Jo Nova writes:
Murry Salby was sacked from Macquarie University, and Macquarie struggled to explain why, among other things, it was necessary to abandon, and strand him in Paris and hold a “misconduct” meeting in his absence. Since then he has been subject to attacks related to his previous employment. I’ve asked him to respond, which he has at length in a PDF (see below). The figures listed below refer to that PDF, which encompasses 15 years of events.
I don’t have the resources (unlike the National Science Foundation, the NSF) to investigate it all, but wanted to give Murry the right of reply.
On closer inspection the NSF report used by people to attack Salby does not appear to be the balanced, impartial analysis I would have expected. Indeed the hyperbolic language based on insubstantial evidence is disturbing to say the least. Because of the long detailed nature of this I cannot draw conclusions, except to say that any scientist who responds to a question about Murry Salby’s work with a reference to his employment is no scientist.
Remember the NSF report was supposedly an inhouse private document. It was marked “Confidential”, subject to the Privacy Act, with disclosure outside the NSF prohibited except through FOI. Desmog vaguely suggest there “must have been an FOI”, but there are no links to support that. In the end, a confidential, low standard, internal document with legalistic sounding words, may have been “leaked” to those in search of a character attack.
My summary of his reply:
See: http://joannenova.com.au/2013/08/murry-salby-responds-to-the-attacks-on-his-record/
The PDF:
If the facts support your case, argue the facts. If the facts support your opponent, argue the man. Salby is arguing the facts, Desmog is arguing the man.
I believe it was no less a figure than Abraham Lincoln that used this technique with great success. When faced with a case he could not win on the evidence he argued that the city slicker lawyer for the other side clearly didn’t know what he was talking about, because he couldn’t even figure out how to tie his collar.
(At the time collars were worn separate from the shirt, and it had become the fashion in the city to wear your collar back to front, while country folks still wore their collars front to front.)
Graham Readfearn, who “found” the NSF report, in the linked Desmog blog post, refers to Anth_ny W_tts as a “denialist”, along with a reporter. IMO the antiscientific IPCC denies reality, by asserting without evidence that humans are responsible for 90% of “climate change” over the past 50 years.
NSF investigation started with this as it’s primary reason:
From the PDF report:
“The investigation pursued numerous targets, finding little of substance. When one target proved fruitless, it adopted another. After years of searching, the best it could come up with was:
“…Acknowledged as the investigation’s most significant finding, the claim was, by its own admission, mere speculation. It was inconsistent with the physical evidence…””
Since we do not know what this ‘inconsistency’ is and I doubt they did either because after this letter the NSF used the bureaucracy in order to eliminate him. Not on the bases of the science presented.
“Because of the long detailed nature of this I cannot draw conclusions, except to say that any scientist who responds to a question about Murry Salby’s work with a reference to his employment is no scientist.”
A reasonable point – but the NSF report did not come to light with regard to Prof Salby’s claims about CO2 but in relation to his allegations regarding his termination of employment.
I’m willing to look at both sides and consider the possibility that perhaps Murray is a screwball.
But.
Macquarie University stranding him in Paris and holding a hearing they went out of their way to make sure he couldn’t attend speaks volumes about them. There are also many other points in support of Murray and few if any in support of Macquarie.
It looks very much like Macquarie University broke their commitments to Murray and then went out of their way to discredit their own professor when he did science they didn’t approve of.
*Murry a.k.a. Professor Salby
“Macquarie University stranding him in Paris and holding a hearing they went out of their way to make sure he couldn’t attend speaks volumes about them.”
Wait – According to both Prof Salby and the Uni they had not given approval for the trip and according to Prof Salby he had to fund the trip himself as a consequence. The university claims that Prof Salby bought the plane ticker using unapproved university funds and that claim fits with Prof Salby’s own account. So what we have is a university cancelling a plane ticket that had been improperly bought and Prof Salby abroad AGAINST THE ADVICE of the university. What should the university have done in such a circumstance? Personally I don’t think they should have cancelled the ticket but rather have recouped the money in a way that wouldn’t have left Prof Salby stranded. However it certainly isn’t as cut and dried as you describe it.
So, the CAGW-crowds’ hero-status goes to Jim Hansen who illegally and publically as a public employee not only received hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra pay and benefits and international travel from international agencies and gifts and “awards” DESPITE his illegal political statements and activities, but also that international acclaim and publicity came specifically BECAUSE of his political posturing.
but another man, NOT on the CAGW-crowds’ politically corrupt CAGW bandwagon, get stranded overseas wrongly and fired while stranded and without recourse because of …. what now? False claims and unsubstantiated “potential” problems while funding his own way to a conference?
Fair points, Nyq.
Desmogblog’s slanderous forays seem near comical in the context of James Hoggan’s public $ tough-slurping behavior. What a piece of work he is.
http://archive.citycaucus.com/2009/02/was-council-bypassed-for-60k-contract
“but another man, NOT on the CAGW-crowds’ politically corrupt CAGW bandwagon, get stranded overseas wrongly and fired while stranded and without recourse because of …. what now? False claims and unsubstantiated “potential” problems while funding his own way to a conference?”
If he had funded his own way to the conference then the university couldn’t have cancelled his plane ticket. There is basic issue of facts here. Also according to Prof Salby’s account the problems with Macquarie U started years before Prof Salby’s public comments about the behavior of CO2.
Jo Nova says it all.
Yet, I would add (being cynical) that if I wanted to take down a sceptical scientist in this manner – publically portraying him as weird- then I would make sure he had priors and would have some vulnerability.
They didn’t try it with Pat Michaels, for example.
But they did tinker with his career within academia.
Nyq Only says:
Personally I don’t think they should have cancelled the ticket but rather have recouped the money in a way that wouldn’t have left Prof Salby stranded. However it certainly isn’t as cut and dried as you describe it.
Agree wuth your first sentence. However, it is as ‘cut and dried’ as described by Mr Dollis. This was simply back room water-cooler politics. The feeders at the CAGW trough wanted to cause Prof Salby grief. Is there any doubt? The university’s explanations are a load of hogwash. They never even attempted to get Salby’s side of anything; they saw an opportunity to strand him at the airport and did. Then they saw an opportunity to decide his fate in their “investigation” — which they made sure he could not attend.
Maybe Salby isn’t a team player. Maybe he is even off his rocker. I don’t know. But you can be certain that if someone like Michael Mann or James Hansen was the issue, they never would have been stranded like that [in Mann’s case, he was even allowed to sit in and help formulate the questions he was going to be asked in one of his “investigations”!]
The whole thing stinks. Macquarie acted unethically, repeatedly, as did Colorado U]. If you want to defend their actions, I look forward to your rationale. Because given the facts presented by both sides, I think they done him wrong.
Nice to see the argument here is about whether Salby acted outside the financial controls of his research. What about his research itself regarding CO2, surely that’s the issue here.
One of the comments on JoNova’s site hits home:
That kind of retaliation has been happening in the U.S., as documented in Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion, and elsewhere.
We are witnessing a slide into intolerance. History repeats. Those defending the university’s actions should think long and hard about what they are defending.
The link to “Salsby’s work” on Jo Nova’s site is over two years old now.
Where’s the “imminent blockbuster” paper ??! Supposedly six weeks away from being published two years ago.
I’m very interested from what I saw of Salsby’s presentation in Hamburg recently but we need to see a paper not a lecture.
It does appear that there has been some very devious petty-politicking going on here, but the key issue is his work. Let’s see what he’s got.
Don’t forget Desmegblog was Peter Glieck’s “partner” in crime, collaborating in diffusing the fake Hearthland document.
How much cred can you give that site?
Murry Salby says ice CO2 records may be off by a couple of orders of magnitude for the really old samples. That’s a huge claim that needs backing up with some substantial arguments and quantitative evidence.
That was one part of his presentation that did not ring true to me. The rest of it “sounded” good but where is the much heralded paper?
It was reported at Jo Nova’s the is had “passed peer review” in 2011 …… where is it?
Murray Salby has attempted to revive an old controversy about the accurace of ice core data for atmospheric CO2 simply because his theories now require that. But Salby is making (and needs to make for the sake of his theories) some very radical claims about a ‘reverse smoothing’ mechanism in the topmost (firn) layer of ice pre-load compaction. Salby has not cited any prior literature in support of the (his estimated) extremes of the ‘effect’ nor has he presented any published literature of his own on this ‘effect’ nor has he presented any published literature of his own on his theories per se (despite them now being quite some years in gestation). And yet he is clearly a good scientist in some other areas?! What gives?
Quite frankly, I find the previous claims by Prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski regarding a much milder ice core CO2-altering effect far more scientifically sound and supported by known data than those of Salby. See for example:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
It is noted that Jaworowski’s work (and minority position) was strongly supported by the historic review of the now deceased Ernst-George Beck on the body of pre-IR, chemically derived atmospheric CO2 data. As a former analyticvl chemist and geochemist I suggest it ‘beggars the imagination’ that all the pre-IR (pre-Keeling/Mauna Loa) historic atmospheric CO2 data could have been so wrong as Callendar, Keeling etc. (and the whole AGW bandwagon) have required.
But the fact remains that there is no sound evidence whatsoever that Salby’s radical levels ofpost-depositional reverse smoothing of past peak CO2 levels have any credence.
Personally I find Salby’s stuff so extremely tendentious that it reaches even greater heights of imagination than the (latent and sensible heat transfer-free) fantasies of Ferenc Miskolczi. People in the sceptical camp who take up the baton on Salby’s behalf are ignoring the very same dictates of good science and sound logic that the thousands who ran amok with Misckolczi’s bizarre theory did. They do a great disservice to the sceptical community IMHO.
Here there is a long account now of how the NSF mistreated Salby. In fact the original investigation was actually by the Office of Inspector General (p 34). When Salby left UC, he sued the University, and the Governor of Colorado, for infringing on his civil rights; then he mounted a state suit against UC. But he didn’t legally challenge the OiG or NSF investigations leading to him being debarred from grant funding, which seem to be his primary problem.
Steve Short,
“…nor has he presented any published literature of his own on this ‘effect’ nor has he presented any published literature of his own on his theories per se (despite them now being quite some years in gestation). And yet he is clearly a good scientist in some other areas?! What gives?”
The history of science teaches us that when potentially new-ideas are put forward that question the status-quo [whether they are subsequently shown to be correct or not], they meet fierce resistance from the established scientific community. In an ideal world this is a good thing, since science requires a high level of proof before it abandons and established theory.
Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world, and so it is often the case that petty human spite and vindictiveness are used as the guiding principles in deciding whether or not these new ideas will appear in the peer-reviewed literature. Scientific history is replete with these pathetic attempts at gate-keeping.
If you are correct about Prof. Salby’s work then he will eventually put his ideas into the literature and they will be either fully/partially confirmed or rebuffed by the evidence.
The fact that the self-appointed gate-keepers of science are squealing like stuck-pigs about Prof. Salby’s work makes me feel that bulk of resistance he is experiencing is based upon the failings of human nature rather than genuine scientific concern.
Steve Short says:
August 11, 2013 at 5:03 pm
“…I suggest it ‘beggars the imagination’ that all the pre-IR (pre-Keeling/Mauna Loa) historic atmospheric CO2 data could have been so wrong as Callendar, Keeling etc. (and the whole AGW bandwagon) have required.”
Riggghhhtt. Because, as we all know, the history of Science is one smooth, unbroken progression of incremental modification of the consensus view.
In case it doesn’t come through, that statement is dripping with sarcasm. That is the whole problem with the appeals to the “consensus”. Even if it were true, it would only have weight if the consensus were usually correct. But, in fact, the “consensus” is usually hard over in the wrong direction prior to a paradigm shift.
BTW, Salby’s theory is almost trivially confirmed by readily available evidence. The rate of change of atmospheric CO2 concentration is proportional to temperature anomaly with respect to a particular baseline. No its, ands, or buts about it. Human inputs have little effect. It’s right there, right before our eyes. The only way to miss it is to have a heavy bias against recognizing what is placed right under one’s nose.
dbstealey says: August 11, 2013 at 1:26 pm
“This was simply back room water-cooler politics. The feeders at the CAGW trough wanted to cause Prof Salby grief. Is there any doubt?”
Is there any evidence? Prof Salby was suspended without pay in February, pending a misconduct hearing. That would entail cancelling his Uni credit card. Someone in the Finance dept would have had the job of dealing with any outstanding matters on the card. The ticket got cancelled.
“They never even attempted to get Salby’s side of anything;”
Prof Salby took off for Europe after he had been suspended, with misconduct hearing pending. That is a structured process with the union represented and ample opportunity for the subject to be heard and quiz people. He preferred to be in Europe. The committee is required to meet within fifteen days, so it’s hardly the case that being in Paris weeks later kept him away.
Nyq Only says:
August 11, 2013 at 12:22 pm
Personally I don’t think they should have cancelled the ticket but rather have recouped the money in a way that wouldn’t have left Prof Salby stranded.
What is even more obvious in regards to motivations is that the ticket was non-refundable and therefore Macquarie got nothing back, financially, for cancelling the ticket.
I agree with this. There simply was no good reason to hold the hearing in his absence. That stunk to high heaven.
If they felt really perturbed by the airline ticket, they could have cancelled it and rescheduled the hearing, and brought up the ticket at the hearing that Professor Salby then attended.
True that. To cancel a non-refundable ticket for zero financial gain, which also resulted (coincidentally? lol) in Prof. Salby being unable to attend the hearing.
Even if the university was within their rights, to cancel the ticket and hold the hearing on schedule makes them look bad. They should have either let him fly back (and attempted to recoup any proper expenses rather than cancel a non-refundable ticket) or rescheduled the hearing a little later.
This would have given the appearance of proper behaviour and would make the hearing result seem more credible. As it is, they look terrible – facts aside.
Bart I am not at all convinced that “Salby’s theory(s) (there are a number of them if you look closely) is/are almost trivially confirmed by readily available evidence.” Your logic and reference) is faulty, in that respect. At least part of Salby’s theory(s) is/are patenetly over the top when it boils down to ‘post-depositional CO2 level smoothing’ in ice. Where is the evidence for that?
But I am convinced there is indeed an unresolved discrepancy (putting aside the tribe-like tendency of a majority of little boys clubs to reach a consensus even if the consensus is not absolutely proven) between the reality of the CO2 in air bubbles in ice cores and the reality of CO2 in a contemporary atmosphere (trapped at the time). Murry Salby was only right about one thing – it is all about the firm layer. But he is a lot less right than Jaworowski who came well before. Jawarovski is a practiced hands on an core expert who speaks clumsy English. Salby is a moderately talented signal deconvoluter, not an experimentalist (see his published papers).
This paper reveals the rarely mentioned rot behind that consensus:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/siple.html
The key sentences are of course:
“The ice could be dated with an accuracy of approximately ±2 years to a depth of 144 m (which corresponds to the year 1834) by counting seasonal variations in electrical conductivity. ”
and
“On the basis of porosity measurements, investigators determined that the time lag between the mean age of the gas and the age of the ice was 95 years and that the duration of the close-off process was 22 years (Schwander and Stauffer 1984).”
Everything since has hinged on those subsequent (almost invariably never acknowledged) ‘fiddle factors’ called ‘time lag’ and (mean) ‘close off duration”. Yet another model.
What this really means is that we really only know the CO2 content of the atmosphere in (say) Victorian times to ±95 years – coincidentally well within the majority of the pre-1900 chemical determinations which (in all fairness) averaged about 335 ppmv around 1884 (then ‘consensus value’) – very close indeed to the 345 ppmv (‘new consensus’) value for 1984!
Those Bern Swiss; Friedl, Neftel, Oeschger et al have a lot to answer for IMHO. It is where this rotten new consensus first really took root. Thirty years later their fiddle-factored consensus has still not been put to a burden of absolute truth. Fact.
I have Murry Salby’s climate textbook published in early 2012. In it there is little corroboration of the IPCC’s assessment of alarming AGW from burning fossil fuels.
I recommend for all to access it. One (of several) observations is that he is very critical of the Bern Carbon Cycle Model.
Salby is very publicly in fundamental opposition to Australian and US climate science establishments. That alone calls forth very critical vigilance / due diligence on their version of their story about the instances of their treatment of him.
We saw CG1 & CG2 provide widespread evidence showing a significant number of establishment scientists thwarting scientists which opposed their own; that is thwarting skeptical climate science that was critical of the IPCC’s ideologically biased meme of alarming AGW from burning CO2.
When a situation arises where there is an internationally based establishment focussing pejoratives toward a single individual, it should be of concern to those who have had the experience of opposing establishment.
John
Thanks Bart. Good comments.
Steve – not so much.
Best, Allan
‘James Hoggan’s public $ tough-slurping behavior.” Correction: “trough-slurping”
If anyone were to doubt that the extraction of ALL CO2 from ice core i.e. of a sample truly representative of the total partail pressure in the atmosphere at time of ice depostion AND of its delta13C ratio is not quite the ‘open and shut case’ which has been presented to the general public by the ‘consensus crowd’ since the early 1980s, they need only read the following RECENT papers:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/97JC00159/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
http://epic.awi.de/25634/1/schmitt11amt.pdf
My apologies that Alex Wilson’s paper is behind a firewall (noting he is one of the grand old men of ice core CO2 work) but the Introduction to the 2nd paper by Schmitt et al more or less let all of the long well-concealed cats out of the bag.
Please note that, ironically, these methodological issues also profoundly effect the reliability of both the CO2 and the 13C data Murry Salby has relied on for his Fourier Transform analysis etc.
(not for the MacRaes of this world 😉
Obviously none of us kniow the full and true facts. It is usually the case that matters are not black and white, and neither side openly and accurately conveys the true and full position.
That said, I find it completely unacceptable for the University to hold a hearing in Prof. Salby’s absence. This is almost certainly against the rules of natural justice. It is almost certainly the case that whatever the cause behind Prof Salby’s absence (ie., whether it was justified or not), the correct and appropriate procedure would have been to postpone the hearing and re-schedule it for a date when Prof Salby could attend and/or was in some other way represented.
In Court cases, it is my understanding that hearings are rarely conducted in the absence of one of the parties, and usually there is an adjournment with cost consequences which may depend upon the reason for the absence. I would have thought that the reasoning behind such approach to be even more compelling in the case of disciplinary hearings which may lead to dismissal. It would surprise me greatly if the University can justify its position with respect to the hearing, but then as noted at the outset, perhaps the full facts and circumstances are not known.
Whilst it is obviously of great concern to Prof Salby personally, and whilst I can see the wider implication for scientists who do not tow the ‘party line’, my utmost concern is the science. I am predominantly interested in whether and to what extent (if any) there is validity in the scientific points (or some of them) raised by Prof Salby.
Attacks against the man carry no weight, and hopefully this episode will not silence Prof Salby and he will continue to explore and push the science that he considers to be correct and relevant. Hopefully, the debate on this science will continure unabated.
Bart says:
August 11, 2013 at 6:19 pm
///////////////////////////////
Bart
i have seen you raise this point a number of times together with your supporting plot. I have never seen Nick Stokes respond to your point and it would be interesting to read Nick Stokes’ comments on your point and the plotted data to which you refer (in your hyper link).
If Nick Stokes is still following this thread, perhaps he would kindly respond to it, but, of course, that may well depend upon whether he has a good counter argument.
Steve Short says:
August 11, 2013 at 7:05 pm
Simply said: let Ernst Beck and Jaworowsky rest in peace, together with their theories of historical measurements and ice cores .
