Missing the big picture on CO2

From the University of Exeter, this press release below and not a peep in it about the El Niño earlier this year that would have helped to degassify CO2 from the warmer portions of the Pacific ocean. But hey, its got a connection to UEA, so we know it’s quality work, right?

Global CO2 emissions back on the rise in 2010

Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions – the main contributor to global warming – show no sign of abating and may reach record levels in 2010, according to a study led by the University of Exeter (UK).

The study, which also involved the University of East Anglia (UK) and other global institutions, is part of the annual carbon budget update by the Global Carbon Project.

In a paper published today in Nature Geoscience, the authors found that despite the major financial crisis that hit the world last year, global CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuel in 2009 were only 1.3 per cent below the record 2008 figures. This is less than half the drop predicted a year ago.

The global financial crisis severely affected western economies, leading to large reductions in CO2 emissions. For example, UK emissions were 8.6% lower in 2009 than in 2008. Similar figures apply to USA, Japan, France, Germany, and most other industrialised nations.

However, emerging economies had a strong economic performance despite the financial crisis, and recorded substantial increases in CO2 emissions (e.g. China +8 per cent, India +6.2 per cent).

Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, lead author of the research, said: “The 2009 drop in CO2 emissions is less than half that anticipated a year ago. This is because the drop in world Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was less than anticipated and the carbon intensity of world GDP, which is the amount of CO2 released per unit of GDP, improved by only 0.7 per cent in 2009 – well below its long-term average of 1.7% per year.”

The poor improvements in carbon intensity were caused by an increased share of fossil-fuel CO2 emissions produced by emerging economies with a relatively high carbon intensity, and an increasing reliance on coal.

The study projects that if economic growth proceeds as expected, global fossil fuel emissions will increase by more than 3% in 2010, approaching the high emissions growth rates observed through 2000 to 2008.

The study also found that global CO2 emissions from deforestation have decreased by over 25% since 2000 compared to the 1990s, mainly because of reduced CO2 emissions from tropical deforestation.

“For the first time, forest expansion in temperate latitudes has overcompensated deforestation emissions and caused a small net sink of CO2 outside the tropics”, says Professor Corinne Le Quéré, from the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey, and author of the study. “We could be seeing the first signs of net CO2 sequestration in the forest sector outside the tropics”, she adds.

###

Editors’ notes

The Global Carbon Project

The Global Carbon Project was formed to assist the international science community to establish a common, mutually agreed knowledge base supporting policy debate and action to slow the rate of increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The project is working towards this through a shared partnership between the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and Diversitas. This partnership constitutes the Earth Systems Science Partnership (ESSP).

More information available at: http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget

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George E. Smith
November 22, 2010 3:48 pm

“”””” Thermal energy is a direct result of the movements of atoms and molecules in matter. Since atoms and molecules are composed of charged particles, i.e. protons and electrons, their movements result in the emission of electromagnetic radiation, which carries energy away from the material. “””””
For what it is worth the above is cited directly from Wikipedia. If that is false; then blame wiki; not me.
Last time I checked, N2, O2, Ar, do NOT lose all their electric charges; when they become gaseous rather than liquid or solid.

steveta_uk
November 22, 2010 4:00 pm

(Somewhat off topic)
Ken Roberts, (1:01 pm) it was an arrhythmia – digoxin used initially to control and slow the heart, and stopped once it was stable. Then beta-blockers and something else I don’t recall for a couple of years, then just ACE inhibitors to maintain steady pressure, and it’s all fine.

John from CA
November 22, 2010 4:16 pm

Ferdinand,
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
You’re presenting an interesting and compelling perspective for the concept but don’t you agree the proof is in the details? The proofs are the important aspect to understanding a climate system that’s currently undefined by science.
The idea of smoothing data before there is a point to doing so is the problem I have with the current approach.
Example: Science doesn’t fully understand what triggers an ENSO event and is unlikely to ever make the discovery if all the data is “manipulated” before analysis.
Climate Science freely admits it fails to understand the system as a whole yet routinely presumes to predict its outcome.
I simply can’t buy into a flawed methodology that eliminates observation and yet assumes insight.

