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.
tallbloke says:
August 5, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Ferdinand,
The surface ocean flux of 1,020GT is the really interesting figure. The amount added by humans is a small percentage of that. Less than 1%
If there is a downward trend in the ocean surface flux of less than 1/2% of absorption annually, we are off the hook.
Be careful: the 1,020 GtC is what is in the reservoir, that is not the flux! The exchange between the ocean surface and the atmosphere is about 90 GtC (rough estimate), that is the flux, but even that is not of interest, as much of it returns in another season (or another millennium, via the deep oceans). Only the difference between the two fluxes in and out is of interest for the mass balance: about 2 GtC of CO2 mass is ultimately net absorbed by the oceans from the 8 GtC addition by humans…
Alex says:
August 5, 2010 at 8:53 am
Did anybody say we didn’t increase co2 in the air? I don’t get this who is he arguing against?
As in my comment above, I think the reader is to assume that man is causing global warming. But the science does not show this.
The cost of postage stamps has gone up in the last 100 years. That must be causing warming. This comparison is just as valid as saying warming is caused by co2. And it may be an even better relation since the only science to come out has show that co2 increases actually cause cooling because of negative feedback.
There is no data in the historical, or current, scientific record that shows co2 causes warming in the climate.
Frank Lansner says:
August 5, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Wops, heres the link:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/co2%20concentretions%20in%20oceans/b4.jpg
I made the illustration from AR4 illustrations as you can see. So who can “deny” that data are valid ? 😉
________________________________________
Frank does the pCO2 in the oceans correlate to the ocean oscillations? Perhaps with a bit of lag? It does look like it.
Atlantic (AMO)
http://digitaldiatribes.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/amoraw200908.png
Pacific (PDO)
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/PDO_Easterbrook.JPG
I basically agree with the gist of the article.
The carbon cycle pic is a bit out of date, though (the totals are a bit higher by now).
The big question is whether feedbacks are positive or negative. (I see greater evidence so far that they are negative.)
Frank Lansner says:
August 5, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Hi Ferdinand!
You say that pH controls pCO2 and therefore a decade of stagnation in CO2 is no problem for the idea that increasing human CO2 outlet controls CO2 levels?
But pH levels have stagnated too:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/pH%20in%20oceans/e1.jpg
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/pH%20in%20oceans/d9.jpg
Dear Frank, I see that you still don’t get it: pCO2 is not the important factor for the total amount of carbon in the oceans. pCO2 is only related to free CO2 in solution, not to the bicarbonate and carbonate ions, which give the bulk (99%) of all CO2 in the oceans.
As the pH decrease seems to level off, that may be the reason that pCO2 and thus the free CO2 in the oceans levels off too. But that doesn’t influence the total amount of carbon in the oceans, which still is going up in parallel with CO2 in the atmosphere.
Not the reverse. If the CO2 levels of the oceans were the cause of the increase in the atmosphere, then the total carbon levels in the oceans would drop, not increase.
The same problem for more biolife in the oceans: that should reduce total carbon levels, but there still is an increase.
——————-
Wow, this is quite intense… Need some sleep now (it’s 2 AM here…).
This is not a closed system, carbon is mineralized or in the process of being mineralized all the time. Bogs are one type of loss of carbon from the biotic/atmospheric pair. The other is the generation of organic sediment in the oceans; my guess is that this is much underestimated (you 0.2 gty is probably out by an order of magnitude).
As for inputs, burning fossil fuels is obvious ans is the leakage of methane/CO2 from deep underground. There is more life, and carbon, beneath the ground surface than above; it just tends to move more slowly. Chemolithotropic bacteria are forever mobilizing carbonates as a side product of their metabolism.
The amount of CO2 released by volcanic and non-volcanic carbonate heating is also problamatic.
However, any way you cut it your diagram is wrong; at steady state the rate of influx (vulcanism + weathering of rocks) must match the efflux (mineralization), yours does not.
Finally, one has to look at Kellings isotope ratio’s very carefully. He is a top rate investigator and the work he has done on 12C/13C/14C is very interesting; more interesting is the changes he observes in Ar/N ratios. His data suggest that there has been a big change in gas exchange between the atmosphere and the oceans. Examining changes in Ar, which is non-biotic, soluble in water, and generated by both weathering and volcanic action should be as important as measuring CO2.
Have a watch going on “global warming” & have noticed the climate alarmists’ new catch phrase is “undeniable” & no longer “settled science.”
@Dan Evans — thanks. I googled this up. Seems to be on point…
http://www2.glos.ac.uk/gdn/origins/life/carbon.htm
“Alternatively, isotopic fractionation takes place during a chemical reaction. In this case it is the speed of the reaction which is important. In other words there is a kinetic control on the fractionation. In detail the strength of a chemical bond is dependent upon atomic mass, such that bond strength increases with the substitution of heavier isotopes. In biological processes, when inorganic carbon is used to make organic compounds, 12C is more weakly bonded and reacts more readily than 13C, because of its lighter mass. This means that organic matter tends to become enriched in 12C relative to the reservoir of inorganic carbon from which it has been drawn.”
Yeah, that’s cute but misses the point when you don’t how much you have in the bank.
How much CO2 is in the deep ocean, Ferdinand?
Are you aware of the recent discovery of liquid CO2 coming of oceanic ridges and it’s so deep and cold it stays liquid for God only knows how long?
Do YOU know how long? Of course you don’t. Stop bluffing. This isn’t settled science.
Umm, I think Ferdinand Engelbeen, is teasing us.
Making us think.
Can’t wait for Part 2.
Ferdinand:
You and I have debated these matters for several years.
Above, at August 5, 2010 at 10:25 am, you assert:
“Yes, but if humans add 8 GtC per year as CO2 a year and we see only an increase of 4 GtC per year in the atmosphere, then all other flows together, whatever their variation within or over the years, must remove the difference. The variability of the natural removal rate is quite low: +/- 1 ppmv/year (or +/-2 GtC/year, about half the current emissions in year-by-year spread).”
From that, you assume the increase of “an increase of 4 GtC per year in the atmosphere” is an accumulation of part of the anthropogenic emission. Sorry, but that assumption is a logical error.
In the absence of knowledge of how natural emissions (and sequestrations) are varying, then any one (or more) of them could be responsible for the observed increase.
There are several inputs and outputs to the atmosphere that are much larger than the anthropogenic emission. Indeed, as your first (not numbered) figure and your Figure 2 both show, during each year the CO2 in the atmosphere increases then decreases by an order magnitude more than the anthropogenic emission of a year. This increase and decrease within each year is known as the seasonal variation.
So, the annual increase to the CO2 in the air for a year is the residual of the seasonal variation of the year. And the residual is about an order of magnitude less than the seasonal variation which is induced by variations in the natural emissions and sequestrations.
This residual could be induced by the anthropogenic emission affecting some component of the system, but it is clearly not merely an accumulation of the anthropogenic emission for the following reasons.
Firstly, as your Figure 2 shows, the system rapidly adjusts during the year in a manner that does not suggest it is near to saturation. Indeed, the graph strongly suggests that most CO2 emission (both natural and anthropogenic) is sequestered near its source. And the sequestration rate at Northern latitudes (e.g. at Barrow) is more than 100 times the rate of human emission (as your Figure 2 shows). This strongly suggests that the natural sequestration processes can easily sequester the small anthropogenic emission.
Secondly, as others have pointed out, your assumption requires that in the absence of the anthropogenic emission the CO2 in the atmosphere would fall by 4 GtC per year. Therefore, it should have declined at that rate prior to the anthropogenic emission. However, such a decrease would have removed all the CO2 from the air millennia in the past, and all life would have then ceased. But that did not happen because we are here to debate it.
Thirdly, your argument is circular. You assume the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is an accumulation of the anthropogenic emission then say, “See, the emission is sufficiently large to provide more than the observed increase”. But 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.
And your only justification for choosing the anthropogenic emission as the cause is that we know its magnitude but we do not know the magnitudes of the variations to the (much larger) natural emissions and sequestrations!
I do not know if the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is natural or anthropogenic in part or in whole, but I want to know. And I regret that your assumptions and assertions add nothing to available knowledge concerning what I want to know.
Richard
The limiting factor in the oceanic “bank account”, which is hugely larger than the atmosphere’s “cash drawer” at the end of each business day (to continue a silly metaphor) could very well be partial CO2 pressure at the ocean/atmosphere interface. If the anthropogenic contribution didn’t raise the partial pressure the ocean would have just released more from its enormous reserves.
So there. Prove that wrong.
John Hounslow says:
August 5, 2010 at 2:23 pm
I invite you to visit http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/
and examine the CO2 growth deduced from the Vostok Ice Cores starting around 10,000 years ago, when there were few “men” to exert a man-made effect. Compare with the comparable phase of previous climate cycles. Something has changed in the current cycle. Why?