I had some long year discussions with the late Ernst Beck about the historical measurements. Most should be discarded as taken in “CO2 heat islands” to compare with the interpretation of temperature readings. Taken midst of towns, forests, growing crops, etc. levels between 200 and 650 ppmv at the same place within hours…
Samples taken over the oceans were around the CO2 values of ice cores, confirmed decades later. See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html
As problematic is what the late Jaworowsky said: migration of CO2 from lower concentrations to higher ones, misinterpretation of the difference between the ice age and gas age of ice cores, etc… Most of his objections were already answered by Etheridge e.a. in 1992 by drilling three ice cores at Law Dome with different techniques (wet and dry) and carefully measuring CO2 levels in firn and ice, top down. Including an overlap of ~20 years with the direct measurements at the South Pole. See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html
The ice cores d13C is measured by sublimating all ice just under the melting point under vacuum and separating all gases cryogenically. That effectively destroys all clathrates which have been formed under pressure. See further:
http://courses.washington.edu/proxies/GHG.pdf for the CO2 distribution and the different techniques used and more in depth for the sublimation technique:
http://www.awi.de/de/forschung/fachbereiche/geowissenschaften/glaziologie/techniques/high_precision_d13c_and_co2_analysis/
Last but not least, Salby, Bart and others all interpretate the nice correlation between temperature and CO2 rate of change on short time variability as causing the whole increase over the past 160 years, or at least the past 50 years. But that is curve fitting, based on an completely arbitrary base line. One can make the same fit for every combination of temperature influence and human emissions. Thus one need to look at other observations to see what really happened. See for a comparison:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_T_dT_em_1960_2011.jpg
and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_T_dT_em_1900_2011.jpg
both are fitted to the least squares residue over the period 1960-2011
Then it becomes interesting: human emissions fit all observations, temperature doesn’t. Thus according to Salby and Bart, the observations must be wrong and Salby makes his own interpretation of the migration in ice cores to fit his theory… But there is no such migration: over 800 kyr the peaks and drops in CO2 exactly follow the peaks and drops in temperature (with some lag) at a ratio of ~8 ppmv/K. If there was any substantial migration, the peaks of CO2 would fade over each interglacial 100 kyr back in time…
Bart simply rejects all other observations and “shows” that the oceans are the main source, be it that he doesn’t include the negative feedback from a higher CO2 pressure in the atmosphere…
Where it goes wrong is that Salby and Bart think that the short term variation and the increase over the period 1850-current are caused by the same processes. But the short term reaction of (tropical) vegetation on temperature is by releasing more CO2, while the longer term reaction of (mid-latitude to polar) vegetation on temperature is more uptake. For short term reactions temperature is the main cause, while for the increase pressure related processes are at work…
richard verney says: August 12, 2013 at 1:54 am
“If Nick Stokes is still following this thread, perhaps he would kindly respond to it, “
I don’t know how well what Bart is saying relates to any Salby theory. The reason is that while two years ago we were told
“The up and coming paper with all the graphs will be released in about six weeks. It has passed peer review, and sounds like it has been a long time coming.”
there’s been nothing in writing – not even a blog post.
But Bart’s theory has a big gap. He shows the derivative of pCO2 against temperature, but with a fudge number, which aligns the graphs. That number includes the gradient of the steady rise of CO2, and corresponds to what sensible people see as the natural consequence of burning nearly 10 Gtons of carbon a year. That just disappears from the graph..
But that aside, if you look at the graph, it does track the El Nino peaks quite well. That’s not surprising – no one disputes that seas will outgas some CO2 when they warm. Otherwise, tracking isn’t great. Since 1980 the CO2 rate dips quite frequently with little corresponding temperature movement. Before then, it’s temperature that makes unrequited dips.
Ferdinand,
Given that everything you say is true, what is your opinion on Macquaie U deliberately stranding Salby at he airport, and denying him the opportunity to defend himseelf at a hearing?
“Given that everything you say is true, what is your opinion on Macquaie U deliberately stranding Salby at he airport, and denying him the opportunity to defend himseelf at a hearing?”
The uni had asked Prof Salby not to travel and hadn’t approved his travel. What do you think the university should have done. What would YOU do if an employee of yours bought a plane ticket without approval?
“Even if the university was within their rights, to cancel the ticket and hold the hearing on schedule makes them look bad. They should have either let him fly back (and attempted to recoup any proper expenses rather than cancel a non-refundable ticket) or rescheduled the hearing a little later.
This would have given the appearance of proper behaviour and would make the hearing result seem more credible. As it is, they look terrible – facts aside.”
I agree – just in this thread alone people keep returning to the stranded-at-the-airport story even though in Salby’s own account it was actually one of his weakest points. It is easy to see how the stranding occurred but it was a PR error on the uni’s part.
“Yet, I would add (being cynical) that if I wanted to take down a sceptical scientist in this manner – publically portraying him as weird- then I would make sure he had priors and would have some vulnerability.”
The problem with most of these plots-against-salby theories is they tend to mismatch with the sequence of events. In this case please remember that it was Prof Salby who publicized his dispute with Macquirie Uni and it was only after his public complaint (via this blog and others) that a prior dispute with his previous employer was publicized. Notably the NSF report did not appear on warmist sites in response to Prof Salby’s Sydney Institute lecture.
Greg Goodman says:
“It does appear that there has been some very devious petty-politicking going on here, but the key issue is his work. Let’s see what he’s got.”
Greg, you are on point, and the entire issue here is the university’s actions. They were not aboveboard, and they had nothing to do with Salby’s science. This was politics, nothing more or less.
And regarding this:
“…there is a long account now of how the NSF mistreated Salby. In fact the original investigation was actually by the Office of Inspector General (p 34). When Salby left UC, he sued the University, and the Governor of Colorado, for infringing on his civil rights; then he mounted a state suit against UC…”
Dr Salby prevailed in all of his actions, according to Jo Nova. When someone forces an institution and state bureaucrats to back down, there are hurt feelings, and some folks don’t forget. These vindictive attacks seem to have hounded Salby all the way to Australia. What else would explain what is going on here?
I’m not defending or attacking Salby’s science. But it appears obvious that some un-named people are using the weight of the university to cause him personal grief. That seems reprehensible to me. His scientific facts should stand or fall on their own, without being hobbled by the university’s unethical actions.
Nyq Only says:
“What would YOU do if an employee of yours bought a plane ticket without approval?”
Please. You make it too easy.
After reading the ENTIRE report from the NSF (using the Desmog link) yesterday, a couple self-contradictions jumped out at me. Some were related to Salby’s response and some were not. I won’t address Salby’s explanations in his response, only what was included in the NSF report itself. Equally troubling was the fact that all the supporting evidence mentioned in the report was not included. The only facts and figures were the NSF summary interpretations.
The main contradictions that bothered me were:
1. A footnote at the start of the report mentions the “duplicate” application with another agency was not funded. Yet later in the report it states Salby broke the rules by not disclosing the “pending” application. If the first application was already denied, then it wasn’t pending and didn’t need to be disclosed.
2. Much of the report focuses on the issue of the Company 2 as a subcontractor. But the NSF report goes back and forth concerning Company 2 being just Salby or being another actual company doing work. When they want to dismiss all but the first $25,000 as being overcharges, NSF assumes that the “indirect” charges limit should be applied because the subcontractor was doing all the work. But when they want to characterize the subcontract as a sham to funnel money clandestinely to Salby, they say that Salby was the only employee. They switch again when Salby points out that Company 2 is a personal corporation that all his financial dealings go through, it suddenly has other employees also. Similarly, when discussing the ability to do the work the NSF says it’s financial so would be no good at doing scientific work. Yet is Company 2 is Salby then he as the Principal Investigator is obviously capable of doing the work.
3. There was also a major Catch-22 going on. They contacted Salby in Australia to provide supporting evidence of the documented hours. Yet when he is able to provide it, they assume it’s fake because he is in Australia. So either way, they had already decided there was no evidence that would be accepted.
4. Another aspect of the “indirect” limitation application. To justify the “overcharging” by imposing the indirect limitation, they discuss all the additional company related expenses that a subcontractor would not be entitled to. Yet when suggesting Salby is a tax cheat to boot, they point out that not all the money paid to Company 2 shows up on Salby’s taxes. This too comes from the Just Salby/Real Company flip flopping throughout the report.
5. Although not an explicit contradiction, there is one damning point that is implied but never actually stated. This suggest that the actual fact would contradict the implied fact. Throughout the report, much hay is made of need to report staffing and assigned duty changes because of how they will affect the financial cost and timely outcome of the grant. The strong implication is that Salby made these changes to enrich himself and allowed the research to suffer. However, nowhere in the report does it state that the research was late, over budget, or of substandard quality.
Actually Steve, I don’t mind your post of 7:05 pm – not sure how I missed it with my 9:22pm – maybe it was not visible yet. My apologies.
To be clear, I am increasingly convinced that since atmospheric dCO2/dt changes almost contemporaneously with temperature, and CO2 lags atmospheric temperature by about 9 months, this is compelling evidence that CO2 drives temperature – not the reverse as the popular consensus falsely dictates. Bart wrote this point on August 11, 2013 at 6:19 pm.
BTW, this is not originally Salby’s theory – I published it in January 2008 on icecap.us, and others had published parts of it before me (the new part was the dCO2/dt vs. T relationship).
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
The argument from the consensus crowd is that the above CO2-after-temperature lag is a “feedback mechanism” is utterly specious, imo.
But if temperature primarily drives atmospheric CO2, not the reverse, why has atmospheric CO2 continued to increase even as there has been no significant warming of average atmospheric temperatures for the past ~10-20 years?
I think it is safe to say that we really do not have a good understanding of atmospheric CO2 concentrations pre-1958. There are many valid questions about absolute accuracy of the ice-core record. The late Ernst Beck raised some good questions based on chemical analyses, but was unfortunately shouted down by the consensus crowd. Beck, Salby and others make counter-arguments that may or may not prove true. Richard Courtney and Ferdinand Engelbeen have ably debated the “mass balance argument” in these pages and elsewhere.
In the end, we just do not know enough about atmospheric CO2 concentrations pre-1958. I suggest that if, as we predicted in 2002, atmospheric temperatures will soon cool, then we will reach a better fundamental understanding of the relationship between CO2 and temperature.
In the meantime, it is reasonable to conclude that:
1. Climate sensitivity to CO2 is near-zero and increasing CO2 concentrations are inconsequential to atmospheric temperature. The alleged global warming crisis does not exist.
2. Grid-connected “green energy” schemes like wind and solar power are currently inefficient, ineffective, and a waste of scarce global resources.
BTW, we confidently published both these conclusions in 2002.
Finally, I suggest that in science, one of the only true tests is one’s predictive record, and the CAGW crowd has none.
Regards, Allan
dbstealey says:
August 12, 2013 at 2:54 am
Given that everything you say is true, what is your opinion on Macquaie U deliberately stranding Salby at he airport, and denying him the opportunity to defend himseelf at a hearing?
Whatever the dispute over the science, that is no reason to fire someone, only reason to discuss things out. Seems that everything escalated since day one. I can’t and won’t interprete what happened as one need to know more details from both sides, but at least the hearing should have been with Salby present in person…
Nyq Only says: @ August 12, 2013 at 3:05 am
….The uni had asked Prof Salby not to travel and hadn’t approved his travel. What do you think the university should have done. What would YOU do if an employee of yours bought a plane ticket without approval?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It depends.
He was giving a presentation. This means he had probably made COMMITMENTS long before the brohaha blew-up AND the plane reservation was also made long before there was any mention of the hearing. Many of these conferences and such are often set-up a year or more in advance. The speakers have to be book well in advance so the brochures advertising the event can be printed up and sent to the potential audience months before the event. I do kids entertainment and we get booked six months to a year in advance so I would guess that Prof Salby received the invitation to speak with at least that much lead time.
Remember hotel accommodations and convention centers have to be set-up and this is often done years in advance.
Why should he not honor his commitment, honor his word? Canceling at the last minute would be a grave disservice to the conference. Besides, the University doesn’t OWN him.
If the University did not wish him to go WHY DID THEY WAIT UNTIL HE WAS IN THE EU to cancel the ticket, especially since it was non-refundable? That is what stinks of petty vengeance.
Nyq Only says: Nyq Only says:
August 11, 2013 at 12:22 pm
(,…) So what we have is a university cancelling a plane ticket that had been improperly bought and Prof Salby abroad AGAINST THE ADVICE of the university. What should the university have done in such a circumstance? Personally I don’t think they should have cancelled the ticket but rather have recouped the money in a way that wouldn’t have left Prof Salby stranded. However it certainly isn’t as cut and dried as you describe it.
August 11, 2013 at 12:22 pm
Hold on. Maquarie University later said that they “cancelled his ticket in error”.
Furthermore, the ticket was non-refundable so they did not recoup the money in any case.
Perhaps being Monday morning, I am just in a pedantic mood. But to give you (and Patty over at Jo Nova) the answer is YES. There is evidence. Salby provided it.
Perhaps you meant to ask is there “credible” evidence. That is open for debate.
If you look at Prof Salby and Dr Jaworowski from the point of view of politics there are interesting parallels.
In both instances politics and not science is used to take down the man. This makes you wonder just how dangerous the line of research they were pursuing is to the CAGW religion.
I would hazard a guess, VERY DANGEROUS. “…. the research would be “immoral” if it served to undermine the foundations of climate research….”
dbstealey says: August 12, 2013 at 2:54 am
” Macquaie U deliberately stranding Salby at he airport, and denying him the opportunity to defend himseelf at a hearing?”
If you’re going to keep on with this, you should find out the timing. Salby says he was suspended without pay for misconduct in February. That requires that a committee meets within fifteen days. Salby himself says:
“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.”
And clearly, Salby was informed. But he went to Europe anyway. His first date there seems to have been EGU, April 8th. The committee would have been going for weeks at that stage. It may well have finished. How do you get that Salby was rendered unable to defend himself by lack of an air ticket at end April?
“Dr Salby prevailed in all of his actions, according to Jo Nova.”
No, he abandoned both court actions.
Gail Combs says: August 12, 2013 at 4:26 am
“He was giving a presentation. This means he had probably made COMMITMENTS long before the brohaha blew-up AND the plane reservation was also made long before there was any mention of the hearing.”
No, he says he applied for permission and the University refused. They are, or were, paying his salary. They also refused to fund the air ticket.
Allan MacRae says:
“…I am increasingly convinced that since atmospheric dCO2/dt changes almost contemporaneously with temperature, and CO2 lags atmospheric temperature by about 9 months, this is compelling evidence that CO2 drives temperature – not the reverse as the popular consensus falsely dictates.”
Then how do you explain this? It is clear that ∆T is the cause of ∆CO2.
==========================================
Nick Stokes,
I suggest you read Jo Nova’s summary. If you’ve read it, read it again. Among other things, it reports: By 2003 it reached the stage where the NSF launched a criminal investigation into Colorado University for misappropriation of research funds. The investigation stopped when $100,000 was returned to Salby’s group. Sounds like a win to me. But then it’s clear your mind is made up. So maybe re-reading the summary would be a waste of your time.
Nick Stokes:
You reply to dbstealey and Gail Combs at August 12, 2013 at 5:25 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1387541
In reply to dbstealey having said
you say
Firstly, there is a misunderstanding (or deliberate misrepresentation) in what you have written.
It is clear that when Salby writes that, “Macquarie was well informed of the circumstances. It was more than informed”, then the “circumstances” he mentions are his absence and the reason for it. He was NOT referring to his informing the Hearing about the matters it was to investigate.
Importantly, Salby was attending a Speaking engagement that could only have been arranged months in advance. As Gail Combs says: August 12, 2013 at 4:26 am
Your reply to that says
Frankly, that is ridiculous. The commitment would have been long before the disciplinary matter arose. Either they agreed to it then, or they were malign by refusing it then (attendance to speak at such conferences is normal for an academic in his position), or they were malign when they withdrew the permission. The only way their refusal could not have been malign was if Salby had recently attended many similar conferences, and I can find no evidence that he had.
And you make presumptions; viz.
“The committee would have been going for weeks at that stage. It may well have finished.”
Your suppositions are noted but I observe that Macquariehas made no statement which supports them, and it is strange that Macquarie has made no such statement if your suppositions are true. Frankly, your suppositions are not credible in the absence of such a statement.
So, Salby had an existing commitment to attend the conference. And insistence on holding the Hearing prior to his return could only be malign: either Salby is discredited by failing to fulfil the commitment together with a public statement at the Conference of his reason (i.e. attending a Disciplinary Hearing), or Salby is prevented from defending himself at the Hearing.
dbstealey wrote
And you have replied in total saying
Really?
Dbstealey and Jo Nova make no reference to “court actions”.
Jo Nova refers to his defence against the NSF accusations in which it seems he was successful. She provides this link to his account of that
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/guest/salby-murry/re_nsf_r.pdf
Indeed, if the NSF had found that Salby was guilty of false accounting and improper tax returns then there would have been “court actions” AGAINST HIM. Are you claiming there were such “court actions” but they were withdrawn? If so, then he could not have “abandoned” them.
Richard
Thanks Allan for your kind response. I agree with what you say.
I’ll say this about Ferdinand Engelbeen’s amateurish and nasty attacks on the dead Beck and Jawarowski and the whole body of pre-1983 chemical (Pettenkoffer etc) CO2 measurements going right back to the 1850s.
Abstract
Criteria minimizing differences in operators, location, and time of observation are established for selecting comparative data on atmospheric CO2 concentration during the past 100 years. The resulting selection showed in all cases the period 1907–1956 to have a higher mean than 1857–1906. The difference between means was not statistically significant for 5 unweighted comparisons. Weighting by estimates of reliability resulted in a significant difference for yearly and summer non-urban values, but not for the other 3 comparisons. Additional comparisons of all values in the study, of six entire distributions, and of five paired studies with closely comparable data showed increases in a more recent period, with one exception. The magnitude of the increase for weighted yearly non-urban data was 25 ppm (from 294 to 319) for the quarters 1857–1881 to 1932–1956. Several possible explanations for the increase include: 1) an actual atmospheric increase, 2) a coincidence of the influence of micro-atmospheres, 3) improvement (or change) in chemical technique. Need for further sampling is emphasized and suggestions made for considering local influences in this sampling.
Published my good friend and excellent scientist Roger Bray in Tellus, 1959.
The assertion that the old 1992 David Etheridge et al paper discredited all Jawarowski’s criticisms is also nonsense when it contained a 10 year hiatus (fall even) in CO2 between 1935 and 1945 subsequently found to be methodological is simply laughable.
Engelbeen’s comments show no real understanding of the nature of the CO2 and 13C data produced from the sublimation method between just after Alex Wilson seminal paper of 1997 and the final perfection of the method around around 2010, some 13 years later.
Steve Short:
I write to thank you for your defense at August 12, 2013 at 6:40 am of my late good friend (Jawarowski) and late associate (Beck).
They are far, far to maligned on the web. Both did excellent scientific work.
Richard
I think in the end the entire stranding him at the airport thing is going to bite them in the butt. That kind of childish antics are rather uncalled for and obviously its grounds to prove that they had malicious thought and actually attempted to railroad him without using the proper channels. If you think about it, they fired him when he was out of the country. Someone had to time it like that and they had to realize that he was using the University Credit Card. The simple fact that they left him stranded goes to motivation. If they were going to fire him, you normally fire someone not through distance but through sitting down and talking to them. That is what grown-ups do. And yes, you often use security so that they can take their personal belongings out of their office, but you never simply fire them from afar. That is childish to the extreme.
This speaks volumes about the university. They fired him while he was out of the country. Its a remote possible they had no idea that he couldn’t get home, but in their attempt to be subtle and clever they end up looking childish, arrogant and of course rude. I guess they thought they could be more clever than most employers and fire the guy without even telling him so. A cancelled university credit card and a call home would have done the trick with the person informing them being some low-level bureaucrat who has no idea what is going on. Childish really. And I bet the person who did the firing STILL believes they are clever to do it like that. Its a power trip more likely than not with some over-promoted incompetent basically making sure the unversity gets a nice lawsuit out of the deal. All because they refused to follow proper ettiquete. Most times, lawsuits can be avoided if you simply stay civil to someone you are firing and treat them with respect.
