People send me stuff.
Just last week we heard that Dr. Robert Carter had been blackballed at his own university where he served as department chair, and now we have this from Dr. Murray Salby, sent via email.
Between John Cook, Stephan Lewandowsky, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, plus Mike Marriot and his idiotic ideas, I’m beginning to think Australia is ground zero for AGW crackpottery.
This email’s accusations (if true I have independent confirmation now, title changed to reflect this – Anthony) is quite something, it illustrates the disturbing lengths a university will go to suppress ideas they don’t agree with. So much for academic freedom at Macquarie University.
From: [redacted]
Sent: Monday, July 08, 2013 2:25 PM
To: [redacted]
Subject: From Murry Salby
Thanks for your interest in the research presented during my recent lecture tour in Europe.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/another-nail-in-the-climate-change-coffin.php
Remarks from several make it clear that Macquarie University
is comfortable with openly disclosing the state of affairs,
if not distorting them to its convenience. So be it.
Macquarie’s liberal disclosure makes continued reticence unfeasible.
In response to queries is the following, a matter of record:
1. In 2008, I was recruited from the US by “Macquarie University”,
with appointment as Professor, under a national employment contract with
regulatory oversight, and with written agreement that Macquarie would provide
specified resources to enable me to rebuild my research program in Australia.
Included was technical support to convert several hundred thousand lines of computer code,
comprising numerical models and analyses (the tools of my research),
to enable those computer programs to operate in Australia.
2. With those contractual arrangements, I relocated to Australia.
Upon attempting to rebuild my research program, Macquarie advised that
the resources it had agreed to provide were unavailable. I was given an excuse for why.
Half a year later, I was given another excuse. Then another.
Requests to release the committed resources were ignored.
3. Three years passed before Macquarie produced even the first major component
of the resources it had agreed to provide. After five years of cat-and-mouse,
Macquarie has continued to withhold the resources that it had committed.
As a result, my computer models and analyses remain inoperative.
4. A bright student from Russia came to Macquarie to work with me.
Macquarie required her to abandon her PhD scholarship in Russia.
Her PhD research, approved by Macquarie, relied upon the same computer
models and analyses, which Macquarie agreed to have converted but did not.
5. To remedy the situation, I petitioned Macquarie through several avenues provided
in my contract. Like other contractual provisions, those requests were ignored.
The provisions then required the discrepancy to be forwarded to the Australian employment tribunal,
the government body with regulatory oversight.
The tribunal then informed me that Macquarie had not even registered my contract.
Regulatory oversight, a statutory protection that Macquarie advised would govern
my appointment, was thereby circumvented. Macquarie’s failure to register
rendered my contract under the national employment system null and void.
6. During the protracted delay of resources, I eventually undertook the production
of a new book – all I could do without the committed resources to rebuild my research program.
The endeavor compelled me to gain a better understanding of greenhouse gases
and how they evolve. Preliminary findings from this study are familiar to many.
http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/speaker/murry-salby/ Refer to the vodcast of July 24, 2012.
Insight from this research contradicts many of the reckless claims surrounding greenhouse gases.
More than a few originate from staff at Macquarie, which benefits from such claims.
7. The preliminary findings seeded a comprehensive study of greenhouse gases.
Despite adverse circumstances, the wider study was recently completed. It indicates:
(i) Modern changes of atmospheric CO2 and methane are (contrary to popular belief)
not unprecedented.
(ii) The same physical law that governs ancient changes of atmospheric CO2 and methane
also governs modern changes.
These new findings are entirely consistent with the preliminary findings,
which evaluated the increase of 20th century CO2 from changes in native emission.
8. Under the resources Macquarie had agreed to provide, arrangements were made
to present this new research at a scientific conference and in a lecture series at
research centers in Europe.
9. Forms for research travel that were lodged with Macquarie included a description
of the findings. Presentation of our research was then blocked by Macquarie.
The obstruction was imposed after arrangements had been made at several venues
(arranged then to conform to other restrictions imposed by Macquarie).
Macquarie’s intervention would have silenced the release of our research.
10. Following the obstruction of research communication, as well as my earlier efforts
to obtain compliance with my contract, Macquarie modified my professional duties.
My role was then reduced to that of a student teaching assistant: Marking student papers
for other staff – junior staff.
I objected, pursuant to my appointment and provisions of my contract.
