This is a bit disturbing, though in retrospect, not surprising. One of our local IPCC wonks at Chico State University, Jeff Price, is a biologist, but lectures me about climate all the same. – Anthony
by Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
I had intended to return to this point when I originally posted about this debate last week, but time got away from me. Thankfully, my colleague Roy Cordato brought it up today:
During the question and answer session of last week’s William Schlesinger/John Christy global warming debate, (alarmist) Schlesinger was asked how many members of United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were actual climate scientists. It is well known that many, if not most, of its members are not scientists at all. Its president, for example, is an economist.
Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC – trained initially as a railway engineer
This question came after Schlesinger had cited the IPCC as an authority for his position. His answer was quite telling.
First he broadened it to include not just climate scientists but also those who have had “some dealing with the climate.” His complete answer was that he thought, “something on the order of 20 percent have had some dealing with climate.” In other words, even IPCC worshiper Schlesinger now acknowledges that 80 percent of the IPCC membership had absolutely no dealing with the climate as part of their academic studies.
This shatters so much of the alarmists’ claim, as they almost always appeal to the IPCC as their ultimate authority.
Joel
“As for Wegener, of course I am not going to claim that it is always easy getting new ideas accepted. But, I am sometimes a little suspicious of these histories and have also read (although I can’t remember where) in the particular case of Wegener that the story is actually more complex than it is made out to be.”
Joel this is a very unscientific, disingenuous and dismissive statement. This is precisely what is wrong with much of the AGW crowd’s approach in deflecting criticism. I studied geology in the 1950s and there was by that time an inkling from geological data that Wegener’s idea could well be correct. However, not a small percentage of the brave souls that espoused the idea at the time lost their jobs with oil companies or were refused jobs in industry, government and academia and those in academia lost grants and were ridiculed by their “peers”. Finally, when the weight of evidence couldn’t be borne, a “new” theory came forward called Plate Tectonics with no reference at all to Wegener. This disgraceful behaviour by the status quo shocked young idealistic scientific mind to the core. I don’t look back on the treatment of Galileo as history. I can see it happening today.
Katherine – I stand corrected on the venerability of the science of climatology. I studied “paleoclimatology” in the 1950s but didn’t believe that there were any modern day ones that saw climate as other than stable for now and forever.
“The fact that the oceans are acidifying is one of the pieces of evidence that the oceans are acting as a sink, not a source, of CO2.”
Joel we’ve been through this before. CO2 fluences cannot be balanced at the end of a year’s time like a chemical equation. AIRS and MLO daily fluctuations indicate to me that the daily fluence out of the ocean into the air and back at night may reach 80Gtons of CO2.
Today on this or another thread it was found that mature forests are soaking up CO2 at surprising rates, contributing additionally to a yearly fluence in the 200Gton range. The yearly fluence via terrestrial erosion back into the ocean is 50Gtons.
Your putative excess of 4Gtons not taken up by the ocean is nothing against any of these natural fluences.
One year ago Spencer, here at WUWT, showed the variance in 13C:12C ratio of the seasonal signal in MLO data and that of the long term trend were identical under F-Test. The biogenic fluences are thought components of the seasonal, the anthropogenic thought part of the long term, no?
At the very least, Spencer’s result means the anthropogenic fluence is scrubbed from the 13C:12C record. You have no, I repeat no way to prove its existence. A trivial increase in the oceanic flux can produce the effects you claim exist. There are 50,000Gtons dissolved in the oceans and perhaps twice that in precipitates.
Get real.
Tim Clark:
Nitpick much, do we? The point is that the basic facts are these:
(1) The Bush Administration chose not to endorse the re-appointment of Watson as IPCC Chair and to support Pachauri instead.
(2) Watson was not popular with the “do-nothing-about-AGW” crowd. And, whether or not the Bush Administration’s decision to get rid of Watson was a result of Exxon Mobil’s influence (and I never claimed one can prove that it was), the fact remains that one Randy Randol, Senior Environmental Advisor for Exxon Mobil sent a FAX with his company’s name plastered all over it and a handwritten cover note that read:
The first page of the memo then has a couple of paragraphs detailing why they don’t like Watson followed by the statement:
You can see the actual memo here: http://www.nrdc.org/media/docs/020403.pdf
What aspects of the basic story are you actually doubting?
