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

Roger E Sowell says:

I once calculated, very roughly, that approximately 7 cubic miles of new water has been condensed from combustion of hydrocarbons, taking into account burning of petroleum, natural gas, and coal since 1900. Others may have a better estimate. However, realizing that all 7 cubic miles of that water condensed and fell to earth as rain, it absorbed at least some CO2 as it fell. This mechanism would not be cyclical, rather a one-time occurrence. I fully understand just how small 7 cubic miles is in relation to the entire ocean.

And plants take that water and CO2 and use the abundant energy from sunlight and turn it in to O2 and food for it self. It is recycled.

I’ve been musing about the carbon cycle. Using school level physics I calculate that the CO2 in the atmosphere contains enough carbon to cover my back garden(and the rest of planet earth) with 1mm of soot. You can correct me if I’m wrong. Meanwhile… The grass grows about 1m a year. Which makes me think that the life of carbon in the atmosphere is a wee bit shorter than the consensus suggests.

Sekerob (05:32:14) :
Read on, whilst the oceans acidify and saturate.
Is this the next environmental catastrophe that’s about to befall mankind as “global warming” falls by the wayside?
Please let me know as I’ll begin wringing my hands well beforehand.

Anthony, when will AIMS be able to report CO2 on a current global basis? Or am I missing something?
REPLY: Good question, they seem to have gone quiet. I’ll check. – Anthony

Crosstab, Anonymoose: Don’t get me wrong. I *agree* that increasing temperatures should increase CO2 concentrations. We can see that over the past 650,000 years, where temperature precedes rises in CO2. I *also* agree, as I mentioned in the post above, that solar effects on temperature are more important than any CO2 feedback. Finally, I *also* agree that there are more positive than negative effects of CO2, including positive effects on photosynthesis, water-use efficiency and nitrogen-use efficiency. I also think the issue has been inadvertently politicized and holds the potential to be the biggest PR disaster for science in the history of the world.
With regard to the CO2 growth issue, however, it is not hard to find good, honest estimates of how much CO2 is emitted by human beings (and by every natural terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems for surface types that happen to be sources), and it is also not hard to find good, honest estimates of how much CO2 is taken up by terrestial and oceanic ecosystems (for those regions that happen to be sinks). These estimates do take into account the oceanic temperature, and you can even account for the impact of increased temperature on soil and growth respiration. The budget doesn’t balance out, meaning that there is some, as yet unknown, missing carbon sink.
Anonymoose, let us pretend, for the moment, that you were correct, that scientists had assumed that the budget is completely balanced, and that they had neglected the impact of rising postglacial temperatures on oceanic CO2 release. Well, this would mean that we would expect CO2 concentrations to be rising even faster than they are. Under your assumption (which, from my understanding of the issue, is not correct), the missing sink would be even larger! Again, not that it matters, because all three of us appear to believe that the net impact of CO2 on the global environment is a positive one. What we are doing today is taking a world that had become CO2-impoverished, because of millions of years of photosynthetic carbon-hydrogen bonds lost to carbon deposits, and now retrieving that carbon from the depths of the earth and temporarily replenishing some of the lost carbon (concentrations used to be in the thousands of ppm).
We agree here, but our emissions *do* increase the atmospheric CO2 concentrations relative to those from warming alone. Emissions are, as you state, be 3% or so of the budget… yes, and, as a result, it increases the CO2 concentration in the air by much, much less than 1% each year. That this is exacerbated if it is warmer than in recent years, and reduced if it is colder than in recent years, I do not argue.

Crosstab: You are right about the effect of white rooves on my energy costs. I just don’t care. I was referring to weather-related effects.

errata: let alone chemistry of course.

Just wondering if Pieter Tans has an internet connection? Couldn’t he check what he is sending out to the world? This is more than sloppy it is incompetent.

“As I slowly make my way through the material on WUWT, it occurs to me that there may be other mechanisms for CO2 removal from the atmosphere, not including oceans and trees. I do not know much yet about this, so if I am slow please have patience.”
One very important mechanism that takes CO2 out for a very long time is erosion. When rock is exposed to air, it is subjected to bathing in rain. CO2 in the air dissolves in rain and forms a weak carbonic acid. This acid reacts with the rocks forming carbonates. These carbonates stay out of the atmosphere for a very long time. In fact, many have put forth the notion that the rising of the Himalayas has resulted in scrubbing a considerable amount of CO2 from the atmosphere and is one of the reasons for the dramatic drop in CO2 to record low levels in recent geological history. In fact, it has been put forth that if this scrubbing were to continue at the rate it has been, we would begin to see mass extinctions of plants as they came under stress from lack of CO2.
Things such as rock “flour” from glacial grinding of rock absorb a huge amount of CO2 as it reacts with rain, too. As glaciers recede, more rock is exposed and so more CO2 is reacted out of the atmosphere.

Michael D Smith and jeez,
Thanks for the help.
Anthony,
Your site is my new favorite and your contributors give the most clear and intelligent coverage/discussion of the current climate debate.
Educational and Entertaining! Who could ask for more?

Interesting that energy consumption and mileage driven dropped very little in 2008 vs. 2007.
This is anecdotal, but when the price of gas in Calif. went over $4.00 and news of the near-collapse of the financial system came along, the drop in traffic along my usual route to the hardware store was more than noticeable, even drastic from previous months. Not a monster pickup truck in sight anywhere, and the kids with their hotrods and lowriders seemed to have disappeared. I would have sworn the traffic was 50% less than what I was used to.
With the amount of unemployed people going up tremendously and manufacturers shutting down plants worldwide, one would think that energy consumption, miles driven, and anthropogenic CO2 emissions would be all be dropping like a rock.