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…”
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It’s a bit ingenuous to believe, assume, or even think that the AGW bedwetters are going to admit that this paper has any meaning or weight regarding their junk science card castle. They dismissed the 800-year lag, the shorter lag in the 1938 warm peak in E. Beck’s CO2 data study, and pretty much ignore Henry’s Law, focusing only on the idea that CO2 will increase in the oceans, regardless of Henry’s Law.
They will ward off any wind that comes close to their card castle and the character assassination, spurious, wrong criticisms, and name-calling will begin once the paper is published, or even before.
Up Wing says:
August 5, 2011 at 5:13 am
Salby is saying that The CO2 rise is a natural response to the global termperature rise. So you can accept his explanaion but this also requires accepting that glbal temperatures are increasing.
Is everyone here accepting that then?
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Everyone was always accepting that temperature has risen since about 1850…. Skeptics say that mostly it is Natural and the anthropogenic signal that should be present because of the accepted physical properties of CO2 is barely detectable above the noise of natural climate variation and is not significant…… So I think you have been missing the skeptical view point if you thought skeptics didn’t accept higher temperatures….. However, it is interesting to note that there has been a hiatus in the warming for 12 to 15 years despite rising CO2 levels…..
John Finn said:
“We know atmospheric CO2 concentration responds to temperature. When it’s warmer CO2 concentration increases – BUT WHEN IT’S COOLER IT SHOULD DECREASE. Not once in the past 50 years has there been a year on year fall. ”
But it is the ocean temperature that counts and not the air temperature and we’ve seen that the oceans vary internally over time as regards the rate at which energy is released at the surface via warmer or cooler surface temperatures. If the current CO2 increase is driven by MWP warmth returning through the ocean system at a time of more active sun then it would be most unlikely that we would see decreases just from changes in air temperatures.
Luis Dias said:
“The most pertinent criticism I think was quoted on Cetc but it was made by Gavin Schmidt. It is basically this point: if CO2 was so sensitive to temperatures (we are talking about 100ppm per 1 degree celcius), then the ice age data stops making sense. In the ice ages, CO2 was 180ppm, while in the warmer gaps between ice ages, CO2 was 280ppm. But the temperature was 6 degrees celcius higher. If the CO2 was as sensitive as Selby says, the difference ought to be 600ppm+- (or more), not 100.”
But that only goes to the sensitivity issue which is not the important finding. So what if the sensitivity is less than first thought ? That does not affect the basic contention that the isotope ratios have been wrongly interpreted.
LazyTeenager said:
“If the extra CO2 in the air is coming from the oceans due to warming oceans, then the amount in the oceans should be going down.
As far as I know ocean CO2 is going up not down.”
I’m not convinced by that. Water will only hold so much CO2 at a given temperature. Thus if ocean heat content rises the water must hold less CO2 and more will be released to the air. Please indicate how warmer water can become less alkaline (not more acidic) if it can hold less CO2. The PH of the oceans may well be more complex than simply the amount of CO2 they can hold.Furthermore ocean PH is not that evenly distributed vertically and horizontally. Remember that if there are horizontal temperature discontinuities along the track of the Thermohaline Circulation that would have an impact on surface PH levels as those discontinuities feed back to the surface some 800 or more years later. Some say the THC could be up to 1500 years long and climate cycles of that length have been noted.
We are clearly only at the very beginning of the process of understanding all the relevant inter relationships. The confident assertions of warmists are utterly bogus.
Julian Braggins says: August 5, 2011 at 5:13 am, commenting upon a point raised by me (see
richard verney says: August 5, 2011 at 3:37 am)
“…The planet has greened since then (added CO2), shown in satellite photos…”
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Julian, I accept that it would appear that planet has greened since the 1950s, (and whilst I accept that a greener planet is likely to increase one source of natural CO” sink), this fact alone does not answer the detail of the pointthat I raised.