The Australian university that sacked Salby while he was traveling on their own university business was shameful and wrong on its face. I’m not a fan of the Australian university system in general, as they appear to promote CAGW almost blindly, and have produced leading lights like Gergis and Karoly’s Southern Hemisphere Hockey Sticks, and are responsible for Lewandowsky’s crap.
I’m generally inclined to give Prof. Salby every benefit of doubt. But the back story of conflicts over his work at Colorado University is too obtuse and convoluted to interest me. Salby should make a brief summary (abstract, timeline) of those events, before jumping into the deep minutia, as he has done in his PDF. Brevity… soul of wit… major editing or rewrite needed…
Allan MacRae says:
August 12, 2013 at 3:48 am
But if temperature primarily drives atmospheric CO2, not the reverse, why has atmospheric CO2 continued to increase even as there has been no significant warming of average atmospheric temperatures for the past ~10-20 years?
Allan,
I think the point is that d(CO2)/dt is proportional to temperature.
This means that CO2 levels are proportional to the integral of temperature.
I think you will find that even tough the instantaneous temperature has recently flattened out, the integral of the atmospheric temperature with time is still rising. Hence, you would expect CO2 levels to still be going increasing.
Steve Short says:
August 12, 2013 at 6:40 am
////////////////////////////////////////
I have never fully understood the reasoning for disregarding the old chemical CO2 measurements.
I have on a number of occassions suggested that before the results of those experiments be disregarded, they should today be replicated (ie., same equipment, same methodolgy, same geographical location, same season/time of year/time of day sampling etc) and see what results would be achieved today using that approach to the assessment of CO2 levels.
In my opinion, it would be interesting to compare results achieved today with the results which were achieved when those experiments were conducted all those year back, and to see whether there is some relationship with today’s levels of CO2 measured at ML etc., for example, are the results now achieved greater in some proportionate manner to which CO2 levels have increased in the latter part of the 20th century?
As I posted on Jo’ site, where is the contract between Salby and MQ? That alone will move this whole issue away from all this emotional theater and name calling into factual reality. I’ve wondered this from the first time I read about Prof Salby’s quandry.
Davet916
Steve Short says:….
Dr Short, Thank you for the defense of Beck and Dr Jawarowski. If there is any true justice in the world both will go down in history as heroes.
As an industrial chemist I find the assumption that “CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere” completely laughable but Engelbeen continues to cling to this very important assumption for CAGW like a ship wreck survivor clings to a floating plank.
Without that assumption the whole edifice of CAGW crumbles because Callendar’s cherry picking of historic atmospheric CO2 analysis loses all credibility. As does all the present Mauna Loa data because of the “data selection criteria”
In otherwords they use the “CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere” assumption as the reason for cherry picking the results they want.
Before data selection: graph
After data selection graph
@Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 12, 2013 at 2:11 am
//////////////////////////
There may well be merit in much you say, although to some extent it suggests that CO2 is not a well mixed gas.
It may well be the case that the results from the old chemical method experiments were polluted and distorted by the local factors that you raise. However, if that be the case, if those experiments were today replicated (see my post of 08:17am) the results achieved today would be similarly polluted/distorted save that on top of that pollution/distortion we should see overlaid, the signal from the increase in CO2 levels that took place post mid 20th century.
Of course, I accept that the local environmental conditions may not be exactly the same as they were in the past (eg., there may have been intervening land change, development, de-forestation, agricultural changes etc) and some further interpretation to take account of such changes may be necessary. But that said, before I would dismiss those old result out of hand, I would like to know what results would be achieved today, if those experiments were replicated as best possible.
Personally, I am surprised that papers dealing with those old results and dismissing them as not being representative did not attempt to replicate those experiments since that would certainly strengthen the position taken by the authors of the paper(s).
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 12, 2013 at 2:11 am
“One can make the same fit for every combination of temperature influence and human emissions.”
That is completely untrue. The human emissions have been increasing in rate over the time interval. There is no significant room for such a term to be added in. The temperature relationship already accounts for the acceleration in atmospheric CO2.
“Then it becomes interesting: human emissions fit all observations, temperature doesn’t.”
Temperature does. It’s right here. As far as the relationship to proxy data before 1958, Salby has explained how it is manifested.
“For short term reactions temperature is the main cause, while for the increase pressure related processes are at work…”
It is impossible for nature to work in this fashion.
Nick Stokes says:
August 12, 2013 at 2:45 am
“He shows the derivative of pCO2 against temperature, but with a fudge number, which aligns the graphs.”
The only arbitrary value in the model is the constant offset which defines the baseline temperature with respect to which the temperature anomaly is measured. So, you would be correct that I had a gap IF the rate of human emissions had been constant. But, the rate of human inputs (top plot) has most definitely and decidely NOT been constant.
Any influence of the trend in human emissions is already accounted for by the temperature relationship. Ergo, human emissions can have little effect.
Allan MacRae says:
August 12, 2013 at 3:48 am
“BTW, this is not originally Salby’s theory…”
What Salby has done is answered Ferdinand’s complaint above about how the relationship extends into the proxy record.
TO ALL:
Discussions of Salby’s alleged behavioral deficiencies have no place in a discussion about the science. Those of you pushing this angle clearly have an ulterior motive.
Gail Combs says:
August 12, 2013 at 8:39 am
Gail, this is the second time that I see that you are dishonest: the two graphs that “prove” that the CO2 data are “selected” are from different stations, as the title above the graph clearly shows. One station is Neuglobsow, near Berlin midst a forest, thus completely unsuitable as “background” station. The other data are from Mace Head, coastal Ireland, which gives nice background data without any “selection”.
If you want to show the “manipulation” of the data, then plot the same data before and after selection and show what difference that gives in average, trend and variability.
richard verney says:
August 12, 2013 at 8:47 am
although to some extent it suggests that CO2 is not a well mixed gas.
In 95% of the atmosphere, CO2 is quite rapidely mixed. That is everywhere over the oceans and above a few hundred meters over land. Only in the first few hundred meters over land, fast sources and sinks can mess up things, especially under low wind conditions and inversion.
There is no need to revive the old instruments. The accuracy of most was around 3%, or +/- 10 ppmv. But one can use modern instruments to measure CO2 variability at the same spots as the historical measurements. Fortunately we have a few such places already in use.
Beck’s compilation shows a “peak” of about 80 ppmv around 1942. Besides the fact that that implies a change in CO2 release and uptake in the order of 1/3rd of all carbon contained in land vegetation, such a “peak” doesn’t show up in any other proxy (including stomata data and coralline sponges) or ice cores of high resolution (less than a decade).
When I searched all the papers that the late Ernst Beck used for that period, I saw that the “peak” was mainly caused by two long series: Poonah, India and Giessen, Germany. The former measured CO2 below, inbetween and above growing crops and only few were ambient. Not the slightest correlation with CO2 in the rest of the atmosphere. Giessen (a small village, semi-rural) is more interesting, as there is a modern station, not far from the historical site. Here a few days of measurements in summer with nightly inversion conditions, compared to actual “background” stations data:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/giessen_background.jpg
Most of the historical measurements were taken three times a day, where two were at the flanks of the largest change of morning and evening. So even with the best equipment of the world, such data are worthless for knowing the CO2 levels in the bulk of the atmosphere of that time…
Even today quite problematic, as the monthly averages show more or less the same trend as the Mauna Loa trend, but some of the averages are skyhigh:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/giessen_mlo_monthly.jpg
Bart says:
August 12, 2013 at 11:12 am
That is completely untrue. The human emissions have been increasing in rate over the time interval. There is no significant room for such a term to be added in. The temperature relationship already accounts for the acceleration in atmospheric CO2.
The human emissions do fit the increase over time over the full period 1960-2011, even slightly better than your fit and certainly before 1960. There is no room for temperature in the accelleration of atmospheric CO2.
Main point: different processes at work, as vegetation reacts in opposite ways to short and longer time temperature changes.
BTW, I have changed the plot from direct effect from human emissions to the effect of the total CO2 above equilibrium. That makes that the small variations in year by year increasing human emissions have little effect on the decay speed.
Temperature does. It’s right here. As far as the relationship to proxy data before 1958, Salby has explained how it is manifested.
That is the only thing temperature fits, thanks to an arbitrary baseline. All other observations don’t fit the theory. Salby’s backcalculation of diffusion in firn and ice cores is pure theoretical to fit his hypothesis, but has no bearing in any known or observed migration.
It is impossible for nature to work in this fashion.
As in nature so many different, even opposite processes are simultaneously at work, I shouldn’t bet that nature doesn’t hold a lot of such suprises…
“Discussions of Salby’s alleged behavioral deficiencies have no place in a discussion about the science. Those of you pushing this angle clearly have an ulterior motive.”
It was Prof Salby who brought up the issue of his sacking and made it into a public issue. Are you saying HE had an ulterior motive or that HE was the one wanting to distract from the science?
FerdiEgb says:
August 12, 2013 at 12:27 pm
“The human emissions do fit the increase over time over the full period 1960-2011, even slightly better than your fit and certainly before 1960.”
No. They don’t. They cannot account for both the short and the long term like the temperature can.
“As in nature so many different, even opposite processes are simultaneously at work, I shouldn’t bet that nature doesn’t hold a lot of such suprises…”
Not this one. It is impossible to perform causal filtering in a natural system with no phase delay or distortion. You are inserting epicycles where none are needed. The temperature relationship explains all of it.
Nyq Only says:
August 12, 2013 at 12:39 pm
“Are you saying HE had an ulterior motive or that HE was the one wanting to distract from the science?”
No, I am saying YOU do and are.
Steve Short says:
August 12, 2013 at 6:40 am
I’ll say this about Ferdinand Engelbeen’s amateurish and nasty attacks on the dead Beck and Jawarowski and the whole body of pre-1983 chemical (Pettenkoffer etc) CO2 measurements going right back to the 1850s.
Steve, in general I had friendly discussions with Ernst Beck during several years, including a personal discussion at the home of Arthur Rörsch in Leiden, The Netherlands.
I had not the slightest problem with Ernst as person, admired the tremendous amount of work he has done to recover all the old data, but I have a lot of objections against his compilation.
The main problem I had is that he lumped everything together: the good, the bad and the ugly data, without much quality control.
E.g. the data of Barrow, quite interesting as that is currently a “baseline” station for global CO2 data. Unfortunately the micro-Schollander equipment was accurate to +/- 150 ppmv, as the equipment was intended to measure CO2 in exhaled air. It was calibrated against outside air. If the values read were between 200-500 ppmv, the equipment was ready to use. The calibration figures were used by Beck in his compilation.
Something similar happened with the seawater data of Wattenberg: Beck interpretated the data of 0 meter depth in the tables as being from the atmosphere, while these were from seawater at the surface.
About Jaworosky, I never met him, but had some personal correspondence with him. It seems that he was a very nice person. Of course no problem with that, but problems with his science.
I had asked him why he persisted that there was an arbitrary shift in the ice core data to match the Mauna Loa data, while he obviously had used the wrong column in the table by Neftel (the ice age instead of the average gas age). He responded that there was no difference between gas age and ice age, as all ice was immediately sealed by remelt layers (there was mention of only one remelt layer at near closing depth in Neftel’s work).
But what closed the door for me was his story that because of cracks in the ice, due to drilling, transport and storage, the levels of CO2 in the ice cores would go down, while the ambient air was 100-200 ppmv higher than what is measured in the bubbles.
If anyone can explain to me how CO2 can migrate from 180 ppmv within an ice core to 370 ppmv in ambient air, I may change my opinion.
Bart says:
August 12, 2013 at 12:42 pm
No. They don’t. They cannot account for both the short and the long term like the temperature can.
Temperature is responsible for the short term CO2 rate of change variability, the emissions (via the increase in the atmosphere) are responsible for the longer term change. No need for curve fitting via an arbitrary baseline.
Not this one. It is impossible to perform causal filtering in a natural system with no phase delay or distortion. You are inserting epicycles where none are needed. The temperature relationship explains all of it.
There is no filtering at work in either case. There is a similar CO2 response to short term temperature changes for a permanent or temporary difference in temperature.
FerdiEgb says:
August 12, 2013 at 1:29 pm
“No need for curve fitting via an arbitrary baseline.”
Of course there is. You have an offset yourself in the beginning CO2 concentration. That offset has been assumed based on a model for the capture of CO2 in the ice. A model which, BTW, Salby has shown to be erroneous.
“There is no filtering at work in either case.”
Any process which removes the long term leaving the short term is a filtering process.
“There is a similar CO2 response to short term temperature changes for a permanent or temporary difference in temperature.”
In that case, you have contradicted yourself. Because your previous claim very specifically states that the processes which induce short term changes in CO2 from temperature are attenuated over the longer term.
The bottom line:
A) the temperature relationship holds across all frequencies – the rate of change of CO2 with temperature matches in phase in both the long term trend and in the short term variation. That’s all you need to fit it the whole thing.
B) For your idea to work, there has to be high pass filtering of the temperature related processes, and blending with low pass filtered human inputs. It is, in the first place, absurd that the one would be high passed and the other low passed – the same processes are operating on both. In the second place, high pass filters in the natural world always induce phase distortion at the crossover frequency. There is no observable phase distortion anywhere in the record. The rate of change of CO2 is always coincident with the temperature for every trend or bobble in the record.
So, what you are arguing for is something very exotic and unnatural. That just doesn’t happen in the real world. Occam’s Razor comes down very hard on the simplest explanation which fits the data: atmospheric CO2 is the result of a temperature dependent process which is pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, and that process is effectively independent of human activity.
Bart says:
“Occam’s Razor comes down very hard on the simplest explanation which fits the data: “
Yes it does. The extra CO2 is there because we put it there.
Nyq Only says:
“Are you saying HE had an ulterior motive or that HE was the one wanting to distract from the science?”
I think the issue was raised after his sacking. What was he supposed to do? Turn the other cheek? Would you?
=================================
Nick Stokes says:
“The extra CO2 is there because we put it there.”
We agree on that. Humans have added CO2 to the atmosphere. I also agree with Bart that ocean outgassing causes a rise in CO2. There is solid empirical evidence showing that to be an observed fact over many years.
Now would you also agree that the added CO2 has been harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere? Because that is what the evidence [and the lack of any evidence of global harm from CO2] shows.
Bart says:
August 12, 2013 at 2:19 pm
Of course there is. You have an offset yourself in the beginning CO2 concentration. That offset has been assumed based on a model for the capture of CO2 in the ice. A model which, BTW, Salby has shown to be erroneous.
A small difference: CO2 levels are measured in ice cores, only the average age of that level need some modelling, but as the error in average age in this case is not more than a few years, that is no problem at all. In your case you need to tune the baseline to fit the longer term increase.
And Salby has nothing proven, he only calculated a non-existing diffusion of CO2 in firn and ice to fit his theory…
Any process which removes the long term leaving the short term is a filtering process.
In my “model” there is no filtering as the short term effect of temperature is a different process (with no long term effect) than for the long term effect. The former regulates the fast processes in ocean surface and vegetation. The latter influences the equilibrium setpoint for the slower process of deep oceans uptake and more permanent uptake by vegetation.
“There is a similar CO2 response to short term temperature changes for a permanent or temporary difference in temperature.”
In that case, you have contradicted yourself. Because your previous claim very specifically states that the processes which induce short term changes in CO2 from temperature are attenuated over the longer term
Again, different processes at work: the fast processes have a limited capacity, thus have no long-term effect. These result in the fast responses (1-3 years) to temperature changes. The slower processes go on near forever, but are far less influenced by temperature changes.
Nick Stokes says:
August 12, 2013 at 2:49 pm
“Yes it does. The extra CO2 is there because we put it there.”
“Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – A. Einstein
The simplest explanation that we stay anchored to the ground is that the Earth is flat. Occam’s Razor does not demand the simplest explanation, it recommends the simplest explanation consistent with theory and observations.
The hypothesis that we are responsible for a significant portion of the atmospheric CO2 rise is inconsistent with those.
FerdiEgb says:
August 12, 2013 at 3:21 pm
I cannot argue this further with you along these lines. What you are arguing is unmoored to physical reality.
Bart says:
August 12, 2013 at 2:27 pm
A) the temperature relationship holds across all frequencies – the rate of change of CO2 with temperature matches in phase in both the long term trend and in the short term variation. That’s all you need to fit it the whole thing.
The temperature relationship holds for the short term variation, it is already more problematic for the period before 1960 and absurd for ice ages – interglacials. Except if one accepts that different processes are at work.
B) For your idea to work, there has to be high pass filtering of the temperature related processes, and blending with low pass filtered human inputs.
Again, no filtering at all, only a limited capacity of the fast response processes on temperature changes. And little effect of temperature on the slower processes, which are mainly pressure dependent.
atmospheric CO2 is the result of a temperature dependent process which is pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, and that process is effectively independent of human activity.
The atmospheric CO2 increase is the result of human emissions pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, the removal of which is a pressure dependent process, quite independent of temperature.
Bart says:
August 12, 2013 at 3:35 pm
I cannot argue this further with you along these lines. What you are arguing is unmoored to physical reality.
Bart, all you have is a good fit of a curve. And from that you insist that temperature is the only variable that counts and all other variables that may do the same job as good, or even better, don’t count.
That your solution does violate all other known observations is of no interest.
That your solution doesn’t take into account that any increase in the atmosphere also influences inflows and outflows is of no interest.
Which solution is unmoored in physical reality?
FerdiEgb says:
August 12, 2013 at 3:39 pm
“Except if one accepts that different processes are at work.”
Nope. Just assuming Salby has things right.
“Again, no filtering at all, only a limited capacity of the fast response processes on temperature changes.”
Nope. If a sink has limited capacity, then once it is saturated, it is saturated. It will not continue to function on short timelines but not on longer ones. It will simply cease altogether.
This is the kind of thing I mean. Your viewpoint is unphysical. It is a mishmash of things you want to believe, but it has no anchor in physical reality.
“…the removal of which is a pressure dependent process, quite independent of temperature.”
Now that truly is absurd.
FerdiEgb says:
August 12, 2013 at 3:51 pm
“Bart, all you have is a good fit of a curve.”
It is an excellent fit of the curve. Too good to be happenstance. And, it accounts for everything.
I cannot get it across to you because you do not have the experience I have. But, it is also fully consistent with the behavior of feedback systems in general.
It has always been a stretch to believe the conventional wisdom that CO2 levels have been remarkably stable for millennia, yet humans have upset that balance in just a few decade’s time. The notion of a rock-steady stable equilibrium co-existing with such hair-trigger sensitivity to external perturbation – these are just not two properities which go together. They are very much mutuallly exclusive in real world systems.
Bart says: August 12, 2013 at 4:00 pm
“It is an excellent fit of the curve.”
Not really. And it requires cherry-picking a hemisphere. A very good hemisphere, mind you – one of the best. But the NH doesn’t fit well at all. Not even if you re-fudge.
Nick Stokes says:
August 12, 2013 at 4:22 pm
“Not really.”
Really. The correlation is especially good with the highest accuracy measurements.
And, it isn’t cherry picking to go where the action is, which is with the oceans. That’s like saying proving gravity by throwing a ball up in the air and watching it come back down is cherry picking because you are doing the experiment on a massive object.
Bart says: August 12, 2013 at 4:47 pm
“And, it isn’t cherry picking to go where the action is, which is with the oceans. “
Well, why not go with global SST? Again, the El Nino peaks line up, but that’s about all.
Nick Stokes says:
August 12, 2013 at 5:15 pm
Because it obviously suffers from resolution problems, but it’s not too bad a fit for all that.
What is your point, anyway? Finding a better fit with SH data merely means that is where the action is mostly occurring. Finding a worse one in the NH does not negate the excellent fit in the SH, any more than finding a black hole negates propagation of light from the Earth. If you look for something, and find it, why would you continue looking, suggesting that if you do not find it elsewhere, you never found it there? This is bizarre.
But, if you insist, how about using the best data we have? This is a slam dunk.