You can apply Spencer’s analysis to the Dow-Jones-Index 1990 to 1999 and the gold price 1970 and 1979 instead of 13C and 12C. You will find, that the slopes of the “Trend Signal” and the “Interannual Signal” are identical. If you look at the math involved, you will see that it must be so. In short, this is a non-proof.
REPLY: Well if you’ve proven it to be a non proof by those methods, then show you work. – Anthony
@Gary Young gulrud (14:22:16) :
“Today on this or another thread it was found that mature forests are soaking up CO2 at surprising rates, contributing additionally to a yearly fluence in the 200Gton range.”
It’s better than that…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/08/surprise-earths-biosphere-is-booming-co2-the-cause/
(sorry I can’t find it, but there’s even data on how wheat, etc., production is up due to warmer weather and higher CO2, and how it’s likely to get better with CO2 making plants more resilient under stress.
These guys have some good data, but they just can’t resist trashing the results with a, yeah but everyone knows CO2 is still bad, at the end.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0603-can_carbon_dioxide_be_a_good_thing.htm
‘Cept that the price of wheat is in the toilet. Not enough people buying bread these days and too many fields produced too many bushels of red winter wheat (which is the preferred wheat for flour). So I guess I will stick to alfalfa and timothy hay. Damned global warming.
Still waiting for anyone to show me which station; land, balloon, or orbit, that is currently measuring CO2-12, CO2-13, and CO2-14 ratios in the CO2 that is being pumped into the atmosphere, from above, and below. The argument that plants don’t use the heavier CO2-13 is hogwash. It depends on which plants you are talking about and where they grow. Any farmer and greenhouse owner knows that one.
Let’s see, you CO2 equivalent is changing at 0.7 au over 100 aau, or 0.007 au/aau (arbitrary units per another arbitrary unit)
Your another equivalent forcing is changing by 0.2 au over 8 aau, or 0.025 au/aau or 3.6 times larger! The third one is 0.3 au over 8 aau, or 0.0375 au/aau, which is 5.4 times large. They are both significantly larger forcings then your CO2 forcing, and this is reflected in your simple example. OF course those other forcings do not continue for as long as “CO2”, but they are real and much larger then “CO2” forcing. The interesting question is why are they so large and what causes them to suddenly start and stop.
But I do agree with your assertion that this simplistic graph is not by itself a good proof of anything. Of course, if you used your logic to refute many similar graphs used by believers to prove AGW I would have responded differently. Perhaps I am wrong and you had sent (blogged, send letters to the editor, or such) similar objections after Inconvenient Truth had won an Oscar, for example? If you did I take back everything I had said.
There are roughly 10 billion people in the world. How many total had died
in 2008 from any causes? 100 millions? Maybe more? And 150 thousand of them had died due to global warming? How could someone come up with result that is statistically significant with such small number is beyond me. This reminds me of those articles in MSM that talks about new research that claims that consuming (insert your favorite food/beverage here) increases you chances of dying from (insert you method of death here) by 1%.
MartinGAtkins wrote:
“Why don’t you show us the study that says there has been a 30 percent
increase in Carbon-13 to Carbon-12 over the last 150 years.”
I didn’t say that there was a 30 percent change in the Carbon-13 to Carbon-12 ratio. The 30 percent referred to the increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
“‘This implies that the additional CO2 must come from the combustion of plant matter, either living or fossilized (and ruling out volcanos).’
What about microbial decomposition and ocean out gassing? The planet has been warming since the LIA I presume you would agree that would include the
oceans. Out gassing is not rocket science.”
The best information available to me indicates that oceans are net absorbers of CO2. And again, you’re dealing with different isotope ratios. This will become clearer later in this post.
