurements that the Earth has “greened” 11-20% over the past couple decades, thus the natural sinks could have expanded ~11-19%, considerably more than the 4% man-made sources. No 300% increase in the carbon cycle required as you claim.
Single graph shows T controls CO2 on short timescales:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/01/single-graph-demonstrates-man-made-co2.html

Hockey Schtick says:
July 29, 2014 at 4:38 pm
Natural sinks would only have to expand by ~4% to accommodate all man-made CO2.
Completely right, but they didn’t do that over the past 55 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
thus the natural sinks could have expanded ~11-19%, considerably more than the 4% man-made sources.
The greening of the planet is a fact, but that is only for ~1 GtC/year of the 9 GtC/year human emissions. That is the net result of the increased cycle. Again, the height of the natural cycle is not of interest, the net source/sink result after a full cycle is what is of interest:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5462/2467.short
and
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
The 300% is only of mathematical interest: human emissions increased a threefold over the past 50 years or so. As plants and oceans don’t make any differentiation between human and natural CO2 (except a slight one in isotopes), if not humans are responsible for the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, then the natural CO2 cycle should have increased a threefold too, to build enough resistance in the (then theoretically very fast accommodating) sinks so that they can’t remove the extra CO2 flux in short term, but still remove near all of human emissions.
But there is not the slightest indication that that happened: not in the residence time, not in the 14C/12C ratio, not in the 13C/12C ratio, not in the oxygen changes,…

DesertYote says:
July 29, 2014 at 4:41 pm
From -20 to +40 C, the CO2 produced by eukaryote metabolism is directly related to temperature. Don’t ask me to quote a bogus study. Referencing studies is NOT science. Do the experiment for yourself. It easy grade school stuff. Use yeast.
Sometimes simple sums and subtractions are of more importance than fancy linear equations…
The eukaryotes only produce CO2 that was first captured out of the atmosphere by plants in the form of sugars and other stuff. Thus that is part of the natural cycle and doesn’t add any extra CO2 to the atmosphere, as long as plants capture more CO2 out of the atmosphere than the rest of the biosphere can eat/break down/oxidize again.
Which is the case, based on the net oxygen production by the biosphere.
Thus again, that humans emit only 4% of the natural emissions is of no interest at all, as nature captures 102% of the natural emissions back each year… Which means that the net natural contribution to the atmospheric increase is zero, nada, nul,…

Ferdinand said, “As long as there is an airborne fraction, humans are responsible…”
So, *nothing* else is changing in the carbon balance: no volcanoes erupting, no algae blooms blooming, etc.? Gaia is running a controlled experiment I guess? Including any sources/sinks that we have yet to characterize?
Do we even know if we’re in a regime where the D.E.s can be treated as approximately linear?
The problem is far more subtle than the crude lumped averages in the table can possibly illuminate. The conclusion that humans are *solely* responsible for the airborne fraction is unwarranted.

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
July 29, 2014 at 5:26 pm
DesertYote says:
July 29, 2014 at 4:41 pm
###
Your attempt to model the carbon cycle using naive linear equations is a big fail. The rate at which CO2 is “sequestered” is directly related to the concentration of CO2. The rate at which CO2 is released is directly related to temperature. You can not model a system like this without differential equations. The overestimated rate of anthropogenic CO2 production is well within the measurement uncertainty of vastly underestimated rate of “natural” CO2, and much smaller then the natural variability. What we have here is a naturally stabilizing system with a great deal of negative feed back that totally swamps out mans insignificant contributions. The history of the Earth demonstrates this quite well, else life would have been destroyed when the Deccan Traps were created. Get real. Do some real math for a change. What are planning on doing next, try modeling the solar system using epicycles?
Your “We don’t need no steenking diff eq” stance just makes you look foolish to those of us with real systems engineering experience.

