Some people claim, that there's a human to blame …

Dear Willis!
Out of topic but text for Figure 2 includes … land use/land cover (LU/LC) changes (green line), … It looks white to me (unless I am white/green colour blind).
Good luck with your work!

I don’t have an issue with CO2 concentrations, however regarding your first and “most solid” argument, I wonder if the ice core data has not been “calibrated” or “adjusted” deliberately to match the Mauna Loa record.

BANG!!!!!!!

RULES FOR THE DISCUSSION OF ATTRIBUTION OF THE CO2 RISE
Amen!

So if you are going to believe that this is not a result of human activities, it would help to answer the question of what else might have that effect….
…and to bear in mind that the effect is not a ‘bump’ i.e. it’s unlikely to be not a one-off event or ‘shift’.
PS I’m not a supporter of the ‘catastrophic’ AGW argument. I’ve argued on RC with Michael Mann about the validity of his HS reconstruction, for example.

I’ve never used warmist as a term of abuse. What are we meant to call people who believe the “CO2 causes warming” theory?
My only objection to being called a denier is its lack of specificness. Especially since I don’t deny that the world is warming – although I do not believe some of he claims of the rate of warming. But as a term, per se, I don’t find denier offensive.

I agree with you.
But there is an argument that increased temperature can cause increased CO2 levels. I am not saying the temperature has increased and that is what has caused the CO2 concentration “hockey stick”. I am asking, what is the sensitivity of CO2 concentration to temperature… i.e. what kind of temperature increased would be required to produce that change in CO2? Presumably they would be massive temperature changes? Just wondering if anyone knows the figures.
Please let me stress the hypothetical nature of my point. I do not support it as a reason for the increase in CO2. I agree that the most likely reason (and the only sensible one I know of) is anthropogenic emmissions.

‘Rules for discussion’, what a piece of work. Should be chiselled on the wall of every academic establishment everywhere. IMO.

Okay Willis… you econo-freaka-nature you!

Mr.Eschenbach, are you crazy? No, you’re not; you’ve given me a lot to think about. Thank you.

BOOM !!!

Its probably me being stupid on a monday morning, but I couldn’t find a link to the actual data that the anthropogenic emissions are based on. Is there one?

Sorry, meant to say – a link to the data on which the “ESTIMATIONS” of anthropogenic emissions are based on.

“As I said, I think that the preponderance of evidence shows that humans are the main cause of the increase in atmospheric CO2. ”
Ok, fine. Is there anything that would lead anyone to believe that the increase in CO2 is harmful in any way?

Willy!
I’m thinking about the rollercoaster graph of historical (temp/co2) that MR Al Gore/Gavin Smith presented.
If warmth has a restricted inpact of 20ppm since 1850? Things surely don’t add up in any aspect. And cause/effect co2/temp will still be written with question marks for a long time.
To me the work on climate science more describes how little we know, rather than how much.
There is a big potential that many science articles are right in some aspect. Spencer, Lindzen, Milkolzci, Scafetta, IPCC, Svensmark also. The big tragedy is that so much focus has been on the CO2 hype, which has certainly crippled the science.
Blaming CO2 without understanding the negative and positive feedabacks is is like eating dinner before you cooked it! CO2 is a gas for life. It’s very possible that we are increasing the chances for life on the planet by increasing CO2 turnover.
But no one is calculating the benefits.

Good job, Willis. Takes guts to put stuff out there these days. For me, it is always curious what the facts are. Truth versus opinion: Can we distinguish the two?
While I am way out of my realm, commenting about origins of carbon dioxide, climate science or even responding to your article, I have been fully engaged in advising government and industry on environment, resource conservation, pollution prevention for over 30 years. Still scratch my head at the final priorities established and decisions made.
We have to be open to examine man’s role on the planet more holistically. Our world is much more complex than its response to any one chemical or molecule or organism present. Yet, our minds tend to fixate on the one thing that is the source and cause of all eco-problems, then seek its eradication. Governments and large institutions have become very skilled at chemical (flu organism) demonization, crisis creation and urgent-reactive solution, through the mass media. This is why I find resources such as WUWT so interesting and instructive. We are prompted to think first.
The average person, if there is such a person, is much more inquisitive and open to ideas, presentations, facts, data and its interpretation than institutions are willing to believe or want to accept. Computer simulations are illusive to them. You would have to have worked a government risk assessment, for example, to know how large an impact assumptions, rolled together, can have, especially on the decided course of action. Even then, we assume adopting no effect level standards for multiple materials equate to a clean soup.
Is the planet warming or cooling? It just makes no intuitive sense that lowly man could have such an effect on a trend that could be happening over hundreds if not thousands of years. One would have to assume earth is the solar system and universe.
Isn’t it the tornado that ripped through our yard last night that matters? Confining a massive oil leak after it happens to the smallest area? Planning and protecting for disruptive events is key to the survival of the human race. Ending fossil fuel use helps that how exactly? Oil will still leak naturally into oceans.
Like it our not, we are caretakers on this planet. Caretakers of each other and the environment we necessarily access. Our goal should always be the next generation. Otherwise, why procreate?
Before we obsess on fossil fuel combustion, we might want to examine the way we settle ourselves. If we did, we might reconsider our utilization of resources. This is not a federal government or world order level of intention, it is much more at the individual, family, or local community levels. Economic collapse is testing our response.
Personally, I have always had more faith in individual people than institutions. Those who come here, read your article today, think about the carbon dioxide and your suggested rules, might take a moment to reflect on context before they leap. Thank you.

Thanks, Willis, for the several hours of reading and cogitation ahead.
In your ‘Anthropogenic Emission, 1850 – 2005’ graph, why are there no spikes covering the 2 World Wars? I would have expected the scales to be fine enough to show at least a noticable upward ‘blip’ given the enormous activity in fossil fuel use (and, I expect, explosives would also contribute) during these periods.
Back to reading/cogitating.

If our influence wasn’t so controversial we could use it to advantage. Ego and greed tisk tisk tisk.

How trivial or significant is the direct additional respiratory and food production CO2 emission produced by increases in human longevity and population density since medieval times?

Well, as you say – your first graph resembles the Mann hockey stick, and perhaps for good reason, as it seems to utilize the good old “trick” – splicing the instrumental record onto the proxy data.
Here is another graph, clearly showing the instrumental data (red) disjointed from the proxies:
http://www.geo.cornell.edu/eas/energy/_Media/ice_core_co2.png
So the question is, as with the hockey stick: do the figures from the two methods even belong on the same graph?

I will like to comment on fig 1.
1) ice core records, evidently, come from regions largely depleted of fauna. The CO2 there is what the winds carry. It is not surprising that they show such a stable value, ignoring little ice ages and medieval warming periods ( Henry’s law). This argues that the values measured are sort of homogenized at least over centuries.
The rise in recent data is notable, but in a diffusion model, not enough time and pressure of over covering ice has passed for the recent years where so smartly the trick is played with the Mauna Loa data.
2) Mauna Loa data is also depleted by construction, so making the hockey stick shape is not hard in the overlap region. The real question is, if one had better resolution in ice core data, , for example for the medieval warm period, would it show values of the order of 350 ppm even in this depleted region ? The whole anthropogenic CO2 argument rests on this assumption, that the rise in recent years is unprecedented. Beck’s data, and I now learn from Courtney’s post above, stomata data speak differently.
I have no doubt that the temperatures have been increasing since the little ice age, and therefore expect, by Henry’s law the CO2 to be increasing . It is possible that part of the increase is due to anthropogenic causes, but I am not convinced by the data presented.
Tons do not mean much , as global numbers. example: Pollution remains close to the source, and I do not see why CO2 would be different. Most pollution sources are close to cities. It rains more over cities, (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/UrbanRain/urbanrain3.php ) because of the pollution, and rain washes down CO2 too, mixing it with the water that ends up in the seas. How can this process be quantified? i.e. how much of anthropogenic CO2 ends up in the “pure” background of the antarctic and arctic and Mauna Loa?
The whole field is rife with speculations and assumptions served as certainties.

