Correlation of Net CO2 emissions with climate properties shows that the growth in CO2 may be natural
Story submitted by WUWT reader Steve Brown
The narrative of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming has been challenged at many levels but this presentation by Professor Murry Salby, Chair of Climate at Macquarie University rips up the very foundations of the story.
The talk (in the video below) was given at the Sydney Institute 2nd Aug 2011
He elegantly shows that there is a solid correlation between natural climate factors (global temperature and soil moisture content) and the net gain (or loss) in global atmospheric content when the latter is averaged over a two year period. The hanging question remains, if natural factors drive more than 90% of the growth in CO2 how significant is the contribution of human generated emissions. The answer is simple… not very.
The talk has been covered in the past on Judith Curry’s blog, and an abstract of the talk is here . But this is the first time I have encountered a video of the talk or been able to see the slides which he referenced.
Fascinating.
Bart said:
“There is no error in my thinking. You analogies are facile and inapplicable. It is apparent you have no familiarity with feedback systems, and do not understand how they work.”
I thought marsupial’s analogy seemed to fit your theory well and made it much clearer.
Rather than simply dismiss the analogy, if you think it doesn’t represent your theory, why not fix it to show more clearly your thinking? We would understand your thinking much more clearly if you could use the husband/wife coin jar analogy with your own numbers inserted.
Just hand-waving it away as wrong doesn’t help solve the problem.
Dave in Delaware says:
April 21, 2012 at 7:47 am
Atmospheric CO2 is a “Catch and Release” system.
Rainwater has the ability to wash CO2 out of the atmosphere, and may be an important mechanism in the ocean – atmosphere exchange. Rainfall over land could contain 49 to 68 Gt CO2/yr (as Carbon so we can compare to the atmospheric CO2 estimates). And for the ocean rainfall, it comes to 183 Gt/yr to 252 Gt/yr (as carbon). Compare with of 6 – 8 Gt/yr man made CO2/yr (as Carbon).
If those estimates are correct, it is likely that virtually ALL of the man made CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, then re-released by natural surface processes. That certainly fits with Dr Salby’s presentation, and would be consistent with a temperature and soil moisture correlation.
The land rainfall could end up ’stored’ in a river or lake, go into the soil or plants, or could splat on a parking lot and re-release the CO2 to the air when the water evaporates. My guess is the ocean rainfall could most likely be incorporated into the ocean and the CO2 with it (there is way more CO2 dissolved in the oceans than ‘free’ in the atmosphere), then released in natural temperature processes, or sequestered in biological exchanges.
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Just to add to the list – http://www.brightsurf.com/news/headlines/33734/Hungry_microbes_share_out_the_carbon_in_the_roots_of_plants.html
Hungry microbes share out the carbon in the roots of plants
October 19, 2007
Sugars made by plants are rapidly used by microbes living in their roots, according to new research at the University of York, creating a short cut in the carbon cycle that is vital to life on earth.
The green leaves of plants use the energy of sunlight to make sugar by combining water with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This sugar fuels the plant’s growth, but scientists in the University’s Department of Biology discovered that some of it goes straight to the roots to feed a surprising variety of microbes.
A study led by Professor Peter Young, of the Department of Biology at York and Dr Philippe Vandenkoornhuyse of the University of Rennes in France is published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS).
In the carbon cycle, plants remove carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) from the atmosphere. Eventually, the carbon compounds that plants make are ‘eaten’ by microbes and animals, which release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. The rapid cycling demonstrated by the new research is an important link in this process.
Professor Young said: “Our research identifies microbes in roots that create a short cut in the carbon cycle. This is an important development given current interest in reducing outputs of carbon dioxide and the ‘carbon trading’ that is intended to help this.”
…
Professor Young added: “It is these active organisms that are important because they are turning sugar back into carbon dioxide, which is released into the atmosphere. We were astonished at the wide variety of active bacteria that we discovered. Many of them had not been seen in plant roots before, and we have no idea how they may affect plant growth.”
The role of mycorrhizal fungi is better known. They are particularly important in carbon cycling, because they pump the carbon compounds out of the root into a massive network of fine fungal filaments in the soil, where it becomes available to other microbes and also to larger soil organisms like worms, mites and insects. In return, the fungus gathers phosphorus from the soil and delivers it to the plant, helping the plant to grow better. The research confirmed that there were many different fungi in the roots of each plant, but revealed, for the first time, which of these fungi were most active.
University of York
Bart wrote “There is no error in my thinking. You analogies are facile and inapplicable. It is apparent you have no familiarity with feedback systems, and do not understand how they work.”
Sorry Bart, this is merely a tacit admission that you can’t address the issue raised by the analogy without making it obvious that your argument is untenable. The ad-hom about not understanding feedback systems is really no substitute for a substantive counter argument. It also demonstrates that you have not read my peer-reviewed journal paper, in which in addition to the mass balance argument, I construct a simple dynamical model of the carbon cycle, descibed by differential equations.
Forgetting for the moment whether the analogy is facile or inapplicable, in the analogy would you say that I was responsible for the rise in our savings, or my wife? If the latter, please give your justification for your answer.
News on this from Jo Nova. Apologies if this has been posted before.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/08/blockbuster-planetary-temperature-controls-co2-levels-not-humans/
“The up and coming paper with all the graphs will be released in about six weeks. It has passed peer review, and sounds like it has been a long time coming. Salby says he sat on the results for six months wondering if there was any other interpretation he could arrive at, and then, when he invited scientists he trusted and admired to comment on the paper, they also sat on it for half a year. His speech created waves at the IUGG conference, and word is spreading.”
Heggs.
It is a shame that Prof. Salby doesn’t read climate blogs. He is not the first to have made this mistake, Roy Spencer put forward essentially the same argument some time ago on his blog (it was republished here) and the “other interpretation” was explained in great detail. It is well known that the variability in the growth rate is well correlated with temperature. However it is not the variability in the growth rate that gives rise to the long term increasing atmospheric CO2, it the long term average value of the growth rate, which is not explained by changes in temperature.
I really hope that Prof. Salby realises his error before the paper is published and withdraws it, it won’t do anyone any good, especially Prof. Salby himself.
dikranmarsupial says:
April 21, 2012 at 2:35 pm
“Sorry Bart, this is merely a tacit admission that you can’t address the issue…”
This is your usual debating ploy – claim that I have not addressed what I have explicitly addressed time and time again. You’ve got a static model. There is no feedback.It’s idiotic.
Try this analogy. There are three people involved: You, your wife, and your kid (actually, her kid from a previous marriage).
You and your wife both contribute to your kid’s non-interest bearing account. Every month, you put in 300 Euro, and your wife initially does not put any in. You start with a balance of 1200 Euro.
Your kid withdraws 25% of the amount in the account each month, providing him a steady income of 300 Euro/month.
After some time, your wife starts contributing 10 Euro a month. In about a year, the account value is roughly 1240 Euro, as she would expect, and she reasonably concludes that the rise is due to her contributions.
Your wife notices the kid seems to be living rather well. She confronts him, and he confesses that he has actually been taking out 100% very month. She reasons that you have been putting in 1200 Euro a month and, at the time she began contributing, you bumped it up to 1230 Euro per month so that, when she checked on the account in a year, it would show the rise she would expect. The increase is actually 75% from your contributions!
Your wife did not know your kid caught you fooling around with the nextdoor neighbor, and extorted an additional 900 Euro/month from you. Now, you’re busted, and the lawyers are going to be collecting your Euros.
Now, note the variables. Your wife’s contribution over the year is 120 Euro. That is Ea(t) at t = 1 year. The delta in the account is 40 Euro. That is dC(t). dC(t) is less than Ea(t), yet the rise in the account is only 25% due to her. How can this be, when you have assured me it cannot?
It all depends on the power of the sink. When it was thought to be relatively low (25%), the rise was due to the wife. But, as it gets stronger (up to 100%), the relative contribution from her becomes less and less of the total.
dikranmarsupial says:
April 21, 2012 at 2:57 pm
“He is not the first to have made this mistake…”
That is so farcical, given that you haven’t a clue what you are talking about.
Brian H says:
April 21, 2012 at 1:02 am
“Many have battered themselves silly trying to educate Myrrh.”
Yep. But, “dikranmarsupial” is a viable competitor. I’m not sure which is worse.
Bart wrote ” You’ve got a static model. There is no feedback.It’s idiotic.”
You clearly didn’t read my post, I deliberately made the analogy with a feedback loop as the wife’s withdrawals are whatever my deposits were plus 88 euros. I even put in a paragraph stating that I had done this so that it would be a dynamic rather than a static example.
Your analogy is obviously an attempt to annoy me by personalising the discussion rather than making a serious point. Sorry I have no time for that sort of behaviour. However if you would like to make the point in a more scientific manner then I will respond to it.
I see now what you have done. In my analogy I represent anthropogenic emissions but in your analogy you have switched it to be the wife instead and then claimed that I said the wife couldn’t be the cause of the rise “How can this be, when you have assured me it cannot?”.
However the funamental problem with your analogy is that the sources and sinks are either anthropogenic or natural, there is no third player involved, so your analogy does not map onto the carbon cycle. Try making a better analogy where there are only two parties, one representing all anthropogenic influences and one representing all natural influences.
Notice that I am engaging with your analogy, even though you reufused to engage with mine, and wouldn’t even say whether I was responsible for the rise or my wife in that example.
“I deliberately made the analogy with a feedback loop as the wife’s withdrawals are whatever my deposits were plus 88 euros.”
That is not a feedback. That is a feed-forward of a constant value, i.e., it is merely a bias input which does not partake in or influence the loop dynamics.
A dynamic feedback would be of the form where the withdrawals change as a function of deposits, e.g., as in an interest rate. That is why I fixed your “analogy” by adding a dynamic factor of the percentage the kid takes out.
The Earth’s climate system, including the CO2 governors, is a dynamic feedback system.
“…there is no third player involved…”
There are three players involved: 1) natural emissions (you) 2) anthropogenic emissions (your wife) 3) sinks (your kid). Period.
Sinks do not discriminate on the basis of “natural” or “anthropogenic,” any more than the kid in this analogy cares whether the money in the account came from his mother or his step-father. The environmental sinks gobble up CO2 from any source. And, they expand and contract dynamically based on how much CO2 is available.
Let me repeat this:
“Sinks do not discriminate on the basis of “natural” or “anthropogenic,” any more than the kid in this analogy cares whether the money in the account came from his mother or his step-father. The environmental sinks gobble up CO2 from any source. And, they expand and contract dynamically based on how much CO2 is available.”
This is where you made your error. You assumed the sinks were constant. That, if 100 ppm per day is coming in naturally, they will take 100 ppm per day out, and when humans put in another 3 ppm per day, they will still take on 100 ppm out.
But, that is NOT how dynamic feedback systems work. If humans put in another 3 ppm, then the sinks will expand eventually to take 103 ppm out, and an equilibrium is once again achieved. How much the overall concentration has to rise in order to put enough pressure on the sinks to equalize at 103 ppm determines how much it will rise.
If the feedback is strong, then that delta concentration will be no more than 3%. If it is weak, then it could rise considerably more.
That is the question which has to be answered before we can positively pin the blame for the observed 30% or so rise on humankind: How powerful are the sinks? Nobody really knows.
I didn’t really understand this video.
I continue to believe that a drop in human emissions would lead to atmospheric CO2 increasing at a slower rate or dropping. And an increase in human emissions would lead to atmospheric CO2 increasing at a greater rate.
I think to believe otherwise you’d have to overthrow some of these common sense principles:
1. Natural sinks can’t distinguish between CO2 molecules of natural origin and those emitted by humans
2. Natural sinks work to remove CO2 at a rate dependent much more on the current CO2 level than on any of its time derivatives. (For example, plants don’t make plans to grow faster this year because they expect there to be more 0.5% more CO2 next year.)
Bart says:
April 21, 2012 at 7:21 pm
——————————–
@Bart,
Hello man, I’m a layman and I found your comment/explanation very easy to understand, thank you. My question for you if you don’t mind is this. How much does science agree with your explanation and do you have any sites I could learn more about these sinks etc. that I have some chance of understanding ?
thanks again,
Heggs
Bart :” If humans put in another 3 ppm, then the sinks will expand eventually to take 103 ppm out, and an equilibrium is once again achieved. ”
Except that they are not reaching an equilibrium. People arguing with you are not assuming static models, they have several times pointed out that mankind is releasing CO2, but that not all of it is staying in the atmosphere. i.e. the sinks are expanding, but not fast enough. And the data is clear enough that this has been going on for some time now. So where is your equilibrium? Your position appears to be that mankind is releasing extra CO2, but that this not responsible for the observed rise. Instead it is Nature’s fault for not having CO2 sinks with a short enough response time to absorb it. Well you can argue that if you want, but it is not very convincing.
jimmi the d says:
“…the sinks are expanding, but not fast enough.”
It takes trees time to grow.
Yes indeed Smokey, it takes time for trees to grow and the ocean to absorb more CO2 etc, but where did that extra CO2 come from in the first place?
jimmi,
The extra CO2 came from human emissions. So what? That is not the issue; that is a red herring argument.
Here, let me put it as a testable, falsifiable hypothesis:
At current and projected levels, CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
I invite you to try and falsify that hypothesis, if you can. Per the scientific method, of course, with verifiable, testable, and falsifiable real world evidence.
Because if CO2 is globally harmless, then the entire “carbon” scare is falsified.
“The extra CO2 came from human emissions. So what?”
So what? The “so what” is that Bart, and the OP, and Prof Salby are denying that.
I don’t see how your hypothesis is testable, as we do not have a control planet available – mind you, I do not see that the converse, that CO2 emissions are harmful, is testable either, except by waiting a 100 years and seeing what happens.
Fabulous presentation. Absolutely solid science.
The natural sink / source varies greatly depending on ocean surface and land moisture temperatures.
The system is well capable of absorbing ALL human emissions in very short order but in reality the natural variability is currently releasing more CO2 to the air entirely naturally and would be doing so even if our emissions were zero.
The AIRS data shows no excess CO2 over human population centres which suggests rapid local and regional reabsorption by natural sinks.
All the higher CO2 levels are over or downwind of areas of warm ocean surfaces which supports the contention that what matters most is ocean surface temperatures.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Global_carbon_dioxide_AIRS.jpg
All the highest concentrations are downwind of warm water.
The Mediterranean gets very warm in summer so you can see the plume across the Middle East.
Australia gets CO2 from the ocean between it and South Africa.
South America gets CO2 from the Pacific upwind.
Western USA from the Pacifdic upwind .
Southern Asia gets CO2 from the Indian Ocean upwind.
There is a plume of CO2 downwind of the warm Gulf of Mexico.
and so on.
There is little or no significant excess CO2 above or downwind of major population centres such as Western Europe or the North Eastern USA.
The relatively low CO2 quantities above the equator are due to the clouds and rain of the Intertropical convergence zone.
The two main bands of higher CO2 concentration are under the subtropical high pressure systems in each hemisphere where most sunshine gets into the oceans to warm the sea surfaces.
Atmospheric CO2 is clearly driven by sea surface temperatures affecting oceanic absorption capacity and the AIRS results are proof but so far as I know no one else has pointed it out as yet.
Sea surface temperatutres are in turn affected by cloudiness and albedo changes and I have extensively described the causes of that elsewhere
The true extent of natural variability does not show up in the ice core record because of the coarsness of the record which really only reproduces large changes over long periods of time and even then much of the detail is lost.
The sensitivity of the ice core record as a proxy is lost during the process of sealing a section into the ice column. During that sealing process there are multiple melts which progressively deplete the CO2 content as the temperature of the sample rises again at each event in the melt cycle.
It is no coincidence that he old chemical methods of measuring CO2 in the air gave higher results than the ice core proxy methods.
I think the ice core proxy record is and always has been way too low and the current concerns are therefore misplaced.
jimmi_the_dalek says:
April 21, 2012 at 9:08 pm
“Except that they are not reaching an equilibrium.”
I never said they were. You rarely can reach an equilibrium when inputs are time varying. And, you generally wouldn’t reach an equilibrium instantaneously even if they were constant.
I’ve made the analogy as simple as possible so that you could understand it. The only thing you need be concerned about right now is whether I have, or have not, demonstrated that the argument that nature acting as a net sink necessarily means the source of increase must be wholly or predominatly from anthropogenic forcing only is false. I have. Thus, the phoney “mass balance” argument is kaput.
“…i.e. the sinks are expanding, but not fast enough. “
We do not know that. We do not have data demonstrating it one way or the other. This silly “mass balance” argument neither confirms nor disconfirms it.
Heggs says:
April 21, 2012 at 8:03 pm
“How much does science agree with your explanation …”
If you mean “science” as the application of reason and rigorous mathematics to understand and shape the natural world, it agrees emphatically. I am only relating standard results of control theory. If, however, you mean “Science” as a human enterprise, with all the politics and jockeying for position, cash, and entitlements such enterprises entail, I might not garner a majority in a headcount.
But, make sure you understand my position. I am not saying the rise is positively not anthropogenically induced. I am saying only that the “mass balance” argument does not provide any useful information to resolve the issue.
“…do you have any sites I could learn more about these sinks etc. “
I cannot provide a comprehensive list. Nobody really can. New mechanisms are being found and old quantifications updated all the time, e.g., here and here. Maybe a good place to start is reading about the Carbon Cycle at Wiki.
In searching for the penultimate link (the old one I had from The Resilient Earth website appears to have gone stale), I also came upon this link to a downloadable book. I do not vouch for it because I haven’t looked at it, but am providing it FYI to do with as you will.
“Bart says:
April 22, 2012 at 12:07 am
jimmi_the_dalek says:
April 21, 2012 at 9:08 pm
“Except that they are not reaching an equilibrium.”
I never said they were.
Let me clarify that before jimmi… well, let me clarify it. What I said above wiht which he took issue was “then the sinks will expand eventually to take 103 ppm out, and an equilibrium is once again achieved.” Nature is always seeking equilibrium, even if it takes time, and even if it is tracking a moving target.
Please note that I was here talking about 103 ppm per day, and I was tossing up numbers as an example for illustration, not numbers which have any relation to reality, except insofar as I was suggesting anthropogenic emissions which were 3% of natural emissions.
Currently, we are emitting about 3% of natural emissions as they are estimated today. With strong sink feedback, we would quickly settle out to a 3% increase over what nature itself was driving us to. Indeed, we may well have settled out with regard to the anthropogenic input, but still could be being driven higher by natural emissions above and beyond the estimates. That is the whole point.
And, one last time, let me reiterate:
The question before us, does the “mass balance” argument, as proferred by Ferdinand Englebeen, Gavin Cawley, and dikranmarsupial settle the argument as to the attribution to humans of the rise in atmospheric concentration of CO2 since at least 1958?
No, it does not.
Bart says:
April 21, 2012 at 3:22 pm
Brian H says:
April 21, 2012 at 1:02 am
“Many have battered themselves silly trying to educate Myrrh.”
Yep. But, “dikranmarsupial” is a viable competitor. I’m not sure which is worse.
==============
And what precisely have you two tried to educate me about where you claim your understanding superior?
I insist on an answer because I have several posts in this thread, your ad hom attack is on all I’ve written in them.