11. In February 2013, Macquarie then accused me of “misconduct”,
cancelling my salary. It blocked access to my office, computer resources,
even to personal equipment I had transferred from the US.
My Russian student was prohibited from speaking with me.
She was isolated – left without competent supervision
and the resources necessary to complete her PhD investigation,
research that Macquarie approved when it lured her from Russia.
12. Obligations to present our new research on greenhouse gases (previously arranged),
had to be fulfilled at personal expense.
13. In April, The Australian (the national newspaper), published an article which
grounded reckless claims by the so-called Australian Climate Commission:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/last-summer-was-not-actually-angrier-than-other-summers/story-e6frgd0x-1226611988057 (Open access via Google News)
To promote the Climate Commission’s newest report is the latest sobering claim:
“one in two chance that by 2100 there’ll be no human beings left on this planet”
Two of the six-member Australian Climate Commission are Macquarie staff.
Included is its Chief Commissioner.
14. While I was in Europe presenting our new research on greenhouse gases,
Macquarie undertook its misconduct proceedings – with me in absentia.
Macquarie was well informed of the circumstances. It was more than informed.
15. Upon arriving at Paris airport for my return to Australia, I was advised that
my return ticket (among the resources Macquarie agreed to provide) had been cancelled.
The latest chapter in a pattern, this action left me stranded in Europe,
with no arrangements for lodging or return travel.
The ticket that had been cancelled was non-refundable.
16. The action ensured my absence during Macquarie’s misconduct proceedings.
17. When I eventually returned to Australia, I lodged a complaint with the
Australian employment tribunal, under statutes that prohibit retaliatory conduct.
18. In May 2013, while the matter was pending before the employment tribunal,
Macquarie terminated my appointment.
19. Like the Australian Climate Commission, Macquarie is a publically-funded enterprise.
It holds a responsibility to act in the interests of the public.
20. The recent events come with curious timing, disrupting publication of our research
on greenhouse gases. With correspondence, files, and computer equipment confiscated,
that research will now have to be pursued by Macquarie University’s “Climate Experts”.
http://www.science.mq.edu.au/news_and_events/news/climate_change_commision
Murry Salby
Ferdinand says “the residence time increases in more recent estimates”
If the residence time was increasing, the CO2 airborne fraction would not be decreasing
http://ej.iop.org/images/1748-9326/8/1/011006/erl459410f3_online.jpg
Ferdinand says decrease in 13C proves man is the source of increased atmospheric CO2
Salby’s lecture shows natural sources of 13C such as vegetation and plankton in the oceans [leaner in c13 vs. c12 just like fossil fuels] vary due to temperature changes. Observations show atmospheric 13C varies according to temperature, not man-made emissions. Thus, 13C/12C is also a false argument in support of the assumption that man-made CO2 controls atmospheric CO2.
Jan P Perlwitz, LMAO, Keep digging that hole in your credibility.
Hockey Schtick wrote in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/professor-critical-of-agw-theory-being-disenfranchised-exiled-from-academia-in-australia/#comment-1359504
The claim that there were two unknown variables in the mass balance equation is false.
One can write the differential balance equation of the total carbon dioxide mass C in the atmosphere in a simple form,
dC(t)/dt = Fn(t) + Fa(t),
where Fn is the total of the fluxes between natural sources/sinks and the atmosphere, and Fa is the flux from anthropogenic sources (anthropogenic sinks are negligible), and t is time. This balance equation must always be fulfilled, at any point in time. The mass must always be balanced. It’s a first principle in physics. In this equation, Fa(t) averaged over time is sufficiently known, and dC(t)/dt averaged over time is sufficiently known. There is only one unknown term in this equation, the total of the fluxes between the atmosphere and natural sources/sinks Fn(t) averaged over time. Since Fa(t) has been greater Zero on average since pre-industrial times, and dC(t)/dt has been greater Zero on average since pre-industrial times, but dC(t)/dt has been smaller than Fa(t) on average since pre-industrial times, Fn(t) must have been smaller than Zero on average since pre-industrial times. It can’t be differently without violation of the mass balance equation. When 32 Gt carbon dioxide is emitted in a year due to human activities, with some variability around this value, equivalent to a yearly increase of the carbon dioxide mixing ratio in the atmosphere of about 4 ppm a year, and the atmospheric mixing ratio of carbon dioxide increases only by about 2 ppm on average every year, currently, there is a difference in the mass balance of about 2 ppm a year of carbon dioxide that comes from human activities, which must go somewhere. Mainstream climate science’s answer is it goes into the natural sinks, which take in more carbon dioxide than it is emitted from natural sources. Salby doesn’t have any answer where the carbon dioxide mass from human emissions goes. He basically claims something like 4+2=2.
