Andrew Bolt (via his reader John Coochey) of the Herald Sun notes an astonishing incongruity with expert claims on CO2 warming retention times made about 24 hours apart on radio programs in Australia.
Climate scientist and warmist Andy Pitman on Thursday:
If we could stop emissions tomorrow we would still have 20 to 30 years of warming ahead of us because of inertia of the system.
Climate Commissioner and warmist Tim Flannery on Friday:
If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years
As he titles the post:
Twenty years or 1000? One of these “experts” is hopelessly wrong
Heh, ya think?
well, at least it’s consistent with the climate computer games………..
Scientists want to give the low ball estimate to keep people in the game…
..and keep the money flowing
Re:
Twenty years or 1000? One of these “experts” is hopelessly wrong
Possibly both? Solid evidence that CO2 increases raise global temperatures remains lacking.
Actually, I think both experts are “hoplessly wrong”…
What a world…
Well, they both might be full of crap, but I don’t see an inconsistency. The rise could continue for 20-30 years and then level off and not drop for the hundreds or a thousand or whatever. That’s the “in the pipeline” argument that there is a lag between adding new Co2 to the system and temperature response equilibrium to that addition being achieved.
If the inertial is there, then the temperature would be very stable.
The temperature isn’t stable, so the inertia isn’t there.
It’s neither – Hansen’s Scenario C proves temps begin dropping right away by merely keeping CO2 emissions stable at the year 2000 level.
http://climateaudit.org/2008/07/28/hansen-update/
lol
I agree with Pabce. Both Pitman & Flannery are wrong and declining warmth bears that out.
In your post “CO2 causes unchecked wetdry” Cao makes a similiar comment. He is quoted as saying that it would take several decades for cooling to take place after a reduction of CO2.
OMG, Pitman compares C02 to Cadmium. I honestly don’t know which one is worse-Pitman or Flannery. CAGW delusion has addled their brains.
‘Twenty years or 1000? One of these “experts” is hopelessly wrong’
IMO they are both wrong. The extra CO2 we’ve seen over the last 100y will have had little effect on Earth’s energy level, and natural climate oscillation is the dominant driver.
Considering that the CO2 maximum lags about 800 years in the ice core studies, 12k-14k years before the (next) maximum is reach is more like it.
How could Andy Pitman be wrong? We have paid him so much money to be right:
http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/apitman-funding
And those are Aussie dollars!*
* I can say that now that the Pacific Peso is finally worth something.
The two views are consistent. see inertia.
Hmmm. Let me see. Maybe it was 20 dog years? Under prior optimal climatic conditions that was 140 of our years but now, due to the disruption of warmcold and drywet, that now equals 1000 years?
Or maybe there are now flexible ‘IPCC years’ which cover both this and the rate of Himalayan glacier melt? And also works to calculate the economic pay back of green energy projects.
All we know is that they must both be correct because these guys always are correct.
The real travesty is the idea that we could stop all emissions. Now if I could win the lottery tomorrow, I algoreicise myself and not care what happens to the rest of the world.
steven mosher says:
March 26, 2011 at 2:49 pm
“The two views are consistent. see inertia.”
In theory… but if this is supposed to be science, my six year old granddaughter deserves a PhD. Since a baboon can get a PhD in this field from some faculties if they go with the flow, maybe my pet dog should get one too?
Bark twice for 20 years, three times for a 1000 years. Give that dog a job!
I’ve seen some talk on the half life of CO2 being 5 years, 10 years or even 100 years so I’ve decided to calculate it myself.
h = half life of CO2 (in years)
y = CO2 added to atmosphere annually
r = CO2 resident in atmosphere
x = hy (Amount of CO2 added to atmosphere every half life period)
After n half-lifes of adding x CO2 to the atmosphere we have this amount resident:
r = x/(2^0) + x/(2^1) + x/(2^2) + x/(2^3) + .. + x/(2^n) which approaches 2x for large values of n
But this assumes that the CO2 is added as a lump sum every period h. If we
add x/2 twice over the half life period instead we get:
r = x/2*1/(2^0) + x/2*1/(2^0.5) + x/2*1/(2^1) + x/2*1/(2^1.5) + … + x/2*1/(2^n) ~= 1.71x
In fact, as you increase the number of times you add it during the period then r approaches x/ln(2)
So we have:
r = x/ln(2)
Substitute hy for x
r = hy/ln(2)
Rearrange
h = r * ln(2) / y
r = 2337Gt (300ppm which is the pre-industrial level)
y = 771Gt (Annual natural emissions from land and sea)
Therefore
h = 2337*ln(2)/771 = 2.1 years
So the half life of CO2 is 2.1 years which means if we stop emitting CO2 now then the level will drop back to normal pretty quickly.
Of course this all assumes that CO2 absorption by the land and sea follows a half life pattern.
steven mosher says:
March 26, 2011 at 2:49 pm
The two views are consistent. see inertia.
====================================
So if we stopped all emissions tomorrow…
There would still be warming for the next 20-30 years…
….then temperatures would stay the same for the next several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years
So it would be at least several hundred, perhaps a thousand, years before anything we did would do any good.
You go first………….
See: http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
“So any CO2 impulse injected into the atmosphere will take about 38 years to reduce itself to half the original value.”
So in other words, if we assume CO2 went up from 280 ppm to 390 ppm today, if we stopped emitting today, the CO2 would be down to 308 ppm in 76 years. However since 390 ppm is doing nothing, as there has been very little change in global temperature over the last 10 years, then 308 ppm cannot do any less.
Let us pray the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several thousand years .
Since the temperature is already falling, they’re both hopelessly wrong.
Experts are, by definition, wrong and obsolete.
What exactly is the intertia they are talking about? Inertia when applied to motion is proportional to mass and inertia when applied to thermal systems is proportional to thermal capacity. Since the oceans have one thousand times the heat capacity of the atmosphere it presumeably has to be the oceans that supply the inertia they are talking about. But thanks to Bob Tisdale’s Argo update we know that there has been virtually no increase in Ocean heat content in the 8 years that the buoys have been in full operation. Therefore I can see no evidence to support what either of them is saying.
So do they just make this up? It’s not those models again is it?
Steve is correct, the two views are not contradictory. The first says we will continue to warm for 20-30 years. It says nothing about how long it will take to cool down. The second says nothing about the near term, but that it will take many hundreds of years to cool down. They are discussing different time frames. (I am not saying whether either view is correct – that’s a different question.)
The Catlin Arctic Survey team is not helping to reduce CO2 emissions on their expedition are they?
“…One skidoo snowmobile, 1,000 eggs, 15 sleeping bags, outerbags and fleece liners and 3,200 liters of cooking and heating fuel are just a fraction of the cargo that must be transported to Ice Base. There’s also 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds) of scientific equipment in around 50 boxes…”
…by using 3,200 liters of cooking and heating fuel, (CO2 producers and likely fossil based) they are more intelligently focused on staying alive from carbon based energy sources than freezing to death from windmill, solar panel, and battery based power sources that they could have brought with them. Is the skidoo electric?
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/03/11/arctic.expedition/index.html?hpt=Sbin
Carbon… don’t leave home without it !!
I think all you have to do to become a warming expert is to declare yourself a warming expert. Oh, and forecast doom and gloom for the future if we don’t mend our wicked ways. That way you are guaranteed to be quoted by the tabloid press, the BBC etc. Nobody will ever hold you to account in the mainstream media by looking back at previous crap forecasts. Just keep the doom and gloom coming. Anything out of line is just weather anyway.