“‘I am guessing that we can agree that humans have been burning fossil fuels – IIRC, about 500 billion tons worth of Carbon. This amount alone is more than it would take to explain the increase of 280ppm to 380ppm (most of the excess is absorbed by the ocean).’
Your recollection may be wrong. At any rate saying 500 billion tones without a time frame or stating the total mass of CO2 in the atmosphere is
meaningless. As I understand things the main uptake by the oceans is
biological or we would run out of Oxygen.”
The 500 billion tons was an estimate of the Carbon content of all the fossil
fuel consumption (not sure if it also included deforestization) since the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
I’ll try some back-of-the-envelope calculations. The atmosphere weighs roughly 6×10^15 tons. This means that the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere since the beginnng of the Industrial Revolution is about 600x
10^9 tons. This would be, what, maybe the amount of anthropogenic emissions in the past 30 years (we are currently putting in more than 25×10^9 tons/year)? Whatever the exact number of years, it is clear that the total amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere by human activities since the start of the Industrial Revolution exceeds the increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. If net out-gassing by oceans were to dwarf human emissions, that would mean that the oceans were out-gassing enough CO2 to have increased the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by hundreds of ppm. For enough CO2 to be removed by an increased uptake by plants to limit the increase in the atmosphere to around 100 ppm would require the increase in uptake by plants to exceed the amount of CO2 that was in the atmosphere prior to the Industrial Revolution! Try finding a study that supports that result.
“‘As far as CO2 not being able to drive temperature change, what happens to the additional energy that is absorbed by the increased CO2?’
There isn’t any additional energy to be absorbed. The sun is a reasonable
constant energy input. All the available black body radiation is already
absorbed by the atmosphere we have had for a long time.”
Try Googling something like “Earth’s radiation balance”. You will learn how incorrect your statement is.
Pamela Gray wrote:
“The argument that plants don’t use the heavier CO2-13 is hogwash.”
Which is irrelevant, because no one (at least not in this forum) has made such an argument. It is true, however, that plants preferentially absorb Carbon-12.
Re Spencer’s carbon isotope post: If you look at the math involved, you will see that it must be so. In short, this is a non-proof.
REPLY: Well if you’ve proven it to be a non proof by those methods, then show you work. – Anthony
Spencer’s analysis was indeed based on an embarrassing mathematical fallacy, and his technique will give the same spurious result whatever two time series are input. See here.
REPLY: I said show YOUR work, not Tamino’s. Seeing you have none, I point out that Spencer has replied to that here with additional commentary by Ferdinand Englebeen here. – Anthony
Here you are.
The following is in response to the conclusions drawn from data presented in Figure 3 and Figure 6 of Dr. Spencer’s guest article “Spencer Part 2: More CO2 Peculiarities – The C13/C12 Isotope Ratio. By the time I had written this up, the thread was closed for comments. Please note, that since that posting I have registered at wordpress and had to change my moniker from “blue” to “bluegrue” in the process. You can find this entire post in my livejournal entry, too. I recommend to read it there, because of the better layout.
Notation
Some of the expressions in the following proof can get quite long, so I am using a very compact notation, suitable for a text blog:
1) Variables are one letter only and case-sensitive.
2) x(t) denotes a timeseries, i.e. a collection of n tuples (t_i,x_i) where i = 1 .. n
3) I’ll need a lot of sums over all elements of a timeseries and elementwise sums or products of these timeseries. Multiplication signs are dropped. I’ll use square brackets to denote them. Let [x] be the sum over all terms of the indicated timeseries. Examples:
[x] = x_1 + x_2 + … + x_n
[xy] = (x_1*y_1) + (x_2*y_2) + … + (x_n*y_n)
The mean value of a timeseries in this notation is [x]/n
Caveat:
[1] = 1 + 1 + …. + 1 = n
Regression Coefficient
We will need the slope m of the linear regression line of y(x), where x(t) and y(t) are series with n members:
m = (n[xy]-[x][y]) / (n[xx]-[x][x])
You can verify that in literature or see e.g. here at MathWorld equation 15. If requested, I can give you the derivation for this from least square principles.