_____________________________________________________–
At that site the Vostok Ice Core data shows the CO2 dips below 200ppm almost to 180 ppm for long periods.
There is this statement:
“As CO2 is a critical component of growth, plants in environments with inadequate CO2 levels – below 200 ppm – will cease to grow or produce.” This is based on real life measurements by those dealing with greenhouses for a living.
http://www.planetnatural.com/site/xdpy/kb/implementing-co2.html
Another paper states under 200 pm CO2 trees starve, but has since disappeared . It was http://biblioteca.universia.net/ficha.do?id=912067
This entire article is refuted here: http://www.co2web.info/
This particular pdf looking at the dogma and politics behind the 70 years of CO2 measurement as well as the science. It is a very interesting read. http://www.co2web.info/ESEF3VO2.pdf
Unfortunately Dr. Segalstad of Resource- and Environmental Geology,
Geological Museum, University of Oslo is swamped and can not write a rebuttal to this article.
The main problem with this assertion about it being humans fault is that it is falsified by the recent economic downturn, in which we saw an 8% drop in fossil fuel consumption globally since 2006. This should have reduced CO2 emission growth significantly and possibly caused it to go negative for the first time in decades. The fact that the CO2 growth has continued unabated demonstrates that human fossil fuel consumption is NOT the primary driver of CO2 increases, instead it is the biosphere responding to the end of the Little Ice Age that is the primary driver of CO2 growth.
Doing a mass balance is not rocket science. It is done all the time in chemical processes. But as a matter of principle I dont trust the data for this one. May be Mr. Engelbeen should ask Steve McIntyre for an audit.
Where’s E.M Smith? On his Chiefio blog he posted a comprehensive demolition of the isotope balance argument some time ago.
I think one thing has been clearly demonstrated by some physicists who Anthony evidently cherry-picked because they happen to support his beliefs — this is far from settled science as a greater number of equally qualified individuals have surfaced to call the OPs no more than opinion trying to masquerade itself as settled science.
Very little of the this “science” is settled. It’s mostly all correlations offered up as causation few of which are unbiguously supported by observation and experiment and most of which are supported only by theoretical models of reality. The QM descriptions are all over the board. Ask 10 physicists about deep questions in QM and you get different answers depending on which QM interpretation the responder has decided is the one that deserves his faith.
Settled science my ass. It’s bandwagon science.
Ferdinand Engelbeen writes:
“Don’t underestimate what science already has investigated about the CO2 cycle, as well in the atmosphere as in the oceans…”
I have been searching for the information for years. All I can find is what can be deduced from characteristics of the CO2 molecule and the theory of radiation. As regards credible studies of actual phenomena, physical processes, there aren’t any. The reason there aren’t any is that AGW proponents don’t actually do science. Successful science always culminates in reasonably well-confirmed hypotheses, though experiments that falsify can be considered successes too. AGW proponents do not produce reasonably well-confirmed hypotheses and certainly have never reported a falsifying experiment. The only thing I know from AGW proponents that I will dignify with the name of hypothesis is Mann’s hockey stick, imperfect as it is. I believe that if genuine hypotheses do in fact exist and support the AGW thesis they would be plastered all over the place. Where are they? Can anyone state the hypotheses that describe the natural regularities that constitute the La Nina phenomenon? I don’t think so. Can anyone explain the role of CO2 in the La Nina phenomenon? I don’t think so. Can anyone explain the energy budget of the La Nina phenomenon? I don’t think so. I use La Nina for an example simply because the name is widely recognized. But I believe that the same is true for at least 99% of all relevant natural processes.
Why do AGW proponents not produce reasonably confirmed hypotheses about the behavior of CO2 in natural processes? Because that is not their goal. Each and every paper produced by an AGW proponent has as its conclusion a dire warning about the harm caused by production of CO2. That is not science; rather, that is moral philosophy. It will never produce reasonably well-confirmed hypotheses about natural phenomena. It will produce only moral prescriptions. If you can rewrite your paper and choose not to treat 1850 and 270 ppm as NORMS then I will be greatly impressed. But I do not see how you can. You take 1850 and 270 ppm as a norm for a closed system and argue that mankind is responsible for all increase in CO2 concentrations after 1850. Do you not? Is that a scientific argument? No. It is a moral argument. Science would give us hypothese that explain the behavior of CO2 at 377 ppm but it would not tell us who is to blame. You tell me who is to blame but you do not provide the reasonably well-confirmed hypotheses that would enable me to understand the behavior of CO2 in this environment.