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
July 29, 2014 at 5:26 pm
“Thus again, that humans emit only 4% of the natural emissions is of no interest at all, as nature captures 102% of the natural emissions back each year…”
Once again, a complete detachment from the way feedback systems work.
JJ says:
July 29, 2014 at 10:47 pm
“In fact, they could be much larger than half the anthro pipe, perhaps several times that size.”
Bingo! In fact, if one takes it as given that it could be anywhere from half to many multiples, the overwhelmingly greater share of possibilities obviously tends toward the latter.
DesertYote says:
July 29, 2014 at 11:25 pm
Yes. It is a fundamental misconception to try to model this dynamic system as though it were a problem in basic accounting.
It is, again, a detachment from the way feedback systems work. The inflow and outflow are not static, unchanging quantities. The outflow expands in reaction to the inflow.
This static point of view is one of a magical world, in which an equilibrium between natural inflow and outflow simply happened, and stayed that way just because one side wanted to play nice with the other.
That is not how an equilibrium is established in nature in this universe. If there is no push-back from either side, then random fluctuations create a drift, like Brownian motion of a particle suspended in a fluid. Scientifically speaking, the notion that there was a rock solid equilibrium in existence for millennia when there were no opposing forces keeping it there is farcical.
Given the powerful opposing forces necessary to produce such a tight equilibrium, it must be presumed that nature can shrug off our puny inputs with hardly any notice. It is very obvious that nature is in control of the atmospheric CO2 balance on this planet. It never ceases to amaze me how people will rationalize away something which is right before their noses like this. Someday, people will look back on this silly idea that humans control the planet’s CO2 like we now do at leechcraft, phlogiston, or phrenology.

This number shows emissions and absorptions. In an equilibrium model, emissions and absorption would be equal. They are not. The difference (and a bit more) is due to extra CO2 from fossil fuel and land-use change. On this, at least, I’m glad to see you on the same side as the climate-change people.

Hockey Schtick says:
July 29, 2014 at 6:05 pm
Where is the data to back up this assertion, and what assumptions are made?
The net uptake of the biosphere is based on the oxygen balance: fuel consumption is known with reasonable accuracy (if anything wrong, probably underestimated). CO2 emissions and oxygen use for the different fuels can be calculated and the oxygen decrease in the atmosphere can be measured (be it at the edge of analytical possibilities). That shows that since the 1990’s some less oxygen is used than calculated. The difference is what the biosphere as a whole (land + ocean plants, bacteria, molds, insects, animals, humans) has produced (or used) by (plant) uptake or (plant/others) decay/food/feed/burning. This makes it easy to make the distinction between simple ocean release/uptake and the biosphere release/uptake as for the oceans no oxygen is involved (except for its solubility in seawater). Another way is to look at the δ13C balance, which is far more pronounced – and opposite – than the ocean influence. Both methods gives a similar net uptake by the biosphere:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5462/2467.short and
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
Natural sinks would have only had to increase a mere 4% to accommodate all man-made CO2, and the error bars on natural sources and sinks are large, as well as on land-use changes.
It seems quite difficult to understand the difference between an increased cycle and the net result of a cycle.
If we take the ~1.5 GtC/year extra uptake of the biosphere for granted, that gives an increase in total bio carbon mass of ~30 GtC over the past two decades. That is about 5% in total mass.
Does that increase the seasonal cycle? Maybe somewhat, but not in the tropics: the decay rate and growth rate there is near equal, except during El Niño’s (drought, heat) and Pinatubo’s. Thus the difference should be in the extra-tropic (mainly NH) forests. That should be visible in the seasonal cycle, because the NH seasonal cycle is dominated by the NH forests.
I haven’t looked at that in detail, but there are signs that the seasonal cycle increased over time.
But again, and increase in seasonal cycle doesn’t influence the net result of the cycle: more growth is accompanied by more decay, as most debris is from one-year leaves…
While the error bars of the natural cycle are huge, the net result shows a remarkably modest variation: not more than +/- 1 ppmv (2 GtC) from year to year:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
including huge influences from the 1992 Pinatubo and 1998 El Niño.
That is less than halve the human emissions and less than 3% of the estimated fluxes. But take into account that seasonal ocean and biosphere fluxes are opposite to each other with the temperature change.
Land use changes only add to the human emissions…

When I once pointed out how Nick Stokes had misrepresented an article written by Roy Spencer, rather than admit the completely black and white mistake, Stokes obfuscated and misdirected in shameless fashion. What a vast gulf exists between those of intellectual merit who admit mistakes, and the hacks.

