There is quite a bit of buzz surrounding a talk and pending paper from Prof. Murry Salby the Chair of Climate, of Macquarie University. Aussie Jo Nova has excellent commentary, as has Andrew Bolt in his blog. I’m sure others will weigh in soon.
In a nutshell, the issue is rather simple, yet powerful. Salby is arguing that atmospheric CO2 increase that we observe is a product of temperature increase, and not the other way around, meaning it is a product of natural variation. This goes back to the 800 year lead/lag issue related to the paleo temperature and CO2 graphs Al Gore presented in his movie an An Inconvenient Truth, Jo Nova writes:
Over the last two years he has been looking at C12 and C13 ratios and CO2 levels around the world, and has come to the conclusion that man-made emissions have only a small effect on global CO2 levels. It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels.
Salby is no climatic lightweight, which makes this all the more powerful. He has a strong list of publications here. The abstract for his talk is here and also reprinted below.
PROFESSOR MURRY SALBY
Chair of Climate, Macquarie University
Atmospheric Science, Climate Change and Carbon – Some Facts
Carbon dioxide is emitted by human activities as well as a host of natural processes. The satellite record, in concert with instrumental observations, is now long enough to have collected a population of climate perturbations, wherein the Earth-atmosphere system was disturbed from equilibrium. Introduced naturally, those perturbations reveal that net global emission of CO2 (combined from all sources, human and natural) is controlled by properties of the general circulation – properties internal to the climate system that regulate emission from natural sources. The strong dependence on internal properties indicates that emission of CO2 from natural sources, which accounts for 96 per cent of its overall emission, plays a major role in observed changes of CO2. Independent of human emission, this contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide is only marginally predictable and not controllable.
Professor Murry Salby holds the Climate Chair at Macquarie University and has had a lengthy career as a world-recognised researcher and academic in the field of Atmospheric Physics. He has held positions at leading research institutions, including the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, Princeton University, and the University of Colorado, with invited professorships at universities in Europe and Asia. At Macquarie University, Professor Salby uses satellite data and supercomputing to explore issues surrounding changes of global climate and climate variability over Australia. Professor Salby is the author of Fundamentals of Atmospheric Physics, and Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate due out in 2011. Professor Salby’s latest research makes a timely and highly-relevant contribution to the current discourse on climate.
Salby’s talk was given in June at the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysic meeting in Melbourne Australia. He indicates that a journal paper is in press, with an expectation of publication a few months out. He also hints that some of the results will be in his book Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate which is supposed to be available Sept 30th.
The podcast for his talk“Global Emission of Carbon Dioxide: The Contribution from Natural Sources” is here (MP3 audio format). The podcast length is an hour, split between his formal presentation ~ 30 minutes, and Q&A for the remaining time.
Andrew Bolt says in his Herald Sun blog:
Salby’s argument is that the usual evidence given for the rise in CO2 being man-made is mistaken. It’s usually taken to be the fact that as carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere increase, the 1 per cent of CO2 that’s the heavier carbon isotope ratio c13 declines in proportion. Plants, which produced our coal and oil, prefer the lighter c12 isotope. Hence, it must be our gasses that caused this relative decline.
But that conclusion holds true only if there are no other sources of c12 increases which are not human caused. Salby says there are – the huge increases in carbon dioxide concentrations caused by such things as spells of warming and El Ninos, which cause concentration levels to increase independently of human emissions. He suggests that its warmth which tends to produce more CO2, rather than vice versa – which, incidentally is the story of the past recoveries from ice ages.
Dr. Judith Curry has some strong words of support, and of caution:
I just finished listening to Murry Salby’s podcast on Climate Change and Carbon. Wow.
If Salby’s analysis holds up, this could revolutionize AGW science. Salby and I were both at the University of Colorado-Boulder in the 1990′s, but I don’t know him well personally. He is the author of a popular introductory graduate text Fundamentals of Atmospheric Physics. He is an excellent lecturer and teacher, which comes across in his podcast. He has the reputation of a thorough and careful researcher. While all this is frustratingly preliminary without publication, slides, etc., it is sufficiently important that we should start talking about these issues. I’ll close with this text from Bolt’s article:
He said he had an “involuntary gag reflex” whenever someone said the “science was settled”.
“Anyone who thinks the science of this complex thing is settled is in Fantasia.”
Dr Roy Spencer has suspected something similar, See Atmospheric CO2 Increases: Could the Ocean, Rather Than Mankind, Be the Reason? plus part 2 Spencer Part2: More CO2 Peculiarities – The C13/C12 Isotope Ratio both guest posts at WUWT in 2008. Both of these are well worth your time to re-read as a primer for what will surely be a (ahem) hotly contested issue.
I’m pretty sure Australian bloggers John Cook at Skeptical Science and Tim Lambert at Deltoid are having conniption fits right about now. And, I’m betting that soon, the usual smears of “denier” will be applied to Dr. Salby by those two clowns, followed by the other usual suspects.
Smears of denial and catcalls aside, if it holds up, it may be the Emily Litella moment for climate science and CO2 – “Never mind…”
Richard S Courtney says:
August 7, 2011 at 12:08 am
Michael D Smith:
Thankyou for your post at August 6, 2011 at 5:34 pm. It is clear and concise.
Yes, Richard, especially this bit… 🙂
But the chart also shows that the rate is increasing over time, which I think points to a non-natural source.
I agree with Julian Braggins. People should read that paper by Tom Quirk. The argument is very similar.
trouble is john, some of the points are nothing more than the contrived a-priori dogma.
280ppm at the dawn of civilisation, when proxies from the MWP show elevated levels, (see details from Richard Courtney’s references above) The logic of is claiming that the 3% of CO2 which humans put into the atmosphere accumulates over time to 30%, while the 97% of CO2 which nature adds to the atmosphere does not accumulate and in fact shrinks to 70% of the total is [snip]. Its not even gimmick, as gimmick arguments can be convincing
Since oceans regulate CO2 in the air to the most minute degree, any real increase is due to warmer oceans releasing more. There is no justification in reading human activity into an increase
trouble is, Ferdinand, these are speculative figures based on mathematical models and equations. They’re not measured or verified facts.
Coincidentally, I wrote this note to Roy Spencer and Danny Braswell on July 28, 2011.
Hi Roy and Danny,
Congrats on your recent paper “On the Misdiagnosis Of Surface Temperature Feedbacks From Variations In Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance” By Spencer and Braswell 2011.
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/
Roy, you may recall we corresponded in early 2008 on this subject, and we both wrote papers on the subject. Mine is at
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
While I am not certain, I still really wonder if the mainstream debate (human fossil fuel combustion primarily drives atmospheric CO2, which primarily drives temperature – the two camps just argue about how much warming will result) is mostly wrong.
I think there is more real-world data to suggest that temperature primarily drives atmospheric CO2, not the reverse, although it is possible that humanmade CO2 emissions have a significant influence (or not).
I realize that putting forward such a heretical hypothesis is high-risk, tin-foil hat stuff. Nevertheless, it would not surprise me if this becomes the conventional wisdom in less than a decade.
Best, Allan MacRae
Summary of my paper:
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Carbon Dioxide in Not the Primary Cause of Global Warming: The Future Can Not Cause the Past
Paper by Allan M.R. MacRae, Calgary Alberta Canada
Despite continuing increases in atmospheric CO2, no significant global warming occurred in the last decade, as confirmed by both Surface Temperature and satellite measurements in the Lower Troposphere. Contrary to IPCC fears of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, Earth may now be entering another natural cooling trend. Earth Surface Temperature warmed approximately 0.7 degrees Celsius from ~1910 to ~1945, cooled ~0.4 C from ~1945 to ~1975, warmed ~0.6 C from ~1975 to 1997, and has not warmed significantly from 1997 to 2007.
CO2 emissions due to human activity rose gradually from the onset of the Industrial Revolution, reaching ~1 billion tonnes per year (expressed as carbon) by 1945, and then accelerated to ~9 billion tonnes per year by 2007. Since ~1945 when CO2 emissions accelerated, Earth experienced ~22 years of warming, and ~40 years of either cooling or absence of warming.
The IPCC’s position that increased CO2 is the primary cause of global warming is not supported by the temperature data. In fact, strong evidence exists that disproves the IPCC’s scientific position. This UPDATED paper and Excel spreadsheet show that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration lag (occur after) variations in Earth’s Surface Temperature by ~9 months. The IPCC states that increasing atmospheric CO2 is the primary cause of global warming – in effect, the IPCC states that the future is causing the past. The IPCC’s core scientific conclusion is illogical and false.
There is strong correlation among three parameters: Surface Temperature (“ST”), Lower Troposphere Temperature (“LT”) and the rate of change with time of atmospheric CO2 (“dCO2/dt”). For the time period of this analysis, variations in ST lead (occur before) variations in both LT and dCO2/dt, by ~1 month. The integral of dCO2/dt is the atmospheric concentration of CO2 (“CO2″).
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 6, 2011 at 9:13 am
You got the context all wrong. I was referring to the annual variation in how much anthropogenic CO2 is emitted vs. the annual variation in total atmospheric CO2. If you’d bothered to go the linked paper in Geophysical Review and looked at the figure I mentioned you’d know that. But hey, don’t let sloth get in the way of correcting someone…
Julian Braggins says:
August 7, 2011 at 1:53 am
Tom Quirk has a PDF that I sourced at Icecap.us It has many plots of CO2 around the world and charts of seasonal variations as opposed to annual variations.
Jack Barett and I have reacted on his essay with an article in E&E. He made an essential error in graphs 18 and 19, supposing a lack of lag between the South Pole and Mauna Loa data, even a reverse lag, but his method doesn’t show lags with a multiple of 12 months. In reality, CO2 and d13C level changes in the SH lag the NH data with 12-24 months. That makes that his conclusions don’t hold:
ftp://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/d13c_trends.jpg
and
ftp://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends_1995_2004.jpg
Hi Ferdinand,
I hope you are well, and am enjoying once again your longstanding dialogue with Richard Courtney.
I think you raise some very interesting points, particularly in the quantification of certain factors.
I wonder if some of these questions can be explained by at least two, and possibly more, time lags of CO2 AFTER temperature change. We think we know there is an ~~800 year “long cycle” lag of CO2 after temperature from the ice core data, and also a ~9-month “short-cycle” lag as derived from modern data. If I recall correctly, the dear, late Ernst Beck also postulated another such “intermediate-cycle” lag, and it may still become apparent, even if it takes more than ~5 years to manifest itself.
However, with sincere respect, I don’t agree with your “material balance argument”. I think it is incorrect because it inherently assumes the climate-CO2 system is static, but it is highly dynamic, and the relatively small humanmade fraction of total CO2 flux is insignificant in this huge system, as it continues to chase equilibrium into eternity.
Best personal regards, Allan
P Wilson
August 7, 2011 at 3:42 am
claims, “They’re not measured or verified facts”
Here, repeated, are some measured and verified facts:
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increased by 640 billion tons between 1850 and 2000.
Human beings emitted 1620 billion tons to the atmosphere during the same time period.
The difference, about 1000 billion tons of CO2, has been absorbed by oceans and terrestrial vegetation and soils.
Conclusions
1: Human emissions are more than able to account for the rise in atmospheric CO2 (since human emissions were more than twice the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere).
2. The oceans have been and continue to be a sink of CO2, since that is where much of the CO2 has “disappeared” to. This is independently confirmed by the decrease in oceanic pH.
@Engelbean
Here is the link AGAIN. See figure 2.
http://radioviceonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/knorr2009_co2_sequestration.pdf
Note in 1997 atmospheric CO2 increase was about 2ppm. In 1998 it was 5ppm. In 1999 it was 2ppm again. 1998 was the strongest El Nino on record. The Pacific warmed, outgassed a buttload of CO2, then cooled and went back to normal.
Now go back to figure 1 and note that anthropogenic emissions in those years was close to flat. There is no anthropogenic explanation for the 1998 acceleration in rate of atmospheric CO2 increase.
Salby attempts to make the point that all CO2 variation is a result of warming oceans. He might be right. I don’t think he is but the possibility remains. No one has either proven nor falsified that rise in CO2 over the past 250 years is anthropogenic in origin and certainly not narrowed it down to fossil fuel combustion gasses. What Salby actually did was cast great doubt upon the C12/C13 ratio meme held out by climate boffins as confirmation of anthropogenic causation which I personally had never thought was reliable confirmation even before Salby came along. So what we are left with is the same thing we were left with before – a strong correlation between anthropogenic CO2 emission and rise in atmospheric CO2 level. I personally find the correlation compelling but I also know that correlation is not causation and so, reasonable as it seems, it cannot be taken as fact.
P Wilson says:
August 7, 2011 at 3:40 am
280ppm at the dawn of civilisation, when proxies from the MWP show elevated levels, (see details from Richard Courtney’s references above) The logic of is claiming that the 3% of CO2 which humans put into the atmosphere accumulates over time to 30%, while the 97% of CO2 which nature adds to the atmosphere does not accumulate
The ice core data are not proxies, but real atmospheric measurements of old air, be it smoothed over 8 (Law Dome) to 600 years (Vostok, Dome C). They have their problems, but by far not what renders them useless.
The proxies you allude too probably are stomata data. These are useful for a first approximation, but suffer from the same bias as many of the historical measurements: over land, near huge sources and sinks. Stomata (index) data are calibrated against… ice cores for the past century, which removes the local bias for that century. The main problem is that we don’t know how the bias evolved over the centuries. E.g. one of the main places of SI research is in the SE Netherlands, which saw huge changes in land use (marshes and sea to forests and pasture and other vegetation) over the centuries in the main wind directions.
What everybody seems to forget is that against the 97% natural addition there stands 98.5% natural sinks. The 97% natural addition is only part of the main circulation, only throughput, not addition.
Have a fountain where a pump circulates 1,000 l/h from down a bassin over a fountain. Except for some evaporation, nothing happens with the water level in the bassin. Add a hose which supplies only 1 l/h of extra water and some time later, you will see an overflow of the bassin. No matter if the additional flow is 0.1 or 0.01 or 0.001% of the main circulation…
Dave Springer says:
August 7, 2011 at 4:55 am
Sorry, my misinterpretation, indeed wrong context…
But that doesn’t make much difference. The annual increase in the atmosphere depends of the annual emissions, which are rather monotonically increasing at one side and the sink rate in oceans and vegetation at the other side. The sink rate is heavily influenced by temperature fluctuations, which explain about 2/3rd of the variability (see my the link to Pieter Tans in my reaction on Richard). But that has little influence on the trend, as most changes in temperature level of over the years.
Richard S Courtney says:
August 7, 2011 at 12:01 am
For example, you say the variation of CO2 during each year is 2 ppm.
No! It is not. IT IS ABOUT TEN TIMES THAT.
According to Dr.Spencer, the global variation of CO2 over the seasons is 6.2 ppmv for a global temperature variation of 1 degr.C. Both variations are very low in the SH but near double in the NH.
tokyoboy says:
August 6, 2011 at 10:49 pm
I feel the CO2 increase in the atmosphere is due, partially or heavily, to a rapid increase in the number of animals including human, via respiration (CO2 release).
Animals or burning wood don’t add to the overall increase of CO2, because all CO2 they exhale (or emit from burning) was captured by vegetation out of the atmosphere a few months to a few years before. Thus over a few years that levels off. In contrast, fossil fuels were stored out of the atmosphere many millions years ago, so that adds to the current atmosphere.
Only if there is a mismatch between what the biosphere (plants, humans, animals, insects, bacteria) emits and absorbs, that will add or substract to/from the atmosphere. That can be measured via the oxygen balance: if more oxygen is used than can be calculated from fossil fuel burning, then the biosphere is a net emitter of CO2. But we see a net deficit in oxygen use. Thus the biosphere is a net sink for CO2 (around 1.5 GtC/year).
Human emissions of CO2 were very small until about 1900.
Technically, I think we should move the pre-industrial timeline to 1900 because CO2 was changing by itself for decades at a time at a rate which were orders of magnitude greater than our very small emissions.
CO2 changes per year and human emissions going back to 1750.
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/3005/co2emmandchangeperyear1.png
CO2 changes per year and human emissions going back to 1000AD.
http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/8520/co2emmandchange1000ad.png
Dave Springer says:
August 7, 2011 at 5:17 am
Salby attempts to make the point that all CO2 variation is a result of warming oceans. He might be right.
He probably is right. But please pay attention to the word “variation”. Temperature is the cause of the variability of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. But look at the graphs in Knorr: the emissions are about twice the increase in the atmosphere and twice their variability. Thus his assumption that 80% of the increase in the atmosphere is by temperature doesn’t hold.
No one has either proven nor falsified that rise in CO2 over the past 250 years is anthropogenic in origin and certainly not narrowed it down to fossil fuel combustion gasses. What Salby actually did was cast great doubt upon the C12/C13 ratio
The latter argument is already refuted for about a decade: while no differentiation is possible for 13C/12C ratios between fossil fuels and vegetation, it is possible to discriminate on 14C/12C ratio and oxygen use: vegetation is a net absorber of CO2, thus not responsible for the decline in 13C/12C ratio. To the contrary. See:
http://bluemoon.ucsd.edu/publications/ralph/25_Partition.pdf
sorry, ferdinand, despite your ardour, I’m not convinced.
Taking it further, I repeat a post which might have been overlooked, it was aquestion:
Is there any data about fumaroles, mud volcanoes, hydrothermal vents, etc and generally all volcanoes, and (including underwater) and how much c02 they put into the atmosphere? Underwater volcanoes are quite a source of ocean heating around Antarctic waters..
so I quote:
Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1991). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts.
In point of fact, the total worldwide estimate of roughly 55 MtCpa is by one researcher, rather than “scientists” in general. More importantly, this estimate by Gerlach (1991) is based on emission measurements taken from only seven subaerial volcanoes and three hydrothermal vent sites. Yet the USGS glibly claims that Gerlach’s estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes in roughly equal amounts. Given the more than 3 million volcanoes worldwide indicated by the work of Hillier & Watts (2007), one might be prone to wonder about the statistical significance of Gerlach’s seven subaerial volcanoes and three hydrothermal vent sites. If the statement of the USGS concerning volcanic CO2 is any indication of the reliability of expert consensus, it would seem that verifiable facts are eminently more trustworthy than professional opinion.
and further:
Hillier & Watts (2007) surveyed 201,055 submarine volcanoes estimating that a total of 3,477,403 submarine volcanoes exist worldwide. According to the observations of Batiza (1982), we may infer that at least 4% of seamounts are active volcanoes.
Irrespective that some authors may neglect to allow for significant volcanogenic CO2 input to the atmosphere, volcanoes represent an enormous CO2 source that is mostly submarine. Furthermore, volcanic activity beneath both ice caps and localized to the regions of most intense melting has demonstrated an obvious cause of stronger Spring melts at the Poles. It is evident from the observations of Sohn et al. (2008) & Reves-Sohn et al. (2008) that the Northwest Passage was opened up by powerful volcanic activity under the Arctic Ice along the Gakkel Ridge, while West Antarctic melting (as opposed to thickening of ice throughout the rest of Antarctica) can be explained by recent volcanic activity beneath the ice (Corr & Vaughan, 2008). Moreover, there are simply too many volcanoes to deny that the atmospheric concentration of the most erupted gas next to water is predominantly controlled by the balance or lack thereof between volcanic activity and photosynthesis. Furthermore, there is no fingerprint by which we may distinguish fossil fuel CO2 from volcanic CO2. This leaves us with no empirical method by which we may attribute the 20th century rise in CO2 to human energy consumption.
from:
http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
I mean, its a tidy mathematical equation that is presented to support to anthropogenic co2 case, though it just can’t be verified. There’s nothing so far to suggest that the annual carbon budget is fixed or equilibrium based
Ferdinand Engelbeen
August 7, 2011 at 8:37 am
“He probably is right.”
I think you overlook the annual wriggle due to growth and decay of terrestrial vegetation, where NH has far greater land surface than SH and therefore in NH summer there is a net decrease in global CO2 and vice versa. Or were you referring to something else?
John Finn says:
August 7, 2011 at 2:07 am
Well observed. If temperature remained constant we would still see an increase in atmospheric CO2. Temperature changes amplify or moderate the increase but the underlying increase is still there. That’s because humans are continuing to emit ~8GtC per year into the atmosphere. Don’t get me wrong I don’t particularly have a problem with this. I expect some warming from CO2 but nothing ‘catastrophic’. However I see no point in denying that human activity is clearly responsible for the steady increase in atmospheric CO2 which I believe is now nearer 2ppm per year (rather than the 1.56 ppm per year that you noted).
I don’t deny anything, I’m simply observing the dCO2 data once it has been de-seasonalized, and I’m taking it where it leads me. As I explained, we see that temperature produces clear and drastic changes in dCO2. Small changes, applied over a long period, are more than enough to account for all of the observed total CO2 changes since 1850, 4x over. It’s right there, and quite significant at P=1e-26. I added emissions to the model as mentioned above, it is not significant at P=0.5. But it still LOOKS like it deserves to be part of the equation. And it would make sense too, since we know we make a small contribution. But looks don’t count.
These fast rates of exchange of CO2 with temperature is the part that cannot be ignored, I’m afraid. It indicates to me that the oceans breathe quite readily, and in very large breaths, and they do it all the time, regardless of air temperature. The temperature simply determines which direction the giant vectors balance to. And they clearly are giant or you could not have such a fast reaction to temperature. This needs to be quantified, which I think is a simple extension of what I’ve already done. See where I’m going?
The exchange rate is critically important. Let’s look at this another way, and assume that the exchange rate is such that ALL CO2 is exchanged overnight, so the oceans are exchanging it like lungs. Now, given the CO2 capacity of the ocean, would you expect to see any measurable effect of our emissions, since 1850? If so it would be nearly unmeasurable simply due to the capacity of the oceans, even if you only affect the top layers. Now, on the other hand, let’s assume that CO2 is exchanged only once every million years, so the absorption rate can be safely ignored. Now we should see twice the increase in total CO2 levels that we do see.
So the amount of CO2 remaining in the atmosphere is related to the size of the drain into the sink. It can be a giant sink, but if the drain size is small (low flow rate), then emissions will accumulate in the atmosphere and should be detectable. But we can see from the data that the ocean is both a source and a sink. And we know from the data that the reaction rate is very high, dwarfing emissions. So we must conclude that the the size of the opening to this source / sink is very large. This is the part that is unmistakeable in the data. If that is true, then the total accumulation MUST be mostly related to temperature and the ocean’s equilibrium level.
So we know that we have an anthropogenic contribution. And we know we have a temperature contribution. They add to what we observe now, but we don’t know which is which. I’m saying that given the charts I’ve done, we DO know which is which because we have directly measured the temperature’s effect on CO2 rate! You apply that rate to the length of time it was in effect (integrate it). And that says that the temperature effect is (probably less than) 4x adequate to explain ALL the CO2 accumulation. This means that the rate of exchange is EVEN HIGHER than we thought. There is no question that some anthropogenic CO2 must remain in the atmosphere, but given the size of the opening to the source / sink, this is being exchanged out so fast that not much can accumulate, it’s mostly a temperature effect.
One last thing I would point out, is the filtering effect over time that you can see in the charts Bill Illis posted:
CO2 changes per year and human emissions going back to 1750.
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/3005/co2emmandchangeperyear1.png
CO2 changes per year and human emissions going back to 1000AD.
http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/8520/co2emmandchange1000ad.png
Please look at the frequency information in those charts. You can see that in the recent past, information is retained. Going back in time, the frequency of the chart is reduced, meaning information is being lost by filtering. The longer you go back, the more information is lost. I’m saying that in general, all proxies will do this. The fast response you see in my chart is a real-world, measured, physical effect. The rules don’t change as time passes, the ability to resolve differences over time does. So don’t think these processes were never in effect just because we can’t see high frequency, fast response data in proxies. It all gets smoothed together and you’ll never see it. So just because you can’t see large excursions of CO2 values in ice cores doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. If the temperature changed, they happened. The high frequency information is gone forever.
michael says:
So we know that we have an anthropogenic contribution. And we know we have a temperature contribution.
Henry@Michael
I don’t dispute that we are putting a bit more CO2 in the atmosphere. I think that is good for forests and greenery. They need that specific chemical for more growth. I dispute the fact that anyone knows for sure what the net effect is of this small increase of 0.01% since 1960 in CO2 in the atmosphere, cooling or warming. Unless they can bring me the actual test results.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
P Wilson
August 7, 2011 at 8:55 am asked, “Is there any data about fumaroles, mud volcanoes, hydrothermal vents, etc and generally all volcanoes, and (including underwater) and how much c02 they put into the atmosphere?”
See: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/08/volcanic-vs-anthropogenic-co2/#comments
Thanks for the link Slioch, but i meant objective and authoritative data.
Given the sizeable number of submarine volcanoes, by far the biggest source of volcanic co2, I suspect that there isn’t
regarding oceanic ph, lets assume that these huge numbers of active underwater volcanoes, fumaroles, etc, most likely impossible to quantify, of magmatic c02, and which surface preferentially in an ocean that contains some 60 times the quantity of c02 than is in the atmosphere, the notion that aerial co2 absorption where it takes place – usually at the polar waters – makes silly logic for oceans becoming more acidic due to a minuscule fraction of anthropogenic co2, in the annual equation of the c02 budget (the anthropogenic part that is absorbed by oceans). Its like saying that a drop of ink will cause a bathful of water to turn into enough ink to produce the works of Shakespeare.
ok, to be clear, I’m interested in data from ‘6: conclusion’ of this link
http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/