Gail Combs
November 22, 2010 5:06 pm

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 22, 2010 at 8:15 am
” …Not necessarely: Stomata data are proxies…”
_________________________________________________________
Even if the stomata data does not destroy the Ice Core data the presence of C3 plants (trees) certainly does and that leaves the stomata data left owning the field.
“…The CO2 concentration found in air bubble and in secondary air cavities of deep Vostok and Bryd cores range from 178 and 296 ppm…
According to Barnola et al (1987) the level of CO2 in the global atmosphere during many tens of thousands of years spanning 30,000 to110,000 BP were below 200ppm. If this qwere true then the growth of C3 plants should be limited at the global scale because their net Photosynthesis is depressed as CO2 concentration in air decreases to less than about 250ubar (less than about 250ppmv)(McKay et al 1991) This would lead to the extinction of C3plant species . This has however not been recorded by paleobotanists (Manum 1991).”
http://www.co2web.info/stoten92.pdf
This is what I was trying to point out but this quote does a much better job of it.

Gail Combs
November 22, 2010 5:47 pm

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 22, 2010 at 9:06 am
Ian W says:
November 22, 2010 at 6:59 am
“…I don’t think that anybody means that: nature makes no differentiation between anthro and natural CO2, except for the small differences in 12C/13C ratio. But that is not the point here. What is important is that there was a 800,000 years balance between temperature and CO2 levels, which is changed by the human emissions….”
___________________________________________________________
AHHhh so that is the fallacy! I have always wondered.
You make the assumption that the amount of Carbon has remained constant until evil mankind has changed it by liberating the poor chained carbon molecules in coal, peat and oil.
Unfortunately that is not true because you are not dealing with a closed cycle. Carbon has been sequestered by the formation of lignite, coal, Erosion of silicate rocks, whereby carbonates are formed and silica is liberated, precipitation of calcium carbonate and hydrates in the ocean, oil (maybe) and methane captured in the permafrost. This has reduced the bio-available carbon over the millenium.
Since nature has been permanently removing carbon from the carbon life cycle, earth has been gradually headed toward an CO2 starved atmosphere from the point of view of plants. The evolution of the C2 plants are one result. Slowed plant growth another.
If the historic 280 ppm is a true number we were darn close to seeing the extinction of C3 plants (trees) “… because their net photosynthesis is depressed as the CO2 concentration in the air decreases to less than about 250…” http://www.co2web.info/stoten92.pdf
This is direct observation:
“…Plant photosynthetic activity can reduce the CO2 within the plant canopy to between 200 and 250 ppm… I observed a 50 ppm drop in within a tomato plant canopy just a few minutes after direct sunlight at dawn entered a green house (Harper et al 1979)” Source
I think CO2 starved plants was the actual looming catastrophe, narrowly escaped, not Global Warming.

Joel Shore
November 22, 2010 6:08 pm

The reason that the fast natural exchanges of CO2 between the atmosphere & the ocean mixed layer & biosphere are not important relative to the human emissions from fossil fuels is these fast exchanges are within a subsystem…and they just determine the equilibration within that subsystem, whereas the human emissions are taking carbon long locked away from this subsystem and adding it back in.
What happens when we burn fossil fuels is that the rapid exchanges mean that the new carbon added to the atmosphere is rapidly partitioned between the atmosphere, ocean mixed layer, and biosphere. As a result, about half of that added to the atmosphere is removed from the atmosphere fairly rapidly, but the rest will stay around for a long time.
Dave Springer says:

If the evaporation rate increases it increases the amount of heat (latent in this case) carried upward by rising water vapor. This heat is then released when a cloud forms. So the “extra” downwelling radiation in this case is quickly transported back up and released high in the air by way of a faster water cycle where the energy that increases the water cycle speed is caused by CO2. So it won’t raise surface temperature at all because the energy carried off by the water vapor is LATENT where latent in this case means it won’t register on a thermometer. You may want to google “latent heat of vaporization” if you don’t understand how you can have increased energy without increased temperature. It’s related to phase change from, in this case, liquid to gas.

But, what you are proposing is just a mechanism of the redistribution of heat within the troposphere. The important rate-limiting process is the emission of this radiation back out into space. What you are describing is essentially just the physics of what is called the “lapse rate feedback”, a negative feedback included in all of the climate models. What this feedback asserts is that, as a result of the processes that you describe, the upper troposphere warms more than the surface, so the surface does not have to warm as much as it otherwise would in order for radiative balance to be restored (via the increase in outgoing radiation due to the Steffan-Boltzmann Law).
Interestingly, a lot of skeptics like to claim that the satellite and radiosonde data does not support the idea that the warming is greater in the upper troposphere of the tropics (where most of the effect is expected to occur) than at the surface, although in reality there are too many issues with the data to conclude this is really the case. At any rate, your argument, taken to its logical conclusion, would argue that in fact the models underestimate the degree to which the upper troposphere warms relative to the surface…and therefore that the satellite and radiosonde data suggesting otherwise are even more unreliable than has been imagined. Perhaps you can go argue with John Christy and David Douglass and that whole crowd about this.

