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:
It will be really funny when the “experts” figure out that 388 ppmv CO2 pretty well fits within the normal range of warm periods in the last 10,000 years.
The ice core CO2 data make for a very nice 200- to 500-yr moving average; but they can’t resolve decadal- and century-scale changes.
I would think that the fact that the AIRS data show polar CO2 to be ~30 ppmv lower than low- to mid-latitude CO2 would be a clue that the ice cores systematically underestimate global atmospheric CO2.
AIRS
Plant SI data accurately depict CO2 with nearly annual resolution over portions of the last 10,000 years. SI data over the last 60 years match the MLO data and they can be empirically tested.
SI vs MLO & Ice Cores
Ferdinand Engelbeen (13:53:22) :
“Of course, the earth’s carbon cycle hardly distiguishes between “man-made” and natural CO2 (it does for a tiny fractionation of isotopes), but as the emissions are one-way additions and the sum of all natural processes is negative (less CO2 increase is measured than there are emissions), there is zero net extra CO2 induced by nature. They are talking about (man made) quantities, not type.”
Ferdinand, if the carbon cycle does not distinguish between the two, then the dynamics which continually remove the much larger natural input must be equally adept at removing the anthropogenic portion.
It may be argued with very few assumptions that the model should be
Cdot = (Co – C)/tau + (1+Ko)*adot
where C is the atmospheric concentration, Co is the equilibrium level of CO2 in the atmosphere without anthropogenic forcing, tau is the dominant time constant, adot is the rate of input from anthropogenic sources, and Ko is a sensitivity factor which is essentially a stimulated emission term, e.g., anthropogenic forcing causes warming, which heats the ocean, releasing more CO2.
This additional CO2 is natural, with natural isotopic composition. It would be like the action of a transistor. A transistor does not actually amplify a given weak signal by making the electrons bigger, or some such silliness. Rather it uses the weak signal to modulate a stronger signal so that it becomes qualitatively similar to the weak signal.
Without Ko, an adot which is less than or equal to 3% or so of the value of Co/tau, which is the rate of natural CO2 release, results in a 3% steady state increase in the level of C. That is, if Co were representative of 280 ppmv, the level of C due to adot would be less than 1.03*280 = 288 ppmv. To get a level of about 380 ppmv such as we have observed from anthropogenic forcing alone, Ko would need to be greater than a factor of 10, which is extremely unlikely IMHO.
The only assumptions which went into deriving this model are:
A) locally linear dynamics
B) the term Ko*adot represents the dc gain of a linear operator K acting on adot, and the potentially higher frequency components of this operator are not significantly excited by adot
It is possible, though IMHO unlikely, that the value of tau could change significantly with increasing C, hence dramatically increasing the sensitivity as the concentration increases. I believe the results of the Bristol paper argue against this possibility.
nofreewind (12:54:54) :
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%”.
You need to make a distinction between the total inventory and the individual flows: The year by year increase is what is really measured +/- 0.2 ppmv. The emissions is what is calculated from fossil fuel sales +/- 0.5 ppmv. That is what is important: in average 55% of the fossil fuel emissions (as extra mass, not as individual molecules) is remaining in the atmosphere. Where the extra CO2 is going into is not known with high accuracy, it may be that in one year more is going into vegetation, the other year more in the oceans, depending of temperature and precipitation. But that is not important for the overall inventory, as that is not based on individual fluxes.
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.
The overall inventory is not based on any model.
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 short term influence of temperature is about 4 ppmv/K. For (very) long term temperature changes (glacials-interglacials), the ratio goes up to about 8 ppmv/K, far too small to be the cause of the increase: 8 ppmv for a temperature increase of about 1 K since the LIA, while we see a 100+ ppmv increase…
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.
The 212 GtC is not important at all, as some more is removed (216 GtC) at the other side of the globe and/or in another season. Even if it was 1,000 GtC in and 1,004 GtC out, this isn’t important, as long as more is removed by nature than added, only the emissions are important…
The satellite data also show that CO2 is far from well-mixed.
Invariant (13:13:00) :
Are people actually saying that if we heat the atmosphere that the water and land will only absorb that additional heat over a time scale of years?
