Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt, a former professor and environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa, has officially bailed out of the man-made global warming movement, calling it a ‘corrupt social phenomenon’.
He writes this in an essay on science trust issues plus adds this powerful closing passage about climate science:
And there is a thorough critique of the science as band wagon trumpeting and interested self-deception [4]. Climategate only confirms what should be obvious to any practicing scientist: That science is a mafia when it’s not simply a sleeping pill.
Now he thinks that fossil fuel burning isn’t a problem of significance based on the scale. Excerpts below.
Is the burning of fossil fuel a significant planetary activity?
by Denis G. Rancourt
This essay was first posted on the Activist Teacher blog.
After all, the Earth is a planet. Is even the presence of humans significant on the rough and diverse thin surface of this planet?
We certainly make every effort to see ourselves as significant on this spinning ball in space. We like to point out that the lights from our cities can be seen from our extra-atmospheric “spaceships” at night and that we have deforested continents and reduced the populations of large wild mammals and of fishes but is all this really significant in the planetary web known as the biosphere?
INSIGNIFICANCE OF FOSSIL FUEL BURNING ENERGY RELEASE
The present (2010) historic maximum of anthropogenic (caused by humans) fossil fuel burning is only 8% or so of global primary production (GPP) (both expressed as kilograms of carbon per year, kg-C/y). GPP is the rate at which new biomass (living matter) is produced on the whole planet. And of course all biomass can in principle be considered fuel that could be burned with oxygen (O2) to produce CO2 gas, H2O water, energy, and an ash residue.
This shows the extent to which anthropogenic energy production from fossil fuel burning is small in comparison to the sun’s energy delivery to Earth, since biomass primary production results from the sun’s energy via photosynthesis.
…
In summary, the total amount of post-industrial fossil fuel burned to date (and expressed as kilograms of carbon) represents less than 1% of the global bio-available carbon pools.
More importantly, bio-available carbon is a minor constituent of the Earth’s surface environment and one that is readily buffered and exchanged between compartments without significant consequences to the diversity and quantity of life on the planet. The known history of life on Earth (over the last billions of years) is unambiguous on this point.
…
This ocean acidification side show on the global warming science bandwagon, involving major nation research centers and international collaborations, is interesting to compare with the 1970s-1980s hoax of boreal forest lake acidification. [1][2]
More importantly, scientists know virtually nothing about the dynamic carbon exchange fluxes that occur on all the relevant time and lengths scales to say anything definitive about how atmospheric CO2 arises and is exchanged in interaction with the planet’s ecological systems. We are barely at the point of being able to ask intelligent questions.
…
For left progressives to collaborate with First World governments that practice global extortion and geopolitical wars in order to pass carbon schemes to undemocratically manage and control the developments of non-First-World communities and sovereign states is obscene, racist, and cruelly cynical.
====================================
Here’s a video interview:
“thebuckwheat says:
September 20, 2010 at 10:56 am
“For left progressives to collaborate with First World governments that practice global extortion and geopolitical wars in order to pass carbon schemes to undemocratically manage and control the developments of non-First-World communities and sovereign states is obscene, racist, and cruelly cynical.”
This is misplaced hyperbole. Human history is clear: states have used credit expansion (inflation of their currency) to finance war, either to deflect some domestic issue away from the ruling elites, or to seek economic domination over others. “”
thebuckwheat: Inflating the money supply is not free money! Those bonds are interest bearing are they not? Banksters are still collecting on war bonds! And when inflation has been abused to the point of risking the currency? An alternative scam is required, one that can still fill the bankster trough even with declining/negative GDP/growth, that’s where the carbon scam comes in IMO 😉
Bill Yarber:
“You, Ferdinand and the AGW all make the same mistake, ignoring the outgassing of CO2 from the warming oceans since the end of the LIA!”
Measurements show that the oceans are absorbing CO2, not outgassing it.
