Guest post by Frank Lansner, civil engineer, biotechnology.
(Note from Anthony – English is not Frank’s primary language, I have made some small adjustments for readability, however they may be a few passages that need clarification. Frank will be happy to clarify in comments)
It is generally accepted that CO2 is lagging temperature in Antarctic graphs. To dig further into this subject therefore might seem a waste of time. But the reality is, that these graphs are still widely used as an argument for the global warming hypothesis. But can the CO2-hypothesis be supported in any way using the data of Antarctic ice cores?
At first glance, the CO2 lagging temperature would mean that it’s the temperature that controls CO2 and not vice versa.
Click for larger image Fig 1. Source: http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400000yrfig.htm
But this is the climate debate, so massive rescue missions have been launched to save the CO2-hypothesis. So explanation for the unfortunate CO2 data is as follows:
First a solar or orbital change induces some minor warming/cooling and then CO2 raises/drops. After this, it’s the CO2 that drives the temperature up/down. Hansen has argued that: The big differences in temperature between ice ages and warm periods is not possible to explain without a CO2 driver.
Very unlike solar theory and all other theories, when it comes to CO2-theory one has to PROVE that it is wrong. So let’s do some digging. The 4-5 major temperature peaks seen on Fig 1. have common properties: First a big rapid temperature increase, and then an almost just as big, but a less rapid temperature fall. To avoid too much noise in data, I summed up all these major temperature peaks into one graph:
Fig 2. This graph of actual data from all major temperature peaks of the Antarctic vostokdata confirms the pattern we saw in fig 1, and now we have a very clear signal as random noise is reduced.
The well known Temperature-CO2 relation with temperature as a driver of CO2 is easily shown:
Fig 3.
Below is a graph where I aim to illustrate CO2 as the driver of temperature:
Fig 4. Except for the well known fact that temperature changes precede CO2 changes, the supposed CO2-driven raise of temperatures works ok before temperature reaches max peak. No, the real problems for the CO2-rescue hypothesis appears when temperature drops again. During almost the entire temperature fall, CO2 only drops slightly. In fact, CO2 stays in the area of maximum CO2 warming effect. So we have temperatures falling all the way down even though CO2 concentrations in these concentrations where supposed to be a very strong upwards driver of temperature.
I write “the area of maximum CO2 warming effect “…
The whole point with CO2 as the important main temperature driver was, that already at small levels of CO2 rise, this should efficiently force temperatures up, see for example around -6 thousand years before present. Already at 215-230 ppm, the CO2 should cause the warming. If no such CO2 effect already at 215-230 ppm, the CO2 cannot be considered the cause of these temperature rises.
So when CO2 concentration is in the area of 250-280 ppm, this should certainly be considered “the area of maximum CO2 warming effect”.
The problems can also be illustrated by comparing situations of equal CO2 concentrations:
Fig 5.
So, for the exact same levels of CO2, it seems we have very different level and trend of temperatures:
Fig 6.
How come a CO2 level of 253 ppm in the B-situation does not lead to rise in temperatures? Even from very low levels? When 253 ppm in the A situation manages to raise temperatures very fast even from a much higher level?
One thing is for sure:
“Other factors than CO2 easily overrules any forcing from CO2. Only this way can the B-situations with high CO2 lead to falling temperatures.”
This is essential, because, the whole idea of placing CO2 in a central role for driving temperatures was: “We cannot explain the big changes in temperature with anything else than CO2”.
But simple fact is: “No matter what rules temperature, CO2 is easily overruled by other effects, and this CO2-argument falls”. So we are left with graphs showing that CO2 follows temperatures, and no arguments that CO2 even so could be the main driver of temperatures.
– Another thing: When examining the graph fig 1, I have not found a single situation where a significant raise of CO2 is accompanied by significant temperature rise- WHEN NOT PRECEDED BY TEMPERATURE RISE. If the CO2 had any effect, I should certainly also work without a preceding temperature rise?! (To check out the graph on fig 1. it is very helpful to magnify)
Does this prove that CO2 does not have any temperature effect at all?
No. For some reason the temperature falls are not as fast as the temperature rises. So although CO2 certainly does not dominate temperature trends then: Could it be that the higher CO2 concentrations actually is lowering the pace of the temperature falls?