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
July 29, 2014 at 4:05 pm
“But there isn’t the slightest sign that the natural carbon cycle even increased over the past 55 years:”
—————–
To support and/or justify your above “statement of fact” ….. you will have to provide factual scientific evidence that the anthropogenic CO2 emissions …. or lack thereof, …. have been “steady and consistent” ….. month after month and year after year ….. for the past 55 consecutive years ….. as is portrayed/recorded via the Keeling Curve Graph and the Mauna Loa Record.
So best you “think up” something that humanity has been doing in a “steady and consistent” manner for the past 55 consecutive years.
=================
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
July 29, 2014 at 4:12 pm
“Simply add some vinegar to a solution of (baking) soda and weigh both containers before and after the mixing…”
————-
Iffen you are trying to simulate actual ocean activity ……….
Why not simply “shake-up” a can of cold beer and then “pop-the-top” and weigh the can both before and after the “pop-topping”.

Hockey Schtick says:
July 29, 2014 at 6:13 pm
Your declining “sink rate” makes the convenient assumption that 100% of the CO2 increase is man-made, that none of the increase is a secondary effect of temperature, ocean outgassing, etc., thus it is a circular argument that proves nothing.
The sink rate is not declining, it is increasing in ratio to the extra pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Temperature only gives a small change in input and output fluxes: 17 μatm extra pressure difference for 1°C warming of at the upwelling near the equator and 17 μatm less pressure difference for the intake at the polar sink places. That increases the inflow and decreases the outflow of CO2, such that the CO2 level in the atmosphere will increase. That goes on until the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is 17 μatm (~17 ppmv). Then the previous in/out fluxes of CO2 between atmosphere and oceans are restored:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
Thus the equilibrium “setpoint” of CO2 from the oceans changes 17 ppmv with temperature. That is all. Not 120 ppmv…
Extra upwelling from the oceans, be it from temperature, increased concentration, more upwelling or pH changes also would increase the δ13C level of the atmosphere, or at least reduce the reduction rate of the human supply of low-13C CO2.
The problem with all the “alternative” CO2 sources is that they all fail one or more observations. Only human emissions fit all observations…

Samuel C Cogar says:
July 30, 2014 at 7:56 am
To support and/or justify your above “statement of fact” ….. you will have to provide factual scientific evidence that the anthropogenic CO2 emissions …. or lack thereof, …. have been “steady and consistent”
See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_acc_1960_cur.jpg
and even in the year by year emissions, there is little variation (less than the detection limit of Mauna Loa):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
Iffen you are trying to simulate actual ocean activity
All what I tried to show is that a reduction of pH in the oceans from volcanoes would lower DIC, while more CO2 pressure in the atmosphere will increase DIC and lower the pH.
BTW, try to shake a Coke bottle in a 7 bar CO2 atmosphere: it will take up more CO2…

Alan Robertson says:
July 30, 2014 at 8:00 am
“That’s a bold statement and doesn’t make sense, to me and here’s why: we know that each year, the biosphere is greening and there is a net gain in biomass, which indicates that annual CO2 bio- uptake outpaces CO2 release from the biosphere.”
————-
Said “indicates” is what you have been nurtured to believe, ….. but in fact, … IS NOT SO.
The FACT is that the natural biological emissions of CO2 actually begins before the biosphere photosynthetic “greening” begins. For the following reasons, to wit:
1. the initial biosphere “greening” requires a “warming” in the day-time surface temperatures …. as well as a minimum number of day-light hours. Said day-light hours is the primary “trigger” that initiates said “greening” … as well as the “shut-down” process in late summer and fall.
2. the initial biosphere “greening” DOES NOT require any CO2 absorption because it is produced by the stored sugars in the root system.
3. biological emissions of CO2 via rotting and decaying begins just as soon as the surface temperature “warm up”. Ref: my Refrigerator/Freezer Law … @ http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/934c2c81-2a3d-4d59-b6ce-c238fdd45582/Refrigeration_and_Food_Safety.pdf?MOD=AJPERES
4. both biosphere “greening” and biological emissions of CO2 ….. BEGINS around the 1st of February in the southern latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere …. and progresses slowly northward to the northern latitudes until the Summer solstice occurs in June. (That is why the far northern latitudes have a “short” CO2-emitting growing season)
Reference: USDA Planting Zone Map .. http://www.plant-power.com/images/zone_map.jpg
5. both biosphere “greening” and biological emissions of CO2 are neither steady nor consistent each and every year over the entire expanse of the above cited USDA Planting Zone Map therefore it is a figment of one’s imagination to assume that mid-May always reflects the “mid-point” of biosphere photosynthetic activity in the Northern Hemisphere.