As Richard Telford mentioned above, another line of evidence implicating fossil fuels as the source of atmospheric CO2 increase is the change in the atmospheric O2:N2 ratio. This is discussed in AR4 WG1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 2, Section 2.3.1 and illustrated here. My only problem with this record is that it’s impossible to verify since the raw data are “protected” behind a firewall at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography web site and therefore cannot be accessed by the general public. It would be great if someone at WUWT like Willis Eschenbach or Anthony Watts could convince Keeling to release his data since it was funded by mine and your tax dollars the NSF and NOAA and therefore ought to be in the public domain.
For more information, click the link “Lab Data”, located here:
https://bluemoon.ucsd.edu/data.html
Note: the Scripps/UCSD web site inexplicably uses an untrusted security certificate for their SSL connection which might trigger a browser security warning. However, this can be safely ignored.

“So, what should we expect? In the early decades of a pulse of CO2 being added to the atmosphere, with a “fresh” ocean awaiting, the near exponential decay of CO2 is possible. But as the surface layers of the ocean become more saturated with CO2, its ability to absorb more CO2 declines, and the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere departs from the exponential, and becomes much slower. ”
This assertion ignores diffusion of CO2 from the surface to the lower levels of the ocean. If diffusion (removal of CO2 from the surface to the lower volume) happens at a faster or equal rate to the absorbtion of CO2 from the atmosphere then the ocean can be considered “fresh” until the entire volume “fills.” While, in theory, eventually the ocean would saturate, the rate would be very slow.
Have there been any studies about the rate of diffusion of CO2 through the ocean layers?
My gut feeling is that since we’re dealing with Volume vs Area, that diffusion would, indeed, be a much larger value.

“Of course, those nasty warmists have been trying to explain for years just how solid the evidence is that it is indeed human activity that’s causing the CO2 rise, it’s laughable that many “skeptics” are only capable of accepting the reasoning when it’s explained to them by one of the good people at WUWT.”
Nonsense. I do not know of anyone within the climate realist community that doubts (or ever doubted) that atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased, nor that the increase is largely caused by man.
What realists believe is what is proven scientifically using the full scientific method, and that is that there is NO PROOF that current warming, (such as it is, and that depends very much an when you start and end the measurements and whether you have faith in the veracity and accuracy of those measurements and the analysis of those measurements) is entirely or mostly caused by those emissions or that the outcome of those emissions will be catastrophic.
The real actual earth upon which we all live and rely on for our life is NOT a greenhouse, nor is it a computer model. It behaves a little bit like both, but crucially, it behaves a lot like neither and we simply do not know how the climate works in enough detail to be able to predict with any level of certainty what will happen next.
The UN IPCC had become far too reliant on former scientists who abandoned parts of the scientific method to push a theory when the scientific method failed to provide proof.
To wit: altering or amending or omitting data to make it fit the theory, closing down peer review to an “incestuous” in-group, bullying publishers and using threats against “sceptical” scientists are all methods that not only fail the scientific method, but indeed contradict it and render the scientists involved in such dishonest practices as advocates, rather than scientists.

Willis,
I enjoy these mind manipulation response games so, here goes.
One thing I am find is that trace elements attached to elements such as O2 or CO2 or even H20 16 0r H2O 18 have a bearing on the mass weight of these and also can change our preception of how they interact in a magnetic field setting.
Think hard my young scholar on what EXACTLY is gravity? What one element is most involved even on a small level.
No question that we are the major contibutors of CO2 but trying to tie this with temperatures is fool hardy. We have not included rotation of planet, elasticity of the atmosphere it pulls or the pressure buildup we have caused.
Science has made physical evidence into theories and theories are the all mighty as long as math (not science!) is involved.

The anthropogenic emissions line in your figure 2 tracks closely with the world fuel consumptions statistics cited by Klashtorin and Lyubushin (in L.B. Klyashtorin and A.A. Lyubushin, “On the coherence between the dynamics of the world fuel consumption and global temperature anomaly”, Energy & Environment, Vol. 14, No. 6 (2003), Figure 1). K&L take the argument to the next logical step, however, and add in the global temperature anomaly line, and then check the correlation between delta T and WFC. The coefficient of correlation runs at +0.92 from 1861-1875; -0.71 from 1875-1910; +0.28 from 1910-1940; -.088 from 1940-1975; +0.94 from 1975-2000. In other words, there is no linear correlation between global temperature anomalies and world fuel consumption. The lack of a linear correlation falsifies the AGW thesis, the heart of which is the IPCC’s contentions (a) that anthropogenic additions to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations “have caused the largest forcing of the industrial [post-1950] period” (4th AR WG1, Chapter 2, 136), and (b) that the amplitude of the large-scale pattern of response will scale linearly with the forcing (4th AR WG1, Chapter 2, 670). If they pick their analytical end-points right, they can just barely make it work. Of course, if you pick your end-points right, you can make ANY argument work.
If your figure 1 is accurate (and I have no reason to doubt your numbers), then the flat line from 1000 to 1850 or so, in the context of the MWP, the LIA, and the modern warming, demonstrates that there is no correlation whatsoever between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and average global temperatures. Yet ice core data over the last four glaciations demonstrates that there is a relationship between delta T and delta CO2, with the latter lagging the former (J.R. Petit, et al., “Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica”, Nature 399 (1999), 429-436.). If there is, in fact, an 800-1200 year lag between average global temperature increase and atmospheric CO2 increase (as the Vostok cores seem to demonstrate, with CO2 concentrations varying by as much as 100 ppm in response to a multi-degree swing in average temperature), then seeing as how we’re about 1200 years past the onset of the significant temperature change of the MWP, might not the current rise in CO2 concentrations that began 200 years ago be a lagging artefact of the MWP, with human CO2 emissions a contributing factor perhaps, but a largely inconsequential one?
Just wondering; after all, INACS.*
It’s hard to argue with your numbers, and I certainly have none better than yours to offer. But I can’t help but wonder if we’re missing something. Humans, our technological hubris notwithstanding, really are bit players on a planetary scale.
* Obligatory self-abnegation: “I’m Not A Climate Scientist”
P.S. I work in a scientific organization, and I’ve cut’n’pasted your rules for discussion to all my colleagues. Every scientist should have them tattooed over his heart.

of course that should be flora, not fauna in my
anna v says:
June 7, 2010 at 3:59 am
Although humans as fauna contribute something like half a ton of CO2 a year, and as we are 6 billion that is 3 billion tons a year from our respiration cycle. to be compared with 8 or so gigatones from fossil etc, a factor of 1000 less. ( somebody asked)

If the ice core data shows a lag between warming and CO2 rise, surely the last hundred years are the start of the normal CO2 rise from the MVP. That may explain the change in isotope ratios.

“Curiousgeorge says:
June 7, 2010 at 4:35 am
A philosophical question, Willis. Assume for the moment that we lacked the capability to measure CO2 ( or temperature other than what we feel on our skin ). Would we then perceive our current environment as beneficial or detrimental ?”
It’s not philosophical but practical. It’s fortuitous how all this happened just as we developed satellites and supercomputers. What great luck that our worst climate disaster coincided with huge advances in measuring and modelling!!
cheers David

I also would like to point out that the deforestation really took of well with inventing the steam engine in the UK and the need to burn wood for that.
But also consider deforestation to gain farm land and later to expand settlements.
Even now, it still happens in the Amazon region and in Africa.
Aren’t we loosing the storage capacity of CO2 from the forests worldwide?
Considering the fastest method today is still to burn everything down!
A working forest holds moisture and water, creates O2, removes dust and other pollutents out of the air and creates shade (local cooling).
Big cities with lots of concrete and asphalt becoming hot spots, using up water and are usually funnel wind and get dust airborne!
Why is this not considered as causing in warming or CO2 concentration rise models?

Mmmmmmm… thanks for the excellent food for thought…
I have trawled through my mental archives after reading the article and comments…
Now if I remember rightly there is a TRICK somewhere… now what is it?
A TRICK that helps me understand Hockey Stick graphs….
A TRICK that helps me create Hockey Stick graphs…
Ahhhhhhh… I remember now 🙂

Take historic proxy data (of imprecise worth – like tree ring or ice core data) and then splice on some modern day observations. This recipe seems to work every time. Then flavour the latest data with a bit of Tabasco to ensure the end result is red and hot!!!!!