Now on to the proof
Let u(t) and w(t) be two time series with n elements each, sampled at equidistant timesteps (i.e. daily, monthly or similar data).
Create two new time series, by lineraly detrending the above time series u(t) and w(t), where e,f,g and h are constants (Dr. Spencer used the regression lines for this, I’m proving the more general case) :
U(t) := u(t) – et – f
W(t) := w(t) – gt – h
Now take the derivatives with respect to time
x(t) := du(t)/dt
y(t) := dw(t)/dt
X(t) := dU(t)/dt = d(u(t) – et – f)/dt = x(t) – e
Y(t) := dW(t)/dt = d(w(t) – gt – h)/dt = y(t) – g
We can observe, that only the constants g and e survive, when taking the derivatives.
x(t) and y(t) are what Dr. Spencer called the “Trend Signal”.
X(t) and Y(t) are, what Dr. Spencer called the “Interannual Signal”.
The correlation coefficient of the “Trend Signal” is just
m = (n[xy]-[x][y]) / (n[xx]-[x][x])
Now let us calculate the correlation coefficient of the “Interannual Signal”:
M = (n[XY]-[X][Y]) / (n[XX]-[X][X])
= (n[(x-e)(y-g)]-[(x-e)][(y-g)]) / (n[(x-e)(x-e)]-[(x-e)][(x-e)])
= (n[xy-gx-ey+eg]-([x]-ne)([y]-ng)) / (n[xx-2ex+ee]-([x]-ne)([x]-ne))
= (n[xy]-ng[x]-ne[y]+nneg – [x][y]+ng[x]+ne[y]-nneg)
/ (n[xx]-ne[x]-ne[x]+nnee – [x][x]+ne[x]+ne[x]-nnee)
= (n[xy]-[x][y])/(n[xx]-[x][x])
= m
So the correlation coefficient of Dr. Spencers “Trend Signal” and “Interannual Signal” of any equispaced time series are identical by mathematical neccessity. Arguing “m equals M, therefore A holds true” is equivalent to saying “4 = 4, therefore A holds true”
Anthony, feel free to copy this to anywhere you feel appropriate.
MikeF (22:14:53)
The example is not a proof of AGW. It just knocks down one often repeated, yet faulty, argument against AGW. Nothing more, nothing less.
By the way, while bluegrue’s analysis demonstrates why Spencer did not show what he thought he showed, the fact that Spencer’s Fig. 3 and 6 had IDENTICAL slopes and R^2 should have been a huge clue to anyone with a skeptical bone in their body that something was wrong with his analysis! After all, with any real experimental data set, you simply would not expect that sort of exact agreement unless, as is the case here, the agreement is not due to any physical reason but is simply a mathematical necessity (because you are really just plotting the exact same thing over again)!
Gary Pearse says:
I don’t think it is unscientific to say that I have heard other accounts of the history that are at odds with this general meme. I was vague about what I had actually read though, simply because I couldn’t remember where I read it. But now I did manage to dig up what I had read that said that Wegener that the story is actually more complex than it is made out to be. Here it is: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200311/viewpoint.cfm I’m not particularly wedded to the idea that James Trefil’s description of the history is more correct than yours…But, I am also not quite ready to believe that his is wrong and yours is right either.
Jeff (23:42:42)
You were using Carbon-13 to Carbon-12 ratio as a proxy measurement for the amount of CO2 man is responsible for in the atmosphere. If we are responsible for 30 percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere then there would have to be a 30 change in the ratio.
It didn’t say it wasn’t. I said that the absorption was due to biological action.
The 500 billion tons was an estimate of the Carbon content of all the fossil fuel consumption (not sure if it also included deforestization) since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Some of the increase is taken up increased growth of carbon absorbing organisms. Deforestation does not directly increase CO2 unless it’s burnt.
Go ahead. The IPCC bases it’s whole findings on such calculations.
Which of course leads to the conclusion that higher global temperatures lead to increased CO2 sequestration as well as higher production.
Please don’t infer that I have said something I haven’t. “dwarf human emissions” Is a childish attempt by you to skew the discussion off any meaningful path.
Your statement that ocean out gassing would have to add to CO2 levels by hundreds of parts per million is patently absurd. There is only 380 ppm in the atmosphere now.
“There isn’t any additional energy to be absorbed. The sun is a reasonable
constant energy input. All the available black body radiation is already
absorbed by the atmosphere we have had for a long time.”
Do go ahead and explain it to Me. We are in no hurry. Would you like me to explain to you the concept of thermal equilibrium or would you just prefer to google it?.
.
Joel
Re Wegener, I note that it is a physicist with perhaps only a snippet of the story to go on. He didn’t mention that in the 1950s it was worth an academic’s and some industrial geologists’ livelihood to entertain the idea – essentially a modern version of what happened to Galileo. Also, Wegener was a meteorologist – probably meaning he was a physicist of sorts. Surely with such a huge idea, he shouldn’t also be obliged to come up with the entire mechanism of how it occurred (your physicist was right that that was how they skewered him!). Let’s see how we can explain this aspect to a physicist? For example, a) whether light was corpuscular or waveform as competing theories: no one denied the existence of light because the precise mechanism or form was not agreed upon. Newton’s theory of gravitation was supplanted by Einstein’s but we didn’t erase Newton from the list of scientists. And lets face it, thinking physicists are frustrated by the fragmented bits that make up our understanding of the universe – do we have to find a unified field theory before we deserve to be recognized…. I think you get the idea.
I think after all this, a bit of editorializing on the subject of science and scientists and some advice to you, young man, seems a propos. I once was told by a scientist that there are more scientists alive today than the sum of all those who lived in the past. I replied that most of those he refers to in modern times, despite having a diploma, are largely technicians who have digested a curriculum (a lab coat and horn-rimmed glasses does not a scientist make). The only ones we know of in history are the mega thinkers who left behind a legacy of discovery (and partial discovery) we never new the others and the same will be true in the future of today’s lot. Now advice. Einstein was a very humble man despite guaranteeing his place forever in the history of mankind. It was partly because of his gentle nature and partly because he knew that the ultimate was still far out of reach. Don’t take yourself so seriously.
MartinGAtkins:
“You were using Carbon-13 to Carbon-12 ratio as a proxy measurement for the amount of CO2 man is responsible for in the atmosphere. If we are responsible for 30 percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere then there would have to be a 30 change in the ratio.”
Since I don’t have the interest in researching what the exact change in ratio has been, I’ll merely make the point that because some of the anthropogenic CO2 is absorbed by plants and since plants preferentially absorb Carbon-12, it’s perfectly plausible for the change in ratio to be less than 30 percent.
“‘The best information available to me indicates that oceans are net absorbers of CO2. And again, you’re dealing with different isotope ratios. This will become clearer later in this post.’
I didn’t say it wasn’t. I said that the absorption was due to biological action.”
Your quote was “What about microbial decomposition and ocean out gassing? The planet has been warming since the LIA I presume you would agree that would include the oceans. Out gassing is not rocket science.” And that is what I was addressing.
“‘The 500 billion tons was an estimate of the Carbon content of all the fossil
fuel consumption (not sure if it also included deforestization) since the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution.’
Some of the increase is taken up increased growth of carbon absorbing
organisms. Deforestation does not directly increase CO2 unless it’s burnt.”
I thought that it was obvious that I was referring to the gross amount of
Carbon put into the air by humans, not to a net change in Carbon.
“‘If net out-gassing by oceans were to dwarf human emissions, that would mean that the oceans were out-gassing enough CO2 to have increased the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by hundreds of ppm.’
Please don’t infer that I have said something I haven’t. “dwarf human emissions” is a childish attempt by you to skew the discussion off any
meaningful path.
Your statement that ocean out gassing would have to add to CO2 levels by hundreds of parts per million is patently absurd. There is only 380 ppm in the atmosphere now.”
