I’ve been getting a lot of requests to cover this story, probably 20 or so now with wonderings about “why haven’t you covered this yet?”
How quickly you all forget. WUWT was the very first to cover this story back on November 10th, 2009.
Everybody else in the media today is playing catch-up. So if you’d like to read the original press release and participate in the already ripe comments left then, see this WUWT story:
Peter Hearnden (12:19:37) :
And if the atmospheric concentration increases, so what? It’s not driving the warming of the planet, and the planet is certainly more than capable of handling the sequestration of 10 times the current amount.
Good luck getting the C02 away from the Calcium Carbonate rocks and back into the bio carbon cycle.
‘The Sednan race spotted Earth 25,000 years ago, a potentially habitable Ice World, needing only to have the Interglacials arrested. By the time the advance scouts got here, they found the Hominids had achieved Industrialization and Advanced Knowledge. They immediately set to work on a 30 year plan to drive them toward destroying their bio carbon cycle.’
Well, that’s not going to stop the Aussie moonbats. They got an early start on 2010.
http://tinyurl.com/ya4zx9g
Squidly (12:13:52) : A bit off topic, but I have a lot of respect for Burt Rutan
It’s interesting to see that Burt Rutan gives an estimate for thermal time constant of the oceans:
Also, the oceans take 30 to 100 years to react to atmospheric temperature changes http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm
Do you know what is the origin of this estimate?
This is all based on the carbon cycle which is nothing but a theory, because although they might be able to make a fair estimate of man-made CO2 emissions, it is almost impossible IMHO, to estimate accurately Ocean and land-based fluxes. The IPCC even says so, here is a very important IPCC picture.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-7-3.html
note: the caption – “Gross fluxes generally have uncertainties of more than ±20%”.
To accept the 43% figure you have to accept all the other models, like the carbon cycle, as absolute truth and ignore the 20% error factor they admit to. (Gross fluxes generally have uncertainties of more than ±20%). That error factor is much more than man’s CO2 contribution.
What about the warming oceans? I think we can all accept that global temperature have warmed somewhat since 1850 and warmer oceans will release more CO2. This warmer article,Carbon Dioxide in the Oceans, states: “In general, tropical waters release CO2 to the atmosphere, whereas high-latitude oceans take up CO2 from the atmosphere.” How is all of that measured?, There are millions of miles of ocean each releasing or taking up a different amount of CO2 depending on temperature gradients.
The natural world creates about 212 Gt of Carbon, yet man only creates about 7-8 Gt, or 3-4% of natural. Yet the IPCC admits to error bars of 20% in their Carbon/CO2 estimates. Call me a skeptic, but you know what I think, I think they start with the man-made 7-8 Gt and then work “backwards”, making all the other number fit.
This is Prentice, which is a long paper showing you how they came up with all the different estimates, that might be off 20%. To show you how hard all this is, look at a recent paper measuringforest inventory changes in Pennsylvania, (slow loader), Go to page 19 (22) You will see that Stand-Size of Pa forests increased by 33% btn 1994 and 2005. That means there is a tremendous change in CO2 taken in and decaying vegetation, very complex processes to measure. Do you think the IPCC or anyone can possibly measure all these various fluxes in the innumerable complex ecosystems, and add to that the oceans. The oceans which because of warming have to be emitting more CO2, they are estimated to hold 50x more CO2 than the atmosphere, just 1% more of CO2 release because of slightly warmers ocean temperatures, completely overwhelms any man-made CO2 affect! Completely!
Call me a skeptic, although this paper might make the AGW a little less worse than thought, it is still all a big whopping guess! We just don’t know.
Squidly (12:13:52) says:
Hmmm, Rutan says:
I would have thought that, given the greater heat capacity of the oceans compared with the atmosphere, and that the oceans receive energy every day from the sun, that it was unlikely for the oceans would react substantially to atmospheric temperature changes.