Let me know what part or parts of that you don’t understand.

The part that I have trouble understanding is how someone could actually think that several paragraphs of half-correct qualitative description of how the atmosphere works trumps millions of man-hours of calculations by scientists of how it actually works and how large the various effects discussed actually are. But, hey, I guess I just don’t always appreciate the true brilliance of random people on the internet.

Pamela Gray
November 22, 2010 6:17 pm

I’m putting out a fricken “Help wanted, greenhouse gasses please apply” add!
My holiday break will be spent desparately trying to keep pipes from freezing solid!
“Tuesday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around -13. Wind chill values as low as -20. West wind between 5 and 9 mph.
Wednesday: Mostly sunny and cold, with a high near 9. Wind chill values as low as -22. Light southwest wind.
Wednesday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around -2. South wind between 3 and 6 mph.”
etc, etc, %$# etc!

pkatt
November 22, 2010 9:12 pm

SteveE says:
November 22, 2010 at 2:06 am
The CO2 that nature emits (from the ocean and vegetation) is balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Therefore human emissions upset the natural balance, rising CO2 to levels not seen in at least 800,000 years.
——————————————-
Lol and you think that the ocean and vegetation cannot compensate for our measly addition as well? How little faith you have in the system. Fortunately for us the Earth has proven quite adaptable.

Savant
November 22, 2010 9:28 pm

Anthony,
Can you explain how your comment on El Nino relates to the discussion of fossil fuel emissions? I do understand that atmospheric CO2 is sensitive to tropical temperatures, but isn’t the focus of this study fossil & cement?

November 23, 2010 12:47 am

John from CA says:
November 22, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Ferdinand,
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
You’re presenting an interesting and compelling perspective for the concept but don’t you agree the proof is in the details? The proofs are the important aspect to understanding a climate system that’s currently undefined by science.
The idea of smoothing data before there is a point to doing so is the problem I have with the current approach.

I agree that climate science still is in its infancy and needs far more good data before the main interactions are known with sufficient detail…
But CO2 data really are the best we can get, under rigorous quality control, where test gases and equipment are calibrated and intercalibrated, comparable to the tests done for clinical trials. We only can hope that one day the same rigorous quality control would be implemented for temperature readings all over the world…
Except for intermittent flask sampling, no smoothing is done on the CO2 data. Measurements which are clearly contaminated by local sources and sinks are not used for averaging, but including or excluding these data doesn’t change the average or trend. But as we are interested in background data, not in the local contamination (wich is btw measured for other purposes, like an overview of volcanic CO2 releases), only CO2 levels deemed “background” are used for averaging and trending. Even so, the raw hourly averages still are available (on line for four of the baseline stations: ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/in-situ/ ) and on simple request, I even obtained the 10-second raw voltage readings of a few days to check the calculations.
Here a comparison of raw hourly, and “selected” daily and monthly data from Mauna Loa and the South Pole:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_mlo_spo_raw_select_2008.jpg
Makes hardly a difference if you include or exclude the local outliers (but watch the scale!)…

SteveE
November 23, 2010 1:16 am

pkatt says:
November 22, 2010 at 9:12 pm
SteveE says:
November 22, 2010 at 2:06 am
The CO2 that nature emits (from the ocean and vegetation) is balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Therefore human emissions upset the natural balance, rising CO2 to levels not seen in at least 800,000 years.
——————————————-
Lol and you think that the ocean and vegetation cannot compensate for our measly addition as well? How little faith you have in the system. Fortunately for us the Earth has proven quite adaptable.
—————————–
As CO2 levels are rising by about 15 million tons a year it would appear not…

November 23, 2010 1:36 am

Gail Combs says:
November 22, 2010 at 5:06 pm
According to Barnola et al (1987) the level of CO2 in the global atmosphere during many tens of thousands of years spanning 30,000 to110,000 BP were below 200ppm. If this were true then the growth of C3 plants should be limited at the global scale because their net Photosynthesis is depressed as CO2 concentration in air decreases to less than about 250ubar (less than about 250ppmv)(McKay et al 1991) This would lead to the extinction of C3plant species . This has however not been recorded by paleobotanists (Manum 1991).” http://www.co2web.info/stoten92.pdf
This is what I was trying to point out but this quote does a much better job of it.

