Dr. Murray Salby on Model World -vs- Real World

Selected slides from and summary of presentation:
Climate scientist Dr. Murry Salby explains why man-made CO2 does not drive climate change
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/06/climate-scientist-dr-murry-salby.html

Oops – Dr Salby, I should have said, of course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=G8L3skoSLIA

Its useful to remember that the first rule of climate ‘science’ is that when the models and reality differ in value its reality which is in error .
Once you can get your head around such ‘1984 logic’ it becomes much easer to understand why climate ‘scientists’ talk the way they do.

Dr. Murry Salby has it right.
Planetary temperature controls CO2 levels – not humans.

“If the model’s predictions disagree with actual observations, then the model is wrong.”
Agreed. Why is he comparing observations to CO2 then?

It’s an impressive talk.
From 2011, the following criticism (last para) from another climate scientist (together with much gloating from other commenters):
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/08/unforced-variations-aug-2011/comment-page-2/#comment-212401
This criticism now looks to me invalid because it doesn’t take account of the residence time of CO2, as Salby does.
Other criticisms:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html#The_mass_balance
I don’t know if this is any better founded.

Excellent presentation with the relationships clearly set down both for short and long timescales. I have referred others to it for their edification.

I watched the whole thing and I know that 40 years ago, I understood most all of the math that he uses. It is truly a priviledge to watch someone walk through it who actually know what it means. For the other side, I have long suspected that it was all smoke and mirrors. Dr. Murray Salby takes away their mirrors.

“….1% whacks the other 99% …” (in reference to CO2 and the factors involved in the global energy balance) and the divergence in 1998 between the model and observations is in my opinion, stunningly obvious.

Dr. Salby concluded that the CO2 variation in ice cores could understate atmospheric variation severalfold. Yet ice cores from our interglacial seem to correspond well both with ice cores from previous interglacials and with atmospheric measurements, i.e. we have no indications of 1,000 ppm CO2 in the Holocene. Presumably there are other atmospheric CO2 proxy measures that could be compared with ice cores from thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago?
His observation that climate models seem to depend in a simple way on only CO2 reminded me of Willis Eschenbach’s articles here on WUWT. The energy budget diagram with its dependence on water and cloud behavior brought to mind yesterday’s WUWT article on waterworld modeling and the slide presentations linked by Mosher in the comment thread.
Much food for thought.

It’s Murry, not Murray.
Judging by the speech Murry Salby gave at the Sydney Institute, there’s a blockbuster paper coming soon.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/08/blockbuster-planetary-temperature-controls-co2-levels-not-humans/

I have seen a version of the presentation before, but have not seen a published paper although it was discussed previously. If there is a published paper, produce it. Intuitively it seems to me he is on to something, but without a published paper with verifiable data sources, it lacks the needed credibility.

“I agree that Salby should be comparing model projections with observations, but that’s been done before.
In case you missed it, the models didn’t do so well.”
The Feb model/observation update from realclimate disagrees heartily with you.

I would have thought that Lord Monckton who have been intensely interested in this work as it is pure maths LOL.

Very nice explanation of how the very different geological time scale changes and recent rapid changes all fit together within the same model. The time constant of non conservative processes being the factor that distinguishes the two very different responses and phase relationships.
Also the explanation of dC13 ratio was very useful.
The only bit that did not ring true for me was the claim that ice core records underestimate CO2 by a factor of 15 at 100ka scale. I think if you followed that back to 1 million or 10 million years it would imply physically impossible levels of CO2. The numbers are getting to big too quickly.
The general argument and equations explaining how diffusion would cause an underestimation seem sound though.
Very interesting talk.

So, CO2 is the dependent variable (not cause) in both instrument and proxy records and the dependence of CO2 is on the integral of temperature. Then based on his analysis, which looked good to me, CO2 as a driver is unimportant. The inference then is that the temperature and CO2 variations in modern times are both natural and not anthropogenic. (if CO2 tracks the integral of temperature, the reverse of causation would be that CO2 was the independent variable and then temperature would have to depend on the derivative of CO2, which implies some unknown physical mechanism).
What then is driving temperature, and, moreover, driving it in such a way of producing a nice monotonic CO2 rise?
I wonder if Dr. Lindzen has seen this presentation?

Owen in GA says (June 10, 2013 at 1:58 pm): “The thing about the ice cores wasn’t so much that there may have been 1000ppm CO2 levels missed in the core, but that any high rate of change of CO2 would have been missed.”
Ah, thanks, that makes more sense.

Dr Salby confirms as follows:
i) The ice core record is too coarse to accurately reflect natural short term variability in atmospheric CO2. It appears to be far larger than generally supposed.
ii) There are potential natural sources of low C13 CO2 which are capable of confounding the isotope based diagnosis. I have suggested that one such may be decomposing organic material in the oceans just as decomposing organic matter on land is low in C13.
iii) CO2 involves only a tiny fraction of the energy absorbed by an atmosphere. I think he understates the role of mass in the presentation but impliedly acknowledges it when he refers to conduction and convection.
iv) The potential variability of the speed of conduction and convection would provide a negative system response.
All of those points are confirm my comments here and elsewhere over the years.
The next step is to get a grip on the way the climate system changes when the effects of forcing elements other than mass, gravity and ToA insolation occur (primarily variations in atmospheric composition) and I think I have given plausible mechanisms in that regard.
The ultimate truth must be that atmospheric composition changes, including radiative ability of constituent molecules will only ever result in circulation changes which would eventually return the system to the initial equilibrium set by mass, gravity and insolation if everything else remained equal.
The key to that is climate zone shifting and changes in jet stream behaviour.
The key diagnostic indicator as to whether the system is gaining energy or losing energy at any given time is global cloudiness and albedo.

@ Ryan:
“The Feb model/observation update from realclimate disagrees heartily with you.”
I assume you are referring to this: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/02/2012-updates-to-model-observation-comparions/
They present 5 charts that show the following:
1) Climate models are much better at hindcasting than forecasting.
2) Climate scientists would rather show adjusted data than actual data,
3) The models got the direction of Ocean Heat Content right, but “If the models were to be simply extrapolated, they would lie above the observations”.
4) Models failed spectacularly to either hindcast or forecast the rate of acrtic ice melt.
5) The world has warmed less than Hansen et al (1988) Scenario C, despite GHG emissions and concentrations that have risen faster than Scenario B.

