Continued from part 1…
Guest Post by Caleb Shaw
I will now tell you what I’ve learned, so you can subject it to your kindly WUWT peer- review. I’m fairly certain I’ve gotten some of it wrong, because it doesn’t entirely make sense.
For the purposes of this paper we will imagine a place where snow falls at a great rate, builds up and compacts swiftly, and turns to ice with little bubbles, in only sixty years. We will begin sixty years ago, in the year 1951, on an icecap where the temperatures are always below freezing.
When snow first falls it is called, “Snow.” I find this very relieving, because Climate Scientists have more words for snow than an Inuit. Their official reason for this is to respect other culture’s words for “snow,” and to demonstrate political correctness, as in Climate Science that correctness is more important than the mathematical sort, and they are exceedingly respectful towards all cultures, except Yankees. (In fact I imagine their secret reason for creating the snow-jargon is to keep Yankee laymen like myself confused, hoping the confusion will keep us from butting in where we are not wanted. It is almost as if they are saying, “Yankee go home,” but two can play that game. With the exception of the single word “firn,” I will only use Yankee lingo.)
The snow that fell in 1951 was dry, and around 95% air, but wind whipped it around and it became the sort of packed powder that is around 90% air. At this point the snow is 1951 snow, and the air is 1951 air.
As seasons pass this snow gets buried deeper and deeper by successive snowfalls, as temperatures never allow thawing. As 1951 turns to 1961, and 1961 turns to 1971, the sheer weight of the snow overhead causes changes in the packed powder. Despite the fact temperatures never rise above twenty below, the snow behaves as if it had thawed, and becomes “firn,” which involves the snowflakes becoming crystals of ice too large to be called flakes.
As decades continue to pass and pressures build the firn becomes what Yankee call “gritty snow,” (like granulated sugar,) and then becomes “corn snow,” and finally becomes “candle ice.” Then, in the year 2011, with over 400 feet of snow overhead, we arrive at a momentous occasion, wherein the air in the ice, which once was able to move with some degree of freedom through the firn, is locked into little bubbles. Firn is firn no longer, and has stepped over the frontier and become ice.
I’m sure Climate Scientists have a word for this frontier, but I can only research so long before my computer freezes up, and therefore I’ll make up my own Yankee jargon, and call the boundary between firn and ice, “The Firnopause.”
It is at the Firnopause that the formerly free air suffers the indignity of an icy chastity belt clamping about its freedom, forcing it to become what Climate Scientists call, “pristine.” And pristine it must remain, eon after eon, until at long last a gallant Climate Scientist rides up and frees it from its deplorable condition. (Sorry about the purple prose. Unfortunately that is a prerequisite, in Climate Science.)
And that gallant Climate Scientist then discovers a remarkable thing. As you remember, the snow originally fell in 1951, so the ice around the bubble dates from 1951. However the air within the bubble dates from 2011. Somehow the air from 2011 has made its way down through over 400 feet of tightly packed snow, and all the air from 1951 has been booted out.
Accepting authority, I try to get my mind around this amazing natural phenomenon, and to think of what natural factors could have caused it to occur.
It can’t be the kinetic movement of air, for that higgiltypiggilty movement would not cause 1951 air to only move up, even as 2011 air only moves down. Even the most frenetic kinetic motion would create a mix of airs from all the years between 1951 and 2011, with air from 2011 the least likely to be down that deep.
It can’t be due to expansion and contraction of summer and winter air, because, once you move down ten feet into the firn, temperatures remain constant, and air neither expands nor contracts.
The best solution involves the difference between a huge 950 mb winter storm and a huge 1040 mb winter high pressure area. Before my computer froze I determined this was a difference between 13.778 psi and 15.084 psi. (I haven’t a clue what this means in terms of volume; the peer-review of WUWT will help me out, I’m sure.) However, because I prefer math to be simple, I will state there is a ten percent difference in volume between the same amount of air in a 950mb low and a 1040mb high.
