For a another view on the CO2 issue, please see also the guest post by Tom Vonk: CO2 heats the atmosphere…a counter view -Anthony
Guest Post by Ferdinand Engelbeen
There have been hundreds of reactions to the previous post by Willis Eschenbach as he is convinced that humans are the cause of the past 150 years increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. For the (C)AGW theory, that is one of the cornerstones. If that fails, the whole theory fails.
This may be the main reason that many skeptics don’t like the idea that humans are the cause of the increase and try to demolish the connection between human emissions and the measured increase in the atmosphere with all means, some more scientific than others.
After several years of discussion on different discussion lists, skeptic and warmist alike, I have made a comprehensive web page where all arguments are put together: indeed near the full increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is caused by the human emissions. Only a small part might have been added by the (ocean) warming since the LIA. That doesn’t mean that the increase has a tremendous effect on the warming of the earth’s surface, as that is a completely different discussion. But of course, if the CO2 increase was mainly/completely natural, the discussion of the “A” in AGW wouldn’t be necessary. But it isn’t natural, as the mass balance proves beyond doubt and all other observations agree with. And all alternative explanations fail one or more observations. In the next parts I will touch other items like the process characteristics, the 13C and 14C/12C ratio, etc. Finally, I will touch some misconceptions about decay time of extra CO2, ice cores, historical CO2 measurements and stomata data.
The mass balance:
As the laws of conservation of mass rules: no carbon can be destroyed or generated. As there are no processes in the atmosphere which convert CO2 to something else, the law also holds for CO2, as long as it stays in the atmosphere. This means that the mass balance should be obeyed for all situations. In this case, the increase/decrease of the CO2 level in the atmosphere after a year (which only shows the end result of all exchanges, including the seasonal exchanges) must be:
dCO2(atm) = CO2(in1 + in2 + in3 +…) + CO2(em) – CO2(out1 + out2 + out3 +…)
The difference in the atmosphere after a year is the sum of all inflows, no matter how large they are, or how they changed over the years, plus the human emissions, minus the sum of all outflows, no matter how large they are, wherever they take place. Some rough indication of the flows involved is here in Figure 1 from NASA:
From all those flows very few are known to any accuracy. What is known with reasonable accuracy are the emissions, which are based on inventories of fossil fuel use by the finance departments (taxes!) of different countries and the very accurate measurements of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere on a lot of places on earth, including Mauna Loa.
Thus in the above CO2 mass balance, we can replace some of the items with the real amounts (CO2 amounts expressed in gigaton carbon):
4 GtC = CO2(in1 + in2 + in3 +…) + 8 GtC – CO2(out1 + out2 + out3 +…)
Or rearranged:
CO2(in1 + in2 + in3 +…) – CO2(out1 + out2 + out3 +…) = – 4 GtC
Without any knowledge of any natural flow in or out of the atmosphere or changes in such flows, we know that the sum of all natural outflows is 4 GtC larger than the sum of all natural inflows. In other words, the net increase of the atmospheric CO2 content caused by all natural CO2 ins and outs together is negative. There is no net natural contribution to the observed increase, nature as a whole acts as a sink for CO2. Of course, a lot of CO2 is exchanged over the seasons, but at the end of the year, that doesn’t add anything to the total CO2 mass in the atmosphere. That only adds to the exchange rate of individual molecules: some 20% per year of all CO2 in the atmosphere is refreshed by the seasonal exchanges between atmosphere and oceans/vegetation. That can be seen in the above scheme: about 210 GtC CO2 is exchanged, but not all of that reaches the bulk of the atmosphere. Best guess (based on 13C/12C and oxygen exchanges) is that some 60 GtC is exchanged back and forth over the seasons between the atmosphere and vegetation and some 90 GtC is exchanged between the atmosphere and the oceans. These flows are countercurrent: warmer oceans release more CO2 in summer, while vegetation has its largest uptake in summer. In the NH, vegetation wins (more land), in the SH there is hardly any seasonal influence (more ocean). There is more influence near ground than at altitude and there is a NH-SH lag (which points to a NH source). See figure 2:
The net result of all these exchanges is some 4 GtC sink rate of the natural flows, which is variable: the variability of the natural sink capacity is mostly related to (ocean) temperature changes, but that has little influence on the trend itself, as most of the variability averages out over the years. Only a more permanent temperature increase/decrease should show a more permanent change in CO2 level. The Vostok ice core record shows that a temperature change of about 1°C gives a change in CO2 level of about 8 ppmv over very long term. That indicates an about 8 ppmv increase for the warming since the LIA, less than 10% of the observed increase.
As one can see in Fig. 3 below, there is a variability of +/- 1 ppmv (2 GtC) around the trend over the past 50 years, while the trend itself is about 55% of the emissions, currently around 2 ppmv (4 GtC) per year (land use changes not included, as these are far more uncertain, in that case the trend is about 45% of the emissions + land use changes).
We could end the whole discussion here, as humans have added about twice the amount of CO2 to the atmosphere as the observed increase over the past 150 years, the difference is absorbed by the oceans and/or vegetation. That is sufficient proof for the human origin of the increase, but there is more that points to the human cause… as will be shown in the following parts.
Please note that the RULES FOR THE DISCUSSION OF ATTRIBUTION OF THE CO2 RISE still apply!
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Dirkian Marsupial:
Thanks for your reply.
I can imagine that the productivity of the biosphere maybe sufficiently affected by the ENSO. However I also see that the CO2 increase dropped siginficantly in response to Mt Pinatubo cooling, which is due to sulphates in the upper atmosphere, I would have expected that to have a negative affect on photosynthesis.
I also have strong doubts that you can prove one way or another whether the CO2 is being absorbed by plants or the oceans. I would expect that to be an open question.
Dave Springer says:
August 6, 2010 at 5:32 am
The null hypothesis I offer is bascially that the tail does not wag the dog.
The global ocean establishes the equilibrium level of atmospheric CO2. Absent anthropogenic CO2 the ocean would release a commensurate amount of CO2 to keep the equilibrium point exactly where it is today.
Prove it wrong.
First, the fact that there is a 4 GtC sink rate, with over half going into the oceans, disproves that the oceans are in equilibrium with the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Second, nature has proven that it is wrong. A lot of Antarctic ice cores, measured by different organisations with overlapping periods (including 20 years with South Pole atmospheric data), and better resolution in more recent times, show a direct correlation between CO2 levels and temperature of 8 ppmv/C. The pre-industrial level was 280-300 ppmv, including a small dip of about 6 ppmv for a dip of 0.8 C over the MWP-LIA transition (ice core resolution 21 years). The current temperature is about as warm (or less warm) as during the MWP period, thus the temperature may have increased the CO2 level with some 6 ppmv (which is the basic equilibrium level for the current temperature) in the past 150 years, at around 290 ppmv, not 390 ppmv…
Richard S Courtney said:
“a change to any other emission (or sequestration) that is larger than the rise could also be said to be sufficiently large to provide more than the observed increase.”
Yes, I completely agree (and I suspect Ferdinand would also) that other changes in natural emissions or uptake COULD be large enough to explain the observed increase. The key point is that the observations show that they DON’T explain the observed increase, because the observations (via the mass balance argument) show unequivocally that the natural environment has been a net sink since at least 1960. Whatever changes to individual environmental fluxes that may be taking place, it is environmental uptake that is winning.
Of course some sources of environmental emissions may be strengthening, but if that is the case, we know that the environmental uptake must be strengthening even faster, because not only is the natural environment still a net sink, the difference between environmental emissions and uptake is WIDENING, not narrowing, as shown in Fig. 3.
Dikran Marsupial says:
August 6, 2010 at 6:50 am
“If we were already at the equilibrium point, then by definition natural emissions would be in balance with environmental uptake – but we know that is not the case.”
No! If the equilibrium point were not changing, total emissions (natural plus man made) would be in balance with uptake. Increase the man made component and the natural component (of emissions minus uptake) would decrease by the same amount. The assumption of equilibrium requires that the equilibriating mechanisms be fast compared to the fluxes; lags would allow changes in the sources to temporarily shift the atmospheric concentration slightly (though in a geographically nonuniform system this is not necessarily the case).
Bob from the UK. IIRC the section in the IPCC report that discusses this mentions that there have been a couple of changes not explained by ENSO, and Pinatubo was suggested as the explanation for one of them. The reason why it is not thought to be the ocean that is directly responsible is because the thermal inertia is too high to produce rapid changes, so it pretty much must be the terresrial sources/sinks.
The wording in the IPCC report does not suggests any of that is proven, just the explanation considered most plausible. Absolute proof is impossible in observational science, and there is plenty of uncertainty in AGW (as detailed in the IPCC reports); the mass balance argument is one of the rare examples of something where the data actually are pretty much unequivocal.
Dikran Marsupial says:
August 6, 2010 at 7:36 am
“It is perfectly true that we don’t know what the wife would have done had the husband not deposited any money. However, that is irrelevant as we know what she actually did do, and it is what she did do that affected the balance of their bank account, rather than what she might hypothetically have done.”
It’s not irrelevant, because the hypothesis under test is that the husband’s depositing money has caused the bank balance to rise more than it would otherwise have done. This is the counterfactual you cannot answer.
“A scientist doesn’t ignore the data, and the data show unambiguously (via the mass balance argument) that the natural environment has been a net sink throughout the industrial era. Note this is exactly what you would expect from a system in approximate equilibrium; if you disturb the equilibrium (e.g. by putting fossil carbon into the atmoshere) then the system will react to oppose the disturbance.”
Yes. The wife has probably done something different because of what the husband did. So there is no justification for assuming that the rise (or some fraction or multiple of it) would not have happened anyway.
Matt G says:
August 6, 2010 at 7:24 am
I had made a post yesterday at 3.40pm that shows scientific evidence that you have seriously underestimated the impact on the oceans outgassing CO2 as they warm. (unless see below at bottem)
The globe and regions of it have shown much lower increases in temperatures with much higher levels of CO2. There are concerns about the loss of atmospheric CO2 when the ice core samples are taken. How accurate would a snow/ice core sample taken from the surface now(or near), show CO2 to be compared with recent instrumental levels?
So why is the ice core data valid and why have you not taken into account the instrumental values of CO2 that don’t show this 1c/8 ppmv rise? With these major differences both can’t be right so which one is wrong and demonstrates different orders of CO2 outgassing from the oceans?
CO2 outgasses from the oceans the same amount via the the same rise in ocean temperature as it does now as then. You must see the very big problem here and can you explain this? Alternately are you suggesting the ice core data is right and the amounts were released from warming oceans from a 1c rise and that means extra CO2 shown from instrumental data is irrelevent and shows no/trace warming effect on the globe over the past 100 years.
My impression of your previous message was that you are mixing the effect of CO2 on temperature and the reverse. The ice cores are quite reliable (but I have the impression that we need to handle that first, before further discussion about the process characteristics).
If the ice cores are reliable indicators of the past CO2 levels (even of smoothed), then there is only 8 ppmv/C increase or decrease. That was true in the past and true today (there is no reason that ocean/vegetation temperature changes should show a different behaviour on CO2 levels today). That means that the rest of the current measured increase in CO2 is from human emissions… The effect of the increase on temperature changes is not at order now, that is a complete different discussion…
Ferdinand; The terms residence time and decay rate are constantly being confused, residence time of a single molecule can vary from 1 sec to 10 000 years+ so it really is a meaningless term, whereas decay rate is a term which can be used to accurately determin how much CO2 from a given emission remains in the atmosphere after x period of time. If we are to calculate the amount of anthropogenic CO2 remaining in the atmosphere today the decay calculation is the most accurate because it incorporates the sequestration of the carbon.
I did prepare a mass balance calculation which exchanged natural and anthropogenic carbon in the ratio that they exist in the 3 sinks so this does account for the reemission of anthropogenic carbon from the ocean and land back into the atmosphere, but since there is a much lower ratio in the land and water than the air there is a net flux out of the atmosphere, therefore the net impact of human emissions is much lower than simplistic logic implies.
It must also be realized that the fluxes are impacted by the partial pressure of CO2. Henrys Law has already been quoted; this puts more CO2 in solution which accelerates the formation of carbonates, on the other hand warmer water outgasses CO2 which slows down the formation of carbonates.
It has been proven in thousands of experiments that an increase of 300 ppm in atmospheric CO2 increases the growth rate of plants by 40% on average. Thus, changes in CO2 concentration bring about many complex interactions which can not be evaluated by simplistic logic. The important factor is how much anthropogenic CO2 is resident in the atmosphere today, which by a real mass balance calculation is between 10 and 18 ppm depending upon what decay rate you select.
Dikran Marsupial says:
August 6, 2010 at 7:43 am
Paul Birch wrote: “A contrary hypothesis would be the very simple one that CO2 is in approximate equilibrium between atmosphere and oceans, so the CO2 level has risen principally due to the rise in ocean temperatures since the Little Ice Age. Under this hypothesis it would have risen at almost exactly the same rate irrespective of anthropogenic emissions. More sophisticated variants of the theory would include absorption and circulation lags for both CO2 and heat, and in those the rise would typically happen a bit quicker with anthrop. emissions than without (and falls a bit later).”
Dikran: “However, if that were the case, then the annual rise in atmospheric CO2 would be greater than anthropogenic emissions (as both anthropogenic emissions AND the response to increasing ocean temperatures were adding to atmospheric CO2), and as I said, we know from observational data that this is not the case.”
No! This simply does not follow. The annual rise in CO2 would be essentially independent of the anthropogenic emissions; it could be greater, or less, or equal. It would be determined by changes in the equilibrium positions, from causes having nothing to do with the rates. Sure, there might be some rate limitations on the equilibriating uptake step, so the atmospheric concentrations would show some dependence on the input rates, but this could be arbitrarily small. This seems so blindingly obvious I can’t understand why you apparently can’t grasp it.
A quick one on the ice cores J.J.Drake wrote a very good paper explainig why the ice core data is low, basically it is because of the formation of Calthrates which are not released when the core is processed. The leaf stomata proxy is far more robust and comparisons between leaf stomata and ice core data shows that the ice core data is seriously flawed.
Paul Birch: Re. equilibria.
Sorry Paul, the environment is a net sink, which means its equilibrum state is below the current level. The usual example used in undergraduate classes is a cars suspension system, you have a spring, a damper and the weight of the car. Take the car off the jacks and it settles until the weight of the car is balanced by the force exerted by the springs. If you push down on the fender, the car will sink a bit lower, but the force exerted by the springs increase to oppose the disturbance from the equilibrium point. You stop pushing on the fender, the body of the car rises again until it reaches its ride height. The damper controls the rate at which the adjustment ocurrs, but is otherwise irrelevant; the important thing is that if the force exerted by the spring is higher than normal, we know the body is below its design ride height, if it is less than normal, we know it is above the design ride height.
I hope the analagy is obvious, but the basic point is that the fact the environment is a net sink (and is opposing the rise) shows that the atmosphere is above the natural equilibrium point.
Being pedantic it is seems likely that we will not get back to the pre-industrial 285ppmv (except in geological time) as there is now more carbon moving through the carbonc cycle, and all things being otherwise equal, the atmospheric reservoir will have a share of the excess. However, we know that the equilibrium level is below current levels.
Dikran,
Read my presentation http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf with an open mind.
Paul Birch said:
“It’s not irrelevant, because the hypothesis under test is that the husband’s depositing money has caused the bank balance to rise more than it would otherwise have done.
This is the counterfactual you cannot answer. ”
You could apply the same logic to any scientific theory that you did not want to accept. How do you know that the sun makes the earth warmer than it would otherwise have been? That is an argument of exactly the same form, and likewise the answer is you don’t, however you have no reason to expect the Earth to be warmer without the sun. There could be some mechanism that explains how the earth might be warm without the sun, but it is not mentioned in the counterfactual, just as the mechanism in your counterfactual is absent. Likewise there is no reason to expect CO2 levels to be 100ppmv higher than pre-industrial levels (the temperature change from the LIA for a start is far too small to explain it).
As it happens, while it can’t be prove that the CO2 levels wouldn’t have been higher if there had been no anthropogenic emmisions, we can show that the observed rise in CO2 is due to anthropogenic emissions as the mass balance argument shows that the natural environment has consistently opposed the rise.
Your argument is non-scientific as (at least according to Popper) for a theory (including a counterfactual) to be considered scientific there must be the possibility of its falsification. Your couterfactual is not falsified because it is not falsifiable. That is not to your advantage. Now if you gave a specific mechanism in your counterfactual, it would become falsifiable, and hence scientific, but would almost certainly be falsified by the mass balance argument.
Hi Ferdinand!
As a Biochemistry engineer I should probably be a rather embarrassed that I have a hard time to understand your chemical points concerning pCO2! Perhaps my learning’s from the first years at university is a little rusty, please forgive I just want to understand 100% what you are saying.
I said basically: Temperatures and pH has been roughly constant for a decade now and so has pCO2 in upper layers of Oceans. I do not see increasing human emissions reflected here, so this could be a sign that the oceanic biosphere is growing and assimilating CO2 still faster – and thus omitting the human dominance of CO2 control.