This is of course rather hypothetical as many factors have not been considered.
Fig 7.
Well, if CO2 should be reason to such “temperature-fall-slowing-effect”, how big could this effect be? The temperatures falls 1 K / 1000 years slower than they rise.
However, this CO2 explanation of slow falling temperature seems is not supported by the differences in cooling periods, see fig 8.
When CO2 does not cause these big temperature changes, then what is then the reason for the big temperature changes seen in Vostok data? Or: “What is the mechanism behind ice ages???”
This is a question many alarmists asks, and if you can’t answer, then CO2 is the main temperature driver. End of discussion. There are obviously many factors not yet known, so I will just illustrate one hypothetical solution to the mechanism of ice ages among many:
First of all: When a few decades of low sunspot number is accompanied by Dalton minimum and 50 years of missing sunspots is accompanied by the Maunder minimum, what can for example thousands of years of missing sunspots accomplish? We don’t know.
What we saw in the Maunder minimum is NOT all that missing solar activity can achieve, even though some might think so. In a few decades of solar cooling, only the upper layers of the oceans will be affected. But if the cooling goes on for thousands of years, then the whole oceans will become colder and colder. It takes around 1000-1500 years to “mix” and cool the oceans. So for each 1000-1500 years the cooling will take place from a generally colder ocean. Therefore, what we saw in a few decades of maunder minimum is in no way representing the possible extend of ten thousands of years of solar low activity.
It seems that a longer warming period of the earth would result in a slower cooling period afterward due to accumulated heat in ocean and more:
Fig 8.
Again, this fits very well with Vostok data: Longer periods of warmth seems to be accompanied by longer time needed for cooling of earth. The differences in cooling periods does not support that it is CO2 that slows cooling phases. The dive after 230.000 ybp peak shows, that cooling CAN be rapid, and the overall picture is that the cooling rates are governed by the accumulated heat in oceans and more.
Note: In this writing I have used Vostok data as valid data. I believe that Vostok data can be used for qualitative studies of CO2 rising and falling. However, the levels and variability of CO2 in the Vostok data I find to be faulty as explained here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/17/the-co2-temperature-link/
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Ferdinand Engelbeen (07:04:07) :
E.M. Smith / E. Warren:
About cows and any use of food/feed:
My comment about cows was only to show to Nick Warren that in the long term of the geologic time scale used here, cows are a blip at the end…
I agree fully with the notion that cows (and people and chickens and…) are just cogs in the: air to plants to animals to air cycle.
Fossil fuels were stored for millions of years, thus add to the current atmosphere, while they were extracted from the ancient atmosphere (when CO2 levels were sky high)…
This is a bit simplistic. Most of the ‘sky high’ CO2 ended up in limestone, not oil or coal. What CO2 we produce each year is a small percentage of what nature produces.
It is also the case that much of the coal and oil is not sequestered!
Tar sands, oil shales and coal erode into the environment. Oil seeps naturally (still doing it off Santa Barbara!). Natural gas out gasses from clathrates. Nature is busy recycling those materials right now. At most we can speed up the process by about 1/3. (about 2/3 of carbon stays in the ground in the most extreme recovery we know how to do, continuing to await erosion). And nature is also busy burying more carbon in deep ocean sediments. (To be subducted and emitted from volcanoes or to form future gas deposits…)
We can’t change the outcome, and we can only influence the rate a little bit.
Cows, sheep, goats,… are somewhat different as their stomach uses bacteria to break down cellulose (which humans and most animals can’t),
The category you are looking for is ‘ruminant’ animals. BTW, rabbits are considered a ‘small ruminant’! Though of the ‘hindgut’ type not the ‘foregut’ type as with cows, sheep and goats.
with as byproduct relative much methane.
As is the case with non-ruminants, such as us. Just eat a big bowl of beans and you will see that you have methanogenic bacteria as well! And I won’t go into what happens at the wrong end of a pig (another non-ruminant)… BTW, when elephants ‘vent’ it’s a wopper! And they ‘vent’ a lot!
FWIW, the largest single source of animal methane is termites. Yup. All the domestic animals in the world are nothing compared to the termites. Now just how are we to plug up all those wee little termite bottoms to stop all those little termites from ‘venting’?
despite China eating more meat nowadays (and planting more rice, another important source of CH4), there is little to worry about methane from animal breeding.