Does the CO2 level in the trapped ice represent the composition of the original air or is it the final equilibrium concentration between the trapped air and compressed snow. If it is an equilibrium then it would be a low level and very constant like that shown in Figure 1.
http://www.igsoc.org/journal/21/85/igs_journal_vol21_issue085_pg291-300.pdf
CO2 in Natural Ice
Stauffer, B | Berner, W
Symposium on the Physics and Chemistry of Ice; Proceedings of the Third International Symposium, Cambridge (England) September 12-16, 1977. Journal of Glaciology, Vol. 21, No. 85, p 291-300, 1978. 3 fig, 5 tab, 18 ref.
Natural ice contains approximately 100 ppm (by weight) of enclosed air. This air is mainly located in bubbles. Carbon dioxide is an exception. The fraction of CO2 present in bubbles was estimated to be only about 20%. The remaining part is dissolved in the ice. Measurements of the CO2 content of ice samples from temperate and cold glacier ice as well as of freshly fallen snow and of a laboratory-grown single crystal were presented. It is probable that a local equilibrium is reached between the CO2 dissolved in the ice and the CO2 of the surroundings and of the air bubbles. The CO2 content of ancient air is directly preserved neither in the total CO2 concentration nor in the CO2 concentration in the bubbles. Possibly the CO2 content of ancient air may at least be estimated if the solubility and the diffusion constant of CO2 in ice are known as a function of temperature. (See also W79-09342) (Humphreys-ISWS)
Descriptors: Ice | Carbon dioxide | Snow | Gases | Laboratory tests | Testing procedures | Instrumentation | Measurement | Hail | Alkalinity | Hydrogen ion concentration | Analysis | Analytical techniques | Data collections | Dissolved gases

Off Topic, but I’ve been following the evolution of David Hathaway’s “Solar Cycle Predictions” of the sunspot cycle for a while. I’ve noticed that when he posts the current month’s real data, he quietly adjusts his predicted curve to fit the real data.
This month he has the cycle peaking in 2013 and having a peak of about 65. Last month, the modeled peak was 70. November 2009 it was about 78. And back in July 2007 his model predicted a peak of 150 in mid 2010.

Daniel H says:
June 7, 2010 at 4:02 am

It would be great if someone at WUWT like Willis Eschenbach or Anthony Watts could convince Keeling to release his data since it was funded by mine and your tax dollars the NSF and NOAA and therefore ought to be in the public domain.

That would be a bit difficult, as Keeling died in 2005, refer to my recent links back to Anthony’s discussion with Pieter Tans, the current MLO director.
MLO does release a lot of data, can you be more explicit about what you are looking for that you can’t get from them? Your comment wasn’t very explicit. One starting point is:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/livedata/livedata.html

Douglas Cohen
June 7, 2010 at 4:49 am
The several hundred year delay between an increase in temperature and the corresponding increase in CO2 revealed by the ice core measurements, (eg Vostok) during glacial to interglacial transitions requires a net transfer of CO2 from the oceans and terrestrial biosphere to the atmosphere.
In contrast, between 1850 and 2000, human caused emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels equalled 1620 billion tons CO2, whereas the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increased by only 640 billion tons. (data from Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre). There is no way in which that can be explained other than by a net transfer of CO2 from the atmosphere to the oceans/biosphere, the opposite of the former process.
Human emissions of CO2 are more than able to explain recent increases in atmospheric CO2.

Slabadang says:
June 7, 2010 at 3:11 am

Blaming CO2 without understanding the negative and positive feedabacks is is like eating dinner before you cooked it! CO2 is a gas for life. It’s very possible that we are increasing the chances for life on the planet by increasing CO2 turnover.
But no one is calculating the benefits.

Asking someone to prove a negative is a bit of a dirty trick, but it’s easy to disprove your “no one” claim. Just ask Google. Very little is all good or all bad, and more research is warranted and I’m sure in progress.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/1122_021125_CropYields.html
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V13/N10/B2.php

The trouble is one thing is “trapped heat” other the supposed “greenhouse effect”, and:
CO2 follows temperature, not the other way. Open a coke and you´ll see it: The more you have it in your warm hand the more gas will go out when you open it.
CO2 is the transparent gas we all exhale (SOOT is black=Carbon dust) and plants breath with delight, to give us back what they exhale instead= Oxygen we breath in.
CO2 is a TRACE GAS in the atmosphere, it is the 0.038% of it.
There is no such a thing as “greenhouse effect”, “greenhouse gases are gases IN a greenhouse”, where heated gases are trapped and relatively isolated not to lose its heat so rapidly. If greenhouse effect were to be true, as Svante Arrhenius figured it out: CO2 “like the window panes in a greenhouse”, but…the trouble is that those panes would be only 3.8 panes out of 10000, there would be 9996.2 HOLES.
See:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/28018819/Greenhouse-Niels-Bohr
CO2 is a gas essential to life. All carbohydrates are made of it. The sugar you eat, the bread you have eaten in your breakfast this morning, even the jeans you wear (these are made from 100% cotton, a polymer of glucose, made of CO2…you didn´t know it, did you?)
You and I, we are made of CARBON and WATER.
CO2 is heavier than Air, so it can not go up, up and away to cover the earth.
The atmosphere, the air can not hold heat, its volumetric heat capacity, per cubic cemtimeter is 0.00192 joules, while water is 4.186, i.e., 3227 times.
This is the reason why people used hot water bottles to warm their feet and not hot air bottles.
Global Warmers models (a la Hansen) expected a kind of heated CO2 piggy bank to form in the tropical atmosphere, it never happened simply because it can not.
If global warmers were to succeed in achieving their SUPPOSED goal of lowering CO2 level to nothing, life would disappear from the face of the earth.
So, if no CO2 NO YOU!

This valuable post mentions a large source of CO2 which has not been given wide publicity – cement manufacture. The warmers will now start lobbying for reduction in thickness of roads, cobblestone pavements, smaller buildings, no new bridges or other large concrete construction. With the new smaller cars which will give greater gas mileage, weaker roadways should be adequate, and the future of the earth should be assured.

test comment
[Note: there is a “Test” menu on the page mast head. ~dbs, mod.]

Willis, I am concerned about your frustration level with AGWers coupled with your great intelligence and precise math. You wrote, “People seem madly passionate about this question. So I figure I’ll deal with it by employing the method I used in the 1960s to fire off dynamite shots when I was in the road-building game … light the fuse, and run like hell …” Yes, but….The dynamite is carefully placed in a surveyed and planned area for the roadway — and, of course, human activities and the geology around that future road have been carefully taken into consideration.
Yes, sometimes you can take the “opposition’s” figures and research for granted and work out the science. However, if those figures are not accurate or do not take the complexity of conditions into account, I am not sure they can be valid. As I first read the essay, a number of red flags went up in my mind:
1,2,and3. Ice cores, ice cores, ice cores. Too much depends on CO2 registration in ice core data which has been neatly been fitted to Mann’s Hockey Stick without enough checking and cross checking. Next are you taking the CDIAC dataset at face value when we know how much, dare I say it, dishonest, fudging the data upward has been done with the temperature (thermometer) data? Can you assert that this data can be fully trusted in its current “official” state. Then there is the chemistry, perhaps more complex than you suggest (Slioch 2:41 am). Then there is the rather amazing history of climate and human activities during warm periods (tonyb 1:42 am). Are you really sure that there was no rise in CO2 because of (at least) outgassing from the oceans during those times — like 1850 to today? Is the flat line from ice cores reasonable to a reasonable mind?
Abadang 3:11 seems appropriate: “To me the work on climate science more describes how little we know, rather than how much.” I think you give the “warmists” (I wish it were warming) too much credit for accurate data and interpretation. Richard Courtney 2:43 am) gives a long disposition on the complexities you dismiss: “But it is important to understand that there is no evidence which could be said to prove the matter.” Your argument is too close, too similar, to that of the pseudo-scientists who published in Nature — since there was a mass migration of humans to the New World before the Holocene and because we know they killed off the megafauna, and because warmth of the earth depended on the methane in megafauna burps, we know that humans were the cause of the Younger Dryas — just like we are the cause of warming today. Watts Up With That argument?
Anyway, I like your ending. Thanks for your coninuing efforts to keep the discussion-debate lively. Next time, don’t run like hell.

