My New Paper On The Economics And Science Of Climate Change
Guest Post by Alan Carlin
On Friday my new paper on climate change science and economics was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, a peer-reviewed journal. The paper is unusual from a number of different perspectives.
From a policy perspective, the paper’s conclusions include the following:
· The economic benefits of reducing CO2 emissions may be about two orders of magnitude less than those estimated by most economists because the climate sensitivity factor is much lower than assumed by the United Nations because feedback is negative rather than positive and the effects of CO2 emissions reductions on atmospheric CO2 appear to be short rather than long lasting.
· The costs of CO2 emissions reductions are perhaps an order of magnitude higher than usually estimated because of technological and implementation problems recently identified.
· CO2 emissions reductions are economically unattractive since the few benefits remaining after the corrections for the above effects are quite unlikely to economically justify the much higher costs unless much lower cost geoengineering is used.
· The risk of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming appears to be so low that it is not currently worth doing anything to try to control it, including geoengineering.
From a historical perspective, the paper builds on my Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act, prepared for the US Environmental Protection Agency in early 2009, by presenting an expanded version of a few portions of that material in journal article format, incorporating many new or updated references, and explaining the implications of the science for the economic benefits and costs of climate change control.
It is also particularly noteworthy for appearing in a peer-reviewed journal rather than the “gray literature,” such as a report to EPA, where many skeptic analyses end up—something that warmists never fail to point out. Although this article was not written for EPA, it has major implications for the scientific validity (or lack thereof) of the December 2009 EPA Endangerment Finding and the economics that EPA and many economists have used to justify current efforts to regulate the emission of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, cap-and-trade schemes, and other approaches to controlling climate change.
From a scientific perspective, the paper starts with a detailed examination of the scientific validity of two of the central tenets of the AGW hypothesis. By applying the scientific method the paper shows why these two tenets are not scientifically valid since predictions made using these hypotheses fail to correspond with observational data. (See primarily Section 2.).
From an economic perspective, the paper then develops correction factors to be used to adjust previous economic estimates of the economic benefits of global warming control for these scientifically invalid aspects of the AGW hypothesis. (See primarily Section 2.) It also briefly summarizes many of the previous analyses of the economic benefits and costs of climate control, analyzes why previous analyses reached the conclusions they did, and contrasts them with the policy conclusions reached in this paper. (See primarily Section 5.) It also critically examines the economic costs of control. (See primarily Section 3.)
From a methodological perspective the article argues that economic analyses of interdisciplinary issues such as climate change would be much more useful if they critically examine what other disciplines have to say, insist on using the most relevant observational data and the scientific method, and examine lower cost alternatives that would accomplish the same objectives. (See primarily Section 1.) These general principles are illustrated by applying them to the case of climate change mitigation, one of the most interdisciplinary of public policy issues. The analysis shows how use of these principles leads to quite different conclusions than those of most previous such economic analyses.
Additional background and access information can be found at carlineconomics.com.
A CEI press release on it can be found at http://cei.org/news-releases/epa-whistleblower-criticizes-global-warming-science-and-policy-new-peer-reviewed-study . My 2009 report to EPA can be downloaded from http://www.carlineconomics.com/archives/1
See also:
Folks, it seems that we are again and again going to discuss the same points. Alan Carlin indeed is wrong to quote Segalstad on the point of residence time, because Segalstad talks about residence time of CO2. On that point Telfort and Eadler are right. Which doesn’t make them right on other points or that one should dismiss the rest of the article…
Residence time has nothing to do with how long an excess amount of CO2 above the temperature controlled dynamic equilibrium stays in the atmosphere. The residence time is based on the amount of CO2 which is exchanged between the atmosphere and other reservoirs (oceans and vegetation) over the seasons, thus within a year. Which is about 150 GtC on the 800 GtC in the atmosphere. What is important is how much is removed from the atmosphere after a year, not how much is exchanged within a year. That currently is only 4 GtC from the 800 GtC in the atmosphere. To go back to the pre-industrial 290 ppmv (580 GtC, the dynamic equilibrium CO2 level for the current warm period), would need far more time than the residence time indicates (but far less than the IPCC estimates): about 40 years to halve the difference (if we shouldn’t emit any CO2 anymore!). See:
http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
The work of the late Ernst Beck suffers from the same problems as can be (and is) measured today: many of the measurements were taken over land near huge sources and sinks and have not the slightest value for estimating the real average CO2 levels in the bulk of the atmosphere (but the current measurements over land are used to estimate CO2 fluxes over large areas). CO2 levels taken on ships over the oceans and coastal with seaside wind (as is done nowadays for all baseline stations) all were around the ice core CO2 data for the same period of time. There is no peak of CO2 around 1942 in high resolution (8 years average) ice core data or stomata index data or in the 13C/12C ratio from coralline sponges. The 1942 peak in Beck’s analyses is completely based on two series (Poona, India and Giessen, Germany) which show (even today) much too high and highly variable CO2 levels, because of nearby CO2 sources.