I agree completely. In fact, even if no animals were involved, all sorts of decay organisms break down all that cellulose into CO2 and methane. Thus ‘swamp gas’… Remove every large animal on the planet and methane will still be made from the plants.
I know it’s hard for Warmers to accept but: We are just not relevant.
The only place where ‘cows vs. non-cows’ has an impact is something called ‘feed conversion ratio’. If I have 10 kg of corn, I can make 10 kg of tortillas (actually more, because water is added to process, but lets ignore the water) or I can cook it to about 40+ kg of cooked grits or polenta. If I feed it to a cow, I get about 1 kg of beef (that has about 250 gm of dry solids at most).
This only matters to the extent that I don’t have enough food for everyone to eat. Once everyone is fed a basic grain & greens diet, turning all the rest into cows and pigs is quite reasonable. It’s really just a matter of saying “I have an extra 10 kg of corn, do I want 40 kg of polenta or 1 kg of beef?”
Sidebar: Convenient feed ratios to know
Cows 8-10 dry feed to 1 “wet’ meat
Sheep /goats 7 : 1
Pigs 3.5 : 1
Chickens 2-3 : 1
(though some folks are pushing 2:1 and eggs are even better than that!)
Fish (farmed) 1-ish : 1 or sometimes even fraction:1
How can fish do that? They are cold blooded with small bone mass. Most of the feed goes to meat. The feed is ‘dry’ but the fish is ‘wet’ and this hides the actual dry mass ratio of closer to 4 : 1 In some farmed fish operations, the fish also eat algae growing in the pond, so the ‘fish poo’ ends up being recycled via sunlight and you get fraction:1 (while absorbing CO2 ! )
Want to solve world hunger? Teach folks to make fish ponds and farm fish. Swap that burger for a bucket of fried chicken…
Yes, I’m saying that the only kind of ‘self denial’ needed is to force yourself to enjoy fried chicken and a mess ‘o catfish … (and even that probably isn’t needed, since there’s more food than the world needs right now. It just isn’t distributed well.)
Oh, and I’m not saying to get rid of cows and goats. They ought to be fed the ‘silage’ (leaves and stems) of things like corn. This ‘grass and silage’ fed meat and milk is enhancing total food production, not reducing it. That’s what ruminants in the agronomy system are all about…
Does any of this mean a thing to global CO2, Methane, and ‘warming’? Not a chance… As I said before: We are just not relevant. Far less important than even wee little termite farts…
Dear Mr. Smith,
One wonders, where and how were you educated? Did you not study logic and fallacies?
This is a bit simplistic. Most of the ’sky high’ CO2 ended up in limestone, not oil or coal. What CO2 we produce each year is a small percentage of what nature produces.
Talk about simplistic. You well know, and don’t claim you don’t, the issue is balance and pace of change. The natural cycle sans human input has been roughly in balance. When any system is in balance, or nearly so, it requires very little extra forcing to send it out of balance. So, while you play childish word games, I will set the record straight: Overall, about 1% of the gases affecting climate and temperature are those that affect that overall balance. Of those gases that are forcing things above and beyond the relative balance of the natural system, CO2 is 40% of those.
These are not trivial numbers, quite unlike your ill-informed and/or illogical and/or intentionally and maliciously misleading presentation of the “facts.”
I ask you, if there is doubt about AGW, where is the science? Quit posting your opinion. It means nothing. WHERE IS YOUR SCIENCE?
FACT: 90% of all anti-AGW books are written by people with ties to conservative, political think tanks and/or groups.
FACT: 97% of ACTIVE, RESEARCHING CLIMATE SCIENTISTS responding to a very recent survey supported the AGW science.
FACT: the anti-AGW machine was funded almost exclusively by Exxon, for which Exxon should be prosecuted under international law for crimes against humanity.
FACT: The BuCheney administration actively suppressed climate research, for which BuCheney should be prosecuted under international law for crimes against humanity.
It is also the case that much of the coal and oil is not sequestered!
Not anymore. Much? Do you understand the word? “A tiny percentage” is the term you are looking for in terms of natural emissions. However, you are correct in your statement when anthropogenic use of FF is considered. About 50% of the oil that is reachable has been pumped out of the ground.