This is a significant difference. Stand by a cave with a large chamber and a small entrance as barometric pressures falls, and you will feel a breeze blowing out.
A cave is actually a poor analogy for firn, for firn in effect has a large entrance which funnels down to smaller and smaller cracks and capillaries. However, just to shut me up, assume that, as a 950mb low gives way to a 1040 mb high overhead, air actually can be inhaled 10% of the way down into the firn.
Big deal. That is only 40 feet, and leaves you with 360 feet to go, for 2011 air to be at the Firnopause in time to be clamped into little bubbles. Furthermore, as soon as the 1040 mb high starts to move off and pressures fall, the 2011 air gets exhaled out.
Obviously we need to discover a way to inhale the 2011 air down, and exhale all the pre-2011 gas out. Fortunately Climate Science is much like undone homework; if you have no excuse you can always make one up.
Therefore, to be helpful, I have invented the concept of “grabacules.” Grabacules are yet-to-be-discovered, gravity-activated, kinetic bonds on the sides of fresh air, but worn off the sides of stale air. Because they are gravity-activated, 2011 air slides freely downwards through the firn, but grabs onto the ice when any power tries to move it back up. In essence 2011 air stands aside for pre-2011 air, (which lacks grabacules,) to pass, and then moves downwards again the next time downward forces come into play. The 2011 air moves like an inchworm, moving foreword, grabbing, and moving foreword again.
Pretty cool theory, aye? Isn’t Climate Science wonderful!? (And if you think that idea is good, you should have heard my excuses for undone homework. A breathless hush would fall in the classroom, as I arose to speak…)
The problem with my admittedly brilliant idea is that the inch-worm gets shorter and shorter. Moving 10% of the way to your goal can never get you to your goal. Up at the surface of the firn, a huge change in atmospheric pressure may shove the 2011 air 40 feet downwards, but 100 feet from the firnopause the same change only moves the 2011 air 10 feet towards the goal, and 10 inches from the goal it only moves an inch towards its goal.
According to my layman’s calculations that is as far as the 2011 air gets, for by then it is 2012, the 2012 Air starts downwards, and the 2011 air, its grabacules all shot to heck, has to U-turn and start back upwards to make room for the 2012 air.
This leaves a space of nine inches the 2011 air never gets to. This is a very important space, for it is this air which is actually is incorporated into the little bubbles. If this air isn’t 2011 air, what is it?
First we must have a name for this nine inches, just above the Firnopause, and I suggest it be called the Yankeeopause, (named after me, of course.)
It is in this nine inches which a factor so tiny it is unseen, up at the surface, becomes glaringly apparent. It is a factor I call “Spongeosis.”
We all know that, when you squeeze a sponge, water comes out. The exact same thing happens when you squeeze snow, which is 95% air, and wind up with the Firnopause ice, which is at best 10 % air. The difference is that with a sponge you squeeze out water, but when you squeeze snow you squeeze out air. Where is that air to go? Nowhere but up.
This very weak, nearly imperceptible flow is unseen at the surface, where changes in barometric pressure have veritable tides of air inhaling and exhaling through the firn, but down in the quiet and still depths of the Yankeeopause, this flow is all there is. Like the bow-wave of a boat, it moves just ahead of the freeze-up at the Firnopause, and consists of the very last bit of air squeezed from the snow. It never holds air from above, and rather consists of a great many years worth of air all slowly pushed ahead like snow before a plow. Some of the air may be centuries old, and when a part of the Yankeeopause’s blended air gets left behind as a bubble in ice at the Firnopause, the CO2 level in that bubble will not represent any particular year, but rather an average. All peaks and valleys in the CO2 record will be smoothed out. The firn, in the end, has been a great equalizer.
