Engelbeen on why he thinks the CO2 increase is man made (part 3)

Folks, I think we are looking for a steady pump, not the up and down nature of ocean sinks, or even seasonal vegetation. What entity, what ecosystem, what area on this planet is steadily increasing in regular amounts day in and day out, and increasing each time at a fairly regular rate? Looking at graphs of things that increase, there is a near perfect match between CO2 and human population growth. So looking at human behavior is a reasonable place to look for a steadily increasing pump. The only thing I have found so far that is steadily increasing and that matches CO2 and is strong enough to overcome being washed out by rain or decreased by cold, or fluctuated by energy use, in other words is immediately replaced by more CO2, is exhaling CO2 out in a steadily growing population. What organism (or organisms) in the animal kingdom is undergoing a steadily increasing population that matches the CO2 graph?

When researching info for commenting on F.E.’s post, I ran across something that I had not seen before regarding the source of earth’s 13C and 12C.
In the following four reference links we can find that the solar wind is a source for 13C and 12C on earth. I take them as evidence that it arrives depleted in 13C when compare to earth’s isotopic standard pre-industrial ratio of 1 (13C) to 90 (12C). The ratio range of 13C and 12C from the solar wind look to be about the same ratio range as the 12C and 13C that F.E. says are from fossil fuel CO2 emissions.
Solar winds varying with Solar Cycles cause variation in deposition rates of 13C and 12C into the earth system. Those solar wind depositions on earth are in the same range of ratios of 13C and 12C as the range of ratios found in release of carbon by fossil fuel emissions.

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qsolwindcomp.html
http://www.springerlink.com/content/4436600382381753/
http://www.als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/83spacedust.html
http://www.icsu-scope.org/downloadpubs/scope13/chapter02.html#fig2.1

I hope those links came out OK. : )
John

CO2 increases go up and down with sea temperature. For example In 2008 during the deep La Nina, in those months, the rise in CO2 was negligable. This is explained by the IPCC as the biosphere consuming more CO2 during La Nina cycles, because of the favourable weather that ensues. I question this particularly as this also occured after Pinatubo erruption. Erruptions cause a dimming and are quite different from the ENSO cycle. Well it now looks like we’ll be entering a minimum, maybe something approaching the Maunder minimum, as the sea surface temperatures plunge and the CO2 increase too ( as they have done in every other La Nina cycle), let us ponder for a moment whether the following scientific statement, really is as “fantastic” as everyone says it is:
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/statements.htm
What fascinates me is that this statement was made in 2007, well before it was clear that the sun had gone quiet and there wasn’t a hint of a record breaking La Nina back then.

It seems like hardly a week goes by, without someone reporting the discovery of some new source of atmospheric CO2 or methane. Whether it is desert soils or whatever there just are so many diverse ways CO2 moves around in the environment. And of course one of those ways is our burning of fossil fuels; what about all the forests we burn too or that burn themselves; do they not also have a plant (fossil fuel) signature too ?
In any case; I’m simply not convinced that anybody has done anything like a credible accounting of all the carbon in the environment and the physics/chemistry of every exchange mechanism (with the atmosphere).
So yes I am not naive enough to believe that man’s burning of fossil fuels and forests is not adding some carbon to the atmosphere; but I haven’t seen any solid accounting, that would convince me that all of the increase is fossil fuel related; or forest burning related; I simply don’t believe we know.
But I do not believe that Ferdinand’s exposition here (which I think is very good and worthwhile) estabishes anything more than the obvious fact that fossil or other biological carbon is being released in the atmosphere as a result of human activites; and that isotopic signatures indicate that; but we already know we are doing that anyway. Most people from Africa have black skin; so what we already know that; we don’t have to do any DNA tests to demonstrate the obvious. same with atmospheric fossil CO2.
Africans do well pretty much anywhere they go in the world. Fossil CO2 works pretty much the same as any other CO2 in the atmosphere. Get used to it; there will be a lot bigger fraction of fossil CO2 in the atmospehre as we keep on burning it; and that will happen whether the total CO2 goes up or down or sideways; and if we start burning some of that Argon rich fossil fuel, then the Atmopsheric Argon will go up too.
Remember you read it first here on WUWT.