Anthony appears to be doing what I’ve seen a whole bunch of young earth creationists do. They accept some fundamental but unproven and unprovable axioms of the random mutation plus natural selection crowd, namely the age of the earth, and say “well I’m willing to accept an old earth but God still designed it all”. This gives imparts a patina of at least accepting some of the science as being settled so the YEC isn’t labeled a total hopeless mystic crank.
I suspect if Anthony questioned the more fundamental axioms of the CAGW crowd he fears it would put him squarely in the crank category so, purely for appearance’ sake he doesn’t question certain beliefs masquerading as settled science. Beliefs like the like the so-called greenhouse effect being marginally functional and beliefs like CO2 rise being due to anthropogenic sources. These things are not settled science and it’s dishonest to pretend they are.
It is truly irrelevant whether humans are increasing CO2 levels or not because the effect is negligible as CO2 cannot and does not drive the climate, it follows the climate, at least until recently. (Beck’s bottle data collection questions the validity of the cherry-picked contention that CO2 was historically low until recently.) In either case, CO2 cannot trap heat or act as a greenhouse and water vapor is NOT a positive forcing factor as it is part of a massive global heat engine which carries heat upwards and away from the surface – it’s called the water cycle.
CO2 is plant food and plants of all kinds thrive with more CO2. CO2 cannot acidify the oceans as the oceans are a complex buffer and CO2 is part of an extended equilibrium which cannot eat the calcium carbonate it leads to. In fact, more CO2 means more calcium carbonate, not less. More plant food, more food, and more efficient use of nutrients and water – there’s no down side here.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 5, 2010 at 12:23 pm
A quick eyeball tells me that the increase in CO2 from that graph seems to relate much more closely to the increase in temperatures than anthropogenic emissions. That would support the argument that the increase is mainly dues to temperature rises.
Neither follow the amount of anthropogenic emissions well.
That’s just the way it looks….
Before The Big Bang there was The Steady State after The Big Bang will be The ________ . Before The AGW was The Little Ice Age after the AGW will be The _________ . The Psyence may be settled for the Mann-kind of the World but the Science ain’t settled for anybody, anywhere, on anything, at anytime, anyhow. When Pi is finally defined as have “so many” places, we “may” be able to quit the game and say we won. But then, what will we do?
Slioch says:
August 5, 2010 at 10:30 am
Of course, the interesting question is for how much longer the oceans are going to behave as a net sink for CO2.
Slioch, isnt the answer provided by Henry’s Law? (which simplistically put defines how the equilibrium between whats in the atmosphere and whats in the oceans is reached)
cheers
J
Ferdinand Engelbeen said at 4:39 pm
Milwaukee Bob ….
All these flows are of not the slightest interest….
What? Surely you jest!! You can’t possibly be suggesting the “proof” of your formula is – the one flow we can somewhat accurately estimate is X, therefore X is responsible for the overall increase, just ignore A thru W, we don’t know what they are anyhow. And your analogy of calculating CO2 flow contributions to a business situation – You don’t need to know all detailed transactions of your bussiness during the day to know what your loss or profit was at the end of the day: just count what is in your cash register… is a perfect example of your underwhelming simplistic thinking. I am not a physicist or a chemist and I do not play either on TV so you can probably run circles around me spouting scientific formulas, but trust when I say, after 50+ years of owning and running business of all kinds successfully, if all you are doing at the end of the day is counting your cash AND ignoring ALL (but one of) the “flows” that put it there your an – – – – well, I don’t want this to be sniped so let’s just leave it at – you’re going to fall flat on your corporate butt! Very much like what you have done – – – ah, let’s just leave it at- “flows” are obviously not your strong suit.
As a result of an article by Prof. Lance Endersbee, ‘Oceans are the main regulators of carbon dioxide,’ I have entertained the notion that the ocean might act as a huge temperature-sensitive reservoir of dissolved CO2. I find, however, that I cannot accept the high temperature sensitivity factors (over 100 ppm/deg C) required for this to be effective.
Thus, while I do think that CO2 levels should track major climate shifts and biota changes, I have no real reason to doubt the primary attribution of the recent CO2 rise to anthropogenic activity.