And that is the end of my story, which I have told for your entertainment. It flies in the face of the desire of Climate Science, which is to move 2011 air down to inclusion in tiny bubbles at the Firnopause. However it’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
JDN says:
November 2, 2011 at 8:10 am
We have human artifacts with verifiable provenance in the ice from 40+ years ago. Can’t we just dig one of them up and measure the gas content of the ice right next to it? Hasn’t this been done? There’s also carbon dating to compare to ice gas content. I don’t understand why this is being treated as a purely theoretical issue, when experiment is clearly possible.
___________________________________
Because it is not science it is propaganda or Lysenkoism. Read: The article: Zbigniew Jaworowski the ice core man
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=25526754-e53a-4899-84af-5d9089a5dcb6&p=3
And then his Paper: http://www.co2web.info/stoten92.pdf:
More pdfs on Dr. Segalstad’s website: http://www.co2web.info/
They have gotten away with the propaganda because unlike measuring temperature, measuring CO2 takes know how and expensive equipment. Also the fraud is not very easily spotted but it is there.
Take a look at the assumptions put into measuring CO2 at Mauna Loa.
Thanks to this “outlier rejection” step they reject something like 99+% of the data according to Zbigniew Jaworowski and Segalstad. (paper)
You will also find the papers all include Keeling or one of his students. At this location:
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/atmospheric_co2.html
something like 14, and practically all are publications by Keeling et al.
Can you say Monopoly??? Keeling et al. are as bad or worse than the “Climategate Team” in their stranglehold on the “science”.
One other point that most people miss. From my other reading someone floated the idea that education is “shaped” by giving scholarships to those of the “Correct mindset” This allows wealthy foundations like Carnegie, Ford, Rockefeller, Rhodes (Rothschild) to have a major input on the direction of education as a whole.
RE: Tony Mach says:
November 2, 2011 at 1:06 am
Tweak……….gotcha!
Actually that was a high-risk tweak, and I deleted it in one version, but your response makes me glad I left it in the final version.
Do you have any idea how flagrantly disrespectful you are being towards Yankee culture, when you state, “And by the way, what the heck is wrong with being respectful towards other cultures? Especially when you are from the White/Christian/European culture and the other culture has been the target of subjugation and/or extinction in the name of your culture? ”
Get ready to be seriously tweaked.
When the Pilgrims dragged ashore in 1620 they were saved by sheer luck (or the Grace of God) because not only had the native population been 90-95% depopulated by a pandemic, but the winter they faced was amazingly mild and snow-free (especially for the Little Ice Age.) Even so many died. Less than 100 survived. But now look around America. How many people can (whether they know it or not) trace back in their family tree and discover they have a forefather who was aboard the Mayflower? An amazing 35 million. (In 2002) Roughly 10% of the population!
Obviously they were winners. What happened to losers? Check out Battle of Lepanto in 1571. The Turkish fleet was galleys, side by side, stretching roughly two miles, numbering 300, with nearly 100 in reserve. What powered those ships? Who was chained to the oars, and went down screaming as the Turkish ships sank? Largely it was white, Christian losers.
Sorry. That was the “entitlement” losers got, back in the old days. Some suggest it may have
been the fate of the final Greenland Vikings: A ship appeared on the horizon, but the crew was not friendly. Greenlanders were herded aboard and sold as slaves (but at least were slaves where it was warmer, and likely were fed better.) (Columbus and Cabot may have heard of them, as young men in Italy, and for all we know the gossip of sea-dogs and wharf rats about Greenlanders may have prompted Columbus and Cabot to sail west in the late 1400’s.)
The Pilgrims knew what happened to losers. Even while starving one of the first things they did was lug a cannon up a hill, and point it towards the sea. Not only did they fear Europeans, but also the fierce “Red Vikings,” a Micmac clan called the Tarenteen. Also Algonquin tribes knew what happened if they lost to the Iroquois, which is why they abandoned nearly all their settlements in Vermont before the Pilgrims landed.
I’d rather be a winner. The Indians who lost to the Pilgrims were sold as slaves. Sad. But Yankees paid for that with the Civil War. Every New England graveyard has a stark reminder of the price the Yankee paid.