Tar sands, oil shales and coal erode into the environment.
Uh-huh. At what rate? Are you seriously trying t claim that the burning of about half of the recoverable oil by humans is equivalent to the miniscule amounts that are being emitted naturally?
You are so dishonest. Shame on you.
At most we can speed up the process by about 1/3. (about 2/3 of carbon stays in the ground
Ah, more dishonesty. The rate of extraction should never be measured against the total carbon in the planetary/atmospheric system. It must logically be measured in terms of what actually gets emitted in the time frames we are dealing with: tens and hundreds of years. You are attempting to say something like, how much water we use is irrelevant because so much more gets used as rain and runoff. This is a stupid argument.
And the key is the SPEED or RATE of emissions. Natural emissions happen very, very slowly over geological time in most cases. Methane is one of the exceptions in the climatic record. However, when it comes to oil and coal, there is no instance in history of a rapid emitting of either. So, the rate of emission for both naturally has got to be somewhere in the thousandths – millionths of a percent compared to emissions caused by the use of FF by humans.
Your argument is beyond ridiculous.
We can’t change the outcome, and we can only influence the rate a little bit.
Correct. The use of the present and future is accurate. That is because we have already done so.
with as byproduct relative much methane… Just eat a big bowl of beans… wrong end of a pig (another non-ruminant)… elephants ‘vent’..
FWIW, the largest single source of animal methane is termites. Yup. All the domestic animals in the world are nothing compared to the termites. Now just how are we to plug up all those wee little termite bottoms to stop all those little termites from ‘venting’?
Tell us, who domesticated the animals so that the biomass of cows and humans now exceeds the biomass of virtually any other animal? Those emissions, too, are anthropogenic forcings.
Termites? Whose homes are they eating? How many termites would there be less human habitations?
I know it’s hard for Warmers to accept but: We are just not relevant.
Truer words. You are not relevant. You are a dishonest, illogical being.
REPLY: At least Mr. Smith is “relevant” enough to use his real name when stating an opinion, “”ccpo”. I see at your blog you have a collection of “asdf” gobbledygook under “how to make the best use of this blog”. TCO I presume? Please don’t make ad hom attacks on people you disagree with here.
– Anthony
ccpo (20:42:47) :
Very basic logical misunderstanding on your part. You are describing a metastable system.
When any system is in balance, or nearly so, it requires very little extra forcing to send it out of balance.
You are describing a metastable system.
To say that the sky is falling you have to prove that it is in a metastable state.
Think of half an egg shell. If it is set on the table on the wide end, it is in a stable state. If it is balanced on its tip, it is in a metastable state and a small nudge can roll it over.
The basic skeptic premise is that there is no inkling of a proof that the earth as a whole, as we know it now, is in a metastable state.
Termites? Whose homes are they eating? How many termites would there be less human habitations?
How can you be so anthropocentric? Cockroaches and termites thrive everywhere, man and his houses are a blip on their screen.
http://www.iitap.iastate.edu/gcp/studentpapers/1996/atmoschem/brockberg.html
“Termites prefer the absence of solar radiation; an immobile atmosphere; saturated or near saturated relative humidities; high, stable temperatures; and even elevated levels of CO2. Although termite populations are active in the middle latitude environments, the vast concentrations of mounds and nests are found in the lower latitude tropical forests, grasslands, and savannahs of Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. It is estimated that these regions contribute approximately 80% of global termite emissions.”
Hi all,
I will try to set some balance at this all…
– As the ice cores reveal, there is a metastable equilibrium at work at the pre-industrial CO2 level, which can be swithched to the cold side if we have the right solar/earth conditions. Why we have this only since a few million years, is probably a matter of configuration of the continents: huge land masses at one of the poles (good for piling up a lot of ice) and the hindering of ocean currents by the closing of the Panama isthmus. But there still is a lot of discussion on this.
– At each of the two states, the equilibrium is rather stable around a minimum and maximum temperature. Much higher temperature (and CO2) levels in the far past didn’t cause a catastrophic further warming.
