Guest Post by David Middleton
Fingerprints are admissible evidence in criminal trials because of their uniqueness. The probability of two human beings having identical fingerprints is very low.
Measurements of δ13C depletion have often been cited as anthropogenic “fingerprints,” proving human culpability for the rise in atmospheric CO2 over the last 200 years or so…
While δ13C depletion certainly could be evidence of the Suess Effect, it is not a unique solution; therefore, not a “fingerprint.”
Examples of geologically recent δ13C depletion not of anthropogenic origin…
δ13C depletions were associated with warming events ~5,000 years ago in India, ~9,100 years ago in Poland and ~150,000 years ago in the Indian Ocean. It appears to me that δ13C depletion has been a fairly common occurrence during periods of “global warming.” It also appears that δ13C increases have occurred during periods of global cooling…
The red curve in Figure 5 is the Flinders Reef δ13C that was cited as “Human Fingerprint #1” in Skeptical Science’s The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism. The rate of δ13C depletion is quite similar to that of the lacustrine deposit on the Yucatan. The Flinders Reef data do not extend back before the Little Ice Age; so there is no way to tell if the modern depletion is an anomaly, if the δ13C was anomalously elevated during the 18th and 19th centuries and the depletion is simply a return to the norm or if δ13C is cyclical.
Is it possible that Skeptical Science’s “Human Fingerprint #1” is not due to the Suess Effect? Could it be related to the warm-up from the Little Ice Age?
References
Cook, J. et al., 2010. The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism. Skeptical Science.
Banakar V., 2005. δ13C Depleted Oceans Before the Termination 2: More Nutrient-Rich Deep-Water Formation or Light-Carbon Transfer? Indian Journal of Marine Sciences. Vol. 34(3). September 2005. pp. 249-258.
Enzel, Y. et al. High-Resolution Holocene Environmental Changes in the Thar Desert, Northwestern India. Science 284, 125 (1999); DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5411.125.
Apolinarska, K. δ18O and δ13C Isotope Investigation of the Late Glacial and Early Holocene Biogenic Carbonates from the Lake Lednica Sediments, Western Poland. Acta Geologica Polonica, Vol. 59 (2009), No. 1, pp. 111–121.
Hodell, D.A., et al., 2005. Climate change on the Yucatan Peninsula during the Little Ice Age. Quaternary Research, Vol. 63, pp. 109-121. doi:10.1016/j.yqres.2004.11.004
Pelejero, C., et al. 2005. Flinders Reef Coral Boron Isotope Data and pH Reconstruction. IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series # 2005-069. NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA.
tallbloke says:
April 3, 2012 at 1:22 pm
Well, drop back later. I’m bailing out. I’m really sick of this. Whatever the triplets write after this, the reader should be aware that it has been demonstrated that they did not know what they were talking about before this post, and it is unlikely they will have gained greater wisdom or knowledge after.
Shame you are off tallbloke, it is sad that so few are willing to actually go through the steps one by one and prove me wrong. You should however read Fred Singers article “Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name”
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=3263
I personally would try to avoid using the word “Denier” as name-calling is rarely productive (see above). However the basic point Prof. Singer makes is a pretty good one, which is that skeptics that cling onto arguments that are known to be false (such as that the greenhouse effect violates the second law of thermodynamics) only serves to marginalise them from the climate debate as it makes them look as if they don’t understand the science. Another one of the arguments that Prof. Singer says should be dropped is the argument that the rise in CO2 is natural, perhaps you should ask him to expand on this in a blog post here?.
The reason I wrote my rebuttal of Essenhigh’s paper is basically the same, I don’t want to see skeptics make themselves look foolish any more than you do. Repetition of such canards does neither side of the debate any good. Follow Singers advice and drop them
What? Are you talking to me Gavin you cheeky oik?
Where did I in my interaction with yu discuss thermodynamics of the radiative greenhouse effect or reach any judgement about the proportion of the airborne fraction that belongs to humans?
tallbloke, read a bit further, where I wrote “Another one of the arguments that Prof. Singer says should be dropped is the argument that the rise in CO2 is natural, perhaps you should ask him to expand on this in a blog post here?.”
I mentioned the second law thing as it is the first “denier argument” that Prof. Singer mentions. The argument that the rise in CO2 is natural is if anything worse than the second law canard; anyone capable of balancing a bank account ought to understand how we know the rise in CO2 is anthropogenic.
Well it’s model with approximations not a mass balance equation and omits Henry’s Law, the equation should at least have one more constant, i.e.:
Mdot = N + A + a*(O – b*M) where b is order 10 to account for the Henry’s Law coeff etc.