I seem to remember reading and watching videos that state that 50% of all anthropogenic CO2 emissions are absorbed by the hydro, litho and biosphere. If that were true, wouldn’t that mean a complete stop in CO2 emissions would result in a drop just as fast as it went up?
I.e. If it took us 22 years to get from 350 ppmv to 390ppmv then it would take 22 years to get back there once we completely stopped all emissions.
MrC
Given the impeccable performance of the CAGW predictions, the unimpeachable clarity of their calculations and the unassailable transparency of their model methodology; I would say that given the rather constant / steady rise in CO2 over the last decade along with the concomittant reduction / flattening of global temperatures (;^) that our two entreprenuers have hit it spot-on. Is there a problem? sarc/off
MrCannuckistan says:
March 26, 2011 at 3:40 pm
I seem to remember reading and watching videos that state that 50% of all anthropogenic CO2 emissions are absorbed by the hydro, litho and biosphere. If that were true, wouldn’t that mean a complete stop in CO2 emissions would result in a drop just as fast as it went up?
It is true that about halve of what humans emitted is absorbed in quantity (not the same molecules!) by other reservoirs, but as human have emitted extra CO2 during 160 years (and smalle quantities somewhat longer), the total extra amount residing in the atmosphere now is 210 GtC (100 oomv CO2) higher than equilibrium. The amounts removed by oceans and vegetation currently are about 4 GtC/year. Thus it will take a lot more time than a few years to remove the excess CO2, the more that the driving force, the difference between CO2 levels in the atmosphere and oceans/vegetation will reduce over time. The 38 years from Peter Dietze, as quoted by Werner Brozek may be spot on…
That’s an easy Q, it’s both. See 20 to 30 years fit right inside the whole several hundred years. Geez, even I know such things. :p
For experts they are absolutely consistant. As CO2/AWG causes everything they can’t be wrong, as self appointed experts they are always wrong.Just the way modern experts work I guess.
It is apparent both have contracted serious cases of irritable climate sydrome, the only cure is to wean each of all tax payer funding and isolation from the general public in a nice friendly green padded cell.
Pitman said “If we could stop emissions tomorrow we would still have 20 to 30 years of warming ahead of us because of inertia of the system.”
What, like we have 10 years without warming behind us?
Flannery said “If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years”
What, like it hasn’t net warmed or cooled in the last 1000 years?
Flannery is the winner as he is consistent in terms of timescales and predicting no change.
Now if they’d made the same predictions 15 years ago (I assume the underlying physics hasn’t altered in the meantime) we’d have had one that said we’d have warmed and still be warming even if CO2 had stabilised, (which it hasn’t), and one that said it would take hundreds of years to cool.
Both of these forecasters would have been pretty relieved to have been proved wrong.
Wouldn’t they?
Maybe they’ll be kind enough to confirm that.
Or then again, perhaps maybe not.
Funny old world.
That’s not inconsistent ! It may betray that neither of them has a clue, what’s going to happen, despite all their tax payer funding, but they’re not inconsistent ( not with each other anyway).
Why don’t we just agree that they’re both wrong?
Tim Flannery, interviewed by the WWF, 2007 (when the AGW movement was in the news every day, oh, the good old times).
Another miss from Bolt. The two statements are consistent with each other. Good grief isn’t Bolt supposed to be a journalist? Isn’t being able to read part of his job description?
X years with temperatures still RISING
Y years before they start FALLING
Bizzarely Bolt seems to be the most influential climate ‘expert’ with at least one major party in Australia…
Well sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits. Perhaps likes Descartes I should sit in an oven and wait for inspiration, or perhaps I should live in a barrel like Diogenes. Neither appeals.
But for all my defects I can recognise things that would make a cat laugh, and this one is most mirthful. So I don’t bother to think about it but instead raise a glass of fine old Rioja to celebrate the joke.
Kindest Regards
NyqOnly says:
March 26, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Another miss from Bolt. The two statements are consistent with each other. Good grief isn’t Bolt supposed to be a journalist? Isn’t being able to read part of his job description?
X years with temperatures still RISING
Y years before they start FALLING
Bizzarely Bolt seems to be the most influential climate ‘expert’ with at least one major party in Australia…
Great Comment. You saved me the trouble of writing it.
I am scratching my head about two things.
1) Why was Bolt’s comment posted here to begin with? It seems that Bolt can’t be bothered to read and think about what he writes, but how did such an error get past Anthony Watts?
2) Why did it take 37 responses until someone noticed the obvious mistake made by Bolt?
Have to agree with Mosher et al. I may be relatively scientifically illiterate, but even I can comprehend that the two comments are not contradictory. Both wrong, very possible.
oops, perhaps the scientific term is, “highly probable”.
latitude
“So it would be at least several hundred, perhaps a thousand, years before anything we did would do any good.
You go first………….
#######
Your assumption is wrong. Theory says that the C02 we put in the atmopshere up to now has had a warming effect. call it .5C just for sake of the argument. If we cut all emissions, the warming will continue for a couple of decades. This is known as inertia. If we cut our emissions, then eventually over time the C02 levels would return to pre industrial. I’m not so convinced that Flannery is correct on the hundreds of years figures, but lets just assume he is correct.
The point of cutting emissions is to arrest the warming at levels that are manageable.
So, the “good” of doing it is more like harm prevention.
Quite simply, do nothing and the world will continue to warm maybe 2-3C over pre industrial
Stop altogether and you limit that to maybe .5-1C
So, will it do “any good” to stop the warming at 1C rather than letting it go to 2-3C?
Some people think so.
Another way to look at it is the damage goes with the square of the temperature increase, so preventing temperature increase has a lot of leverage.
Both Pittman and Flannery were talking about the same article by Susan Solomon et. al. in the PNAS.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.full.pdf+html
Looking at figure 1, it is seen that when CO2 concentration increase is halted at 450 ppM, the surface warming stops very quickly but over the next 1000 years, the CO2 does not get back to its original concentration before the increase in emissions, and the temperature doesn’t get back to anywhere near its original value in that time either.
Mosh, you’re assumption is wrong…
…but you already know I disagree and why
There are too many assumptions, based on computer games and theories, that do not exist in the real world, and only exist inside some computer program.
steven mosher,
“Just for the sake of argument,” let’s say the warming effect from CO2 is ≤0.2°C. That’s Dr Lindzen’s understanding, and I think he knows something about the subject.
There is no credible basis to argue that CO2 is responsible for 0.5° out of a total rise of 0.7°. That sounds like some wild-eyed realclimate WAG. [In fact, a good case can be made that CO2 causes little or no warming, but I’m playing your game here, admittedly with more realistic parameters.]
With that in mind then, please cite the specific global “damage” caused by the extra CO2 molecules. Please stay within the scientific method, and provide us with empirical, testable, reproducible evidence of global “damage” caused specifically by CO2 [keeping in mind that models and pal-reviewed papers are not scientific evidence].
And Latitude has a good point: U.S. CO2 emissions have been declining without the proposed EPA regulations, while China. Brazil, India, etc., etc., are all ramping up their CO2 emissions.
The planet has been several degrees warmer many times over the past ten millennia, and there was no corellation with CO2 leading to temperature rises. In fact, rising CO2 follows temperature rises.
Given these facts, the rise in CO2 has been harmless and beneficial. Unless, of course, you can provide verifiable evidence of global damage due specificaly to the increase in CO2.
You ain’t seen nothing yet!
In the first edition of Tim Flannery’s book, “The Weather Makers: the History and Future Impact of Climate Change” (you can find it in google books), he explains how telekinesis affects climate. An example is, “There is one remarkable aspect of the great aerial ocean that has only recently been appreciated – its telekinesis. The last time you heard of telekinesis was probably when Uri Geller was bending spoons, but the term does have a valid scientific definition. It means ‘movement at a distance without a material connection’, and in the case of the atmosphere telekinesis allows changes to manifest themselves simultaneously in distant regions.”
This is from our (Austrlia’s) head of its Climate Commission. The expert our federal government has appointed to lead a commision to teach us all about the science of climate and global warming. His first degree was in arts majoring in English and his PhD was in long dead marsupials (also found with google – perhaps they will make that harder to find now they are going to start spreading warmist propaganda). So it is not hard to understand why he has problems with the science. What is worrying is that we do not appeared to have moved much beyond the middle ages where those in power relied on advice(?) to blame witches and had them burnt for causing global cooling?
But what is the optimal global temperature and why? What is the goal temperature?
Tenuc says:
March 26, 2011 at 2:38 pm
Unfortunately, science only progresses with each funeral (although as absolutely wrong both of these “experts” are, it really shouldn’t take a funeral to wake people up)!
steven mosher says:
March 26, 2011 at 6:04 pm
But what if it is benefit rather than damage that goes with the square of the temperature increase (at least until we’re out of Ice Age range), so “preventing temperature increase” should be a criminal act and stopping the benefit should be a crime against humanity. Sad that it takes funerals for illogical, irreconcilable, idiotic notions to be swept away; you’d think the value of an education would be a strong propensity for knowledge rather than stroking an unmaleable ego.
These views aren’t completely inconsistent with each other, I suppose 1000 years would be inertia in the extreme. But the question is…are they sure it’s getting warmer?
Cindy in San Diego says:
March 26, 2011 at 7:13 pm
But what is the optimal global temperature and why? What is the goal temperature?
########
14.34786541234682651C
Seriously, nobody who believes in AGW believes there is an optimal temperature. Here is a major concern. Physics tells us that adding more GHGs to the atmospher will warm the planet and NOT cool it. Our best estimates tell us that if we continue to put GHGs into the atmosphere the warming will be around 2C over the next 100 years. It might be more, it might be less. We also can estimate a sea level rise. The problem is that more than half the human populations lives on or near coasts. That means a sea level rise will cause damage. Question. what do we want to do about that?
There are many things we can do about that. We dont even need to know for certain what the sea level rise would be to take action to mitigate the potential damages.
we cant predict earthquakes, or tsunamis. But when we build nuclear power plants by the ocean, we can plan for unpredicatable events. Sometimes we do that well. othertimes we are overly cautious. Other times we are too optimistic.
They are both scientologists, one in the field of climastrology, the other in paleostrology…
What is wrong with a degree or two higher average anyway, we have just had that for the last two years in the NW Australian tropics and had a fantastic couple of wet seasons and dry seasons. Bring on the warming, I say.
Watching the expressions conveyed through Tims eye movements, he gives away when he is having flights of fantasy [see the whites of his eyes all the way round] and when he has to frame lies in an acceptable way for the interviewer {closes his eyes and blathers on} these unstable flashes of emotional responses shows the underlying lack of stability in his normal thinking patterns.
I would not buy girl scout cookies from this man.
steven mosher says:
March 26, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Oh really. I’ve seen multiple requests from Smokey (one just above, by the way) that you provide
And you know what, Mr. Mosher… you NEVER ANSWER HIS FREAKIN’ REQUEST. He’s asking for evidence… EVIDENCE and all you can come back to is some inane repetitive… REPETITIVE statement saying it’s a “GHG” over and over and OVER when in fact there’s no SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE AT ALL THAT IT’S CAUSING A PROBLEM!
At best all you’ve got is some 11th-grade teacher with CO2 in a liter 7-Up bottle assuming that’s how the earth reacts, or some algorithm in some computer model regurgitating assumptions written by some code-slinger. And those assumptions and projections are just that–assumptions and projections!
Do you ever read anybody else’s comments? Or do they just go over/through/under you without making any impression?
Because you can’t answer Smokey, you’re toast.
(And I bet I never hear a peep from you on this, either–but here it is for everybody to see and judge.)
But here’s the final word about your approach. You say:
You use the word “believes” twice in a very definable way because AGW isn’t a scientifically demonstrable phenomenon–it’s a BELIEF SYSTEM!
We also can estimate a sea level rise. The problem is that more than half the human populations lives on or near coasts. That means a sea level rise will cause damage.
The inverse problem is what will happen if conditions arise in the SH similar to the 1300 event.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2007.tb00277.x/abstract
Andy Pitman on Thursday: ” . . . stop emissions tomorrow we would still have 20 to 30 years of warming ahead of us because of inertia of the system.”
Tim Flannery on Friday: ” . . . cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years.”
Steve Mosher on Saturday: “The two views are consistent. see inertia.” ( comment @ March 26, 2011 at 2:49 pm )
John Whitman on Sunday (Taiwan time): None of the above three futures are shown to have sufficient reality based credibility. [The models did not predict, with the observed increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, the actual >10 yr plateau like structure of that questionably significant climate parameter of the IPCC called avg GST ]
John Q. Public (ever since climategate and IPCC gates): We, not belonging to the self-named elite science community, will withdraw all funding until we see a comprehensively more independent (of IPCC and USA gov’t funded science) science to calibrate us toward an unbiased differentiation & integration of competing ideas. : ) Basically, we say to climate science . . . . you need to get with what reality is showing us, science girls and boys.
John
DirkH says:
March 26, 2011 at 5:11 pm
Tim Flannery, interviewed by the WWF, 2007 (when the AGW movement was in the news every day, oh, the good old times).
Flannery states we only have 3 decades in which to “stabilize the climate”? My gosh, what an idiot!
Flannery states “there’s a lot of heat being transferred into the ocean”. Observation isn’t seeing it.
Flannery states “there far too much pollution in the air for the climate to stabilize” and he blames severe weather events are evidence of that, when in fact there hasn’t been an uptick in weather events (what happened to all the hurricanes in the Atlantic this year?)
Flannery states “the ice will melt away and the sun’s energy will be trapped in the ocean” yet when this happens (ice is there in the wintertime), there’s no sunlight on the polar region for the ocean to trap.
That’s as far as I could go with this bozo Flannery in the video. Anybody that believes what he says hasn’t got any more clue than does Flannery. He’s obviously making things up.
Warmer is OK for lifeforms.
Dinosaurs+Hotter Climate+?Violent Storms? = Millions of Years of Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs+Big Asteroid Impact = Extinction
If temperatures were lots warmer when dinosaurs were alive, then they survived “alleged” violent weather storms for millions of years. It took a big asteroid to take them out, not weather or climate.
Any future violent weather allegedly induced by a temperature increase will be quite survivable for our species. Besides, the Earth never gave any guarantee to be gentle on us, and violent events are just “business as usual” for the Universe. Remember Shoemaker-Levy:
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/
I’m glad Jupiter was “in the way” for that one. For guaranteed survival, we need to colonize off the planet. The moon will do for now. “Global Warming” is insignificant in the BIG picture.
Got to run, I smell the turkey I put in the electric oven at 7:30 to celebrate that 1 hour event tonight… mmmmmm… good ! ps: all the neighbors around here kept lights ON!
Steve says “Another way to look at it is the damage goes with the square of the temperature increase, so preventing temperature increase has a lot of leverage.”
What evidence do you have that damage goes as the square?
We have had temperature rise in the past. Has damage squared?
And what is this damage of which you speak.
Most of the leverage requires things like more hurricanes (not happening) and more “extreme” climate events (not happening as you know from the historical record).
The argument that damage is somehow the square of temp increase needs references, but, more importantly, some sort of serious set of evidence. I don’t see any here.
(But maybe I am blinded by the lights of out family’s “Hour of Power” celebration.)
Talk about Dumb Luck…
Me thinking the lighting event started at 7:30 (but not really caring)…
my Oven Clock started auto cooking at 7:30 but it is still on Standard Time, so it really started at 8:30.PDT. I was wondering what took the turkey so long….
Sometimes Murphey winds up working FOR you.
“Bulldust says:
March 26, 2011 at 2:46 pm”
WOW! That is some serious funding there, and that, I am sure, is not even the tip of the AGW iceberg.
Mosher,
Here is some of the “damage” caused or to be caused in our ‘warming’ world.
Boreal forest fires may continue decreasing
Coral island atolls rise
Gulf stream speeds up a little
Indian rice yields to increase
Malaria may continue decreasing in a warming world
Sahel to get more rain
Sea level rise
Was the Roman Empire damaged by warming?
Read this:
[More “Bad for Good and Good For Bad”]
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/02/20/more-bad-for-good-and-good-for-bad/
Mosher,
Here is some more damage
North Atlantic cyclone frequency to decrease [full pdf]
From memory I recall that some of the worst hurricanes occured during the Little Ice Age.
DirkH says:
March 26, 2011 at 5:11 pm
Thanks for that video.
Anyone who doesn’t see that for what it is needs to have their head examined. It is so obviously political. I love the way he (Flannery) is so dismissive of skeptics as to forget that his statements will follow him name in perpetuity. At least his lineage will not have to look all the way back to Neanderthals for the beginning of family enlightenment…IMHO!
steven mosher says:
March 26, 2011 at 6:04 pm
Steven, indeed there is the inertia of the heat accumulation in the oceans, which need theoretically some 30 years to get in equilibrium with the changes in radiation fluxes caused by increased GHGs. But the observations don’t follow the theory: there is no increase of heat content of the oceans, no heat in the pipeline measured since the floats are at work.
The other point is the reduction of CO2 when we should stop all emissions. The thousand years by Flannery is often mentioned, but that is only part of the CO2 equation: The IPCC and others use the Bern model, which is composed of different speeds of CO2 sinks: Ocean surface (app. 1.5 years, but only 10% of the increase in the atmosphere), deep oceans (app. 15 years), vegetation (app. 70 years), rock weathering (1,000 years),… The latter only plays an important role if the deep oceans (and vegetation) are saturating, which is only the case if near all oil and much coal is burned (10-20 times current emissions total since 1850). Until now, there is no saturation of the relative fast CO2 sinks observed (average half life time still is ~38 years). Thus in the current circumstances Flannery is completely wrong, while Pitman is theoretically right, but that is not observed.
If we should stop alle emissions totday, the excess CO2 would halve in about 38 years, thus back to the CO2 levels of some 50 years ago. That also means that the extra heat retention would halve in the same period, thus back to the extra heat of 50 years ago, or halve the extra heat of today. That makes that there would be a theoretical cooling already about 20 years from now, independent of the sensitivity for 2xCO2…
Having read some of the other contributions I now think I see where the AGWers are coming from. They talk about the inertia of the system but are actually describing the persistence of elevated CO2 levels and therefore proposing a sort of warming momentum.
This distinction is is a bit more than pedantry since we are confusing different physical properties.
The intertia of the climate system can be used to explain why the forcing due to CO2 has not so far resulted in as big a rise in temperature as predicted. However the ocean heat data does not support this explanation.
The persistence of CO2 in the atmosphere can be cited as a reason why any warming effect might continue for some time but this is quite hard to justify physically.
As the level of CO2 increases the level of outgoing radiation in the 14 -18 micron band should reduce. In order to maintain the energy balance the surface temperature of the earth has to rise so that increased radiation at other wavelengths can compensate. Exactly how much change in radiation is brought about by this mechanism is still up for debate because the actual measurements are inconclusive and swamped by natural variations as are the temperature changes.
What is unarguable is that if the world had no oceans the changes in outgoing radiation and surface temperature would reach equilibrium in a very short time. My guess would be that it would be a matter of weeks if not days. Once this new equilibrium had been reached there would be no further warming. This is equivalent to the acceleration effect in a car. If you depress the accelerator to a new fixed position the car will accelerate to a new speed where the increase in friction and air resistence balances the increase in power. If one holds the pedal at this point the car travels at constant speed. In the climate case we have pushed the “CO2 accelerator” to a new position so without oceans our current temperature would already be at the new equilibrium temperature resulting from all the accumulated CO2.
Therefore if we had no oceans we could be confident that the effect of CO2 was no greater than the rise in temperature that we have already seen in the last 50 years and on the basis that at least some of this was natural variation or mismeasurement the effect is pretty insignificant.
Therefore we are back to the oceans. This is why Pielke Snr is so adamant about using ocean heat content as the true measure of global warming. The whole argument revolves around the energy balance and this is 99.9% an issue of sea temperature. That is why the Argo buoys are so important and that is why the current tiny change in heat content is such a big threat to AGW hysteria.
“Pre-Industrial levels” is an AGW scam, no such thing. Only an idiot or a conman would think to measure the unproven “background level C02” from the top of the world’s biggest active volcano in a region of great volcanic activity. Why would anyone believe this is deemed a “pristine site measurements uncontaminated by local production” as it’s billed? The whole thing is utterly ridiculous.
CO2 is local everywhere it’s local, it’s heavier than air and doesn’t readily rise into the atmosphere, it comes down under its own weight and everytime it rains, to the ground. How convenient then for us that the plants which feed on it don’t live above cloud level floating in the air, they’d starve.
[Plant stomata are on the underside of leaves. Why?]
In the Thursday interview Professor Andy Pitman seems to show an unbelievable level of ignorance about climate.
He doesn’t appear to know what effect a unit of CO2 has on temperature. he certainly doesn’t volunteer that its effect is logarithmic and the CO2 band is close to saturation. He avoids the question by saying, after some thought, that it depends on the unit (of course) but doesn’t suggest any.
He regards CO2 as a pollutant and likens it to cadmium.
He says that the rise in temperature of 0.74 deg.C over the past century – which he says is certainly due to human activity – is a half ( or a quarter- he can’t remember ) of the difference between an ice age and our current climate. My God.
What amazes me, apart from Andy Pitman being professor of anything, is that he is described as a director of the Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. That says it all.
Jimbo says:
March 27, 2011 at 2:49 am
I looked at the abstract, it made no mention of the AMO’s huge impact on Atlantic storm frequency. I assume they must know about it, but their model can’t handle it.
Listening to the broadcast at the address linked in the article:-
Doesn’t Prof Pitman say, to explain the impact of such a very small proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere, ” it doesn’t really matter how much CO2 ” .
So what’s all the big deal about putting more in then ?
Does he also evade the very simple question , about how much warming for a unit of CO2 added , as the questioner hasn’t specified which unit .
I mean is this guy for real ?
OOps !
Is that the effect you were bemoaning a few days ago Anthony.
Did I really miss out the “> terminator ?
Sorry.
both of them has weaken current efforts done by most countries and agencies
Smokey says:
March 26, 2011 at 6:45 pm
steven mosher,
“Just for the sake of argument,” let’s say the warming effect from CO2 is ≤0.2°C. That’s Dr Lindzen’s understanding, and I think he knows something about the subject.
The fact is that two independent polls of scientists get a figure of 97% who disagree with Lindzen. Why take his word for the role of GHG’s?
There is no credible basis to argue that CO2 is responsible for 0.5° out of a total rise of 0.7°. That sounds like some wild-eyed realclimate WAG. [In fact, a good case can be made that CO2 causes little or no warming, but I’m playing your game here, admittedly with more realistic parameters.]
[SNIP]
With that in mind then, please cite the specific global “damage” caused by the extra CO2 molecules. Please stay within the scientific method, and provide us with empirical, testable, reproducible evidence of global “damage” caused specifically by CO2 [keeping in mind that models and pal-reviewed papers are not scientific evidence].
Since this damage is mainly in the future, and models are the only means of predicting the future, you are asking the impossible. Even determination of the role of CO2 in the past requires models. Your requirements preclude the use of science in understanding the past and predicting the future. Without scientific models we would still be in the pre-industrial age. This doesn’t seem like a recipe for the success of mankind.
And Latitude has a good point: U.S. CO2 emissions have been declining without the proposed EPA regulations, while China. Brazil, India, etc., etc., are all ramping up their CO2 emissions.
Latitude, is wrong. US emissions are on an increasing trend, which has halted temporarily in 2008 by the recession.
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/carbon-emissions/united_states_of_america.html
The planet has been several degrees warmer many times over the past ten millennia, and there was no corellation with CO2 leading to temperature rises. In fact, rising CO2 follows temperature rises.
The human population was not 7Billion people during these past times. The human population had time and space to migrate to different areas during the ice ages. Some species which didn’t have the ability to migrate were wiped out. The US defence department studied the projections of climate change and claimed that it would adversely affect the security of the US.
Given these facts, the rise in CO2 has been harmless and beneficial. Unless, of course, you can provide verifiable evidence of global damage due specificaly to the increase in CO2.
Your argument is a straw man. The expected damage from CO2 is not in the past, but rather in the future. In addition, what you call facts are fallacies.
Remember the most important rule of the AGW community:
If it can be construed as something bad, it is caused by CO2 and is worse than predicted.
If it is something good, it is actually bad, and worse than predicted.
So both the 20 – 30 year and the 1000 year claim are true, and both are worse than predicted.
Myrrh says:
March 27, 2011 at 4:34 am
[Snip. This is the second time today that you have called another commentator a “denialist.” Please read the site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]
eadler,
The link to U.S. CO2 emissions confirms what I wrote: U.S. CO2 emissions have started to decline.
eadler should check these things before shooting himself in his own foot. Next, eadler states: “The human population was not 7Billion people during these past times.”
And the human population is not 7 billion now. But what do facts matter to religious CAGW true believers? Emotion is what maters, and fear is a strong emotion.
hunter is right: “If it can be construed as something bad, it is caused by CO2 and is worse than predicted.”
Adler’s response: “The expected damage from CO2 is not in the past, but rather in the future.”
Translation: Mr Smokey is 100% correct; there is zero evidence of damage from CO2. It is all in the future – and it always will be. That way, no evidence is required, the scientific method can be safely ignored, and the CAGW scare can be perpetuated by the ignoratii.
A 40% increase in CO2 is not minor, it is a big increase. But eadler can not identify any damage caused by that substantial rise. Rational folks conclude that CO2 is not the problem claimed. But the eadlers of the world have so much of their egos invested in their evidence-free CAGW belief system that they can’t accept reality. So eadler’s incredibly weak rejoinder is: “The expected damage from CO2 is not in the past, but rather in the future.” Pure cognitive dissonance: The flying saucer didn’t arrive as I predicted, but that doesn’t mean there is no flying saucer…
eadler, there is no flying saucer. And there never was.
And Latitude has a good point: U.S. CO2 emissions have been declining without the proposed EPA regulations, while China. Brazil, India, etc., etc., are all ramping up their CO2 emissions.
=======================================================
eadler says:
March 27, 2011 at 7:16 am
Latitude, is wrong. US emissions are on an increasing trend, which has halted temporarily in 2008 by the recession
=================================================
Latitude is not wrong eadler
” From 2005 to 2006, emissions from fuel combustion decreased for the first time since 2000 to 2001″
” After experiencing a decrease from 2005 to 2006″
” Emissions from fossil fuel combustion decreased from 2007 to 2008″
” From 2008 to 2009, fossil fuel combustion emissions experienced a decrease of 6.4 percent, the greatest decrease of any year over the course of the twenty-year period.”
EPA
2. Trends in Greenhouse Gas Emissions
2.1. Recent Trends in U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sink
http://epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads11/US-GHG-Inventory-2011-Chapter-2-Trends.pdf
Someone on this board once observed that, in the absence of wind, a patch of growing corn would suck all the CO2 out of the atmosphere above it in about 15 minutes.
Plants thrive on CO2. So would it not be reasonable to assume that if atmospheric CO2 continues to increase, plant life on Earth will increase proportionately, sucking more CO2 out of the atmosphere?
More plants, more food for animals (like humans), a greater range of shirtsleeve temperatures (assuming the Alarmist models are right and the plants don’t use all the CO2 up)—if that’s “damage,” I’ll take more of it!
/Mr Lynn
REPLY: It is already happening and measure, see my post on The Biosphere is Booming: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
-Anthony
For disasters however they want to give the highest estimate, for the same reason. That’s what I call second order cherry picking.
Mr Lynn,
I’ve quoted Prof Freeman Dyson a few times. Here’s what he wrote:
“A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all the carbon dioxide within a meter of the ground in about five minutes. If the air were not constantly stirred by convection currents and winds, the corn would stop growing.” [source]
Others can correct me but I can think of only two ways for this infamous inertia to exist.
A-) Once released into the atmosphere, CO2 molecules get in a line waiting to be ushered into the seat of warming. So what you belch today may not cause any warming for 20-30-1000 years.
Hmmmm that’s just bull$hit. Once in the air, all CO2 molecules adhere to the same physical laws. There are none hiding around the corner like a boogey man waiting to get us some decades into the future.
B-) CO2 molecules do cause warming immediately upon release, but this warming is sequestered in the vast oceans, primed and ready to warm the atmosphere for 10-20-1000 years.
Problem with inertia B is that this sequestered warmth had to be in the atmosphere first, but there has only been 0.7DegC of it over the last 100 years or so (this is disputed). It can only be released if the atmosphere is cooler than the ocean and then it can only re-warm the atmosphere by 0.7DegC i.e back to square one. A patch of ocean at say 14.7DegC can’t warm the air above it to 14.8DegC
So if all emissions were to stop now, the atmosphere cannot possibly keep warming under inertia B.
Inertia my a$$
Myrrh says:
March 27, 2011 at 4:34 am
“Pre-Industrial levels” is an AGW scam, no such thing. Only an idiot or a conman would think to measure the unproven “background level C02″ from the top of the world’s biggest active volcano in a region of great volcanic activity.
Before saying things like this, please look at where CO2 is measured: at some 70 places they measure “background” CO2 in air, including regular ships cruises and buoys over the oceans, airplanes and nowadays satellites. There are relative huge seasonal variations, mainly in the NH, but the yearly averages are within 2 ppmv for each hemisphere and maximum 5 ppmv between the NH and the (lagging) SH. See:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/iadv/
Compare the differences between the stations and the trends of several stations from near the North Pole to the South Pole:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends.jpg
CO2 is local everywhere it’s local, it’s heavier than air and doesn’t readily rise into the atmosphere
Indeed all CO2 levels are “local”, but some are more local than others. 95% of the atmosphere has about the same CO2 level, if averaged over a year. Only the first few hundred meters over land show huge variability and is unsuitable for “background” measurements.