Hockey Schtick says:
July 30, 2014 at 9:53 am
“The only thing that is “well known” is fossil fuel emissions.”
—————-
I have to disagree with the above statement in you post.
Me thinks it would have been more appropriate to have stated “well believed”….. because there is no way in ell that CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels is well known by anyone.
“Tracking” fossil fuel sales is almost akin to “tracking” marijuana sales or the number of illegal immigrants in the US. Unless, like a few other things, +-40% is considered a “scientific fact”.
“HA”, like the State DNR does in their “tracking” of Whitetail deer populations. They drive along the roadways …. counting the # of deer they see out in the fields ….. and then multiply that # by ten (10) to account for the # of deer that are surely “hiding” in woods.

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
July 30, 2014 at 8:53 am
CO2 production is quiet well known. the natural variability is only halve the human emissions and the uncertainty of the natural cycle fluxes is of not the slightest interest, as the net result of that cycle is known with the same accuracy as human emissions:
###
And Spock has a beard.

DesertYote says:
July 30, 2014 at 12:44 pm
And Spock has a beard.
Some very smart people have problems with simple math like:
increase in the atmosphere = human emissions + natural emissions – natural sinks
2 ppmv = 4 ppmv + X – Y
X-Y = -2 ppmv
Where the variability of X-Y = +/- 1 ppmv, which is halve the human emissions, without any sign of increased variability over time:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg.

richardscourtney says:
July 30, 2014 at 12:17 am
And nobody can weigh the oceans.
Indeed quite difficult, but one can measure what is in the oceans: all measurements taken at ships tracks and fixed stations show that the pH is decreasing and DIC is increasing over time. Which proves that the pH decrease is not caused by an addition of some acidic components but from increased CO2 input into the oceans…

Samuel C Cogar says:
July 30, 2014 at 10:14 am
Don’t be “talking trash” to me ….. by first claiming that atmospheric CO2 has generally been increasing since the Industrial Age and specifically increasing since 1958 ….. and then claiming those increases are undetectable even in the Mauna Loa record.
I was talking about the year by year <I<variability of the human emissions. Human emissions indeed are increasing, but the year by year variability and the increase rate from one year to next year is maximum 0.2 ppmv. As about halve of that variation remains in the atmosphere, the variability itself is undetectable in the Mauna Loa record.
That has led Bart, Salby and many others to believe that the increase itself is not caused by human emissions because all observed variability is natural.