So don’t lay any guilt trips on me. And don’t call me European. Do you see any Yankeeland in Europe? In Europe, when you have been rude and they say, “Yankee go home?” are they asking you to stay?
Most Yankee are not even truly white. Besides the Mayflower in most family trees, you discover there is an old “family secret,” and most Yankee are between an eighth and a sixty-fourth “native.”
And don’t think you are spiritual, when you rub the name of my people in the mud. I am proud to be a Yankee, and am going to tweak any Liberal who believes it is politically correct to be racist towards any people. (And if you don’t think this attitude steeps Climate Science, you have scales on your eyes.)
In fact, if you don’t shape up, I’ll write a song, and treat you like Lynyrd Skynyrd treated Neil Young: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye5BuYf8q4o&feature=related
.
Tony Mach says:
November 2, 2011 at 1:06 am
“Now, that was uncalled for, that scientists use their lingo to be “politically” correct. You could have come up with all kinds of reasons, but this is bullsh*t.”
I find that last word in your sentence a tiny bit offensive, Tony.
Excellent post
Anyone ever freeze soda pop and then thaw it? Its pretty flat. That CO2 gets out even though its dissolved in the water.
I do not see how the gasses would get forced into the ice in the first place either. It will want to migrate as the ice crystals set up. The water will expel it as the formation of ice causes great pressures on the surrounding molecules.
IIRC, Ice relies on hydrogen bonds and cannot bond to gas molecules at all. This will enhance the migration of the gas molecules.
This mechanism explains why the CO2 tends towards a uniform low limit.
I wonder what the CO2 composition of just the water in a snowflake is?
This should be easy to test.
Caleb,
A great post. A real dialogue opened up – the contributors contributed: I learned as much from your questions/confusion I shared with their answers as I did from your thoughts. And it was fun.
Fun. Not politically incorrect, but, by Climate Wars respect, INTELLECTUALLY incorrect.
Keep up the good speculating.
bones says:
November 1, 2011 at 9:06 pm
“Although there might be some bulk flows associated with outflows from compaction and changes of barometric pressure, the exchanges of gases above the “firnopause” should be dominated by diffusion processes. For example, for CO2 in air at the freezing point of water, the diffusion coefficient is about 0.14 cm^2/s. In sixty years, CO2 molecules could move diffusively about 400 meters, which is about three times the depth to your firnopause. ”
You forgot to include effects of porosity (90% near the top, but only about 10% open at lower levels), constrictivity (I don’t have a good guess for this but it is several times), and tortuosity (I would guess at least 3X). These would lower the EFFECTIVE diffusion coefficient by well more than 30 times at the lower level, and somewhat less higher up. Thus diffusion is probably smaller than 14 meters per 60 years as you go to lower levels, and pressure driven exchange dominates higher up, so mixing is significantly limited near the firn. There will be some smoothing of multi-years data, but closer to Caleb Shaw’s argument than you stated.
The data for much slower closing of firn (where snow fall is far slower to accumulate) may have a larger gas mixing due to diffusion occurring over the much longer period, but we are examining the Greenland case here.
Sorry, I had a lot of work today and can’t read all comments atm.
But what came into my mind today, while thinking about the ice cores:
Imagine what an uproar science would experience, if the alarmists’ one-and-only CO2 proxy for pre-industrial CO2 would fall apart of wrong ice core data!
How many thousands of peer-reviewed and published papers from renowned journals would be afflicted? How many papers were afflicted that were build upon wrong predecessors?
This would turn all science upside down!
Phew… better not develop thoughts further.
Gail Combs says:
November 2, 2011 at 10:20 am
measuring CO2 takes know how and expensive equipment
For 149 euro you can buy one with sufficient accuracy to show how much CO2 you are exhaling inside your home:
http://www2.conrad.be/goto.php?artikel=102541
Just read the display… Not very accurate (+/- 75 ppmv), but still better than some historical measurements…
Thanks to this “outlier rejection” step they reject something like 99+% of the data according to Zbigniew Jaworowski and Segalstad.