Ah, Jaworowski again. Sorry, not a very reliable source of information. Too much of what he says is wrong, even the opposite of what he alleges. See my take on Jaworowski:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html
Further, indeed C3 plants (most trees) have difficulties going below 200 ppmv and C4 plants (grasses, grains, rice) slowly evolved during the last millions of years. But even with a background CO2 level of below 200 ppmv (measured at the South Pole via ice cores), the night/morning levels of CO2 over land may reach much higher levels (thanks to soil bacteria), good for several hours of photosynthesis even for C3 plants. Here a few days of CO2 measurements at Giessen, mid-west Germany, compared to the same days at Mauna Loa, Barrow and the South Pole:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/giessen_background.jpg
CO2 levels at Giessen increase enormously at night (little wind, inversion layer) and drop rapidely below background in daylight. With background levels at 280 ppmv, that would give a similar increase at night, but less drop in daylight as the photosynthesis gets limited by the lower CO2 levels.
And it seems that the absolute minimum for (C3?) photosynthesis is at 90 ppmv:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v193/n4815/abs/193587a0.html
That is the minimum level for photosynthesis. The balance for growth vs decay (respiration at night) will be higher.

November 23, 2010 1:54 am

Gail Combs says:
November 22, 2010 at 5:47 pm
AHHhh so that is the fallacy! I have always wondered.
You make the assumption that the amount of Carbon has remained constant until evil mankind has changed it by liberating the poor chained carbon molecules in coal, peat and oil.
Unfortunately that is not true because you are not dealing with a closed cycle. Carbon has been sequestered by the formation of lignite, coal, Erosion of silicate rocks, whereby carbonates are formed and silica is liberated, precipitation of calcium carbonate and hydrates in the ocean, oil (maybe) and methane captured in the permafrost. This has reduced the bio-available carbon over the millenium.

I didn’t make any assumption that CO2 levels were constant. The observation made in the Vostok ice core (and recently the Dome C ice core) is that there was a dynamic equilibrium between temperature and CO2 levels, surprisingly linear over the past 800,000 years. Only since about 1850, the equilibrium is disturbed and CO2 levels increased at a rate of about 55% of the emissions. That is confirmed in all Antarctic ice cores with quite different rates of accumulation, inclusion of salts (coastal and inland) and average temperature. The best reolution ice cores (Law Dome, 8 years averaging) even have an overlap of some 20 years with the South Pole direct measurements.
Thus including all known and unknown natural processes, there was a dynamic equilibrium where temperature dictated the CO2 levels, until around 1850. As temperature probably increased some 0.7°C since then, that would increase the CO2 levels with some 6 ppmv (a similar drop is measured in the third Law Dome ice core for the MWP-LIA drop in temperature), but we see an increase of about 100 ppmv, while humans have emitted some 200 ppmv CO2 in the same period.

SteveE
November 23, 2010 2:47 am

mkelly says:
November 22, 2010 at 8:59 am
SteveE says:
November 22, 2010 at 6:29 am
Steve Keohane says:
November 22, 2010 at 3:23 am
SteveE says: November 22, 2010 at 2:06 am
The CO2 that nature emits (from the ocean and vegetation) is balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Therefore human emissions upset the natural balance, rising CO2 to levels not seen in at least 800,000 years.
Not part of the biosphere are we?
————————
CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels aren’t, no.
Did you honestly think they were?
————————-
Steve coal is made from vegetation right. So yes I think it is(was) part of the biosphere. If you think oil is made from old sea shells etc then yes it is(was) also part of the biosphere.
But that has nothing to do with whether CO2 can increase the temperature of the ground. Please provide your proof (not a link) as to how CO2 can heat the ground.
—————————————-
Coal and oil whilst organic in origin aren’t part of the biosphere, they formed 10’s sometimes 100’s of millions of years ago and were effectively locked away. Humans are release all this carbon back into the system over a few 100 years, not the millions of years that it would have naturally returned to the atmosphere.
CO2 doesn’t directly heat the ground and if that’s what you thought was the explanation for global warming then perhaps that’s why you don’t understand the concept. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so is acting like an insulator in the atmosphere, trapping heat that arrives from the sun, or at least slowing down it’s escape.
Like if you were to wear a thick coat on a sunny day, you’d heat up, not because you were generating more heat from your body, but because the heat escaping does so at a slower rate.
Obviosly it’s a lot more complex than that and with positive feed back loops from water vapour etc, and my analogue isn’t very accurate, but you seemed to need a simple explantaion.

