Guest Post by Caleb Shaw
My last layman’s paper generated a wonderful and polite peer-review from WUWT readers, teaching me a great deal, not the least of which was that I should avoid using the word “pneumatic” when I mean “hydraulic.” It is in the hopes of receiving a similar polite response that I will venture to ask some questions about a Climate Gospel, even though it is a Climate Gospel that earns most questioners a severe pummeling.
I will attempt to be cheerfully naïve, however in some situations that is not enough. A Texan can be cheerful and naïve all he wants, but, when he is making cheeseburgers out of a Holy Cow in a Hindu village, he is liable to find he has a riot on his hands. There are some things Thou Shall Not Do. Sometimes Thou Shall Not Even Question.
My questions involve those little bubbles in ice cores. It may seem a harmless subject, but those little bubbles are a basement upon which a great many papers have been written, and upon which a great many grants depend. Dare you question the little bubbles, and all sorts of hell breaks lose.
In fact if you poke around the subject of those little bubbles your don’t-go-there alarm will start to go off, along with your I-don’t-have-time-for-this alarm, (if you have one.) However sometimes a man’s got to do what he least wants to do.
As anyone who has raised teenaged daughters understands, there are times when you have “to go there,” despite the fact your don’t-go-there alarm is blaring, and times you have to make time, even though your I-don’t-have-time-for-this alarm is howling.
Daughters teach a man that, despite all efforts to ban bullying and legislate spirituality, ostracism remains mysteriously crucial to schoolgirl adolescence, and the same daughter who was sobbing about being ostracized on Monday may be gleaming with glee over a nemesis being ostracized on Tuesday. Fathers often have to make sense of this emotional and blatant hypocrisy, even if it means turning off the TV just before the big game.
You may be wondering what this has to do with little bubbles in ice caps. I don’t blame you, but bear with me.
Please notice that, in the above example, it is the daughters doing the teaching. They are teaching their fathers about wild swings of emotion involved with having a non-scientific and supposedly irrational thing called “a heart.”
Scientists don’t like being compared with schoolgirls, because, in humanity’s constant battle to balance the heart and head, Science represents the purified essence of the head. However just because Science focuses on the head does not mean Scientists have no hearts. “If you prick them, do they not bleed?”
The only thing a scientist is suppose to be passionate about is being dispassionate, however in their quieter moments most will confess there have been times they’ve failed to be totally objective, and have slapped themselves on the forehead because they were blind to some obvious truth staring them in the face. However even this humbleness underscores an egotism they have about being more objective than most people. Also, if anyone is going to slap their forehead, they prefer it to be themselves. They don’t like it one bit when you compare them with schoolgirls. They get all emotional if you accuse them of being emotional.
Nothing makes people angry faster than accusing them of being angry when they’re not. A calm, peaceful soul can be reduced to frothing and to spitting snakes, because no one likes being falsely accused. You can get them even madder if , after you have angered them by accusing them of being angry when they weren’t, you look smug and say, “See? I told you that you were angry.”
Scientists are no different, and if you tweak them in the right way, then they, who are so focused on the head, will lose their heads and demonstrate they have tremendous hearts. Sometimes the revealed heart is tremendously good, but sometimes it is tremendously otherwise.
Scientists do not like being tweaked in this manner, because that is not what science is all about. Raving is beneath the dignity of science. However, when politics enters the hallowed halls of science, scientists get tweaked plenty, for study is no longer funded for its intrinsic value. A scientist may abruptly be defunded due to an election. Men are jarred awake in their Ivory Towers, as they are confronted by a mentality befitting thirteen-year-old schoolgirls: It matters who is “in” and who is “out.”
Therefore, despite all my shortcoming concerning Physics classes I never took, (or preferred to spend dreaming out the window during,) I do have an understanding others lack, as I approach the delicate subject of little bubbles in an icecap’s ice, because I have been the father of schoolgirls, and know the politics of ostracization and marginalization, and what such things do to the human heart and to human tempers.
One can study both the little bubbles, and also the path to marginalization, by taking a hard look at the travails of Zbigniew Jaworowski.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=25526754-e53a-4899-84af-5d9089a5dcb6&p=3
And also looking at a paper he wrote:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/Jaworowski%20CO2%20EIR%202007.pdf
A quick perusal of Jaworoski’s paper taught me that all sorts of complex chemistry may (or may not) being going on in those innocent little bubbles, but most of the chemistry was over my head. Not that I couldn’t understand, if I put my mind to it, but I actually had some simple questions, and, until I got those simple questions answered, it seemed I’d be getting ahead of myself if I tackled the complex chemistry.