Dr. James Hansen on the climate models. 16 May 2013, assuming it’s a correct transcript.

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE
To be published as HC 60-i
Q 12 Peter Aldous: Do you feel that climate feedbacks are adequately understood and factored into climate models?
Professor Hansen: No. For example, one of the feedbacks is that as the planet gets warmer you melt ice. The Arctic sea ice is melting faster than the climate models indicated. The climate models often get criticised-and it is a valid criticism-that there is a lot of physics that we may not even have in the models, and that which we do have in may be inaccurate….
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmenvaud/uc60-i/uc6001.htm

But they can tell us the temperature of planet Water in 2100.

Russ R. at 12:16 pm above offers two criticisms based on watching the final 10 min of the video. I assume this was based on Anthony’s recommendation for that section of the video. I think that was a mistake and urge you to watch the whole video. Salby addresses those issues in detail earlier in the video.

It’s a good video. Thanks for linking to it.

Impressive and implaccable logic.

Now compare Salby’s contribution to science to this:
“3. Global Warming
If you are worried about global warming and its effects globally and locally, coal trains are a bad idea. The proposed export volumes are huge: roughly 15% of the total coal usage of China. We will be a participant and contributor to a significant increase in atmospheric CO2. It is nice to drive our hybrids and use wind energy. The coal trains will compensate (in a bad way) for all our sacrifices and investments.”
LOL Now name the author of this gem… 😉

Marvellous talk. Judging from the number of warmist nay-sayers here, it’s devastating.

As far as the CO2 debate goes, Dr. Selby went into great detail concerning mathematical issue’s between old ice core proxy (I use proxy since the comparison is between icebound CO2 and atmospheric not necessarily the same thing) new ice core and actual observation. If you watch the entire presentation and have a decent grasp of math, what he says makes perfect sense. He is careful to not try and calculate actual amounts just notes that it is under represented which makes a logical sense considering we are talking ice, which has a tendancy to keep the local surface area to a bounded upper temperature, the CO2 observations have a huge annual variation, all which would tend to limit the moment to moment capture of the CO2.
The interesting thing will be then next 10-20 years if the CO2 in atmosphere follows the integral of the temp we may see a leveling then a decrease in CO2 concentrations.

Konrad.
Although you get much right it cannot be right that GHGs are necessary for convective overturning to occur.
One doesn’t need to add energy at the bottom AND remove it at the top to create overturning.
All one needs is for pressure (and density) to reduce with height so that KE is converted to PE as one goes higher.
The conversion of KE to PE with height produces a temperature decline because PE does not register as heat.
The only two factors needed to provoke convective overturning are a pressure decline with height and surface heating and both are present in a non GHG atmosphere.

Bart said:
“The upwelling waters in the thermohaline pipeline have been charting their course for centuries. Their CO2 concentration is dependent on what it was at the time they originally downwelled, as well as any other processes they endured during their multi-century trek”
I have been making that point for years.

We do not know much about the magnitude of natural sources and sinks of CO2 but we know enough to understand that temperature controls the RATES of both biotic and physical chemical processes.
This relationship is the probable cause of seasonal and multiyear planetary CO2 variability not resulting from black swan events discussed by Dr. Salby.
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are largely controlled by life on earth or we would not have 21% Oxygen versus .04% CO2. It’s that simple. Photosynthesis versus respiration as life “breathes”. Or did you think all that oxygen came out of Al Gore’s ass ?
AGW, Global Thermageddon, Climate Disruption, etc is and always has been so much bull$hit.

The hour spent on listening to the presentation was definitely one of the most interesting hours I have ever spent on the topic. But if I consider things carefully, I still see some inaccuracies and weak points.
What he presents and more or less proves is the fact that CO2 is driven by temperature way more than temperature is driven by CO2. I agree with that. When we go to the part calculating the CO2 change however, human emission stop being as negligible as they were in the energy budget calculation. It is rather likely that if human emissions weren’t there, the CO2 would be actually declining with about the same slope it is now increasing. Because as long as the change is caused by imbalance between natural sources and sinks – imbalance driven by temperature – humans with their comparably tiny contribution have still successfully changed the imbalance to the exactly opposite direction.
If he’s right, we probably don’t have to care about temperature. But we may still need to care about CO2. Not exactly to get rid of it, but to figure out and maintain level which is beneficial for us.

Konrad says:
June 10, 2013 at 10:06 pm

It is not just the AGW hypothesis that must be questioned, but also the radiative GHE hypothesis. Many sceptics and AGW believers accept the radiative GHE hypothesis, yet just like the AGW hypothesis, it remains unproven. Is there a case for claiming that the net effect of radiative gases is cooling?
Dr. Salby raises an important point toward the end of his presentation. He states that the mechanical energy transfer from the surface to atmosphere through conduction and convection is two orders of magnitude greater than any expected CO2 warming effect.
The real problem here is that Dr Salby and ilk do not understand that the AGW GHE does not have conduction and convection, and those supporting the AGW GHE do not understand the arguments bringing in conduction and convection because they don’t have it, because their gases are not real, but the ideal gas. Their ideal gases are a theoretical fiction turned into a fantasy world and it is this they pass off as if the real world, in ignorance that this was fraudulently created by person/persons unknown, to me, but who understand real physics as still taught in up to date traditional science and have manipulated it by sleight of hand changes by misappropriating its terms, to create a world that doesn’t exist.
The AGW Greenhouse Effect is impossible in the real world.
As every meteorologist should know, who is expected to understand how we get our winds and weather from expanding and condensing real gas molecules of our mainly nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere, which changes their weight under gravity creating areas of low and high pressure. Who should know that heat is transferred by convection in this as the real gases expand and become lighter than air taking away heat from the surface and then cooling condense becoming heavier than air forming high pressure volumes and so sinking back to the surface, flowing beneath the areas of low pressure hotter volumes at the surface. These are called winds, which are volumes of air on the move, convection currents.
Hot air rise cold air sinks. Winds flow from high to low. Basic bog standard meteorolgy of real gases with individual volumes which expand and contract, real gases with mass under the pulling power of gravity which gives them weight relative to each other.
The standard air against which the mass of gas molecules are measured, water vapour and methane lighter than air and carbon dioxide one and half times heavier. Lighter than air gases always rise in air, heavier than air gases always sink, spontaneously, it takes work to change this direction just as it takes work to change the direction of heat flow which is always from hotter to colder. This is a Law of Nature. It is never seen to be broken, not in nature and not in any industry utilising heat transfer by conduction and convection. The industrial revolution was built on the 2nd Law in which there is no fake fisics “net”. There is no GHE of “backradiation of heat from colder atmosphere to warmer Earth”.
AGW’s The Greenhouse Effect is an illusion built on changing the properties of real condensable gases with mass, volume, attraction, relative weight under gravity comprising our heavy fluid ocean of gas which is our atmosphere, and replacing this with the theoretical fiction Ideal gas in empty space in an imaginary invisible container which does not exist.
The AGWScienceFiction’s world does not have an atmosphere. How can it then have conduction and convection?
The sooner all arguing about this realise that these are completely different viewpoints, completely different concepts of the world around us, the sooner we can begin untangling the damn mess that the AGWScienceFiction’s Greenhouse Effect Illusion has got us into.
Ideal gas has no mass, therefore nothing for gravity to work on so it has no weight which gravity gives, it is not subject to gravity and so does not separate out by weight ; it has no volume, therefore nothing to individually expand and condense; it has no attraction, because ideal gas has only elastic collisions. Ideal gas is hard dots of massless nothing so empty space.
This ideal gas cannot be called by the names of real gases such as nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide, which have all these properties.
The AGWScienceFiction fisics has exchanged real gases for ideal in their fantasy world.
The AGWScienceFictions fakenitrogen, fakeoxygen, fakecarbondioxide, are “massless hard dots of nothing travelling at great speeds through empty space under their own molecular momentum miles apart from each other, bumping off the sides of the container and each other in elastic collisions so thoroughly mixing.” – real gas nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide are not this.
Our real world gases have volume, there is not empty space between them.
Our real gases are impeded by the volume of the other real gases surrounding them.
That’s how we get sound.
We do not get sound in the empty space of the AGW ideal gas scenario..
Our real gas atmosphere is a heavy fluid, gases and liquids are fluids, which weighs a stone on every square inch, a ton on our shoulders. Our atmosphere is not empty space but a heavy ocean of real gas with individual volumes which expand when heated and condense when cooled.
This makes them lighter or heavier than air and those lighter will rise and those heavier will sink.
Gravity’s force, its pulling power, acts on the mass of the individual gases and it is reduced the further away from the surface the gas which means there is less condensing pressure on the individual molecule, from gravity’s pull to the surface and from the weight of the other gases around it squashing it. Real gases under pressure condense, as the pressure lessens they expand.
So, there are two ways for real gases to expand and condense, relative pressure from gravity’s pull and weight of the individual volumes of gases around them, and heating and cooling.
Both are in constant play in our real gas fluid atmosphere.
As a base all the real gases expand in volume the further they are away from the surface and condense the closer they are to the surface under the pull of gravity.
This is the basic scenario of the lapse rate in which temperature decreases in known degrees per feet away from the surface, because the real gases have individual volumes which expand and condense under gravity.
As they expand they take up more room – be careful here, you will not often see it said like that, but said “they get further away from each other” which gives the wrong impression of what is physically happening, implying there is empty space between them..
For example, in liquid form the number of water molecules in a given volume on expanding will take up 1000 times more space as water vapour.
As water vapour expands its volume increases taking up much more space and so the weight of the individual molecules of water are spread over a greater area, this is what gives us our low pressure areas.
Low pressure areas are simply that, expanded gases of air and water weighing less heavily on us because their weight is spread over a greater area.
So conversely, high pressure areas are where the gases are condensed so taking up less room so more of them in the same space, the combined weight now pressing down more heavily on us.
AGWScienceFicition fisics does not have this. They do not have any atmosphere at all, they have replaced all this with empty space for their radiation claims.
Not only does our bulk nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere of real gases act a blanket because real gases with individual volume under gravity, but they also play their part in convecting heat away from the surface as does water.
Water in evaporation and with its high heat capacity taking away heat from the surface to the colder heights where it releases its heat and condenses back to liquid water and ice, coming down in cold precipitation, which, is also taking out all the carbon dioxide around it because it and carbon dioxide are attracted to each other forming carbonic acid – all natural unpolluted rain has a pH of 5.6-8 from its carbonic acid content.
AGWSF’s Greenhouse Effect has taken out the Water Cycle, it has no rain in is Carbon Cycle.
This is where AGWSF has created its sleight of hand by taking out the natural real gas cooling of our atmosphere by all gases, which means that they have changed the meaning of “greenhouse”, which real world greenhouses both warm and cool, and in warming, have given the thermal blanket effect of the whole atmosphere under gravity to the trace gas which they fraudulently call carbon dioxide..
All our real gases which comprise the our atmosphere are greenhouse gases.
This is the base science fraud here, note it well –
There is no AGW Greenhouse Effect of “33°C warming by their version of greenhouse gases from the -18°C”, because that figure is from real physics and it refers to the Earth without any of its real gas atmosphere. The comparison is with the Moon. Which has no atmosphere. All the Venus arguments are a distraction from this..
Here, you can see what they’ve done in their science fraud by the real world physics of our real gas atmosphere:
Temperature of the Earth without any atmosphere at all: -18°C.
(Compare with the Moon’s -23°C.)
Temperature of the Earth without water, think deserts, but with the rest of the real gas atmosphere in place which is practically 100% nitrogen and oxygen: 67°C.
That’s what you call a thermal blanket!
From -18°C to 67°C from the bulk of our real gas atmosphere which is nitrogen and oxygen.
This is the difference between the Moon without an atmosphere and our Earth with its thermal blanket of nitrogen and oxygen, we avoid the extreme swings into cold of the Moon.
But note, our great nitrogen and oxygen real greenhouse gases are also preventing us going into the extremes of heat of the Moon.
Because they also take heat away from the surface of the Earth by convection.
“When sunlight hits the moon’s surface, the temperature can reach 253 degrees F (123 C).”
The convective power of heat transfer by oxygen and nitrogen brings that down to 67°C on our Earth.
Now, this is just with the heat capacity of nitrogen and oxygen, when we add water back into our real gas atmosphere with water’s really big heat capacity, that 67°C is further reduced – to our goldilocks 15°C.
So, bearing all this in mind, here’s what you ought to be comparing with, the Moon: http://www.space.com/18175-moon-temperature.html
I’m sure you can see now where their AGWSF sleights of hand have created the illusion that there is “33°C warming” by their greenhouse gases, there is no mechanism for that..
They have misattributed the -18°C and have taken out the whole real gas atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen and water to create that illusion.
From within which world are all of you arguing about this? Completely in the real of up to date physics as still taught traditionally, or completely in the fictional AGWSF’s Greenhouse Effect word?
From what I’ve seen of the arguments it is usually a mixture because the fake fisics memes produced by this scam were introduced into the general education system some decades ago and its basic memes taken as if real by those not specialising in the relevant fields.
Hence all the confusion..

The only objections put up by AGW proponents so far all seem to miss the point.
Dr Salby demonstrates mathematically that it is his interpretation of the real world that fits observations whereas the assumptions of the AGW theory do not.

Kasuha
Without geting too far into the climate intricate mechanisms, it seems that professor Murry Salby is both well qualified as an atmospheric scientist, with a number of important publications to his credit and obviously more to come once the gatekeepers of so called “peer review” can’t find anything else to delay his papers/book publication. The important thing is, can we now with confidence, adapt to whatever climate serves up to us in the future. Seems from his talk that if we accept that C02 is NOT a driver of temperature, we should be able to avoid having to alter our economies dramatically to control a rather non event, due to guesswork and substandard model projections based on past guesswork.
As an Australian I find it rather strange that our present government has relied on/or stacked its Climate Commission with either poorly qualified or not qualified in this field of science, activist CAGW promoters when they have available to them Professor Salby as chair of climate at an Australian University, and one might think the government would wish to make use of his expertise in that exact field.
In the same way it is hard to understand why the Australian Broadcasting Commission, a taxpaper funded but independent broadcaster, whose charter is to provide a balanced media presentation to the Australian public (and under fire from other media for its almost total left wing biased reporting) hasn’t found time to ask Professor Murry Salby (or any other well qualified Australian sceptical climate scientists) to present such an alternative view, preferring the rather wild pronouncements by their Climate Commissioners, or failing to insist that those well qualified but sceptical scientists replace some of the Australian representatives that are also not specifically qualified in climate science, but often make pronouncements based solely on their authority conferred by participating as our “official” representatives at the IPCC. and enhanced recipients of much government funding and research dollars.?
These self proclaimed “Climatologists” get instant media coverage (no credible alternative view permitted sir) as long as they support the political view of the present government that CO2 is framed as “dirty carbon” and so evil because it is driving temperature upward, to absolutely cause disaster and necessitating the most draconian economic reversal and taxation, driving up prices, adding to the taxation burden of ordinary australians.
But even though this is hurting people now, costing jobs, why oh why doesn;t the Media and the ABC find equal time to present science instead of social twitterings, like that of unqualified people like Bill McKibben and others of similar backgrounds that get the red carpet treatment and a forum to spout their nonsense?.
I am sure that Professor Salby, Bob Tisdale, and a host of other well qualified people would be willing to debate IPCC scientists, Climate Commissioners and the stream of unqualified CAGW believers who keep the faith.
It is a travesty of justice the Australian public suffer from the stream of propaganda and science itself suffers as truth is silenced and available experts ignored.

An absolutely superb presentation.
For most of my life as a climate sceptic I have assumed that the increase in CO2 was entirely man-made. Now I find myself less and less certain.
I believe it was thought that temperature did indeed drive CO2, but with a lag of around 800 years. This was due to the oceans releasing CO2 as they warmed, and the 800 years lag was due to the vast bulk of the oceans.
However, I believe he didn’t mention this mechanism. It seems that, as temperatures rise, life becomes more active and prolific and, as a result, emits more CO2. Unlike the oceans, this will have a very small lag.
Basically, it means all bets are off. It’s been totally obvious that the warming was primarily natural, and not driven by CO2. Now it seems a serious possibility that the increase in CO2 itself was also natural.
We live in interesting times….
Chris

Alex says:
“Now you have to average it over the globe (including the angle of incidence!) and including the night side.”
Why, though? Why not consider the energy budget, instead of globally-averaged, as at a fixed point on the Earth’s surface during peak TOA radiation. Then consider it again at this fixed location when the sun is setting or rising. Then again in the middle of the night. And repeat these budgets for various latitudes…so you can start to build up a picture of the overall Earth’s energy budget but as a globe rather than a disk, and more in real-time rather than ignoring the difference between night and day. Perhaps the idea of the energy budget you would end up with would be very different than the one based on averaging everything out.

I found the talk riveting and most of the comments equally thought-provoking but, slightly off-topic a very naive question, why do so many commentators equate AGW with human release of CO2? Surely humans can increase temperatures, both locally and globally, without necessarily increasing CO2 levels? Can we not copy KenB’s terminology and distinguish between AGW and CAGW?

Chris Wright said:
“It seems that, as temperatures rise, life becomes more active and prolific and, as a result, emits more CO2. Unlike the oceans, this will have a very small lag.”
I think he implied that oceans plus soil moisture release more CO2 (net) when temperatures rise but there is then a lagging response from the biosphere so atmospheric amounts rise in the meantime.
However, the energised biosphere having taken up more but not all of the additional CO2 from warmed water at sea and on land then decomposes faster too which releases more low C13 CO2 in the decomposition process. Presumably that would apply to both the land based and oceanic biospheres together.
That way one could get both increasing CO2 in the air and a reduction in the C13 proportion without human emissions being implicated.
Furthermore, those natural processes are far larger than our puny emissions which seem to be taken up by the local and regional biosphere quickly so as to not affect the natural CO2 exchange significantly.
I think it will take a while for this to be picked over and thought through properly.

Stephen,
I did reply, just lost in m—–tion.

Alex.
I know what he did I know this is wrong. It does NOT follow reality.
TOA insolation is 1370W/m2. his model has a sunny night side which he divided by 4. This is obviously WRONG since the sun, providing that insolation, only shines on half the planet at a time since we do have a day/night divide. The day side receives radiation and radiates but the night side only radiates heat away so is cooling all night. Sunrise starts the warming cycle again with the average 500W/m2 and a zenith flux of 1000W/ms. this can be MEASURED AS EMPIRICAL DATA.
The flat earth model is wrong because it does not model reality which is a sphere rotating once every 24 hours with sunrise, sunset a daily occurrence and 12 hours of zero energy arriving at the surface. Reality thinking means reality answers and a debunking of the GHE because that is unnecessary for the heating that reality proves we have.

By radiative gas I suppose you mean GHG’s.
Convection relies on density difference not radiation. The density difference is caused by temperature gained by, usually, conduction, ie. contact with a warmer surface. All gasses will convect regardless of their IR reactivity given a density difference. Convection happens on Jupiter, no GHG’s, and Venus, all GHG’s. So in this Spencer is correct the rest wrong.

Graham W.
We seem to agree on this figure as the TOA insolation. Albedo and atmospheric losses reduce this to ~1000W/m2 at the surface. TOA of 340W/m2 is plainly wrong. 1000W/m2 flux will heat part of the surface, about 10%, and the same flux spread over the hemisphere is half that at 500W/m2.(zero at the poles) 1000W/m2 equates to 88C at radiative equilibrium much of this being lost to convection, latent heat of evapouration of water etc.
Latent heat losses also explain the temperature difference between a very hot dry desert and a cooler rainforest at the same latitude.

Yes, I agree that this is the right figure for TOA insolation at a point on the Earth’s surface when at that location the sun is directly overhead. Then I’d agree that part of that is going to be reflected because of the atmosphere and clouds etc and so only a smaller amount is actually going to reach the surface…you say ~1000 W/m2, I’m not sure exactly how that’s calculated but it doesn’t seem unreasonable! Then at other times of the day, when the sun is not directly overhead, seems to me that the TOA insolation figure at that same location on the Earth’s surface will be less…and at night it will be zero. I would think that these differences should all be considered and taken into account when considering the Earth’s energy budget rather than just averaging everything out (dividing insolation by 4, averaging out night/day etc) because the energy you’re receiving from the sun during the day is going to be more than 340 W/m2 at TOA for the majority of the time.

@Ryan Spear
The reason he showed the past is to explain that CO2 and Temperature are related, however rather than CO2 CAUSING increased Warming ( which would account for the 1% wagging the 99% ) he was demonstrating that CO2 via natural sources ( and to a limited extent Anthropological ) track temperature. He also indicated that the CO2 levels via proxy ice core data show a mean which suggest much higher elevations than what are demonstrated.
Did you watch the talk?

Hans Erren says:
June 11, 2013 at 10:29 am

I’m afraid that anybody who concludes that the current high atmospheric Co2 level is not manmade has not been paying attention in bookkeeping 101 classes.

You must have forgotten to account for the hefty payments of Co2 to the cold ocean surfaces near the poles.

Bart says:
June 10, 2013 at 7:37 pm
… No, because it is the scaled integral of temperature anomaly, and neither the baseline for the anomaly nor the proportionality factor are necessarily constant in time. However, they may be modeled as such over finite durations to achieve an approximate system model within the neighborhood of a given operating condition.

My main contention was that Dr. Salby is wasting his time bothering about diffusion in the ice cores. That explanation is too easily disputed and it’s not necessary. He spends a lot of time trying to use diffusion to explain why the proxy CO2 and proxy temperature don’t exhibit the same behaviour as the instrumental versions.
All the data is simply explained using a first order low pass filter analogue. Over periods shorter than one time constant, such filters integrate. Over long periods, the inputs and outputs are directly proportional. So simple. There is nothing about the waveforms that suggests that it is worthwhile to go for a more complicated relationship. As always, one should apply Occam’s Razor.
Once we have established the relationship, we can worry about the physical mechanisms involved, which is what you are doing. (And yes I do realize that adaptive control systems are wonderful … until they break and you have to fix them. I built my first one in 1974.)

commieBob says:
June 11, 2013 at 11:30 am
“All the data is simply explained using a first order low pass filter analogue.”
I only sampled the video, so I could have gotten some low pass filtering and aliasing in my own perceptions, but I thought that was Salby’s point, that the diffusion process affects the measurements similarly to such a low pass filter. So, if someone asks how can it be that “Over periods shorter than one time constant, such filters integrate. Over long periods, the inputs and outputs are directly proportional”, he can answer: “this way”.

Bill says:
June 11, 2013 at 12:16 pm
My thought would be, well, what do you expect Gavin to say? “Whoops! Oh, boy, was I wrong. Well, better clean out my desk and brush up my panhandling technique.”
You may be assured, those who have everything to lose will hold out to the bitter end.

johnmarshall says:
June 11, 2013 at 7:20 am
Alex.
I know what he did I know this is wrong. It does NOT follow reality.
TOA insolation is 1370W/m2. his model has a sunny night side which he divided by 4. This is obviously WRONG since the sun, providing that insolation, only shines on half the planet at a time since we do have a day/night divide. The day side receives radiation and radiates but the night side only radiates heat away so is cooling all night. Sunrise starts the warming cycle again with the average 500W/m2 and a zenith flux of 1000W/ms. this can be MEASURED AS EMPIRICAL DATA.
The flat earth model is wrong because it does not model reality which is a sphere rotating once every 24 hours with sunrise, sunset a daily occurrence and 12 hours of zero energy arriving at the surface.
So what is going on here? Is it or isn’t isn’t divided by 4?
And there’s more that confuses me with the figures that get presented, but let me first of all say that the AGW Greenhouse Effect energy budget of “shortwave in longwave out” is fake fisics.
They’ve taken out the direct heat radiation from the Sun, longwave infrared, and claim ludicrously that shortwaves heat the Earth (mainly visible with shortwave uv and ir either side, the shortwave ir being 1% of the total and mostly ignored, uv usually ignored too). But perhaps this has a bearing on the figures they use.
What you are giving giving is the solar constant which includes all wavelengths so includes the longwave thermal infrared, which AGW’s GHE energy budget has excluded – its 100% “Solar”, (KT97 and ilk) is shortwaves only and that mostly visible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant
“The solar constant includes all types of solar radiation, not just the visible light. It is measured by satellite to be roughly 1.361 kilowatts per square meter (kW/m²) at solar minimum and approximately 0.1% greater (roughly 1.362 kW/m²) at solar maximum.”
It goes on to say:
“The Earth receives a total amount of radiation determined by its cross section (π·RE²), but as it rotates this energy is distributed across the entire surface area (4·π·RE²). Hence the average incoming solar radiation, taking into account the angle at which the rays strike and that at any one moment half the planet does not receive any solar radiation, is one-fourth the solar constant (approximately 340 W/m²). At any given moment, the amount of solar radiation received at a location on the Earth’s surface depends on the state of the atmosphere, the location’s latitude, and the time of day.”
But, as visible light and uv together at less than half that of the combined visible, uv and all of infrared including thermal longwave, they are using the number for longwave infrared from the Sun, but calling it shortwave. .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_radiation
“Direct sunlight has a luminous efficacy of about 93 lumens per watt of radiant flux. Bright sunlight provides illuminance of approximately 100,000 lux or lumens per square meter at the Earth’s surface. The total amount of energy received at ground level from the sun at the zenith is 1004 watts per square meter, which is composed of 527 watts of infrared radiation, 445 watts of visible light, and 32 watts of ultraviolet radiation.”
Reality thinking means reality answers and a debunking of the GHE because that is unnecessary for the heating that reality proves we have.
The fraud here of course is that they have taken out the name of thermal infrared direct from the Sun, but attributed its power to visible.
(And give two versions of why their GHE world doesn’t get any direct heat from the Sun.)
They have done this in order to claim that any downwelling infrared is “from backradiation from greenhouse gases”.
That alone proves the GHE is a fraud.
Which double counting shows up for their strangely large figure for their “downwelling from the atmosphere backradiation” of 333 as in the Trenberth comic cartoon:
http://bobfjones.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/trenberth-cartoon-ex-colose.jpg?w=588&h=375&h=375
Taken from the discussion here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/26/does-the-trenberth-et-al-%e2%80%9cearth%e2%80%99s-energy-budget-diagram%e2%80%9d-contain-a-paradox/
So, back to my question, what exactly is happening here?
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7i_2.html
This gives shortwave (July 83-90) as
“0 to 350 W/m2. Global mean = 158 W/m2, Minimum = 0 W/m2, Maximum = 323 W/m2. (Source: NASA Surface Radiation Budget Project).
Is this including or excluding the missing heat longwave infrared direct from the Sun of the GHE energy budget?
Or is that mean what shortwave alone would be in the solar constant divided by four?
Here’s another: http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7i_5.html
This is shortwave and longwave combined, and I don’t understand it either:
“Figure 7i-7: Average net radiation at the Earth’s surface: January 1984-1991. Total net radiation is the sum of shortwave and longwave net radiation. It is dominated by the shortwave portion. Highest values occur along the subtropical oceans of the Southern Hemisphere. Lowest values occur over areas of low solar input such as the North Pole, and areas of high surface reflection such as the South Pole. Color range: blue – red – white, light green = 0 W/m2, Values: -50 to 250 W/m2. Global mean = 114 W/m2, Minimum = -60 W/m2, Maximum = 261 W/m2. (Source: NASA Surface Radiation Budget Project).”
“It is dominated by the shortwave portion” – how is it showing this?
What difference does “Lowest values occur over areas … and areas of high surface reflection ..”
Is this or isn’t this measuring what is reaching the surface? What does what happens next matter?
Here’s another: http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7i_6.html
This again is for the same period as the shortwave only:
“Figure 7i-8: Average net radiation at the Earth’s surface: July 1983-1990. Total net radiation is the sum of shortwave and longwave net radiation. It is dominated by the shortwave portion. Highest values occur along the subtropical oceans of the Northern Hemisphere. Lowest values occur over areas of low solar input such as the South Pole, and areas of high surface reflection such as the North Pole. Color range: blue – red – white, light green = 0 W/m2, Values: -50 to 250 W/m2. Global mean = 111 W/m2, Minimum = -65 W/m2, Maximum = 249 W/m2. ”
Again, how are they showing that shortwave dominates, and, why are the figures for combined less than shortwave alone?

And, p.s., isn’t the solar constant calculated on how much the Sun heats the Earth? So, since shortwaves don’t heat the Earth’s land and water then they were never historically included in that 1.36 figure, that is all thermal infrared, i.e. longwave infrared direct from the Sun.
In other words, it doesn’t break up into the 53% infrared, 47% visible and uv at the surface – it’s all infrared minus non-thermal longwave.

Apologies, it was late..,
“Myrrh says:
June 11, 2013 at 6:54 pm
And, p.s., isn’t the solar constant calculated on how much the Sun heats the Earth? So, since shortwaves don’t heat the Earth’s land and water then they were never historically included in that 1.36 figure, that is all thermal infrared, i.e. longwave infrared direct from the Sun.
In other words, it doesn’t break up into the 53% infrared, 47% visible and uv at the surface – it’s all infrared minus non-thermal longwaveshortwave infrared.”
As NASA’s real scientists used to teach from up to date traditional science building on the brilliant discovery by Herschel that the great powerful heat energy from the Sun was invisible, as he measured it through a solid glass prism…:
NASA:
“Infrared light lies between the visible and microwave portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Infrared light has a range of wavelengths, just like visible light has wavelengths that range from red light to violet. “Near infrared” light is closest in wavelength to visible light and “far infrared” is closer to the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The longer, far infrared wavelengths are about the size of a pin head and the shorter, near infrared ones are the size of cells, or are microscopic.
“Far infrared waves are thermal. In other words, we experience this type of infrared radiation every day in the form of heat! The heat that we feel from sunlight, a fire, a radiator or a warm sidewalk is infrared. The temperature-sensitive nerve endings in our skin can detect the difference between inside body temperature and outside skin temperature
Shorter, near infrared waves are not hot at all – in fact you cannot even feel them. These shorter wavelengths are the ones used by your TV’s remote control.”
Thermal in traditional science from the Greek meaning ‘of heat’ is a description of the wavelength, not as the fake fisics meme of the AGW Greenhouse Effect’s has it, “the source”…
Neither is visible light a thermal wavelength/photon which is a packet of particles from the Sun, these shortwaves are classed Light not Heat. Heat is the thermal energy of the millions of degree hot Sun in transfer by radiation.
Herschel’s measurements were of course crude compared with later ability to measure electromagnetic wavelengths, and our brilliant scientists went on to discover even more differences, compare gamma with radiowaves. Herschel moved the solid glass prism by hand at the edge of a table, through a window if I recall..
What he was measuring as temperature from the visible wavelengths we can now see was the overlapping bigger wavelengths of thermal longwave infrared, which is why we call these thermal and the shortwaves of infrared non-thermal, and so classed in with Light not Heat, and Reflective not Thermal.
This quote comes from a page which used to be on an internal link, but was replaced by AGW pc fake fisics, but someone with integrity managed to keep it from disappearing altogether: http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/infrared.html
The AGW GHE fake fisics has two reasons why the direct radiant heat which is longwave infrared aka thermal infrared from the Sun doesn’t reach us – an unknown to science “invisible barrier like the glass of a greenhouse at TOA prevents its entry” and the actually millions of degree°C burning hot Star which is our Sun radiates “insignificant amounts of longwave infrared and insignificant of insignificant reaching us”.
The last calculated from the “planckian” on the narrow 300 miles wide atmosphere of thin visible light around the Sun, and they’ve come up with 6000°C as the temperature of the Sun..
By giving the property of the thermal energy of longwave infrared to shortwave light the GHE distracts from their absurdity that the Sun is only 6000&degC and what they’re actually saying is that the millions of degree hot Sun doesn’t radiate any heat, so they can use the real measurements of the direct powerful travelling in straight lines radiant heat from the Sun to pretend that this comes from their fake “backradiation from the atmosphere by greenhouse gases”.
The AGWScienceFiction’s Greenhouse Effect world has no direct heat from the Sun, so no weather so no climate in their cold world.

Unfortunately, this is all rubbish!
The mass balance equation:
Change in At CO2 = Natural Sources + Human Sources – Natural Sinks
Rearranged:
Change in At CO2 – Human Sources = Natural Sources – Natural Sinks
We know Human Sources is greater than Change in At CO2 because we can calculate them.
Therefore LHS of equation is negative. Therefore RHS is negative.
Therefore Natural Sinks is greater than Natural Sources.
Therefore growth in atmospheric CO2 must be man made.
The rest of the hypothesis is irrelevant.

Tony Rogers.
You assume that natural sinks are static. They aren’t.
There are two factors involving the sinks that potentially complement each other in overwhelming our contribution despite being of opposite sign:
I) Our emissions appear to energise the local biosphere such that the power of the local and regional sinks on land increases to reduce or eliminate our emissions.
ii) The reduced global albedo of the late 20th century seems to have warmed the oceans which became less effective as global sinks.
The consequence is that our land based emissions had little or no effect as against the simultaneous natural increase in atmospheric CO2 from the warmer oceans.
There is data to support that here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=9508
“Evidence that Oceans not Man control CO2 emissions “

You’re missing the point.
The equation shows that natural sinks are larger than natural sources. For nature to produce the extra CO2 each year, it would have to be the other way around.

Tony Rogers says:
June 12, 2013 at 2:13 am
Unfortunately, this is all rubbish!
===========================
These are not linear systems Tony. Stop embarrassing yourself in public,

Tony Rogers says:
June 12, 2013 at 2:13 am
“Unfortunately, this is all rubbish!”
Your argument is absolute, pathetic rubbish, and I am tired of confronting the idiots who espouse it.
“Natural” sinks are not entirely natural. This is a dynamic system. The sinks expand due to forcing.
Hence,
Natural Sinks = Natural sink action due to natural forcing + Natural sink action due to anthropogenic forcing = NSNF + NSAF
Now, your equation reads
Change in At CO2 – Human Sources + NSAF = Natural Sources – NSNF
You have two unknowns, and one equation, and this does not allow a unique solution,
This is how feedback systems work. Your pseudo-mass balance argument is stupid beyond compare on an extremely elementary level. I am so sick of it.

Mark T Richardson author of the Sks study is another postgrad trying to make a name for himselt.
http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/users/users/1596

DCA says:
June 12, 2013 at 11:24 am
It is painful to see so many smug morons gathered in one place. These guys are applying algebra to a calculus problem. It makes me wonder if they teach calculus in the schools anymore.

The most significant statement of the whole presentation ” CO² = the integration of temperature.

calculus not calculas

Bart,
I copied and pasted your reply on the sKs blog (I hope you don’t mind) and here is the response.
“Calling arguments that have appeared in journal papers written by top carbon cycle experts, as well as the IPCC report “ridiculous” suggests hubris, which is not a good thing in science.
The mass balance argument, at least stated in its usual form, is not a calculus problem, as the quantites involved represent the actual amounts of carbon that have been moved between reservoirs within a particular timeframe – a year is a common choice. No calculus is involved.
Answer me this:
If during a particular year, net natural emissions are say 2 units and anthropogenic emissions are 2 units and the rise in atmospheric carbon is only 1 unit, where did the missing three units of carbon go?
Edit: By the way, your initial error is to double count natural fluxes,
dC/dt= -a*C + N + A
The net natural response of the carbon cycle is (to a first approximation) proportional to atmospheric CO2 levels, so the natural response is being represented by both -a*C and by N. If you want differential equation based models, you can find the in my journal paper, and give a reasonable reproduction of a variety of known observations, for instance a constant airborne fraction, and they do they also show that the natural environment is a net carbon sink.”

DCA says:
June 13, 2013 at 5:31 am
Please feel free to post what I have said anywhere. I’d be interested to know if your input gets “disappeared” from SkS at some point.

Thanks Bart.
The guy claims to be http://heartland.org/robert-essenhigh, who Earl Rood refers to.
Here is the “journal paper” he refers to . http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef800581r
It hasn’t disappeared yet.

Just to give a little more insight, consider the case where “a” approaches infinity (infinitely short sequestration time). The solution of the differential equation now approaches
C := (N + A)/a
We know A, and it is finite, hence A/a approaches zero. We don’t know N, so it can be arbitrarily large. We can choose a parameter M such that N = a*M, and now
C := M
wholly natural. Hence, the “mass-balance” argument is bunk. It does not in any way uniquely determine the culprit for the observed rise in atmospheric CO2.
It all depends on the residence time (1/a is e-folding time), and the estimates for that are all over the map. But, Salby’s analysis shows that Nature is dominant, hence residence time is relatively short, and A has only a marginal impact.

Oh, that guy. I’ve had run-ins with him before on these pages. Impervious to logic. No point in pursuing.

DCA says:
June 13, 2013 at 3:39 pm
See no evil, hear no evil. Those guys are a case study in pathological science.