Well its probably the good old Henry’s Law. Even though some laws are quite old, it doesnt mean they are not working anymore.
Oceans slooooowly heating up from last ice age. CO2 degassing from the oceans. Its complex business.
But of course all that is settled. According to Al Gore.
Facts from 1997;
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/esef4.htm
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/esef5.htm
I bet that white stuff you see raining down on you when diving on Titanic and similar places is that CaCO3 stuff..?
Anyone?
I suspect that in the near future, CO2 will phase out as a primary driver of AGW and be replaced by methane.
Mapou (12:21:51) :
Let me see if I get this straight. The paper claims that the proportion of man-made CO2 retained in the atmosphere is more or less constant. In other words, if we generate a million tons of CO2 in a given period, about half a million (.55) tons are retained. This means that half a million tons are absorbed by the oceans, lakes, rocks, trees, etc. What is the physical mechanism behind this strange process, pray tell?
I mean, how does the earth know that it must retain only half of the man-made CO2? How about the naturally emitted CO2? How does nature tell the difference between the two types of CO2? I sense some unseen magic in the woodwork.
I was waiting for someone to ask this. I think that the oceans etc absorb an amount equivalent to ~55% of the amount emitted by fossil fuel burning.
Nick Stokes (10:40:36) : edit
There have been many, many claims that the sequestration rate is either decreasing or is going to decrease. A quick look at Google finds thousands of articles from 2007-2008 alone making the claim, with titles like:
I could quote hundreds more, but I’m sure you see the point.
You point out that the UN IPCC notes that the airborne fraction has been steady over the last fifty years. You either don’t know or don’t mention that the IPCC also notes that the models show “… the mean tendency towards an increasing airborne fraction through the 21st century, which is common to all models.” (IPCC FAR Figure 7.13) The IPCC also notes that “All C4MIP models project an increase in the airborne fraction of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions through the 21st century,” and “Climate change alone will tend to suppress both land and ocean carbon uptake, increasing the fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions that remain airborne and producing a positive feedback to climate change.” (Ibid p. 538)
Now, since all the screaming is about the “climate change” that occurred in the latter half of the 20th century, and the IPCC says that climate change alone will increase the airborne fraction and also that the fraction hasn’t increased, I don’t know how they reconcile those two facts. Seems very contradictory to me, but since the IPCC is a corrupt UN idiocracy I suppose it should not be surprising …
In any case, since each and every one of the models say that the airborne fraction increases with increasing levels of CO2, a scientific observationally based study saying that those model results are hogwash is certainly worth highlighting.
Joel Shore
“What you ignore is that there is a timescale associated with how long it takes the CaCO3 in the rocks to make it into the ocean to neutralize things, and unfortunately, this timescale is on the order of a thousand years or more.”
Um, what YOU ignore is the other end of the process that sucks carbon out of the ocean, sequesters it on the sea floor in shells that later is thrust up as sedimentary rock that eventually makes it back to the ocean.
P Gosselin (11:23:42) :
I thought some mountain in Hawaii was measuring CO2 concentrations, and has shown a steady 2 or 3 ppm per year increase since measurements started in the 1950s.
You mean this Bristol study says it aint so?
Someone expalin this? I’m lost.
Okay, well understand first of all where the source of information comes from, ice cores. But basically what is being talked about is the ratio of absorbed vs unabsorbed CO2 as a percentage, Not that we are not dumping more into the atmosphere but that which we do dump is being absorbed at the same rate. The reason this is significant is because one of the many hypothesis about CO2 is that we better reduce it now before the we emit more then the world can absorb. But the ratio of absorption has not changed… So basically if we emitted 2 billion tonnes of CO2 in 1850 approx 55% of that was absorbed by the world at large. Currently we are emitting 35 Billion Tonnes and it is still being absorbed at the same rate ( 55% basically ) So while CO2 is still going up and is going up at a higher rate the world absorbed more CO2 then it even did in 1850…
Please anyone who notes I am off base with this chime in, just my understanding of it.