One could split the natural sources/sinks into two terms, or in even more terms for different sources and sinks. And one can study how those sources and sinks respond to short-term changes in various meteorological variables, or also to longer-term changes of climate. Then one would formally have more than one unknown term in the equation. But this doesn’t change anything about the sum of all natural flux terms. The sum must be smaller than Zero on average to fully account for the total of the carbon dioxide mass change in the atmosphere and the fluxes, under the condition of the presence of the perturbation in the carbon dioxide flux that comes from human activities.
And I don’t care about video clips on “skeptic” opinion website. Those are not scientific references. I care about what published science says, because this is the place where scientists present their evidence and open their hypotheses and theories to the scrutiny of other scientists. There is a reason why Salby’s claims about the cause of the present day carbon dioxide increase since pre-industrials times are not published in the specialist journals of the field. And with all the journals that exist today, and with the open-access journals that compete with each other, it is just not believable it was because of the acting of sinister forces that suppressed the publication of his “findings”. Instead, he travels around and gives speeches to willing audiences where he spreads his claims.
@Janice Moore, Lord Monckton, Allencic –
My sentiments exactly, well said by all. What a gross miscarriage of justice, and a prostitution of “science.” Unfortunately, I think Dr. Salby will have an uphill battle in either civil or criminal action, as the courts are surely packed with the satraps of climatism. Here in the US, even our supposedly “conservative” Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, saw no problem with ignoring the 4th and 5th Amendments and allowing that hate group known as the EPA to declare CO2 a pollutant. I would not think Australian courts would be any different in this.
What a tragedy this is for Australia, which used to be that other beacon of liberty shining upon the world, America’s Down Under counterpart. Hopefully the September elections there will start the process of unraveling the tyrannical kleptocracy that now rules the country and its educational system.
@Rhys Fair –
Maybe, if Australia reverted to its ancient, real anthem, “Waltzing Mathilda,” spirits might be revived somewhat. I have never quite understood why WM wasn’t chosen, if “God Save the King/Queen” had to be abandoned (“O Canada” certainly isn’t any better either). How sad, that nations abandon their heritage. I’m waiting for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “America the Beautiful,” “Hail Columbia,” “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” “America (to the tune of ‘God Save the King’)” (in that regard, have any British Commonwealth people ever heard Charles Ives’s superfragilisticexpialidocious “Variations on ‘America'” for organ? It rocks!!), “Stars and Stripes Forever,” “God Bless America” and such to be banned from the schools, universities and other public fora of all kinds.
As for Jan P Perlwitz – to respond properly to this gastropod’s idiocy, I would need to use language too strong even for this relatively tolerant and indulgent website. In fact, I don’t think there is any word in the English language that is filthy and obscene enough to describe people like him, or what they purvey in the name of “science.”.
This isn’t about whether Salby is “right” or not. It’s about independent research and academic freedom, as opposed to Lysenkoism and the global warming thought police.
If one adds two and two, the obvious interpretation is that the University is trying to prevent Salby publish his findings in the scientific literature. (They probably have a whole bunch of lews and cooks sitting on them, too.)
Jan P said: “Michael Palmer wrote “… On the other hand, being “sceptical” about another man’s assertion of simple fact means to assume that he is a liar. This is usually done based only on prior evidence of untruthfulness.” Following this logic, if someone accused someone else of a crime, and I didn’t have any knowledge about prior untruthfulness of the accuser, I should believe the accusations to be true at face value.”
An accusation of crime is not an “assertion of simple fact”, to which Michael Palmer referred. A crime necessarily has two components: (a) the “actus reus” (the physical act, perhaps taking away another person’s property) and (b) the “mens rea” (dishonest intent, such as permanently to deprive the rightful owner of the property).
So if I were say “that man has taken my coat” I would indeed expect you to accept what I say (unless/until you have reasonable grounds for disbelief); if I were to say “that man has stolen my coat” I would again expect you to believe that he has taken my coat but you could properly point out that his reason for his taking it (whether it was just accidental, or actually dishonest) must be considered before he can be taken to have committed the crime of stealing it.