“Ferdinand claims he knows how much is human induced because burning fossil fuels will increase the CO2-12 percentage. But he fails to see or to mentioned that the CO2 generated by ocean biomass and the CO2 outgassed by warming oceans will be almost entirely CO2-12, totally negating his analysis and conclusion.”
Measurements show that the oceans are absorbing CO2, not outgassing it. If they were outgassing, there is no reason why they would outgas “almost entirely” 12CO.
“Mankind has only been producing measurable CO2 emissions for the past 60 years”
Ever heard of the industrial revolution? Two things you should know about it: 1. it marked the start of the era of serious fossil fuel burning. 2. it was more than 60 years ago.
I think that Dr. Rancourt made the same mistake as may others before him: he compares the one-way addition of CO2 by humans with the amount of natural CO2 circulating through the atmosphere, which shows very little natural variability (currently only halve the human addition)
Compare that to a fountain with a huge pump circulating the water in the reservoir with some 10,000 liter per minute, while you add 1 liter per minute in the reservoir with a hose. The addition is only 1/10,000th of the total “addition”, but even so the content of reservoir will increase from the 1 liter per minute, not from the 10,000 liter which circulates.
In the past 50+ years, nature was a net sink for CO2, whatever the amount of CO2 circulating through the atmosphere. Thus the contribution of nature to the increase in the atmosphere was zero, nada, nothing, at least in the past 50 years.
If air had the density of water, it would cover the surface of the planet with a layer just ten metres thin. Oceans: close to 3,000 metres. Can we pollute either?
Bill Yarber says:
September 20, 2010 at 9:25 am
And many others…
Yes, human burning of fossil fuels have put more CO2 into the atmosphere. But it is trivial compared to natural sources. Fortunately, natural sinks (biomass), absorb 99.+% of natural plus human CO2 emmissions. What you are ignoring is that our oceans, which cover 70% of the Earth’s surface, is the largest source and sink of CO2 – far exceeding all other sources, including human produced CO2!
Some realistic figures:
Some 150 GtC of the 800 GtC in the atmosphere is exchanged with other reservoirs, mainly the oceans and vegetation. That is exchange, which over a full seasonal cycle shows a net sink rate of 4 +/- 2 GtC per year. Thus regardless how much is exchanged over the seasons, the net result is a loss of 0.5% in total CO2 (including 0.5% of the human contribution).
The net result is an increase of 4 GtC/year, all human caused, as nature as a whole is a net sink. The year by year natural variability is quite small: +/- 2 GtC/year, much smaller than the human contribution. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg
The reason why the natural variability is quite small probably is that the inflows and outflows due to the seasons are countercurrent for vegetation and oceans. But from the d13C and oxygen balances can be deduced that both vegetation and oceans are net sinks for CO2, not sources.
Ken Hall says:
September 20, 2010 at 10:23 am
SO getting to the crux of my heated discussion, has our 8% been an on-going annual addition which has, over 150 years, almost doubled the concentration from 200 to 380PPM? Or is the total man-made percentage of current total CO2, only 8%? Meaning that the near doubling of CO2 from 200ppm – 380ppm is almost entirely natural?
Which view is correct?
The first view is correct. Humans have added more than enough CO2 directly to the atmosphere to explain the increase, as the removal of an excess amount of CO2 takes some time (some 40 years half life). Over the ice ages, CO2 levels changed between 180 and 300 ppmv, depending on (and lagging) temperature changes with a quite linear ratio of 8 ppmv/°C. That means that for the current warm period, the natural CO2 level would be around 290 ppmv, while we measure 390 ppmv. The increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is a near perfect match of the increase in total emissions over the past 100+ years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1900_2004.jpg
There is little doubt that humans are responsible for the increase: all observations match the human origin. But I agree with you (and Prof. Lindzen, Dr. Spencer,…) that the effect of the increase is far less than what the climate models and the IPCC “project”.