Re: Willis Eschenbach (13:04:11) :
Very well put…..
I guess this result (earth still effectively absorbing all forms of CO2) shouldn’t really be all that suprising, since it has been doing this for some time now…..but I have to admit it sure feels good to have a peer reviewed (Journal published article) confirming it……
Richard Sharpe (12:55:04) :
Squidly (12:13:52) says:
I would have thought that, given the greater heat capacity of the oceans compared with the atmosphere, and that the oceans receive energy every day from the sun, that it was unlikely for the oceans would react substantially to atmospheric temperature changes.
Sure it’s the other way around – the thermal mass of the ocean is 700 times larger than the thermal mass of the atmosphere…
However, an ocean thermal time constant in the range between 30 and 100 years seems reasonable!
Everybody else in the media today is playing catch-up.
Another reason for WUWT to advertise on Yahoo front page—-so people can find a new and better news source!!!
Yes, it was an exercise in model Validation: and the models weren’t.
DesertYote (12:44:52) :
“I have always been suspicious of the reports of CO2 levels and have many questions. For one thing, how are ice core based data correlated with other data?”
Well, the REAL HUGE HUMONGOUS BOMBSHELL in the last few weeks was the report out of NASA on the AIRS satellite data re CO2. Contrary to ‘consensus’ belief, CO2 is NOT well mixed in the atmosphere. In fact it is rather lumpy. (Odd, isn’t ‘Lumpy’ the name of Lucia’s climate model? Rather prescient methinks.)
So one can say that the ice core data on CO2 correllates only with itself.
What are the implications for the climate models? Perhaps an expert like Joel Shore can illuminate us. Ya think?
There was a piece out of NASA months ago hinting at this, but they were still analyzing the data.
I question the timing of the report, however. Just like the Whitehouse dumps stories on a Friday night that it doesn’t want known, the NASA report on Lumpy came out during the initial heat of ClimateGate!
Peter Hearnden (12:52:08) :
I’d love to see any climate paper that you consider to be the “last word”, though AGWers try to shut down debate so much they’d like some to be the “last word”.
REPLY: Well said. It reminds me to remind everyone of Lord Kelvin’s missive: “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” Some facets of Climate Science seem to be imitating Lord Kelvin these days with their focus on CO2 being “the final word” on warming. – A
thecomputerguy says:
You don’t. It doesn’t. In fact, the fact that the amount remaining in the atmosphere is such a fixed fraction of what we emit provides even more evidence that the CO2 rise is indeed due to our emissions.
Willis Eschenbach (13:04:11) :
Nice IPCC goofy list, don’t mind if I do.
Forests losing the ability to absorb man-made carbon dioxide – That’s a land-use issue, not a C02 type issue. A tree could care less which type of C02 it eats.
Southern Ocean already losing ability to absorb CO2 – until they discovered all the sea life under the ice.
Heat Hinders Ground’s Ability to Absorb CO2 – I thought sunlight was a prescribed component of photosynthesis. It’s the plant that eats the C02, not the dirt. Frozen plants don’t eat anything.
North American flora can’t absorb continent’s greenhouse gas – I didn’t catch the news that reported all plant life died in N. America.
Antarctic Ocean Losing Ability to Absorb Carbon Dioxide – bio, bio, bio. Crustaceans make shells. Shells sink. Limestone forms.
Atmospheric CO2 Levels Rising Much Faster than Predicted [from decreasing sequestration] – If the ratio hasn’t changed, the only thing that is faster than predicted is the IPCC giveth and the IPCC taketh away.
Earth may be losing ability to absorb CO2 – That might be true if it eats all the rest of the C02. You can’t absorb something that is doing a Geological timeframe vanishing act. Put in a science perspective, the law of diminishing returns is at work here. Geology has gobbled bio-C02 insatiably.