And, for any who are interested, the actual real world CO2 system works, on average, analogously to the coupled differential equations below over particular operating conditions which may change, either slowly or in abrupt shifts, over time. These changes in operating conditions would be reflected in the parameters. It can be stated confidently that the parameters have not changed appreciably in the past 55 years.
dC/dt = (P – C)/tau + A
dP/dt = k*(T – Teq)
C = atmospheric CO2 content
A = anthropogenic inputs
tau = time “constant” parameter, which may vary over long stretches of time
P = CO2 pumped into the atmosphere by ocean currents and possibly other processes
T = atmospheric temperature in a global sense
Teq = an equilibrium temperature parameter
k = a temperature coupling parameter
When tau is “short”, sinks are very active, A is attenuated to insignificance, and C tracks P. The equation for P is my own nomenclature which I have been using for some time, but Salby has an identical equation in his presentation, only “k” is “gamma” and “Teq” is… I don’t recall, but it is the same equation, just with different letters.
The actual real world system is undoubtedly more complicated than the above, but since the sink feedback is attenuating A to insignificance, and P is the only really important process going on, it does not really matter on a practical level. This system maps to the simple example system posted previously with a = 1/tau, N = P/tau. According to the “mass balance” argument, “Nature” is still a net sink, but the natural temperature dependent process is nevertheless driving the output.

I late for discussion with F. Engelbeen, 3 June.
But it concerns of the same what writes and says M. Salby.
The discussion on the origin of unbalanced atmospheric carbon of F. Engelbeen and the EG Beck I carried out active here (http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/historic-variations-in-co2-measurements/).
I propose a very simple mathematical model to solve Your:
If, with growth rate a natural source (the sum for the 195? – to today , eg. =1000 Pg), global sinks: eg. photosynthesis, removes 75%, this will be 250 Pg “unbalanced carbon” in atmosphere. If, to this natural source (1000 Pg), we add the 500 Pg (such as: our anthropogenic CO2) and global sinks: especially photosynthesis, increases by slightly more than 8% (only!); how it will change “unbalanced carbon”?
[correct answer: they just do not change …]
Conclusion: in this case the “zero” unbalanced volume of CO2 added to the atmosphere will be the same – both without our CO2, as well as from our CO2 emissions.
That is: although “… nature was a continuous sink for CO2 over the past 50+ years …” and “… we emit about 9 GtC as CO2 per year and we measure an increase of about 4 GtC/year in the atmosphere …, … it is theoretically possible that „…the increase is NOT human made …”
If you are our source – added is very small compared to the total volume of natural sources of CO2 and particularly the growth in the twentieth century, the effect of this small source will always be little or even completely insignificant (so says M. Salby but his proof is still very incomplete).
Because, of course, it must be shown that:
– global sinks: especially photosynthesis, indeed increase compared to growth: temperature and the emergence of a new source of CO2.
– really there was a significant increase in natural sources of CO2.

Whether “heterotrophic respiration”: this is the first “great” source, which we observed an increase from 195? year?
We are now “threatened” that the permafrost in the future will be a major source of net (currently a net sink) unbalanced carbon. However, permafrost already in the twentieth century were happening “interesting things.” In this figure, (http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/1_Fig.2loss-of-permafrost.png) Here you can see a very rapid melting of permafrost in the 191? – 192?, violent to 195?, followed by the reconstruction circa of 1 million km2, and the the 195? “Medium” fast, rather constant, the rate of melting (up to now). Generally melted in the twentieth century 4.5 – 5 million km2 (…) permafrost.
Zimov (2005 – http://forms.mbl.edu/sjp/pdf/readings/zimov_permafrost2005.pdf): “About 4 m of yedoma-like soils accumulated across 3 million km2 in the steppe-tundra ecosystems of Europe and south of West Siberia toward the end of the glacial age and thawed …” “… it would have released about 500 Gt of permafrost carbon at the beginning of the Holocene.“
“The 13C/12C isotope ratio of the permafrost reservoir is similar to that of soil, vegetation, and marine biota. Unlike these reservoirs, however, permafrost carbon is depleted in radiocarbon (14C).”
Nowinski (2010, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2886135/): “Radiocarbon ages of heterotrophically respired C ranged from <50 to 235 years BP in July mineral soil samples and from 1,525 to 8,300 years BP [!] in August samples, suggesting that old soil C in permafrost soils may be metabolized upon thawing.”
So it is a source of isotopically identical with our!
Although the twentieth century – in the second half, permafrost – as a sink has increased more than as a source of CO2, however, increase – this source, was very high throughout the twentieth century (including in the second half) – probably much greater than ours source.
Now (compared to 2005) it is considered that the permafrost stored is much more C than we expected in 2005 (not c. 500 GtC but 1672 Pg or 2167 PgC C http://www.earthtimes.org/climate/thawing-permafrost-increase-co2-emissions-climate-change/1286/ – is possible, however, that up to 1.5-2 times as much!). In addition, permafrost, which melted in the twentieth century was in the lower latitudes – most probably contain more carbon.
Zech (2011, http://www.clim-past.net/7/501/2011/cp-7-501-2011.pdf):
“Recent findings show that the amount of organic carbon stored in high-latitude permafrost regions has been greatly underestimated.”
Zech (version before the process censored, so sorry: the process of reviewing, 2010) considers that the source of the “old coal” (permafrost) in the past always took major contribution in the global changes in atmospheric CO2.
“In light of these inconsistencies, we should stay open minded to the possibility of changes in the terrestrial carbon cycle as an alternative.”
“Changes in sizes of these carbon pools could thus have major impacts on atmospheric CO2 levels. The enormous carbon storage at high-latitudes reflects that apart from biomass productivity, the rate of decomposition is crucial for terrestrial carbon storage.”
We must remember that in the past ALWAYS with global warming were associated decreases in 14C and 13C – the release of old carbon.

Ice cores.
Is worth knowing that there are other widely accepted in the world of science, methods of determination the former CO2 concentrations: boron isotopes, alkenones.
Collected them Seki (2010, http://environ.lowtem.hokudai.ac.jp/saishin.pdf/Seki2010EarthPlanetarySci.Lett.Alkenone%20and%20boran-based%20Plicene%20pCO2%20records.pdf).
Especially alkenones (Fig. 9 a – not subjected to revisions) give astonishing results – much higher concentrations than the ice cores show.
Corrections are mainly include pollution from the Jurassic and Cretaceous and the evolution of physiological processes.
Of course, these corrections are necessary, but their range is very, very controversial, required for recognition by creation of strong evolutionary changes in a very basic physiological processes.
P. S. I think it is worth from this my comment (after correcting my English) make separate publication.