Therefore I headed to Wikipedia. Not that I trust it as a source, but it often has links to truer sources, and one hopes Wikipedia gets the most basic facts right.
However even in terms of the most basic facts I seemed to be getting a wide variety of answers. For example, how long does it take fluffy snow to be compacted to ice with little bubbles in it? The answers I got ranged from sixty to five-thousand years.
Likely this variance occurred due to the fact Antarctica includes some areas of very dry desert, where snow accumulates very slowly, whereas Greenland is subject to Atlantic gales, and snow can accumulate very quickly. However it was unclear which data-set was being referred to, and that made things rough for a layman like myself. I had to keep switching back and forth from source to source, and then, when I went back to find an important link at the Wikipedia source, “Greenland ice cores,” just a week ago, I found it had vanished, and instead there was this message:
06, 12 September 2011 Timothy’s Cannes (talk | contrib.) deleted “Greenland ice cores” (Mass deletion of pages created by Marshallsumter: questionable creation by now-indeffed editor: see
As a scientific researcher, my conclusion at this point was, “Oh, Drat.”
Unless you are the sort who rushes in where angels fear to tread, do not, I repeat, DO NOT go to that Wikipedia message board. I only went because I wanted to see what ice core data “Mashallsumter” got wrong. As far as I could tell from the morass I waded out into, the reason “Greenland ice cores” was deleted had nothing to do with the data on that page, but rather had to do with some strange beliefs “Mashallsumter” was expressing, and strange research he was involved with, elsewhere in the Wiki-world.
I didn’t much want to know about the fellow’s beliefs and activities, as it seemed to have very little to do with little bubbles in ice, but I couldn’t help notice the marvelous effort that was made to throw “Mashallsumter” from the hallowed halls of Wiki. He was found guilty of both the crime of being original, and the crime of copying. (What is the third alternative?) In any case, “Greenland ice cores” was history, and was history in a hurry, and was deleted history, which hardly counts as history because you can’t find it.
At this point I almost gave up my research, because it occurred to me that something about the study of little bubbles in ice cores makes people weird. I did not want to become weird. However my wife reassured me I had nothing to fear, because I already am weird, and that gave me the courage to forge onwards.
part two tomorrow…
According to one paper I’ve read (Ho, Don, Journal of Hawaiian Music, 1966), researching those tiny bubbles will make you feel happy, make you feel fine
Nick Stokes,
Thanks for the link on the radiation paper. I am not going to assume you were trying to be denigrating. The important thing is the information.
As someone with 10+ years in nuclear power generation and another 4 in submarines, it has always amazed me how most people have this boogyman view of radiation. I tend to think a lot of it results from movies from the 50’s and 60’s – giant spiders, the amazing 50 ft woman, etc. It is basic lack of knowledge and the subsequent fear that results where people hear “radiation” or “nuclear” that got me interested in science education.
I see a lot of the same issues with climate science. People are being told scare stories about what “global warming” is going to do to them. Are the stories true? Here is a hint – seen any giant spiders or 50 ft women?
BTW – did you know the the US government did long term studies on shipyard workers who worked on nuclear powered warships, compared to workers in civilian shipyards and found no evidence of increased cancers? What was a bit surprising is their finding that the nuclear workers tended to have a slightly lower incidence of other diseases.
This has also shown up in the surviviors of the WWII atomic bomb attacks in Japan. Their average lifespans and incidence of disease is less than the national average. Researchers can say definitively that this is a result of the radiation exposures they received, as it could be natural selection for people who are genetically favored for long life.
I left out a “not” in the last sentence. Researchers “cannot” say …
“However just because Science focuses on the head does not mean Scientists have no hearts. “If you prick them, do they not bleed?””
And if you wrong them, shall they not revenge?
Teenage boys can also teach their mothers a lot. When my eldest was 16, he came home after school and asked a simple question: “Mom, what would you do if I got a girl pregnant?”