Good analysis Willis. My only concern is the relative amount of CO2, anthropogenic vs. not. I have the following stored from a few years ago, without the source, which seems to be the basis for the 3% anthro-CO2 contribution to the annual CO2 budget that is often quoted.
CO2 EMISSIONS :
1. Respiration Humans, Animals, Phytoplankton 43.5 – 52 Gt C/ year
2. Ocean Outgassing (Tropical Areas) 90 – 100 Gt C/year
3. Volcanoes, Soil degassing 0.5 – 2 Gt C/ year
4. Soil Bacteria, Decomposition 50 – 60 Gt C/ year
5. Forest cutting, Forest fires 0.6 – 2.6 Gt C/year
Anthropogenic emissions (2005) 7.5 – 7.5 Gt C/year
TOTAL 192 to 224 Gt C/ year
The table shows the range of estimates of natural CO2 and human production in 2005 (Gt C/year is Gigatons of Carbon per year). Accuracy has not improved since. Notice the human contribution is within the error range of three (1, 2, & 4) of the natural sources. The total error range is almost 5 times the amount of total human production.
Further, I have read that the amount of CO2 emitted by termites is enormous, 50 gigatons/year. In thinking about termites, it occurs to me that what they are consuming is wood that is probably at least 40 years old, often older, considering the life cycle of trees. Would their diet of old wood skew the C12/13 ratios by releasing the C that was sequestered in the wood decades earlier?
Source for termite CO2 production: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/218/4572/563

The Stauffer/Berner paper addresses the same points made by Jarorowski about the validity of the Ice cores as a measurement of previous atmospheric CO2 levels. Jarowowski maintained that the ice was not a closed system as pertains to CO2.
When one looks at the Vostoc ice core record, it is apparent that the older the core, the more obvious the lag between the change in temperature and the change in CO2. The point has already been made that the stomatal measurements of CO2 show much more variability and do not track the ice core records. There has been no mention of Beck’s compilation of >90,000 historical CO2 measurements which showed a post war rise in CO2 to about 400 ppm, which would make the peak just after the warm period of the 30’s and during WWII. Callender showed similar variability but then selected those values he thought fit the theory. It is surprising that no one is actually publishing research on the question of movement of CO2
through glacial ice in light of the evidence that ice may not give an accurate picture of CO2 levels.

anna v June 7, 2010 at 4:37 am
Thanks for that.

Darkinbad the Brightdayler says:
June 7, 2010 at 1:05 am
“So if you are going to believe that this is not a result of human activities”
I’m not comfortable with the use of the words “Believe” or “Disbelieve” in a scientific context. These words are more appropriate to discussions about religion and concepts which are not open to a process of proof.
To pull them into a scientific debate is to allow participants to think and respond in a less rigorous way than they ought.

I agree, but many, many folks, including scientists, use “I believe” to mean, inter alia, “I think,” “I suppose,” “In my opinion,” “I am more or less convinced,” etc., etc. Some time ago I suggested to Willis that he eschew the terms “believe” and “belief,” in favor of more specific language, but he dismissed the idea.
Back on topic, it will be interesting to see how Willis responds to the comments above that raise doubts about the validity of the ‘observed’ rise in CO2 (that tags recent atmospheric measurements on to old ice-core ones) and about the role of the oceans in the carbon cycle. Do these affect his belief (= confidence?) that the CO2 spike (if it is real) is mostly anthropogenic?
BTW, what contribution do forest/wildfires make to atmospheric CO2? Will they not mimmic fossil-fuel combustion?
/Mr Lynn

Isn’t it a bit silly, and IPCCian, to state that if a person truly don’t have another viable hypotheses that can explain the increase in carbon emission, that fairly fits the world increase of tomato use or population or the number of new rice fields or et cetera, then people can’t speak their mind, less they wanna pretty much be ignored.
But essentially in the year of 1850, and before like, and even though the whole world was in a coal burning frenzy and not only from industrialization but also from private coal fired heater and boilers, they somehow only manage to emit about 0.5 gigatonne of carbon.
Personally I just don’t see it.

Juraj V. says:
June 7, 2010 at 2:53 am
“….Today, the rate of CO2 rise plays well with SST data.
http://climate4you.com/images/CO2%20MaunaLoa%20Last12months-previous12monthsGrowthRateSince1958.gif1998 El Nino is clearly visible, also La Nina and volcanic eruptions. But strange that 2007 La Nina is not visible. More, as oceans start to cool, the rate of rise stabilizes.”
____________________________________________________________________
I would like to look at that but the link seems to be broken.
[Reply: It may be this:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISS%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1958%20AndCO2.gif
or this:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CO2%20MaunaLoa%20Last12months-previous12monthsGrowthRateSince1958.gif
~dbs]

The debate about what causes CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is pointless. What matters is: does the increase in CO2 concentration cause warming? The whole thing is about Global Warming, not about CO2 concentration. To indicate that CO2 increase causes warming, you would need to present a curve where temperature oscillations match CO2 concentration, and that curve clearly does not exist for the last 1000 years, nor for the last 150 years.

Thanks Hopper for the Stauffer & Berner paper, that clears many things. If I open my mouth further on this subject I’m afraid I might cross one of those lines, so, like Willis, I’m outta here.
(Oh, stick to the numbers… 2.18 seems closer than 2.13)

With respect to residence time in the atmosphere, I understand that the A bomb tests of the 1950s showed the half life to be five years. This means that the atmosphere is in equilibrium with part of the oceans with a lag of only a few years. My caculations say that on average it is the top 100 metres.
The CDIAC is the nuclear industry’s contribution to global warming hysteria. If you look at their experiments on the growth response of plants to increased CO2, they added ozone to their artificial atmospheres in order to get a negative response.
The cooling of the next 20 years should result in a flat atmospheric CO2 trend.

The title is misleading. What’s there to blame anyone for in this piece?
The Keeling curve is so damn perfect it makes one wonder.

Stockholm syndrome anyone?
In psychology, Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

SimonH:
“I propose “AGW believer”.”
I agree but “AGW convinced” or “AGW unconvinced” avoids religiosity, while retaining correct meaning. GK

A couple of points to provide food for thought:
1. Add to figure 2 a total global population line.
2.Something odd about CO2 seems to have started 10,000 years ago – from the ice core results it has been on an upward trend, even though temperature has been on a downward trend. Contrast with what happened during 10,000 year periods at comparable points in previous cycles – 120,000 years ago to 130,000 years ago, 230,000 years ago to 240,000 years ago, 325,000 years ago to 335, 000 years ago, 400,000 years ago to 410,000 years ago. In each of those periods CO2 followed temperature down. What caused the change? Total human population was pretty puny 10,000 years ago.

One is the residence time of CO2. This is the amount of time that the average CO2 molecule stays in the atmosphere. It can be calculated in a couple of ways, and is likely about 6–8 years.
The other measure, often confused with the first, is the half-life, or alternately the e-folding time of CO2. Suppose we put a pulse of CO2 into an atmospheric system which is at some kind of equilibrium. The pulse will slowly decay, and after a certain time, the system will return to equilibrium.

That I don’t get. Assuming residence time of 6 years we get ~16.7% of all pulse absorbed in first year. ~30.5% is gone after two years. And after only four years more that half of original pulse will be absorbed (~51.77%). That means that 6 years residence time results in less than 4 year of half-life time. Same analysis for 8 years of residence time results in just above 5 years of half-life time. Is anything wrong with my reasoning?
Andrew

From the Vostok data, CO2 lags the temperature from 50 to 600 years or so….
We are at the “end” of a warming period with a gradual lowering of temperatures and despite the recent “increase”, shouldn’t the natural trend of CO2 content be somewhat downward? That being the case, are we “diverting” the temperature drop into the next ice-age by our carbonaceous ways?
Just askin’.

“1. Numbers trump assertions. If you don’t provide numbers, you won’t get much traction.”
I love numbers, I really do. I once wanted to be the statistician that threw out the various statistics at sporting events…….such as Team A wins 90% of the time when Joe Blow runs for over a hundred yards for the game, or, up next, here’s Jose Golpe, he’s batting .431 with runners in scoring position against left-handed pitchers on Wednesdays in a dome this year!(My apologies to the people not familiar with American sports).
My point is, numbers are often meaningless. For anyone that cares, every team that has a runner rushing for over 100 yards in a game should win at least 90% of the time, so attaching a meaning for a particular team to a specific runner going over 100 yards is silly. In my other example, while batting .431 is a lofty goal, this is example is bereft of “ifs” and “buts”. First, typically, a batter performs better against a pitcher throwing from the opposite hand.(Righty vs. Lefty, I assumed it is the same with cricket, but I don’t know.) Also, averages are skewed by lower incidents. Even if it is at the end of a season and Mr. Golpe was a full time player, how many times would Mr. Golpe have batted against a lefty on a Wednesday, in a dome with runners in scoring position for the year? Not often enough for the number to hold any meaning. For those that don’t know the last hitter to bat over .400, regardless of day of the week, right or left, ect. was Ted Williams in 1941.
Most people here, will say “so what?”
Numbers and averages skew a perspective. Like the team winning with the hundred yard rusher, atmospheric CO2 should increase. Why? For the obvious reason, man’s advancement! Anthropogenic CO2 is simply a by-product of economic growth and societal progress. My latter scenario, too, can have parallels with the CAGW discussion. In the CAGW discussion we use terms such as El Nino and La Nina. Almost always, they are accompanied by terms such as albedo and currents and solar phases ect. In other words, if solar activity X is accompanied by Nino or conversely Nina along with other astral convergences(a recent discussion here) combined with volcanic activity apparently, other than the one by Muana(Muana’s CO2 emissions are the good kind that we use a CO2 ruler for the world) then we’re likely to see Y in regards to Arctic ice extent in May(apparently meaningless in relation to ice extent in Sept). All that to mean……..nothing. Don’t get me wrong, man’s knowledge of our climate has increased significantly……sort of. As with many of the great questions of man, we’re often left with more questions than answers. I believe this will be the case for many years to come. Sadly, agenda driven science has altered the course of climate science. To what extent and what degree, we won’t know for many years to come.
Numbers are great when put in proper perspective, but useless unless the proper logic and critical thinking have been applied. Figures lie and lairs figure. I’m not sure what the exact number is, but my verbosity increases exponentially when I see a hockey stick graph.
Cheers

I went through a lot of the same material, when I first got interested in AGW. Having come to the same conclusion then, I would be hard-put to disagree with it now. And, the insights of the Thermostat Hypothesis are really quite good. Nice work, Willis. It seems like a pretty good model for a piece of the puzzle. But, the question that bedevils is “what is changing the set-point of the thermostat?” There is a lot of chaotic short-term variation, which is not surprising given the feedback mechanisms, but there also seems to be an underlying long-term movement in the center value of the whole thing. There is obviously a large and loud school of thought that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is what is moving the set-point. Perhaps it is, but correlation and causation are different things, and that theory seems to keep needing patching, which is not exactly reassuring. Nor am I convinced by any of the alternatives. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Bob says:
June 7, 2010 at 5:05 am
“Off Topic, but I’ve been following the evolution of David Hathaway’s “Solar Cycle Predictions” of the sunspot cycle for a while. I’ve noticed that when he posts the current month’s real data, he quietly adjusts his predicted curve to fit the real data.”
This is what MSN Weather does with its WTD/iMAP weather module on MSN homepages. Towards the end of the day, it goes back and changes incorrect forecasts to match what actually happened. It’s fraud, but what else is new in the climate community? Doesn’t Michael Mann spend much of his time rewriting temperature records to make them match his theories?
Does anybody ever admit to being wrong?

@ G. Karst
June 7, 2010 at 8:11 am
SimonH:
“I propose “AGW believer”.”
“I agree but “AGW convinced” or “AGW unconvinced” avoids religiosity, while retaining correct meaning.” GK
Hmm, perhaps for many, but for others it would seem including religiosity would be appropriate.
Religion
From Latin religiō (“‘moral obligation, worship’”)
1. A collection of practices, based on beliefs and teachings that are highly valued or sacred.
2. Any practice that someone or some group is seriously devoted to.
3. Any ongoing practice one engages in, in order to shape their character or improve traits of their personality.
4. An ideological and traditional heritage.
Numbers 1 and 2 seem to hit some CAGW convinced people dead on.

Andrew W says:
June 7, 2010 at 3:19 am
Of course, those nasty warmists have been trying to explain for years just how solid the evidence is that it is indeed human activity that’s causing the CO2 rise, it’s laughable that many “skeptics” are only capable of accepting the reasoning when it’s explained to them by one of the good people at WUWT.
__________________________________________________________________________-
I am more open to Willis and Anthony because I know they are more interested in science than in their next pay check or the next big financial bubble.
There have been enough people who have run a foul of the establishment and lost their jobs or what ever to make me examine ANYTHING that comes out of the government these days.
A neutral example: Since the international HACCP system replaced the old US meat inspection system there were ninety-four meat recalls in just one year, over 1000 Food inspection non-conformance reports found as a result of a freedom of Information act request from ‘Public Citizen’ and the Food Inspection Union’s chairman, Stan Painter accuses the USDA of ignoring the problems with HACCP during a Congressional investigation.
The official “Answer. …. The FSIS investigation has been completed and the allegations concerning improper enforcement of SRM regulations were not substantiated. In addition, the OIG independently sent an investigator and an audit team to examine the allegations concerning SRM regulatory compliance. Their observations also concluded that the chairman’s allegations were unsubstantiated.”
GRRRRrrrrr PEOPLE died horribly and the US government covered it up! http://www.marlerblog.com/tags/john-munsell/
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/contributors/nicole-johnson/
Now, tell me again why I should take the word of any scientist who is on the government payroll or gets government grants without checking his work closely.

I was starting to worry a bit . . . then I re-drew the top graph with the y-axis going from 0 – 1,000,000 and I stopped worrying.
I am not a climate scientist, by the way.

The return of the LOST SHEEP:
There were ninety and nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold.
But one was out on the hills away,
Far off from the gates of gold.
Away on the mountains wild and bare.
Away from the tender AL BABY Shepherd’s care.
Away from the tender AL BABY Shepherd’s care.

Rules for Discussion: A masterstroke! It would change this whole field if adherence to this could be guaranteed. How about enshrining that somewhere on the main WUWT page or making it an editorial policy, or something? It should be nailed up by moderators at the beginning of climate debates everywhere — and STRICTLY enforced.
As for your article, Willis, I find little that is controversial in it, but I would have liked to see more discussion of the empirical evidence for the high proportion of human emissions in the CO2 resident in the atmosphere today. From what I read of isotope studies, emissions comprise a small fraction. This, of course, does not mean that they have not CAUSED the rise in CO2, as the gas is continually being consumed, absorbed and re-emitted by the seas, plant life and geological system, none of which care which CO2 molecules they are absorbing. With the flux in and our of the natural system more-or-less in balance, the addition of human emissions should have the effect of increasing the total but it will be distributed into the various sinks and replaced with naturally occurring CO2, thus it should comprise a smaller proportion of the whole than one would think. I imagine one could use the emission numbers versus the empirical values of resident emitted CO2 to infer something about actual (as opposed to theoretical) absorption rates. I wonder if this has been done.

I left out forest fire suppression as a reason for bump in CO2 in recent years. As was discovered a few decades ago forest fire suppression actually has the opposite effect of what Smokey the Bear wanted – preservation of our forests. Suppressing forest fires allows combustables to accumlate near ground level setting the stage for truly massive fires that can’t be controlled and are so hot that it destroys old growth trees which would have otherwise survived the lesser more frequent fires. When those old growth trees go up in smoke you get a century’s worth of CO2 locked up in the wood released into the atmosphere.
While land use changes and forest fire suppression are still anthropogenic in origin its not the fossil fuel bogeyman that everyone is focused on and wants to control and it’s not the US that is the big offender. The political drive behind this whole CAGW hoax is ained at two things
1) Taking over control of fossil fuel use and thus taking over the factor that literally fuels the economic growth of industrialized nations. It’s a power play.
2) Putting a damper on the US economic and military superpower status. Anything that can’t be blamed on the US is of no interest to the rest of the world or even US domestic self-loathers. Thus we hear next to nothing about the effects of black carbon (soot) produced by dirty diesel engines, slash & burn agriculture, heating of homes with wood and even dung, lack of particulate filters on coal burning power plants, and other assorted soot sources. You see, starting with the Clean Air Act of 1963 the US has dramatically reduced the amount of soot it pumps into the atmosphere. No other country in the world has come close to matching that effort. Moreover we regulate our logging industry such that their harvest methods either don’t denude the land or require planting of young trees to replace the old ones removed and we pretty much no longer use wood as source of fuel and instead much of becomes lumber used in contruction of durable structures where the carbon in the wood remains locked in the wood for a hundred years after harvest. On top of that we now use control burns that don’t destroy old growth forest but rather serve to remove fuel before it accumulates into disastrously hot fires that kill big trees.

Britannic no-see-um says:
June 7, 2010 at 3:49 am
How trivial or significant is the direct additional respiratory and food production CO2 emission produced by increases in human longevity and population density since medieval times?
____________________________________________________________________________
The termites beat us hands down.
“According to the journal Science (Nov. 5, 1982), termites alone emit ten times more carbon dioxide than all the factories and automobiles in the world. Natural wetlands emit more greenhouse gases than all human activities combined. (If greenhouse warming is such a problem, why are we trying to save all the wetlands?)”
Termites emit ten times more CO2 than humans. Should we cap-and-tax them?
“The 0.03% CO2 content of the atmosphere is minimal and has less impact and is lower in volume than, for example, methane given off by termites (who outweigh humans by 30x). ” http://globalwarminghoax.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/global-warming-is-a-hoax-invented-in-1988/#comment-9266

“Nick Stokes says:
June 7, 2010 at 2:52 am
Willis,
A good explanation of many things, especially the e-folding time. But I don’t agree with your calculation of the 31 year period. I think you have calculated as if each added ton of CO2 then decays exponentially back to the 1850 equilibrium level. But the sea has changed. It is no longer in equilibrium with 280 ppm CO2. Of course it has its own diffusion timescale, and lags behind the air in pCO2. You could think of the decay as being back to some level at each stage intermediate between 1850 and present.
If you apply that process to the emission curve, you’ll match the airborne fraction with a slower decay (longer time constant) where the decay has less far to go.”
No, Nick. Exponential decay towards an increasing equilibrium level would need a smaller time constant for the observed rate of sequestration, not a larger one.

stevengoddard says:
June 7, 2010 at 6:09 am
Claims that cement manufacture introduce significant CO2 are the work of people who don’t understand science. Sadly that includes the US Government. When the cement is mixed with water, it absorbs the CO2 back from the atmosphere. Without CO2 the cement would never harden.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_cement
“Carbon dioxide is slowly absorbed to convert the portlandite (Ca(OH)2) into insoluble calcium carbonate. “
GeoFlynx-
The cement industry is thought to contribute about 5% of human Co2 emissions. Co2 is released in the manufacture of cement by the calcination of lime and the combustion of fuels in a kiln process. Portland and other hydraulic cements will continue to react with Co2 in the air and further “cure”. The reaction with atmospheric Co2 continues after initial hardening and is very slow often continuing for hundreds or thousands of years. In no way does this continued uptake of Co2 equal the amount of Co2 required in the cement’s manufacture. Hydraulic cements will harden quite well without absorbing Co2 from the atmosphere. Cements of this type are well suited to applications underground and underwater.

James Sexton:
“Hmm, perhaps for many, but for others it would seem including religiosity would be appropriate.”
Again, I agree, but my suggestion was for those people searching for a term, which does not imply further connotation. Reality sometimes has to move over for politeness! Besides, faith and belief are terms which can be thrown back at us. That is all I have to say. GK

“”Smokey says:
June 7, 2010 at 9:09 am
Interesting CO2/Temp chart.
Smokey says:
June 7, 2010 at 9:18 am
P Berkin,
Here’s another CO2 chart to keep you from worrying. And another.””
Thanks Smokey, it’s nice to have a reality check.
Measurements like ‘tons’ etc, are meant to fool.
Percentages are all that matter, and out of that very small percentage,
how much is ‘man made’ and how much of that can we really do about it?

Interesting piece Willis. Your conclusions on post-1850 CO2 trends seem fair, but I don’t think that the pre-1850 CO2 data that you show in Figure 1 tell the whole story. Back in 1996 I did an analysis of the available CO2 proxy data, most of which were from ice cores, and the results differed form what you show. The relevant figure from this paper is shown in my blog (http://suddenoaklifeorg.wordpress.com) here:
http://suddenoaklifeorg.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/the-potential-role-of-peatland-dynamics-in-ice-age-initiation/
Note that I found a slight but significant downward trend in CO2 concentrations during the few thousand years leading up to 1850. So I’m curious why the difference in these data sets?

Nice work Willis. It’s notable to find the number of responses that are not on point. perhaps you should add a 7th rule about being germane, or about admitting when one is wrong. Anyway, I should catalogue the various ways in which people avoided simple agreement with your hypothesis. Also I want to reserve special criticism for those people who still do not understand what the TRICK is. The trick has been covered in detail many times, but I will do it one more time. the TRICK consists of this
1. truncation of a proxy series. {not always required}
2. Splicing a temperature series onto that.
3. smoothing the result.
4. failing to indicate that this is what you did by NOT distinguishing the data sources.
The KEY ELEMENTS are these
1. performing a mathematical operation on the two datasets that regards them as measures of the same thing. The smooth.
2. presenting the result AS IF it were data from from one source.
Folks Willis has not performed the trick. I give him a F on climate science trickery.
Anyway, to respond simply. I agree with you willis. There is more C02 in the atmosphere today than in 1850. The best explanation for that is man’s activities.
I’ve seen nothing in the way of argument that would lead me to seriously question either of those.

“The termites beat us hands down.
“According to the journal Science (Nov. 5, 1982), termites alone emit ten times more carbon dioxide than all the factories and automobiles in the world. ” Ha! That’s where all the extra CO2 is coming from — the termites in the south having a field day since air condidtioning made living there viable.
Actually, I have a bit of a problem: All this CO2 rising seems to be post 1950 but the industrial age started in the early 1800’s. Parts of England, France, Poland and Germany were covered in soot from the coke and steel production by the 1870’s and the US was ramping up to speed in Pennsylvania but the increases shown n the charts don’t reflect this. Since the 1960’s on, manufacturing has become cleaner with scrubbers, etc – even with China and India. The biggest change that can see to human fuel useage that follows the CO2 usage charts is the automobile.

Overall, a reasonable posting.
A few thoughts:
“Now, how can we determine if it is actually the case that we are looking at exponential decay of the added CO2? One way is to compare it to what a calculated exponential decay would look like.”
This presumes there is only one sink, and that it is infinite, as another commenter noted. There are multiple sinks, of limited capacity, acting on different timescales. What Willis has captured is most likely the upper 700m of the ocean, a fast acting sink, as is well known by the already apparent rise in carbon content of this volume. If a sink is fast acting, it is likely to reach an equilibrium point quickly; so, expecting the same rate of decay into the future is problematic.
under “Issue 3. 12C and 13C carbon isotopes”
I think Willis is making the mistake of thinking of CO2 absorption by the ocean as a one-way trip. A decent analogy is to imagine a host of tennis players knocking green balls to each other; the balls are CO2 molecules and the net is the boundary between water and air. The court is littered with balls. If you dump a bunch of orange balls onto one side, they don’t simply ‘decay’ to the other side; in a little while, an equilibrium is reached where there are orange and green balls on both sides.
@Slioch:
“the reaction whereby CO2 is most readily absorbed is NOT by simple reaction with water”
I would expect that CO2 would have to be absorbed by the water before it could react with the other chemicals in the water. How much gas is absorbed in water is largely a function of temperature and relative concentrations; no chemical reaction is required there. What you have shown is better labeled as how an increase in CO2 content leads to a decrease in pH, rather than as how CO2 is absorbed.
Ian H,
“I find it interesting that the sequestration rate seems to be getting larger – it is trending above the exponential line. ”
That’s about the opposite of how I see the graph. Looking at the end points and the rate of change of the slopes, calculated airborne is less than actual airborne, and calculated absorbed is higher than actual absorbed. I suspect Willis had to tweak the decay rate vary carefully in order to be able to overlap the curves without the differences between the rates of change (and the rates of change of the rates of change) (derivative and second derivative for those familiar with calculus) being readily apparent.