Your (attempted) rebuttal conflates two different concepts, and is inapt.
Why not crowd-fund Salby and his Russian student/assistant? And double their salaries, in the process. This may not work for his Russian assistant, as she was seeking a degree from an accredited university, but funding a credible offer for her, as well, would still be an impressive response to Macquarie’s insults.
Hockey Schtick says:
July 9, 2013 at 1:15 pm
If the residence time was increasing, the CO2 airborne fraction would not be decreasing
I was talking about the period 1960-current when everything doubled: emissions, increase/year in the atmosphere…
Observations show atmospheric 13C varies according to temperature, not man-made emissions.
On very short term (seasons), yes. Not on longer term, as the whole biosphere (land and seaplants, microbes, insects, animals) is a net producer of oxygen, thus a net absorber of CO2 and preferentially 12CO2, leaving relative more 13CO2 in the atmosphere. But we see a steady decline of the 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere and ocean surface… See:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
Thus Salby is wrong on this point.
But let’s leave this discussion for a another time. Now it is about Salby and the university…
Universities ought to be a broad church of differing opinion and discourse, otherwise they become stagnant pools of political correctness that no longer serve to expand human development and push back the boundaries of science and knowledge.
One thing is certain, weather and climate both go up and down. All the signs are there that cooling to at least 2020 and more likely 2030 are highly possible. Lacky University (it’s easier to spell), may have made a mistake of momentous proportions. They have traded long term respect for short term financial gain.
If, and more likely when, the climate moves into a colder spell, if they had Kept Salby they would have been in a stronger position, able to demonstrate that they held the high ground by encourage innovative thinkers to their University and that they were actively researching all aspects of climate, both the conventional wisdom of co2 and other viewpoints.
They have gambled by putting all their eggs into one basket, the belief that rising co2 means rising temperatures to dangerous levels. A risky strategy if temperatures fall as widely predicted and for which there are an increasing number of indications.
[snip – accusations of lying -mod]
TimC wrote in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/professor-critical-of-agw-theory-being-disenfranchised-exiled-from-academia-in-australia/#comment-1359581
The claim is that Salby had been deliberately wronged by the university, because of his “skeptic” views. Is it not?
Well, too bad for you in this case. Whatever you expect from me, I nevertheless wouldn’t just accept your claim to be true at face value. Why would I? Just because you make such a claim? I don’t know you and I don’t know anything about you.
Anthony Watts wrote in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/professor-critical-of-agw-theory-being-disenfranchised-exiled-from-academia-in-australia/#comment-1359341
If this is supposed to support your assertion that Carter and Salby had presented the matter correctly, then this is logically a non-sequitur.
If Carter and/or Salby have been administratively wronged by their universities they can go to court. If they are successful with that I will accept that. But I am not going to take their word at face value, when claim stands against claim.
I don’t know whether Salby is lying about his matters with the university. But I know that it is not true what you claim here and now, Mr. Watts. I have never said that I didn’t work at the GISS institute. Instead, what I said is that I am not employed by NASA, contradicting your repeated assertions about this matter. And I said that I work at GISS as a Columbia scientist based on a collaboration between NASA and Columbia. Everyone who can read should be able to see under the link you have posted here with what institution I am affiliated. Nothing has changed regarding this. My statements about this are still the same as back then.
REPLY:The Unversity is doing wagon circling, we’ve seen it all before. You’ve said in the past, that you don’t work for NASA GISS in NYC, with excuses that you aren’t a federal employee, but some sort of special circumstance employee in some specially funded relationship between Columbia and NASA, that has blurred lines to the outsider looking in.
To solve the issue, simply say “I am a Columbia employee working at NASA GISS in NYC” and the matter is settled. Anything else is just more pointless obfuscation.
Does the money Columbia pay you come from federal funding or state funding, or something else, and is it 100% Columbia or some mixture? Or, is it some NGO like Greenpeace that is funding you? Since so many AGW activists (like your former boss Hansen) claim that skeptics are in the pay of big oil, big coal etc, I think it is a germane question. – Anthony
This Salby incident seems to be the opposite of the old academic joke, “The reason academic arguments are so nasty is because the stakes are so low.” The stakes could hardly be higher if AGW is proven to all that it is totally false. Lots of heads should roll. I retired from academe in 2001 after 37 wonderfully enjoyable years of teaching geology. The politically correct BS just got so intolerable and so unscientific that I was lucky that my retirement could happen just as the crap got too deep.