Ferdi says:
“The atmospheric CO2 increase is the result of human emissions pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, the removal of which is a pressure dependent process, quite independent of temperature.”
You probably know more than I do about this, but when I look at this 50+ year chart, I see that CO2 levels appear to be entirely temperature dependent — both rising and falling ∆CO2 levels. CO2 follows ∆T, both up and down, no?
[If you have a comparable chart showing empirical observations of ∆CO2 vs ∆pressure, I would like to see it, please.]
Bart says: August 12, 2013 at 5:42 pm
The point is, as Ferdinand says, if you rely on curve fitting, that’s all you’ve got. And if the fit fails, you have nothing.
What you have is a reasonable alignment at high frequency – basically ENSO. And for the SH air temp, there is not too bad alignment at multi-decadal. From that you want to make an inference that temperature controls CO2. Of course this completely disregards elementary mass balance. But if the multi-decadal alignment fails rather frequently, as with global air temp or SST, then there’s no basis for inference at all.
dbstealey says: August 12, 2013 at 6:27 am
Allan MacRae says:
“…I am increasingly convinced that since atmospheric dCO2/dt changes almost contemporaneously with temperature, and CO2 lags atmospheric temperature by about 9 months, this is compelling evidence that CO2 drives temperature – not the reverse as the popular consensus falsely dictates.”
Then how do you explain this? It is clear that ∆T is the cause of ∆CO2.
____________________________
Hello DB – I looked at this data very closely in 2008 and cannot agree with the argument you presented above.
I do not have the time to dissect exactly what is wrong with your argument but am quite sure it is wrong. It could be an error introduced by differences in the exact time that the measurements were taken.
In 2008 I carefully examined these parameters using both CO2 data from Mauna Loa and also the Global CO2 numbers, and also temperature data from Hadcrut3 surface temperatures (ST) and the better quality UAH Lower Tropospheric (LT) temperatures. All the data and analyses are included in a spreadsheet with my icecap.us paper. Have a look if you want to pursue this further.
Originally, my conclusion was derided as wrong, but later it was grudgingly accepted as correct and then dismissed by the warmists as a “feedback effect” – a thoughtless “cargo cult” explanation that is without merit, in my opinion.
Remember, dCO2/dt changes almost contemporaneously with LT temperature, and the integral CO2 has inflection points about 9 months later. So you cannot day that there is evidence that CO2 drives temperature.
Staff in academia often get treated differently according to the whims, prejudices, bias, misperceptions, etc of those in senior management. It’s human nature. For some its simply routine procedure to blackball those outside the ‘click’; that is the extent of their understanding of human beings and society-if you are different, you are no good. But of course this means that sometimes people make gross mistakes on how other people are treated etc, but what I really don’t get is, why there isnt procedures and ways to reduce such mistakes, to strengthen the internal processes and regulation etc of such administrations, so that such is less likely to occur. Why are university administrations so able to ignore the values which are already established in the rest of the community?
” The Law Dome ice core CO2 records show major growth in atmospheric CO2 levels over the industrial period, except during 1935-1945 A.D. when levels stabilized or decreased slightly.”
Etheridge et al. 1998
“The stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentration during the 1940s and 1950s is a notable feature in the ice core record. The new high density measurements confirm this result and show that CO2 concentrations stabilized at 310–312 ppm from1940–1955. The CH4
and N2O growth rates also decreased during this period, although the N2O variation is comparable to the measurement uncertainty. Smoothing due to enclosure of air in the ice (about 10 years at DE08) removes high frequency variations from the record, so the true atmospheric variation may have been larger than represented in the ice core air record. Even a decrease in the atmospheric
CO2 concentration during the mid-1940s is consistent with the Law Dome record and the air enclosure smoothing, suggesting a large additional sink of 3.0PgCy-11 [Trudinger et al., 2002a]. The d13 CO2 record during this time suggests that this additional sink was mostly oceanic and not caused by lower fossil emissions or the terrestrial biosphere [Etheridge et al.,1996; Trudinger et al., 2002a]. The processes that could cause this response are still unknown.”
Meure et al 2006
Finally I note that the (negative) ‘offset’ i.e the fraction of the global surface average CO2 (ppmv) by which the average near surface CO2 level over the entire great Southern Ocean and Antarctica (below 30 S) CO2 level lags below that global average has been falling from -0.33% in 1982 nearly every single year for at least 3 decades until it is about -0.60±0.10% now. If anyone doesn’t believe me then they can simply get all the NOAA data for all the relevant SH stations and prove it to themselves. The negative offset from the global average over this vast area now more or less matches the offset at the centre of the South East Pacific gyre (Easter Island Station; EIC) which has always averaged around -0.65±0.10% since complete annual records began there in 1994. Meantime, the (positive) offset i.e the fraction of the global surface average CO2 (ppmv) by which the average near surface CO2 level at the NH Mauna Loa Station (MLO) leads the global average has remained about +0.20±0.10 over 3 decades since 1982.
World War II emissions effects, shipping effects (noting e.g. bunker oil had much higher Fe and S levels prior to the 1960s when oil desulfurization took off etc? Slow SH oceanic cold water cyanobacterial biomass adaptations etc?
Regardless, there clearly are, and have always been, many more things going on in ‘heaven and earth’ with respect to atmospheric CO2 than Mr. Engelbeen has yet dreamed-of.
Allan MacRae says:
“…you cannot say that there is evidence that CO2 drives temperature.”
I’m not saying that. I am saying exactly the opposite: that temperature drives CO2 levels, as this chart shows.
So it appears we are saying the same thing. Anyway, the more I look at that chart, the more obvious it appears that ∆CO2 is caused by ∆T. If I’m wrong, please show me where.
dbstealey says:
August 12, 2013 at 8:42 pm
Allan MacRae says:
“…you cannot say that there is evidence that CO2 drives temperature.”
I’m not saying that. I am saying exactly the opposite….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I think in Allan’s first comment on CO2 in his first paragraph, he inverted the meaning by mistake. This is the exact comment:
If CO2 LAG by nine months then it is driven by temperature.
Bart says:
August 12, 2013 at 11:12 am
//////////////////////////////////////////////
The effects of the late 1970s recession can be seen clearly in the plot of manmade CO2 emissions for the period say 1978 to 1990, whereas there appears no change and in particular no corresponding dip say between 1978 to 1982 in the ML accumulated emissions plot.
That observational fact supports the general thrust of the point made by Bart, but of course, it could have something to do with sink responses, or by chance some change in natural variation (eg., a boom in ant/termite population which emiited correspondingly more CO2 than usual during those years thereby offsetting the reduced manmade CO2 emissions – an unlikely co-incidence but changes in natural variation must be a possible reason especially as man emits only a small percentage of annual global CO2 emissions).
@Gail Combs says:
August 12, 2013 at 11:13 pm
/////////////////////
Further to the point made by Gail, whilst I do not like interpreting what other meant to say, I concur with her view that Allan in effect made a simple typo in his comment (Allan MacRae says:
August 12, 2013 at 3:48 am) and did not mean to suggest that CO2 drives temperature, but rather the other way around (ie., temperature drives CO2).
This mistake is apparent from his concluding observation “not the reverse as the popular consensus falsely dictates.” ,ie., he was taking a position opposite to that of the consensus and additionally he was agreeing with the view expressed by Bart.
@Steve Short says:
August 12, 2013 at 8:22 pm
////////////////////////////
But manmade CO2 emissions because of the additional industrial activity significantly increased during the run up and throughout the war, ie., during the period 1935 to 1945 and the fact that this increase is not seen in the ice data is of concern.
The observation about shipping (“…shipping effects (noting e.g. bunker oil had much higher Fe and S levels prior to the 1960s when oil desulfurization took off etc?…”) is a patently bad one, Whilst it may be the case that bunker fuel, back then, had higher sulphur and iron levels, that has no bearing on the amount of CO2 emitted upon burning the bunkers. These aerosols may have had an effect on incoming solar and created some form of shading, thereby possibly cooling temperatures, but they do not mean that less CO2 was emitted during the war years.
It is an inescapable fact that there was a significant increase in industrial activity and a significant increase in the amout of shipping and shipping movements with a corresponding increase in manmade CO2 emissions. If the increased CO2 emitted during this period is not seen in the ice core record, there is reason to be cautious as to how accurately the ice records capture changes in CO2 emissions at least in relatively short time scales.
Nick Stokes says:
August 12, 2013 at 7:18 pm
///////////////////////////
Nick
The very same point can be made with equal force against your assumption that CO2 drives temperatures given that there is no correlation in the thermometer record (or sat record) between CO2 and temperature. For example whilst CO2 emiisions increased during the period 1880 to 1910, 1940 to 1975, temperatures fell. During the period late 1990s to date, temperatures have remained about static not withstanding a steady and unrelenting increase in CO2 9together with such CO2 that remained residenct from emissions taking place earlier within the 20th Century).
The same appears to be the case in the paleo record when there are several examples of anti correlation, ie., periodas when CO2 levels are rising and yet temperature is falling, and periods when CO2 levels are falling and temperature rising. Then on top of that you have the problem that it appears the case that CO2 lags temperatures by about 600 to 1000 years.
On the basis of your own argument “…then there’s no basis for inference at all.”
Bart says:August 12, 2013 at 3:35 pm “Occam’s Razor does not demand the simplest explanation, it recommends the simplest explanation consistent with theory and observations. The hypothesis that we are responsible for a significant portion of the atmospheric CO2 rise is inconsistent with those.”
No it isn’t because we know that when we burn hydrocarbons CO2 is one of the byproducts. There is no great mystery there nor is there any great mystery as to whether we have actually been burning fossil fuels. For humans *NOT* to have contributed significantly to the rise in CO2 you’d need a mechanism that removed the additional CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels + some other mechanism that added a similar amount of CO2.
Now perhaps that is exactly what has happened but without some startling observational data and some pretty solid theoretical work the scientifically parsimonious explanation is that the rise in CO2 has, to a large degree, come from human activity.
Richard
“Whilst it may be the case that bunker fuel, back then, had higher sulphur and iron levels, that has no bearing on the amount of CO2 emitted upon burning the bunkers.”
Nope….
(1) Fe and S emitted by bunker fuel combustion gets trapped by sea spay and in low clouds and ALL eventually gets rained-out onto the surface of the sea.
(2) Fe and S (and Si) are critical nutrients for oceanic cyanobacteria (aka blue-green algae). These constitute ~47% of world’s photosynthetic biomass.
(3) Ocean cyanobacterial primary productivity has a powerful effect on oceanic surface CO2 levels (as the algae absorb dissolved CO2 and bicarbonate and respire O2).
(4) My father served in the Pacific in WWII. In the 1960s he told me that the effect of shipping was very noticeably:
* streams of low level (cumulus) clouds behind fleets
* smell of sulfur due to bunker oil combustion and oily sheen following fleets
* increased algal blooming – often most noticeable in moonlight due to increased predation by luminescent bacteria (principally Vibrio spp).
Finally (with apologies):
a PhD isotope in biogeochemistry (;-)
DB and Gail – thank you for your corrections – we agree.
Correcting my post of August 12, 2013 at 3:48 am:
To be clear, I am increasingly convinced that since atmospheric dCO2/dt changes almost contemporaneously with temperature, and CO2 lags atmospheric temperature by about 9 months, this is compelling evidence that temperature drives CO2.
Note to file: Do not post at 3:48am – you make too many errors pre-coffee..
What time is it now? 3:45am local time – darnit!
Nyq Only:
I don’t know if the recent observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration has a wholly natural cause, or a wholly anthropogenic cause, or some combination of natural causes. Nobody knows and nobody can know
(ref. Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005) ).
But at August 13, 2013 at 1:50 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1388297
you write
Oh! But there is much such “startling observational data”!
For example, atmospheric CO2 concentration follows global temperature at all time scales.
Ice cores indicate that at the longest time scale the lag is ~800 years, and Mauna Loa data indicates that at the shortest time scale the lag is ~9 months. This latter finding was first reported in 1990
(ref Kuo C, Lindberg C & Thomson DJ ‘Coherence established between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature’, Nature 343, 709 – 714, 22 February 1990)
and has been confirmed by several subsequent studies of other atmospheric CO2 data sets but the subsequent studies show the time of the lag varies between 6 and 9 months depending on latitude..
A cause cannot follow its effect, and this implies the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is induced by global temperature rise.
However, this does not exclusively show Bart is right (see the first reference above which is to one of our papers).
Richard
Bart says:
August 12, 2013 at 3:53 pm
Nope. Just assuming Salby has things right.
Salby is of the same kind as you: extremely good in theory, but lacks insight in what happens in nature. Like calculating a huge non-existing diffusion in ice which should give negative values for CO2 in several periods…
Nope. If a sink has limited capacity, then once it is saturated, it is saturated. It will not continue to function on short timelines but not on longer ones. It will simply cease altogether.
It ceases at longer timelines but still works on short ones, because that are equilibrium reactions: both the oceans surface and vegetation growth/decay react on temperature changes up and down. The sink may become a source and vv.
This is the kind of thing I mean. Your viewpoint is unphysical. It is a mishmash of things you want to believe, but it has no anchor in physical reality.
There is plenty of literature out that shows the short term response of the ocean surface to changes in the atmosphere. And the short half life (~1 year) to equilibrium. And the saturation, because of the Revelle factor. Your view that only temperature is responsible for all processes is unphysical.
“…the removal of which is a pressure dependent process, quite independent of temperature.”
Now that truly is absurd.
That only shows that you have no idea what happens in natural processes. The uptake and release of CO2 to/from the oceans is mainly pressure dependent. If there is no pressure difference between the atmosphere and the ocean surface, then there is no uptake or release.
Of course, temperature governs the pCO2 of the ocean waters, but that is not more than 16 microatm/K. As the real pressure difference in the tropics is ~350 microatm and near the poles ~250 microatm, a 16 microatm change hardly plays a role.
Moreover, 3-4 years of human emissions already exceeds such a change…
Also thank you Richard Verney on August 13, 2013 at 1:08 am – also correct.
dbstealey says:
August 12, 2013 at 6:52 pm
db,
What you see is a high correlation on short term. That is caused by fast processes like plant growth and decay and the exchanges with the ocean surface. These are limited in capacity, so their uptake or release is only for a part of the CO2 increase over time, but they are the cause of the variability and the correlation.
Other processes are at work for the uptake of the rest of the human emissions: deep ocean exchanges and more permanent storage in vegetation. These are much slower processes but have near unlimited capacity. These processes are mainly pressure dependent and hardly influenced by temperature. That can be seen if you compare the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere with the total release of CO2 by humans:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2.jpg
Compare that to the changes in temperature:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2.jpg
It is quite obvious that the short term CO2 variation in uptake capacity is caused by the short term temperature variations and that the longer term increase is caused by human emissions…
Regarding the Mass Balance Argument, etc.:
There is evidence that CO2 from fossil fuel combustion is predominantly captured close to the source by increased uptake by plants. CO2 is scarce in the atmosphere and plants thrive on it.
If indeed the increased CO2 in the atmosphere is primarily caused by man rather than from natural sources, then it appears probable that deforestation is the main culprit, not the burning of fossil fuels.
The imminent global cooling (hope not) should solve this question, but could also cause great harm to humankind and the environment.
Regards, Allan
Posted one year ago:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/30/important-paper-strongly-suggests-man-made-co2-is-not-the-driver-of-global-warming/#comment-1070493
Here is an interesting article about Japanese satellite results, at
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/japanese-satellites-say-3rd-world-owes-co2-reparations-to-the-west/
Japanese Satellites say 3rd World Owes CO2 Reparations to The West
Posted on 31 October 2011
[excerpt]
“ It seems that the Japanese have a nice tool on orbit and set out to figure out who was a “maker” and who was a “taker” in the CO2 production / consumption game. Seems they found out that CO2 was largely net absorbed in the industrialized ‘west’ and net created in the ’3rd world’. “
See also Murry Salby’s video at time 10:38 – the major global CO2 sources are NOT in industrial areas – they are in equatorial areas where deforestation is rampant.
As I’ve posted to Ferdinand Engelbeen in the past:
“Variations in biomass (e.g. deforestation and reforestation) may be the huge variable that would make your mass balance equation work better.”
As Richard Courtney ably summarizes above:
“The unresolved issues are
(a) what is the equilibrium state of the carbon cycle?
(b) how does the equilibrium state of the carbon cycle vary?
(c) what causes the equilibrium state of the carbon cycle to vary?
(d) does the anthropogenic CO2 emission induce the equilibrium state of the carbon cycle to vary discernibly?”
To summarize:
This is an important scientific debate about the carbon cycle and the primary sources of increasing atmospheric CO2. It is entirely possible, some say it is probable, that increasing atmospheric CO2 is NOT primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels, others say it IS, and the scientific debate goes on.
To be clear, however, the only significant apparent impact of increasing atmospheric CO2 is beneficial, because CO2 is a plant food.
The claim that increasing CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming is being falsified by these facts:
– there has been no net global warming for 10 to 15 years, despite increasing atmospheric CO2;
– predictions of catastrophic global warming are the result of deeply flawed climate computer models that are inconsistent with actual observations;
– the leading proponents of catastrophic global warming hysteria have been shown in the Climategate emails to be dishonest.
A decade ago, we wrote:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
Since then there has been NO net global warming.
Also a decade ago, I (we) predicted global cooling would commence by 2020 to 2030. When this cooling does occur, many of these scientific questions will be answered.
In the meantime, society should reject the claims of the global warming alarmists, because they have a demonstrated track record of being wrong in ALL their major climate alarmist predictions.
In science, such an utter failure on one’s predictive track record is a fair and objective measure of the falsification of one’s hypotheses.
Repeating, from 2002, with ten more years of confirming data:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/27/new-study-demonstrates-the-role-of-urban-greenery-in-co2-exchange/#comment-1020034
NASA now:
“The researchers found that typical suburban greenery, such as trees and lawns, played significant roles with respect to CO2 uptake. For nine months out of the year, the suburban landscape was a source of CO2 to the atmosphere; but during the summer, the carbon uptake by vegetation was large enough to balance out fossil fuel emissions of carbon within the neighborhood.”
Me two weeks ago (how am I doing so far?):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/15/global-warming-splodeified/#comment-987456
Take a look at the observed Rose Park data in Salt Lake City:
http://co2.utah.edu/index.php?site=2&id=0&img=30
This daily CO2 data profile is very interesting.
Please examine the Daily CO2 and Weekly CO2 tabs for all measurement stations.
These are current CO2 readings taken in May 2012.
Peak CO2 readings (typically ~470ppm) occur during the night, from midnight to ~8am, and drop to ~400 ppm during the day.
1. I assume that human energy consumption (and manmade CO2 emissions) occur mainly during the day, and peak around breakfast and supper times.
2. I suggest that the above atmospheric CO2 readings, taken in semi-arid Salt Lake City with a regional population of about 1 million, are predominantly natural in origin.
IF points 1 and 2 are true, then this urban CO2 generation by humankind is insignificant compared to natural daily CO2 flux, in the same way that (I have previously stated) annual humanmade CO2 emissions are insignificant compared to seasonal CO2 flux.
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/carbonDioxideSequence2002_2008_at15fps.mp4
IF these results are typical of most urban environments (many of which have much larger populations, but also have much greater area, precipitation and plant growth), then the hypothesis that human combustion of fossil fuels is the primary driver of increased atmospheric CO2 seems untenable. Humanmade CO2 emissions are lost in the noise of the much larger natural system, and most humanmade CO2 emissions are probably locally sequestered.
There may be some large urban areas (perhaps in China) where concentrated human activities overwhelm natural CO2 daily flux, but on a global scale these areas are miniscule. In winter, when plant growth is minimal, concentrated human activities may also overwhelm natural CO2 daily flux.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/15/global-warming-splodeified/#comment-987456
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/15/co2-police-can-now-be-equipped-to-rat-out-cities/#comment-988034
Billy Liar says: May 15, 2012 at 11:47 am
Take a look at the observed Rose Park data in SLC:
http://co2.utah.edu/index.php?site=2&id=0&img=30
Thank you Billy.