RW 2:00 am:
“…..ever heard of the industrial revolution? Two things you should know about it: 1. it marked the start of the era of serious fossil fuel burning. 2. it was more than 60 years ago….”
The estimated emissions from fossil fuel use were, by comparison, insignificant prior to c. 1945 http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/graphics/global_ff_1751_2006.jpg .
FrankSW says:
September 20, 2010 at 10:36 am
And many others…
He calculates that CO2 generated by Fossil fuel burning is comparable to the CO2 exumed by humans and their domestic animals. In one of his previous blogs he says
“Furthermore, if we consider that all living things breathe (admittedly some microbes don’t breathe oxygen) and that Earth’s (living) biomass is approximately 10^15 kg-C, then total global breathing may well exceed the CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning by a factor of between ten and one thousand times greater.”
Quite a wide margin, but he says ants for instance have ten time our biomass, but even at the low end it puts our contribution to CO2 generation into perspective.
CO2 from natural of non-natural bush fires, wood burning, exhaling CO2 from all lifeforms, vegetation decay,… doesn’t count: it is all recirculating CO2 which was captured a few days to a few hundred years ago from the same atmosphere. That doesn’t change the CO2 content, neither the isotopic composition of the current atmosphere, except if there is an unbalance. The unbalance can be measured from oxygen use: there is a small deficit, compared to the calculated use of oxygen by fossil fuel burning. That means that all biolife together is a net producer of oxygen, thus a net sink for CO2 (and preferentially of 12CO2)…
wolfwalker says:
September 20, 2010 at 9:29 am
Is even the presence of humans significant on the rough and diverse thin surface of this planet?
Hmm… Seems like he meant this as a serious question, not a rhetorical one.
That’s enough right there to put him firmly in the “nutcase” category. Humans have devastated the natural order of things over most of the globe. With the possible exception of the Greenland and Antarctic icecaps, there isn’t a square mile of land that hasn’t been seriously affected by human action, going back at least two thousand years and probably more than fifteen thousand.”
And the world is better for humans around. We may have caused extinctions, but we prevent them too. Wonder how many dinosaurs would still be around had humans been around to save them. Point is: mass extinctions and global catastrophes happened all the time before even our most primitive relatives showed up. We haven’t done anything even close to that range of magnitude. Not even a minor blip.
Bart says:
September 20, 2010 at 11:39 am
Ken Hall @ur momisugly September 20, 2010 at 10:23 am:
Moreover, the hypothesized slow dynamics of reabsorption would naturally lead to a far ranging random walk-like behavior, which is not indicated by the historical record upon which the advocates rely. Just as Nature abhors a vacuum, it abhors maintaining any equilibrium which is not enforced by competing dynamics.
The historical record is smoothed (some 600 years for the longest records), thus fast changes aren’t seen, but current measurements show some sensitivity of 4 ppmv/°C for temperature variability around the trend. The long-term (smoothed) trend is about 8 ppmv/°C. And indeed there are competing processes, which maintain a rather tight equilibrium: oceans and vegetation counteract each other for temperature changes…
The conclusions, to one who really understands how dynamic systems work, are that A) the greater part of the CO2 buildup we have seen in recent decades is due to natural variation, and B) the historical record is suspect.
No, the year by year natural variation is not more that +/-2 GtC, compared to an increase of nowadays 4 GtC/year from 8 GtC/year human emissions.
There is little doubt that the historical record is wrong.
Even now, if one plots the rate of change in measured CO2 concentration, it is abundantly clear that it is decelerating, and we have reached an inflection point. It may take a couple to three more decades if the curve is smooth, or it could happen rapidly, which the historical data indicates at least qualitatively is possible, but average CO2 concentration will almost certainly begin to decrease again in time, as it likely has bobbed up and down for centuries before we were around to observe it.
There are no signs that the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is decelerating, it follows the accumulated emissions with an extremely constant rate:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1900_2004.jpg
Although I haven’t the latest emissions figures…
Christopher Hanley – and what do you suppose has happened to the rate of increase of CO2 concentrations since 1945?
I find this excerpt from Rancourt’s original 2007 paper worth quoting and keeping in mind, especially the last paragraph.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2007/02/global-warming-truth-or-dare.html
[…]
It was no easy task to arrive at the most cited original estimated rate of increase of the mean global surface temperature of 0.5 C in 100 years. As with any evaluation of a global spatio-temporal average, it involved elaborate and unreliable grid size dependent averages. In addition, it involved removal of outlying data, complex corrections for historical differences in measurement methods, measurement distributions, and measurement frequencies, and complex normalisations of different data sets – for example, land based and sea based measurements and the use of different temperature proxies that are in turn dependent on approximate calibration models. Even for modern thermometer readings in a given year, the very real problem of defining a robust and useful global spatio-temporal average Earth-surface temperature is not solved, and is itself an active area of research.
This means that determining an average of a quantity (Earth surface temperature) that is everywhere different and continuously changing with time at every point, using measurements at discrete times and places (weather stations), is virtually impossible; in that the resulting number is highly sensitive to the chosen extrapolation method(s) needed to calculate (or rather approximate) the average.
Averaging problems aside, many tenuous approximations must be made in order to arrive at any of the reported final global average temperature curves. For example, air temperature thermometers on ocean-going ships have been positioned at increasing heights as the sizes of ships have increased in recent history. Since temperature decreases with increasing altitude, this altitude effect must be corrected. The estimates are uncertain and can change the calculated global warming by as much as 0.5 C, thereby removing the originally reported effect entirely.
Similarly, surface ocean temperatures were first measured by drawing water up to the ship decks in cloth buckets and later in wooden buckets. Such buckets allow heat exchange in different amounts, thereby changing the measured temperature. This must be corrected by various estimates of sizes and types of buckets. These estimates are uncertain and can again change the resulting final calculated global warming value by an amount comparable to the 0.5 C value. There are a dozen or so similar corrections that must be applied, each one able to significantly alter the outcome.
In wanting to go further back in time, the technical problems are magnified. For example, when one uses a temperature proxy, such as the most popular tree ring proxy, instead of a physical thermometer, one has the significant problem of calibrating the proxy. With tree rings from a given preferred species of tree, there are all kinds of unavoidable artefacts related to wood density, wood water content, wood petrifaction processes, season duration effects, forest fire effects, extra-temperature biotic stress effects (such as recurring insect infestations), etc. Each proxy has its own calibration and preservation problems that are not fully understood.
The reported temperature curves should therefore be seen as tentative suggestions that the authors hope will catalyze more study and debate, not reliable results that one should use in guiding management practice or in deducing actual planetary trends. In addition, the original temperature or proxy data is usually not available to other research scientists who could critically examine the data treatment methods; nor are the data treatment methods spelled out in enough detail. Instead, the same massaged data is reproduced from report to report rather than re-examined.
The most recent thermometer measurements have their own special problems, not the least of which is urban warming, due to urban sprawl, which locally affects weather station mean temperatures and wind patterns: Temperatures locally change because local surroundings change. Most weather monitoring stations are located, for example, near airports which, in turn, are near expanding cities.
As a general rule in science, if an effect is barely detectable, requires dubious data treatment methods, and is sensitive to those data treatment methods and to other approximations, then it is not worth arguing over or interpreting and should not be used in further deductions or extrapolations. The same is true in attempting to establish causal relationships. This is in contrast to the precautionary principle which, in this context, would dictate that humans should reduce their fossil fuel burning because a resulting increase in atmospheric CO2 **might** cause serious environmental harm. I argue that we should stick to known consequences rather than potential ones – displacing people displaces people, clearing forests clears forests, etc. – and that we can apply universally accepted norms of human justice and respect for nature in limiting exploiters’ impulses.
k winterkorn says:
September 20, 2010 at 1:24 pm
The isotope ratios show that the rising CO2 is likely from a biologic source. This does not confirm that humans are the main source. Most CO2 from bio-sources are not human activity related, and variations in those sources are a possible source of CO2 change.