If that is really what they said, then they are telling nonsense. You can download the uncorrected, raw hourly data from Mauna Loa yourself at:
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/in-situ/
I have done that for the year 2004:
8784 hourly average data should have been sampled, but:
1102 have no data, due to instrumental errors (including several weeks in June).
1085 were flagged, due to upslope diurnal winds (which have lower values), not used in daily, monthly and yearly averages.
655 had large variability within one hour, were flagged, but still are used in the official averages.
866 had large hour-by-hour variability > 0.25 ppmv, were flagged and not used.
Thus in total 75% of the available data were used. But even if you include or exclude the outliers, that doesn’t make one damn difference for the trend or the yearly average. It is because Keeling and his successors want to present background data, not what is incfluenced by volcanic vents or vegetation from the valley. If you want to know that kind of data, simply measure near the vents or near/inside the vegetation…
See the difference between “all” data and the “selected” data:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/mlo2004_hr_raw.jpg
and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/mlo2004_hr_selected.gif
Thus again, you are refering to Jaworowski/Segalstad, without checking in how far what they say is true. A little more skepticism against (some) skeptics might be healthy…
Further the modern rules for not using outliers (but still available online!) for averaging and trends are strictly fixed before the facts, as we may expect from real scientists:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html#data_selection
#
#
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 2, 2011 at 10:02 am
Gail Combs says:
November 2, 2011 at 9:35 am
That is what made Dr. Jaworowski smell a dead rat.
Gail, the migration of metal(ions) is completely different from CO2 or other molecules. CO2 doesn’t migrate through the ice matrix, while metal ions do.
_____________________
Your argument is
#1 No liquid phase occurs within the ice.
#2 The process is entirely mechanical with no chemical or physical processes.
This (#1 + 2) is invalid because liquid phases were found within the ice in Antarctic at even the lowest temperature. It was found there were capillary like interstital voids filled with brine, melt, cabonates, in early studies. They also found there was mobility of CO2 within the ice. Later studies ignored these findings because they did not “FIT” the story line.
In a plastic bottle soda will go “Flat” within a year or so because plastics are so porous. Even glass has a problem with migration although it is slower. Ice is a heck of a lot more “Polar” than plastic and has an affinity for CO2.
The idea that the gases do not “Migrate” is idiotic. You have a crystal lattice with pores and water/brine AND tremendous pressure, sounds like a gas chromatograph to me. And any one who has worked with gas or liquid chromatography is very aware of differential migration of different molecules because of differences in the polarity of the molecule.
Caleb
Your post at 10.39 raiseed three extraordinary coincidences, two over in my own thread here;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/01/a-short-anthology-of-changing-climate/
Firstly, I also mention the Mayflower experience here;
“However, that mild conditions can prevail even during the harshest periods of the LIA can also be seen here, when we examine the arrival of the Mayflower in America in 1620. The initial cold weather quickly gave way to a mild winter described here;
http://www.stormfax.com/thanksgv.htm
“The winter of 1620-’21 was “a calm winter, such as was never seen here since,” wrote Thomas Dudley of Massachusetts Bay in 1630. Edward Winslow, one of the original Pilgrims, also wrote about the “remarkable mildness” of that first winter in Good Newes from New England, published in 1624. There was testimony by others to a mild end of December, a moderate January, a brief cold spell with sleet and some snow in early February, followed by definitely mild conditions and an early spring.”
Secondly, your reference to Christian slaves is mentioned within this link here; (White Christian Slaves were taken from the shores of the beach I look out on in Southern England and the Church I also overlook took collections in order to raise money to free them)
“In this next article the author looked at the lives and times of famous people living in Teignmouth on the South Coast of England in order to examine the warming trend-punctuated by cold periods- experienced in Europe through the 19th Century by following one of this town’s famous sons-the harpist Elias Parish Alvars- as he travels through Europe on concert tours.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/travels-in-Europe-part-1/
Third coincidence is that I was standing on the Mayflower steps in Plymouth just a couple of days ago
All the best
tonyb
petermue says:
Imagine what an uproar science would experience, if the alarmists’ one-and-only CO2 proxy for pre-industrial CO2 would fall apart of wrong ice core data!