The claim was made by several posters that most of the increase in the CO2
content of the atmosphere was due to out-gassing by oceans, and because I
mis-read a sentence in your post, I thought that you were one of them. What
I did here was to merely show that it is implausible that most of the CO2
increase could be from out-gassing because it would require an implausibly
large increase in Carbon uptake by plants.
“‘There isn’t any additional energy to be absorbed. The sun is a reasonable
constant energy input. All the available black body radiation is already
absorbed by the atmosphere we have had for a long time.”
Try Googling something like “Earth’s radiation balance”. You will learn how\
incorrect your statement is.
Do go ahead and explain it to Me. We are in no hurry. Would you like me to
explain to you the concept of thermal equilibrium or would you just prefer to
google it?.”
Yes, I guess that you will have to explain to me how the Earth can absorb
radiation from the Sun, lose no radiation to space, and not have a long-term
warming trend. What has happened to the surplus energy that should have accumulated over billions of years?
The earth does lose radiation to space. It reaches equilibrium in that it will lose as much energy as it receives. Green house gasses only delay the loss.
Lost to space. That’s why there isn’t and cannot be runaway warming on earth.
MartinGAtkins says:
I don’t know what this means in terms of a scientifically-precise statement. If you mean the number of Joules that escapes per second (i.e., Watts) is lower because of greenhouse gases, you are correct…But that is all important, since it is the Watts in and Watts out that must balance.
If you mean something else, like the number of Watts is the same, then you are simply wrong.
By the way, any skeptic with even an ounce of scientific-credibility, e.g., Roy Spencer or Richard Lindzen, accepts that doubling CO2 results in about a 4 W/m^2 of forcing. The only seriously debatable point is what sort of temperature change this results in once the feedback effects are considered.
Joel Shore (07:35:54) :
The earth does lose radiation to space. It reaches equilibrium in that it will lose as much energy as it receives. Green house gasses only delay the loss.
What I am saying is the atmosphere delays the escape of black body radiation. Not that it stopsblack body radiation escaping.
And that is exactly what happens. If there were no atmosphere, then when the earths surface was facing the sun we would burn to death. When the earths surface was facing away from the sun we would freeze.
Although the atmosphere delays IR it reaches a point where the same amount of energy is lost as is delayed. That is thermal equilibrium.
Suppose we increase solar input. At first the extra energy is delayed and the earth warms. It will continue to do so until the amount of energy retained equals the amount of energy lost.
The earth will reach thermal equilibrium but at a higher temperature.
There is another way we can shift the balance without increasing the energy input.
By increasing the density of the atmosphere we increase it’s capacity to hold energy.
This has the effect of delaying IR for a longer period of time. It will warm up but only as far as the retained heat is balanced by the increased loss to space.
Again we reach thermal equilibrium but at a higher temperature.
I’m not sure how they arrive at their numbers, and if they use term “forcing” they are being verbally obscure. Feed back is more appropriate.
At least we can agree that feedback is a better term for other consequences that may arise from the basic model.
If you have any problem with my explanation of thermal equilibrium then have Dr. Gavin A. Schmidt explain it to you. It was he who taught me.
And the Goracle brought forth 2 chldren – the internet and AGW – and like Cain and Able one will kill the other.
MartinGAtkins says:
Conventionally, “forcing” is used to describe some perturbation that is imposed on the climate system and “feedback” is used to describe part of the climate system’s response that can either magnify or de-magnify the effect of the forcing. Since we are adding the CO2, it is a forcing. In the case of the ice age – interglacial transitions, it is probably more correct to call it a feedback since it occurs in response to the warming due to the Milankovitch oscillations and corresponding ice sheet albedo change…although in cases like this, the terminology gets somewhat arguable and, as long as one gets the physics right, people probably won’t care horribly about the pedagogy.
Nope…Now that you have expanded your explanation to make it clear that you understand that the effect of added greenhouse gases is to cause a radiative imbalance which persists until the earth warms enough to restore it back to equilibrium, I have no problem with your explanation.
I’m not trying to be pedantic but it’s important that you understand that adding more CO2 doesn’t mean more IR is absorbed.
With that we may close the thread.