That would be true if the oxygen balance shows that biolife is a net sink for CO2, thus biolife increases the d13C level by a net 12CO2 uptake, but we measure a decrease…
David L says:
September 21, 2010 at 3:42 am
You need to get out to more or at least take a good look at the globe with google earth. I reckon’ the global ocean which covers 70% of the surface is just about exactly the same as it was a million years ago. Only about 10% of the land surface is occupied or modified by human civilization and the remaining 20% is virgin.
Roy UK, you asked for comments on the website link: although water vapour is an important greenhouse gas, it also has an important negative feed-back mechanism, i.e. cloud formation. CO2 does not have this. So water vapour definitely is part of the model, but if it’s negative feedback (clouds) happened to exactly balance its greenhouse effect, that would leave CO2 as the important greenhouse gas. See what I’m getting at?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
September 21, 2010 at 4:35 am
“That would be true if the oxygen balance shows that biolife is a net sink for CO2, thus biolife increases the d13C level by a net 12CO2 uptake, but we measure a decrease…”
The duration of that oxygen measurement barely goes back a decade, the sample size is vanishingly small, and the signal is so tiny that it’s questionable whether it is really there at all.
George E. Smith says:
September 20, 2010 at 3:01 pm
But when I read Ferdinand’s extensive treatise; I get the feeling that a lot of people spend a lot of time playing with all kinds of variations on variations of isotopic contents of a variable that seems to have totslly gross gaps in the knowledge of just what the total carbon circulations in the atmospehre really are; and what is presented as a well mixed atmospehric component is anything but that. We learn that different plants have different metabolisms and these process 13C/12C differently; and all these things vary from pole to pole, and with altitude; and evidently with closeness to advanced cindustrialized nations.
Your pages about the different metabolisms and therefore different d13C rates of different species are very interesting. If vegetation was a net source for CO2, it would be near impossible to make a differentiation between natural and fossil CO2 from (former) vegetation. But as there is a small deficit (since about 1990) in oxygen use, the whole biological world is a net absorber of CO2. Thus whatever the 13C/12C discrimination in the different species, the current biological world increases the d13C level in the atmosphere, while we measure a decrease…
Mean while we have one of the fundamental tenets of “Climate Science” the so-called “Climate Sensitivity” which to this day; people still insist is a logarithmic link between atmospehrics CO2 abundance and the earth mean Temperature (somewhere).
I think that we agree on this, that the climate sensitivity for CO2 is quite limited and probably far below the 1.5-4.5°C range of the IPCC.
I have one final observation relating to Ferdiand’s CO2 budgetary analysis.
We have since 2008; and maybe earlier experienced a several years long period of catastrophically reduced global industrial activity; which must have been accompanied with a large and easily measurable reduction in the amount and rate of fossil fuel burning on planet earth. Sinc the ML and other site annual CO2 measurement data clearly indicate rapid changes in the amount of CO2 in as little as a month; then clearly the measured CO2 observations from ML and other well known global sites; should carry a clear signature of this reduced industrial activity; since Ferdinand insists that the data clearly shows a fossil fuel based increase that should have considerably diminished. These changes, should at least be as measurable as the almost microscopic changes in 13C/12C ratios; that Ferdinand says are quite visible.
so does somebody have a citation to such data ?