This daily CO2 data profile is very interesting.
Please examine the Daily CO2 and Weekly CO2 tabs for all measurement stations.
These are current CO2 readings taken in May 2012.
Peak CO2 readings (typically ~470ppm) occur during the night, from midnight to ~8am, and drop to ~400 ppm during the day.
1. I assume that human energy consumption (and manmade CO2 emissions) occur mainly during the day, and peak around breakfast and supper times.
2. I suggest that the above atmospheric CO2 readings, taken in semi-arid Salt Lake City with a regional population of about 1 million, are predominantly natural in origin.
IF points 1 and 2 are true, then this urban CO2 generation by humankind is insignificant compared to natural daily CO2 flux, in the same way that (I have previously stated) annual humanmade CO2 emissions are insignificant compared to seasonal CO2 flux.
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/carbonDioxideSequence2002_2008_at15fps.mp4
IF these results are typical of most urban environments (many of which have much larger populations, but also have much greater area, precipitation and plant growth), then the hypothesis that human combustion of fossil fuels is the primary driver of increased atmospheric CO2 seems untenable. Humanmade CO2 emissions are lost in the noise of the much larger natural system, and most humanmade CO2 emissions are probably locally sequestered.
There may be some large urban areas (perhaps in China) where concentrated human activities overwhelm natural CO2 daily flux, but on a global scale these areas are miniscule. In winter, when plant growth is minimal, concentrated human activities may also overwhelm natural CO2 daily flux.
These observations, if correct, suggest that human combustion of fossil fuels is NOT the primary driver of atmospheric CO2.
These observations are consistent with my 2008 paper, which notes that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
In what has become “mainstream climate science”, there are many inconsistencies that have been resolved by data fabrication and contortions of logic.
There appears to be a much simpler explanation. Temperature primarily drives atmospheric CO2, not the reverse.
___________
Occam’s razor (also written as Ockham’s razor, Latin lex parsimoniae) is the law of parsimony, economy or succinctness. It is a principle urging one to select among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions and thereby offers the simplest explanation of the effect.
Uniformitarianism is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe.
Gail Combs says:
“I think in Allan’s first comment on CO2 in his first paragraph, he inverted the meaning by mistake.”
Thanks for the correction, Gail. My mistake was scanning Dr MacRae’s post and then responding too quickly. I think Allan and I are on the same page.
I think we all agree that ∆T causes ∆CO2. There is plenty of empirical evidence proving that. It seems that FerdiEnb thinks there are other forces in play at longer time scales. But as Richard Courtney convincingly shows, ∆CO2 still follows ∆T on much longer time scales.
I am still interested in finding a chart showing that ∆T is caused by ∆CO2. Despite my numerous requests, no one has ever produced one that I’ve seen. To me, empirical evidence trumps everything else. We have solid evidence showing that global land and ocean T controls atmospheric CO2 levels. I am willing to accept contrary evidence — but I have to see it with my own eyes since I’m a Doubting Thomas on that question. Ferdi has patiently tried to explain, but maybe I’m slow to learn. If the claimed effect exists, then there must be some verified evidence showing that ∆CO2 causes ∆T. But I have never seen any such evidence.
The whole carbon scare is predicated on the assertion that CO2 controls global T. All I’m saying is: ‘Show me’. But after many months of asking, still no joy. ☹
“A cause cannot follow its effect, and this implies the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is induced by global temperature rise.”
If you like – now all you have to explain is where all the anthropogenic CO2 went and why your hypothesis is simpler than simply observing that we certainly have been burning fossil fuels.
Ferdinand,
I was working on my comment and did not see your reply above before I posted it.
Your charts are fine as overlays. They show concurrent changes. But they still do not show any cause-and-effect like this chart does.
Do you have anything showing that the rise in CO2 is definitively the cause of rising global temperatures? I am still looking for a clear cause-and-effect chart.
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
At August 13, 2013 at 3:32 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1388340
you assert
No, It is quite obvious that the short term CO2 variation in uptake capacity is caused by the short term temperature variations
but
there is no evidence of any kind that the longer term increase is caused by human emissions…
This is because
1.
the short-term sequestration is limited by the maximum exchange rate of CO2 between air and ocean
but
2.
the long-term sequestration is limited by the maximum transfer rate of CO2 between the ocean surface layer and the deep ocean.
If we understood the dynamics of the annual cycle of atmospheric CO2 then we would have definitive evidence that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 is natural or anthropogenic in part or in whole. This is because, as our paper
(ref. Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005) )
says
Our paper shows that
A.
The dynamics of the seasonal variation indicate the natural sequestration processes of the carbon cycle can easily absorb all – both natural and anthropogenic – emissions of CO2 in each year
but
B.
The rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration measured at Mauna Loa since 1958 indicates the natural sequestration processes of the carbon cycle do not absorb all the emissions of CO2 in each year
The important question is;
Why do the natural sequestration processes NOT absorb all – both natural and anthropogenic – emissions of CO2 in each year when the dynamics of the carbon cycle indicate that the processes can easily sequester them all?
Our paper explains that this question can be answered by assuming the equilibrium state of the carbon cycle has altered. And at issue is whether such an alteration has had a natural or an anthropogenic cause.
Richard
PS I will not be able to reply to any response for several hours
Nyq Only:
At August 13, 2013 at 4:02 am you say
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1388361
That would make sense if “all the anthropogenic CO2” were much, but it is a trivial proportion of the CO2 flowing around the carbon cycle: almost all of the CO2 is in the deep oceans.
You have fallen for the trap of forgetting that for every complicated question there is a simple answer which is wrong.
Richard
Allan MacRae says:
August 13, 2013 at 3:56 am
There is evidence that CO2 from fossil fuel combustion is predominantly captured close to the source by increased uptake by plants. CO2 is scarce in the atmosphere and plants thrive on it.
The 13C/12C ratio changes over time show a different picture: these are quite consistent with human emissions, not including deforestation. The whole biosphere, including deforestation was a small net source of CO2 until ~1990 and a growing sink thereafter. Currently absorbing ~1 GtC/year from the ~9 GtC increase by humans. That is deduced from the oxygen balance.
The main sinks are the deep oceans. One can calculate the deep ocean – atmosphere exchanges from the theoretical change in 13C/12C caused human emissions and the observed changes:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_zero.jpg
Japanese Satellites say 3rd World Owes CO2 Reparations to The West
Posted on 31 October 2011
The image given by chiefio is only for one summer month, July 2009, when NH forests are huge sinks for CO2. If you look at the January 2010 image, it is all reverted:
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2012/12/20121205_ibuki_e.html
I suppose that the comment of Salby, like many before him, is based only on the July image…
These observations, if correct, suggest that human combustion of fossil fuels is NOT the primary driver of atmospheric CO2.
You are looking at the daily noise at a place where it is near impossible to see any human influence. Although there are places where one can see the daily peak of CO2 at rush hours if under inversion, in general the human emissions are too small to be detected in the huge natural noise. It is like finding a trend in sealevel via a tide gauge: one need at least 25 years of data to filter out the trend from the huge noise.
In the case of human emissions, one need 2-4 years to get enough data to separate the trend from the noise…
dbstealey says:
August 13, 2013 at 4:08 am
Do you have anything showing that the rise in CO2 is definitively the cause of rising global temperatures? I am still looking for a clear cause-and-effect chart.
I had misunderstood your question…
I am pretty sure that the recent rise in CO2 is not caused by temperature (there is no natural process that can do that without a negative feedback reaction from the increase in the atmosphere), but by humans. Even if Bart and Salby come with a physically impossible continuous extra CO2 inflow from a sustained temperature difference.
If the increase will have an influence on temperature is a more difficult question to answer. Theoretically yes, but the question is how much: theoretically a doubling of CO2 gives not more than 0.9 K increase in temperature at the surface, based on the absorption characteristics of CO2. But everything depends of the feedbacks: lots of positive feedbacks (according to the models), lots of negative feedbacks (according to the skeptics, myself included).
To know who is right, we may need another 15 years or so, when we have had a full PDO/NAO cycle and the result of the current decrease in solar activity and a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere. Until then the possible signal is too weak to be separated from the noise…
richardscourtney says:
August 13, 2013 at 4:10 am
Hello Richard, some time ago… I hope all is well with you.
there is no evidence of any kind that the longer term increase is caused by human emissions…
Except that human emissions fit with all observations and all other (theoretical) explanations fail one or more observations…
Why do the natural sequestration processes NOT absorb all – both natural and anthropogenic – emissions of CO2 in each year when the dynamics of the carbon cycle indicate that the processes can easily sequester them all?
Different processes at work. For a temperature increase:
Seasonal temperature effect (~5 ppmv/K):
– positive for oceans (~90 GtC CO2 release, same back into the oceans at cooling)
– negative for vegetation (~60 GtC CO2 uptake in spring/summer, same back in fall/winter; vegetation at mid- and highlatitudes is dominant in the NH, less in the SH).
Interannual temperature effect (4-5 ppmv/K) + precipitation:
– positive for ocean surface
– positive for vegetation (dominant temporarely 1-3 years extra release from tropical forests, less effect in higher latitudes)
Multidecadal to multimillennial temperature effect (~8 ppmv/K):
– positive for oceans surface and total ice free area (oceans are dominant)
– negative for vegetation (average uptake, longer growing seasons and larger area).
The fast dynamics are in the ocean surface and direct response of vegetation, but these are limited in capacity. The slow response is from the deep oceans and more permanent storage in vegetation. The latter shows that the increase in temperature since the LIA had not more effect than an increase of 8 ppmv. The rest of the 100 ppmv increase is from…
For an increase of CO2 (pressure) in the atmosphere beyond the temperature dictated equilibrium, the fast responses are only taking away some 10% of any excess atmospheric CO2 into the ocean surface. The rest needs more time…
***
Bart says:
August 12, 2013 at 3:53 pm
***
Bart, you seem smart, but on the CO2-accumulation issue, Ferdinand has it all over you. Even Stokes sees that.
Thank you for your comments Richard, Ferdinand and all.
The global CO2 flux is complicated and I agree with Richard that we do not yet know the answer.
And I agree with Ferdinand that we probably need more time and more good data, especially during a global cooling cycle, to help decipher the variables.
Ferdinand, it would not surprise me greatly if there is indeed a humanmade component to the increased atmospheric CO2. And indeed it could be partly due to the combustion of fossil fuels, not just deforestation. But as Richard correctly states, the fossil fuel component is a small part of natural global CO2 flux.
Also, with regard to the Japanese satellite data, the CO2 data shows that there is Summer in July in the Northern Hemisphere and Winter in the South, and , and Summer in January in the Southern Hemisphere and Winter in the North, and that Nature, not Man dominates the CO2 cycle. No surprises there. This is consistent with my earlier statements. http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2012/12/20121205_ibuki_e.html
Also, I understood from the work of others that the C13/C12 argument “did not hold water”, so to speak.
It would also not surprise me greatly if, during the next natural cooling cycle, atmospheric CO2 actually declined even as fossil fuel emissions increased, as happened in several 12-month intervals from 1959 to 1974 (see below).
To summarize the CO2 balance – we do just not know enough to separate the variables, imo, but we can have our opinions.
On the alleged global warming crisis, I think we know enough now to dismiss this phenomenon as deeply flawed misinterpretations of climate science (to be very generous to global warming alarmists – deliberate falsehood and fraud appear more probable).
I think it is highly probable that the so-called “sensitivity of global temperature to increased atmospheric CO2” is so small as to be inconsequential, if it exists at all. There is evidence that this “sensitivity” does not even exist at these CO2 concentrations, since the only signal I have been able to detect in the data is that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales, ergo …
… and the entire alleged catastrophic humanmade global warming crisis does not exist, as we confidently wrote more than a decade and more than a trillion dollars (of squandered global resources) ago.
Regards to all, Allan
_____________
Notes:
Annualized Mauna Loa dCO2/dt “went negative” a few times in the past (calculating dCO2/dt from monthly data, by taking CO2MonthX (year n+1) minus CO2MonthX (year n) to minimize the seasonal CO2 “sawtooth”.)
These 12-month periods when CO2 decreased are (Year and Month ending in):
1959-8
1963-9
1964-5
1965-1
1965-5
1965-6
1971-4
1974-6
1974-8
1974-9
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
Thankyou for your reply to me at August 13, 2013 at 6:30 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1388439
I hope all is well with you, too.
Before responding to your post, I recognise there may be onlookers who are not aware of the long history of disagreement between us. So, for their benefit, I point out that for well over a decade you and I have been arguing about the carbon cycle and attribution of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Our disagreements have often been ferocious and always mutually respectful.
I now write in continuation of that spirit of bluntness.
You say
Please, Ferdinand, we have been over this many times and you know it is NOT true that “all other (theoretical) explanations fail one or more observations…”.
And, yes,” human emissions fit with all observations” but the “fit” is poor.
For example, the IPCC uses 5-year smoothing to get agreement between the anthropogenic emissions and the rise in atmospheric CO2. But there is no justifiable reason for this: the data is ‘tortured’ to force it to agree.
2-year smoothing is justifiable because emissions from one year may be wrongly accounted as being in an adjacent year.
And 3-year smoothing is justifiable because different reports of emissions may be reported for ’12 month periods’ with different start dates.
But there can be no valid reason to smooth over 4, 5 or more years.
The IPCC uses 5-year smoothing because using smoothing over shorter times fails to get agreement between the anthropogenic emissions and the rise in atmospheric CO2.
The 12C:13C isotope ratio in the atmosphere is changing in the direction expected if the change were a result of the anthropogenic emission. But it has an equal chance of changing in the expected direction or in the other direction. Importantly,
the 12C:13C isotope ratio in the atmosphere is changing at a rate which differs by a factor of 3 from the rate of change expected if the change were a result of the anthropogenic emission.
As I said,
the human emissions do “fit” with all observations” but the “fit” is poor.
It is important to note that an ability to attribute a suggested cause to an effect is not evidence that the suggested cause is the real cause in part or in whole. So, the ability to force a “fit” between the anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and the rise in atmospheric CO2 is only evidence that the anthropogenic emission of CO2 cannot be rejected as a possible cause of the rise.
And I posed the question
To which you have answered
Say what!?
Your answer is a non sequitor. It has no relation to the question.
I introduced the question by saying
This matters because
the residual of the variation in each year is the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration of each year. If the natural sequestration processes of the carbon cycle did absorb all the emissions of CO2 in each year then there would be no rise.
Please see my post
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1388367
which you have answered for a proper answer to the question; i.e.
something (either natural or anthropogenic) has altered the equilibrium state of the carbon cycle.
Richard
Nick Stokes says:
August 12, 2013 at 7:18 pm
“And if the fit fails, you have nothing.”
It doesn’t fail. It is next to perfect, about as good as you can expect to get. You are clutching at straws.
“Of course this completely disregards elementary mass balance.”
Of course it does not. The usual “mass balance” argument is a circular argument which has been debunked innumerable times.
“But if the multi-decadal alignment fails rather frequently, as with global air temp or SST, then there’s no basis for inference at all.”
Wrong. You could as easily claim that failure to track a stock market index is indicative of failure of the model. If the variable being tracked is only tangentially related, then it will only tangentially track. In this case, the main dynamic is with ocean temperatures in the SH.
richard verney says:
August 13, 2013 at 1:03 am
Excellent observation.
Nyq Only says:
August 13, 2013 at 1:50 am
“Now perhaps that is exactly what has happened but without some startling observational data and some pretty solid theoretical work the scientifically parsimonious explanation is that the rise in CO2 has, to a large degree, come from human activity.”
Observation is right here. It indicates that your explanation is, by far, too parsimonious to hold up.
richardscourtney says:
August 13, 2013 at 4:10 am
“Why do the natural sequestration processes NOT absorb all – both natural and anthropogenic – emissions of CO2 in each year when the dynamics of the carbon cycle indicate that the processes can easily sequester them all? “
Indeed!
beng says:
August 13, 2013 at 7:12 am
“Ferdinand has it all over you.”
Ferdinand has a narrative, which he has practiced and polished over several years. But, it has no physical foundation, no appreciation for the necessary dynamics of flows.
“Even Stokes sees that.”
Suggesting that you do not carry such high regard of Stokes’ opinions in general. It is curious that you would decide his opinion worthy of consideration now.
Look, I cannot stop you from believing what you want to believe. I can only show you the evidence. In the end, you will see. As I have shown, the rate of change of CO2 fits temperature perfectly. Meanwhile, the superficial resemblance between emissions and CO2 is even now diverging. In the years ahead, the divergence will become so pronounced that people will look back and wonder how they could ever have held such a misconception that humans have any significant effect on CO2 concentration at all.
Steve Short says:
August 13, 2013 at 2:07 am
/////////////////////////
Steve,
I note that you are implying that any increase in CO2 emissions during the war years was absorbed by oceanic cyanobacteria (aka blue-green algae) and this is why there was no spike in observationakl measurements of CO2 in these years (and even explains why there was a fall in the lvel of CO2 during those years).
It seems highly implausable that sulphur and iron particles emitted at funnel height get trapped by sea spray which breaks over the fore-deck but rarely to bridge height, still less to funnekl height (especially as funnel smoke is warm and hot air rising would carry the particulates to altitude).
If sea spray is as dense and prevalent as you suggest, it would be rather difficult for DWLWIR to penetrate it and reach the ocean surface below. As you are no doubt aware, LWIR (due to its wavelength and the absorption characteristics of water) can only penetrate matters of a few nanometers in water; about 50% of all LWIR is fully absorbed within just 3 or 4 nanometers, and only about 10% can penetrate as much as 10 nanometers. This would suggest that DWLWIR would have little global effect, being absorbed by ocean spray merely assisting evaporation of already airbourn water particles (ie., the ocean spray), and DWLWIR would predominantly be a land based phenomena.
I accept the possibility of the low level cloud point, and I do accept that eventually it gets rained out predominantly back over the oceans, but not exclussively.
Is there any hard evidence (ie., something other than anedodal evidence of your father) for a dramatic increase in the abundance of oceanic cyanobacteria (aka blue-green algae) during the war years and a fall back in the prolification of that organism after the war? That is at the root of your argument and I would wish to see evidence on population.
I would point out that, whilst bunker quality was more variable back in the war years, I consider that you overlook the fact that it is only relatively recently (by which I mean effectively only this centrury, of note it was only in 2005 the IMO produced regulations capping sulphur content at 4.5%) that low sulphur emission regulations have been implemented, and even now they are not enforced world wide (there are of course designated Sulphur Emission Control Areas where enforcement is more rigorous).
Bunker fuels (I am ignoring gas oil which is not commonly used for main propulsion) with up to 4.5% sulphur are still in use (although HFO of this spec is being phased out by the latest IMO regulations which set a 2012 date for this but is not enforced world wide so one still sees the use of this fuel), and 3.5% is still quite common. Of course one can now procure low sulphur varities with less than 1.5% or even less than 1% (I am ignoring gas oil which is not commonly used for main propulsion at least not unless within designated sensitive zones) but fuel is only slowly finding its way into worldwide wide spread usage.
I have seen reports that claim that the 16 largest ships plying ocean trade today emit as much sulphur as all the cars in the world put together!. I do not know how well researched and accurate that claim is, but the presence of such a claim does suggest that even with today’s recent trend for lower sulphur emissions, ships are still today emitting vast quantities of sulphur and accordingly, I doubt that during the war years the sulphur emissions were substantially higher than today. Today, there are far more bigger ships and far more trade (well before the relatively recent China downturn) such that total sulphur emissions are up compared to 1935/45 such that one would expect today to see the prolific blooming of oceanic cyanobacteria (aka blue-green algae).