I apologize in advance for interrupting your fantastic scientific discussion with what might seem like a “blast from the past”. This blog came to my attention only this morning (CET time zone) and took quite a lot of time to read and digest. So if you allow me, I would like to try to address several issues that seem to be recurring and where my name or my work is mentioned.
First, the pipe analogy, part of which was cited here, contained a bit more information. More precisely, my original post was trying to address the problem with the table, also corrected by many people here, that the table is showing gross (annual) fluxes to the atmosphere, not the total amount.
“With regard to your gross fluxes question – imagine the atmosphere (as a reservoir of CO2) as a pool. You have several pipes that control the in/out flow. You have this huge pipe of biospheric inflow, almost as big as the pipe for the biospheric outflow. You have silimar pipes for the ocean inflow and outflow in the pool. Regardless of the actual size of the big pipes – they are relatively balanced between inflow and outflow – their net contribution to the pool is almost zero when compared to the gross fluxes themselves – in some years the pool level is rising, in other it is going down.
Now you add a much smaller pipe for the inflow from anthropogenic emissions. This pipe does not have outflow to balance it, so it’s net contribution is in fact the entire inflow of it to the pool. And the net contribution of this pipe is in fact bigger than the net contribution of the other huge pipes and is growing. Luckily the outflow pipes to the biosphere and ocean are in fact a bit bigger (or you could say flexible) and manage to take up a bit of the inflow from the anthropogenic flux. Still, the pool is getting filled up faster and faster.”
Second, the original review on Hockey Schtick. It’s mistakes were that it
1. Wrongfully attributed the fossil fuel CO2 we report as -all- the fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere
2. Wrongfully attributed our findings to the global scale and since the preindustrial era
These were the several major points, which a commenter here caught correctly –
Nick Stokes says on July 29, 2014 at 1:04 pm:
CO2bg is the background CO2 outside the limited area of the study, measured in her case at the top of Jungfraujoch in the Alps. The other terms, including CO2ff, are the perturbations in her particular location in a plume of recently emitted CO2.
Thirdly, reply to some comments here which I found very surprising.
WryHeat says on July 28, 2014 at 12:28 pm (copied in the addendum to the original post here)
“Denica Bozhinova has commented extensively, and frankly, I can’t understand her position since she seems to contradict what she wrote in the abstract to “Simulating the integrated summertime Ä14CO2 signature from anthropogenic emissions over Western Europe”
Considering the time stamp of the cited e-mail/comment and looking back to the conversation on WryHeat’s blog, there is virtually no discussion on what my article results actually are. I would be happy to elaborate on any “contradiction” that WryHeat thinks I have made with regards to my article, although I am puzzled that he would state here that I am conflicted and not in the discussion where I am actually replying.
“She apparently scared The Hockey Schtick into taking down his post on the matter.”
I have no idea what power I must have in order to “scare” an established blog-writer into taking down his work over the internet. In fact, my reply to his “review” of my work never even made it to the comment section – as all comments are required to pass moderator’s approval he read it first and then decided to take down his own work for revision. Then he notified me about it and asked further questions. And connected to that comes the next part..
Hockey Schtick says on July 29, 2014 at 11:59 am
“The correspondence with the lead author has been delayed waiting ~5 days for a reply from the author to questions, including about the following…”
“…then putting the post in draft mode until this issue is clarified by the lead author, then so be it.”
Considering that the reasons why the original review was “put in draft mode” were that Hockey Schtick realized that my paper does not address the issues he described in it, I am really surprised to read this statements. Even more surprised because, again, the time-stamp shows me that I received the email with his new questions (also copied and posted here) only 2-3 hours before he wrote here repeatedly that he is waiting on my so very much delayed reply.
I confess that my previous reply to him had taken me 5 days to write, which were mostly spent in trying to find all the forums/blogs/sites that have reposted his review and trying to minimize the damage done to my and my article’s credibility. Also, because the questions he asked were not issues directly connected with my work or study and as I pointed out in my recent communication – I prefer not to chat about science, but have time to think over the arguments and evaluate them.
Further claims that “it appears there is a significant erroneous statement in the first conclusion which conflates “concentrations” with “gradients”” are in fact inaccurate again. As I wrote few hours ago in an e-mail reply – the statement in the abstract about the result for the gradients in CO2ff concentrations and the conclusion about the concentrations themselves are not contradicting each other at all. However, this discussion made me realize that Hockey Schtick has a much bigger issue he should deal with – taking responsibility for his own writings and doings.
In this particular discussion he has tried to use my delay in reply to him retroactively as an excuse for his retracted review and the delayed republication. And trying to shift the attention from the original mistakes in the review to something “new and shiny” that he had not verified, but yet in only few paragraphs he states repeatedly:
– appears should have said “gradients” not “concentrations”
– If the author wrote “concentrations” when she meant “gradients”
– it appears there is a significant erroneous statement in the first conclusion which conflates “concentrations” with “gradients”
– apparently incorrect conclusion in the paper
– an incorrect statement in the major conclusion of a paper
– she apparently made a significant incorrect statement in the conclusion
– apparent error written in the conclusion
– she apparently didn’t mean what she wrote
– an apparently incorrect and misleading statement conflating “concentrations” with “gradients”
– if you want to blame me, … , then so be it.
Reading this, I am yet forced to post the last part of my reply to his original “review” on his blog (one which I decided to cut off when posting it on the WryHeat).
“I appreciate all the feedback and skepticism about our results as shown by the commenters here, however I would have to ask the author of the blog entry to try and be more conservative in his summary of this and other scientific studies, especially when he makes claims about the findings that are nowhere in the article itself.”
It might be a bit obvious, but APPARENTLY it needs to be said that a good journalist/reporter that is not a specialist tries to do research on his subject -before- he posts an article and not -after-. It APPEARS that contacting the authors of the article you want to review with tabloid title -before- you actually write it might help you not guess what they APPARENTLY MEAN, but actually know it.
Again, I am sorry for the long reply that is nowhere near the real topic of this discussion about the global carbon cycle and climate change in general. I am afraid my article is also nowhere near closely related to this subject, yet somehow it got mixed into it. I will continue following this discussion, in case there are any more questions.

The pipe analogy is flawed by the assumption that the inlet and outlet are fixed.
Sounds like Houghton has a lot of disciples.
Here is a better analogy. Start with a small river of 100 liters per minute. Sink follows source.
Add a dam, such that the resulting reservoir holds 500 liters. In 5 minutes the reservoir is filled, and 100 liters per minute begin to overflow the dam. Sink and source are again matched. The reservoir is the atmosphere. The river is the natural CO2 fluxes into and out of the atmosphere.
Increase the inlet by 3 liters per minute for a total of 103 liters per minute entering the reservoir.
There is a small increase in the reservoir volume, but the overflow reaches 103 liters per minute almost immediately.
The 3 liters per minute is the anthropogenic addition to the atmosphere/reservoir. The amount of anthropogenic CO2 in the reservoir never exceeds 3 percent of the total volume, and never “accumulates” in the atmosphere past 3 percent. 0.03 times 400ppm is 12 ppm. If the source becomes 104 liters per minute, then the outlet adapts almost immediately. 0.04 times 400ppm is 16 ppm.
There may be a transient (short term delay) in the sink response. The stable isotope and other approaches to analysis of atmosphere CO2 indicate a possible maximum of 25 ppm due to anthropogenic addition, with the remaining 100 ppm increase due to slight shifts in natural sources and sinks. Likely eutrophication or tropical forest destruction, or shifts in deep ocean upwelling.
The bottom line is that there is no evidence that anthropogenic CO2 “accumulates” in the atmosphere, any more than bacterial or bovine CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere. CO2 never accumulates in the atmosphere from any source. CO2 never accumulates in the atmosphere because it is part of a much larger flowing system. Houghton knows this, but would never admit it.

Denica Bozhinova says:
July 30, 2014 at 4:15 pm
Thanks a lot for the clarification…
I had already reacted on HS ‘blog, but my comments disappeared together with the article.
As always, I am interested in new research that sheds light on different aspects of the carbon cycle, but as you have experienced now, a lot of people have difficulties to make a differentiation between (parts of) a cycle and the net result at the end of the full cycle…

Denica Bozhinova says:
July 30, 2014 at 4:15 pm
“This pipe does not have outflow to balance it, so it’s net contribution is in fact the entire inflow of it to the pool”
This is not how a feedback system works. Your argument has no merit. Sorry.
bw says:
July 30, 2014 at 5:40 pm
“The pipe analogy is flawed by the assumption that the inlet and outlet are fixed.”
Exactly. Your explanation describes how a feedback system works. Others, take heed.
Alan Robertson says:
July 30, 2014 at 6:10 pm
“If CO2 never accumulates in the atmosphere from any source, then how have pre- industrial levels of atmospheric CO2 risen from 280 ppmv to 400 ppmv?”
By a shift in the natural equilibrium level brought on by some natural event which effectively has created a temperature dependent pumping action into the atmosphere in the modern era.

bw says:
July 30, 2014 at 5:40 pm
There is a small increase in the reservoir volume, but the overflow reaches 103 liters per minute almost immediately.
That is the main error that you and Bart make; the increase in sink rate is not immediately.
The fact that there is a measured increase in the atmosphere already proves that the CO2 sinks can’t accommodate with an increase in inflows and only increase their output if the atmospheric pressure increases.
That isn’t 100% proof that humans are the cause, but to accommodate the 3-fold increase of human emissions over the past 50 years, the natural cycle should have increased a 3-fold too to give the increased pressure necessary to increase the sink rate in ratio with human emissions.
But there is not the slightest sign that the natural cycle increased a threefold: not in residence time (which slightly increased), not in 14C/12C ratio, not in 13C/12C ratio, oxygen use, seasonal amplitude,…