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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Luis Dias:
You people must be really desperate to avoid reality if you keep feeling the need to present ‘straw man’ arguments as in your post at August 5, 2011 at 10:51 am.
You are the second person to respond to my words on this thread with a ‘straw man’.
At August 5, 2011 at 6:58 am you asserted;
“At most, the temperature would have only affected 10% of the CO2 rise.”
I replied at August 5, 2011 at 8:37 am where I explained that nobody could know that because the carbon system is complex and I outlined that complexity. I concluded with;
“And you say you know “At most, the temperature would have only affected 10% of the CO2 rise”.
I DON’T BELIEVE YOU. PROVE IT.”
Your post at August 5, 2011 at 10:51 am responds to that challenge with a falsehood and a ‘straw man’ argument.
It says;
“I’m not saying I’m able to do so. It’s not my thesis, it’s professor’s Salby’s thesis which states the CO2 sensitivity to temperature, not me.”
But Salby did NOT say, “At most, the temperature would have only affected 10% of the CO2 rise”.
YOU SAID IT, NOT HIM.
Your assertion is a falsehood. And the argument that Salby said any such thing is misrepresentation of his argument; i.e. it is a ‘straw man’.
Salby says the rise is completely consistent with it being natural. It is. Please see my post at August 5, 2011 at 4:51 am if you want to know what the data does show.
And you are attempting the same reversal of the null hypothesis that Dave Springer tried to foist on us at August 5, 2011 at 6:52 am and I refuted at August 5, 2011 at 8:19 am.:
Richard
Google Nyquist sampling theorem. Then read these two papers…
McElwain, J.C., Mayle, F.E. and Beerling, D.J. 2002. Stomatal evidence for a decline in atmospheric CO2 concentration during the Younger Dryas stadial: a comparison with Antarctic ice core records. Journal of Quaternary Science 17: 21-29.
Van Hoof, T.B., Kaspers, K.A., Wagner,F., Van de Wal, R.S.W., Kürschner, W.M. and Visscher, H. (2005) Atmospheric CO2 during the 13th century AD: reconciliation of data from ice core
measurements and stomatal frequency analysis. Tellus B, 57/4, 351-355.
I have always felt that Salby’s hypothesis seemed to be highly likely. There is so little evidence for CO2 causing warming in the historical records – everything suggests that atmospheric CO2 is affected by temperatures in some ways.
No doubt many other things influence CO2 levels such as volcanoes, plants, land mass, how much ice covers the poles, animal & bacterial life forms including, of course, Man etc.
Only a narrow minded imbecile could possibly believe that there is a simple relationship between any of these factors.
Any intelligent person would necessarily conclude that there are a whole host of interrelated factors.
Only a simpleton would single out just CO2 and temperature and suggest that there is some kind of direct constant relationship between the two that is independent of everything else.
Is it just me that sees the discussions exclusively around CO2 and temperature as being pointless and idiotic? Doesn’t anyone else see that it is a totally futile approach to understanding a chaotic complex system?
So the AGW crowd urge us to keep temperatures down, so in the light of Prof Salby’s findings, we need to keep burning fossil fuels to keep the cooling sulphates high……oh the irony.
Tom Gray says:
August 5, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Suppose AGW theory is correct and a rise in atmosheric CO2 will lead to an increase in temperature and that this could verry bad effects.
Then why is it a good thing that this is natural?
=========================================================
Because acceptance is necessary for advancement. And certitude is only derived from acceptance. It is how we persevere over adversity. ——– “Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.”—————William Congreve
We could then quit wasting our time, energies and money on this useless CO2 blame game and move on to something worthwhile. You see, it doesn’t matter if it is or isn’t a natural process vs. human caused. If this is a natural occurrence, obviously, there’s nothing to be done about it. If this is man caused……… well, there’s nothing to be done about it either. China has aptly proven that developing nations don’t and won’t care about a degree or two of warming. They will develop first and worry about the rest later. The developed world can’t change to a non-carbon emitting society, either. If it is man caused, atmospheric CO2 will continue to rise at least until the end of the next century and likely beyond that. If its a natural variation, it could stop anytime then.
This could be a trillion dollar blunder for the warmists if it holds up and it seems solid. Prof. Murry Salby’s talk was very persuasive.
John Finn says:
Human emissions are causing the increase in CO2. Temperature simply determines the rate of that increase.
ummm…
So, you’re saying that temperature determines the rate at which humans emit CO2?
Yeah, right.
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?
Seriously? What part of “lag” do you fail to understand? Current levels of CO2 are only partially affected by current temperatures. You can’t simply take a given “global temperature” (as if such a thing actually existed or were pertinent to global energy content) and expect to correlate that with a specific level of CO2. Your argument is typical of warmists who gladly accept the science when it fits their argument, but conveniently forget it when they try to shoot down someone else’s argument.
Steve from Rockwood says:
August 5, 2011 at 9:02 am
===================================================
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.
With all due respect, Steve, I don’t think you nor a large number of posters understand the 800 year lag and the time scales involved.
As the earth emerged from the ice age, temperatures began to rise very gradually following which the oceans warmed and more CO2 was released into the atmosphere. The whole complete process took thousands of years. The ~800 year lag was due to ocean circulation ‘digging’ out higher concentrations of CO2 from the deep. Throughout this, the earth was continuing to warm so a new CO2 ocean/atmosphere equilibrium (Henry’s Law) would be established as more ‘free’ CO2 at the ocean surface became available.
To repeat: This was a long continuous process of rising temperatures and slow CO2 feedback.
After about 5000 years the earth had warmed 5-6 degrees and in response to that atmospheric CO2 concentrations had risen from 180 ppm to 280 ppm, i.e. about 100 ppm.
Over the past 150 years the earth has warmed ~0.7 degrees while atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen by more than 100 ppm – i.e. more than the increase over the 5000 years following the LGM (when temps increased more than 5 degrees) .
In a nutshell: The 800 year lag is completely and utterly irrelevant in the context of the rises over the past 150 years. There are small short term fluctuations such as during ENSO events. That is, during the warm El Nino phase there is more emission and less absorption than during the cool La Nina phase. But the steady underlying upward trend since the late 19th century is almost entirely due to human emissions.
A Question to all those who still believe the current CO2 rise is due to higher temperatures:
How come a temperature rise of less than 1 deg C produces the same increase in CO2 as a 6 deg C rise – and in just a tiny fraction of the time?
Luis Dias says:
August 5, 2011 at 3:55 am
“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.”
Jeremy says:
August 5, 2011 at 12:26 pm
“I’m very amused at how sure you are with the numbers you are using. A six degree C difference with what amount of error? 180ppmv with what amount of error?”
As the argument comes from Gavin, it must be numbers he found out using his computer models. So his argument is a tautology: If the models are right, Salby must be wrong, and as we have shown that Salby is wrong, our models must be right.
Oceans overwhelm all other influences on climate, being 70% of the earth’s surface, and regulate the climate concerning air temperature, water vapour which overwhelms all other ghgs, humidity and precipitation., Oceans also regulate how much c02 is in the atmosphere. NASA et al have no theory for all this, or data, as they can’t really handle that much complexity.
However, The air does not heat the oceans; the oceans heat the air; since oceans have a thousand times more heat capacity than the air.(Thus water retains heat, the air does not – the fallacy of green house gases trapping heat, which it doesn’t)
Charlie Z says:
August 5, 2011 at 11:01 am
“The only thing interesting and potentially new was that the isotopic concentrations don’t necessarily mean that the extra CO2 in the air is from humans, which doesn’t say it isn’t either. ”
Well, that’s the bombshell because it undermines the ability of AGW science to determine the impact that antropogenic CO2 emissions have at all on the CO2 concentrations in the air. They would no longer be able to “fingerprint” human impact. As the natural carbon cycle exchanges are 2 orders of magnitude above human emissions, this would render CO2 control technology or taxation irrelevant.
Daniel M says:
August 5, 2011 at 2:04 pm
John Finn says:
Human emissions are causing the increase in CO2. Temperature simply determines the rate of that increase.
ummm…
So, you’re saying that temperature determines the rate at which humans emit CO2?
No I’m not saying that. I’m saying that humans are causing the regular average annual increase of roughly 2 ppm but temperature determines whether the actual rise for any given year is, say, 1.5 ppm or 2.5 ppm. In an El Nino (warm) year the annual rise will be more than in a La Nina (cool) year.
Yeah right.
In other words, John Finn, c02 simply can’t add any more heat to the atmospheric temperature than comes from other sources, such as the sun and oceans.
Much of what you write seems to indirectly refer to the gimmick notion of the back radiation effect, which is contrived to explain why c02 doesn’t heat where there is supposed to be the hotspot 10km above the tropics, so the 0.6 degree is a tiny fraction of heat to be added to anything to do with the climate, regardless of the temperature measurement frauds of the last 40 years.
then there’s the question of decay/respiration etc that there is little data on, as nature puts 26 times more c02 into the atmosphere than does humans, per annum.
There is also the question of the decay of biology due to too little c02 in the atmosphere. Fortunately, since c02 is rising, there is every indication that biology will flourish for the forseeable future.
John Finn,
“How come a temperature rise of less than 1 deg C produces the same increase in CO2 as a 6 deg C rise – and in just a tiny fraction of the time?”
Because the ice core data does not have the resolution to accurately reflect actual atmospheric concentrations of CO2. I believe that 10,000 years ago the atmospheric level of CO2 exceeded 400ppm not 280ppm. Click on my name for a more complete explanation.
Frank K. says:
August 5, 2011 at 6:43 am
“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??”
I thought that was obvious. Wealth redistribution, socialist dependent State, Green-minority pandering, and vote buying to try and win a clear majority at the next election!
OMG? The balls on that guy! Quickly protect him long enough so he can speak his piece in peace before the climate zombie hippie drones start with the whole big oil stuff that owns them. :p
P Wilson states “Oceans overwhelm all other influences on climate, being 70% of the earth’s surface”
Your comments echo EXACTLY what my college Atmospheric Physics Professor said more than 25 years ago!!!
We knew about CO2 as a greenhouse gas at that time and even discussed it in class.
But nobody back then dared dismiss the Oceans and suggest that it is actually “the tail which wags the dog”.
I guess a truth never changes – it remains valid no matter the political winds.
Unlike Global Cooling….err Global Warming err Climate Change err Climate Disruption….blah di blah…what nonsense will they invent next?
We just played the ultimate joke on our 2800AD selves. Man are they going to be annoyed with us when all our emissions come back out. Hehehehehe.
This may have been covered by other comments, but I would like to point to the beer I am drinking right now. If I warm it up, the CO2 will be driven off right smartly. If I then cool it at atmospheric CO2 levels, it will absorb much less CO2. This is a concept well known in most science as hysteresis. That is to say, the path in one direction does not always indicate the path in the other direction. Dr. Schmidt et. al. who argue that CO2 should immediately drop with cooling may be unaware of this concept. Perhaps they don’t like beer.
Cheers.
JE
John Finn,
One of the things Salby talked about was the huge increase in CO2 from the 1998 El Nino event. Looking at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ there were several El Nino’s the past decade. While none of the El Nino’s since 1998 were as large, El Nino was dominant in the first half of the decade and that could explain the increase in CO2 concentration.
@ur momisugly
J.Hansford:
Good job setting Up Wing straight. Except, I’d qualify it by saying most people, in my view, on here accept that warming has occurred; but, that it’s been exagerated by improper accounting of urban heat island effect and poor station siting and other issues. Also, too much leeway has been taken replacing historical data with adjusted data, which always goes in favor of biasing modern temperatures upwards–Mosh’s protestations not withstanding.
Does plant/plankton life in the ocean consume CO2 like terrestrial plants do? If you add CO2 to a plant’s environment, it grows faster, automatically. Could oceans be adding more plant life too, if our atmosphere contains more CO2?
I am thoroughly enjoying the tutorial by Dr. Richard S. Courtney (and others-thank you Tim Ball).
However, a NOAA illustration of the Annual Mean Growth of CO2. Note the group by decade-and no relation to human emissions.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo_anngr.png
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?
Answer: With all due respect Mr. Salby is incorrect. Current CO2 levels, far beyond the levels we seen for the past 800,000 years and probably longer are due to human industrial activities. The oceans have been net sinks of human carbon dioxide…this much is quite clear. Humans have taken the carbon from the fossil fuels and placed it in the atmosphere and oceans…end of story
So you’re saying that for 800,000 years we’ve had some ten 100,000 year long periods of ice age interspersed by periods of rapid and dramatic warming with huge rises in sea levels during some ten c15,000 year long interglacials, and Carbon Dioxide had nothing to it. End of story.