Jan P
I care about what published science says, because this is the place where scientists present their evidence and open their hypotheses and theories to the scrutiny of other scientists.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So it must upset you greatly then that Phil Jones talked about working to get properly peer reviewed papers excluded, even if it meant changing the definition of peer review? It must bother you greatly then when the editor of Remote Sensing is forced to resign because he allowed a paper to be published despite it passing peer review and by his own assertion not having any problems with it? So you must be upset then about professors being denied promised resources and even their jobs to prevent their work from becoming part of the body of peer reviewed work?
Or are you only a supporter of peer review when it contains peer reviewed papers that agree with you?
For about the ninth time btw, you never answered my question from many threads ago as to what in Briffa’s paper could not be understood by someone with good math skills and entry level stats? Remember you refused to answer my question until I answered yours? Then when I answered yours you refused to answer mine?
You also never answered other tough questions I asked you. When asked the tough questions you either run away and hide, or whine about what is and isn’t in the peer reviewed literature. The fact is that you cannot or will not deal with the facts, and you are just fine with suppressing papers that disagree with your position from being published.
Ferdinand Englebeen set an excellent example in this thread, disputing the facts of Salby’s position without trying to silence it. If you actually believed what I quoted from you above, you would be doing the same.
“The CSIRO said the report was in breach of its publication guidelines, which restrict scientists from speaking out on public policy.”
Yet 10 days later I saw on TV half a dozen CSIRO suits entering parliament to brief MPs.
Per davidmhoffer above, I’m going to hold Mr. Perlwitz to answering those questions before he gets to comment further on other topics.
I bet all you blokes down under are regretting letting go of your guns, when was it, 1999? Wonder when things started to go down hill down under. Bet you’ll wouldn’t let that happen again if you could do it over.
Jan P Perlwitz says:
July 9, 2013 at 1:32 pm
“…anthropogenic sinks are negligible…”
There is your error. And, it is such a simple, stupid one. Natural sinks are not wholly natural. They increase in size due to increased forcing, whether that forcing is natural or anthropogenic. As a result, there is a portion of natural sink capacity which is maintained by anthropogenic inputs.
You cannot put these portions of the natural sinks into the “natural” column of the ledger, because they would go away if anthropogenic forcing were to cease. They are effectively artificial sinks.
If you do not understand this, you should not be engaged in the debate, because it means you are not able to understand complex systems.
Allencic says at July 9, 2013 at 2:27 pm
Sorry, moderator, I made my father’s mistake of poor html formatting.
Perlwitz says “Salby doesn’t have any answer where the carbon dioxide mass from human emissions goes. He basically claims something like 4+2=2.”
That is an absurd characterization of Salby’s lecture, which you obviously haven’t even watched. The tiny 4% contribution of man-made CO2 to total CO2 emissions is negligible with respect to the huge, dynamic natural sources and sinks. Also, as Bart pointed out above, your claim above that there are no significant anthropogenic CO2 sinks is a non sequitur.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/10/dr-murray-salby-on-model-world-vs-real-world/#comment-1334077
Perlwitz says “One could split the natural sources/sinks into two terms, or in even more terms for different sources and sinks. And one can study how those sources and sinks respond to short-term changes in various meteorological variables, or also to longer-term changes of climate. Then one would formally have more than one unknown term in the equation.”
Of course one has to split the sources and sinks into [at least] two terms. Anthropogenic sinks are a third unknown in the single equation. It is a dynamic system, not static. Human sources are insignificant in comparison to the natural flows. The uncertainties on both natural sources and sinks greatly exceed the tiny human contribution.
“And one can study how those sources and sinks respond to short-term changes in various meteorological variables”
Salby has clearly shown that the huge natural sources AND sinks respond to short-term changes in temperature, not man made emissions.
davidmhoffer wrote in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/professor-critical-of-agw-theory-being-disenfranchised-exiled-from-academia-in-australia/#comment-1359612
These are all rhetorical question that presume and contain assertions without evidence or proof of source.