Luckily, one of my other children needed some immediate attention, and I was able to avoid the question that evening. However, he repeated the question the next day. Having had some time to compose myself, I answered in a straightforward and logical manner. I don’t believe in abortion, he would have to marry the girl, and if he thought it was rough living at home as a single person, it was even rougher to live at home as a married person. I think I also mentioned that he should pick someone that could clean house.
The years passed by. He joined the military, eventually got married, and had his first child. I called him one evening, and reminded him of his question. He laughed, and said he hadn’t realized at the time that he was putting me on the spot. Evidently he and some friends had been discussing the plight of a fellow student who had gotten pregnant, and one girl said that if she got pregnant her father would kill her. My son, being quite logical, said “Well, you know he wouldn’t literally kill you. So what would he really do?” So they made an agreement to go home that night and ask a parent what they would do if their child got pregnant, or got someone pregnant.
Turned out that my answer was deemed the best by this group of friends, as everyone else’s parent(s) simply started yelling and threatening, and several of the young people were grounded for a week.
Volker Doormann says:
November 1, 2011 at 7:43 am
Allan M says:
November 1, 2011 at 6:38 am
I see the irony evaded you.
Statement written for the Hearing before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Climate Change: Incorrect information on pre-industrial CO2
March 19, 2004
Statement of Prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski
Chairman, Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection
Warsaw, Poland
“Determinations of CO2 in polar ice cores are commonly used for estimations of the pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric levels. Perusal of these determinations convinced me that glaciological studies are not able to provide a reliable reconstruction of CO2 concentrations in the ancient atmosphere. This is because the ice cores do not fulfill the essential closed system criteria. One of them is a lack of liquid water in ice, which could dramatically change the chemical composition the air bubbles trapped between the ice crystals. This criterion, is not met, as even the coldest Antarctic ice (down to –73oC) contains liquid water[2]. More than 20 physico-chemical processes, mostly related to the presence of liquid water, contribute to the alteration of the original chemical composition of the air inclusions in polar ice[3].”
Mr. Shaw I hope the above will be of assistance to you.
Shevva says:
November 1, 2011 at 5:00 am…………………………
Please remember I’m trying to get a climate grant so this maybe just what Stanford or some such Uni is looking for for new revenue streams, if you could make the cheque out to Mr Udgunda of Nigeria please.
——————————
Oops, you forgot to include your bank account number so I can deposit your check.
“Likely this variance occurred due to the fact Antarctica includes some areas of very dry desert, where snow accumulates very slowly, whereas Greenland is subject to Atlantic gales, and snow can accumulate very quickly.”
That is what the weather is like now in those areas, what was it like during the periods being “estimated”? Oh, that’s what the possibly ‘variable based upon weather conditions’ ice cores are supposed to tell us along with CO2 concentrations! Seems like a catch 22. But all that aside, the models tell us it is getting warmer because of CO2, so who could possibly question their validity?
I’m home for lunch, and pleasantly suprised by the comments. Humor is risky business, and the jokes that leaves one crowd in stitches will go over like a lead balloon before the next group. Even the best joke will usually offend at least one person, and as they explain to me why my joke was not funny I quite often agree with them, and something that stuck me as witty will abruptly make me cringe. However my aim is to make people chuckle, and I’m glad to see I succeeded in many cases.
I am sad to learn Zbigniew Jaworowski has been in poor health. I wish him the best. He represents the sheer tenacity and toughness of Poland, of whom Winston Churchhill said, even as Hitler’s troops swarmed in, “The soul of Poland is indestructible and she will rise again like a rock, which may for a spell be submerged by a tidal wave, but still remains a rock.”
Enjoying the comments on my lunch break, except for the news Zbigniew Jaworowski is in poor health. I wish him well. I think he represents the toughness of which Winston Churchhill spoke, even as H-word invaded Poland, “The soul of Poland is indestructible and she will rise again like a rock, which may for a spell be submerged by a tidal wave, but still remains a rock.”
If it’s important, don’t go to Wikipedia, or Snopes. They are only good for settling alcohol lubricated bar bets.
I have empathy for any man who has had teenage daughters. I remember those days, and the parental pain that went with adolescent female hormones. On the other hand, I am the one she goes to when there’s a problem, like, money.
Now, she has her own daughter, and boy-oh-boy, is she in for it!
I to have wondered about the little bubbles.
The entire co2 house of cards rests on that one cornerstone.