Thus sorry, but Carlin is wrong on this point…
[snip] you are welcome to resubmit without accusing me of fraud by using the word. – Anthony
Anthony, I am concerned and confused by your statement that Nature Climate Change charges a $1000 flat publication fee. Please can you advise where you obtained this information from?
From the instructions for authors, “There is a charge of $540 for the first colour figure and $270 for each additional colour figure. Please note that we are unable to offer to publish greyscale in print and colour online. Otherwise, there are no submission fees or page charges.” These are the only charges that I am aware of.
Grace Baynes, Nature Publishing Group
REPLY:Grace, thank you for your note. This came from something from research related to the offer (which was refused me) for a free subscription to Nature Climate Change. This figure was I believe the cost for the average paper submitted, the term flat fee was IIRC discussed, but I’ll see if I can locate the exact source.
While I am doing that…can you explain why the editor of the most viewed climate website on the planet was deemed unfit for a free subscription where some of my regular readers were granted a free subscription? Automatic “denier” disqualification? Here is my screen capture from my application:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/ncc_endcapture.png
And what will be NCC’s policy on the use of that derogatory term, “denier”? Do you have one?
– Anthony Watts
savethesharks says:
April 3, 2011 at 10:50 pm
And that “stable” number of 280 ppm is just 100 ppm greater than the lowest point during the last glaciation….of 180 ppm….NOT an “ideal” number of stability no doubt.
The CO2 levels for the past 800,000 years are directly the result of temperature changes: some 8 ppmv/°C, see e.g. the CO2-temperature ratio for the Vostok ice core (confirmed by the Dome C ice core):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/Vostok_trends.gif
There is a surprisingly near-linear relationship between temperature and CO2 levels. With this in mind, the about 0.8°C temperature rise since the deepest point of the LIA could have given no more than 6 ppmv extra CO2 over the past 400 years, but we see an increase of about 100 ppmv since about 1850 in different ice cores:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_001kyr_large.jpg
That is confirmed by stomata index data for the past century:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/van_Hoof.jpg
and the d13C measurements in coralline sponges (and in ice cores) over the past 650 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif
That the “background” CO2 levels at 180 ppmv during glacials is pretty low for a lot of plants is true, but over land, average levels (especially at night and morning hours) are always higher than background. Here the monthly averages measured over land at Kennedy Space Center, compared to background stations:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/month_2002_2006_ken.jpg
Alan Carlin.
Correlation of various physical attributes with global temperatures.
It is very clear that the strongest correlation is between the ocean warming index consisting of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation plus the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (PDO + AMO) and temperatures; the next strongest is with total solar irradiance (TSI), and the weakest is with CO2.
fact, CO2 has no explanatory power over 1998–2007 decade according to this analysis.
http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/4/985/pdf (page 20/47)
AMO and PDO are calculated in different manner so sums computations give misleading impressions. However AMO and PDO are result of similar physical (but separate and independent) processes, with no correlation between two.
In contrast PDO and ENSO are strongly correlated.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PDO-ENSO-AMO.htm
AMO on the other hand is correlated to the Arctic temperature, with about 3 year delay; more details: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
Grace Baynes,
Thank you for your information. Although it appears to be quibbling over the exact cost, which according to you can be over or under $1,000 depending on the number of color figures, it is best to get the exact numbers from a knowledgeable individual.
Aside from that, perhaps you can either answer the questions raised about the editorial policies of Nature raised here, or direct the questions to someone who can answer them for us.
Those questions are much more important than splitting hairs over what Nature charges authors for the privilege of being published in a somewhat error-prone journal with questionable, confusing, lackadaisical, or even non-existent data archiving requirements.
The scientific method requires reproducibility, which in turn requires full and complete availability of all raw data, methods, metadata and code. In the case of Phil Jones, it appears that Nature simply took Jones’ word for his results. WUWT is not nearly so amateurish, nor as credulous.
Grace Baynes, see reply:
I did trace the $1000 fee back to its origination point, and it is from an email discussion group I subscribe to. The author of that particular email did say “flat fee” but the way it was phrased was misleading.
It was this:
“If you are publishing in the new Nature Climate Change then you can figure on basic fees around $1000 for a typical paper with the color figures and other add on charges. They ought to just make that a $1000 flat fee since most papers are going to have at least a couple of figures….” So it was the key words and a munged recollection.
Seems that one comment of mine still is in the spam filter, but here a short resume:
Smokey, while I admire the tremendous amount of work that the late Ernst Beck has done by digging out a lot of historical measurements, I disagree with his interpretation. Many of the measurements in that time were taken over land nearby huge sources and sinks, with high variability during the day. The 1942 “peak” is mainly based on two series of measurements (Giessen and Poona) which are worthless for general background CO2 levels of that time. At the other end of the world in the US, 1942 levels of 250 ppmv were measured. Also non-background. There is no 1942 peak in high resolution (8 years) ice cores, stomata index data or 13C/12C ratio’s in corraline sponges. And have a look at the modern measurements of Giessen, compared to real background stations during a few days in summer:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/giessen_background.jpg
See more objections of the interpretation of Beck’s historical data at:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html
Further, the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere and the time needed to reduce an extra amount of CO2 in the atmosphere are two completely separate things and have nothing to do with each other. The first is only exchange (150/800 GtC back and forth over the seasons) and doesn’t change the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The second is real removal (currently 4/800 GtC/year, but humans add 8 GtC/year), which needs some 40 years half life time if we should stop all emissions today…
Sorry, the spammed comment just appeared (thanks to the moderators)…
It is disappointing to read a few comments about minor points of Alan’s large paper. Alan has a physics degree and a PhD in economics. He certainly has a better grasp of science than Lord Stern whom the British government used a basis for their policy and Garnaut who prepared a report for the Australian government, and further he has a better knowledge of economics than either of these two . Als0, he has a better grasp of the science and economics than anyone in the US EPA. It seems that the (so called) lady who heads the US EPA does not know she breathes out CO2 (or in her terms pollutes the atmosphere). Have a look at the abstract of the paper. It is about economics. He basically says that the economic benefits of reducing CO2 emissions have been very much exaggerated, the costs of reducing CO2 has been very much underestimated and that if there is a need to do anything there are better ways.
savethesharks says:
April 3, 2011 at 10:50 pm
Smokey says:
April 3, 2011 at 10:02 pm
eadler,
“In order to show that you’re not a climate alarmist promoting your usual disinformation, please provide empirical, testable and falsifiable evidence showing, as you improbably claimed, that “The simple fact is that the concentration of Co2 in the atmosphere had been stable at 280ppM for thousands of years, until the industrial age began.” In fact, there are no such facts supporting your bogus assertion.”
=================
Right, Smokey. I doubt if he/she can provide that type of evidence. [I say he/she because none of us know what an eadler is.]
And that “stable” number of 280 ppm is just 100 ppm greater than the lowest point during the last glaciation….of 180 ppm….NOT an “ideal” number of stability no doubt.
Plant photosynthesis shuts down at 150 ppm. Talk about a disaster.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I apologize to Mr Alan Carlin for calling his paper a sham. My emotions got the better of me.
It does seem to me that his paper is deeply flawed because it does not discuss the failings of Segalstad’s analysis of CO2, which was pointed out by the EPA, where Mr Carlin used to work, in the blogosphere over and over, as well as the literature which contradicts what he says. A proper scientific paper should do this, if it honestly trying to discuss the evidence.
Here is what the EPA says:
http://epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/downloads/RTC%20Volume%202.pdf
“EPA reviewed the information presented, as well as the work by Segalstad, and finds that it does not address the lifetime of a change in atmospheric concentration of CO2, but rather the lifetime in the atmosphere of an individual molecule of CO2. These are two different concepts. As stated in the First IPCC Scientific Assessment, “The turnover time of CO2 in the atmosphere, measured as the ratio of the content to the fluxes through it, is about 4 years. This means that on average it takes only a few years before a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is taken up by plants or dissolved in the ocean. This short time scale must not be confused with the time it takes for the atmospheric CO2 level to adjust to a new equilibrium if sources or sinks change.
This adjustment time … is of the order of 50–200 years, determined mainly by the slow exchange of carbon between surface waters and the deep ocean” (Watson et al., 1990). The magnitudes of these large balanced sources and sinks are addressed in response 2-2, and are similar to those represented in the NASA carbon cycle diagram. Newer research has only extended and confirmed this statement from the first IPCC assessment report (Denman et al., 2007). A recent approximation for this perturbation lifetime is sometimes represented as the sum of decay functions with timescales of 1.9 years for a quarter of the CO2 emissions, 18.5 years for a third of the CO2, 173 years for a fifth of the CO2, and a constant term representing a nearly permanent increase for the remaining fifth (Forster et al., 2007).
The “missing sink” that was referred to by a commenter is also addressed in response 2-2, and is now called the “residual land sink.” The magnitude of this sink is about 2.6 Gt of carbon per year, with significant uncertainty. Denman et al. (2007) included a hypothesis that a portion of this sink is due to the increased growth of undisturbed tropical forest due to CO2 fertilization, but the carbon accumulation of natural systems is hard to quantify directly. The uncertainty in determining the size and nature of this residual sink does not contradict the assessment literature conclusions about the perturbation lifetime of CO2 concentration changes in the atmosphere, but is reflected in the carbon cycle uncertainty for future projections of CO2 (see responses regarding carbon cycle uncertainty in Volume 4 on future projections).”
The variation in CO2 reported in older papers were due to flawed chemical analysis methods and sampling locations polluted by local sources and sinks of CO2.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/beck-to-the-future/
The following graph of CO2 over the last 400,000 years is the result of piecing together data from 4 ice cores and the Mauna Loa data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png
The stability of the CO2 concentration at 280ppM in the last 1000 years is shown by the red, blue and green lines, which are based on 3 different ice cores. The longer term graph shows that CO2 has been around that value since the last ice age ended.
Ferdinand,
Assuming you are correct [and I accept your experise since Ernst Beck is no longer around to defend his work], then why not take the next logical step, and state whether or not the increase in CO2 is causing measurable problems? We know it is beneficial to the biosphere, but I am unaware of any global damage resulting from the rise. In the past you have occasionally stated that the rise in CO2 is apparently benign, but you add that conclusion to your posts far too infrequently.
Because that is the crux of the matter, is it not? If the increase in CO2 is causing global damage, or runaway global warming, or climate catastrophe, then by all means provide the evidence. But if, as you have commented in the past, CO2 is not causing problems, then that should be added to any comments regarding the human contribution.
Smokey says:
April 4, 2011 at 8:03 am
Agreed, I think that the economic analyses of Alan Carlin is good, as there is a lot of (underestimated) economic cost from reducing CO2, without clear benefits. But it is a pity that he used Segalstad’s work, as that addresses the wrong topic (residence time vs. half life time), which makes that the good things of Carlin’s work are dismissed because of the wrong items…
Smokey says:
April 4, 2011 at 8:03 am
“We know it is beneficial to the biosphere, but I am unaware of any global damage resulting from the rise. ”
Actually, Smokey, I am aware of severe damage to domestic and global economies due to regulating CO2 as a “pollutant” (thereby causing energy and food prices to skyrocket), damage to government budgets due to the ballooning costs of climate science “research” (including the 0.5 billion dollar Glory satellite disaster) and “green” energy boondoggles, and damage to science in general as one crackpot scientist after another blames “anthropogenic” climate change for everything from the destruction of Afghan poppy plants to yellow fever outbreaks…
Ferdinand says:
“Agreed…”
Thank you, Ferdinand, for that comment. The entire basis for the scare over “carbon” [by which they mean carbon dioxide, a trace gas], is the presumption that rising CO2 will damage the planet.
But there is no empirical, testable evidence to support that conjecture. Based strictly on science, the conclusion must then be that more CO2 has been both harmless and beneficial. If evidence appears showing that CO2 is causing identifiable harm to the planet [and a degree or two of warming is beneficial, not harmful], then that global damage must be investigated, and if true, addressed.
So far there is no such evidence. But by continuously demonizing that harmless trace gas, certain groups and individuals are benefitting financially at the expense of everyone else. That is not science; that is using advocacy, cloaked with a veneer of science, to support an unspoken agenda involving political power, control and money.
Over the past year or two you have changed my mind with your patience and reasonable arguments, and convinced me that human activity is responsible for much of the increase in CO2. I would appreciate it if, when making your concluding remarks in future posts, that you would acknowledge what you have occasionally said in the past: that there is no evidence showing that the rise in CO2 is a problem. It is, after all, an essential trace gas that has been many thousands of ppmv higher in the past, at times when life flourished, and when the biosphere was teeming with diversity.
eadler says:
April 4, 2011 at 7:58 am
Thank you for the exposition. That makes things clearer. I may yet have it wrong, but after looking at some of Segalstad’s presentations, he’s not confusing anything, he seems to be arguing for a drastically shorter life time than most others and doesn’t seem to have recanted his position. One of the things I try to impress on my students is that you can always find evidence to support a proposition if you look hard enough for it. I’ve got no idea if Segalstad is a clear-eyed visionary or an eccentric wedded to a, shall we say, unique, theory, but your exposition there did fill in a gap for me, which is so much more productive than the sneering dismissal of certain other commentators.
Ferdinand you state this as fact, I assume you are basing this on CO2 measurements from ice cores. How do you know that these are accurate? I think having to make an 80 year adjustment to get anything to line-up seriously puts into question the validity of icecores for that purpose.
Smokey says:
April 4, 2011 at 8:03 am
Ferdinand,
Assuming you are correct [and I accept your experise since Ernst Beck is no longer around to defend his work], then why not take the next logical step, and state whether or not the increase in CO2 is causing measurable problems? We know it is beneficial to the biosphere, but I am unaware of any global damage resulting from the rise. In the past you have occasionally stated that the rise in CO2 is apparently benign, but you add that conclusion to your posts far too infrequently.
Because that is the crux of the matter, is it not? If the increase in CO2 is causing global damage, or runaway global warming, or climate catastrophe, then by all means provide the evidence. But if, as you have commented in the past, CO2 is not causing problems, then that should be added to any comments regarding the human contribution.
Smokey,
You are responding to a straw man argument. The phenomena that climate scientists have observed, that are claimed to be a result of CO2 induced climate change, are not yet catastrophic. Past damage is not what drives scientists, who are concerned about global warming .Climate Scientists are struggling to determine how much to attribute damage from floods, and droughts to CO2 induced climate change that has occurred to date associated with temperature rises ~ 0.7C. It is the future that concerns them.
In fact according to the IPCC report, as far as humans are concerned there may as many winners as there are losers until global average temperature rise exceeds 2C.
In fact in past times, climate change has forced humans to migrate . Since humans were not numerous, there was land available for resettlement. With the human population at around 7B and expected to rise above that, the problems associated with the rapid development of chronic drought and flooding can create catastrophes in some of the heavily populated areas of the world, with 10’s of millions of people having no place to go.
In modern society, projections of the future are used to make plans about what to do, and whether to take preventive measures that pay off economically. That is what is driving Carlin’s paper. A priori, Carlin’s projections aren’t any better than others.
Since Carlin makes arguments about the origin of the rise in CO2, that have been known to be wrong, from the time that the articles he is quoting first appeared, there is ample reason to question whether he knows what he is talking about, in the rest of his paper, as Fredrick Englebeen has pointed out. Further examination of his climate science arguments shows that their quality continues to be poor, beyond what he says about the origins of the CO2 increase in the atmosphere.
Another incorrect argument is hos figure 3, where he claims that only 4% of CO2 in the atmosphere arises from burning of fossil fuel. That is the annual contribution, to the amount emitted, but over the years this annual contribution has built up to 110ppM, which is a 40% increase in CO2 concentration since the industrial age began and represents 28% of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere. This is not a subtle scientific point, and is another example of an elementary point that he got wrong.
His claim that strong positive feedback is “assumed” by the IPCC and most climate models is wrong. The feedback is not assumed. It arises out of the basic physics of evaporation, radiation, and observations of water vapor, and clouds during the past and present day evolution of weather and climate.
He quotes Lindzen’s 1997 talk about low climate sensitivity deduced from volcano eruption data, without reference to the fact that over a dozen papers have been written on this subject, and there is no consensus on how to deduce climate sensitivity from data on volcanic eruptions. A paper written 10 years after Lindzen’s talk, which examines the results of 10 models in an attempt to determine climate sensitivity from the Mt Pinatubo eruption gives a 1 sigma figure of 1.7 to 4.1C, which is pretty close to the nominal figure of 3C given by the IPCC.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:2GWvb1eKP4EJ:www.misu.su.se/~frida/benderetal10.pdf+effect+volcanoes+climate+sensitivity+models+pinatubo&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgQHSOL8e3B_vjpoevWtf3pdvX-FSlx4kwOHgtocNlHC8dB_NAD5SsGUXjYmDRWezloFhslFRtxjJ4YgraAQO5jdkkCilKUbM2VTKmOeJW86uLLAid4Y9Vq9-rmktzA0dCR4t-7&sig=AHIEtbQKstPm05ACgBnjgvliQIDrxFvRWw
As I continue to read through the scientific basis of this paper, there is a real lack of scientific thoroughness, and the citations of research are so biased, one sided, and limited, that the author’s claim that he is looking for valid science seems hollow. If the the majority of posters on this web site are real “skeptics” I would expect to see more criticism of this paper.
does anyone know if CO2 absorbtion by sinks is a linear or fixed function ? i.e. does the same sink absorb a fixed amount iof CO2 or is its absorbtion a % of the total ? and if it is a percentage is it linear ?
seems to me that the vegetation sink is not linear and may increase with higher CO2 concentrations … given that much of the oceans sink is not simply water but flora and fauna I would guess that it is non linear as well, i.e. higher concertations of CO2 means higher sink rates …
Robert E. Phelan says:
April 4, 2011 at 9:40 am
eadler says:
April 4, 2011 at 7:58 am
Thank you for the exposition. That makes things clearer. I may yet have it wrong, but after looking at some of Segalstad’s presentations, he’s not confusing anything, he seems to be arguing for a drastically shorter life time than most others and doesn’t seem to have recanted his position. One of the things I try to impress on my students is that you can always find evidence to support a proposition if you look hard enough for it. I’ve got no idea if Segalstad is a clear-eyed visionary or an eccentric wedded to a, shall we say, unique, theory, but your exposition there did fill in a gap for me, which is so much more productive than the sneering dismissal of certain other commentators.
If you were as familiar with the subject, and you would realize that Segalstad is confusing residence time, which is based on the ratio of total annual flux of CO2 removed from the atmosphere on an annual basis, to the amount in the atmosphere, and the net rate of change of the amount in the atmosphere, which is the difference between the influx and removal of CO2. The difference is what determines the net rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere, not simply the total removal rate, which is all that Segalstad is dealing with when he discusses residence time . It is net rate of change which determines how long the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will remain high, not the residence time. From your comment, I conclude that you haven’t really grasped this principle. I urge you to rethink.
The sneering dismissal on the part of other commentators, that you sense, is a result of the confusion in Segalstad’s mind. The EPA explanation, which I quoted, has to be more polite, than the usual bloggers, because they are an agency that serves the public, and doesn’t want to insult anyone.
Jeff Carlson says:
April 4, 2011 at 1:10 pm
does anyone know if CO2 absorbtion by sinks is a linear or fixed function ? i.e. does the same sink absorb a fixed amount iof CO2 or is its absorbtion a % of the total ? and if it is a percentage is it linear ?
It is surprisingly linear as percentage of the accumulated emissions, even if a lot of underlying reactions are far from linear, see the cumulative emissions vs. the accumulation in the atmosphere over the past 100+ years (the first part until 1959 from ice cores, from 1960 on direct measurements):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1900_2004.jpg
Maybe a matter of slightly non-linear increasing emissions which drives the partial pressure difference between CO2 in air and the ocean surface (and vegetation alveoles) up with the exact rate to make that the result is a quite constant ratio with the emissions.
hum says:
April 4, 2011 at 12:39 pm
Ferdinand you state this as fact, I assume you are basing this on CO2 measurements from ice cores. How do you know that these are accurate? I think having to make an 80 year adjustment to get anything to line-up seriously puts into question the validity of icecores for that purpose.
The “80 years adjustment” comes from Jaworowski (and Segalstad?) 1992, repeated many times after that, even recently. But Etheridge already in 1996 refuted all of Jaworowski’s objections with his work at the three Law Dome ice core drillings.
In all scientific literature, one assumes that there is a difference between the age of the ice and the average age of the inclused air, mostly based on gas diffusion models. Not so for Jaworowski. He says that that is just an assumption and that there is no difference in age.
What Etheridge did do is measuring CO2 in the firn top down in the drilling hole from the still open pores layer by layer until the start of the first complete closing of the air bubbles at 72 meter depth. The results:
1. The ice at 72 meter depth was 40 years old (40 layers counted).
2. The air composition was average 7 years older than at the surface.
3. The CO2 level in the still open pores was the same as in the already fully closed bubbles.
That means that at closing depth (72-80 meter), the average air age in firn and ice was about 30 years younger than the age of the ice layers at the same depth. And that Jaworowski was/is completely wrong on that point. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_overlap.jpg
The ice age – gas age difference is dependent of the accumulation rate of snow at the place where is drilled (or upstreams for slopes). For fast accumulating ice cores like Law Dome (2 out of 3 drillings) it is only 30 years (1.2 m ice equivalent per year snow), for inland cores like Vostok and Dome C, it can be thousands of years (a few mm per year ice equivalent). In all cases (if there is no summer melting which isolates the different layers), there still is exchange of air and its componenents between the pores in the ice and the atmosphere, slower with depth as the ice is compacting and the pores become smaller.
eadler says:
April 4, 2011 at 1:07 pm
Climate Scientists are struggling to determine how much to attribute damage from floods, and droughts to CO2 induced climate change that has occurred to date associated with temperature rises ~ 0.7C.
Even if there are winners and losers (as always) from a rise in temperature, in general with not too extreme outliers, the benefits of an increase in temperature by far outweigh the drawbacks. The hottest places on earth, around the equator, don’t increase much in temperature and the extra water vapour translates into more rain in dry countries (see the Sahel greening in the past decade). The colder places up to the poles benefit from longer, warmer summers… There are no more extreme weather events found in the VS (neither in Europe) because of warmer temperatures.
The main problem for politicians is that they should plan for the future, but the current climate models are far too uncertain to be based on, and as is meanwhile proven, way to alarmist: the real temperature increase is less that the lower no-CO2-emissions-increase scenario, while the real CO2 emissions follow the “bussiness as usual” scenario of increasing emissions (despite the economic crisis).
Thus based on reality until now (less huricanes, no water vapour feedback in the upper troposphere, hence no hotspot in the tropics, no accellerated sealevel increase, no heat in the pipeline in the oceans) doing nothing currently is the best and most economical option. Of course it is prudent to invest a lot in research for alternatives for fossil fuels (and massive storage of power), but CO2 reduction today is only a waste of money.
eadler says:
“You are responding to a straw man argument.”
No, I am not. And I don’t think Ferdinand’s argument is a strawman — but yours certainly is. You say:
“Since Carlin makes arguments about the origin of the rise in CO2…”
FYI, I’ve not gotten around to reading Carlin’s paper; I have never commented on his methodology, data, etc., but you’re arguing as if I had, trying to re-frame the debate away from my pertinent question. That’s a strawman argument, so it fails.
My comment was: “If the increase in CO2 is causing global damage, or runaway global warming, or climate catastrophe, then by all means provide the evidence.”
As usual you provided no testable, reproducible, empirical evidence showing that the rise in CO2 is causing any global problems. Instead, you just do a lot of vague “What if” arm-waving.
Even though CO2 is a very minor trace gas, measured in parts per million, a ≈40% rise is considered substantial. So IF CO2 had caused global harm, solid evidence of the damage caused would have appeared by now. But it hasn’t. [I fully expect, however, that the alarmist crowd that depends on keeping their grant gravy train on track will gin up some bogus “evidence” in the near future.]
Based on the complete dearth of any such verifiable evidence, any rational person would conclude that the “carbon” scare is baseless. There’s no ‘there’ there, and it is past time to stop wasting taxpayers’ money promoting “carbon” alarmism.
Finally, I note many of the usual suspects in the bibliography of the grant trolling paper you linked to: “A paper… which examines the results of 10 models… is pretty close to the nominal figure of 3C given by the IPCC.”
Well, no kidding, Sherlock. Your paper repeatedly cites the IPCC as their authority. What are they going to do, bite the hand that feeds them?
Smokey,
You say,
Even though CO2 is a very minor trace gas, measured in parts per million, a ≈40% rise is considered substantial. So IF CO2 had caused global harm, solid evidence of the damage caused would have appeared by now. But it hasn’t. [I fully expect, however, that the alarmist crowd that depends on keeping their grant gravy train on track will gin up some bogus “evidence” in the near future.]
You are repeating the argument that I said was a straw man. You are talking of CO2 damage that should have appeared by now.
The fact is that this is not a necessary condition for damage to appear in the future, which is what the attempt to limit CO2 emissions. In addition, Your argument does not include the time lag between CO2 increase and temperature increase, which tends to push the damage into the future.
Your argument also assumes that the desire to get grants is the driving force for getting results. I have seen is no real evidence presented for. This is only an assumption on the part of some global warming “skeptics”.
In fact some results which make the effects of global warming less severe are uncovered by scientists using the same grant structure are featured on WUWT.Two recent posts come to mind: Phil Jones has found the UHI is a real phenomenon and climate scientists have found that ice bergs improve the ability of southern oceans to absorb CO2 . They are eagerly seized upon as evidence the global warming is not as bad as it has been made out to be.
In fact individual scientists do not earn great amounts of money from doing science. It is a comfortable living, but there is no evidence that they profit from it any more than scientists in other fields. They are in it because it interests them, the same motivation driving other scientists. If you want to argue that all professional scientists are charlatans, seeking to make a dollar and don’t care about the validity of what they are doing go ahead. That is the logical argument that you are making.