To this you answer first:
1) Ferdinand: “You are looking at pCO2, but that is only about 1% of total carbon (CO2 + bicarbonate + carbonate) in the (upper) oceans and heavily influenced by temperature and alkalinity.”
Frank: pCO2 is in equivalence with bicarbonate as well as carbonates like Calcium- and Magnesium carbonate. So its not really a problem if pCO2 is just a smaller fraction, we can still use it to track changes in CO2 content none the less. Well, that is unless you actually count in the solid carbonates that has sedimented out, but im sure you don’t go that far. Anyway, IPCC used pCO2 as the indicator for CO2 content as I showed you, and I think they did so for a good reason.
2) Ferdinand: “the total amount of CO2 in the upper ocean part increased, despite a decline in pCO2.
Frank: Is this documented in your links you gave, earlier in the comments here or in your article? I would like to see the basis for this statement.
3) Ferdinand: “pCO2 is directly related to pure dissolved [CO2*] where CO2* is the sum of CO2 and H2CO3 (together around 1% of total dissolved inorganic carbon ). Bicarbonate (around 83%) and carbonate (around 16%) ions don’t play any role in pCO2. “
Frank: Again, its as if you don’t think CO2 in oceans are in equilibrium with Calcium/Magnesium carbonates etc?
4) Ferdinand: “So a change in pCO2, due to changes in pH, biolife, temperature or whatever, doesn’t say anything about the total amount of carbon (as CO2 + HCO3- + CO3– ) in the upper oceans…”
Frank: As I said, we have a decade with quite constant pH, and temperatures also rather constant, so its hard to be so very sure as you seem, that pH and temperature can explain the missing pCO2 increase.
K.R Frank Lansner
Sorry, maths mangled in previous post, mods please feel free to delete the first version, many thanks in advance.
Paul Birch: One last try. Do you agree that:
dC = E_a + E_e – U_e
where dC is the annual change in atmospheric CO2, E_a is total anthropogenic emissions (fossil fuel and land use changes), E_e is total environmental emissions (from all sources) and U_e is environmental uptak (all sinks)? N.B. These are all positive quantities – you can’t have a negative source – that would be a sink.
If you do, then a rearrangement gives
dC – Ea = E_e – U_e
O.K. so far?
If the annual rise in atmospheric CO2 is less than anthropogenic emssions then the left hand side is negative, and hence so is the right hand side
dC – E_a = E_e – U_e LESSTHAN 0
which implies that U_E GREATERTHAN E_e, in otherwords, if the annual rise is less than anthropogenic emissions, then we know that environmental emissions must be less than environmental uptake and so we would know that the natural environment is a net sink and hence cannot explain the observed rise.
There you are, I have spelled it out. It is such a straightforward bit of algebra I don’t really see how it is so difficult to grasp. I you have a problem, point out the line containing the flaw.
Dikran Marsupial says:
August 6, 2010 at 8:54 am
“I hope the analagy is obvious, but the basic point is that the fact the environment is a net sink (and is opposing the rise) shows that the atmosphere is above the natural equilibrium point.”
Sorry, but you’re wrong. In a simple system, what you say would be true; however, even then the amount by which the atmospheric concentration exceeded the equilibrium concentration could be arbitrarily small (small enough that for practical purposes we could ignore it). For a complex system, in which there are oscillations, lags, non-linear feedbacks, geographical non-uniformities, underdamping, etc., the conclusion is not valid; it is possible for the instantaneous concentration to be above or below the instantaneous equilibrium value (which is itself varying over time with changes in temperature, compositions of the seas, etc.).
Dikran Marsupial says:
August 6, 2010 at 9:13 am
“Your couterfactual is not falsified because it is not falsifiable.”
It is not “my” counterfactual. It is the claim made in the OP – that CO2 levels are higher than they would have been in the absence of anthropogenic emissions. That’s what “the CO2 increase is man made” has to mean.
Dikran Marsupial says:
August 6, 2010 at 9:29 am
“Paul Birch: One last try. Do you agree that:
dC = E_a + E_e – U_e
where dC is the annual change in atmospheric CO2, E_a is total anthropogenic emissions (fossil fuel and land use changes), E_e is total environmental emissions (from all sources) and U_e is environmental uptak (all sinks)? ”
Yes, if you let E_a be net anthrop. emissions (or include -U_a).
“… so we would know that the natural environment is a net sink”
OK so far (if by this you mean, the natural environment is a net sink under current conditions – it might or might not have been a net sink in the past or under other conditions).