Evidence that historic co2 levels may have been higher than the cores record would destroy the entire unprecedented and dangerous nonsense.
Leaving Jaworowski aside, there is a rich and growing literature dedicated to understanding microbial growth and survival in cold environments, specifically glacial ice. Perhaps the main proponent of this investigation, though there are many others, is Buford Price (NAS member). He brought this investigation to the forefront with his article,
Temperature dependence of metabolic rates for microbial growth, maintenance, and survival,
PNAS 2004 101 (13) 4631-4636; doi:10.1073/pnas.0400522101
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/13/4631.full
Over the past decade, I have become less surprised at every publication of where microbes can survive, if not grow. An early study found microbes in the snow at the South Pole at a concentration of ~10^3 cells/cm^3 with ~15% being from the Deinococcus-Thermus group. These are the hardy extremophiles, resistant to just about everything. Deinococcus radiodurans is the Guinness “world’s toughest bacterium”, able to survive 5,000 Gy of ionizing radiation (humans die at 5 Gy).
Finding them is one thing, but are they alive? Are they metabolizing? The answer is yes to both. Carpenter et al. (Applied and Environmental Microbiology, October 2000, p. 4514-4517, Vol. 66) reported incorportation of precursors into both protein and DNA at ~ -15 C for cells trapped in ice at the South Pole. The extent to which they are metabolizing is a different, thornier issue.
Another question is where are they living? From the above discussion, we have read about veins of “unfrozen” water and the possible diffusion of gasses, minerals and organic compounds through them. Several studies have shown that bacteria survive and metabolize in these environments, though very, very slowly. All the while, they are exchanging CO2, N2O, CH4, etc. with their environment. Price and colleagues have also suggested that another environment is conducive for supporting metabolism and viability: within the ice crystals themselves. From the abstract of the paper, Diffusion-controlled metabolism for long-term survival of single isolated microorganisms trapped within ice crystals, they state,
“…microbe[s] frozen in ice can metabolize by redox reactions with dissolved small molecules such as CO2, O2, N2, CO, and CH4 diffusing through the ice lattice.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/42/16592.full.pdf+html
No doubt, the diffusion and partitioning of small molecules like CO2 in glacial ice is not a trivial matter. Ice is not the equivalent of zircon, and chemistry and metabolism do occur at temperatures found in polar glaciers. The influence of a metabolizing microbial community on measurement of past CO2 concentrations is, in my book, an open question. I should also note that photosynthetic bacteria are also found in glaciers and that their chlorophyll content increases with depth (sorry can’t find the reference or talk right now). Moreover, chlorophyll containing bacteria are not the only ones that can incorporate CO2: bacteria with both proteorhodopsin and phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (think C4 plants) can at least incorporate some CO2 but cannot survive on CO2 alone. The involvement of these bacteria in the carbon cycle is only now being investigated.
Why haven’t we heard about these biological stories before? My guess is that interest in growth of bacteria in these extreme environments has been limited to the environmental microbiology, astrobiology, and origin of life communities. Implications of measuring gas and metabolite diffusion through ice and their in situ biosynthesis on proxy measurements of green house gasses is never brought up in these papers: why incur the wrath of climatologists whose ice cores you depend upon to do your work?
Microbes have shaped and continue to shape the composition of our biosphere. It would not be surprising to me if they also shape the glacial environment as well.
Thx to all above for the Jaworowski links. No mystery why he had to be sent to poli-sci purdah.
I wonder how lukewarmists rationalize his results and observations and thoughts. A test for intellectual honesty, IMO.
Extra thx to Garacka for the superb “Tiny Bubbles” rendition.
And everything Caleb Shaw has to offer will be received with delighted gratitude.
jason says: November 1, 2011 at 10:31 am
“I to have wondered about the little bubbles. The entire co2 house of cards rests on that one cornerstone. Evidence that historic co2 levels may have been higher than the cores record would destroy the entire unprecedented and dangerous nonsense.”
Jason – you said it all!
When it is shown that the bubble stuff is rubbish the entire house of cards collapses.
Janice:
What a marvellous story, marvellously well told. It fits so neatly with Caleb’s. It also portends the fate of all who dare to ask pointed questions over at RealClimate…
Volker said: “Climate is order and is solved.”
(http://www.volker-doormann.org/climate_code_s.htm)
Volker, have you read the work of Ivanka Charvátová?