– Any change in temperature is followed by a limited change in CO2 level. For the current variability, that causes about 3 ppmv/°C with a lag of one to a few months around the trend. For the MWP-LIA cooling that was about 8 ppmv/°C with a lag of about 50 years. For the 420,000 years covered by the Vostok ice core, it also is 8 ppmv/°C with a lag of about 800 years for upgoing temperatures and several thousands of year for downgoing temperatures.
– There is no physical evidence that CO2 has any effect on temperature in the ice cores, while this should be visible, if CO2 would be helping for about 40% of the warming / cooling. That doesn’t prove that CO2 has no effect at all, but it proves that the effect is small, substantially smaller than the 3°C/2xCO2 as most climate models show.
– There was a quite stable, surprisingly linear correlation between temperature and CO2 levels, including short term and long term changes in vegetation, (deep) ocean flows etc. This short time correlation is broken since the industrial revolution, which show increasing CO2 levels beyond what can be expected from temperature changes in ice cores, firn and direct measurements.
– The ice cores also show that the short time correlation between absolute temperature and CO2 levels as debated in the other thread (the CO2-temperature link) is spurious: CO2 levels change with changes in temperature, not with long standing temperature levels themselves. That there is a correlation in the past decades is mainly caused by a simultaneous increase of CO2, temperature and the relative huge year by year temperature variations…
– Humans are the cause of the rise of CO2 since the industrial revolution (and methane levels since they invented rice cultivation), because they add more CO2 than nature (oceans and biosphere) can absorb over a year, thus pushing the dynamic equilibrium to higher levels.
Conclusion:
Although humans are the cause of the increase of CO2 (and CH4), the effect of this on temperature is limited and to a certain extent even beneficial.
There are other reasons to limit our use of fossil fuels, but global warming is not one of them…
Chris J., et al:
Ok, I just did a very simplistic “dry lab” calculation which does show that with high ratios of HCO3 to H2CO3, addition of H2CO3/dissolved CO2 which adds more HCO3 net than H2CO3 to the solution does decrease CO3.
K = Ka1/Ka2 = [HCO3-]^2 / [H2CO3][CO32-]
say initial [HCO3] = 1000, and [H2CO3] = 2
Then,
K = 1/2 [1000][1000]/[C03] = 1/2[10]^6/[CO3]
K = 500,000/[CO3]
Now add 100 HCO3 such that, arbitrarily, H2CO3 increase = 1 and HCO3 increase = 99
K = 1/3 [1099][1099]/[CO3] = 402600 /[CO3new] – approx.
K = 402,600 /[CO3new] = 500,000/[CO3].
Therefore [CO3new] must decrease to keep K constant.
So I was wrong, must apologize, and soon will run for President.
Gavin Schmidt
– is commenting on the article “CO2, temperature and ice ages” In this blog of Realclimate: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/irreversible-does-not-mean-unstoppable/langswitch_lang/en
He writes:
“The climate affects the carbon cycle – over ice age timescales it seems to be mainly through ocean processes (solubility, production, stratification) which takes time to work through. CO2 is still a greenhouse gas, and so the combination is an amplification of the cycles which are driven by orbital wobbles. None of this is controversial.”
So, Gavin does not in any way distance the illustrations of vostok data I’ve shown.
So far so good. As I wrote in the article, the illustrations does not make a CO2 effect 100% impossible.
1) They just show that the CO2 effect is so small, that even a CO2 in max cannot prevent temperatures from falling all the way down. This shows that CO2 is at most i quite little player.
2) Data indicates, that maybe, and just MAYBE, its CO2 that makes temperatures fall 0,1 K per century slower than they rise?
3) And literally, I don’t think Gavin from fig 4 and 5 can make CO2 “amplify” the temperature falls? It must be an amplifying effect working only when temperature is rising.
– by the way, yesterday i 2 times tried to reply at realclimate to Gavin Schmidt, but i cant see my writings in his blog. I dont know if its technical problems or??
Frank,
No worry. After that a several of my postings never appeared at RealClimate, I don’t post there anymore. They censore anything and anybody they don’t like. That makes a real scientific debate impossible…
Posting an article on Anthony’s blog is a good reason to put you on on their blacklist…
What????!!!!
but why does a warmer temperature raise the CO2 level ?
The oceans are full of CO2. If they get warmer, they “outgas,” because their ability to absorb gasses is reduced.