Don’t you think that if the ice core data were really wrong/falsified, at least one of the hundreds of persons in a lot of different organisations of different countries involved in ice core research would bring that out, especially after retirement…
Ferdinand
If I bought one of the cheap 149 Euro devices you mention, would I be able to stand on the beach close to my house and see any discernible difference in co2 levels between winter (water temp around 6degres C) and summer (water temperature if we are lucky 20 degrees C).
In other words at what temperature point does water change from being a sink to a source?
Ps Please answer quickly so I can use my Euros up before they are replaced by a more sensible currency-such as sterling 🙂
tonyb
Is ice actually hermetically sealed with respect to air? Water isn’t. So we’re sure that ice is?
Gail Combs says:
November 2, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Your argument is
#1 No liquid phase occurs within the ice.
#2 The process is entirely mechanical with no chemical or physical processes.
In pure ice, there is no liquid water at the ice-air border below -32°C. Even at -20°C, the liquid-like layer is only 5 atoms thick. You can’t skate on ice below -20°C… And I don’t think that
much CO2 can hide there. The ice between two crystals is more unordered than in the crystal, but still not liquid. Again hardly possible for CO2 to hide or migrate there.
Only if dust, salts and/or bacteria are present, some (more) liquid may be present. That is more at coastal Antarctic ice cores than far inland. But there is hardly any difference between CO2 levels from coastal ice cores and inland ice cores in Antarctica, thus that plays little role.
Dust, salts and bacteria can influence the CO2 levels. That is hardly the case for inland Antarctic ice cores, but potentially may play a role in coastal cores and for Greenland cores. The coastal ice cores have carbonate salts present which may give some 70-80 ppmv extra CO2 with addition of an acid. These are not present in the Antarctic, but they are occasionally present in Greenland, when nearby Icelandic volcanoes deposit their highly acid dust on Greenland’s ice…
That is the reason why the Greenland ice core CO2 levels are unreliable, due to extra in situ CO2 production…
Gail Combs says:
November 2, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Forgot to add:
The idea that the gases do not “Migrate” is idiotic. You have a crystal lattice with pores and water/brine AND tremendous pressure
What is the difference in pressure between ice at 2000 m depth and 2000.1 m depth and how much migration does that induce? And how many still open pores are left at that static pressure? Even the bubbles did disappear…
Engelbeen says:
November 2, 2011 at 12:52 pm
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As I said you need expensive equipment not draeger tubes. And yes I know what they are and have used them. They are not of much use they are nothing more than a “toy” in this application.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Here is the exact quote from J & S citing papers by Keeling and Bacastow.
….and the fact that the results of the measurements were “edited” (Bacastow et al., 1985); large portions of raw data were rejected, leaving just a small fraction of the raw data subjected to averaging techniques (Pales & Keeling, 1965). http://www.co2web.info/ESEF3VO2.pdf
This is the SAME bait and switch we see with the “Raw Temperature Data”
To again quoted from Mauna Loa Observatory.
“At Mauna Loa we use the following data selection criteria:
1.The standard deviation of minute averages should be less than 0.30 ppm within a given hour. A standard deviation larger than 0.30 ppm is indicated by a “V” flag in the hourly data file, and by the red color in Figure 2.
2.The hourly average should differ from the preceding hour by less than 0.25 ppm. A larger hour-to-hour change is indicated by a “D” flag in the hourly data file….
Sorry the HOURLY data and even the minute data are AVERAGES. Spikes get leveled. And yes they NOW make the “Raw” (averaged) data available.
