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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Here is something hair-raising I found:
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
I’m not competent to comment – but who can?
It never made any sense to me to attribute changes in C12/C13 ratios to humanity, considering that C13 is created naturally in the atmosphere by incoming radiation from space which is a variable, and not constant. I never heard anyone speak on how they eliminated the variability of naturally produced C13 wrt human emissions.
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.”
===================================================
A whole 50 years John Finn? You are willing to believe that humans are responsible for CO2 increases because of a whole 50 years of increases?
The average lag between CO2 and temperature is 800 years. When CO2 was increasing in the 1940s through to the 1970s (for over 30 years) why did temperature go down?
Probably because the short term fluctuations in global temperature are not related to the long term increase in CO2, which is obvious when you compare the two graphs. Over a period of several thousand years – yes there is a correlation, CO2 follows temperature. But over 50 years? No correlation. I don’t understand why people don’t understand this.
When the cooling really gets going, the CO2 will start decreasing. I think there is already evidence of deceleration.
~800 years lag is an artifact. CO2 was higher than today during the Holocene optimum for example, simply because the temperatures were higher.
Re Luis Dias @ur momisugly August 5, 2011 at 3:55 am:
There must be a very large effect on the carbin sink if CO2 concentration goes from 180 ppm to 280 ppm. You’re crossing over the threshold value of CO2 (~200 ppm) at which plant photosynthesis can occur.
richard verney says:
August 5, 2011 at 3:37 am
…
On a related point, we need to know why natural sinks today are absorbing more CO2 than they were 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 years ago etc.
We do not know that they are, though I tend to think so. CO2 is, as often repeated, “plant food.” Increased productivity would lead to higher sequestering rates. Again, the oceans may be a more or less undiscussed key sink. Algal blooms, for example, would take up tons of CO2, but how broadly researched is this. There are also natural chemical sinks – carbonate pan formation in soil,. lime precipitation in marine environments, and presumably others as well.
For example, if say back in 1980, natural sinks had the same capacaity as they do today to absorb CO2 then there would not have been an increase in CO2 levels in 1980/1, ditto If say back in 1981, natural sinks had the same capacaity as they do today to absorb CO2 then there would not have been an increase in CO2 levels in 1981/2.
Natural biological sinks would be capable of increasing capacity in response to increased available CO2 if other critical nutrients aren’t acting as limits. Increased agriculture could also act as a non-natural sink.
We need to better understand the natural processes involved both in the release of CO2 and in its absorpttion.
Hear, hear!
“professor” Salby should get some basic courses on diffusion physics before he writes this tripe.
Google Ferdinand Engelbeen CO2 for some real skeptic science.
Anthony,
Nothing new here just another rehash of what appeared in our ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon’ book written by Miso Alkalaj. Also, it’s amazing to read “Dr Roy Spencer has suspected something similar,” because in emails with the ‘Slayers’ he argued against our conclusion that increasing CO2 wasn’t principally traceable to human emissions.
Week by week, month by month lukewarmers are wising up to fact there is no ‘greenhouse effect.’
Mike Hohmann says:
August 5, 2011 at 8:58 am
Here is something hair-raising I found:
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
I’m not competent to comment – but who can?
============================================
Hmm, Mike some blogs are a bit behind WUWT……
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/06/hyperventilating-on-venus/ (There’s a link to Lubos Motl’s thoughts at the end of the post)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/08/venus-envy/
Goddard has continued espousing that the ideal gas law should be applied on his own blog…..
Here is an excellent articulation of the current theory as to why the ideal gas law doesn’t apply in this particular case. http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/ivy-league-alarmist-proves-my-point/#comment-50172 🙂
But, the post itself demonstrates Goddard’s POV.
Hello folks, I am not Jeff Dunham, nor do I play him in TV, but today our skit will not have Jeff Dunham not playing himself and Achmed the dead terrorist who will be playing to part of Kevin Trenberth, and Walter, who Gavin Schmidt plays when he is not posting on The Blog that will not be Named. Are you with me so far?
Jeff: So, you guys have a real problem today with whole out-gassing of CO2 from the oceans problem making your AGW theory look like so much hot air…
Gavin: I out-gas all the time! But that is not a problem because clearly if warming oceans were causing CO2 levels to rise, the fact that the warming has halted for a decade or so would have caused CO2 levels to level off, and we have not seen that.
Kevin: Infidel!!! Fool who is bought and paid for by big oil! What you are saying is not possible. Everyone knows that the heat is hiding in the deep oceans where we can not find it. This is a position I have staked my career on, and AGW theory requires that this be true, therefor the oceans have been warming!! Wait… Gavin is that you?
Gavin: (Emitting a gas he claims is killing us with every breath…) Ahhh, hmmm What I meant to say was that the missing heat is hiding in the deep oceans in a place where it will not cause warming, in fact the extra heat is causing cooling. Therefor this proves double true that human activity causes the heating which causes the cooling that creates the CO2 that causes my funding, that proves that everyone who disagrees with our position is funded by big oil and therefor must be wrong.
Jeff: What?
Kevin and Gavin: Silence!!!
I still don’t understand this point: there is a high turnover rate of CO2 in the atmosphere. The entire turnover period is less than 10 years. Furthermore, the majority of CO2 emissions are natural. Therefore, the live CO2 in the atmosphere is going to always be coming predominantly from natural sources, and the CO2 being taken in is predominantly natural with a bit of man-made in there. Either way, the man-made sources are only part of the mix, and this is a well-mixed system. Just going by this description, I don’t think that we can determine these things on this level using a C12-C13 analysis.
The question is: if man had not been outputting CO2 to the atmosphere, would the CO2 levels have increased? More generally, what is the equilibrium concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, and has this been significantly affected by the actions of Man?
this is by far the top story of the whole AGW even greater than climategate ect should be left top post for a very very long time AW you decide its your site lol
That’s pretty weak, Gates. Your comment amounts to, “It is this way because I say it is so!”
As far as the MWP is concerned, I presume you’re basing your argument on ice-core data. You’re saying the ice-cores do not show a CO2 increase during the MWP. This indicates you did not listen to the podcast.
Tim Ball says:
August 5, 2011 at 7:43 am
“It is difficult to be a sceptic among sceptics.”
=========================================================
Sometimes, it is.
R. Gates says: August 5, 2011 at 8:55 am
Well then, it seems skeptics to the anthropogenic build-up of CO2 studies would have a difficult choice to make. Why, for example, didn’t CO2 reach the levels we see today during the Holocene Optimum, Roman Warm period, or much beloved MWP?
It doesn’t matter what the CO2 level is…it is not driving the climate bus. I’d say it is not only at the back of the bus, it’s coming out the tailpipe. That is to say, it is barely connected to climate.
richard verney:
I welcome disagreement with what I write and I especially appreciate it when I am shown to be wrong because then I learn. But I object to misrepresentation of what I write.
Your post at August 5, 2011 at 8:21 am purports to be replying to my post at August 5, 2011 at 6:41 am.
You begin that reply by saying;
”The system is never in equilibrium and cannot achieve equilibrium. the chaotic nature of clouds alone leads instrinsically to that result.”
Then you attack what I said as being wrong because the system is never in equilibrium. That attack is the logical error commonly known as a ‘straw man’.
I wrote,
“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). “
So, I said the system is changing because it is seeking equilbrium equilibrium.
I did not say it is in equilibrium.
My argument must be very good if you feel the need to answer it with a ‘straw man’.
Richard
R. Gates says:
August 5, 2011 at 8:55 am
Well then, it seems skeptics to the anthropogenic build-up of CO2 studies would have a difficult choice to make. Why, for example, didn’t CO2 reach the levels we see today during the Holocene Optimum, Roman Warm period, or much beloved MWP?
——————–
R. Gates,
I think R Taylor’s following comment suggests an insight. The Salby paper will be interesting.
Thanks R Taylor.
John
Fred H. Haynie – Complements on your fascinating analysis: The Future of Global Climate Change especially on polar ice caps as CO2 drivers. http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf.
I encourage you to formally publish your findings. I took the liberty to crosspost your material at Climate Etc.
Richard Courtney – I also cross posted some of your post – (before seeing your post.)
Its new, its old. Its exciting, its a boring rehash. Its accurate, its inaccurate. He is a good scientist, he is a bad scientist.
This one could run a while….
There onto a change of tactics now
http://www.tothecenter.com/index.php?readmore=16987e
@ur momisugly John Finn: One presumes you’ve understood that the time lag between temperature trend rise and [CO2] trend rise is 800years? so why would you expect [CO2] to be trending downward on account of 15years of cooling or no change?
If your soup is boiling and you turn off the stove element, does the soup immediately stop boiling? Now consider the volume of the earth’s oceans and consider it’s thermal inertia and then explain why you expect that a trivial 15years cooling should already be paying dividends WRT atmospheric [CO2].
As another Skippy, I hope this paper proves sufficiently game changing to put the brakes on this gullible warming gravy train; though I am far too pessimistic to actually believe the nomenclatura will relinquish their grand vision when faced with yet more contractory science.
Concensus my arse!
Sad thing is, all my Geology, Meteorology, Climatology and Oceanography professors knew the hot-air affect was pure fiction back in 1991, so why have we all wasted so much time and beer vouchers on such improbable bovine faeces in the meantime?
(My Meteorology Professor was cut off while answering a local radio station’s DJs questions on gullible warming back in 1993, a sudden technical failure after he’d pointed out that atmospheric [CO2] increases were as trivial as those due to opening a can of coke in one’s lounge room).
Off topic maybe, but I see another oil company is proudly gloating about an offshore wind farm selling watermelon electricity to the UK national grid (off the Norfolk coast) this week.
So much for the vested interest of ‘big oil’.
Bring on the 21st century minimum so that science proof eco-worriers have something real to fuss about.
R Gates: “Current CO2 levels, far beyond the levels we seen for the past 800,000 years”
During the Eemian, CO2 rose 100ppm from a 190ppm base line. So far, CO2 has risen about 100ppm from a higher base line.
What natural process decided the base line would be 100ppm higher in the Holocene than the Eemian?
Why did CO2 follow temperature changes in the Eemian?
Why does CO2 rise 2.9ppm during an El Nino and less than 1ppm in some years? I thought human produced CO2 was quite consistent?
Mr./Ms. Gates:
The last 800,000 years is less than a blink of an eye. As can easily be found, there was a period of time when CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was close to what it is today.
This was the Carboniferous Period, called the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian Periods on the side of the pond wherein polar bears are drowning due to thin/absent arctic ice.
This was also a significant glacial event, coexistant with luxuriant coal-forming swamps.
A bit earlier, near the transition between the Ordovician and Silurian Periods, we saw another significant glacial event take place. Funny thing is, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was more than ten times what it is today.
What is the big deal about the last 800,000 years? Why not look at the complete record, and explain tells us why the last 800,000 years is so special? While you are at it, explain the lack of correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature changes. There’s lots of data; surely you can come up with a model to make CO2 concentration and temperatures match each other perfectly, right?
Mark H.
Wow! This was a talk by Prof. Murray Salby that had to blow the collective minds of every eco-fanatic on the planet. CO2 increased in the 80s while temperature began to drop and c13 is also made naturally. This is devastating to the AGW community – millions of dollars will have to be spend to discredit this man and his work or the AGW community is DOA.
BTW, thanks Anthony for this article – your research is second to none highlighting this man.
The edifice is crumbling!
This fits in nicely with this:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=8119
and this:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=8168
Please see my paper at the weblink.