“and hence cannot explain the observed rise.”
Complete non sequitur.
Fred H. Haynie:
(i) suggesting I should read your document with an open mind implies that I might read it in some other way (i.e. with a closed mind). That is not a good way to encourage people to take up your ideas. If I didn’t have an open mind I wouldn’t be discussing this as WUWT would I? ;o)
(ii) I have only had time to have a quick look at the file (too much there to do anything else in a reasonable time frame). Am I right in thinking that the point of the analysis relating to atmospheric CO2 is pointing out that only a small fraction of atmospheric CO2 is of direct anthropogenic origin? If so, that is well known. It is caused by the fact that the seasonal exchange fluxes exchange 20% of atmospheric CO2 with CO2 from the environmental reservoirs, which means that only IIRC only about 4% is directly emitted from fossil fuel use (I have done the simulations to verify that is the case). This is perfectly consistent with the anthropogenic origin of the observed rise as the large exchange fluxes only swap CO2 between reservoirs without actually changing atmospheric concentrations. As usual, this is explained with great clarity on Ferdinand Engelbeens excellent webpage.
If I have missed the point, it would be better if you gave a specific topic to discuss and I can use the relevant section of your document for reference.
Paul Birch wrote:
“It is not “my” counterfactual. It is the claim made in the OP – that CO2 levels are higher than they would have been in the absence of anthropogenic emissions. That’s what “the CO2 increase is man made” has to mean”
(i) whether it is your counterfactual or not, it is still not falsifiable, and still non-scientific.
(ii) “the CO2 increase is man made” does not have to mean that the rise would not have ocurred if not for anthropogenic emissions, it only means that the particular rise that we have actually observed is man made. That is not the same thing at all.
Frank Lansner says:
August 6, 2010 at 9:27 am
2) Ferdinand: “the total amount of CO2 in the upper ocean part increased, despite a decline in pCO2.
Frank: Is this documented in your links you gave, earlier in the comments here or in your article? I would like to see the basis for this statement.
This was in one of the first links I did give:
http://www.bios.edu/Labs/co2lab/research/IntDecVar_OCC.html
Look in the graph for nDIC and compare that to the pH and pCO2 changes. nDIC still goes up, while pCO2 and pH stagnate.
3) Ferdinand: “pCO2 is directly related to pure dissolved [CO2*] where CO2* is the sum of CO2 and H2CO3 (together around 1% of total dissolved inorganic carbon ). Bicarbonate (around 83%) and carbonate (around 16%) ions don’t play any role in pCO2. “
Frank: Again, its as if you don’t think CO2 in oceans are in equilibrium with Calcium/Magnesium carbonates etc?
A small change in pH has little effect on carbonate and bicarbonate levels, but a tremendous effect on free CO2 levels, by pushing the equilibrium to one or the other side… lower pH means much higher pCO2 levels… In this case, the pH doesn’t change while the total amount of carbon still increases, which means that the pH effect of more CO2 is compensated by something else.
One observation:
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 5, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Unintentionally, perhaps, you have pretty much destroyed your entire thesis with this statement.
You have no idea what your sales were with this method. You have no idea if your net gain or loss is due to staff giving too much or too little change. Your cash drawer does not account for staff salaries or advertising or rent. Without examining the records to determine whether your sales are due to loss leaders or high margin product you have no idea whether you have a gain or loss. I have personally witnessed retail business failure because the management only concerned themselves with this cash-drawer fallacy.
In short, simply looking at the end numbers gives you NO information about what the numbers mean.
The steady, straight line rise of CO2 that is being documented at Mauna Loa has not faltered, in spite of very clearly identified changes in our overall CO2 emissions, and that is the undoing of all of it. Until and unless you account for that there is no Science involved, only a belief.
As has already been pointed out: this entire post devolves to one claim: CO2 increase is manmade because there is a CO2 increase. Circular reasoning at its most futile. Good luck with that… but I assume there’s a reason that science publishers are not lining up at your door to have you write science books.
Paul Birch said:
“Yes, if you let E_a be net anthrop. emissions (or include -U_a).”
Well as anthropogenic uptake is as close to nothing as to make no difference to the argument, we are in agreement then.
““… so we would know that the natural environment is a net sink”
OK so far (if by this you mean, the natural environment is a net sink under current conditions – it might or might not have been a net sink in the past or under other conditions).”