I like the way your model can ‘magic’ away half the total input (1-c)*(A+N), nice sleight of hand, no sink terms to the ocean in the equation just permanent sequestration which you say is small and no treatment of land at all!
gavincawley says:
April 3, 2012 at 2:21 pm
tallbloke, read a bit further, where I wrote “Another one of the arguments that Prof. Singer says should be dropped is the argument that the rise in CO2 is natural,
It should be obvious enough that I “read a bit further” Gavin, hence my question:
“Where did I, in my interaction with you, discuss the thermodynamics of the radiative greenhouse effect or reach any judgement about the proportion of the airborne fraction that belongs to humans?”
So would you answer the question now please.
Thanks.
Tallbloke, he doesn’t say you did, that was Singer’s illustration of a flawed argument that gives ‘sceptics a bad name’.
Bart says:
April 3, 2012 at 12:30 pm
I do not agree that total natural uptake (ocean+land) of natural emissions has exceeded total natural emissions (ocean+land) for each of the last fifty years. There is no way to tell with the information we have available. Read my 10:03 am post. Understand it.
Bart, nobody is interested in how much of the total CO2 in the atmosphere is natural or anthro of origin, neither how much of what is going into the sinks is natural or anthro of origin. The only point of interest is what the origin of the increase in total mass of CO2 in the atmosphere is. That is the only point of interest for any effect that it may or may not have on the temperature at the surface.
The question you don’t agree with is not the same question that Gavin asked, as the mass balance is about total quantities of CO2 going into natural sinks, not total natural CO2 into natural sinks.
Even if all anthro CO2 was taken away by the next trees within a minute that it was released, that would not make any difference for the total increase in the atmosphere, as that simply is replaced by natural CO2 which should have been captured instead, but now stays longer in the atmosphere.
Phil. says:
April 3, 2012 at 4:13 pm
Tallbloke, he doesn’t say you did, that was Singer’s illustration
You having as many comprehension difficulties as Gavin Phil?
gavincawley says:
April 3, 2012 at 1:44 pm
You should however read Fred Singers article “Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name” …I don’t want to see skeptics make themselves look foolish any more than you do. Repetition of such canards does neither side of the debate any good. Follow Singers advice and drop them
Gavin’s final sentence is clearly attributing the ‘canards’ Singer outlines to me is he not?
I’d like a yes or no answer please.
FerdiEgb says:
April 3, 2012 at 4:13 pm
“Even if all anthro CO2 was taken away by the next trees within a minute that it was released, that would not make any difference for the total increase in the atmosphere, as that simply is replaced by natural CO2 which should have been captured instead, but now stays longer in the atmosphere.”
Again, your static thinking is evident. When trees capture CO2, they grow. When they grow, they soak up more CO2, and they reproduce to produce more CO2 gobbling trees.
All of the CO2 sinks do this -their capacities grow with increasing CO2. The only question is, how fast do they grow?
I read that he was disappointed that you weren’t going to be around to inlist your help in defeating the canards which were not of your origin.
Bart, in answer to your question the data tells us that it doesn’t grow fast enough the catch up, just follow at a distance.
Phil. says:
April 3, 2012 at 7:17 pm
I read that he was disappointed that you weren’t going to be around to inlist your help in defeating the canards which were not of your origin.
Ah, that explains why your logic is up the spout then. You and Gavin don’t read what people actually write.
Bart says:
April 3, 2012 at 1:37 pm
I’m put out enough having to teach you math. I’m not going to teach English as well. Read what I wrote. If you can’t figure it out, that’s your problem.
Bart, I see your problem, and empathize.
Phil. says:
April 3, 2012 at 7:56 pm
“…it doesn’t grow fast enough the catch up, just follow at a distance”
The data tell us nothing of the kind.
Phil. says:
April 3, 2012 at 2:23 pm
“Well it’s model with approximations not a mass balance equation and omits Henry’s Law, the equation should at least have one more constant…”
No doubt, you have seen that I addressed that at 1:35 pm. Here’s the problem: you do that, and you no longer get a nice roughly 50/50 split between CO2 in the atmosphere and CO2 in the oceans when “k” is small. And, that ~50/50 split is part of the Alarmist case: they claim the theory predicts such a split and, mirabile dictu, there is the split right there in the data.
In fact, they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to fudge together “buffer factors” which will dispense with Henry’s Law and allow them to assign the coupling constants arbitrarily so that they can make the claim. I, frankly, chose values giving the 50/50 split because I did not want to wade into those waters – one poorly reasoned argument to take down at a time. But, if you want to insist on a non-50/50 split, you are not arguing against me, but with me.
Tallbloke, I said “such as”, indicating that this was an example of the kind of “denier argument” that Singer saus should be dropped so that the skeptics can retain credibility. This in no way implies that you had used that argument, I’m sorry that you have taken umbridge over this, but the error is in your parsing of the sentence, not in my writing.
BTW, Phils comment was pretty much what I had in mind. All of the “denier arguments” (sorry I don’t like the d-word either) that Fred Singer mentions should be dealt with. Not everybody here believes in all of them, but there are many here who each believe at least one of them. What we need is to go through the argument step by step and find out whether they are true or not. I was dissapointed that you abandoned the exercise so early as it could have gone a long way to discarding this particular canard, but the opportunity was lost.
I appologise for any implication that you thought the second law canard was true. The wording seems clear to me,and indeed to Phil, but obviously it isn’t as clear as I thought.
Bart says:
April 3, 2012 at 12:30 pm
I wish to point out a small matter here in my derivation.
Under the assumption that “a” is much greater than “k”, then this transfer function is approximately
H(s) := a/( (s+2*a) * (s+k) )
The term a/(s + 2*a) is a wide bandwidth process with dc gain of 1/2. Thus, we can further approximate
H(s) := 0.5 / (s + k)
I should not have dropped the “s” in the numerator of the first Laplace transform version of the transfer function. The zero at “a” is actually “activated” before the pole at “2*a” in the frequency response plot. If doing it over again, I would write:
Under the assumption that “a” is much greater than “k”, then this transfer function is approximately
H(s) := (s+a) / ( (s+2*a) * (s+k) )
The term (s+a) / (s + 2*a) is the transfer function of a wide bandwidth lead/lag network with dc gain of 1/2. Thus, we can further approximate
H(s) := 0.5 / (s + k)
Nothing important changes – I just like to have things in perfect order.
tallbloke says:
April 3, 2012 at 4:56 pm
I don’t know how you think about the greenhouse effect, not my topic, but I have the impression that you are supporting Bart’s stance on the CO2 increase. It is that where we differ. Thus please, don’t let that interfere with the positive discussion you had with Gavin.
To give you some aid for question 2:
Increasing vegetation also increases the amount of rotting wood/leaves debris at the end of the seasons and over longer periods. But that is what is going back and forth in exchanges with the atmosphere. From the atmospheric viewpoint most of that is throughput: what goes out by vegetation CO2 uptake lagely comes back as vegetation decays in another season. That adds to the turnover of CO2 within a year but largely doesn’t give a change in total atmospheric CO2 at the end of the year.
How do we know that vegetation is growing? That can be deduced from the oxygen balance: slightly less oxygen is used than calculated from the use x efficencies of fossil fuel burning. That means that some O2 is produced by the total biosphere, thus more CO2 is captured by the biosphere than produced. The amounts are roughly known, since the analytical techniques to detect small changes of less than 1 ppmv in 200,000 ppmv O2 have evolved over time. The result: some 1 +/- 0.6 GtC as CO2 is sequestered in the biosphere:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
Bart, let’s start with the basic equation
dM/dt = c*(A + N) – kM
With as constraint that 0 < dM/dt < A
For brevity and clarity, let us assume that the throughput from oceans and vegetation is roughly constant and that kM is entirely into the oceans. N is solely an increase in output from volcanoes, so that there is no return flow, at least not on non-geological times…
As well as for human emissions as for volcanic releases, there is no transfer function for their release into the atmosphere, that is simply additional. Thus c = 1, which BTW always is the case for A.
As M is constantly measured, we know the change over a year, for the past 50+ years. That can be expressed as dM/dt = b*A, where 0 < b < 1.
Be aware that dM/dt is about total quantity, regardless of the ratio between N and A in M.
By substitution in the basic equation, that gives;
b*A = A + N – kM
or
N = kM – (1-b)*A
as b < 1, that means that kM > N, what is observed. Thus in fact, N is only throughput, but we can make that clear in the next item.
In another year, a huge solar flare hits the earth and awakens all volcanoes, so that they double their emissions. The above equation now is:
2*N = kM – (1-b)*A
To reach that, either k or M should be (near) doubling. That is only possible by an increase of k or an increase of M. Either way, kM remains higher than 2*N as the observed term (1-b)*A hardly changed but anyway still is positive.
Thus despite a doubling of the extra natural input, there is no change in the observed atmospheric increase. That is only possible if the sinks increased at (near) the same rate as the sources increased. Thus simply doubling the throughput without adding anything net to the mass in the atmosphere. An increase in k is very unlikely (one expects even a decrease, as more constraints in oceanic uptake come in), an increase (near doubling!) in M beyond 0 < dM < A is not observed either.
The only alternative explanation which fits all equations and observations is that N is small, compared to A. Over the past 50 years, that is what is observed: natural variability around the trend is about +/- 2 GtC while the emissions currently are at 8 GtC/year.
Further to Ferdinand’s comment above, I am still happy to go through the mass balance argument step by step with anybody who is interested in its validity. All I ask is that at each stage your agreement is unambiguosly stated before proceeding onto the next step.
Sometimes it is possible to prove something using two different methods of proof. Just because you can’t prove it by method A becuase you don’t know the value of X does not imply that you can’t prove it by method B if method B doesn’t rely on knowledge of the value of X. Thus the only way to demonstrate that method B (in this case the mass balance argument) is incorrect is to identify an error in the chain of reasoning in method B, discussion of method A (e.g. Bart’s model of the carbon cycle) is utterly irrelevant.
Hi Ferdi:
Your area is not my primary interest either, so i don’t want to derail this discussion with my less than perfect understanding of the issues. However, I think what i was getting at was better expressed by bart in a comment you haven’t replied to.
Bart said:
“Again, your static thinking is evident. When trees capture CO2, they grow. When they grow, they soak up more CO2, and they reproduce to produce more CO2 gobbling trees.
All of the CO2 sinks do this -their capacities grow with increasing CO2. The only question is, how fast do they grow?”
Now it seems to me that however you answer this, it has to avoid d13-d12 ratio arguments, aince Idso’s paper in 2003 hasn’t been properly answered so far as I know. Your oxygen ratio argument is interesting, but oxygen is a highly reactive gas which gets used up in many other processes besides the carbon cycle, for example ozone production.
So although I’m very willing and happy to listen to all the deductions you make, I think there are areas of uncertainty which have to be explicitly brought out, examined and if possible quantified (within error limits) before we go forward to drawing conclusions.
Tallbloke, I would be happy to discuss the uncertainties in the mass balance argument where they arise in each step. We were at step #2.
Step #2 Do you agree that the carbon cycle is a closed system, where the sources and sinks are either “natural” or “anthropogenic” and carbon does not enter or leave the atmosphere by any other route?
tallbloke says:
April 4, 2012 at 3:46 am
Bart said:
“Again, your static thinking is evident. When trees capture CO2, they grow. When they grow, they soak up more CO2, and they reproduce to produce more CO2 gobbling trees.
All of the CO2 sinks do this -their capacities grow with increasing CO2. The only question is, how fast do they grow?”
The Idso’s have a very good database for the reaction of a lot of different species on increased CO2. In average, plants grow with 50% when CO2 is doubled, in the best circumstances. In the real world, the circumstances are mostly less than best, thus the 50% is a maximum. More plants is more problematic (and much slower), as seedlings in dense forests have little chance of growing, except if an old tree falls down, thus mainly replacement. The main way to obtain more plants is when the area expands, as (land) glaciers melt and/or tundra becomes forest and/or deserts become tundra. That played a role mainly during the glacial – interglacial transitions, where the increase in temperature of the oceans dominated the CO2 levels, plant area only played a secondary role but relative more important once the interglacial was reached (+/- 10 ppmv over the Holocene).
Oxygen for ozone formation (and back…) is an equilibrium process, mainly in the stratosphere. In the troposphere typical at 80 ppbv, or 0,08 ppmv, hardly of influence on the oxygen levels (10% of the measurement error of the oxygen measurements). Near everything else on earth that could be oxydised is already oxydised: metals, silicon and other minerals…
Based on the oxygen and d13C measurements, some 20% of human emissions (in quantity) is captured by the vegetation cycle and 30% by the oceans. No static thinking at all, as the total quantity captured follows broadly the emissions with a surprising stable ratio over the past 50 years.
FerdiEgb says:
April 4, 2012 at 1:21 am
“That adds to the turnover of CO2 within a year but largely doesn’t give a change in total atmospheric CO2 at the end of the year.”
From that point of view, a crystal radio receiver could never work, because every rectified half wave would have the same area.
FerdiEgb says:
April 4, 2012 at 3:26 am
Pitiful. Absolutely pitiful. You cannot even solve a differential equation. And, you destroyed your argument from the moment you chose c = 1 (see response to Phil at April 3, 2012 at 11:29 pm).
gavincawley says:
April 4, 2012 at 3:41 am
“…I am still happy to go through the mass balance argument step by step with anybody who is interested in its validity.”
I have already satisfied mass balance, and shown that M can still be driven mostly by N while maintaining conservation of mass in the atmosphere and oceans. The argument fails, and you are in denial.
Guys… your argument hinges on c being approximately 1/2. Your brothers in arms have gone to A LOT of trouble to construct their “theories” about how CO2 passes between atmosphere and ocean to make it so. If you do not even know enough to know this, then you do not know enough to be pontificating about the matter at all.
I didn’t make this up.I didn’t choose c := 1/2 out of a hat. I would LOVE for you to insist that c is something other than approximately 1/2. It totally kills your argument at its very foundation.