Double or quits!
Someone mentioned that there was not enough economically accessible fossil fuel left in the world to produce a doubling of CO2 levels. Maybe not even enough to double it against pre-industrial levels. That is a pretty important statement as CAGW scenarios pretty much rely on that doubling. A response to that was that out gassing had plenty to spare. This post seems to say don’t hold your breath. What are the facts?
Oil
Global proved oil reserves in 2008 fell by 3 billion barrels to 1,258 billion barrels, 0r 52.836 trillion US gallons with an R/P (reserves-to-production) ratio of 42 years.
(http://green-energysaving.com/carbon-emissions/how-much-oil-is-left-in-the-world-when-will-oil-run-out/)
(http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9023769&contentId=7044915)
Gas
Global proved reserves of natural gas in 2008 were 185.02 trillion cubic meters or roughly 6,500 trillion cubic feet with an R/P ratio of 63.1 years.
(http://www.carboncounted.co.uk/when-will-fossil-fuels-run-out.html)
(http://green-energysaving.com/carbon-emissions/fossil-fuels/how-much-natural-gas-is-left-in-the-world-when-will-natural-gas-run-out/)
(http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9023779&contentId=7044843)
Coal
World Energy Council 2007 global coal reserves was 847 billion tonnes. BP’s 2008 total estimate was 826 billion tonnes with an R/P ratio of 122*. Roughly half of this is sub-bituminous and lignite.
(But Prof. David Rutledge, chair of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology applied the “Hubbert linearization method” to today’s major coal-producing countries, including the US, China, Russia, India, Australia and South Africa. Hubbert linearisation suggests that future coal production will amount to around 450 billion tonnes – little more than half the official reserves.
Although most academics and officials reject the idea out of hand, over the past 20 years, even official reserves have fallen by more than 170 billion tonnes even though production is only 6 billion tonnes per year. 50 billion has “disappeared” from the official estimates – 20 billion between 2007 and 2008.
In February 2007, the European Commission’s Institute for Energy reported that the reserves-to-production (R/P) ratio had dropped by more than a third between 2000 and 2005, from 277 year’s worth to just 155. By 2008 this was 122.
*The world coal institute notes however that recent falls in the R/P ratio can be attributed to the lack of incentives to prove up reserves, rather than a lack of coal resources. Exploration activity is typically carried out by mining companies with short planning horizons rather than state-funded geological surveys. There is no economic need for companies to prove long-term reserves.)
(http://green-energysaving.com/carbon-emissions/fossil-fuels/how-much-coal-is-left-in-the-world-when-will-coal-run-out/)
(http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=116)
(http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/where-is-coal-found/)
(http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9023784&contentId=7044480)
Summary of world fossil fuel resources
For our purposes I will take the highest figures to arrive at the highest achievable levels of CO2. So 1,258 billion barrels of oil, 6,500 billion cubic feet of gas, 413 billion tonnes of “black” coal and 413 billion of “brown” coal.
The combined liquid fuels from an average barrel of crude oil will produce a minimum of 317kg of CO2 when consumed. (http://numero57.net/2008/03/20/carbon-dioxide-emissions-per-barrel-of-crude/)
So we get 398,786 billion Kg of CO2 from all known oil reserves
1000 cubic feet of Gas will results in between 115lb – 120lb of carbon dioxide depending on the temperature at which the cubic feet were measured.
(http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html)
(http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/coefficients.html)
Let’s stick to our rule of taking the worst case. We get 6.5 billion X 120lbs or 780 billion lbs of CO2. That is just less than 354 billion kg from gas.
Best quality anthracite produces 2.84 times its own weight in CO2 falling to lignite at only 1.4 times its own weight.
(http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/quarterly/co2_article/co2.html)
Coal type CO2 lbs per short ton
Anthracite AC 5685.00
Bituminous BC 4931.30
Subbituminous SB 3715.90
Lignite LC 2791.60
(http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/coefficients.html)
(The short ton is a U.S. unit of weight equal to 2,000 pounds. For the most part this post uses metric tonnes = 1000 kgs – it is noted when otherwise)
For our calculation we will again apply our worst case rule and say all black coal is Anthracite and all brown coal is sub-bituminous. 413 billion X 2.84 = 1,173 billion tonnes plus 413 X 1.86 = 768 billion tonnes. 1,941 billion tonnes in all or (big number alert!) 1,941,000 billion kg of CO2 from all known coal reserves.
The coal number makes the oil and gas figures look like a minor problem. “Oil and gas by themselves don’t have enough carbon to keep us in the dangerous zone [of global warming] for very long,” said Pushker Kharecha, a scientist and colleague of Hansen at NASA GISS. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/oil-not-the-cli/#ixzz0q7dazJcf You can kind of see where J Hansen’s death trains are coming from. Sorry –sorry, wash my mouth out etc. Anyhoo!
Total CO2 from burning all known fossil fuel reserves would be 2,340,140 billion kgs. Loads! – but what is that in p.p.m. of the total atmosphere? Well…
The weight of the Earth’s atmosphere is 441,000 billion x 10 = 4.41 million billion (long) tons. Or 4,480,000 billion metric tonnes.
(http://www.hydrogen.co.uk/h2_now/journal/articles/2_global_warming.htm)
2340.140 / 4,480,000 = 522p.p.m.
So yes it could more than double CO2 levels.
Except that only 40% of that will stay in the atmosphere for any meaningful length of time. A constant unchanging 40% by the way. Knorr, W. (2009), Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L21710, doi:10.1029 / 2009GL040613.
(http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/knorr2009_co2_sequestration.pdf)
This reduces the potential CO2 from burning all known reserves of fossil fuel to just 208 p.p.m. beyond where we are now.
Given what Willis Eschenbach tells us here about natural out gassing, that is about another 45 p.p.m. to come. 253 p.p.m. in all?
Even if the IPCC are right about 3degC per doubling that means we would struggle to find 2degC of warming left in fossil fuels and “feedback” out gassing combined.
And…relax

My issue is with figure one ice core data. I am very skeptical that all the core data readings gave exactly the same CO2 measurement (plus or minus a few ppm). I feel assumptions have been made leading to the result shown in the figure. That is, the ice core data as interpreted by current science may not be an accurate representation of ancient CO2.
1. I imagine the readings were averaged, and I imagine that the estimated dates ascribed to each reading were off by decades — centuries for more ancient data. This could lead to a seeming constant CO2 — when actually there was considerable variability.
2. CO2 trapped in ice may not be entirely trapped. It could diffuse in ice over the centuries — again averaging out large gains and losses with the same effect as item 1.
3. I imagine the ice core CO2 “measurement” was not precisely 270ppm (or whatever) in all 8 cores — possibly in no core. Rather, the readings were quite different. Then, “Kentucky windage” was applied by adding or subtracting an amount from the “level” CO2 ppm to make ice core readings coincide with recent historical atmospheric measurements. This is circular reasoning — “we can adjust old values to today’s values because CO2 has not changed until recently”. Thus, the “perfect hockey stick shape” — is based on assumption and circular reasoning.
4. I have never seen proof that actual CO2 levels in ice cores are literally invariant over centuries or on a millennial scale. That is, the amount initially trapped may not be the amount currently in the ice. This not the same concern as item 2 (but may seem similar). So, a measurement taken today from 1000 or 10000 year old ice may not be representative of the CO2 amount originally trapped in the ice. No, there is just an amount of CO2 present today — its correlation to the amount initially present a thousand years ago is not a proven fact — it is an assumption.
Hence, if we do not really know the past history of CO2 (some folks make assumptions about it, but do not really know), then we can’t be confident about what processes are raising CO2 now.
If we are being asked to change our lifestyles and pay out trillions in new taxes to prevent CO2, we need much stronger evidence.

” Joe Lalonde says:
June 7, 2010 at 4:23 am
Willis,
I enjoy these mind manipulation response games so, here goes.[…]”
Somehow this turned me off from reading the rest of whatever Joe Lalonde had to say…

Are you crazy? Only a fool would believe these deniers and warmists and econazis with their base motives.
Seriously though, great post, really elucidated the topic nicely for me.

Willis
are you saying that there is 2,460.15 billion tons of co2 in the atmosphere?
I have not been able to find a figure above 750 billion tons for co2.

The problem with this chart is that you are arbitrarily assuming one type of exponential decay for the anthropogenic component of CO2, and implicitly an entirely other, and faster, one for natural CO2. Aside from extremely minor isotopic distribution differences, nature essentially cannot tell the two molecules apart.
If you apply the same time constant to the much larger portion of naturally generated CO2, you will quickly find the atmosphere almost entirely composed of CO2. The only way to square this would be to hypothesize that the CO2 reservoir is saturating, and becoming less able to absorb the new, anthropogenically generated CO2. But, if that were the case, the yearly variations in CO2 you see in the MLO and other records would be progressively increasing in amplitude and warped. Instead, they are very regular for the past 50 years.
The isotopic ratio question is entirely speculative and, as others have noted and as has been dramatically demonstrated in the Mann-made temperature hockey stick, the grafting of proxy data onto measured data is highly questionable. So, overall, you have questionable evidence supporting an implausible hypothesis. There can be no doubt that the CO2 rise is mostly natural, it will eventually falter, and then researchers will actually start to look for what really caused it.