That CO2 is heavier than air only plays a role if huge quantities are released at once, once mixed it stays mixed until captured by the oceans or vegetation. That is the case for all gases, including very heavy molecules like CFK’s, which can be measured up to the stratosphere… See Brownian motion:
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/brownian.htm
That humans are the cause of the increase of CO2 over the pre-industrial level was discussed several times here on WUWT, but a good overview is here:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
Baa Humbug, on your inertia point B, do you think CO2 in the atmosphere should cause the ocean to warm immediately or slowly. Those are your choices.
@
Jimbo says:
March 27, 2011 at 2:49 am
…From memory I recall that some of the worst hurricanes occured during the Little Ice Age.
Dang. How old are you?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
March 27, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Re My “Pre-Industrial levels” is an AGW scam, etc.”
Before saying things like this, please look at where CO2 is measured: at some 70 places they measure “background” CO2 in air, including regular ships cruises and buoys over the oceans… etc.”
Ferdinand, please, believe me, I’ve said this before. I have looked at these, and your site. Have you ever bothered to read any of my links?
The beginning is as I’ve said above in my post, a scam. No scientist worth his salt would think of going to the worlds largest active volcano in arguably the world’s most active volcanic region with the intention of measuring “background CO2” surrounded by thousands of earthquakes a year spewing out CO2 into the warm ocean and surrounded by other active volcanoes doing the same in the air. It’s ABSURD.
That this is officially the poster child station of AGW and officially described as “a pristine site” for measurement, i.e., that this station is uncontaminated by local production, is equally absurd.
Who came up with the idea of “background CO2”? – Keeling. There’s no such thing. This is the man who took the lowest readings of the then extensive research on CO2 levels, but only from an already well known and discredited research method, and ignored all the other data. He cherry picked. He then claimed after LESS THAN TWO YEARS of measuring this ‘background CO2’ on a sodding volcano, that he had detected a definite trend of rising global levels from man-made emissions. HOW???!!!
That’s scientific method? Less than two years to establish ‘global’? He could tell man-made from volcanic? How? What’s ‘global’ about that particular site? Trade winds coming from the ring of fire and massive local volcanic production. He had an agenda, he didn’t like coal.
Did he produce anything, anything at all, to explain this ‘global background’? No. Because it’s nonsense. And, co-ordinated nonsense it continued to be because his son took over being in charge of this ‘station’ data at Scripps and as the movement spread so did the interests coming on board, until in the 70’s it became a government organised scam, and all the data is now co-ordinated to fit. NOAA and NASA have been proved to be complicit in fixing temperature data, what on earth would lead you to think that there is any real science behind all these ‘stations’ monitoring CO2 levels?
Here’s an in a nutshell background to the original work on measuring CO2: http://www.real-debt-elimination.com/real_freedom/Propaganda/Global_Warming_Myth/carbon_cycle-modeling_and_CO2.htm
There was absolutely no scientific method employed, but instead deliberate manipulation to create the results desired to fit a particular agenda. That hasn’t changed.
Re my “CO2 is local everywhere it’s local, it’s heavier than air and doesn’t readily rise into the atmosphere.”
Indeed all CO2 levels are “local”, but some are more local than others. 95% of the atmosphere has about the same CO2 level, if averaged over a year. Only the first few hundred meters over land show huge variability and is unsuitable for “background” measurements.
That CO2 is heavier than air only plays a role if huge quantities are released at once, once mixed it stays mixed until captured by the oceans or vegetation.
Oh right, the old “well-mixed” meme. And somehow large amounts of CO2 are sticky? Or what?
So how is it different for CO2 in large quantities than isn’t applicable to an individual molecule of CO2?
See Brownian motion: http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/brownian.htm
Yes, thanks, but I can’t see it, my computer doesn’t load java. Describe it.
That is the case for all gases, including very heavy molecules like CFK’s, which can be measured up to the stratosphere..
? Not that I’ve ever seen convincing proof for.
That humans are the cause of the increase of CO2 over the pre-industrial level was discussed several times here on WUWT, but a good overview is here: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
See my first link. A scam from the beginning doesn’t morph into real science by adding more assumptions, why should Antarctic ice cores show anything but local CO2? Not exactly huge CO2 production factories are they? Although they do have volcanic activity also. This still isn’t proof of “background”. A vague average per year showing a steady increase to fit in with Mauna Loa cherry picked and pre-determined is no proof that such “background” actually exists. AIRS satellite data showed CO2 was not “well-mixed”, but lumpy and the conclusion was they would have to rethink the part winds played in this, it came as a shock because they believed the meme that it was “well-mixed and stayed well-mixed”. Also bearing in mind that this was mid-troposphere level and since it isn’t always windy and CO2 is heavier than air and doesn’t readily rise up into the atmosphere, then volcanic activity and planes are the most likely sources of anything measured that high. (ditto volcanoes for CFC’s)
Again, you claim you can tell how much of this “background” is man-made, but this geologist says you can’t: http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
One of you is wrong.
Please read it, he also has something interesting to say about Keeling and his method, that he chucked observation for statistical fantasy – which as has also been covered extensively on WUWT, and is the new science of computer modeling in AGW: set your own nonsense parameters and get nonsense results bearing no relation to the real world.
In the real world Brownian motion is the movement of random particles suspended in a fluid, i.e. liquid or gas, and distance measured up to millimetres. Why? Because real gases have volume, have weight, are subject to gravity and atmospheric pressure. Only imaginary ideal gases which don’t have volume or weight, zip through the imaginary empty atmosphere at these amazing speeds to “mix-thoroughly” by diffusion.. No sound in the AGW atmosphere, except empty vessels making much noise.
Look up Brownian motion, wiki’s page on it is good, and look up wiki page on diffusion.
From wiki on diffusion: “While Brownian motion of large molecules is observable under a microscope, small-molecule diffusion can only be probed in carefully controlled experimental conditions. Under normal conditions, molecular diffusion is relevant ony on length scales between nanometer and millimeter. On larger length scale s, transport in liquids and gases is normally due to another transport phenomenon, convection.
Therefore, some often cited examples of diffusion are wrong: If cologne is sprayed in one place, it will soon be smelled in the entire room, but a simple calculation shows that this cannot be due to diffusion; the cause can only be convection. If ink is dropped in water, one usually observes an inhomogeneous evolution of the spatial distribution, which clearly indicates convection; diffusion dominates only in perfect thermal equilibrium.”
The Earth’s atmosphere is not a perfect thermal equilibrium. CO2 does not mix thoroughly by Brownian motion or diffusion any more than does heat. That’s why a lot of people choose to go to warmer countries for their holidays, because they know from observation of the real world that heat doesn’t diffuse to mix thoroughly ..
AGWScience is imaginary, it describes an imaginary world, through the looking glass with Alice impossible world. Only in such an imaginary world does CO2, which is one and half times heavier than air in the real world, diffuse into the atmosphere to mix thoroughly and then can’t be un-mixed. Where have such ideas come from? From an agenda, and achieved by taking physical laws out of context of the specific constraints in application.
Myrrh says:
March 27, 2011 at 5:43 pm
I agree w/ your statements about Mauna Loa , I have flown over the area many times in the last 10 years. Planes (especially since the volcano has erupted) going to the other islands circle the mountains coming and going, night and day. Check the flight patterns. When landing at Maui almost all the time they go by the volcano as they are decending. I have seen the Mauna Loa complex also. That has to have an effect on the Co2 levels as a lot of flights fly by constantly. Also the CFC farce was just as political as CO2. They had other reasons to stop production as it was ez to produce dangerous gasses for a weapon. It was also a test run for the CO2 scam . CO2 and Halon fire extingushers can be sprayed over a very hot fire with the hot gasses shooting up into the air and they still fall over the flames like a heavy blanket otherwise they would not work so well.
Re plant consumption of CO2:
Thanks. Missed that one; hard to keep up with the flood of good stuff.
Five minutes, not fifteen as I remembered! How can we get every so-called ‘science reporter’ to appreciate the significance of this fact?
How long would it take for Earth’s green biota to suck up all of the CO2 generated by burning fossil fuels in, say, a year? Realizing that increased CO2 means more plant life, and realizing that the human component of atmospheric CO2 is a tiny fraction of the total, probably not long.
/Mr Lynn
Myrrh says:
March 27, 2011 at 5:43 pm
Myrrh,
Without reopening the whole discussion again, here a few remarks:
– That pre-Mauna Loa CO2 levels were higher in some years is based on the work of the late Ernst Beck. I have read his work in detail. The main problem with his work is that many of the historical measurements were done over land, where you can measure any level of CO2: extremely high at night and near huge sources, very low during daylight near vegetation. The 1942 peak value is mainly from two long series over land (Giessen, Germany and Poona, India), with huge variability (Giessen: 68 ppmv – one sigma). In the same year at the other end of the world (US) values of 250 ppmv were measured. Both series and the value from the US can’t be used to estimate backgound CO2 levels of that period. Measurements on ships over the oceans and coastal with wind from the seaside show values around the ice core CO2 levels for the overlapping periods. There is no 1942 “peak” visible in ice cores, neither in stomata data or d13C values of coralline sponges.
– Segalstad is wrong on many counts: there is not the slightest connection between residence time and excess CO2 decay time. Residence time only shows how much CO2 is exchanged over the seasons, but that has nothing to do with how much CO2 is added or removed at the end of a full seasonal cycle. That is what counts, not which molecules (human or natural) are left. And as humans add twice the amount which is measured as increase, that makes that humans are fully responsible for most of the increase.
– new infra-red (IR) absorbing instrumental method, never validated versus the accurate wet chemical techniques.
How can you validate a new technique with an accuracy of +/-0.1 ppmv against a wet chemical method “accurate” to +/-10 ppmv? Keeling validated the new method against an extreme accurate manometric method (1:40,000 for CO2 levels, still in use at Scripps).
– Jaworowski tells stories from 1992, which were fully refuted in 1996 by the work of Etheridge e.a.: Etheridge measured CO2 levels top down in the firn from near the surface to closing depth. That shows that the CO2 levels at 72 m depth in average are some 10 years older than at the surface (with similar levels in ice cores and firn), while the ice is already 40 years old. Thus Jaworowski is completely wrong that there is no difference between ice age and gas age in ice cores. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_overlap.jpg
Further, it is physically impossible to measure lower CO2 levels in ice cores, if the outside CO2 level is much higher and there would be cracks in the ice which allow exchanges with the outside world.
– Volcanic CO2 is estimated less than 1% of human emissions. Even the largest volcanic eruption of the past 50 years, the Pinatubo, caused a drop in CO2 increase rate, as the cooling resulting from the ash cloud caused more absorption than the extra addition of CO2 from the eruption. Moreover, what Timothy Casey missed is that volcanic CO2 is higher in d13C than the atmospheric CO2, but we see a decrease in d13C, not an increase.
About your own objections:
– Mauna Loa was not the first station where CO2 was measured, the South Pole was first. Mauna Loa only confirmed the South Pole measurements.
– Mauna Loa monitors the CO2 levels continuously. If there is a huge variability within an hour of the 10-second samples, then the data are not used for averaging. That happens with downwind conditions. In fact these data (some +4 ppmv) are used to calculate the emissions from the volcano. The same for upwind conditions, where slightly depleted levels (-4 ppmv, caused by vegetation in the valley) are found. Taking these values into the averaging doesn’t change the average with more than 0.1 ppmv, neither changes the trend. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/mlo2004_hr_raw.jpg and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/mlo2004_hr_selected.gif
– and all the data is now co-ordinated to fit
This is pure nonsense. The only thing that is coordinated by the WMO via NOAA is the preparation and calibration of calibration mixtures (even so, Scripps still has its own calibration mixtures). The 70 baseline stations are operated by different people from different organisations in different countries. Nobody tells them to “fit” some agenda. Or do you think that not one of the hundreds of people involved would bring that out?
– Oh right, the old “well-mixed” meme. And somehow large amounts of CO2 are sticky? Or what?
It is a matter of mixing speed: If you release a huge quantity at once, that amount is residing near ground, eventually killing trees (Mammoth Lakes) and humans (African lake). But within hours, the wind disperses and mixes CO2 within other molecules. To distribute that worldwide needs time: days to weeks within one latitude and altitude, weeks to months within one hemisphere for different altitudes and latitudes and some 14 months between the hemispheres. That are the differences you see in the monthly satellite data: some +/-8 ppmv over the seasons (look at the scale!). If that isn’t well mixed, then I don’t know what is well mixed according to you.
And the trend everywhere is +60 ppmv over the past 50 years, far beyond the temporary differences over the seasons.
– Brownian motion: If molecules can transport heavier items over any distance, then there is no reason that they can’t carry much smaller molecules to any place in the atmosphere, even if these are relative heavier than the average. CO2 levels at 3,400 m at Mauna Loa are the same as at sea level (Cape Kumukahi) on Hawai. While wind and convection are the main mixing items, Brownian motion is what keeps CO2 and any other gas in the mix.
For CFC’s in the stratosphere, see:
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=9549
CO2 levels are amongst the best measured and quality controlled data I know of. It doesn’t matter if you use the Mauna Loa data or any of the other baseline stations (the “global” CO2 data are the average of several sealevel stations, Mauna Loa not included). All show the same trend. One can only hope that one day the temperature data will be of the same quality…
Mr Lynn says:
March 27, 2011 at 9:54 pm
How long would it take for Earth’s green biota to suck up all of the CO2 generated by burning fossil fuels in, say, a year? Realizing that increased CO2 means more plant life, and realizing that the human component of atmospheric CO2 is a tiny fraction of the total, probably not long.
About 38 years half life for removing the excess CO2 by land plants end oceans, see:
http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
A doubling of atmospheric CO2 increases growth speed of different plants with 0-100%, average some 50%, thus not all extra CO2 is absorbed in the same year (and some comes back at the end of the growing season), but there is definitely an increase of more or less permanent carbon sequestering. The same in the ocean surface layer, but that is limited to about 10% of the atmospheric increase (due to equilibrium reactions with bicarbonates and carbonates). The deep oceans store the differences. In total some 50% of the yearly human emissions in quantity (not necessary the same molecules) are absorbed by plants and oceans…
Latitude Said,
Latitude is not wrong eadler
” From 2005 to 2006, emissions from fuel combustion decreased for the first time since 2000 to 2001″
” After experiencing a decrease from 2005 to 2006″
” Emissions from fossil fuel combustion decreased from 2007 to 2008″
” From 2008 to 2009, fossil fuel combustion emissions experienced a decrease of 6.4 percent, the greatest decrease of any year over the course of the twenty-year period.”
EPA
2. Trends in Greenhouse Gas Emissions
2.1. Recent Trends in U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sink
http://epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads11/US-GHG-Inventory-2011-Chapter-2-Trends.pdf
The original argument was that the EPA does not need to regulate CO2 emissions because there is a declining trend in emissions without it.
I argued that there is no declining trend, and the most recent decline is due to the recession. The link that you provided does say there were some years in which there was a decline, but the reason for the latest decline does not give us confidence that there is a trend that will last. Explaining the decline between 2008 and 2009, it says:
The following factors were primary contributors
to this decrease: (1) a decrease in economic output resulting in a decrease in energy consumption across all sectors;
and (2) a decrease in the carbon intensity of fuels used to generate electricity due to fuel switching as the price of coal increased, and the price of natural gas decreased significantly.
As the economy snaps back and there is more energy consumption, this decline should not be expected to continue of its own accord.
http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/2009emissions-proj
The US emissions target for 2020 is a paltry 17% reduction below 2005. This is clearly insufficient to impact climate change due to GHG’s.
Jim K says:
March 27, 2011 @ 8:45 pm
I agree w/your statements about Mauna Loa, I have flown over the area many times in the last 10 years. Planes (especially since the volcano has erupted) going to the other islands cirecles the mountains coming and going night and day..
Keeling wasn’t interested in real observation, he said that – my geologist link above. Ferdinand thinks Keeling is a real scientist so thinks all the explanations coming from this promoted view are real science and so tries to make them make sense, but Keeling decided that the Antarctic wasn’t good enough for his purpose, not enough change, so where better to go than the world’s great hot spot for volcanic activity? To have such an abundance of CO2 to play with in the pre-determined agenda of showing a rising global yearly trend.
So eager to establish this, he couldn’t even wait 2 years before making the announcement! In what scientific field would such data be acceptable as proof that there is a yearly increase of anything? Ferdinand misses these little things or dismisses them as unimportant, but those who objectively observe such unscientific tweakings being made are the real scientists, that see the volcanoes sending up CO2 and the planes, increasingly heavier traffic over the decades, releasing it day and night into the Keeling measuring flasks from which AGW claim to be able to extract non-local production of CO2 with such great precision.
Ferdinand – I’m not going to answer all your points, since you ignore them anyway, but one thing I do find strange is your dismissal of all previous studies of the variable local production of CO2, as Keeling et al did, because they ‘can’t be used in establishing background’, when they are actually showing the real state of CO2 in our atmosphere because the only way you can claim this mythical ‘background’ exists is by torturing ideal gas laws.
Because CO2 is heavier than air it is generally, normally, limited in distance travelled, this variable local CO2 is CO2 in real life. It is subject to local winds and warmth and rain. Some certainly from the tops of volcanoes will go shooting into higher wind patterns, but even then, being heavier than air it will always gravitate downwards, because, something, anything, heavier than air will displace air to reach the ground, or will come down in the rain.
It takes energy to move something heavier than air into the mid and upper atmosphere, neither CO2 nor CFC’s have any ability to do this of their own volition. Brownian motion is limited to nanometers and millimeters – a molecule can not travel at such speeds through the fluid atmosphere which is the gas Air, which also has great weight – do you know how heavy air is on every square foot of ground? Ideal gas laws cannot apply here, because ideal gases have no volume, no weight, are not subject to gravity, etc.
The air above us, our atmosphere, is a very heavy fluid in which molecules do not move very far at all. That’s why sound travels the way it does; the vibration of sound causing molecules to bash the others next to them in the line of sound and pass that on as they themselves vibrate back to their own places and stop. They may well be moving very very quickly on the spot, but going nowhere fast unless something else is moving them through the much thicker volume around them. Our atmosphere is the gas Air, it has weight and volume, it is not empty space.
Within that the molecules of CO2 are heavyweights compared with Nitrogen and Oxygen, and push these nitrogen and oxygen molecules aside as they come to earth with a bump. Poetic licence. Likewise CFC’s, even heavier than CO2. Even more illogical in natural established science to think that these can rise from the ground up into the stratosphere on their own volition or by the impossible ‘ideal gas’ laws, which describe an imaginary gas, not a real one. I urge you to investigate this further, because you’re taking on trust that which is not credible in our normal, day to day, physical reality.
Myrrh says:
March 29, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Keeling wasn’t interested in real observation, he said that – my geologist link above.
Well your geologist is wrong at least on one important point: volcanic CO2 is not the cause of the increase of CO2, simply because its 13C/12C ratio is the other way out, compared to the observations. That shows to me that he either hasn’t looked at the data or simply ignored them.
Moreover, if volcanic activity was the cause, why would there be a near constant increase at about 50% of human emissions? CO2 levels didn’t peak at Mauna Loa when the volcano there erupted, neither showed a decline after the eruption.
I didn’t find any remark on Keeling’s attitude: Keeling was hardly interested in “global warming”, as far as that was an item at all in the 1950’s, it was seen as something beneficial! The only interest of Keeling was good, continuous, measurements of CO2, which costed him a lifetime of struggle against several administrations. See:
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/publications/keeling_autobiography.pdf
Keeling decided that the Antarctic wasn’t good enough for his purpose, not enough change
What a nonsense: The measurements at the South Pole still are done since the start: continuously from 1957 to 1963, before (1956) and after that with (bi-)weekly flask samples, later again with continuous equipment. The variability indeed is less than at Mauna Loa, simply because the SH has less vegetation, thus less seasonal variability. And less outliers (except for mechanical problems in the harsh conditions there), because there is no vegetation and no volcano at least 1,300 km away. Even so the the trend is exactly the same as at Mauna Loa (except for a lag of about 14 months). Here a plot of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere at Mauna Loa and the South Pole since 1960, versus the human emissions:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1960_2006.jpg
If you think that the increase is from some natural source, I am very curious which one can follow the human emissions in such an exact ratio.
And indeed, Keeling could declare that there was an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere after only one-two years of measurements (at Mauna Loa and the South Pole): his new method was accurate enough to detect the increase (which was already presumed, but couldn’t be confirmed with the wet chemical methods).
your dismissal of all previous studies of the variable local production of CO2, as Keeling et al did
Keeling did exactly the opposite: he observed a huge variability in local CO2 levels in the Big Sur forest (California), but also measured the 13C/12C ratio, so he did know that vegetation was the main cause of the variability. He also found that in the afternoon, levels were leveling everywhere, showing about the same CO2 level over fields, in deserts and over the oceans. That was the reason for him to look at places where the least contamination by sources and sinks of CO2 were.
CO2 levels in the first 200 meters above land are extremely variable, simply because CO2 sinks and sources are adding and substracting CO2 and the air mass is not completely mixed. Even so, some 400 CO2 monitoring stations (including tall towers) are trying to establish CO2 fluxes over large areas. Above 500 m over land and everywhere above the oceans, deserts and icefields, air masses are well mixed, be it with a delay for the huge seasonal exchanges from oceans and vegetation. That is for 95% of the atmosphere. The 5% of the atmosphere with high variability is of no interest at all for any discussion about the greenhouse effect. Even if there was 1,000 ppmv CO2 in the first 1,000 meter, the radiation absorption effect would give less than 0.1°C increase. For 95% of the atmosphere, the CO2 levels are within +/-3 ppmv worldwide for yearly averages. Confirmed by stations, ships, airplanes and nowadays satellites. That are solid data, unlike temperature data.
It takes energy to move something heavier than air into the mid and upper atmosphere, neither CO2 nor CFC’s have any ability to do this of their own volition.
Brownian motion takes the energy from collisions with air molecules. It carries much heavier stuff than CO2 or CFC molecules and keeps them within the air, without dropping out. It is the wind and convection which mixes CO2 into the rest of the air and everywhere around the world, but Brownian motion keeps the CO2 in (only in total standstill, some small increase – ~1% – at the bottom of 72 meter of firn after 40 years can be measured). Please consult anyone familiar with gases and vapours about this item, he/she will confirm what I say.
And this is based on observations, not any theoretical consideration.
I had some figures about how much CO2 is absorbed in rain, but lost them, all I remember is that it was negligible for CO2 level measurements.