The fact is that each year, the increase in CO2 levels is less than the corresponding increase in manmade CO2 emissions. This means that in 2010, the sinks absorbed more than they did in 2009. Ditto in 2009, the sinks absorbed more than they did in 2008. ditto, in 2008, the sinks absorbed more than they did in 2007. This trend is seen each year since the 1950s.
It is implausible, that the planet has similarly greened (in like linear fashion) each year. Indeed, it is almost certainly the case that there must have been years when de-forestation more than offset any natural greening in other areas, yet one still sees that the sink capacity has increased. The reasons behind this need detailed consideration and understanding.
In summary, what was the natural sink in each and every year since 1950, and what was the corresponding biomass each year? Increase in biomass is very probably only part of the explanation.
If this is true, then is the ~800 year lag wrong? Or, are we ~800 years behind a previous temperature increase that occurred 800 years ago?
The other issue I see here is, if you look at the graphs of ice core temp and co2, the CO2 only changed about 100 ppm, from roughly 190 ppm to 290 ppm. The CO2 ppm today is almost 400.
This is excellent, leaving little but the conundrum of the relativistic levels of CO2 in ice cores as opposed to absolute values.
John Finn says: August 5, 2011 at 4:50 am
[…]
We know atmospheric CO2 concentration responds to temperature. When it’s warmer CO2 concentration increases – BUT WHEN IT’S COOLER IT SHOULD DECREASE. Not once in the past 50 years has there been a year on year fall.
It is the ocean temperatures that are being discussed wrt CO2 not the atmosphere, and with a several hundred year hysteresis.
John Finn is in good company. There are many people who do not notice the inertia in the system. The climate does not instantaneously respond to stimulus. All the arguments about year on year changes tacitly assumes the system is in a state of equilibrium. We know that is not the case, as the climate is always chasing stimulus. No article I have read indicates that we have a thorough understanding of the various time constants involved in this dynamic system. If the sun were to stop tomorrow, it would take time for the Earth to cool, likely months before it was totally frozen due to all the inertia in the system. Heat does not leave complex systems as quickly as it does a black body. A black body by definition has no resistance to the photon emissions associated with its temperature. Heat also does not enter into a complex system as quickly as it does a black body absorber for the same reason. All the complex equilibrium reactions in the Earth system means some heat is reradiated before it can bring the system to an equilibrium temperature.
Does this mean there is no “Global Warming” or whatever they want to call it today? No. It just means the models are very much oversimplified and don’t represent the real climate system to even first order approximations of the observed phenomena. The jury is still out on the rest of their case and they aren’t doing much of a job presenting the evidence. Hand waving and political machinations do not prove a scientific case – though it does seem to attract funding.
Lazy Teenager,
The partitioning of CO2 between the oceans and atmosphere is extremely complex; and the volume of gas that is dissolved in water is immense. The thermal and circulation lags are enormous, which may be why we see an 800 year time lag between temperature changes and CO2 levels. There is also the issue of sediments and the effects of thermal and circulation changes on CO2 in sediments.
The measured surface C02 levels posited for changes in pH (“acidification”) can be greatly affected by transient thermal conditions in the near-surface layer, but the quality of the measurements and scarcity of reliable, widely distributed measurements are reasons to be uncertain about the acidification issue. So, the system is much more complex than the very short term response you are suggesting.
This presentation is quite interesting and should provide a basis for vigorous debate. Just another reason that the science isn’t settled.
Hi Anthony, I would really like to see a graph of a smaller time scale showing the relation between CO2 and temperatures over say the last ice age and this interglacial period. This would give a better view of the lag between them. Do you have a site I could visit or one yourself? Thanks
Great! Their analysis and conclusions agree with mine. http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf. Try this simple analysis. Divide the C12/C13 index by the standard index for graphite to get an estimate of the fraction in the atmosphere that is from organics. Multiply that fraction by the atmospheric concentration and plot both the organic and inorganic concentrations as a function of time. You will find that the organic fraction is about 1/3 of the total and both have been increasing at about the same rate. That is strong evidence that the increase is natural rather than man made.