The data shown in figure 3 of the OP shows that the environment has been a net sink for at least the last fifty years. The emissions data go back pretty much to the start of the industrial revolution and if you use the Law dome data to compute the annual change in atmospheric CO2 prior to the Mauna Loa dataset, you get the same result. If you don’t take my word for it, download the data from CDIAC and plot it for yourself.
““and hence cannot explain the observed rise.”
Complete non sequitur.”
I don’t see how it can be a non-sequitur. How can the natural environment be responsible for the observed rise if the observations show it has been a net sink and hence taking up more carbon from the atmosphere each year than it emits? Seems a pretty reasonable step to me.
Ferdinand, my recollection of the export to deep ocean bounds is plus or minus 40 GtC per annum. Perhaps that is why my acceptance of your ‘we know the flows, therefore the bit left over must be anthropogenic’ argument is less than 100%. We do not know the flows.
Here’s a rough approximation of what is going on as I see it, which may, of course, be very wrong:
First, production is: methane — permafrost thaw, ocean outgassing, bio land, bio ocean, acid rain rebound and CO2 — bio land, bio ocean, ocean outgassing, methane breakdown. And add anthropogenic, A.
Pulldowns are: gas dissolved into upper ocean, export of dissolved gas to deep ocean, mineralisation, biological mineralisation, bio sludge to methane clathrates/permafrost/ CO2 pools/ deep ocean, soil incorporation, vegetation.
That’s 18 processes which may be — almost certainly are — changing all the time.
Pulldown = production in the balanced state. Since 1850/1910 pulldown + .5A = production
Changes made in the last 150 years by anthropogenic disturbance in production are A, ocean outgassing, bio land, bio ocean, acid rain rebound, while anthropogenic pulldown changes are rate of ocean ingassing, soil incorporation, vegetation, bio sludge to deep ocean etc, biological mineralisation.
That’s ten anthropogenic changes.
Let us suppose that the pulldown mechanisms are flexible to a very large extent and if production were to change by 100 GtC per year then they could cope, but beyond this they become progressively overwhelmed. Let us suppose that the production mechanisms are likewise variable.
How does one know, with all the unknowns, that the anthropogenic C component is a large proportion of the total change of atmospheric C? My personal take on the CO2 increase is that we have changed the pulldown mechanisms and the amount of carbon left in the atmosphere is a function of this. How much have we changed pulldown? Well, if plankton really has decreased by 40%, and land use change, destruction of peat, suppression and then release of methane by acid rain are a reality then we are talking of amounts which dwarf anthropogenic production. If the Kriegesmarine Hypothesis is true then the pulldown _and_ production changes are huge. Huge, but not necessarily equal. The imbalance is what the pulldown mechanisms must adapt to. If the production – pulldown changes are too great then the flexible pulldown can’t cope and the excess is dumped to the atmosphere. Note that the imbalance comprises all the changes to all those production and pulldown mechanisms, all of them, not just A. The pulldown will be made up of parts from all the changes and the excess dumped to the atmosphere, likewise, will consist of bits of all the changes: if you cut out A entirely then only a small proportion of the excess would vanish.
So, what proportion of the change in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic in the 100 GtC flexibility assumption? 4%? 8%?
Unless we tackle all the problems, vegetation destruction, silicate and fertiliser run-off, oil pollution of the ocean surface, aerosol changes, etc then we could cut out every bit of human C production and the CO2 levels in the atmosphere would still rise.
JF
Barry Moore says:
August 6, 2010 at 8:52 am
A quick one on the ice cores J.J.Drake wrote a very good paper explainig why the ice core data is low, basically it is because of the formation of Calthrates which are not released when the core is processed. The leaf stomata proxy is far more robust and comparisons between leaf stomata and ice core data shows that the ice core data is seriously flawed.
J.J. Drake made the classic error of:
A causes B with a good correlation and
A causes C with a good correlation
thus B causes C, because there is a good correlation between the two (which is entirely spurious in this case)…
The “correction” he applied for ice-gas lag has no physical meaning at all, leading to theoretical CO2 levels which never occured in reality.
Further CO2 clathrates are avoided by up to a year relaxation of the cores at low temperature and measuring under vacuum, effectively removing any clathrates left.
Stomata data have far more problems than ice cores, the most important one is that they reflect local/regional CO2 levels which are far more variable and by definition show a positive bias, which is not even constant over time…
But we are again already discussing ice cores and alternative proxies, which is not the topic yet…