From the “fun with conjecture department”, another graduate school paper parroting the claim from NOAA’s Susan Solomon that excess man-made CO2 stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years.
From CO2science: In a paper recently published in the international peer-reviewed journal Energy & Fuels, Dr. Robert H. Essenhigh (2009), Professor of Energy Conversion at The Ohio State University, addresses the residence time (RT) of anthropogenic CO2 in the air. He finds that the RT for bulk atmospheric CO2, the molecule CO2, is ~5 years, in good agreement with other cited sources (Segalstad, 1998), while the RT for the trace molecule CO2 is ~16 years. Both of these residence times are much shorter than what is claimed by the IPCC.
It seems to me that Gaia does a fine job of respirating CO2. It doesn’t just “sit there”, as you can see the process is quite dynamic:
More at NOAA ESRL Carbon Tracker
Via Eurekalert: If greenhouse gas emissions stopped now, Earth still would likely get warmer
While governments debate about potential policies that might curb the emission of greenhouse gases, new University of Washington research shows that the world is already committed to a warmer climate because of emissions that have occurred up to now.
There would continue to be warming even if the most stringent policy proposals were adopted, because there still would be some emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. But the new research shows that even if all emissions were stopped now, temperatures would remain higher than pre-Industrial Revolution levels because the greenhouse gases already emitted are likely to persist in the atmosphere for thousands of years.
In fact, it is possible temperatures would continue to escalate even if all cars, heating and cooling systems and other sources of greenhouse gases were suddenly eliminated, said Kyle Armour, a UW doctoral student in physics. That’s because tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols, which tend to counteract the effect of greenhouse warming by reflecting sunlight back into space, would last only a matter of weeks once emissions stopped, while the greenhouse gases would continue on.
“The aerosols would wash out quickly and then we would see an abrupt rise in temperatures over several decades,” he said.
Armour is the lead author of a paper documenting the research, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. His co-author is Gerard Roe, a UW associate professor of Earth and space sciences.
The global temperature is already about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution, which began around the start of the 19th century. The scientists’ calculations took into account the observed warming, as well as the known levels of greenhouse gases and aerosols already emitted to see what might happen if all emissions associated with industrialization suddenly stopped.
In the best-case scenario, the global temperature would actually decline, but it would remain about a half-degree F higher than pre-Industrial Revolution levels and probably would not drop to those levels again, Armour said.
There also is a possibility temperatures would rise to 3.5 degrees F higher than before the Industrial Revolution, a threshold at which climate scientists say significant climate-related damage begins to occur.
Of course it is not realistic to expect all emissions to cease suddenly, and Armour notes that the overall effect of aerosols – particles of sea salt or soot from burning fossil fuels, for example – is perhaps the largest uncertainty in climate research.
But uncertainties do not lessen the importance of the findings, he said. The scientists are confident, from the results of equations they used, that some warming would have to occur even if all emissions stopped now. But there are more uncertainties, and thus a lower confidence level, associated with larger temperature increases.
Climate models used in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments take into consideration a much narrower range of the possible aerosol effects, or “forcings,” than are supported by actual climate observations, Armour said. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning panel, sponsored by the United Nations, makes periodic assessments of climate change and is in the process of compiling its next report.
As emissions of greenhouse gases continue, the “climate commitment” to a warmer planet only goes up, Armour said. He believes it is helpful for policy makers to understand that level of commitment. It also will be helpful for them to understand that, while some warming is assured, uncertainties in current climate observations – such as the full effect of aerosols – mean the warming could be greater than models suggest.
“This is not an argument to say we should keep emitting aerosols,” he said. “It is an argument that we should be smart in how we stop emitting. And it’s a call to action because we know the warming we are committed to from what we have emitted already and the longer we keep emitting the worse it gets.”
The paper was published in the Jan. 15 edition of Geophysical Research Letters.
If greenhouse gas emissions stopped now, Earth still would likely get warmer
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“This is not an argument to say we should keep emitting aerosols,” he said. “It is an argument that we should be smart in how we stop emitting.”
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Their escape hatch.
Sigh. GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Forgot to add, ……the precursor, or ground laying for the escape plan.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/15/the-chinese-peg-the-sulfur-emissions-worldwide/
CO2 is the gas of life–and ask any farmer whether current global average temperatures (12C=54F) are really better for plant growth than temperatures a few degrees higher.
It is the living things that count.
These warmists scare me because they are unravelling the economies of the developed world, and because everything they do undermines the well-being of life.
Face it people, the warming-or-CO2-is-bad people are scary and dangerous and we don’t actually know about the effect of CO2 on terrestrial wildlife or on people. There is FUNDING to be had in anything dangerous, and unlike our “enemies,” these dangers are real!
There will be extinctions if we do not promote CO2 for what it really is. And some of that, we have to find out.
Interesting that some people think it is quite permissible to report on the results of research but not on the research. That is especially strange at this time in the history of climate science. The reason is that climate science is awash with reports of results but suffers from a dearth of research. You would think that climate scientists would report on their new research methods or maybe their new empirical data. Could it be that their methods are the same old, tired, useless computer models that climate scientists have used to flood the world with their fantasies? The government should give all of us time on their supercomputers and then we could all just sit around and compare fantastic model runs.
Determining the residence time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a rather complex problem. A common misconception arises from simply looking at the annual carbon flux and the atmospheric stock; after all, with 230 gigatons absorbed by the oceans and land every year, and a total atmospheric stock of 720 gigatons, one might expect the average molecule of CO2 to remain in the atmosphere for only three to four years.
Such an approach poorly frames the issue, however. It is not the residence time of an individual molecule that is relevant. What really matters is just how long it will take for the stock of anthropogenic carbon emissions that has accumulated in the atmosphere to be reabsorbed.
The simplest way to approximate the time it will take to reabsorb the anthropogenic flux is to calculate how long it would take for the atmosphere to revert to preindustrial levels of 280 parts per million if humans could cease emissions immediately. If the current net sink of around 4 gigatons of carbon per year remained constant over time, it would take about 50 years for the atmosphere to return to 280 ppm. However, there is no reason to think that these sinks would remain constant as emissions decrease. Indeed, it is more realistic to anticipate that the net sink would shrink in proportion to the decrease in emissions, just as it has increased with the increase in emissions over the past century.
Scientists can approach this problem in a number of different ways. They can use models of carbon sink behavior based on their best knowledge of the physics of ocean carbon absorption and the biosphere. They can also use records of changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide during glacial periods in the distant past to estimate the time it takes for perturbations to settle out.
Using a combination of various methods, researchers have estimated that about 50 percent of the net anthropogenic pulse would be absorbed in the first 50 years, and about 70 percent in the first 100 years. Absorption by sinks slows dramatically after that, with an additional 20 percent or so being removed after 500 years and the remaining 10 percent lasting tens if not hundreds of thousands of years before being removed.
Thank you for that animation! I’ve never quite seen the cycle like that. Am I right in thinking that the abrupt decline in CO2 during NH summer is the plant life coming back from winter and sucking it all out of the atmosphere? If so, I couldn’t think of anything better than to show why we should INCREASE emissions. Talk about helping farmers get a bit more crop yield out of the growing season!
As usual, it is worse than we thought! It is a travesty that the AGW money hydrant has resulted in so many science graduates jumping aboard the “death train” of deciding on the results before they do their research. Exactly the same as the rule in politics about not announcing an inquiry unless you know the conclusions it will reach. There will be a lot of unemployed scientists in 10-20 years.
The article is behind a paywall at http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2010GL045850.shtml
but Mr. Armour has a preprint available online at http://staff.washington.edu/karmour/ArmourRoe2011GRLpreprint.pdf
It just does not make any sense that “the greenhouse gases already emitted are likely to persist in the atmosphere for thousands of years”. At the moment, a certain percentage of the added CO2 ends up in the air, a certain percentage of the added CO2 ends up in the oceans, and a certain percentage of the added CO2 increases photosynthesis. Photosynthesis with 390 ppm CO2 uses more CO2 than photosynthesis with 280 ppm CO2. So IF we were to stop adding CO2 into the air right now (other than breathing of course), the higher rate of photosynthesis would cause an immediate drop in CO2.
According to Le Chatelier’s principle, with each drop in atmospheric CO2, the equilibrium CO2 between the oceans and the air changes so some CO2 would come out of the oceans assuming there is no temperature change. This means a lower drop in CO2 than might otherwise be expected. In addition, as the CO2 drops, the rate of photosynthesis also drops, but as long as the CO2 is above 280 ppm, the higher rate of photosynthesis would cause further drops in CO2. I do not know what the time line would be, but the CO2 would decrease rapidly at first and then more and more slowly as time went on. The CO2 concentration with respect to time would form a curve similar to the half-life curves for what remains of radioactive substances.
But in the PBS’ NewsHour’s one-and-only lengthy presentation of the skeptic’s side of AGW (offered not by a scientist, but by a coal exec), the NewsHour interviewer countered him by saying toward the end, “…carbon dioxide, once it’s up in the atmosphere, really doesn’t disappear for a hundred years or more…” http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/july-dec97/air_12-5.html
Gosh, if that was said on TV, it must be true…… or maybe that was a setup, since I showed in my American Thinker article from last year that the interviewer’s question eerily paraphrased a line straight out of anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan’s The Heat is On – see the last set of paragraphs here: “The Left and Its Talking Points” http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/the_left_and_its_talking_point.html
This thing reads like a tourist brochure………….
Temps might go down, and the uncertainty says they might go down even more…
….temps might go up, and the uncertainty says they might go up even more
temps might even stay the same……..
Plus, I don’t know who’s science they are reading, but they got almost all of that wrong
Zeke Hausfather says:
“Such an approach poorly frames the issue, however. It is not the residence time of an individual molecule that is relevant…”
In fact, Zeke’s approach poorly frames the issue. The relevant issue is this: will the rise in CO2 cause global harm?
Carbon dioxide has risen almost 40%. Despite that very significant rise, there is no evidence — none — that any global damage has occurred. Reasonable people would expect to see at least some evidence of harm due to such a large increase in this trace gas.
But there is no such evidence, and it isn’t for lack of searching for it. There is nothing the alarmist crowd would like more than finding something they could point to proving that CO2 is a problem. But as it turns out, CO2 is harmless at current and projected concentrations.
Zeke is on the Grantham Foundation dole, so he doesn’t see things clearly. Jeremy Grantham is as wacked out as Al Gore. They are both motivated by the money to be made from the fake “carbon” scare.
All the available evidence confirms that carbon dioxide is a harmless and beneficial trace gas. More is better. Only by trumpeting this invented scare can climate charlatans like Gore, Grantham, Pachauri, Mann and their clique keep raking in taxpayer loot.
“Zeke Hausfather says:
February 16, 2011 at 5:06 pm ”
Zeke, you are welcome to “frame” the debate any way you like, but it won’t change the simple fact that life evolved under much higher levels of CO2 and craves high levels of CO2.
Saying we need “pre-Industrial” CO2 levels, makes the silly implication that the results of industry are automatically bad – despite the incredible amount of good it has accomplished.
But you want to frame it that way? Then fine, let’s get some “pre-Industrial” CO2 levels, but not from the tiny sliver of time you’ve decided is optimum for some delusional reason – let’s go back to when corals evolved, since environmentalists are so worried about corals, and get the CO2 levels UP to the levels they started under.
Ah, but if we did that then we’d have to burn a lot more coal now wouldn’t we? And human progress must be stopped at all cost!
I really don’t understand how shoddy articles like this get published in a scientific magazine. The claims made are outrageous far, far away from reality.
Nice to see the seasons back in the movie. peak CO2 NH at the end of winter time and lowest level at the end of the growing season.
I am with Alan Caruba: Deconstructing the Global Warming Fraud
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2011/02/deconstructing-global-warming-fraud.html
Just wait for the next big volcanic eruption that will put more aerosols and CO2 in the atmosphere than 100 year of industrial revolution.
Solar minimum/hibernation and big volcanic and siesmic events seem to go hand in hand.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBUQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spaceandscience.net%2Fsitebuildercontent%2Fsitebuilderfiles%2Fssrcresearchreport1-2010.doc&rct=j&q=ssrcresearchreport1-2010.doc&ei=TwBbTbzFAcP6lweQrO3aDA&usg=AFQjCNF1HJD0MjijaKaU08YRd-OKCPNaQQ&sig2=r0Gp-ZmUW9FcSx29brYZdw&cad=rja
And yet another model predicts a catastrophic end of the world unless we immediately destroy civilization.
No data reported, no procedures reported, just our impending doom.
And my taxes are paying for this? I weep!
Zeke Hausfather says:
February 16, 2011 at 5:06 pm
Absorption by sinks slows dramatically after that, with an additional 20 percent or so being removed after 500 years and the remaining 10 percent lasting tens if not hundreds of thousands of years before being removed.
=====================================================
Zeke, what would you say a “normal/healthy” CO2 level would be for this planet?
Smokey says:
February 16, 2011 at 5:26 pm
Carbon dioxide has risen almost 40%. Despite that very significant rise, there is no evidence — none — that any global damage has occurred. Reasonable people would expect to see at least some evidence of harm due to such a large increase in this trace gas.
=====================================================
But, but the models say………
That damned reality is a butt kicker! I’ve been, as most of us on this planet, have been hearing nothing but doom and gloom from the Malthusian climate tea leave readers. And nothing ever happens. Some say, because they doomsayers alarmed the world we’ve been able to prevent other man caused disasters. Except they can’t prove any of it. This particular issue though is different. We’ve been inundated with scare mongering of AGW for over 30 years! And nothing has happened. Nade, zip, Nichts, Intet, 何も, Rien, 没有什么.
Did I say nothing? Well, we did manage to spend an enormous amount of money. So much, it is incalculable. We did manage to freeze a few people and starve a few to death……..raise prices on any available good and service, and empower a bunch of Malthusian misanthropists with Marxist characteristics.
“The global temperature is already about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution, which began around the start of the 19th century. ”
IMHO this is not yet a “given,” as long as the temperatures are based on unreliable ground thermometers and further, until just several decades ago they had been located very sparsely across the globe.
Why on earth would anyone want a return to LIA temperatures?!
In fact, it is possible temperatures would continue to escalate even if all cars, heating and cooling systems and other sources of greenhouse gases were suddenly eliminated
They’re also advocating a return to the whip and buggy? To give up the very technology that makes adaptation to extremes in temperature easier? Amish lifestyle for everyone?
That was an amazing video, by the way. You could really see the seasonality in CO2 levels.
the disappearance of 14C from the atmospheric bomb testing give between 12-16 years,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radiocarbon_bomb_spike.svg
steady state calculations suggest the same range.
This has some very nice graphs showing the decline in the SURFACE ocean 14C decline following the tests.
Aching to stop listening to political, emotional , scientific and pseudo-scientific mind-numbing BS from all sides and seeking information to help you make up your own minds about alleged AGW?
Google: What’s Wrong With the Surface Record.
Go to Appendix – Station Records with data to 1998 or 1999.
There are 66 clickable ‘greenfields’ sites, many with records going back over a 100 years listed from all over the world and going back 290 years in the case of Composite Central England..
For data up to 2010, but only from 1880
Google: GISS Surface Temperature Data Analysis
(NASA official James Hansen)
Go to it and do your own informative search !
>>
But uncertainties do not lessen the importance of the findings, he said.
>>
Oh really? I wonder in what other branch of science you could seriously make a statement like that.
>>
The scientists are confident, from the results of equations they used, that some warming would have to occur even if all emissions stopped now. But there are more uncertainties, and thus a lower confidence level, associated with larger temperature increases.
>>
OK , so these uncertainties do matter. I guess it’s a rather Rumsfeldian type of uncertain uncertainties and certain uncertainties.
But don’t forget , no matter how uncertain our uncertain uncertainties may be, that does not detract from our certainty of the importance of certain uncertain results.
At least I think that’s what he’s saying. 😕
You know what? I like the fact the Earth breaths deeply, has a few wrinkles here and there, and is a bit on the CO2 pudgy side, instead of being rack skinny, full of oxygen, cold to the touch, and has pancake smooth skin.
Watching the video, it’s absolutely clear how totally plant absorption and emission dominates the CO2 patterns. The industrial emitters show little or no impact.
That article is garbage, indeed.