Unfortunately, emission figures are always years later published than CO2 levels…
What I have heard is that emissions reduced by about 20% compared to previous years (we still use heating in cold winters… and production was lower, but not zero). That would reduce the increase rate with about 20% (or more), but the strong El Niño increased the increase rate with a higher figure last year, thus the increase rate has hardly changed…
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
September 21, 2010 at 3:30 am
“CO2 from natural of non-natural bush fires, wood burning, exhaling CO2 from all lifeforms, vegetation decay,… doesn’t count: it is all recirculating CO2 which was captured a few days to a few hundred years ago from the same atmosphere. That doesn’t change the CO2 content, neither the isotopic composition of the current atmosphere, except if there is an unbalance. The unbalance can be measured from oxygen use: there is a small deficit, compared to the calculated use of oxygen by fossil fuel burning. That means that all biolife together is a net producer of oxygen, thus a net sink for CO2 (and preferentially of 12CO2)…”
re; net producer of O2
Gee, ya think? It’s nice to know that the hypothetical buildup of O2 by green plants over the course of billions of years hasn’t been refuted yet.
However, it does not follow that plants are a net sink of CO2. The reservoirs of biologically available CO2 are huge compared to the amount that is actually taken up and released by biological processes.
Sorry OT, but I had to say something about this comment,
“Water-vapor on its own is not self-sustaining.”
Gases/minerals from the sun enters above Ionosphere as H, He, and O, and lower down diatomic molecules N2, O2, NO etc are present. The ionosphere is electrically charged ions and the UV rays ionizes these gases.
In the ionosphere:
O + h v = O+ + e
N + h v = N+ + e
In the neutral thermosphere:
N + O2 = NO + O
N + NO = N2 + O
O + O = O2
The intake of gases/partials from the the sun or processing of gases/hydrocarbons through atmospheric chemistry as nitrogen, oxygen, argon, c02, H2O and isotopes like Xenon or C-14(byproduct from the separation of oxygen and nitrogen) are aways being produced.
The main gases found on the earth are 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, 0.03% carbon dioxide and 1% water vapor.
Once the earth had no water, water started forming, shallow oceans slowly were created. If earth had the same amount of H2O from the beginning, there would be WAY more land compared to our 75% water surface and volume on earth est. at 1.3 bill. Cue. Kilometers, the volume above sea level land is .1% at 13 bil.cu kilometers would also be much higher. We do not lose water to space, 99.99997% of our atmospheric is below 100 km (62 mi), the ionosphere stretches from 50 to 1,000 km (31 to 620 mi). No loss of water vapor, just more.
Oh, getting back ON-TOPIC,
Dr. Denis Rancourt has the right idea looking at CAGW science, but believes it’s a BIG conspiracy theory. This is growing pains of scientific knowledge or understanding, always will be there. Today computer models and GIS have become science, GIGO. The scientists are not evil or plotting, just a training/ belief in a hypotheses beginning to be proven wrong and are using fantasy computer models when they have no answers or scientific evidence to back it up. A Hitech version of Rolling the bones from a shaman, only they posses the truth and interpretation. A gasp of a dieing religion. But not till they have warned of a holy Armageddon doomsday from our disbelief, penance to change it and sacrifices of non believers.
We are there right now in more then one area of science.
@Engelbeen
“That means that for the current warm period, the natural CO2 level would be around 290 ppmv, while we measure 390 ppmv. The increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is a near perfect match of the increase in total emissions over the past 100+ years:”
And this can be falsified in principle how, exactly?
Any hypothesis which cannot be falsified is not science but rather narrative – a just-so story.
The carbon cycle is sensitive to total biomass. Do you have a precise direct measure that or would it be yet more narrative derived from questionable proxy data? Should we expect an increase in total biomass after 1800 which marked the end of several centuries of what’s been called “The Little Ice Age”? Should we expect an increase in total biomass from all the high nutrient runoff that has been increasingly entering the global ocean? Has there been a change in distribution of living CO2 consumers and CO2 producers due to 7 billion large mammals (humans) and twice that amount of CO2 producers in the domestic livestock kept by those 7 billion humans? These are all confounding factors that have yet to be sufficiently characterized beyond rough guesswork where that guesswork appears to be profoundly influenced by confirmation bias.
Owen says:
September 20, 2010 at 3:49 pm
“The rise in atmospheric CO2 has closely tracked human combustion of fossil fuels, and it will continue to do so! Anyone want to challenge that notion?”
Sure. It hasn’t even come close to tracking it. Atmospheric CO2 has increased by only a small fraction of total fossil fuel combustion. Only by half and that’s before considering how much old growth timber was harvested and burned for fuel or just simply burned away by slash and burn agriculture or made into durable goods and paper and that’s also before methane (which decomposes into CO2 after several years) has been factored in.
The biosphere appears to be greedily sucking up the great majority of human CO2 emissions and is still asking for more. CO2 is a limiting factor for the primary producers in the food chain and in many cases it’s the only limiting factor.
Max Hugoson says:
September 20, 2010 at 7:19 pm
“Sorry, but learning this is very important. Remember the L.A. yacht yard worker called out to haul down the “upside down” flag on the yacht, which the club members who owned the yacht had put up not only upside down but also JAMMED a rather simple mechanism…the yacht belonged to the L.A. Mensa club. One of the methods of getting into the Mensa club: An IQ test of 130 or above. Sanford and Binet would be so proud!”
Got a link to that story that we should “remember”? It’s hard to remember things that never actually happened and I don’t think you need to be a genius to know that.
John Finn says:
September 20, 2010 at 4:01 pm
“If all water vapour were removed from the atmosphere more than half of the current greenhouse effect would still remain.”
Claims need to be tested. How do you propose to test that one?
In fact the claim that water vapor dominates the greenhouse effect to that proportion was experimentally tested and confirmed over 150 years ago by John Tindall. He couldn’t even measure the longwave absorptivity of various gases in his laboratory appartus until he removed all the water vapor and he couldn’t measure any absorption at all in standard atmosphere after removing the water vapor.
Dave Springer says:
September 21, 2010 at 5:21 am
@Engelbeen
“That means that for the current warm period, the natural CO2 level would be around 290 ppmv, while we measure 390 ppmv. The increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is a near perfect match of the increase in total emissions over the past 100+ years:”
And this can be falsified in principle how, exactly?
Any hypothesis which cannot be falsified is not science but rather narrative – a just-so story.
The carbon cycle is sensitive to total biomass. Do you have a precise direct measure that or would it be yet more narrative derived from questionable proxy data?
To begin with: we know with reasonable accuracy how much CO2 was emitted by humans, and further with large margins of error what is emitted by land use changes and extra methane. We know with good accuracy how much CO2 increased in the atmosphere (direct measurements over the past 50+ years, firn and ice cores before that). Nothing from proxy data.
Only the direct emissions from fossil fuel burning are already twice the increase in the atmosphere. Thus whatever the changes in biomass and/or changes in ocean circulation: these two together are not adding one gram of CO2 to the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in the yearly balance. At least over the past 50 years (+ 60 ppmv) and probably over the past 100+ years. Even if biomass was a net source during a few decades (which it probably was before 1990), that doesn’t change the fact that there was no net contribution of nature to the increase, thus the oceans simply were a larger sink in that period.
That humans are not the only cause of the increase easely can be falsified, if the measured increase in the atmosphere was larger than the calculated emissions. As long as that is not the case, the emissions are the sole cause. It is that simple.
Dave Springer says:
September 21, 2010 at 5:03 am
re; net producer of O2
Gee, ya think? It’s nice to know that the hypothetical buildup of O2 by green plants over the course of billions of years hasn’t been refuted yet.
However, it does not follow that plants are a net sink of CO2. The reservoirs of biologically available CO2 are huge compared to the amount that is actually taken up and released by biological processes.
A reservoir of biological available CO2 doesn’t add or substract anything from the atmosphere. Even the uptake by photosynthesis at one side and the decay/burning/eating of the biological available CO2 doesn’t change the amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. Only the unbalance between uptake and release does change the atmospheric CO2 content. That can be measured by the oxygen balance.
Even if the change in oxygen level over the past decade is small and the error margins are huge, the balance shows that all biolife together is a net sink for CO2.