An Assumption was made that a “Background” CO2 exists and all the methods and data is geared to that assumption. This assumption was made by Callendar
sixty years ago and was continued by Keeling and everyone else. This “Assumption” allows editing of data and the rejection of “Outliers”
Sorry, I got my rear handed to me for rejecting outliers without a PROVEN D…M good reason. It was always a real big no no in the labs where I worked. That is IF the labs were run by honest people.
climatereason says:
November 2, 2011 at 1:07 pm
If I bought one of the cheap 149 Euro devices you mention, would I be able to stand on the beach close to my house and see any discernible difference in co2 levels between winter (water temp around 6degres C) and summer (water temperature if we are lucky 20 degrees C).
Hi Tony,
Looking at the technical specs, the resolution is 1 ppmv, that is quite good and sufficient for your purpose. The absolute value may be between +/- 75 ppmv around the real value (there is some possibility to calibrate it with a calibration gas of known composition), but you can measure the differences between summer and winter, which is 6-8 ppmv up and down in our NH mid-latitudes. You can also measure the increase over the years of about 2 ppmv per year…
The only point is that the CO2 exchange rate of the oceans with the atmosphere is low. Thus even a fastocean temperature change will give a slow response in release or absorption. The changes in vegetation are much faster and mixing speed of CO2 over the globe is faster too. Thus what you measure (even with wind only from the seaside) is more influenced by land vegetation than by seawater temperature…
Gail Combs
Thanks for sharing relevant (and IMO truly scientific) knowledge in spades.
Having investigated the matter carefully, I am still sure, and will keep on saying, that the Ice Hockey Stick is the biggest neglected climate science scam.
So I’m glad you drew attention to Segalstad and Jaworowski’s paper “Do glaciers tell a true atmospheric CO2 story?” Written before Jaworowski was confronting the growing science corruptions, it is very good on the pure science without the distractions of righteous indignation. I think it is as still good a paper on ice core science as one can find. I mistrust those “debunking” Jaworowski and suspect vested interests, with the exception of F Engelbeen.
I retyped the whole paper and, with Segalstad’s blessing, uploaded it to my website, with a short introduction and a short codicil which addresses Engelbeen’s take. After finding several points at which I could not agree with FE and found him referencing the inflammatory “Some Are Boojums” to debunk Jaworowski, I tired of further pursuit of refutation. Shame. I like FE.
Above I said
An Assumption was made that a “Background” CO2 exists and all the methods and data is geared to that assumption. This assumption was made by Callendar
sixty years ago and was continued by Keeling and everyone else. This “Assumption” allows editing of data and the rejection of “Outliers”
There are actually two assumptions.
The atmosphere is “well mixed” and that leads to the second assumption that there is a “background” CO2 level.
The problem is the assumptions is leads to circular reasoning. There is a background CO2 level of “380” ppm, because I “Know” that I then reject a reading of 248 ppm and a reading of 573 ppm because obviously they can not be the “background” level in a well mixed atmosphere.
As Ferdinand Engelbeen has amply illustrated, anyone who challenges those assumptions is called into question.
Jaworowski, Segalstad and Beck have shown older data for atmospheric and Ice Core CO2 was higher and more wide spread than that “allowed” to be published today. Any challenge to the established dogma is met with the full force of peer pressure up to and including firing.
Now the JAXA satellite data has turned the whole CO2 emitted by evil mankind destroys mother Earth on its head.
Map: http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gosat/img/topics_20111028.jpg
Secondary map: http://www.suite101.com/view_image_articles.cfm/3499100
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency: http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gosat/index_e.html
CheifIO has a clear picture in his article.: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/japanese-satellites-say-3rd-world-owes-co2-reparations-to-the-west/
Not unless he’s ghost writing. Literally.
Douglas Adams, 1952-2001, RIP
Tiny bubbles,
In the firn….
Gail Combs says:
November 2, 2011 at 2:31 pm
As I said you need expensive equipment not draeger tubes.