Ammonite
November 23, 2010 2:50 am

Don Easterbrook says: November 22, 2010 at 7:27 am
Taken with the physics of CO2 that tell us doubling the atmospheric content of CO2 is only capable of producing less than 0.1 degree rise… Why are we not worrying far more about global population increasing by more than 50% in the next 40 years and again thereafter? Where is the food and energy going to come from to feed and care for that many more people?
Hi Don. Doubling CO2 from pre-industrial levels is anticipated to produce a likely temperature rise of 2C to 4C (see http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf). By 2050 I suspect the wheels will begin to come off for many poorer nations for exactly the reasons you cite. AGW has the distinct potential to exacerbate the situation depending on how high climate sensitivity is and how long it takes temperature increases to be realised.

D. Patterson
November 23, 2010 2:56 am

See:
Post mortem on the Mauna Loa CO2 data eruption
Posted on August 6, 2008 by Anthony Watts

November 23, 2010 4:13 am

Ammonite says:
November 23, 2010 at 2:50 am
Hi Don. Doubling CO2 from pre-industrial levels is anticipated to produce a likely temperature rise of 2C to 4C (see http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf). By 2050 I suspect the wheels will begin to come off for many poorer nations for exactly the reasons you cite. AGW has the distinct potential to exacerbate the situation depending on how high climate sensitivity is and how long it takes temperature increases to be realised.
Well that is what the climate models say. But there are a lot of problems with this:
– Based on the real absorption lines, a doubling of CO2 would increase ground temperatures with about 0.9°C. With water vapour feedback 1.3°C. That is all.
– Clouds are invariably seen as positive feedbacks in all models, contrary to what cloud specialists estimate. No model has cloud feedbacks right, while it still has the largest influence on the range of projections.
– The “heat in the pipeline”, as measured in the increase of heat content of the oceans disappeared within a few years, probably to changes in cloud cover.
– No model is capable to represent any natural variability (ENSO, PDO, NAO), while much of the current warming / standstill is the result of such natural variability.
– All models show a warming for the past decade, which is not seen at all.
Further, any global temperature increase will have most effect near the poles, not directly the poorest countries. The temperature increase around the equator will be far more moderate, as heat is dissipated rapidely towards the poles.

Joel Shore
November 23, 2010 5:42 am

Alan the Brit says:

Therefore human emissions upset the natural balance, rising CO2 to levels not seen in at least 800,000 years.”
Yes that may or may not be true, personally I think not where humans are concerned, but it is really just like saying that there is less CO2 in the atmosphere today than there was 800,001 years ago!

No. It is not like saying that. It is saying that there is definitively less CO2 in the atmosphere over the entire period for which we have ice core data. However, it is likely actually true for the last few million years; it is just that we don’t have the accurate high-resolution ice core data to say so definitively.

Also if this type of thing is going to be quoted, can we please have a definitive figure other than those of 650,000 years, 750,000 years, & 800,000 years, as qioted by many, someone needs to make their mind up which it is, just for the sake consistency, & not for dramatic effect.

They have extended back the ice core record over the years. I know it goes back at least 650,000 years…and it may well now go back the 800,000 years.

I could also add to the example that there is less CO2 in our atmosphere today than there has been for over 500,000,000 years!

But, you would be wrong if you claimed this. But, being British, perhaps it’s a language issue. 😉 If someone says “there is less CO2 in our atmosphere today than there has been for over 500,000,000 years!” that would mean it has not been lower over that entire period, which is incorrect. You could say, “There is less CO2 in our atmosphere today than there was 500,000,000 years ago” but that is a very different statement.

Pamela Gray
November 23, 2010 6:26 am

If you think that the increasing human population somehow matches CO2 absorbing food production (IE your contention this is a closed system), show it. If you say it, link to the statistics and kindly provide correlation co-efficients as well as error bars. The statistics are readily available for both.
So typical. Often, people who have a full plate of food think everyone does. But here is the reality: more babies are born without a full plate of food than babies with one. How do I know this? Poverty stricken countries have higher birth rates. Where is the closed system balance?
Here is just one source of several related to this statistic that will start you on the road to reality. Human population growth is not a closed CO2 system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_fertility_rate

Pamela Gray
November 23, 2010 7:28 am

Here is another link demonstrating the complex nature between food production, population, and income per capita. Human population can and does increase while food production decreases. The fact that some countries produce more food than they need does not mean that countries that do not produce enough food for its people have the money to buy this overabundance. The US may very well be a closed CO2 system. But Africa is most definitely not.
http://info.k4health.org/pr/m13/m13chap1_2.shtml

Pamela Gray
November 23, 2010 7:36 am

The fact that currently CO2 seasonally decreases but then grows again ever so slightly more than before means that something that emits CO2 is growing faster than the other thing that absorbs it. The best match for this is none other than population growth. Current food production is always slightly behind this growth and now does not feed every new mouth. Therefore it is my belief that the simplest CO2 explanation, and one that matches the even distribution of this staircase, is hyper-population growth versus food production. This was not the case prior to the 60’s. It is a recent phenomenon that matches quite well the Mauna Loa staircase and ice core CO2 levels.

Pamela Gray
November 23, 2010 7:41 am

If we use La Nina/El Nino ENSO affects on precipitation (which would of course assume that clouds are involved), cold oceans decrease cloud formation and mean less precipitation. Warm oceans increase cloud formation and mean more precipitation. So tell me where the drought people keep talking about enters into this relationship. World drought due to warmer oceans appears to be a myth not substantiated by science.

John from CA
November 23, 2010 8:07 am

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 23, 2010 at 12:47 am
Here a comparison of raw hourly, and “selected” daily and monthly data from Mauna Loa and the South Pole:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_mlo_spo_raw_select_2008.jpg
========
Thank You for the chart, explanation, and candor!!!
The chart clearly shows the hourly and daily spikes one would expect to find in a location like MLO. The comparison to SPO is great, shows a far less chaotic SPO pattern and clearly shows the difference between the 2 locations.
IMO, the smoothed station trend charts fail to adequately express deviations one would expect to find and the “Global” chart trends and conclusions are highly suspect because they are to generalized (imply a global state rather then presenting a dynamic reflection of the climate system).
Fun thought, it would be interesting to see a comparison of Ground Station readings in the Pacific upwelling regions like the Gulf of Alaska and the Sea of Okhotsk used to help model carbon discharge during seasonal ENSO conditions. If the ocean sequesters CO2 for hundreds of years, what percentage of pre-industrial CO2 vs manmade are we seeing at various locations?

SteveE
November 23, 2010 8:12 am

Pamela Gray says:
November 23, 2010 at 7:36 am
The fact that currently CO2 seasonally decreases but then grows again ever so slightly more than before means that something that emits CO2 is growing faster than the other thing that absorbs it.
————————–
Could that thing that emits CO2 be humans burning fossil fuels instead?
Additional confirmation that rising CO2 levels are due to human activity comes from examining the ratio of carbon isotopes (eg carbon atoms with differing numbers of neutrons) found in the atmosphere. Carbon 12 has 6 neutrons, carbon 13 has 7 neutrons. Plants have a lower C13/C12 ratio than in the atmosphere. If rising atmospheric CO2 comes from fossil fuels, the C13/C12 should be falling. Indeed this is what is occurring (see link below) . The C13/C12 ratio correlates with the trend in global emissions.
http://www.bgc.mpg.de/service/iso_gas_lab/publications/PG_WB_IJMS.pdf

November 23, 2010 8:31 am

Pamela Gray says:
November 23, 2010 at 7:36 am
The fact that currently CO2 seasonally decreases but then grows again ever so slightly more than before means that something that emits CO2 is growing faster than the other thing that absorbs it. The best match for this is none other than population growth. Current food production is always slightly behind this growth and now does not feed every new mouth. Therefore it is my belief that the simplest CO2 explanation, and one that matches the even distribution of this staircase, is hyper-population growth versus food production. This was not the case prior to the 60′s. It is a recent phenomenon that matches quite well the Mauna Loa staircase and ice core CO2 levels.
I suppose that the best match between population growth and CO2 levels is that more people and growing industrialisation simply use more fossil fuels…
Agriculture, besides land use change, doesn’t add to the CO2 releases, as what is used as fodder/food and was CO2 captured from the atmosphere a few months to a few years before. Thus only circulating through the biosphere. It is the difference in more permanent carbon sequestering between a natural environment and agricultural use (or deforestation against reforestation) of a piece of land that adds to (or subtracts from) the total CO2 mass in the atmosphere.
BTW, I had not the impression that malnourishment is increasing (at least not in %), thanks to the green revolution in agricuture, at least not if we don’t use valuable land for biofuels…

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