One other thing that I feel a need to vent on: the question of whether to call AGW advocates “warmists”. “Warmist” is awfully tame compared to “denier”. “Denier” is clearly an intentional reference to Holocaust deniers, and should be offensive to every thinking man and woman on Earth.
The History channel and other cable channels have been showcasing retrospectives on WWII for the past couple of weeks, what with Memorial Day and D-Day remembrances. My wife and I watched the episode of “The World at War” focusing on the concentration camps just the other night. I can barely see straight when I contemplate these jerks popping off about “deniers” and recall the unimaginable barbarity of the Nazis which we were reminded of again that night. I would urge you to delete any posts snarking off about “deniers” immediately and without qualification.

“Given all of the issues discussed above, I say humans are responsible for the change in atmospheric CO2 … but… please be aware that I don’t think that the change in CO2 will make any meaningful difference to the temperature.”
OK. I would say it slightly differently: Given all of the issues discussed above, I say humans are responsible for some of the change in atmospheric CO2 … but… please be aware that I don’t think that the change in CO2 will make any meaningful difference to the temperature.
Love your rules Willis!

Bart says:
June 7, 2010 at 11:34 am
… Aside from extremely minor isotopic distribution differences, nature essentially cannot tell the two molecules apart.
Are you sure – where are your figures? As the Iranian nuclear industry is learning, isotopes of different mass do behave differently on the basis of that difference – it is not impossible for heavier C13 to settle faster than C12. This would put a spanner in the works. (“Extremely minor” – 8.3% mass difference, not quite insignificant.)

Thank you Willis for a balanced and informative article.
I agree that the balance of evidence suggests that mankind is responsible for most of the measured rise in CO2 since 1850, although I also agree with other posters that the proxy measurements prior to 1850 are not necessarily accurate for comparison with modern measurements.
But I do have a problem with the connection with increased CO2 and increased warming (particularly of the catastrophic kind). Can someone help me out here problem because my scientific knowledge is seemingly lacking on the following reasoning:
CO2 exists at less than 400ppmbv in the atmosphere (in fact, I believe ALL the GGs which have a ‘radiative forcing’ factor as described by the IPCC) exist at less than 400ppmbv. To my logic, therefore, each GG molecule capable of radiating is surrounded by approximately 2500 molecules of ‘greenhouse-inert’ N2, O2 molecules or Ar atoms. The fact that CO2 can re-radiate having absorbed LW radiation is well-known, but – and here is the main point of my confusion – simply re-radiating does not directly infer significant warming. The radiation has to be absorbed by another molecule capable of absorbing radiation and then that molecule must transfer heat by conduction to its neighbouring molecules. Given that air is a poor conductor, how is it possible that one GG molecule can conduct enough heat to enough neighbouring molecules to create a catastrophic warming? I agree a very small amount of warming is likely, but the mechanism surely has to be conduction, not radiation, and the number of neighbouring molecules which can warm by conduction must be small.
I am probably missing something important here, so could someone please advise?
Obviously I have ignored water vapour but then it is not included as a GG when it comes to radiative forcing, and I still find it hard to believe that a GG concentration of 400ppm will have that much effect even with the wv feedback.

Oslo says:
June 7, 2010 at 3:53 am
Well, as you say – your first graph resembles the Mann hockey stick, and perhaps for good reason, as it seems to utilize the good old “trick” – splicing the instrumental record onto the proxy data.
Here is another graph, clearly showing the instrumental data (red) disjointed from the proxies:
http://www.geo.cornell.edu/eas/energy/_Media/ice_core_co2.png
So the question is, as with the hockey stick: do the figures from the two methods even belong on the same graph?
_________________________________________________________________________
Thank you for that graph. What I see as interesting is the many data points below 200 ppm. Some as low as about 170 or 180 PPM. At these levels some types of plants have great difficulty growing and reproducing. Do we have evidence of massive plant die offs to substantiate the ice core numbers?
At 180 ppm to 200 ppm C3 plants (trees) would have a very difficult time competing with C4 plants (grasses) and could not complete their life cycles especially in warmer or drought (ice age) conditions. Low levels of CO2 also leads to leaf loss to conserve moisture and slow rates of growth in C3 and C4 plants. A history of atmospheric CO2 and its effects on plants, animals, and ecosystems
By J. R. Ehleringer,
Elephants eat trees, that is why they developed trunks. So what did mastodons and woolly mammoths eat?
“elephants:
* Spend 16 to 18 hours a day either feeding or moving toward a source of food or water.
* Consume between 130 to 660 pounds (60 to 300 kg) of food each day.
* Drink between 16 to 40 gallons (60 to 160 l) of water per day.
* Produce between 310 to 400 pounds (140 to 180 kg) of dung per day.
mastodons and mammoths:
…mammoths had ridged molars, primarily for grazing on grasses, mastodon molars had blunt, cone-shaped cusps for browsing on trees and shrubs. Mastodons were smaller than mammoths, reaching about ten feet at the shoulder, and their tusks were straighter and more parallel. Mastodons were about the size of modern elephants,
From the preserved dung of Columbian mammoths found in a Utah cave, a mammoth’s diet consisted primarily of grasses, sedges, and rushes. Just 5% included saltbush wood and fruits, cactus fragments, sagebrush wood, water birch, and blue spruce. So, though primarily a grazer, the Columbian mammoth did a bit of browsing as well. Mammoths
And how about the Giant Sloth
“The giant ground sloth was one of the enormous creatures that thrived during the ice ages. Looking a little bit like an oversized hamster it probably fed on leaves found on the lower branches of trees or bushes. The largest of these ground sloths was Megatherium which grew to the size of a modern elephant with a weight over five tons.
Giant Sloths had very large, dangerous-looking claws. Despite their size they were probably only used to strip leaves or bark from plants. Their teeth were small and blunt in keeping with their herbivore diet. Examinations of their hip bones suggests that they could stand on their hind legs to extend their grazing as high as twenty feet. “
How could these creatures be eating trees when the CO2 levels were at 180 ppm and trees were all but extinct? For that matter given browsing pressure and problems with growing enough to produce seed why didn’t trees become completely extinct? like this?

There is no doubt in my mind that the CO2 measurements from Mauna Loa and other stations of the same type around the world the are solid, and that the steady exponential rise is they show directly are related human activity one way or another the most likely causes being the that of land use change and a fossil fuel burning used in our somewhat antique power generation technology. I also accept the ice core data as good proxy for the baseline ~280 ppmv CO2 pre-industrial atmospheric concentration, I just little pussled by th small variation (+/- 2ppmv I belive) it shows for the last 2000 years or ,beforehan I would have thougt we should see greater variations, so there is a wisp of a suspion that maybe we are missing something essential there, but ist not very strong or well founded.
But what prompted my comment here was this part of a comment from Ian Hayes
…” I find it interesting that the sequestration rate seems to be getting larger – it is trending above the exponential line.” ….
It reminded me that I had somtime back in time come across a ( now slightly aged it is a critique of some part in the IPCC AR3 report rather than the latest and now much ridiculed AR4) paper by Dr. Jarl Ahlbeck at the (late) John Daly’s website
the link is here , Alhbeck : CO2 Sink 1970-2000…
http://www.john-daly.com/ahlbeck/ahlbeck.htm
It’s an anlysis of resent past and a future forcasting exercise for atmospheric CO2 concentration attributable to human activity, the math is nothing exotic and easy to work through , and I at least can find no fault with it.
What struck me was his his result that the fraction of human CO2 emission ending up in the athmosphere for each year had gone down from either 52% to 39% or 69% to 49% depending on whether the figure for land use change estimate is included in total emission or not.
If he is right and this is not an a spurious signal somehow related to the data from 1970-2000 period that he is using but a the there is a large CO2 sink unaccounted for in the UN dream models eating up an ever larger slice of anthropogenic emission, an he project that the airborne fraction would go down below 20 % by year 2100.
I just wonder what could this sink be , if it exists