As explained to Tony, the apparatus has a resolution of 1 ppmv. It is a continuous measuring device, equiped with a relay to set of an alarm or to start air exchanges. The measurement principle (NDIR) is the same as at Mauna Loa…
large portions of raw data were rejected, leaving just a small fraction of the raw data subjected to averaging techniques
75% of the data were retained, a little more than the 1% you mentioned. But the main point is that the rejection of the outliers doesn’t influence the average or the trend, only the trend looks better without the outliers… And it is the trend which is of importance, not the volcanic plumes or the vegetation at Hawaii…
Sorry the HOURLY data and even the minute data are AVERAGES. Spikes get leveled. And yes they NOW make the “Raw” (averaged) data available.
In the old days of Keeling, the raw voltage data were plotted on long paper rolls, which means a lot of work to collect and calculate the CO2 levels from the calibration data and the sample data. Since 1974 the data are collected by a computer system. As described by Pieter Tans of Mauna Loa, the system collects 2×20 minutes of 10-second sample snapshots (raw voltage) from two intake lines followed by three calibration gases which are sampled too at 10-second intervals for several minutes. The 10-second voltage readings are not on-line but on simple request (to Pieter Tans) supplied if you want to control the calculation of the CO2 levels, which is what I have done.
The 2×20 minutes sampling is averaged and presented on line as average for that hour, but as the standarddeviation of the sampling is given too, that shows how much variability there was in the past hour. Thus if you don’t agree to reject any outlier, you are free to include all data, including a 3 sigma error band… It doesn’t matter, because that doesn’t change the trend at all…
At last, I still wonder why some skeptics are allergic for stringent criteria for outliers in some cases and insist on rejecting in other cases:
In the case of Mauna Loa, it is proven that a high variability within one hour is caused by nearby volcanic vents. These data have nothing to do with the data one is interested in, thus are rightfully rejected. The same for upslope wind, depleted due to local vegetation.
In the case of temperature data, a lot of people rightfully ask for rejecting of data taken from asphalted parking lots etc… In that case there is an influence on the trend. But even if there wasn’t, we aren’t interested in the temperature of asphalt or its trend over the years…
D. J. Hawkins says:
November 2, 2011 at 3:34 pm
old44 says:
November 1, 2011 at 9:08 pm
Is Caleb Shaw Douglas Adams?
Not unless he’s ghost writing. Literally.
Douglas Adams, 1952-2001, RIP
What Hotblack Desiato can do, Douglas can.
Steven Kopits says:
November 2, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Is ice actually hermetically sealed with respect to air? Water isn’t. So we’re sure that ice is?
Sorry, but there is a lot of (frequently repeated every now and then) discussion between who believes in what Jaworowski/Segalstad say and who don’t. That makes that simple questions like yours are more or less neglected.
What Etheridge e.a. (1996) have done is measuring the CO2 levels in firn and ice at closing depth. That shows that there is no last-minute migration out of the bubbles when these are closing. Then there is an overlap of about 20 years between the data in the ice cores and the direct measurements at the South Pole. Thus even with increasing pressure, there is no measurable migration out of the ice over a period of 20 years. That is pretty short to make any conclusions for the long-term (back to 800,000 years) rate of migration.
There was some laboratory test, mimicking the Vostok ice core pressure and temperature, but that didn’t give usable results. The main problem is that if there is migration, the speed is so slow that it is near impossible to measure that in laboratory circumstances.
There were theoretical calculations, based on CO2 migration nearby remelted layers in the Siple Dome ice core. Based on these calculations, there is some migration at medium depth, which makes that the averaging broadens from 20 to 22 jears and at full depth (70 kyr old) from 20 to 40 years.
And last but not least, there is a quite good linear ratio between CO2 levels and temperature (proxies) in the Vostok and Dome C ice cores over 800,000 years. If there was the slightest migration, the ratio would fade over time…
Thus all together, there are a few indications that there is little migration in “warm”, coastal, ice cores but no indication at all for migration in “cold”, inland ice cores… Thus one can say that air is hermetically sealed in ice if the temperature is low enough…