I consider the missing tropospheric hotspots to have invalidated AGW theory long ago.
I said this in April 2010:
“It is likely that the current powerful run of positive Pacific Decadal Oscillations is the pulse of warmth from the Mediaeval Warm Period returning to the surface with the consequent inevitable increase in atmospheric CO2 as that warmer water fails to take up as much CO2 by absorption.”
In my guest post on this site:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/06/a-new-and-effective-climate-model/
John Finn says:
August 5, 2011 at 4:50 am
“We know atmospheric CO2 concentration responds to temperature. When it’s warmer CO2 concentration increases – BUT WHEN IT’S COOLER IT SHOULD DECREASE. Not once in the past 50 years has there been a year on year fall. ”
Pay attention John and look at the graphs! There is an 800 year lag! Want to try again?
Nice to know I have the same response as one of the world’s leading researchers in atmospheric sciences.
John Finn says:
August 5, 2011 at 4:50 am
We know atmospheric CO2 concentration responds to temperature. When it’s warmer CO2 concentration increases – BUT WHEN IT’S COOLER IT SHOULD DECREASE. Not once in the past 50 years has there been a year on year fall.
You didn’t allow for the 800 year time lag. We know from the ice cores that temperatures drive CO2 levels 800 years later. You will see the results of current warming/cooling around 2900 AD. Mark it on your calendar and get back to us.
Gore was aware of, but failed to mention in his movie. Instead he carefully worded his talk to make it appear the other way round, in what looks to me like an attempt to cash in on CO2 trading via his stake in CCX. Destroy the economy and get filthy rich in the process. For this you get a nobel prize.
We have a similar problem with government employees living high on the taxpayer dollar, with the money the should have been used to explore the moon and solar system diverted within NASA to feeding the climate hype machine. It wasn’t an accident that the last 3 moon missions were canceled, the program shut down and NASA re-tasked to studying the earth. All NASA manned missions have been low earth orbit since then, and even that capability has now been lost. Why? It is a lot easier to get money from congress when the mission is saving the earth rather than exploring space, so if budgets are a problem, re-task the mission.
I’ve just listened to the podcast and I find this VERY interesting. If he is right about this then it should be a serious blow to the AGW community. If the nature is responsible for most of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere then what difference does it make if we try to curb the emmisions?! In fact what difference does it make if the computer models are right or wrong? They can all be scrapped. They’ve got the “wrong guy” and the “culprit” is still out there waiting to be discovered. We’ve wasted 30 years on the AGW theory and millions of dollars on super computers and the IPCC organisation.
Interestingly in the end he also mentions that even methane concentrations seems to follow the same rules as CO2 (temperature and surface moisture). So even the second greenhouse gas (third if you count H2O) is influenced largely by nature. Glad someone finally did some checking!
By the way, Anthony, I think you’ve spelled his name wrong. It should be Murry not Murray.
Of course, if temp is driving CO2 & not the other way around, the 1st question you have ask then is what drives temps, specifically, what has driven them up over the last 100 + yrs – could it be ……. the sun ???? Combine this idea with the cosmic ray – clouds hypothesis & you might have a relatively complete model to explain both temps & CO2.
This will be very interesting to see how this story develops & if the hypothesis stands up to scrutiny.
heh, heh, heh…….. to borrow another SNL saying…….. Well, “isn’t that special.” But, given a recent conversation had here, I think a borrowing from Randy Travis and Carrie Underwood would be more apt……..
James
J.Hansford says:
August 5, 2011 at 5:30 am
Seattle? Oh – very good!
Prof. Salby : “Anyone who thinks the science of this complex thing is settled is in Fantasia.”
He is being very polite there. Clearly, all the “science is settled” proponents are pure demagogues. I do see a high correlation between being a demagogue and getting a Nobel peace prize, by the way – maybe they should fix that and rename it to Nobel Prize For Demagogy.