Surely that cannot be true: the whole pattern of evaporation and precipitation will even out air temperature to water temperature in much less time. Hotter air will cool itself by evaporating water faster, which will be returned as rain to the water and land.
If it is true that heated air will only slowly pass on any gained heat, then the whole CO2 thing falls apart. Our burning of fossil fuels more than accounts for the change in air temperature.
kwik (14:27:45)
This reflects a common misconception. There are two times of interest. One is the residence time of CO2, which is the length of time that the average CO2 molecule stays in the air before being absorbed by a plant or the soil or the ocean. This is fairly easy to measure, can be measured in a couple of ways, and as you say is on the order of five to seven years.
The other is the halflife or e-folding time. This is a measure of how long it take for the system to return to its dynamic equilibrium level after a pulse of CO2 has been emitted to the atmosphere. It is much more difficult to measure. Estimates for the e-folding time range from thirty to two hundred years.
w.
DirkH (12:43:36) :
Sorry completely O/T but this is just too funny, it’s on the
right side of the ScienceDaily page, a link to…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091223074659.htm
Actually not that OT, as it illustrates how to screw up good research. As evolution progressed, going on the hypothesis these changes are for decreasing the odds of successful mating, then wouldn’t the genes that lead to the least-successful mating get removed from the gene pool simply because there would be less offspring? More successful mating leads to more offspring thus greater dispersion of genes for more successful mating, seems pretty straightforward. On what basis would they conclude that less-successful mating would be a desirable trait more likely to get passed on?
Looking at the concept of such difficult plumbing, I would conclude something else. As more than one Amazonian tourist has found out, it can be dangerous to be naked in certain natural bodies of water, there are assorted critters, worms and larvae etc, that like to swim up the plumbing. By having a longer stretch of plumbing, somewhat convoluted and with a few dead ends, the odds of the critters getting in to where they can seriously affect fertility is reduced. Thus genes protecting against critter-related loss of fertility would be selected for propagation, thus the difficult plumbing seen is explainable in a way that is in accordance with evolutionary theory.
Going deeper in the article, they think the difficult plumbing is aimed at thwarting aggressive forced mating. By experiments with glass tubes using assorted shapes from the difficult plumbing, they think they show the shapes prevent duck phalli from working properly, thus the shapes are thwarting forced mating. For one thing, I think it shows duck phalli do not work properly in a hard non-resilient substance like glass. Couldn’t they have used silicone models with a few drops of glycerin or vegetable oil? Second, if they keep aggressive males from successfully completing their task, why would more docile males be more successful in a less-aggressive coupling? They are examining an effect that takes less than a half of a second, so the difference does not seem to be coming from the males. Are the females doing anything different that would make the less-aggressive mating more successful, thus propagating the genes giving a preference in fertilization to the less-aggressive mating?
Offhand the work seems tainted by a bit of feminist feel-good philosophy, “Nature helps the females fight back!” In reality aggressive forced mating, when the males do not have to worry about child rearing, is normally rather successful. When males take part in child care, aggressive males gather harems. Repeatedly, evolution chooses aggressive males. Therefore this research shows that evolution is thwarting male aggressiveness?
Note the lead author is named Patricia. No comment.
Ferdinand Engelbeen (14:30:21) :
Thank you very much. You supplied exactly what I was interested in. It looks like your article addresses all of the questions I have. The last time I tried to find this type of info via google, I got so frustrated by all of the nonsense that I gave up!
“Bart (14:22:33) :
DirkH (14:03:13)
If I am correct in my belief of how the dynamics should manifest themselves, there should be evidence of the accelerated input within roughly a 5-10 year lag interval, and it should be small.”
So they say it’s taking the air from a power plants chimney that long to reach Hawaii? Through some hand-waving dynamics?
This is all so sad. I mean it’s sad that journalists and politicians believe this obvious rubbish.
e-folding???? hmmm must read on that. Unless its something from a super-confuser? hehe.
Early in this discussion Marcus posted this link:
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/realCO2-1.htm
According to the graph “Atmospheric CO2 Background 1826-1960”, CO2 levels were fairly stable from 1870 to about 1920 and then began a gradual upward trend. In the mid 1930’s the graph shows an strong annual increase of atmospheric CO2 which peaks in the early 1940’s, followed by a decline back to the prior levels for the early part of the 20th century. The mid-1930’s were very warm with a peak in 1934.
An old chemistry book I have, written around 1940, shows CO2 as component of atmosphere at around 350 ppm which is more or less what the graph indicates which gives some rough validation to the accuracy of the graph—at least in this time frame.
A question comes to mind. What caused the increased warming (circa 1934) *before* the maximum CO2 concentration in the early 1940″s–a decade or so later? This looks to me as if CO2 follows warming—and fairly quickly too. It suggests something(s) other than CO2 is driving global temperature swings.
Furthermore, humans are *not* by any means the only source of light (c12 and c13) carbon on the planet. Human fossil fuel use is one source, however, methane clathrates tend to be light carbon, as do volcanic sources. (Including the Mauna Loa source). Counting the increase in ‘light’ co2 cannot account for all sources of such, including coal seam fires, methane seeps, and other sources.
On the other hand there are unrecognized ‘light’ sources from human influence, such as carbonate decomposition, etc, wherein acidic sources break down carbonate rocks.
Congratulations, Anthony!
You have done mankind a great service.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Syl (13:24:33) :
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.
Sorry to disappoint you, but the satellite shows that CO2 levels are quite well mixed, within 1% of 385 ppmv for yearly averages. But of course, if you have huge seasonal influences and constant emissions and a NH-SH delay, you will see these influences both in the satellite data and in the ground stations.
Ice core data have an overlap of about 20 years with the CO2 levels of the South Pole.
I should have said “Without Ko, an adot which is less than or equal to 3% or so of the value of Co/tau, which is the rate of natural CO2 release, results in an upper bound of a 3% steady state increase in the level of C.”
Also, to further explain the last comment, tau is the value of the time constant at a locally linearized set point. If the state evolves to such a point that the linearization no longer is an accurate description, then if the dynamics are smooth, you can re-linearize about a new set point which has a modified value of tau. From this, you can reason yourself to a model in which tau is dynamically changing with C. However, the Bristol paper argues that the dynamics are not really changing significantly with the increasing concentration of CO2.
Mapou (12:21:51) : “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’ll have an uneducated stab at this: In spring and summer plants sequester the CO2 as they grow. In autumn and winter they don’t. Humans produce CO2 all year round so about half doesn’t get sequestered.
Joel Shore (13:36:02) :
“None of these things are being ignored. What matters is the rates at which these processes occur. Read the literature…Then comment.”
You have utterly missed the point. It’s not about what happens on land, it’s what’s happening in the oceans. Any comparison of rates between the two is a diversion.
Willis Eschenbach (13:04:11) :
Knorr’s paper, and Anthony’s posts have been about the observed airborne fraction, and I quoted in IPCC AR4 on that topic (“remarkably little variation”).
It’s true that the IPCC says that models predict an increase over the next century. What is not often noted about the Knorr paper is that he said the trend since 1860 was not zero, but 0.7±1.4 %/decade, which the press release says is “essentially zero”. But it’s not so small, just uncertain. Fig 7.13 of AR4 marks a model result showing a 11% rise from 2000 to 2100. That’s 1.1%/decade – well within Knorr’s range, and fairly close to his mean 0.7.
“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.”
It doesn’t say that they are hogwash at all. Knorr’s study only adds new info about the century 1860 to 1960. A little more relevant to the model performance the IPCC’s observation since 1959. But the model results are for C21, and in any case are consistent with Knorr’s range.
“so we take temperature readings from thousands of sites to get a global average temp but for CO2 we use ONE site in Hawaii ?
Seems like there are lots of sources of CO2 in Hawaii that could skew any measurements …
the assumption the the atmosphere is perfectly mixed on a global scale is utter ignorance …
“
No, there are lots of sites. Here is just one (Scripps) network. Here is a longer list, with data.
The well-mixed atmosphere is not an assumption. It’s shown in the earth pic at the head of this post. And that shows variation, but look at the legend. The whole color range is 382-390 ppm CO2!
“Kim Moore (15:02:43) :
[…]
This looks to me as if CO2 follows warming—and fairly quickly too. It suggests something(s) other than CO2 is driving global temperature swings.”
Some say cosmic rays: Svensmark , Kirkby.
video 1 hour presentation by Kirkby
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/
the slides used in the presentation
http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=slides&confId=52576
This report seems to contradict the Keeling curve, and to question the evidence for the man made rise in CO2 that underlies AGW:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/18343
How credible is this?
“Dr. Roy Spencer in his book “Climate Confusion,” points out how man-made global warming alarmists attempt to mislead the public by claiming that global CO2 emissions total about 50 billion tons per year. He fails to acknowledge that the total weight of the atmosphere is 5 quadrillion tons. In other words, the 50 billion tons adds to 5 million billion tons, or a mere 10 parts per million – relatively speaking, a trivial change each year.”
Bay City power plant crippled by false global warming Information
http://www.mlive.com/opinion/bay-city/index.ssf/2010/01/bay_city_power_plant_crippled.html
What a day:
And in India:
Cooling is more dangerous than warming.
Look at it from a plant’s perspective:
At about 150 ppm CO2, most plants stop uptake.
The CO2 content of Antarctic ice core during glacial epochs fell to 180 ppm–if that was the global average for CO2 maybe that explains why core ice had much higher dust content as deserts expanded from loss of vegetation.
Plants do much better between 1,000 ppm and 2,000 ppm; that’s why greenhouses are augmented with CO2 to those levels. Plants also utilize water better with higher levels of CO2 so less water is needed and many arid regions are now experiencing notable greening as a consequence.
I’ve read where some experts estimate the maximum CO2 content of the atmosphere would approach about 600 ppm with additional anthropogenic sources, which is not where plants would really like it, and certainly below any levels harmful to humans. At approximately 600 ppm, equilibrium would set in, and it would stay at the level until all fossil fuels were burned up, after which time it would decline. Maybe by then we’ll look aroud for all those oilfields where CO2 was sequestered and release that into the atmosphere.
The oceans contains about 50 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere, so it doesn’t take much warming of the oceans to make a significant contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere. Conversely, carbonic acid, formed as rain falls through the atmosphere, eventually reaches the sea, and this H2CO3 is quickly incorporated into the shells of marine animals. It doesn’t take thousands of years for those little critters to get busy.
The land biomass should expand until it reaches a point of equilibrium, which would undoubtedly be larger than total biomass today. That bodes well for all ecosystems, which benefits mankind, too.
So plants will continue to see an advantage, especially if the BRIC countries continue to make their contributions to a greener planet. And I don’t see anything stopping them, certainly not snowstorms next summer in Mexico City.
Or will Gore not be invited?
Bart (13:38:57) :
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.
No matter what the cause of the increase is (there is a lot of evidence it is), if we stop all emissions today, next year the result will be a decrease of about 4 GtC (about 2 ppmv), the same as today. But as the CO2 pressure difference between the atmosphere and the oceans (and plant alveoles) now is 2 ppmv less, next year we will not lose 2 ppmv anymore, but substantially less. And so on for all next years. With some calculation (see the link to Peter Dietze in a previous message), the half life time of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 40 years. Thus 50% of the excess still is in the atmosphere after 40 years, 25% after 80 years,…
The other strut is the attribution of the entire increase in CO2 concentration observed over the last 1/2 century to anthropogenic sources.
There is little doubt that the increase over the past 1.5 century is due to anthro emissions. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
All alternative explanations fail on one or more observations…
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
As Willis already said, 5-10 years residence time is how fast a CO2 molecule (whatever the source) is exchanged between air and water/plants, which doesn’t add or removes any CO2 in total quantity. That has nothing to do with the time needed to remove half an excess amount of CO2 (whatever the source), which is about 40 years.
Mooloo (14:54:26): Are people actually saying that if we heat the atmosphere that the water and land will only absorb that additional heat over a time scale of years?
Yes. It seems so¹. I’ve been working with commercial thermal simulations for quite some time, and I can assure you that it takes years to heat or cool down an ocean with an average depth of ~4000 metres.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean
Do you know the concept of thermal mass? A very nice analogy with an electrical RC circuit is found here:
http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node129.html
The time constant, τ, is in accord with our intuition, or experience; high density, large volume, or high specific heat all tend to increase the time constant, while high heat transfer coefficient and large area will tend to decrease the time constant.
Now imagine the high density, large volume and high specific heat of the ocean…
¹http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf