NZCLIMATE TRUTH NEWSLETTER NO 312 JUNE 4th 2013
CARBON DIOXIDE
There are two gases in the earth’s atmosphere without which living organisms could not exist.
Oxygen is the most abundant, 21% by volume, but without carbon dioxide, which is currently only about 0.04 percent (400ppm) by volume, both the oxygen itself, and most living organisms on earth could not exist at all.
This happened when the more complex of the two living cells (called “eukaryote”) evolved a process called a “chloroplast” some 3 billion years ago, which utilized a chemical called chlorophyll to capture energy from the sun and convert carbon dioxide and nitrogen into a range of chemical compounds and structural polymers by photosynthesis. These substances provide all the food required by the organisms not endowed with a chloroplast organelle in their cells.
This process also produced all of the oxygen in the atmosphere
The relative proportions of carbon dioxide and oxygen have varied very widely over the geological ages.
It will be seen that there is no correlation whatsoever between carbon dioxide concentration and the temperature at the earth’s surface.
During the latter part of the Carboniferous, the Permian and the first half of the Triassic period, 250-320 million years ago, carbon dioxide concentration was half what it is today but the temperature was 10ºC higher than today . Oxygen in the atmosphere fluctuated from 15 to 35% during this period
From the Cretaceous to the Eocene 35 to 100 million years ago, a high temperature went with declining carbon dioxide.
The theory that carbon dioxide concentration is related to the temperature of the earth’s surface is therefore wrong.
The growth of plants in the Carboniferous caused a reduction in atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide, forming the basis for large deposits of dead plants and other organisms. Plant debris became the basis for peat and coal., smaller organisms provided oil and gas, both after millions of years of applied heat and pressure from geological change; mountain building, erosion, deposition of sediments, volcanic eruptions, rises and fall of sea level and movement of continents. Marine organisms used carbon dioxide to build shells and coral polyps and these became the basis of limestone rocks
The idea promulgated by the IPCC that the energy received from the sun is instantly “balanced” by an equal amount returned to space, implies a dead world, from the beginning with no place for the vital role of carbon dioxide in forming the present atmosphere or for the development or maintenance of living organisms, or their ability to store energy or release it.
Increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused by return to the atmosphere of some of the gas that was once there promotes the growth of forests, the yield of agricultural crops and the fish, molluscs and coral polyps in the ocean.
Increase of Carbon Dioxide is thus wholly beneficial to “the environment” There is no evidence that it causes harm.
Cheers
Vincent Gray
Wellington, New Zealand
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Rud Istvan says:
June 4, 2013 at 12:59 pm
For those above. Only about 45% of sunlight wavelengths are photosyntheticly active radiation (PAR). For a variety of reasons detailed in the world biofuels chapter of my first book, the actual net average efficiency is about 1% in the tropics. (there is a wide range depending on C3 or C4 pathway, etc). So less in temperate zones, most which are in northern latitudes, whichnis why the Keeling curve has annual seasonality with CO2 peaking in spring, just before the seasonal biological sequestration ( plant food) begins. That seasonality allows a calculation of the percentage of annual emissions being sequestered through photosynthesis.
This seems to be a day with a lot of suspect posts. The conditions of the Earth and it’s biosphere in the Carboniferous or the Permian are NOT good indicators of conditions or how they might change in the Holocene or the ‘anthropocene’. Different biome, with continents in different positions. That is at best a very weak argument against AGW.
Interesting input – perhaps you can describe how continental drift alters CO2 infrared absorption in the atmosphere and the hypothesized water vapor feedback?
Mišo Alkalaj says:
June 4, 2013 at 11:16 am
I may be getting lost in the proper terminology myself, but I would have said “Photosythesis is the process that produced essentially all the oxygen in the atmosphere.” (I’m a software engineer – it’s hard to get me to use absolutes!)
However, there are also processes like http://www.thefreedictionary.com/process which says “6. Biology: An outgrowth of tissue; a projecting part: a bony process.” I much prefer organelle.
I’d be reluctant to call these endosymbionts any longer. (I hadn’t heard that word before, but I sort of like it.) I read somewhere that humans have more DNA for controlling mitochondria than there is DNA in mitochondria. They really have become part of us!
While I am somewhat embarrassed that I had never considered the energy locked up in biomass, so I googled “heat of combustion cellulose”.
Update for Combustion Properties of Wood Components
and
Wood Combustion Basics (PDF)
were the first two results. The second one, presented at an EPA workshop points out that the heat of combustion will be equal to the energy stored from the light and indicates about 20,000 to 21,000 joules per kg of dry wood. The first goes into much more detail. but lists biomass as about 20,000 joules per kg. If we consider how much biomass would correspond to 1 w per sq meter, we get 1 j/sec *3600 sec/hr * 24 hr/day * 365 day /year = 31,536,000 j/year. dividing by 20,000 j/kg, we get about 1577 kg/year. With 5.1*10^14 sq meters of surface this would be roughly 8*10^17 kg or 8*10^14 tons per year. Wikipedia estimates 1.46*10^11 tons/ year on their biomass page.
Unless I have really botched it by a few decimal places, biomass does not look like it can account for much of the energy. When I got to the 1577 kg/yr per sq meter, I knew that I was not talking about even close to what my yard produces.
vukcevic says:
June 4, 2013 at 1:04 pm
Volcanic eruptions expel large volumes of CO2, from the Earth’s interior.
Expert opinion appreciated on the following two points:
Does CO2 signature identify its origin either as of interior chemical reactions or less likely organic from subduction process ?
Are the volumes of ejected lava and CO2 related?
Thanks.
As with everything else in the AGW narrative, this aspect too has been butchered to present the narrative in sound bite memes overriding the facts, some from Timothy Casey:
http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
“Based on this brief literature survey, we may conclude that volcanic CO2 emissions are much higher than previously estimated, and as volcanic CO2 contributions are effectively indistinguishable from industrial CO2 contributions, we cannot glibly assume that the increase of atmospheric CO2 is exclusively anthropogenic.”
And some examples of the skullduggery as with temperature manipulations:
“2.0 Calculated Estimates: Glorified Guesswork
The estimation of worldwide volcanic CO2 emission is undermined by a severe shortage of data. To make matters worse, the reported output of any individual volcano is itself an estimate based on limited rather than complete measurement. One may reasonably assume that in each case, such estimates are based on a representative and statistically significant quantity of empirical measurements. Then we read statements, such as this one courtesy of the USGS (2010):
“In point of fact, the total worldwide estimate of roughly 55 MtCpa is by one researcher, rather than “scientists” in general. More importantly, this estimate by Gerlach (1991) is based on emission measurements taken from only seven subaerial volcanoes and three hydrothermal vent sites. Yet the USGS glibly claims that Gerlach’s estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes in roughly equal amounts. Given the more than 3 million volcanoes worldwide indicated by the work of Hillier & Watts (2007), one might be prone to wonder about the statistical significance of Gerlach’s seven subaerial volcanoes and three hydrothermal vent sites. If the statement of the USGS concerning volcanic CO2 is any indication of the reliability of expert consensus, it would seem that verifiable facts are eminently more trustworthy than professional opinion.”
So much for their much vaunted “pristine sites for measuring” their mythical “well mixed background man made”, which are surrounded in huge volcanic production which somehow magically they can tell apart from man-made..
@Ian W at 11:25 am
How much energy is needed to build a tree or a blade of grass – or a forest? The more plant-life the more energy is used.
This is a MAJOR point!
CO2’s spurring of plant growth (and the energy plants absorb) is a negative feedback, or a direct negative effect on temperatures.
Despite no demonstrated connection between CO2 & climate temperatures, the warmists maintain that CO2 directly causes temperature changes, and that a positive feedback of water vapor then triples the alleged effect. Right, is my response. Water vapor is probably a negative feedback. Now we add that plant growth will absorb heat. For all we know, the net effect of an increase in CO2 would decrease temperature. Yes, and that’s consistent with the evidence, and that evidence is that there is no causal correlation between CO2 & temperatures!! None. See and share this short video that beautifully makes this point obvious and calls out Al Gore for his disingenuous bullshit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg&info=GGWarmingSwindle_CO2Lag
Interesting history, bears repeating. Daniel Rothman (PNAS, April 2, 2002) also surveyed the behavior of carbon dioxide for the last 500 million years and concluded that “The resulting CO2 signal exhibits no systematic correspondence with the geologic record of climatic variations at tectonic time scales.” Nicely obfuscated for activists who don’t know what a tectonic time scale is.
Ian W says:
June 4, 2013 at 11:25 am
“The idea promulgated by the IPCC that the energy received from the sun is instantly “balanced” by an equal amount returned to space, implies a dead world, from the beginning with no place for the vital role of carbon dioxide in forming the present atmosphere or for the development or maintenance of living organisms, or their ability to store energy or release it.
Could this energy being used to build plant material be Trenberth’s missing heat? Trenberth’s diagrams all assume that the heat energy either creates a rise in temperature or is radiated out to space. He has missed the locking up of energy by photosynthesis. How much energy is needed to build a tree or a blade of grass – or a forest? The more plant-life the more energy is used. Animals then use that energy to form their own bodies and we can see vast limestone and chalk deposits all required chemical energy to build as the shells of formanifera – energy which is now locked up as calcium carbonate deposits.
The Earth energy budget equation is missing a term. Life
I posted several comments about this some time ago. Though the available numbers are somewhat variable the middle estimate I found for daily caloric intake per capita globally was
about 2800 Calories. Last time I looked the human population was estimated at about 7.1 billion
which gives about 2×10*13 calories per day. Dietary calories are actually kilocalories which convert to Joules by multiplying by 4184 giving 8×10*16 joules per day. Estimates of spoilage and waste in the global food supply range from 30 to 50 percent so figure something north of 10*17 joules per day or about 4×10*19 joules per year. Not in itself a really significant number, but in terms of biological throughput humans are a relative drop in the bucket. I haven’t been able to find even an estimate of what that fraction is, but if it is a hunderdth or as I suspect even a thousandth of total biochemical energy converted from solar insolation by life on the planet, which is mostly if not entirely removed from the Earth’s radiative energy budget, the numbers start to look not quite so negligible.
Besides life there is another significant neglected factor I see as causing problems for the notion that solar input and radiative output must balance. The earth’s atmosphere and oceans, and almost everything else for that matter, are in constant motion which requires massive amounts of kinetic energy. That energy comes from many sources, gravity, the Coriolis effect, etc., but some portion, and I suspect a not insignificant portion, comes from the conversion of incoming solar radiative energy to kinetic energy, which again removes it from the radiative energy balance.
There may be other such factors that I haven’t recognized, but these two by themselves suggest to me that if the TOA energy was actually in balance it could only happen if the Earth was cooling.
The science debate is very interesting to people who really care about science. Do you really believe that the ‘Goreites” succumb to their own drivel. It has nothing to do about saving the earth,it is about power and rule.
I am a geologist and I could not agree more with the point of this article. I have at least 2-5 more examples of published papers in reputable peer reviwed geological magazines, dealing with smaller scale time series (i.e., Miocene time – from about 23 million to aout 5 million years ago, etc) where there is no correlation between CO2 and temperature. If you choose the right scale, the right sampling, and what not, you can come up with some correlation (mathematical correlation that is) for that particular time interval regardless of what your variables are. Yes, I understand that in geologic time, there are processes that no longer act like the they did in the past. Yes, I understand, the configuration of the continents, ocean currents, mountain belts, and a whole slew of other factors that will affect our weather (and thus it 30-years smoothing curve climate) have changed through time, but that is not the point. The point is that AGW croud singles out the CO2 as the drivers of feaver our planet is supposed to have. But, the one thing that graph drives home and can’t be argued with: CO2 and T on that graph are from proxies (and some error bars would be in order), and there is no correlation beteen CO2 and T.
Cheers,
Adrian
“without carbon dioxide, which is currently only about 0.04 percent (400ppm) by volume, both the oxygen itself, and most living organisms on earth could not exist at all.”
Nonsense. It’s just a trace gas and can’t have any significant effects on anything.
Myrrh says:
June 4, 2013 at 1:30 pm
…………….
Thanks Myrrh.
Let’s change the entire discussion around carbon to a “Carbon Positive Campaign”!
RICHARD CLENNEY says on June 4, 2013 at 12:04 pm:
“- – – – – – – – -. the hottest places on earth are the deserts, no vegetation.”
= = = = = = = = = = =
What about Antarctica? That’s one big desert – as far as I can see
FTA: “The theory that carbon dioxide concentration is related to the temperature of the earth’s surface is therefore wrong.”
Correction: The statement that carbon dioxide concentration is directly related to the temperature of the earth’s surface is therefore wrong. The rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere is, however, directly related to temperature.
Natural systems generally evolve according to differential relations, not to memoryless, instantaneous input/output relations. It is calculus, not algebra.
The growth of plants in the Carboniferous caused a reduction in atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide,
Should not that be “an increase in oxygen”?
There is no evidence that CO2 levels effect climate, either long term as dealt with in this paper, medium term, like over the Holocene, or short term, like over the last 150 years. The so called greenhouse effect is dominated by water vapor. There is theory and evidence that any possible effects of added CO2 is negated by negative H2O feedbacks for example clouds in the lower atmosphere. If CO2 has any effect at all then it acts as a radiative thermal insulator. As such added CO2 will cause increases in temperature in the lower troposphere but decreases in temperature in the upper troposphere where SWIR is radiated out to space. If temperatures drop so does H2O content which negates the effect of added CO2. I do not think that this constitutes a smoking gun against AGW but it constitutes a substantial theoretical and evidential basis against the idea of AGW. I have been looking for but have not found a smoking gun basis for AGW. Some claim that solar forcing alone does not account for the warming that we have been observing over the past 100 years. But if one just turns up the solar activity climate warming gain by assuming a relationship between solar activity and albedo then CO2 based warming is not required to account what we have been observing.
So there is a ceiling and floor to temps ~2-3C below the present temp and 7-8C above the present temp and it likes to periodically go up and down to these temps. This should be considered the starting point for investigation of climate – we definitely have to start all over again (what to do with the unbelievable 100,000+ papers on the subject – nearly all based on Willis’s discovery of the simple black box equation that charts a course to nowhere?).
One thing I would like to point out about this CO2 – temp thing, though, we would have started off with a hot earth, very high CO2, water vapor, etc in the earliest atmosphere and condensation of the water into oceans with CO2 dissolving in the oceans as things cooled and this leading to removal of some CO2 in the form of precipitated limestones; this followed by the beginnings and development of life, biological absorption of CO2, splitting off and release of oxygen, etc. and finally bringing CO2 gas down to near present levels about 200 million years ago – the process taking a few billion years. This might be considered a new, longer term equilibrium in which CO2 morphed into gas plus life forms (both live and sequestered dead) plus inorganically and biochemically precipitated calcium carbonate. The new equilibrium, if the max and min temp levels established since the proto-earth cooled hold up, is dealing with a fraction of the earlier available CO2. Anything prior to 200 million years ago is now largely out of the equation. (I think it started out as a more beautiful thought than this).
help me ! http://www.eastleigh.gov.uk/waste-recycling-environment/sustainability/eco-eastleigh.aspx
If any of you have a similar attitude towards ‘climate change’ as I do you will want to help me put this perspective over at this event.
I have asked one question for the event already and would love it if some of you could email one of the questions below to giles.gooding@eastleigh.gov.uk and then come along perhaps to watch them squirm.
1. Fleming Park leisure centre was fitted with Solar panels a few years ago, it takes at least 10 years for these to make any real savings, now with the leisure centre possibly being knocked down — what is to happen to them, was climate change tackled and was it worth it ?
2. ‘Tackling Climate Change’ is the public relations mantra of EBC, have the revelations of ‘Climategate’ where the world’s top experts have been caught fiddling the data, picking only sympathetic collegues to peer review their work, and repeatedly denying other researchers their raw data to hide their biased interpretations at all changed the councils position.
3.The BBC recently announced they would give no airtime to alternative views on ‘climate change’ as it is ‘settled science’ are ‘settled science’ other words for religion ?
4.At a recent LAC planning meeting a councillor said there was a cataclysmic shortage of housing and the committee voted in favour of a massive housing development of hundreds of detached houses on a ‘greenfield’ site, at the same meeting the Councillors laughed at plans for a high rise. Is building thousands more detached and semi-detached houses across the borough sustainable?
5. A housing developer recently told me that the council’s own sustainability criteria (code level 4) made development of brownfield sites uneconomic so firms are now only interested in greenfield sites, however energy efficient the houses are, isn’t the net impact an increase in emissions?
6 You have been ‘Tackling Climate Change’ for some time, has the CO2 output of the borough gone down, and can you prove that?
7. With 500 new houses built every year there is an increasing requirement for water and sewerage, has the capacity of our water system been correspondingly improved by larger or more reservoirs or sewers in the last 25 years ? And if not, are the saving water campaigns just a way of keeping an old system going and money rolling in for what are now private companies?
8. What new discovery could instantly disprove anthropogenic global warming, and if it is not falsifiable, how can we be sure it is right — remember if the earth is getting warmer wouldn’t the great ball of fire in the sky be a good place to start?
.
“You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling C02′” -Reid Bryson, the ‘Father of Climatology’
Myrrh says on June 4, 2013 at 1:30 pm:
“As with everything else in the AGW narrative, this aspect too has been butchered to present the narrative in sound bite memes overriding the facts, some from Timothy Casey:
http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/”
= = = = = = =
Thanks Myrrh, once upon a long time ago, I taught myself a bit of French in order to be able to read the writings of Fourier – That’s the guy who is supposed to be the “Father of the ‘Greenhouse theory”. – I managed to do it – after a fashion – and of course it became obvious to me that that according to Fourier – IR or the dark radiation from the ground/surface could not possibly have anything at all to do with rising or lowering the temperature of this planet.
And then along comes Timothy Casey – a guy who has found all, or most of the translations and writings of the deep thinkers and experimenters from the 19th Century. – Clever guy this Timothy Casey fellow and I wish all the good people who write and contribute here on WUWT would set aside some time to read all his writings – or at least some of it – Once again, yesterday in fact, I performed a simple little experiment that proves that IR radiation cannot penetrate solid, transparent glass and Fourier’s further claim that nor can it penetrate H2O or water is painfully evident in nature. So evident is it – in fact – that no additional experiments should be necessary.
It remains amazing that the warmers and lukers are still hung up on CO2. The “magic gas” that can heat the planet. I suspect they will support it forever–CO2, that toxic gas!
The last 15 years of temps must be cloaked in a shield they cannot see….
3rd para: “convert carbon dioxide and nitrogen into a range of chemical compounds and structural polymers by photosynthesis”
Is that correct ??? Should it read CO2 & H2O ?
We haven’t even answered the most basic question: is the present increase in the atmosphere coming FROM the ocean or coming FROM human and animal activities on land? The pattern, on the current cycle just like the past cycles, would suggest that it’s mainly outgassing from the ocean in response to a warming ocean.
Rud Istvan says (June 4, 2013 at 12:59 pm): “This seems to be a day with a lot of suspect posts. The conditions of the Earth and it’s biosphere in the Carboniferous or the Permian are NOT good indicators of conditions or how they might change in the Holocene or the ‘anthropocene’. Different biome, with continents in different positions. That is at best a very weak argument against AGW.”
I think the message of the chart (assuming it’s largely correct) is that over a variety of geological, atmospheric, and biological conditions, all with temperatures higher than today’s, the Earth never slipped into a catastrophic warming phase. That raises the question of what’s unprecedented about today’s conditions that will produce a result unprecedented in 3 billion years, and why.
To put it another way, the Earth has already performed a number of experiments for us–uncontrolled, to be sure–with higher temperatures than today, yet has not demonstrated the result the IPCC fears. Why would the current experiment, duration less than two centuries, produce a new outcome?
Has the IPCC answered that question?
I’m having a hard time believing the oxygen content reconstruction. At much above the current level, wouldn’t the oxygen be oxidizing everything it could get its hands on, whether by combustion or not?