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Charvatova_SIM.pdf
Although she’s looking from another perspective it seems you both look at the same temperatur driving mechanism, principally.
I’ve been trying to develop a similar compensation function… Just wish I had more time form my “hobby.”
The “funny” thing is that the bubble folk know about the amplitude attenuation problem and they actually try to correct for it….
Neftel A, Oeschger H, Staffelbach T, Stauffer B. 1988. CO2 record in the Byrd ice core 50 000–5000 years BP. Nature 331: 609–611.
The ice core values are not raw measurements of in situ CO2. They have used a deconvolution routine to attempt to restore the true amplitude of the CO2 signal.
The more amplitude they recover and the more they whiten the data, the more variable the preindustrial CO2 becomes, forcing greater variability in the natural carbon flux…
Trudinger, C. M., I. G. Enting, P. J. Rayner, and R. J. Francey (2002), Kalman filter analysis of ice core data 2. Double deconvolution of CO2 and δ13C measurements, J. Geophys. Res., 107(D20), 4423, doi:10.1029/2001JD001112.
MacFarling Meure, C., D. Etheridge, C. Trudinger, P. Steele, R. Langenfelds, T. van Ommen, A. Smith, and J. Elkins (2006), Law Dome CO2, CH4 and N2O ice core records extended to 2000 years BP, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L14810, doi:10.1029/2006GL026152.
Within less than a decade, they went from a stable preindustrial carbon flux to “natural variability as large as 1 GtC yr−1 on the timescale of just less than a decade,” to an “additional sink” of ~3.0 GtC yr-1 from ~1940–1955.
That 3.0 GtC yr-1 is based on a flattening of CO2 at ~311 ppmv from ~1940–1955… But that’s really a flattening of the 30-yr average. So the annual flux variability was probably a lot greater than 3.0 GtC yr-1.
The fact is that they have no idea what the preindustrial flux variability was. Plant stomata indicate a very large preindustrial flux variability.
Volker Doormann says:
November 1, 2011 at 12:00 am
“It is meaningless to speak on that what NOT is, because it has no existence. Science is a method to understand what IS. That what IS is order. No one can show what not IS.”
Allan M says:
November 1, 2011 at 6:38 am
“Well, that all depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is.”
Volker Doormann says:
November 1, 2011 at 7:43 am
“Something – of that what IS – cannot be true and in the same time be untrue, and because of this it is impossible to define it, without to define a contradiction. Science does not believe in contradictions.”
Allan M says:
November 1, 2011 at 6:38 am
“I see the irony evaded you.”
T. Kobashi et al. have analyzed bubbles: “Persistent multi-decadal Greenland temperature fluctuation through the last millennium in an ice core from Greenland”.
I have analysed the heliocentric movement of (six) solar objects for the last millennium:
http://volker-doormann.org/images/greenland_ghi_5x.gif” .
I wrote above: “Climate is order and is solved
The point is, science is able to verify the outward manifestations of nature, because they are visible for all, but science is not able to verify the consciousness of an other person.
Logic and metaphysics are the basis of science and philosophy. No one can show the reference from that he is able to recognize truth. This reference is neither an object of democracy nor of bloggers, nor of a busy mind.
V.
Sounds like it’s a good thing all I have are boys. Four of ’em to be precise.
Great, enjoyable read. Thank you.
petermue says:
October 31, 2011 at 7:52 pm
This paper from Zbigniew Jaworowski is better and more expressive.
It describes the scientific deficiencies of ice cores, physical defects, and why anthropogenic CO2 can’t be the cause for global warming based on his calculation.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/IceCoreSprg97.pdf
This man is a real and truthful climate scientist.
_____________
AMEN
For the laymen there are pdfs including much of Jaworowski’s work at Segalstad’s site: http://www.co2web.info/
It is well worth reading (References to various papers are included)
JuergenK says:
November 1, 2011 at 11:31 am
Volker said: “Climate is order and is solved.”
(http://www.volker-doormann.org/climate_code_s.htm)
Volker, have you read the work of Ivanka Charvátová?
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Charvatova_SIM.pdf
Although she’s looking from another perspective it seems you both look at the same temperatur driving mechanism, principally.
Yes I know her work. And yes, the solar movements are a mirror of the movements of the outer planets.
If I say the climate is solved it means that the code is solved, from which it is possible to simulate precisely in time the terrestrial temperature proxies for the time of 3000 B.C.E. to 3000 C.E. But the physical mechanism is still unknown. There are strong hints from the solar neutrino capture rate that suggests that the solar fusion process is controlled by the outer planets, because the simulation of the tide functions of couples fits as well with the reconstructed global temperature and with the neutrino rate. http://volker-doormann.org/images/snu_rss_ghi8_2b.gif” .
It I also possible to identify discrete frequencies in a FFT power spectrum of the Homestake data, they can be related to frequencies of the inner planets like Venus and/or Mars and their eccentric motion.
A lot of scientific work can be done. And it would be no science fiction work to fool consumers with fallacies.
V.
@David Middleton
I’m still going through that papers atm.
For the mentioned 1940 period, this paper from Schneider & Steig seems very interesting.
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/34/12154.full.pdf
Now I’m asking myself, when temperatures have increased within this period, why could there exist an additional carbon sink? Somehow contrary and puzzling.
As alarmists often confuse cause and correlation, their temperature driven CO2 does not seem as robust as they always emphasize.
Take a look at the annual growth rate of CO2
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_growth
Interestingly the strong annual declines are connected with strong volcano eruptions.
1963-64 Surtsey
1975-76 Tolbachik
1982-83 Gunung Galunggung, El Chichon
1991-92 Mt. Pinatubo
1998-99 Etna, Piton de la Fournaise
That raises some questions:
a)
Why have had their volcanic ashes so much influence on insolation that even
atmospheric CO2 growth decreases in such a strong way (up to minus 75-80%)?
b)
What about climate sensitivity, if CO2 growth declined in such a strong and rapid way?
c)
What about the CO2 lifetime of 50-200 years, assumed by Houghton & Hackler, resp. IPCC, when CO2 is able to react so rapidly?
Seems that aerosols outweigh a huge part of the forcings. Imagine, those eruptions would have continued…
Wasn’t the beginning of the hype somewhere near the beginning 80s, when “Green & Clean” act introduced catalysators and areosol filters?
There something stinks with that whole CO2-GH hypothesis, I tell you. 😉
@Volker Doormann
You can find Earth’s temperature gradient in lots of other data, like Sun’s MUV, magnetic flux and
i.e. all the great historic Minima.
Solanki et al.
http://www.umweltluege.de/pdf/solphys-2004.pdf
(Fig. 4)
How can the Sun copy Earth’s temperature gradient? 😉
FYI, I gathered some more random examples here
http://www.umweltluege.de/sceptics/sun
petermue says:
October 31, 2011 at 10:35 pm
Nick Stokes says:
October 31, 2011 at 8:51 pm
He isn’t a climate scientist. His regular job was/is
“Zbigniew Jaworowski is chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw and former chair of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (1981–82)”
In case of ice cores, and that’s the actual subject, he’s in the field of climate science.
I know Zbig …
For me, there were no 180 ppmv at the last glacial ….
__________
For me the 180 ppmv was the real killer. If it actually got that low we would all be dead.
“200 pm CO2 trees starve” http://biblioteca.universia.net/ficha.do?id=912067
but the link no longer works…
But there is this reference (they missed the practical greenhouse references in the purge I guess)
…. photosynthesis can be halted when CO2 concentration approaches 200 ppm… (Morgan 2003) Carbon dioxide is heavier than air and does not easily mix into the greenhouse atmosphere by diffusion… Source
You are not going to have healthy growing plants if you go below 200ppmv
This may be why Zbigniew Jaworowski got interested. He smelled something rotten.
In the paper by Tom Quirk “ Sources and Sinks of Carbon Dioxide” The isotopic balance in the atmosphere is far more complex and there are many more variables than most think. Consider 94% of all anthropogenic CO2 is released into the northern hemisphere. Next the CO2 is not as well mixed as the IPCC state. From the nuclear tests in the 60’s the mixing north to south is very slow, like several years ( another rhetorical question) so why is the average northern hemisphere CO2 not higher than the south?
I worked in industry sampling solid and liquid batches and the phrase “Well Mixed” instantly sets off alarm bells. If a kettle with no additional inputs and sophsysticated mixers can successfully and frequently screw up mixing I very much doubt the atmosphere is “well mixed” with just the wind and thermals.