Mauna Loa CO2 record posts smallest yearly gain in its history – maybe

Here is a graph on miles driven:
http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2008/05/miles-driven-per-year-by-americans.html
Doesn’t look like there is enough of a drop to make much difference. Idling factories from the the Olympics and the economic downturn would be another tiny effect.
I would think the colder weather slowing and inhibiting growth would have a larger effect in NOT taking CO2 out of the atmosphere!!! Not to mention the extra heating being done to keep warm!!
A side note, the wind farms in England and other areas have had large drops in output during the worst of the cold snaps last year and recently.
IF the drop is real, I would bet on the oceans which may have been slightly cooling since before 2003!!!!

Over at Real Climate, they’re having a fit, saying that everyone at WUWT thinks that CO2 emissions have nothing to do with rising CO2 concentrations (see the comments under the best science blog competition article). Clearly, we understand that CO2 emissions increase CO2 concentrations, but that interannual temperature changes influence the year-to-year differences in growth rates. I think they get confused because of the skepticism many of us display (myself included) about the “which came first – CO2 changes or temperature changes” before the industrial revolution (uhhh… temperature came first and the solar influence must be stronger than the CO2 influence given that the trend keep going up and down rather than being continuous positive feedback, unless it’s some sort of biofeedback or something, but then this would show that warming is good… I digress). Anyway, they are claiming we’re all idiots and that no skeptic has ever published anything useful, so we should probably bombard them with some sanity. Maybe they’re just jealous that they’re being trounced.
REPLY: Well, at least they are reading. Issac Asimov once joined Mensa, and had this to say about it: “Furthermore, I became uncomfortably aware that Mensans, however high their paper IQ might be, were likely to be as irrational as anybody else.” He further described some members as “intellectually combative” and eventually resigned from the Mensa Society. We all have our irrational moments, our failures, and our blown theories, the trick is to not get too worked up about it and to maintain civility and good cheer. Understanding is seldom achieved through anger. – Anthony

“2) Hows does the flip in the PDO affect CO2 absorption?”
As the PDO’s two states both have warm and cool spots, the gross gas/temp effect would depend upon whether there is a difference in the average temperature of the two states. The local conditions would also affect what happens, such as if a warm or cold spot happens to be in an area where the atmosphere has high or low CO2 and whether there are other differences (such as there tending to be more or fewer waves). So someone would have to study all the variables; as AGW proponents seem to avoid the PDO I would be surprised if there has been sufficient study of such details of the PDO.

Roger Sowell (16:12:21) :
Steve Berry:
“Firstly, the amount of miles driven doesn’t appear to have been reduced during the economic crunch – there is no evidence to support this at all.”
With respect, actually there is data from EIA to support a rather small decrease in mileage driven in the U.S. in 2008, compared to 2007. The reduction was small, approximately 3 or 4 percent.

Sorry, that was me. Haven’t been driving my F250 as much since I started working from home. 😉

DaveM, Brendan,
Re the EIA data on U.S. petroleum consumption.
EIA does a bit of sampling in compiling their numbers. Essentially, each Monday they query all the largest companies by volume until they obtain data on 90 percent of the expected volume for that week. The final 10 percent represents a lot of smaller operators and appears to be estimated.
The methodology is laid out, for those interested, on their site as Appendix A, Weekly Petroleum Status Report Explanatory Notes. It includes some statistical language.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/weekly_petroleum_status_report/wpsr.html
In any event, my earlier calculation was perhaps a bit too high. Petroleum use in the transportation sector is approximately 19 percent of total world-wide energy use, but in the U.S. transportation comprises approximately 29 percent of all energy use. So, depending on one’s view of the global reduction in transportation due to the economic slowdown, my numbers given above should be reduced by a factor of at least 3, possibly as much as 5. On the other hand, if global numbers were available, the result above would not include the 25 percent factor. I believe it is a bit early, being only January, for good numbers to be had for world-wide energy use for 2008.
It does not appear that a reduction in driving made much difference, if any, in CO2 emissions to the atmosphere.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
p.s. Fascinating discussion, the above comments. Can anyone point me to an article on the mechanism for CO2 absorption/desorption in the oceans? As a chemical engineer, I am interested in how the CO2 is absorbed, given the very low concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the extremely low degree of mixing at the air/water interface. There are waves crashing on the shores, certainly, where some mixing will occur. Also, the global surface area of cold water is very much smaller than that of warm ocean water. Just curious, trying to keep up!

RH: Plant physiologists have known that you are correct that this is good for plants for decades. I think it is unlikely that it is completely inconsequential for earth climate (though I think it’s all overblown by wild overestimation of the parameters that determine radiative forcing). In any case, I thought you would appreciate this EXCELLENT review on the positive influence of rising carbon dioxide concentrations on photosynthesis rates, water-use efficiency and nitrogen-use efficiency.
http://si-pddr.si.edu/dspace/bitstream/10088/48/1/More+Efficient+Plants.pdf

everyone at WUWT thinks that CO2 emissions have nothing to do with rising CO2 concentrations

*sigh*
Sure, human emissions have *some* impact but I wouldn’t say emissions are the majority impact of rising CO2 numbers. But there is the bigger question: Does it really matter. So far it appears that the climate sensitivity to CO2 or more accurate, the feedback associated with increased CO2 emissions have been grossly overstated. In other words, increased CO2 might not really amount to much of a problem. If increased water vapor is a net negative feedback, as a growing body of evidence seems to suggest, then doubling CO2 may not have the consequences that the models suggest.
Want to mitigate global warming? Have your neighbors go along with you and paint your roofs white. Turn your neighborhood into a suburban cool island. Increase the albedo above what it was when it was natural landscape. Reflect that visible light back into space before it can be turned into IR and trapped by CO2. THAT seems to me to be a more effective method of “fighting global warming” than spending billions to hamstring the economy.
And I am only half kidding.
If we go into a period of considerably cooling ocean temperatures, we could see a significant reduction in rate of CO2 accumulation. Now a lot of that CO2 would get burped back out when sea temperatures rise, but a lot wouldn’t because it would have been absorbed by biological and reactive processes and taken out of the cycle for a long time.
But in any case, I would not be surprised if the tenor of the conversation on the part of the warmists becomes more shrill and desperate if their projected temperature increases continue to fail to materialize. They have a lot invested both professionally and personally in those models and have placed their names on the line. If it comes to pass that it was all wrong, it is going to have repercussions beyond their own personal lives. For one thing it will probably make the public much slower in the future to believe a *real* problem when it arises.
Sure, atmospheric CO2 is rising and humans contribute to that rise. Is it a problem? I am not convinced. We have bigger problems with things like irresponsible land use issues to tackle that *do* make a difference. Just the problems with surface recording data is enough to mask most of the “global warming” that has occurred to date. Sea temperatures are not rising either and that is where Earth stores most of her heat.

Crosspatch:
I agree with you on some points. I tend to agree that rising CO2 concentrations might have as much positive impact as negative impact, even if it induces some warming, which I believe is overstated (as you will see implied by my latest post). However, I highly doubt that the CO2 rise is *mainly* due to the ‘cold beer on a hot day bubbling’ process. I am willing to listed to reason if you can explain to me why you feel that several gigatons of carbon emissions wouldn’t increase CO2 concentrations by a ppm or two each year. The budget is well-established and there are thousands of scientists trying to figure out where the ‘missing sink’ is (ie., according to our best budgets, the CO2 concentration should be rising even faster than it is on the basis of our emissions). I’m listening (and not sighing – how irritating – I digress).
As for painting rooves white: whatever. Yes, it would be locally cooler if you were to do this, but cities make up a tiny fraction of land surface area. We might see a reduction or even a reversal of the UHI bias that is plaguing the global climate record, with most stations located close to populated areas. However, you might also end up with locally decreasing convective precipitation (which would be a good or bad thing depending where you live) and an ugly city… white rooves… ugh! Where I live, cold is more of a problem than heat anyway. I say keep ’em black!

Where I live, cold is more of a problem than heat anyway. I say keep ‘em black!

Yeah, been through that before. That black roof is costing you money. It makes a much better radiator at night and night is much longer than day in winter when you think you “need” the black roof. And the elastomeric coatings designed for this use include insulating ceramic spheres that act as an additional layer of insulation. The result is that your house stays warming in winter and cooler in summer with the white roof and you consume less energy for climate control.
If night is 15 hours and day is 9 hours, your black roof is acting as a very efficient radiator of heat from your house to the air at night.
“I am willing to listed to reason if you can explain to me why you feel that several gigatons of carbon emissions wouldn’t increase CO2 concentrations by a ppm or two each year.”
Because the latest numbers I read was that all human activity creates about 3% of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. The other 97% are from natural processes such as decay of organic matter.
But again, even if we are increasing the CO2 load by a couple of parts per million, there is no evidence that it is harmful in any way. There is no evidence that CO2 is the cause of current warming. Temperatures are not tracking CO2.
Also, the planet was at a record low CO2 atmospheric CO2 content before we started adding it back. Practically all plants and animals evolved with much higher CO2 levels than exist today. It is quite possible that we could be assisting more of a *recovery* of atmospheric CO2 levels back to something much more beneficial for the biosphere than we are *polluting* anything.
I am still waiting for anyone to show that even a single degree of temperature change is due to changes in atmospheric CO2. All we have to date are computer models and the observations aren’t matching the models.

When one considers the increasing demands that human and other animal populations are placing on the planet for food and oxygen, it seems that high concentrations of CO2 are exactly what is needed for the plant kingdom to thrive and produce the food and compounds required.

Probably so. CO2 levels were about 5 to 7 times higher than they are today when most of today’s plants evolved. Today’s plants are much more productive with higher levels of CO2 which is why greenhouse operators often enrich the air inside greenhouses with CO2 (up to 1000ppm is very common).
You can go back in the geological record to when CO2 levels were at 7000 ppm and global temperatures were about 5 degrees above current levels. How much of that increase was due to CO2 and how much to having no land at the poles to anchor ice is a big question. If we had no land near the poles, there probably wouldn’t be any year-round ice there even with today’s CO2 levels. There should be fossil forests buried in the mud out on the continental shelf from when sea levels were 100 meters lower in the last glaciation. I sometimes wonder why nobody has looked for old, swamped trees there for study.

“Over at Real Climate, they’re having a fit, saying that everyone at WUWT thinks that CO2 emissions have nothing to do with rising CO2 concentrations”
My opinion: increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations throughout 20th century were mainly caused by humans (although other factors also have their impact), people saying we only emit 3% annually (http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse says 3.4%) must remember that the other CO2 ’emissions’ are in general no net additions to atmospheric concentrations, but just natural cycles, so the human part of the added CO2 is lots bigger than 3%. The relevant question is (as crosspatch says): should we worry? No of course, because CO2 is a nice plant fertilizer and the effect on climate seems to be quite minor, no greenhouse warming hot spot to be seen, negative feedback observed by Aqua satellite, etc. I would guess that maybe human-emitted CO2 has caused some 0.2 °C of warming, but then again, this is not in any way a reason for panic.

Increasing CO2 in the air and in the water is a stimulus to its own removal, and since we don’t know how those feedbacks work in detail, we cannot predict the response of the carbon cycle, except, perhaps, to suggest that removal and sequestration of any anthropogenic carbon will happen faster than has been widely believed.
======================================

If he has the real December value on his computer, why didn’t he just tell you what it is?
=================================