Will Dr. Salby publish or will the team attempt to block the publication of this work?
Friends:
Several here have pointed out that global temperature has been approximately static for about a decade but CO2 continues to increase in the air. They seem to think that this indicates temperature change is not the cause of the CO2 rise. However, that does not follow as is explained in the one of our papers which I referenced in my above post (at August 5, 2011 at 4:51 am ).
The continuing rise for decades after the temperature has risen is because a temperature increase causes the system of the carbon cycle to obtain a new equilibrium state, and the system takes decades to achieve that new equilibrium.
The short term sequestration processes can easily adapt to sequester the anthropogenic and the natural emissions of any year. But some processes of the system are very slow with rate constants of years and decades. Hence, the system takes decades to fully adjust to a new equilibrium (whatever caused the change to the equilibrium) and, therefore, atmospheric CO2 concentration changes for decades after a change to the system (e.g. a change to global temperature).
I think it is important to note that Salby says very little that is new in his presentation. Only his soil moisture argument is novel. Everything else he says is covered by our paper which I referenced in my above post (at August 5, 2011 at 4:51 am ) and the WUWT articles of Roy Spencer (that Anthony links above). Indeed, Salby uses some of the same words as we use in our paper (please note that this is NOT an accusation of plagiarism: clear statements of the same facts are likely to use the same words).
Richard
Chris Ibbo,
These might help:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Climate%20Change/PhanerozoicCO2vTemp.png
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/IceCores1.gif [CO2 clearly lags temperature and thus is not a cause]
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/USHCNvsCO2.jpg [correlation fail]
http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/2464/tempvsco267m.png
http://www.carlineconomics.com/files/images/Fig7-large.jpg [correlation fail]
http://icebubbles.ucsd.edu/Publications/CaillonTermIII.pdf
http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/ice-core-graph
http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/CaillonTermIII%203.jpg
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c013480b4810c970c-pi
http://i26.tinypic.com/311s08x.jpg [click in image to embiggen]
http://www.climate4you.com/images/VostokTemp0-420000%20BP.gif
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim3.gif
http://oi53.tinypic.com/sg2wav.jpg
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Vostok-CO2.png
http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400000yearslarge.gif [T clearly leads CO2]
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SsVwqCgB-LI/AAAAAAAABKo/U92CnYMmeSU/s1600-h/Vostok-400Kd.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SmDoZBIkB3I/AAAAAAAABAc/KkUzrz2abwI/s1600-h/Vostok-140Kc.jpg
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
CO2 is a function of temperature, not vice-versa. More charts available on request.
Interesting talk by Prof. Salby. I’m sure the conclusions are controversial and will be debated endlessly, but I think they are sufficiently compelling to recommend NOT implementing a ruinous and completely unnecessary climate tax. Can someone (especially someone from Australia) tell me why a carbon tax is needed and what it will accomplish? The same thing can be said for declaring CO2 a “pollutant”. Why are we doing this to ourselves??
John Finn says:
August 5, 2011 at 4:50 am
“According to many posters on this blog, we’ve had no warming since 1998. In 1998 CO2 concentrations were ~366 ppm. In 2010 CO2 concentrations were ~390 ppm. According to UAH, 2010 and 1998 pretty much tied for warmest year, Why was there ~24 ppm more CO2 in 2010 than in 1998?
Human emissions are causing the increase in CO2. Temperature simply determines the rate of that increase. ”
There is a short term correlation between the temperature and the rate of increase, but this does not exclude the possibility of other, long term correlations between a very long term temperature average and the temperature trend – I’m thinking of the thermohaline circulation. In other words, very long lag times from another, very large reservoir – the waters in the deep that must come up somewhere.
When i’m looking at the thermohaline circulation, it looks too me like the longest delay line i’ve ever seen. And surely any information that once went into this delay line (a CO2 impulse, caused by increased CO2 absorption during a cold phase, for instance, or the opposite during a warm time) will come out a long time later and very, very blurred and low-passed…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation