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!
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Mindbuilder says:
August 5, 2010 at 4:14 pm
The logic seemed solid at first – We’ve added more CO2 to the atmosphere than is there now, so nature must have absorbed CO2 rather than added CO2. But there is a simple counter proof to demonstrate that that logic does not always hold. Water vapor. By burning fossil fuels we have released a great deal of water vapor into the atmosphere, but the concentration has risen only slightly if at all. That means nature is absorbing rather than adding to the water vapor in the atmosphere. Yet if we stopped adding water vapor, nature would just stop absorbing it and the levels would stay about the same.
The logic is the same, but the time frames involved are quite different: water vapor from combustion (including cooling towers…) indeed adds to the total amount of water. But the residence time of water vapor is only a few days, that of CO2 several years. If we stop all burning of fossil fuels, the extra water vapor above the temperature dependent natural equilibrium will be gone in a few days, the removal of CO2 (nowadays about 30%) above the temperature dependent equilibrium will take a lot of years…
Jeremy says:
August 5, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Good to see the criticism of this work.
I fully agree with those that say we can’t conclude that man is the major contributor to increases in atmospheric CO2 until we know much more about other carbon sources/sinks – almost all living things, volcanoes, forest fires and oceans – just to name a few – clearly there is a lot that could be influencing atmospheric CO2 levels.
What I have shown is that whatever the natural flows did or didn’t do, there is more natural outflow than inflow, at least over the past 50+ years of quite exact measurements. Thus nature as a whole didn’t add one gram, or tonne of CO2 to the atmosphere in the past 50 years. Any net addition by nature would have been seen as an increase larger than the emissions of 8 GtC/year.
As long as the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is less than the human emissions, nature doesn’t add any extra CO2 (as mass, not as individual molecules) to the atmosphere.
It is that simple…
Dave Springer says:
August 5, 2010 at 1:21 pm
The bottom line for me however is the indisputable record contained in the geologic column. A warmer earth with an atmosphere richer in CO2 is a greener earth. Compared to biosphere hay days like the Eocene optimum the present interglacial period looks close to death from exposure to the cold.
I mean to say if you prefer rocks and ice to plants and animals then be all means advocate reducing atmospheric CO2 and whatever else you can to cool the surface down. However, if you prefer a great abundance of plants and animals to rocks and ice then when it comes to fossil fuels —- Burn baby, burn!
___________________________Reply;
The AGW narrative is designed help facilitate a plan of world government of the elite over the working surfs, to keep the lower classes from becoming free on their own, they need to lower the CO2 content, remove the private ownership of land and keep people enslaved into the international mega corporations.
If the world were to warm up and have higher levels of CO2 (plant food) it would be easy for people to be free range and live with out the need of government programs funded by taxes that are wasted by the elite on keeping themselves in power.
“They” have already killed the housing market by pumping up the values then yanking the credit carpet out from under the first time buyers. Bailed out their banks, and shuffled the debt off onto taxpayers. The whole scare tactic they are still running with is just to keep the sheeple from jumping off of the grid, before they can bleed them dry, while starving the mass of the third world population to death to have better control, down the road a few more generations when the ice age comes back.
The more time we each spend in fighting this crime against humanity the less we are able to get free ourselves, due to the additional drain on our usable time, so it is to their benefit that this senseless arguing continue as a distraction as long as possible.
So their useless idiots consume themselves fighting reason, and there are even less of them as well in the end.
It’s always Marcia, Marcia says:
August 5, 2010 at 4:21 pm
So humans have added carbon….and?
Are we to assume then that warming is caused by humans? Or would that just be conflation?
As already said in the introduction: the point of the effect of the increase of CO2 is an entirely different discussion. I don’t believe in CAGW, I think that more CO2 may have a small effect, but mostly beneficial (like the Mediterranean climate in my cold, wet country…).
What concerns me is that the belief of many here that the increase is NOT human caused, where the “consensus” is rock solid, will harm the credibility of sceptics on other points where there is far more reason for debate…
Milwaukee Bob says:
August 5, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Ferdinand Engelbeen said at 4:39 pm
Milwaukee Bob ….
All these flows are of not the slightest interest….
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.
I am sure that it is good bussiness to know all details of all transactions during the day, but if you are only interested in knowing if you made a profit or a loss at the end of the day, you don’t need to know all these details. Just looking into your cash register would do the job. That is the (als always bad) analogy with the CO2 levels in the atmosphere…
Another anology with bank accounts: you bring your daily profit to a local bank every day. At the end of the year, the bank publishes their bussiness record, which shows that they have a turnover of many millions per year. But their profit is less than what you have personally saved over the year. Without any knowledge of what others have loaned or saved during that year, wouldn’t you look for another bank to save your money?
Seems to be a math error somewhere. Computing the surface area of the earth into sq inches (8.07E17) and multiplying by 14.7 lbs/sq inch and converting that mass into tons gives 5.93E6gigatons as the wt of the atmosphere. Now if we divide the total mass of C contributed by man each yr (4 gigatons) by the total wt of the atmosphere we see that is only 0.7ppm increase per yer. The rate of CO2 increase as shown by the 2002 to 2004 monthly averages graph is much higher than that (5ppm in 2 yrs from the graph presented) thus natural sources are accounting for at least 3x what man is contributing. So much for man contributions explaining ALL of the increase.
Whats the point of all this? Of course C02 levels are rising. The question is are they the driver for climatic change and would the climatic change occur without them. Thats the big question we need answering.
As a follow up to that question, I watched Sky news (UK) earlier and they had a piece about the warming in greenland. They said warming was twice as fast there as anywhere else in the world.
They then went on to explain how farmers there are expanding their pasture and sheep flocks, and how the last time this was possible was when the vikings were there.
When they cut back to the studio, the anchor man even quipped how it really did look like a green land.
Why can’t people join the dots? If pasture farming was done by the vikings and the land was called Greenland for obviously non-ironic reasons, then just maybe….it is not unprecendented!
Ferdinand Engelbeen said, “As long as the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is less than the human emissions, nature doesn’t add any extra CO2 (as mass, not as individual molecules) to the atmosphere.
It is that simple…”
Quite. It is extremely simple … .
Just as I pointed out earlier:
If you wish to know if there has been any NET natural contribution to the increase in atmospheric CO2 levels, all you need to do is measure
1. the amount humans have ADDED to the atmosphere, and
2. the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere over the same period.
It is that simple.
The figures for the atmosphere from 1850-2000 are as follows:
1. Total human caused emissions of CO2: 1620 billion tons CO2
2. Increase in atmospheric CO2: 640 billion tons
Thus, the amount of CO2 humans have added to the atmosphere greatly exceeds the observed increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.”
Q.E.D.
The fact that, after all this time, this simple matter still has to be discussed on WUWT and large numbers of people manifestly still don’t get it, speaks volumes for the continuing prevalence of confusion here.
[reply] Suggest you read Alcheson 2010/08/06 at 1:42 am on Ferdinands first thread to see why people here check the facts from several angles. RT-mod
Gail Combs says:
August 5, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Ross Jackson says:
August 5, 2010 at 3:03 pm
My training, Physical Chemistry. I have also done plenty of background reading on many of the issues surrounding CO2. The more I learn, the more I realise how little we know! These comments are just to encourage you all to read more widely…..
____________________________________
Oh good another Chemist!
I have a question for you. Mauna Loa Observatory in the 50′s and 60′s took measurements with “a new infra-red (IR) absorbing instrumental method” In the seventies I tried, at two separate corporations, to use a infra-red (IR) Spectrophotometer for analytical work and gave up in frustration because I could not get reproducible results even when using an added internal calibration standard.
I don’t know for what purpose you needed IR spectroscopy, but for CO2, it is quite ideal for continuous measurements, with a minimum of maintenance, if working with a water trap and internal calibration. Checks done with alternative methods (cryogenic, GC and mass spectrometers) show essentially the same results.
From: http://www.co2web.info/ESEF3VO2.pdf
”At the Mauna Loa Observatory the measurements were taken with a new infra-red (IR) absorbing instrumental method, never validated versus the accurate wet chemical techniques.
This is one of the objections I have against what Segalstad wrote (there are more, had some discussion with him at a conference in Brussels with MEP Helmer, that will be for one of the last parts…): Keeling made a very accurate manometric instrument (1:40,000) to measure CO2 in the atmosphere and calibrated all NDIR instruments and all calibration gases against that instrument. That instrument was still in use until recently.
Most of the wet chemical methods of that time had an accuracy of 3% of the range or +/- 10 ppmv. Not even accurate enough to measure the seasonal variations. How can one validate an instrument with an accuracy better than 0.1 ppmv against a wet method with an accuracy of 10 ppmv?
Barry Moore says:
August 5, 2010 at 9:06 pm
With reference to IPCC 4AR page 515 fig 7.3 this is a very similar diagram to the NASA diagram shown in the article with the exception that the IPCC diagram breaks the carbon down into natural and anthropogenic ( black and red numbers)
The IPCC diagram contains too many errors in the distribution of “human” vs. “natural” CO2. For the mass balance, the attribution of the CO2 to its origin is of no interest and even the different flows are of no interest, as long as the emissions are larger than the increase in the atmosphere…
For the rest, you are looking at the residence time of any CO2 molecule (whatever the origin), not the decay time of an impulse of some extra mass of CO2…
EthicallyCivil
The isotopes are chemically identical because the number and arrangement of electrons are identical. However, because of their slightly larger mass, the heavier isotopes diffuse more slowly and so the overall reaction rate of the heavier isotopes is lower than that for the lighter isotopes.
That is why the lighter isotopes are (very slightly) preferrentially incorporated in, for example, plant tissues.
Ferdinand,
Thank you for your well thought out and very well presented essay.
If your assumptions about the natural sink rates are sound and the Antarctic ice core data accurately represent Pleistocene and early Holocene atmospheric CO2 concentrations with sufficient resolution, your position is “bullet proof.”
While your assumptions might be correct. There are reasons to think that they may not be.
The fact that Knorr’s “Bombshell From Bristol” was considered to be counter-paradigm by much of the so-called consensus suggests that the natural source rates and sink capacities aren’t so well understood. The long term stability of the airborne CO2 fraction ran “contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase.”
On the ice cores, I suggest Van Hoof et al. 2005, Atmospheric CO2 during the 13th century AD: reconciliation of data from ice core measurements and stomatal frequency analysis.
They fairly conclusively demonstrate that the ice core data cannot accurately resolve century scale CO2 fluctuations as recently as 800 years ago.
It will be interesting to see the results of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide Ice Core Project. The snow accumulation rates in the study area are similar to those of Greenland and they expect to obtain much higher resolution data than previous Antarctic cores.
The atmospheric CO2 levels has been proxy measured to be 285ppmv until we started to drive our SUV’s. The ice core data is not as good as thought for proxy measurements of CO2 levels due to contamination but it is good for estimating the relationship between temperature and CO2 and this shows that temperature rises before parallel rises in CO2 levels between 600 and 1000 years later. If the CO2 levels were at this 285ppmv level for 1000 years or more this does not equate with the previous warm periods. The Medieval Warm Period. ignored by Mann, was much warmer than today so there would have been considerable outgassing of CO2 from the oceans up to 1000 years later, ie today. Previously the Roman Warm period, about 2000 years ago, would have produced a peak level of CO2 up to 1000 years later. So where are the peaks in the NOAA graphs which show this, dare I say it, mythical 285ppmv level of atmospheric CO2.
Geologically speaking the atmospheric CO2 levels have never been as low as today, nor have they been at a level that could be called natural. All levels could be called ‘the natural level’. Remember when the earth was formed the atmospheric level of CO2 was at least 20% or 200,000ppmv. It was only when cyanobacteria evolved and later plants, that this CO2 was photosynthesized to oxygen.
It is also worth remembering that plants start to die at CO2 levels of 200ppmv. CO2 is needed for plant, crops included, to flourish and feed the animal life on the planet, including us.
I just wanted to say “thank you” to Ferdinand for the energy he puts into explaining this particular topic (and WUWT for hosting the article), again and again, with unfailing politeness, even to those who show him little of the respect he has earned by thorough research. That is not at all easy to do, I know I would have given up in exasperation long ago!
For those who say we can’t know that man is responsible for the observed rise because of the uncertainties in the internal fluxes between individual environmental reservoirs, a simple analagy (only slightly adapted from one on Ferdinand’s excellent website) demonstrates why this is not the case:
Imagine you share a bank acount with your wife and you put in $8 a year [representing anthropogenic emissions], but never make a withdrawal. If you see that your annual balance [representing atmospheric CO2] rises by only $4 a year, then you know for a fact that your wife [the natural environment] is spending more than she deposits. That means she is opposing the rise in you bank balance, not causing it. You don’t know whether this is because she is spending $4 and depositing $0 a year, or because she is spending $1,000,004 a year and depositing $1,000,000. You know she had spent more than she has put in without going over the detailed statement of all transactions, you only need the balance.
Likewise the mass balance argument does not depend in anyway on knowledge of individual fluxes between reservoirs, it only depends on the total net flux (i.e. the difference between total “natural” emissions and total “natural” uptake) and we can infer that from knowledge of anthropogenic emissions and from the annual rise in atmpspheric CO2, both of which we can measure with sufficient accuracy for there to be no room whatsoever for any reasonable doubt that the natural environment is a net sink, and hence is opposing the rise rather than causing it.
This is one of the few parts of AGW argument that is absolutely rock solid, and those that can’t accept it merely marginalise themselves from the debate, which does nobody any good.
Keep up the good work Ferdinand!
RT-mod said, “Suggest you read Alcheson 2010/08/06 at 1:42 am on Ferdinands first thread to see why people here check the facts from several angles.”
in reply to Slioch says: August 6, 2010 at 1:52 am.
On the contrary, Alcheson’s post is riddled with errors and simply adds to the confusion:
1. Mass of atmosphere is 5.15*10^6 gigatonnes (not 5.93).
2. “the total mass of C contributed by man each yr” is not 4 gigatons of CO2, it is about 9Gt/year of CARBON, which equates to 9*44/12 = 33Gt/year of CARBON DIOXIDE.
3. The ‘5ppm in 2 yrs’ to which Alcheson refers is ppm by volume, not mass, for which he makes no correction.
Using these corrected figures we get, 33/5.15*10^6 = 6.4 ppm by mass per year or 12.8 ppm by mass per two years. To (approximately) convert that to ppm by volume multiply by 28.8/44 = 8.4ppmv (taking 28.8 as the approximate average molecular weight of the atmosphere, being 80% N2 at 28 and 20% O2 at 32).
This 8.4ppmv human contribution to the atmosphere is clearly greater than the 5ppmv recorded increase, which is precisely the point that I and Ferdinand (and others) are making. ie human contributions of CO2 to the atmosphere are greater than the recorded increases and therefore the human contribution is more than able to explain the increase.
But, with respect, when the moderator of this thread does not pick up on the kind of errors that Alcheson demonstrates, is it any wonder that the confusion continues?
[reply] Thank you for your exposition, which looks correct to me, although I note that your conclusion, while plausible, is not necessarily correct, and does not exclude other possibilities. RT-mod
Dave F says:
August 5, 2010 at 8:57 am
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…
Could you please elaborate on how this is done? Is the dollar amount of taxes received for the sales tax on fossil fuel used? Is there some other method?
I will consider, Dave, that you miss the whole point: It is now KNOWN that mineral crude is NOT a so-called ‘fossil fuel,’ inasmuch as it is pretty much common knowledge that said mineral crude is produced by ongoing geological processes.
So then, that being the case, the powers that be —having it in mind to milk the rest of us ad infinitum— will connive to extort as much wealth from the rest of us as they might by creating both artificial constraints and price manipulations.
What’s needed now is a new source of energy which effectively competes with the current paradigm, such as to reduce energy costs to the point of ‘reasonable,’ and then some.
Richard S Courtney says:
August 5, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Ferdinand:
You and I have debated these matters for several years.
Indeed, that is the reason that I have made my web page and this article…
Several points of what you wrote will come at order in next parts, but here a short response:
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.
The seasonal amplitude at Barrow only shows a variability of +/- 8 ppmv, but that is local/regional. If that was global, then the seasonal variation would be +/- 16 GtC, about four times the yearly human emissions. But the real global average seasonal variability is only +/- 2 GtC (half the emissions) for a global change of +/- 0.5 C, or (again) an influence of about 4 ppmv/C, which is the short term variability seen over the past 50+ years.
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”.
No, I didn’t assume that the rise in atmospheric CO2 was anthropogenic, I only compared the emissions with the increase in the atmosphere, which shows that it is impossible for the sum of all natural flows to have a net contribution to the rise. Which makes that the increase is solely the result of the emissions…
RT-mod said, “your conclusion, while plausible, is not necessarily correct, and does not exclude other possibilities.” ref. Slioch says: August 6, 2010 at 3:47 am
I’d be interested to hear what you consider to be the “other possibilities”, perhaps couched in the terms of Dikran Marsupial’s (August 6, 2010 at 3:37 am) excellent analogy. (I assume the poor man is married!)
@ur momisugly BillD
“Certain findings are widely and clearly demonstrated in science and do not need support by citation and documentation.”
Here’s an example of something that was “widely and clearly demonstrated in science”.
In the 1920’s a team of researchers determined that there were 24 chromosomes in the human genome. This was the consensus for some decades and appeared in all the text books. When a group of researchers measured a different value they gave up their research, because there had to be a problem with their technique.
Just a small problem: the consensus was completely wrong. There are in fact 23 chromosomes in the human genome.
As Matt Ridley pointed out in his book ‘Genome’, if you looked at some of the photos in the text books, you could actually see that there were 23. People were somehow blinded by a belief in the consensus.
In Galileo’s time the “widely and clearly demonstrated” finding was that the sun went around the earth. Many other scientific consensuses turned out to be completely wrong: phlogiston, the aether, the origin of meteorites, fixed continents, the nature of lunar craters etc etc.
Today even Relativity is still questioned and tested. Unlike AGW, it passes the tests with flying colours. But scientists should continue to question and test it. That’s how science progresses. And, by the way, one of the findings of General Relativity is that planets don’t “follow orbits” as predicted by Newton.
I think that most likely the CO2 increase is primarily man-made, but I also think that conceivably some of the increase could have been natural. Do we really understand the carbon cycle in such minute detail that we can state its nature with absolute confidence? I doubt it.
Human emissions are a tiny fraction of natural emissions. It does seem rather odd that such a small increase could have increased the CO2 amount by about 50%
Maybe working scientists, particularly those in climate science, should re-acquaint themselves with the history of science. It tells us time after time that relying on the current consensus without endlessly questioning it can be a very dangerous thing.
Chris
RT-mod: out of interest, what other possibilities?
If nature were a net source of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere then the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 would be greater than anthropogenic emissions as both the natural environment and man were contributing to the rise. However, this is observed not to be the case. The only way for the annual rise to be less than anthropogenic emissions is for the natural environment to be a net carbon sink and hence opposing the rise rather than causing it. Slioch’s conclusion is not only plausible, it is an understatement, it is not only that anthropogenic emissions are sufficient to cause the observed rise, we know that the natural environment is opposing the rise, so anthropogenic emissions is left as the only cause consistent with the observations.
In short, any argument that suggests that the observed rise is not anthropogenic needs to be able to explain why the observed rise is unformly lower than anthropogenic emissions.
What? And let facts get in the way of beliefs? Won’t happen.
Say a blind man sits on the street with a tin cup. It’s empty in the morning and there’s some change in it at the end of the day. There you have it. Proof that human contribution of CO2 changes the equilibrium point at the ocean/atmosphere interface just like human contribution of loose change causes the blind man’s cup to have more coins in it. /sarc off
Lee Kington says:
August 5, 2010 at 9:18 pm
The graph covers Mauna Loa data from 1959 thru 2008. During that time span anthropogenic CO2 emissions have increased (some reports) by six fold. In 1959 about 1 ppm CO2 was added to the atmosphere. Rather than 6 ppm being added, due to man emitting 6x the amount of CO2, in 2008 there was only about 1.5 ppm of increase in CO2.
The uptake out of the atmosphere is a function of total CO2 in the atmosphere it is not a function of the yearly emissions. But that is for part 2.
BillD says:
August 5, 2010 at 8:44 am
Anyone who does not understand that the burning of fossil fuels is the main cause of the regular increase in CO2 that is has been documented over the last 50+ years is clearly unable to understand basic science. It’s also true that the two views posted here are not opposites and are not mutually exclusive. Also, to the best of my understanding, the first one on the greeen house effect does not really contradict the role of GHG in climate.
Three questions:
.
[1] What is a ‘greenhouse gas?’
.
[2] Where –on planet Earth– is there any kind of shield which creates a ‘greenhouse?’
.
[3] Where is your bona fide, certified, quantifiable, and undeniable proof regarding that matter of ‘Anthropogenic’ global warming?
.
When replying to the above questions, please DO note: Models of whatever sort are NOT considered as having any kind of valid reference, inasmuch as models are NOT real.
No. This is dogma that begins the debate. Without it there is nothing to debate.
This bit of dogma is correlation being paraded as causation. To test the causation would require that we stop producing anthropogenic CO2 and observe what happens to atmospheric CO2 as a result. That experiment isn’t going to happen.
I don’t know what the result would be and neither does anyone else. That’s we actually perform experiments instead of just assuming the result.
It’s a logical fallacy called “affirming the consequent”.
Examples:
Argument: If people run barefoot, then their feet hurt. Billy’s feet hurt. Therefore, Billy ran barefoot.
Problem: Other things, such as tight sandals, can result in sore feet.
Argument: If it rains, the ground gets wet. The ground is wet, therefore it rained.
Problem: There are other ways by which the ground could get wet (e.g. dew).
There are other possibilities.
Ocean holds a vast reserve of CO2, particularly in cold deep water at very high pressure where it has a virtually unlimited capacity for it due to pressures high enough to hold CO2 as a liquid instead of dissolved gas. This has been confirmed by the recent discovery of liquid CO2 upwelling from oceanic ridges where new crust is formed.
At the ocean surface exists a state of near equilibrium between dissolved CO2 and atmospheric CO2. If we were to reduce the partial CO2 pressure in the atmosphere by 100ppm to pre-industrial levels it would drive the ocean/atmosphere inface farther from equlibrium. Since the ocean has vast reserves of CO2 that make 100ppm look like a peanut in a moving van we might reasonably expect that the ocean would simply release enough CO2 to restore the equilibrium point.
There are so many unknowns about how those CO2 reserves in the deep ocean mix with the surface layer that we simply don’t know what would happen if atmospheric CO2 were reduced by 100ppm. If anyone says they know what would happen they’re wrong – they are guessing at what would happen with no practical means of confirming or falsifying their guesswork.