Compartmental models are notoriously difficult to characterise especially when transport between compartments are through diffusion, or at least obey linear dffrenetial equations. I went through a phase early in my career of trying to understand where certain chemicals were partitioned in the body from forcing with infusions and observing the washout.The equations describing the concentrations in the various parts of system are horribly ill-conditioned and that was with an observable, controllable system. In the words of a distinguished mathematician, it was like dividing a snowball by a moonbeam and expressing the results to 6 significant figures. I’m highly suspicious of any calculations that require measurements of fluxes to be better that 5% error to gain a realistic answer.
“Syl (13:24:33) :
[…]
Well, the REAL HUGE HUMONGOUS BOMBSHELL in the last few weeks was the report out of NASA on the AIRS satellite data re CO2. Contrary to ‘consensus’ belief, CO2 is NOT well mixed in the atmosphere. In fact it is rather lumpy.”
Oh, you shouldn’t overplay this. It was a very colorful map but the concentration differences ranged from 382 to 395 ppm or something… Not that lumpy after all. Please go back to the map and find the legend.
Syl says:
None of these things are being ignored. What matters is the rates at which these processes occur. Read the literature…Then comment.
Joel Shore (12:41:20) :
“Really? Can you explain that logic?”
Even under the ridiculous assumption that the entire increase in CO2 levels we have witnessed in the last 50 years is anthropogenic CO2, more than half of it is not in the atmosphere after an average of less than 25 years (less than because the release of CO2 is more heavily weighted toward recent decades). This fact completely demolishes analyses such as this.
” I don’t know what you mean by “the dominant time constant”
A dominant time constant would be one which determines the majority of the dynamics. A time constant which accounts for over half of the dissipation of a substance in a given time interval could reasonably be considered “dominant”.
…but the actual claim has been that the persistency is not determined by a single time constant…
Irrelevant. There is no evidence that lingering persistence on the order of hundreds or thousands of years exists, and even less that it exists and is significant. You are dealing in speculative science.
“…because it is highly non-exponential (see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/03/how-long-will-global-warming-last/ ), with ~1/4 of the perturbation still remaining after hundreds of years.”
More models with predetermined conclusions. Open your eyes. The Bristol paper evaluates real, empirical data.
To all: This really is a potential giant slayer. There are two struts which are absolutely essential in holding up the edifice of CAGW. If either weakens significantly or fails altogether, the entire house of cards collapses.
One is the hypothesis of significant and unopposed positive water vapor feedback, without which CO2 alone will not heat the planet catastrophically. Lindzen and Choi and Spencer, et al., have been chipping away at this strut effectively over the last year.
The other strut is the attribution of the entire increase in CO2 concentration observed over the last 1/2 century to anthropogenic sources. Necessary to this attribution is the assumption of an extremely long persistence of anthropogenic CO2 (but not natural CO2, even though there is no significant difference – but that’s a subject for another time which I have been over extensively elsewhere in the WUWT forums) in the atmosphere. Obviously, if the available sinks removed the CO2 as fast as it were being added, there would be no increase in concentration. As the time constant increases, the level of maximum accumulation increases, up to the entire integrated rate of release. A dominant time constant on the order of 5-10 years, such as has been estimated by several studies, and which is reasonably supported by the Bristol paper, would confirm that the claims of CAGW are without merit.
“I’d love to see any climate paper that you consider to be the “last word”, though AGWers try to shut down debate so much they’d like some to be the “last word”.”
That would be why views like mine are in such a minority here then….
Dr Knorr himself explains the ramifications of his paper here:
http://jonesthenews.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/bristol-research-does-not-support-climate-change-denial/
“You can always misinterpret the results but I think that experience shows that kind of misinformation dies out quickly.”
[snip- Tom P… that was uncalled for, it is being discussed widely in other venues, and I don’t appreciate your remarks, if you don’t like what we do here start your own blog, otherwise … – A ]