No, I don’t remember that this was the case how you present it here. Please back up your claims with according links and proof of source.
Why should I have the burden to answer your question “what in Briffa’s paper could not be understood by someone with good math skills and entry level stats?” I do not recall to have claimed that this was the case. Without me having claimed such a thing your question presumes an assertion about me, which is a falsehood. It’s called a loaded question. I do not see any reason why I should have to answer your loaded question.
Since you do not back up your claims about me with anything, and the claims are unspecific, they are objectively not refutable by me. It’s a rhetoric trick by you.
So what? I am not Ferdinand Englebeen. He apparently has chosen to believe the claims by Salby about the university matter at face value, without knowing all the facts, or at least heard all sides in this case. This is his choice. I have made a different one. I do not believe anything that comes without the evidence that the assertions were true. And this is not in contradiction at all to what you quoted from me. It is exactly the same approach I take toward scientific questions. Nothing should be accepted to be true without evidence.
In line with comments by some others, and in view of the shellacking being dished out here to MacQuarie University, I suggest that Anthony should formally contact MU and invite them to defend themselves here. And that really is a serious suggestion, not a sarc.
@JanPPerlwitz, you said:
“Following this logic, if someone accused someone else of a crime, and I didn’t have any knowledge about prior untruthfulness of the accuser, I should believe the accusations to be true at face value, and I would be the one at fault, if I said the burden of proof for the accusations was on the accuser, and I didn’t believe anything before the accusations to be proven true.”
And yet you want to blindly follow computer models in the face of empirical data to the contrary? Hypocrisy much?
When criticising Salby’s statements about CO2 Jan P Perlwitz (July 9, 2013 at 6:02 am) accuses Salby of ignoring the consequences of the mass-conservation law of basic physics. He writes:
These “findings” could only be valid, if basic physical principles like mass conservation did not apply to carbon dioxide. Currently, about 32 Gt carbon dioxide are emitted by human activities every year. This would cause an increase in the atmospheric mixing ratio of carbon dioxide of about 4 ppm every year, if none of this carbon dioxide was removed from the atmosphere. However, the actual increase is about 2 ppm per year, currently. Since there are no substantial anthropogenic sinks of carbon dioxide, it follows from mass conservation and basic mathematical logic that Nature can’t be a net source in the carbon dioxide cycle of the planet under the present day conditions.
and he concludes with the questions:
Otherwise, if Nature was a net source for the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere, where did all the human carbon dioxide go then? Does carbon dioxide mass from human activities just mysteriously vanish?
No, Mr Perlwitz, it is not Murry Salby who is ignoring the mass-conservation law; it is you (and the multitude of your fellow warmists) who are ignoring Henry’s law that governs the dissolution of gases in liquids. This well-established law of physical chemistry determines a fixed partitioning ratio between the amount of CO2 gas that the earth’s oceans will absorb and the amount that will remain behind in the atmosphere at equilibrium.
The value of the partitioning ratio varies inversely with the water-temperature, ie. the warmer the water, the less it will absorb. At the current global mean ocean temperature of under 15°C the partitioning ratio is greater than 50:1. In other words, over 98% of all CO2 released into the atmosphere from whatever sources will ultimately be dissolved permanently in the oceans and less than 2% will be left behind in the atmosphere as a permanent addition to the resident CO2 greenhouse. Hence, Henry’s law deems that less than 2% of the approx. 4ppmv of CO2 that Perlwitz says is emitted annually by global industrial civilization will stay permanently in the atmosphere and the rest will go permanently into the oceans. Now 2% of 4ppmv is just 0.08ppmv. I do not see how any claim of a looming man-made global warming crisis can be justified rationally with that trivial annual greenhouse-increment of human-sourced CO2.
So to Perlwitz’s simple question ‘…if Nature was a net source for the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere, where did all the human carbon dioxide go then?’, we can answer with a high degree of confidence that effectively at least 98% of it has gone into the oceans, leaving less than 2% behind in the atmosphere. It follows too that the remaining 1.92ppmv of atmospheric CO2 required to make up the total annual increase of 2ppmv (assuming that this estimate is correct) must have come from natural sources, Perlwitz’s views notwithstanding.
The bottom line is that Henry’s law blows a massive hole in the alarmist AGW theory below the water-line. No wonder AGW-enthusiasts studiously avoid acknowledging it and are effectively in denial about it.