Sorry all for the late reply,
I was away for a trip to Brittany, just back now. My article was published a little early, so it will take some time to answer the most relevant questions.
About humans using wood, peat and other natural products from photosynthesis for steam and steel production and other industrial uses in the early days of the (pre) industrial period, and organics from plants and animals for cooking, food and breathing the CO2 out again: these show practically the same isotopic “fingerprint” as fossil fuels. The difference is that all the CO2 was incorporated in the organics not too long ago, some months (for food) to a few hundred years ago (for peat and wood), including the incorporation of preferentially 12C in the organics, leaving more 13CO2 in the atmosphere. When used for food or production, the same amount is ultimately returning to the atmosphere, giving back approximately the same isotopic composition as before. Thus using recent organics doesn’t change the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, neither the isotopic composition of carbon in the atmosphere.
Of course, this is not absolute, as some increasing amount of (12C depleted) carbon derivatives are stored in food/feed and body fat of animals and humans. I haven’t calculated these amounts, but I don’t think these are such enormous quantities, compared to the quantities of fossil fuel used for power and heating.
Even if it were enormous quantities, that is not relevant, as the oxygen use shows that there is more plant growth than that there is plant organics destruction: the latter includes all oxygen use from plant decay via soil microbes, methane seeping away from melting permafrost or sea bottom hydrates, burning coal heaps, huge forest fires, etc…
Except for methane (will be for next message), there is little difference between the isotopic composition of recent or fossil organics, but even if there was: the fact that there is more CO2 built in in recent organics than is produced by all other known (and unknown) natural processes together, only increases the 13C/12C ratio, while we measure a decrease. Thus with other words, recent vegetation is a net sink for CO2, not a source.

Dave Springer says:
September 17, 2010 at 6:17 am
“I disproved his hypothesis by showing that methane can produce the same signature.”
You are correct, methane, in the form of natural gas, is indeed a fossil fuel.

Dave Springer says:
September 16, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Methane forcing is about 20% of all GHG forcings. It has increased from about 700 to 1800 parts per billion in the last century or 4 times faster than CO2. Interestingly it decays into CO2 after ten years. So that means it has added CO2 to the atmosphere over the past century about 18000 parts per billion or 18 parts per million. This then accounts for over 20% of the increase in CO2 since pre-industrial times (87ppm).
Assuming the initial CH4 levels were stable ie. there was a natural and balanced methane cycle, I think you need to work on the net increase of atmospheric methane, 1100 ppb. You also need to calculate the CO2 contribution from the increased CH4 from the average value of the increased CH4 over the period, not the latest value, ie 550 ppb. so, with the CH4 resident time of 10 years, we get a 5500 ppb or 5.5 ppm increase in CO2 . But then we need to take into account that we’ve lost half the CH4 derived CO2 to sinks, so the atmospheric CO2 increase from atmospheric CH4 comes to about 2.75 ppm.

For anyone interested Battle’s modus operandi regarding the oxygen cycle can be viewed here:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.129.4517&rep=rep1&type=pdf
GLOBAL BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES, VOL. 20, GB1010, doi:10.1029/2005GB002534, 2006
Atmospheric potential oxygen: New
observations and their implications for some
atmospheric and oceanic models
snippage in quotes
“The APO data set described above is unprecedented
in its temporal and spatial coverage. Nonetheless, it remains
sparse in both senses.”
Sparse data. Check.
“2.4. Rejected Data
[27] Criteria for rejecting individual samples or replicate
pairs/triplets are discussed by Keeling et al. [1998] and
Bender et al. [2005]. In addition, we choose to omit four
more subsets of the data from further consideration.”
Cherry picking. Check.
“3.1. Detrending and Creation of a Climatology
[36] Determining the climatological gradient of APO
using both the PU and SIO data sets presents two
complications. First, APO exhibits a secular decrease,
due to the net effects of oceanic and fossil fuel uptake
and release of O2 and CO2. In order to reduce the 7-year
time series into a single climatological year, we need to
remove this trend. Second, the SIO and PU data sets of
O2/N2 are each referenced to an arbitrary standard that is
unique to the home laboratory [Keeling et al., 1998;
Bender et al., 1996].”
Adjust (pencil whip) the data. Check.
“3.2. Annual Mean Values From Interpolation
[38] As discussed above, the data set has limited spatial
coverage and substantial temporal unevenness. One way to
construct north-south gradients in the face of these limitations
is to treat the coordinate grid as two-dimensional
(sin(latitude) and time) and interpolate to regularly spaced
values on this grid.”
Fill in the gaps in coverage by using the closest measurement. Check.
“3.3. Annual Mean Values From Seasonal Cycles
[42] We also consider an alternative approach to constructing
north-south gradients from sparse data. We divide
the shipboard data into 8 groups: 30, 20, 10 N and S, 0–
9N, and 0–9S. For each group we calculate a seasonal
cycle with a constant offset. These offsets are the annual
mean values for each interval.”
Replace pesky unknown variables with constants. Check.
“5. Modeling
[48] In order to begin understanding the processes that
lead to the patterns of APO that we observe, we have
employed an updated version of the modeling approach of
Gruber ’01.”
Build a computer model and monkey around with it until generates some of the pencil whipped data set. Check.
“[65] There are at least two possible causes for the datamodel
discrepancy in the size of the bulge. First, the
modeled transport in the atmosphere may be too vigorous,
either poleward or vertically. If so, the calculated peak will
be attenuated. Second, as discussed by Gruber ’01, the
regions for which the air-sea O2 fluxes are determined are
probably too coarse to allow the atmospheric transport
model to capture the detailed structure of O2 in the immediate
vicinity of the equator.”
Wave hands around offering possible explanations for why the model output doesn’t match reality. Check.
“[86] We look forward to continued improvement in data
coverage and quality, both temporally and spatially. With
longer records, we will have the opportunity to determine
the factors that control interannual variations in the APO
gradients we have characterized. Better spatial coverage,
particularly beyond the Pacific basin, will improve our
ability to test zonal transport and vertical mixing over
continents in atmospheric transport models and make our
test of air-sea flux fields far more stringent. Finally, reduction
in site-to-site biases through improved and automated
collection equipment will strengthen all of the analyses
presented here.”
Wrap up by asking for more funding. Checkarooni.
Welcome to climate [post-normal] science – the biggest house of cards ever constructed.

Several objected to the “elephant in the room” problem: the oxydation of natural methane to CO2 which has a much lower 13C/12C ratio than CO2 coming from oil or coal.
But there is a problem with this elephant:
More than half of the body parts of the elephant are human manifactured.
Methane is easely measured in ice cores and follows the temperature proxy even better than CO2. The previous interglacial, the Eemian was some 2°C warmer than the current warm period, the Holocene. That also included that Nordic areas were much warmer than today, with forests reaching the Arctic Ocean.
Anyway, all possible natural sources of methane were at work at higher temperatures than today. The maximum CH4 level during the warmest period was some 700 ppbv. Of course, the resolution was quite coarse: 600 years average. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html
Today, we measure some 1600-1900 ppbv. As good as for the CO2 record, the CH4 record shows a typical “hockeystick”, be it starting a little earlier, around 1750 (or even before). Maybe caused by intensivation of agriculture and feedstock expansion. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_ch4.jpg
In this case, the resolution of the the DSS ice core record is some 21 years, and for the other two ice cores it is 8 years.
The interesting point is that the pre-1750 period shows only 600-700 ppbv of methane, similar levels as in the Eemian, but with a much better resolution. The 1,000 years Law Dome DSS core CH4 measurements were recently expanded to 2,000 years ((MacFarling Meure et al. 2006), see:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/law/law2006.txt
also available as Excel file:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/law/law2006.xls
The same result: 600-700 ppbv methane…
Thus it seems that the excess over 600-700 ppbv is all human made, mostly in the most recent period. Any influence on d13C levels, beyond the variablility of the natural influx of methane (+/- 40 ppbv around the average CH4 level in the past) is thus also human-made.

Dave Springer says:
September 16, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Methane forcing is about 20% of all GHG forcings. It has increased from about 700 to 1800 parts per billion in the last century or 4 times faster than CO2. Interestingly it decays into CO2 after ten years. So that means it has added CO2 to the atmosphere over the past century about 18000 parts per billion or 18 parts per million. This then accounts for over 20% of the increase in CO2 since pre-industrial times (87ppm).
There is some error in reasoning here: input is not accumulation! In the same 100 years, the total input of CO2 from fossil fuel burning was some 150 ppmv, that didn’t give more than the same 87 ppmv increase of CO2 in the atmosphere… That is not including land use changes, which indeed also add (an uncertain) amount of CO2 to the atmosphere.
Further, one need to make a differentiation between the natural CH4 supply and the human-made excess in CH4.
In pre-industrial times there was some kind of equilibrium between methane production, the CO2 cycle and the isotopic levels, all three influenced by temperature as main driver of the changes. When the temperature was maintained over a longer period (either glacial or interglacial), CO2 levels, methane levels and isotope ratio’s all show more or less stable figures, with only small excursions around those levels. That means that the constant supply of methane and its degradation to CO2 and the influence of the isotopic changes because of methane degradation was compensated somewhere in the whole carbon cycle. And that the supply of methane to maintain the 600-700 ppbv methane level in the atmosphere had no influence on either total CO2 level or isotopic level.
In current times, all three variables show changes far beyond what temperature influences showed in the past. Will see what I can make of it tomorrow for the 13C/12C ratio’s, it’s getting late here…
Your idea to tackle methane first was proposed by James Hansen not so long ago, indeed as that is easier to do than for CO2. One of the reasons that methane increase is leveling off may be that rice cultivating is more and more using “dry” methods, where less water is used for shorter periods…

@Engelbeen
“Several objected to the “elephant in the room” problem: the oxydation of natural methane to CO2 which has a much lower 13C/12C ratio than CO2 coming from oil or coal.”
“But there is a problem with this elephant:
More than half of the body parts of the elephant are human manifactured.”
I never claimed that the methane rise of 150% since 1850 was not anthropogenic in part or in whole. In fact I noted the correlation between the methane rise and the beginning of the industrial revolution and noted some known sources like blow-off from oil wells that’s neither burned nor captured and used as natural gas and of course an estimated 16% is from the modern cattle industry which kicked into high gear concommitant with the beginning of the industrial revolution.
I also noted that it appeared that if one’s interest was truly in limiting the greenhouse effect then methane is by far the first GHG you want to target. At least with coal, oil, and natural gas we get substantial value out of its combustion. We aren’t gettting jack diddly squat in comparison from methane emissions.
This is simply illustrative of the fact that AGW has a designated bogeyman – fossil fuel combustion – and the designation is a political/ideological decision. In any sane scientific or engineering analysis limiting methane emission is where to get the most return for the least disruption. The fact of the matter is that disruption of the status quo (plus never ending funding for more research) is exactly what motivates the whole AGW charade. You can’t modify and control civilization by controlling methane emissions but you can with CO2 – it’s the designated scapegoat.

@Engelbeen
Ah, I knew I read it somewhere:
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2008.tail_implications.pdf
“The rate of natural CO2 uptake in any given year is not determined by the CO2 emissions in that particular year, but rather by the excess of CO2 in the atmosphere that has accumulated over the past century.”
I’m not sure I agree with that but it disputes your position that accumulation doesn’t count. What I am sure of is that CO2 in the stratosphere has a rather long lifetime due to very limited mixing with the troposphere and the bottom of the troposphere is where all the CO2 sinks exist. CO2 from fossil fuel combustion is almost literally done right on top of carbon sinks (like the nearest green thing or body of water) but CO2 from methane degradation in the stratosphere takes at least decades to reach a carbon sink.