Whilst I have been involved in shipping for some 25 years, I am not aware of significant changes in the amount of iron in bunker fuels. Of course, particulates are of concern to the ship owner (because of engine damage/wear & tear), but my experience suggests that this is directed more at aluminium, silicone, nickel, vanadium content rather than iron.
What evidence do you have that the iron content of bunker fuel has significantly changed from the war years? Again, I would want to see some evidence that iron emitted by shipping during the war years was higher than that emitted today and this fuelled the blooming of the oceanic cyanobacteria (aka blue-green algae) to which you refer during the war years.
Ferdinand says:
“I had misunderstood your question… I am pretty sure that the recent rise in CO2 is not caused by temperature…”
Ferdinand, what we are left with is this: All of the empirical evidence available to us shows that ∆CO2 follows ∆T, from years to hundreds of millennia. By your admission, there is no empirical evidence showing that ∆CO2 causes ∆T [it may. I have always acknowledged that possibility, by saying that any effect from CO2 is too small to measure].
At current concentrations, adding more CO2 has no measurable effect on temperature. I understand why you are arguing the way you are, and you may be right. But I’m a “show me” kind of guy. If there is NO measurable evidence that something exists, then it is only speculation. Conjecture. Opinion. But it is hardly testable science.
The alarmist crowd got into trouble because they took the position that the primary cause of global warming is due to the rise in CO2. But there is no empirical evidence for that, none at all. No one has been able to produce a chart of real world temperatures that show any cause-and-effect between a rise in CO2, and a rise in temperature. All such charts are only coincidental overlays. They do not show cause and effect, like the charts I posted above do.
CO2 may cause some minuscule warming. Or maybe it doesn’t. We simply have no evidence showing that “carbon” is the cause of any global warming, and any opinions to the contrary are just that: opinions. Beliefs. Assumptions, etc.
“That would make sense if “all the anthropogenic CO2″ were much, but it is a trivial proportion of the CO2 flowing around the carbon cycle: almost all of the CO2 is in the deep oceans.”
LOL – so your Occam’s razored theory is that all of the human emissions have somehow got themselves locked up in the ocean but by magic coincidence a similar additional amount of CO2 has become released from the oceans neatly in tune with the rise of human consumption of fossil fuels?
richardscourtney says:
August 13, 2013 at 8:42 am
But there can be no valid reason to smooth over 4, 5 or more years.
There may be reasons to smooth even over 25 years, if the noise is far larger than the signal you wish to detect. That is done for e.g. the detection of a sealevel trend in the huge noise of waves and tides.
And there is hardly a difference between 3 or 5 years smoothing for the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em_avg.jpg
Only the 1992 Pinatubo eruption is a clear outlier (probably due to light scattering that increases CO2 uptake by vegetation). For the rest, the variability in atmospheric increase is from temperature variability, which influences the year by year sink rate. But the trend clearly is from human emissions.
the 12C:13C isotope ratio in the atmosphere is changing at a rate which differs by a factor of 3 from the rate of change expected if the change were a result of the anthropogenic emission.
Simple answer: the human “fingerprint” is diluted by the deep ocean exchanges. What goes into the oceans is the current isotopic composition. What comes out is the composition of 1000 years ago without human influence. That can be used to calculate the deep ocean – atmosphere exchanges:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_zero.jpg
The dynamics of the seasonal variation indicate the natural sequestration processes of the carbon cycle can easily absorb all – both natural and anthropogenic – emissions of CO2 in each year
My answer was right: there are different processes at work: the seasonal processes are fast but limited in capacity. That means that these processes can absorb and release some 15% of all CO2 in the atmosphere for a global change of 1 K, but then it stops, as full capacity for that temperature change is reached. If you want to get rid of more CO2 out of the atmosphere, you need the slower processes.
“Observation is right here. It indicates that your explanation is, by far, too parsimonious to hold up.”
Well it certainly is a nice graph. You do know what you’ve plotted don’t you? You have the DERIVATIVE of interpolated mean of CO2 measurements for one line and temperature for the other. OK now work out what that says – the short term rate of change of atmospheric CO2 concentration follows temperature increases. That tells us nothing about the overall growth in CO2 in the atmosphere and tells us a lot about how the ACTUAL long term increase of CO2 is influenced by temperature beyond what we already know from the basic physics of CO2’s solubility in water.
Essentially your graph shows us that the RESIDUAL data of CO2 concentration *NOT* explained by the simpler upward growth of CO2 concentration is explained by yearly fluctuations in temperature. To use the vernacular – no sh!t Sherlock :). You’ve drawn a graph whose purpose is put the overall growth to one side and which provides some insight into the yearly wobbles in that growth.
Putting temperature and CO2 on the same scale you get this http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/from:1979/normalise/plot/rss/from:1959/normalise
But lets have some more fun. You compared the derivative of atmospheric CO2 with temperature. Let’s flip that relationship around and see what we see. If global mean temp matches the derivative over time of CO2 concentration then the integral of global mean temp should also indicate your position when compared with CO2 concentration plotted over time.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/from:1979/normalise/plot/rss/from:1979/integral/normalise
Who is driving who?
Nyq Only:
Your reply to me in your post at August 13, 2013 at 12:02 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1388712
demonstrates that your opinion is not only blinded by dogma, you are also content to proclaim your ignorance of the subject on which you pontificate.
Your post answers my having corrected your earlier error when I wrote to you
And your answer says
“A similar amount” has NOT been “released from the oceans”!
The annual increase to CO2 in the atmosphere is the residual of the seasonal changes to CO2 in the atmosphere, and the Northern Hemisphere seasonal changes (decrease and increase) each year are approximately an order of magnitude greater than both the total annual increase and the total annual anthropogenic emission. This seasonal change is mostly release then absorbtion of CO2 by the oceans.
A difference of an order of magnitude is NOT “similar”.
I never cease to be amazed that few of the anonymous warmunists who post on blogs have learned it is better to be thought a fool than to make a post which proves they are a fool.
Richard
Bart says:
August 13, 2013 at 9:40 am
It doesn’t fail. It is next to perfect, about as good as you can expect to get. You are clutching at straws.
It fails for all periods outside the period for which it is fitted:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_T_dT_em_1900_2011.jpg
It completely fails the glacial-interglacial changes.
Of course, because the good fit over the period 1960-current, the ice cores CO2 measurements must be wrong. Or how a theory is “proven” by rejecting all observations that don’t fit the theory…
Of course it does not. The usual “mass balance” argument is a circular argument which has been debunked innumerable times.
Except that the theoretical alternative for the mass balance argument is proven wrong: any huge change in natural circulation that causes a similar increase in the atmosphere as human emissions must be in ratio with the near 3 times increase of these emissions over the period 1960-current. That would lead to a near 3 times reduction in residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere. But the residence time slightly increased over the past decades, which is what can be expected for a relative stable throughput in a growing amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Ferdinand has a narrative, which he has practiced and polished over several years. But, it has no physical foundation, no appreciation for the necessary dynamics of flows.
While vegetation is a proven sink for CO2, there is no valid physical foundation for any increase of CO2 fluxes out of the oceans based on a sustained temperature difference that isn’t counteracted by the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. Besides that the release of such huge quantities of extra CO2 from the oceans would INcrease the 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere, despite the human emissions, but we see a firm DEcrease:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_increase_290.jpg
That shows the d13C change 1960-2000 for a change in deep ocean releases from 40 to 290 GtC/year, which is necessary if Bart’s theory was right. The observations simply go the other way out.
Meanwhile, the superficial resemblance between emissions and CO2 is even now diverging…
Not at all. The sink capacity btw does not depend of the year by year emissions, but of the total amount (=pressure) of CO2 above the (temperature dictated) equilibrium:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_T_dT_em_1960_2011.jpg
The fit of my “model” is even slightly better than yours, including over recent years…
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
Thankyou for your post at August 13, 2013 at 12:17 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1388730
in reply to my post at August 13, 2013 at 8:42 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1388508
As you will have expected, I disagree.
Concerning the forced fit of atmospheric CO2 concentration to agree with global temperature data, I explained
You have replied
Well, there may be reasons for pigs to fly if their wings are large enough.
Your (and the IPCC) argument is that a proportion of the anthropogenic emission is accumulating in the atmosphere because the natural sinks cannot cope with it. But the data indicates that if the extra emission of human origin was the only emission, then in some years, almost all of it seems to be absorbed into the sinks, and in other years almost none.
What is this “noise” which results in the disagreement between the emissions and the sequestration? And how can anyone know this “noise” is not the cause of the failure of the sinks to sequester all of the emission with the result of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration?
You say
Well, “the hardly any difference” is sufficient to require the unjustifiable at least 5-year smoothing to force the desired “fit” between the anthropogenic CO2 emissions and the rise in atmospheric CO2.
I wrote
And you have replied
So, you admit the discrepancy of a factor of 3 between the magnitude of the observed isotope ratio change and the magnitude of the change expected if it were induced by the anthropogenic emission.
And the “fingerprint” is smudged beyond recognition if it is altered by a factor of 3. Your assumption that the alteration is “dilution” from deep ocean is only that: an assumption. And it is a circular argument to use that assumption as evidence for the observed isotope ratio change being antrhropogenic.
The difference between observation and expectation indicates that some natural factor is at least 3 times larger than the anthropogenic factor. Your explanation of this is only a plausible hypothesis. So, in actuality, it is possible that all the isotope change may be a result of the unknown natural factor which it is certain causes most of the isotope change.
I wrote
And, as I explained, you answered with a non sequitor. You have replied to that explanation saying
I can only repeat that your answer is illogical nonsense. And again try to tell you why.
There are NO “different processes at work”.
The annual rise of CO2 for any year is the residual of the rise and fall of CO2 during that year.
The dynamics of the variation during each year show that the sequestration processes (i.e. the “fast” “seasonal processes”) can easily sequester ALL the annual CO2 emission (both natural and anthropogenic) but they do not. But they do not, and that is why there is an annual rise of CO2 each year.
None of this disproves an anthropogenic or a natural cause for the observed rise of atmospheric CO2. But it does show there is no reason for anyone to assume the cause of the rise is anthropogenic or is natural in whole or in part.
Richard
Nyq Only says:
August 13, 2013 at 12:02 pm
‘LOL – so your Occam’s razored theory is that all of the human emissions have somehow got themselves locked up in the ocean but by magic coincidence a similar additional amount of CO2 has become released from the oceans neatly in tune with the rise of human consumption of fossil fuels?’
No, that is not it at all. Both natural and anthropogenic inputs are quickly sequestered away. The difference is that the natural inputs are overwhelmingly larger, so they have a much greater impact.
Nyq Only says:
August 13, 2013 at 12:26 pm
“That tells us nothing about the overall growth in CO2 in the atmosphere and tells us a lot about how the ACTUAL long term increase of CO2 is influenced by temperature beyond what we already know from the basic physics of CO2′s solubility in water.”
Have you ever taken a course in calculus? The differential equation is
dCO2/dt = k*(T – Teq)
CO2 = CO2 concentration
k = sensitivity of CO2 rate to temperature
T = temperature
Teq = equilibrium temperature
This integrates to provide a very high fidelity reconstruction of atmospheric CO2, no human inputs required. At any time in the last 55 years since accurate measurements began, you can predict precisely what the atmospheric concentration will be at any later time solely by integrating the temperature relationship. Human inputs are superfluous.
Note that the plot shown is for GISS temperatures. All of the major temperature sets are more or less affinely related, so you can always find an affine model for a given set which integrates to the nominal CO2 concentration. The HADCRUT SH temperatures and the satellite temperatures are a better fit than GISS, and will necessarily produce a better fit in the overall integrated concentration, I just never got around to performing the integration with those data sets.
“Who is driving who?”
Obviously, temperature drives CO2. It would be absurd to say that temperature is determined by the rate of change of CO2. If that were the case, then you could drive CO2 to arbitrary concentration but, once you stopped driving it, the temperature would return to the equilibrium temperature.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 13, 2013 at 1:03 pm
“It fails for all periods outside the period for which it is fitted:”
No, your model for the proxy measurements fails. That is what Salby showed.
“…any huge change in natural circulation that causes a similar increase in the atmosphere as human emissions must be in ratio with the near 3 times increase of these emissions over the period 1960-current.”
Handwaving nonsense and circular logic.
“The fit of my “model” is even slightly better than yours, including over recent years…”
Your fit is only in the low frequency region. It is trivial to get affine agreement between two low frequency time series with comparable curvature. In the end, your agreement is merely a 50/50 coin flip. The temperature relationship, however, agrees across all frequencies. The odds of successfully doing that without there being an actual relationship are vanishingly small.
Well, well, well, Old Nyq. LOL, from your doggedly arguing above for CO2 being the driver of global temperature, we can now clearly see your motive for your vehement defense of those who mistreated Dr. Murry Salby who boldly and publicly states (in his 2012 book and in his April 18, 2013 Hamburg lecture) a compellingly persuasive argument for the opposite view.
Your opinion on the matter of his mistreatment, thus, has little probative value.
Regarding the WFT charts he posted, Nyq Only says:
“Who is driving who?”
Your charts in that comment only show coincidental correlation. They are overlays. They do not show cause and effect, like the charts I posted do. Your simple overlay charts only show that for a very limited time, CO2 and T went in the same direction.
The charts I posted show that from years to hundreds of millennia, ∆T caused ∆CO2. Those are verifiable empirical observations. But as I keep pointing out, there are no similar charts showing that ∆CO2 was the cause of ∆T. That is only your assertion.
You are avoiding thousands of years of empirical [real world] data, and instead arguing that your models are a sufficient explanation for your belief that CO2 is the cause of global warming. But that belief ignores all the empirical data. I think the reason is what Janice Moore pointed out: this has more to do with Dr Salby’s unconscionable treatment than with any scientific evidence.
I am still looking for a chart that shows your claimed cause and effect. I have been asking someone, anyone, to post such a chart for many months now. But no one has been able to locate one. Perhaps that is because any effect from CO2 is too small to measure?
So, will there ever come a time when you will admit that there is no testable empirical evidence showing that the rise in CO2 has any measurable effect on global temperature? If so, when would that time be? Or have you already made up your mind, and decided the question to your satisfaction?
Re Janice Moore says: August 13, 2013 at 3:17 pm
..we can now clearly see your motive for your vehement defense of those who mistreated Dr. Murry Salby who boldly and publicly states…etc”
I’m afraid I’m less adept at the kind of faith based argument you seem to be using here – how does your point work exactly? If somebody doesn’t adhere to a tenet of your faith their arguments on anything (regardless of their content – which naturally you didn’t address) must be wrong? I can see the kind of brilliance within that idea but it isn’t for me. I prefer science and maths.
dbstealey says: August 13, 2013 at 8:16 pm
“Your charts in that comment only show coincidental correlation. They are overlays. They do not show cause and effect, like the charts I posted do.”
A chart can’t show cause and effect. To show cause and effect you need a substantive theory behind the numerical or graphical relation.
“But as I keep pointing out, there are no similar charts showing that ∆CO2 was the cause of ∆T. That is only your assertion.”
Um no – it is my assertion and PHYSICS. We KNOW CO2 is a greenhouse gas – no mystery there. Sure we know that CO2 isn’t the only driver of temperature change – you can knock a strawman down over and over pretending that there are people who claim CO2 is the only factor in global mean temperature (here is a complete list of ‘warmist’ climate scientists of any significance who think that – … erm…that’s it)
“I think the reason is what Janice Moore pointed out: this has more to do with Dr Salby’s unconscionable treatment than with any scientific evidence.”
Wasn’t she saying the opposite? That I defended the Uni’s action because I think CO2 helps drive temperature? You seem to be saying the causality is the other way round. Or is it just crazy argument day? Either way round it isn’t a scientific or logical argument – amusing though, so thanks for the chuckle.
“I am still looking for a chart that shows your claimed cause and effect.”
Which claimed cause and effect?
Theories do not show cause and effect. They explain them.
Bart says: August 13, 2013 at 1:48 pm
“No, that is not it at all. Both natural and anthropogenic inputs are quickly sequestered away. The difference is that the natural inputs are overwhelmingly larger, so they have a much greater impact.”
Sorry but you keep forgetting which kinds of quantities you are considering. Total, seasonal changes and long term changes. Each of these are at different scales.
Anthropogenic emissions of CO2 may be small compared to the overall carbon cycle but they constitute a progressive increase of significance over the 20th century. Again no mystery there and necessarily it has to add to the total and make a net contribution to the net change over the twentieth century.
richardscourtney says: August 13, 2013 at 12:41 pm Nyq Only: “Your reply to me in your post at August 13, 2013 at 12:02 pm http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1388712 demonstrates that your opinion is not only blinded by dogma, you are also content to proclaim your ignorance of the subject on which you pontificate.”
Well that answers that question – it IS crazy argument day. So apart from the poorly constructed ad-hominem do you have any rational argument to add?
OK you’ve got a bit of a one: “The annual increase to CO2 in the atmosphere is the residual of the seasonal changes to CO2 in the atmosphere, and the Northern Hemisphere seasonal changes (decrease and increase) each year are approximately an order of magnitude greater than both the total annual increase and the total annual anthropogenic emission. This seasonal change is mostly release then absorbtion of CO2 by the oceans.”
We are talking about the long term increase in CO2 concentration. You are saying that ISN’T anthropoegnic because 1. it is small compared to seasonal changes (which is irrelevant) and 2. because you think the increase is temperature driven. Yet compare the long term increase with fossil fuel consumption and with anthropogenic emissions the relationship is clear. Now perhaps it is all just an amazing coincidence or perhaps you have an explanation. If you’ve got an explanation – great! Let’s hear it and spare us the rants about dogma stuff.
Nyq Only says:
August 13, 2013 at 11:02 pm
“Sorry but you keep forgetting which kinds of quantities you are considering. Total, seasonal changes and long term changes. Each of these are at different scales.”
This is gibberish. The long term trend in the rate of change of CO2 matches perfectly with the long term trend in temperature. You never took any calculus courses, did you? I am afraid it is beyond my power to make up for your lack of training here.
Nyq Only:
I am answering your reply at August 13, 2013 at 11:15 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1389267
to my post at August 13, 2013 at 12:41 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1388748
I ask everyone to read my post and your reply: they are both short and I have here provided links which go to them.
Nyq Only, as my post explained, your original post was plain wrong: it was in error by an order of magnitude.
And, it seems you are unwilling to learn from information intended to assist you. I concluded my post saying
That was not an ad hom. It was a statement of fact intended to induce you to think before posting.
But you did not learn from that statement so your reply does it again!
I am deliberately rejecting your request for me to not mention your “dogma stuff” because your reply again proclaims your dogma as an alternative to observed reality. I deal with reality and say when reality denies false beliefs such as yours.
Importantly, I strongly object to your supporting your dogma by posting falsehoods concerning what I have said.
The first falsehood in your reply to me says
NO! How dare you!? I have never said that.
I say the data does not indicate whether that increase is natural or anthropogenic in part or in whole. If you have any information of any kind to disprove my statement then I would be very pleased to hear it.
You do not have such information: nobody does. But you do have your dogma which decrees the increase has an anthropogenic cause.
You perceive a suggestion of doubt concerning the cause of the increase as a denial of an anthropogenic cause because your dogma decrees there cannot be such doubt: any such doubt is heresy.
Indeed, you claim that important information “is irrelevant”.
Well, it is “irrelevant” to your belief but it is very relevant to determination of the cause of the long-term rise.
And you assert another falsehood in your reply when you write
NO! I do not!
See my above post to Ferdinand at August 13, 2013 at 1:35 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1388815
That is my clear position;
I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IF ANYTHING DRIVES THE INCREASE because the available data does not enable anyone to know.
But your dogma tells you what must be driving it; i.e. the anthropogenic emission. And, therefore, you ‘know’ it is a heresy to question that belief so you ascribe a different belief to any heretic.
And you explicitly state your dogma in your reply when you write
No! It is NOT ”clear”. Indeed, it requires the data to be processed to force a fit between the two parameters.
Again, this is explained in my above post to Ferdinand at August 13, 2013 at 1:35 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1388815
But you ignore all evidence and proclaim your superstitious belief by writing to me
It is to be expected that there is a “coincidence” of your assertions with your dogma but not reality.
And, of course there are several possible explanations for the “coincidence”. For example, parsimony suggests you are an idiot so you are incapable of considering any information which conflicts with your superstitious belief in AGW.
And I don’t “rant”. That is another misperception induced by your superstitious belief.
Richard
“The long term trend in the rate of change of CO2 matches perfectly with the long term trend in temperature.”
Not on this planet http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1960/derivative/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1960/trend – but perhaps you didn’t mean what you said.
“You never took any calculus courses, did you?”
I’ve taken several. If you think I have made a mistake in calculus feel free to point it out.
“I am afraid it is beyond my power to make up for your lack of training here.”
Apparently so 🙂
Bart says: August 14, 2013 at 12:38 am
” The long term trend in the rate of change of CO2 matches perfectly with the long term trend in temperature.”
The match is poor. It is much worse than simple quadratic regression against time. The date is a better predictor than temperature!
I’ve written a post here explaining what is wrong with all this.
Bart says:
August 13, 2013 at 1:48 pm
No, your model for the proxy measurements fails. That is what Salby showed.
Ice core CO2 measurements are direct measurements. No model involved, except to calculate the resolution and the time delay between ice age and average gas age. Salby only showed a theoretical calculation of the smoothing, without any physical base, to “prove” his (and yours) theory of a continuous release of CO2 from a sustained temperature difference with an arbitrary baseline. Not only is that circular reasoning, it also implies negative CO2 values for long periods of time. Smoothing does hide fast changes, but it doesn’t change the average over the resolution period…
Handwaving nonsense and circular logic.
Sorry Bart, you know better: there is no difference in behaviour of human CO2 or natural CO2 (except a small one for different isotopes). The near threefold increase in rate of change of the atmospheric CO2 concentration 1960-2012 must be caused by a threefold increase in turnover of natural CO2, if your theory holds, as also the human emissions near tripled in the same period.
Your fit is only in the low frequency region. It is trivial to get affine agreement between two low frequency time series with comparable curvature. In the end, your agreement is merely a 50/50 coin flip. The temperature relationship, however, agrees across all frequencies.
The fit is as good as yours for the high frequency changes based on yearly averages over the period 1960-current. The long term fits all trends, from multidecade to multimillennia. Yours completely fails over the full glacial-interglacial period over 800 kyr up to 1960 without arbitrary changes of the baseline (and coefficients). Just try to show the LGM-Holocene optimum change with the same baseline and factor as in the recent period…
richardscourtney says:
August 13, 2013 at 1:35 pm
The difference between observation and expectation indicates that some natural factor is at least 3 times larger than the anthropogenic factor. Your explanation of this is only a plausible hypothesis.
The natural factor even is 4.5 times larger, if my calculations are right. The point is that the oceans (or any other source except vegetation decay) have the wrong fingerprint: with more CO2 from the oceans (or volcanoes or rock weathering, or…), the 13C/12C ratio would go up, not down. That excludes the oceans as the main cause of the increase.
Of course, the “dilution” by oceanic CO2 theoretically could be additional, not throughput. But then the increase in the atmosphere would be 5.5 times the human emissions to give the same dilution of the human fingerprint, while the real increase is halve the human emissions…
BTW, vegetation is a proven (from the oxygen balance) sink for CO2 (the “greening earth”). Thus also not the cause of the 13C/12C ratio decline…
dbstealey says:
August 13, 2013 at 8:16 pm
The charts I posted show that from years to hundreds of millennia, ∆T caused ∆CO2.
The problem is that there is one period which is an exception…
CO2 lags temperature for seasons to several years with less than a year (and 4-5 ppmv/K).
CO2 lags temperature for multidecades to multimillennia with 50 to several thousand years (and ~8 ppmv/K).
But currently temperature lags CO2 increase over multiyears to multidecades, as there is no known natural physical process that may give over 100 ppmv/K as we now see over the past 50+ years…
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
Thankyou for your post at August 14, 2013 at 5:46 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1389641
Yes, all you say is true concerning the carbon isotope ratio change..
But none of that contradicts my point that your post quotes and answers. viz.
Your claim that
is the logical fallacy of ‘argument from ignorance’.
Nobody knows the reason for the ratio change. Clearly, something is contributing much more to it than the anthropogenic emission. And that “something” may be responsible for all the change. Furthermore, as you say, you only know what does not have the correct ‘fingerprint’, and nobody can know what unknown unknowns may have the correct ‘fingerprint’.
Simply, you have shown it is possible to attribute A SMALL PART of the change to the anthropogenic emission.
But an ability to attribute a cause to an effect is not evidence that the attributed cause is the true cause in part or in whole. This is especially true when the attributed cause is known to NOT be responsible for most of the effect.
As I said
Richard
Mods:
My posts almost all go into long moderation or vanish. For example, my reply to Ferdinand has gone (I hope and assume) into the ‘bin’.
I wonder if others are having the same experience or my posts have been ‘singled-out; for some reason.
Richard
[Reply: Your posts are not being singled out for any particular reason. But both WordPress rules and Anthony’s rules cause comments with certain key words to be shunted into the spam folder for individual approval. In your case they have all been approved, although there is often a delay of up to a few hours depending on whether there is a mod on duty. Other comments that contain site Policy violations can be snipped or deleted entirely. Mods know the keywords Anthony uses, but WordPress doesn’t tell us their keywords or phrases. In general, we try to avoid censoring comments. — mod.]
Hello Richard and all,
Richard, in response to your question, one of my longer posts went into moderation for a while, although all did appear after a reasonably short time.
I very much appreciated this latest exchange on the “mass balance argument”, etc. Discussions like this will ultimately sort out the truth, and that will be a very good development for climate science.
I cannot agree with Nyq at all – his arguments seems to be religiously-based rather than scientific – he says “we KNOW CO2 is a greenhouse gas”. This is apparently a specious statement, either false or insignificant. There is NO compelling real-world observational evidence that increased atmospheric CO2 causes significant global warming at these concentrations, and there IS compelling evidence that the actual effective “sensitivity of temperature to CO2” is near-zero or even non-existent, since CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales, and there has been NO significant global warming for ~10-20 years despite increased atmospheric CO2.
In summary, the evidence strongly suggests that the alleged global warming crisis does not exist. We confidently published this statement more than a decade ago.
Also, it appears that increased atmospheric CO2 is a significant benefit to humanity and the environment, resulting in increased botanic activity, better crop yields, and improved water utilization by plants.
However we do not yet know how much of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to natural causes, and how much is due to human activities such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc. We do know that the natural seasonal CO2 flux dwarfs the humanmade components, and we also know that at least during the growing season, CO2 emissions seem to be captured quickly close to the source by increased botanic activity. This is an area where more data and discussion could prove beneficial.
Here are some thoughts I have been pondering since about 2008:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/23/new-research-in-antarctica-shows-co2-follows-temperature-by-a-few-hundred-years-at-most/#comment-1041309
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/29/an-observational-estimate-of-climate-sensitivity/#comment-996002
[Excerpt]
Some Thoughts Regarding the Evidence of Longer Cycles and Lags:
We know there is a ~9 month lag of atmospheric CO2 concentration after temperature on a ~~4 year cycle of natural global temperature variation.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
We also know that CO2 lags temperature by ~800 years on a much longer time cycle (ice core data).
… there is probably at least one intermediate lag, and quite possibly several, between these two – perhaps associated with the Wolf-Gleissberg Cycle, Hale Polarity Cycle, etc., AND-OR with the PDO, etc.
The lag of CO2 after temperature observed in these longer cycles is probably mostly physical in origin, related to ocean solution and exsolution of CO2, but also includes a long term biological component.
Willis’s analysis deals with the seasonal (annual) cycle, in which the biological component of the CO2 lag is comparatively much greater.
I have the opinion that we are looking at several natural cycles of varying duration in which there are external natural drivers (Sun, Earth orbits, stars), then some randomization associated with large ocean phenomena (PDO, etc.); these drive Earth’s natural temperature cycles at all time scales, and result in a series of related CO2 lags after temperature.
Finally:
Atmospheric CO2 variation is primarily a result, not a driver of temperature, and human fossil fuel combustion is probably NOT causing the recent increases in atmospheric CO2 – it is more likely the result of the cumulative impact of all these aforementioned natural cycles – for example, the Medieval Warm Period was ~~800 years ago.
Allan MacRae:
Thankyou for your post addressed to me and others at August 14, 2013 at 8:03 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1389751
I agree with all you say.
I only write to draw attention to your post and to respond to your statement saying
I agree and again state my view on this.
I am convinced that increased atmospheric CO2 concentration will result in some rise in global temperature, but I am also convinced any such temperature rise would be too small for it to be discernible and, therefore, it would only have an abstract existence. I explain this as follows.
Before presenting my argument, I again point out that I remain to be convinced human emissions are or are not the cause – in part or in whole – of the observed recent CO2 rise. However, the cause of a rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is not relevant to the effect on global temperature of that rise.
My view is simple and can be summarised as follows.
The feedbacks in the climate system are negative and, therefore, any effect of increased CO2 will be too small to discern. This concurs with the empirically determined values of low climate sensitivity obtained by Idso, by Lindzen&Choi, etc..
In other words,
the man-made global warming from man’s emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) would be much smaller than natural fluctuations in global temperature so it would be physically impossible to detect the man-made global warming.
Of course, human activities have some effect on global temperature for several reasons. For example, cities are warmer than the land around them, so cities cause some warming. But the temperature rise from cities is too small to be detected when averaged over the entire surface of the planet, although this global warming from cities can be estimated by measuring the warming of all cities and their areas.
Similarly, the global warming from man’s GHG emissions would be too small to be detected. Indeed, because climate sensitivity is less than 1 deg.C for a doubling of CO2 equivalent, it is physically impossible for the man-made global warming to be large enough to be detected. If something exists but is too small to be detected then it only has an abstract existence; it does not have a discernible existence that has effects (observation of the effects would be its detection).
I hold this view because I am an empiricist so I accept whatever is indicated by data obtained from observation of the real world.
Empirical – n.b. not model-derived – determinations indicate climate sensitivity is less than 1.0deg.C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent. This is indicated by the studies of
Idso from surface measurements
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/Idso_CR_1998.pdf
and Lindzen & Choi from ERBE satellite data
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
and Gregory from balloon radiosonde data
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/OLR&NGF_June2011.pdf
Climate sensitivity is less than 1.0 deg.C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration and, therefore, any effect on global temperature of increase to atmospheric CO2 concentration only has an abstract existence; it does not have a discernible existence which has observable effects.
Richard
Nyq Only says:
August 14, 2013 at 2:10 am
‘“The long term trend in the rate of change of CO2 matches perfectly with the long term trend in temperature.”
Not on this planet’
No, not on your planet, where a rate of change is somehow the same as absolute concentration. Clearly, you are not following the conversation. The rate of change of CO2 and the temperature anomaly are affinely similar. Let us have no more denial of this fact.
Nick Stokes says:
August 14, 2013 at 2:27 am
Again, words have a meaning. If you are not following the conversation, how can you hope to make any meaningful contribution to it?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 14, 2013 at 5:32 am
“The fit is as good as yours for the high frequency changes based on yearly averages over the period 1960-current.”
Not even close. Let us have no more denial of this fact.
Nyq Only says:
August 14, 2013 at 2:10 am
Nick Stokes says:
August 14, 2013 at 2:27 am
I see I was hasty in looking at your two inputs. Nyq tried to match ppmv with degC. How stupid is that?
Nick, your link is idiotic. Of course you can get a better fit of the slightly quadratic curve with a least squares fit. That’s because… wait for it… it’s a zarking LEAST SQUARES FIT, by definition the best quadratic fit there is!!!
But, it has no physical explanation accompanying it, and the derivative of it WILL NOT MATCH the variations AT ALL.
Yeah, integration of GISS is not perfect. Real world data is not perfect. As I mentioned previously, I would get a much better fit integrating the SH temperatures or the satellite temperatures. Why? Because they fit the derivative better, and integrating it produces a unique solution. The closer the derivative, the closer the integration.
This is absolutely pitiful.
Allan MacRae says:
August 14, 2013 at 8:03 am
Atmospheric CO2 variation is primarily a result, not a driver of temperature, and human fossil fuel combustion is probably NOT causing the recent increases in atmospheric CO2
Allan, as I have already said to dbstealey, there are indeed different lags (and different processes) at work for different time frames. And also different ratio’s of CO2 changes vs. temperature changes.
1. For the seasons:
Lag ~3 months; 5 ppmv/K; oceans and vegetation in countercurrent; vegetation dominant.
2. For a few (1-3) years:
Lag 6-9 months; 4-5 ppmv/K; oceans and vegetation in parralel; vegetation dominant.
3. For the past 50+ years
Lag unknown as there is no known temperature effect startpoint; >100 ppmv/K; vegetation about neutral over the whole period, small source until ~1990, increasing sink since then, except during El Niño’s. Oceans are an increasing sink over the whole period. Oceans dominant? But proven more sink that source while levels increase in the atmosphere…
4. For centuries to multimillennia:
Lag ranging from ~50 years (MWP-LIA) to ~800 years (deglaciation) to several thousands (glaciation); ~8 ppmv/K; oceans and vegetation in countercurrent; oceans dominant.
What doesn’t fit in the row of proven natural variability? The third one, with an alleged enormous effect from a small, sustained change in temperature, by coincidence (?) following the accumulation of human emissions at an extremely constant rate, except for the 1st and 2nd natural variability.
A “temperature effect” that again disappears after a century or so (according to the past in ice cores). Not seen in any CO2 proxy in the world or any ice core over the past at least 800 kyrs…
Thus how can the recent increase be a result of a combination of natural cycles?
Bart says:
August 14, 2013 at 10:41 am
Not even close. Let us have no more denial of this fact.
Wood for Trees doesn’t have the emissions in their database, thus I have compared the 12 month averages of temperature and CO2 increase. The short term variability gives a better match than yours. The 5+ decades change gives a better match than yours… Who denies what?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 14, 2013 at 11:29 am
Show me your plot your plot like this one.
People appear to have some pretty weird ideas about what I have done and what the goal is here.
The goal is NOT to produce the best fit to the data. The goal is to find similarities which indicate where the main action is which produces the CO2 concentration we observe in our atmosphere.
I did not optimize the integration fit of the GISS temperature here. I pulled the coefficients out of a hat based on a rough inspection. It is not important how small the delta is between the observations, it is only important that it is small. I could have gotten a better fit by optimizing the slope and offset parameters. I could have gotten a better fit with different temperature data sets. It would be wasted effort, because it is beside the point.
What we are dealing with here is an approximate relationship, using bulk variables. The real-world system is distributed across the entire globe. What happens in one location is not going to be the same as what is happening elsewhere. The total outcome is going to be the sum total of everything happening across the globe. The best we can hope to do with bulk temperature measures and bulk CO2 measures is an approximation.
What is important here is that it the result of the approximation clearly indicates that what we are dealing with is mostly a temperature dependent pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere. This relationship, whatever it is in its full glory, accounts for ALL of the observed behavior, both in the long term and the short. There is no need to take account of human inputs to explain the behavior to a high degree of fidelity. To include human inputs, we would have to discount the temperature related process and, in doing so, we would deviate from the description of the short term behavior. And, that dictates that the human inputs CANNOT be having a significant impact. There is no significant room for them if we are to match the short term behavior.
It is NOT important, as Ferdinand seems to believe, that we match all the data, including from questionable proxies, back to the dawn of time. The relationship has held steady for the entire interval from 1958 onward in which we have had incontrovertibly good measures of atmospheric CO2. It is umimportant whether the relationship matches the proxy measurements for two reasons:
1) The relationship is not guaranteed, indeed should not be expected, to be fixed in time, and a different relationship could have held in earlier times.
2) Who cares? The major increase in CO2 has been over that 55 year interval, and the relationship has undeniably held during that time. It does not allow for significant human forcing during that interval.
This is really not at all even questionable to a fair minded, unbiased and rational appraisal. The only reason to hold out against the evidence is denial. Humans simply have little effect on atmospheric CO2 levels.
“It is umimportant whether the relationship matches the proxy measurements for two reasons: “
A third reason is of course that, as Salby showed, the proxy measurements are not a direct measure of the CO2 in the atmosphere. But, whether one chooses to believe Salby or not, the question is moot, because of the above two reasons.
I commented: “I am still looking for a chart that shows your claimed cause and effect.”
Nyq Only then asked:
“Which claimed cause and effect?”
You have commented in various ways that CO2 is the cause of global warming. Since that is your position, I’ve been asking for empirical evidence in the form of a chart showing that claimed cause and effect.
I have posted charts from different sources that clearly show this cause and effect: ∆T causes ∆CO2. All I’m asking for is verifiable evidence showing that the rise in CO2 is specifically the cause of the rise in temperature. That data must be quantifiable; assertions are not adequate.
All I have gotten are chart overlays. But they do not show a cause and effect relationship like the charts I posted do. They only show that at times, CO2 and temperature coincidentally moved in the same direction.
Now, it may be that a rise in CO2 does cause a rise in temperature. But if so, it is too small to measure, because despite repeated requests, neither you nor anyone else has been able to provide any such cause and effect measurements. And if something is too small to measure, it can hardly be called science, can it? At most, it is only a scientific conjecture. It is not even a testable hypothesis, because you cannot falsify something that you cannot measure.
The real question is this: is the recent rise in CO2 harmful? If so, then show us the harm. Identify the global damage due directly to the rise in CO2. Otherwise, the CO2=AGW discussion is pointless arguing over nothing.
The crux of the entire debate is the contention that “carbon” is a problem that must be addressed. If that is so, then show us where the problem is, and show us with verifiable measurements. Show us the global damage from a few ppm of a minor trace gas. Identify the harm caused by “carbon”. Otherwise, the argument is akin to debating the number of angels on the head of a pin.
Bart says: August 14, 2013 at 11:01 am on [Nyq Only says:August 14, 2013 at 2:10 am]
“I see I was hasty in looking at your two inputs. Nyq tried to match ppmv with degC. How stupid is that?”
Not sure what your point is. You stated that ““The long term trend in the rate of change of CO2 matches perfectly with the long term trend in temperature.” and the graph I drew shows the long term trend of the derivative of Mauna Loa interpolated mean with the long term trend HADCRUT4 global mean temperature over the same time period i.e. the long term trend in the rate of change of CO2 with the long term trend in temperature. Exactly what you say “matches perfectly”. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1960/derivative/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1960/trend
They don’t match perfectly – not even close. Best we can say is that they both go up. I suspect given your previous graphs you meant something else but I’m not psychic and I’m afraid it is up o you to work out what relation you wish to talk about and what the significance of that relation might be.
Nick Stokes says:
August 14, 2013 at 2:27 am
I do want to say, Nick, in case my frustration hides it, that I do have respect for your capabilities in general. You have shown in the past that you clearly have some formal training and reasonable understanding of issues involving signals and systems. If my comments to you appear caustic, it is because I am frustrated by what I see as your dogmatic refusal to think outside the box, and these needling potshots you take when you undoubtedly could reason these clearly evident considerations out for yourself.
Nyq Only says:
August 14, 2013 at 12:25 pm
You bring nothing to the table in this discussion. Please go away.
Bart says:
August 14, 2013 at 11:42 am
Show me your plot your plot like this one.
Here is the plot for the influence of temperature on the trend. Add to that 53% of the human CO2 emissions/year over the same period (which unfortunately is not possible in WFT) as a first approximation.
The derivative of the temperature stands for the short term reaction of CO2 on temperature changes, while these in reality react over 1-3 years. The longer term reaction of CO2 levels on temperature is ~8 ppmv/K, the ~0.4 K increase in temperature would give an increase of ~3.2 ppmv over a period of 50 years, hardly detectable in the 70 ppmv increase.
“You have commented in various ways that CO2 is the cause of global warming.”
Well I certainly believe that CO2 is a major driver of global warming the main issue I have been discussing in this thread has been whether the long term trend in atmospheric CO2 has an anthropogenic cause.
“I’ve been asking for empirical evidence in the form of a chart showing that claimed cause and effect.”
And that is a nonsensical request. A chart can only show correlation between two variables. How can a chart show cause and effect? Even if the variables match or there is a lag between one and the other you have no way just from a chart of knowing what other underlying causes might be in play (for example a third uncharted variable which is a common cause of the changes in two charted variables). That isn’t some wacky warmist position either but high-school interpreting statistics.
“I have posted charts from different sources that clearly show this cause and effect: ∆T causes ∆CO2.”
The best you can say about your chart is that it shows that the seasonal and year to year wobbles in both temperature and rate of change of CO2 are very similar. That takes us to the stunning conclusion that climactic variables are related – hey wow! it is almost like we are measuring stuff on the same planet! You want to get from that to a strong claim that temperature cannot be affected by carbon dioxide despite the fact that we know from the physical chemistry of carbon dioxide that it certainly can affect temperature.
Sorry but I don’t do faith.
Bart says: August 14, 2013 at 10:41 am
“No, not on your planet, where a rate of change is somehow the same as absolute concentration. Clearly, you are not following the conversation. The rate of change of CO2 and the temperature anomaly are affinely similar. Let us have no more denial of this fact.”
The graph I drew your comment is relating to is one showing the DERIVATIVE. You do know what a derivative is? No? oops
Allan MacRae says: August 14, 2013 at 8:03 am
“I cannot agree with Nyq at all – his arguments seems to be religiously-based rather than scientific – he says “we KNOW CO2 is a greenhouse gas”. This is apparently a specious statement, either false or insignificant.”
Well me and Murry Salby think CO2 is a greenhouse gas – I know the Slayer crowd have some issues with that but I think it should be OK to refer to basic physics and chemistry as stuff that we know without it being regarded as a religious statement. Of course if you think I’ve gone too far and would like to challenge the claim that CO2 is a greenhouse gas (one of the most significant greenhouse gases according to Prof Salby) then you should explain your argument.
Bart says: August 14, 2013 at 12:28 pm
“You bring nothing to the table in this discussion. Please go away.”
Well not the most gracious admissions of defeat that I’ve ever read but I guess it will do. Regarding your request for me to “go away” I believe that is a request solely within the domain of the managers of this blog rather than yourself.
Bart says:
August 14, 2013 at 12:14 pm
What is important here is that it the result of the approximation clearly indicates that what we are dealing with is mostly a temperature dependent pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere. This relationship, whatever it is in its full glory, accounts for ALL of the observed behavior, both in the long term and the short.
Even if we don’t take into account the proxies of earlier times, the alternative fits the data as good as your approach. The temperature changes are responsible for the short (1-3 years) variability of the CO2 rate of change. The temperature increase 1960-current is responsible for a small increase of CO2, in line with Henry’s Law of ocean releases. And human emissions are responsible for the bulk of the increase.
Further, as repeadetly said, your temperature dependent ocean process runs counter the observed 13C/12C ratio change, it should increase the turnover of CO2 in the atmosphere (for which there is no proof) and increase the decline of the bomb spike 14CO2 (no sign of that either). And last but not least, it violates Henry’s Law, as an increase of 3.2 ppmv in the atmosphere would stop any extra release of CO2 from the oceans for the 0.4 K increase in temperature.
Thus if you have two competing theories, both fitting the same CO2 increase in the atmosphere for short and medium term, one which fits all available current accurate observations, the other violating about every observation, which of them is the right one?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 14, 2013 at 12:37 pm
“Here is the plot for the influence of temperature on the trend. “
It is 90 degrees out of phase. This is very clearly not a match.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 14, 2013 at 1:03 pm
“Even if we don’t take into account the proxies of earlier times, the alternative fits the data as good as your approach.”
Not even close. You have a phase error of 90 degrees. Not even close.
Nyq Only says:
“…that is a nonsensical request.”
Not really. Your comment is simply a copout, because in fact my charts do clearly show cause and effect. Your problem is that you cannot find a chart that shows that the rise in CO2 is the cause of the rise in temperature. CO2 may have some tiny effect, but that effect is too small to measure.
I posted 2 charts that clearly show that ∆T is the cause of the change in CO2. One chart covers a few decades, and the other one covers the past 400,000 years. Everyone else can see that T leads CO2 on those time scales. If you look closely, you will see it too.
Nyq Only:
At August 14, 2013 at 12:39 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1390029
you ask
The reason you ask is that you mistakenly think,
“A chart can only show correlation between two variables.”
But a chart can also show coherence, and both correlation and coherence can each and both provide information pertaining to causality.
Correlation is a mathematical relationship between two parameters. If the correlation is known over the length of the data sets, then their correlation indicates the magnitude of a change in one parameter that is expected when the other parameter changes by a known magnitude.
Correlation does NOT indicate a causal relation between two parameters.
But
Absence of correlation indicates absence of a direct a causal relation between two parameters.
Coherence of two parameters indicates that when one parameter changes then the other parameter changes later.
Coherence can disprove that change of one parameter causes change in the other; i.e. if change in parameter A follows change in parameter B then the change of A cannot be the cause of the change of B (because a cause cannot occur after its effect).
So,
1.
absence of correlation indicates absence of a direct causal relationship
and
2.
when there is a direct causal relationship then coherence indicates which of the two parameters is causal.
Furthermore, coherence in the absence of correlation is strongly suggestive that both parameters are affected by another parameter (or other parameters).
For example, leaves fall off trees soon after children return to school following their summer break.
The coherence is great; i.e. both effects occur each year.
But the effects do not correlate; i.e. the number of returning children is not indicative of the number of falling leaves.
In this example, the time of year is the additional parameter which causes children to return to school and the leaves to fall off trees.
So, in the context of your question, yes, a chart show cause and effect if it is known that there is a causal relationship between two parameters. The coherence between the parameters indicates which is causal.
And, as has been repeatedly explained in this thread, global temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration cohere such that changes in the CO2 follow changes in the temperature at all time scales.
Thus, if it is assumed there is a direct causal relationship between global temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration then their coherence indicates the temperature changes cause the CO2 changes.
Unless, of course, you can provide a chart (as requested from you by dbstealey) showing the changes in the temperature following changes in the CO2).
Richard
Bart says: August 14, 2013 at 11:01 am
“Of course you can get a better fit of the slightly quadratic curve with a least squares fit. That’s because… wait for it… it’s a zarking LEAST SQUARES FIT, by definition the best quadratic fit there is!!!”
Yes, and I did a least squares regression fit with GISS temp too. It’s the green curve. It’s actually very similar to the quadratic fit. The integration means that GISStemp behaves very like its linear trend apporoximation would. The integration attenuates the residuals.
I think what you did in that integrated test is the right thing to do. Your diffentiated plots emphasise the fluctuations, and show that you have something that correlates with those. But in fact the Keeling curve doesn’t vary much – it’s a steady increase, and it’s the reason for that that people want to know. And matching fluctuations doesn’t help, while if your model could explain the bulk rise, it would help.
But I’ve put two datasets into the same optimising process – a straight line, and GISStemp. They do equally well. The extra information in GISS isn’t helping at all.
Bart says:
August 14, 2013 at 1:04 pm
It is 90 degrees out of phase. This is very clearly not a match.
Of course there is an out of phase: the CO2 rate of change lags the temperature changes with 6-9 months, which is visible if you take 12 month averages for both CO2 and temperature changes. If you only take a 12 month average for one of them, as you do, there is no out of phase, while in reality there is one…
dbstealey says: August 14, 2013 at 12:25 pm
“I have posted charts from different sources that clearly show this cause and effect: ΔT causes ΔCO2.”
Yes, it does, in those circumstances. It’s not in dispute. CO2 is less soluble in warm water, and charts like yours show about 10 ppmv increase in CO2 for each °C rise in temperature.
But we’ve had a 120 ppmv rise in CO2, and haven’t had a 12°C rise in temperature. Instead, we’ve been digging up carbon and putting CO2 directly in the atmosphere. This plot from the AR3 does the same differencing as BART and your plots, but clearly shows the cause – our emissions.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 14, 2013 at 1:31 pm
If you only take a 12 month average for one of them, as you do, there is no out of phase, while in reality there is one…
Here I was wrong. WFT does it as it should do: the 12 sample average is plotted in the middle of the samples…
Nick Stokes says:
August 14, 2013 at 1:30 pm
“…while if your model could explain the bulk rise, it would help.”
But, don’t you see? The temperature relationship accounts for the curvature, i.e., the quadratic term. It accounts for that, as well as all the variation. It is hardly a far stretch to say it accounts for the linear term as well, given that the temperature anomaly must have some baseline – the one it already has is arbitrary.
But, here is the nub: you cannot claim that human inputs account for it, because they would also induce curvature which is already accounted for by the temperature relationship.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 14, 2013 at 1:31 pm
“If you only take a 12 month average for one of them, as you do, there is no out of phase, while in reality there is one…”
No, the averaging is not why. The WoodForTrees site automatically advances its averages to account for filter lag. You can see this clearly if you choose, e.g., 12 month averages and 24 month averages. They both line up, despite the fact that the lag for a 12 month average is 6 months, and the lag for a 24 month average is 12 months (the time lag is half the length of the average). The averaging is zero phase (because the filtering operation is non-causal, due to the WFT advancement).
The reality is that CO2 lags temperature by 90 degrees, which is consistent with the derivative of CO2 being in phase with the temperature. You can see this in your plot, where you plot the derivatives of both. For instance, focus in the range from 1970 to 1980. There are about 3.5 cycles, corresponding to a frequency of 0.35 cycles/year. The time delay is the phase delay divided by the frequency, all transformed to radians and radians per year. So, that is pi/2/(2*pi*0.35) = 0.71 years, or about 8.6 months.
A 90 degree phase lag tells you that there is an integral relationship between the variables (CO2 is related to the integral of temperature, or temperature is to the derivative of CO2). It really cannot be simpler.
Nick Stokes:
In your post at August 14, 2013 at 1:59 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1390109
you wrote
I assume you were joking, but just to be sure I write to ask you to either confirm you were joking or – in the unlikely event that your strange assertion is serious – to please explain what makes you think it “clearly shows the cause” to be “our emissions”.
Richard
Bart says:
August 14, 2013 at 1:04 pm
It is 90 degrees out of phase. This is very clearly not a match.
Revision:
CO2 changes follow temperature changes on (near) all time scales, Thus the derivative of CO2 changes follows the derivative of temperature changes on (near) all time scales. Thus the out of phase of the derivative matches the out of phase of the the CO2 change in the atmosphere with the temperature change.
The “perfect match” of your plot is simply the result of not taking the derivative of the temperature change.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 14, 2013 at 2:04 pm
I see our missives passed one another.
Nick Stokes says:
August 14, 2013 at 1:59 pm
“This plot from the AR3 does the same differencing as BART and your plots, but clearly shows the cause – our emissions.”
But, what they don’t show is the affinely mapped temperature, which matches the CO2 rate of change. Surely, you can see that there is very little correlation between the bumps and wiggles of the emissions curve and the atmospheric concentration rate of change. This plot may help you see it more plainly. The two have been diverging since 1990, with accelerating divergence coinciding with the temperature lull of the last decade. You may reasonably expect that, if temperatures continue on the same trajectory or start decreasing, and it is a given that fossil fuel combustion is going to continue increasing, the divergence will soon become very pronounced.
“But we’ve had a 120 ppmv rise in CO2, and haven’t had a 12°C rise in temperature.”
See my recent post here @ Aug 14, 2013 at 5:58 PM for my hypothesis on that score. I will repeat the pertinent parts here:
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 14, 2013 at 2:19 pm
We keep dancing circles around each other.
“The “perfect match” of your plot is simply the result of not taking the derivative of the temperature change.”
Yes! Because the rate of change of CO2 is proportional to temperature anomaly with respect to a particular baseline.
That is the whole point! Your model does not match, because you are not acknowledging this relationship.
Bart says: August 14, 2013 at 2:12 pm
“The temperature relationship accounts for the curvature, i.e., the quadratic term.”
No it doesn’t. The curvature is multiplied by a number selected by the optimisation, or by your estimate attempting to optimise. Any straight line will give the same result. Curvature comes from the integrated trend. But it could have been the trend of anything. Gistemp is not contributing knowledge there.
Nick Stokes says:
August 14, 2013 at 2:32 pm
“The curvature is multiplied by a number selected by the optimisation, or by your estimate attempting to optimise.”
But, that number is the number which matches up both the trend and the variation. This is not happenstance.
Bart,
No, the trend is arbitrarily variable, via your T0 (-0.4). And the curvature is arbitrarily variable by the multiplier of Gi (your 0.2). Both are varied independently.
Bart says:
August 14, 2013 at 2:25 pm
We keep dancing circles around each other.
Agreed.
That is the whole point! Your model does not match, because you are not acknowledging this relationship.
Because there is no such relationship. On all time scales, a change in CO2 follows a change in T and then it ends: no further increase or decrease of CO2, if the temperature doesn’t change.
That is the case for seasonal changes, where CO2 lags temperature with ~3 months, as good as the derivatives of both do.
That is the case for short term changes, where CO2 lags temperature with 6-9 months, as good as the derivatives do.
That is the case for (very) long term changes, where CO2 lags temperature with 50 to several thousand years as good as the derivatives do.
The time delay is the phase delay divided by the frequency, all transformed to radians and radians per year. So, that is pi/2/(2*pi*0.35) = 0.71 years, or about 8.6 months.
Indeed, that is what is found in the observations: the change in CO2 increase rate lags the temperature increase after e.g. an El NIño with 6-9 months. Thus my “model” reflects reality…
Nick Stokes says:
August 14, 2013 at 2:52 pm
“No, the trend is arbitrarily variable, via your T0 (-0.4). And the curvature is arbitrarily variable by the multiplier of Gi (your 0.2).”
I meant the trend in rate. That trend in rate matches the trend in the rate of measured concentration when you scale by the same scaling factor you use to match the variational components. That trend integrates into the curvature, but that curvature is not arbitrarily variable. It is chosen such that the variational components in temperature and rate of change of CO2 match.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 14, 2013 at 3:10 pm
“Indeed, that is what is found in the observations: the change in CO2 increase rate lags the temperature increase after e.g. an El NIño with 6-9 months. Thus my “model” reflects reality…”
This is getting really tedious. It lags by 90 degrees. In every frequency component, it lags by 90 degrees. That is because CO2 is proportional to the integrated temperature relative to a particular baseline.
There is no uniform lag in time, only in phase. And, that 90 degree phase shift indicates an integration. You cannot have a constant 90 degree phase shift without having an integration. This can be proven analytically via the Bode phase-gain integral.
Bart,
“That trend integrates into the curvature, but that curvature is not arbitrarily variable.”
It is. You have a relation
C= a3* Σ Gi + Σ a2 + a1
where C is CO2, Gi GISSLO, and a2 can be identified with a3*( your equilibrium temp). You choose a3 (0.2) and choose eq temp (0.4, and thus a2), and match a1. Regression does the same, to minimise LS.
I’m saying that you can get a very similar result, no worse, with
C= b3* Σ t + Σ b2 + b1
where t is time, again choosing the b’s to optimise. The information contained in Gi isn’t helping.
richardscourtney says: August 14, 2013 at 2:19 pm
“I assume you were joking, but just to be sure I write to ask you to either confirm you were joking”
Of course not. The plot shows gains in air CO2 and the amounts we emitted. Gains rose with emissions, but were a fraction. And you think the presence of CO2 in the air needs special explanation?
I think of this scene. Three people, A,B,C see a leaky bucket with a hose running water into it. A notes that it is half full of water and wonders where it came from. B says, well, from the hose. But C says, no! The bucket is sitting in a puddle, and has holes in it. I can prove water flows through holes. The water must have come from the puddle.
Nick Stokes says:
August 14, 2013 at 3:52 pm
“I’m saying that you can get a very similar result, no worse…”
But, it is much worse. When you differentiate b3* Σ t, you only get b3*t. You don’t get all the variational components.
The variation is the ups and downs. In this plot, you see the big blips at, e.g., just past 1970, up and down around 1990, one at just before 2000, and all the other little bumps and burbles in between? Those are important markers. They match with that value of what you are calling a3.
This is what I have been saying: the curvature matches and the variational terms match, with just that one value for a3.
This is why it is such a bad idea to focus on the concentration itself. When you do that, you do indeed see only some low-ordered polynomial behavior, shorn of most of the identifying information, at least to our eyes. That is why you should focus on the rate domain. When you do that, you see that b3* Σ t is completely unsatisfactory.
Nick Stokes says:
August 14, 2013 at 4:28 pm
“I think of this scene.”
I think of this one. The three people are standing in a room with a candle burning. Person A notes it has gotten warmer since they first came in. Person B says, “obviously, it is because of the heat coming from the candle.” Person C notes that the candle is quite small, that there has been a noticeable hum which stopped at about the time the temperature seemed to stop rising, and that the light on the thermostat down the hall also went out at about the same time.
Bart,
The difference in the analogies is that with the bucket/hose and CO2/emissions, the obvious cause is amply sufficient to explain the effect. And if you want to dream up an alternative, then, in the bucket case, where did all that water from the hose go?
Lot of arguing here about the relationship between dCO2/dt and temperature. However I notice that you are all using just one dataset, the CO2 measurements from Mauna Loa. Admittedly this is the longest sequence, but there are others, and with a wide geographic spread, from Alaska to the South Pole. What happens if you use these datasets? Since there is discussion about time lags, and since the southern hemispheres readings have a lag compared to the northern ones, I think the first step should have been to see how closely the various datasets can be brought into coincidence by a suitable temporal shift, which would establish how large an offset is plausible in the analysis.
Then you need to check your differentiation – I assume it is numerical, but this is notoriously unstable on non-smooth data, which this is. What method is being used, and how has it been checked?
Then you should check the derivatives of the various CO2 datasets against each other – do they match – do they need temporal offsets – are they the same as the CO2 curves themselves.
Only after that should you be trying to match dCO2/dt with temperature. How much of that has been done?
jimmi_the_dalek says: August 14, 2013 at 7:02 pm
Only after that should you be trying to match dCO2/dt with temperature. How much of that has been done?
Jimmi, I did this in 2008. My simplest analysis examined CO2 data from Barrow Alaska, Mauna Loa, and South Pole, along with Global Average CO2. Many others have done this analysis before me.
From memory:
Mauna Loa is helpful because it is close to the Global Average.
Readings at Barrow show the greatest seasonal amplitude of about 16-18ppm CO2 as I recall. Mauna Loa is intermediate and South Pole is near-zero in seasonal amplitude. This is because the Northern Hemisphere has a much larger landmass than the Southern Hemisphere, and dominates the seasonal CO2 cycle.
Allan,
Yes, but that did not really answer my question. Do the derivatives agree? Where did you publish this? And, since there is now 5 years more data, what has changed since?
From the excellent correlation one can indeed draw the conclusion that ∆T controls ∆CO2 to a certain degree, however one could still argue that a continuous rise of CO2 by 1 ppm/year could be anthropogenic while the charcteristic pattern of ∆CO2 (which correlates with ∆T) rides on top of that (with an average 1 ppm/year to explain the total 2ppm/year increase of CO2) but since the anthropogenic 1ppm increase is constant (presumably) it would not contribute to the correlation pattern. Thus, this serves as a compromise where both Engelbeen and Bart etc. are partially right.
Chris Schoneveld:
re your post at August 15, 2013 at 1:37 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1390608
Yes! Thankyou.
As I keep saying, using available data nobody can know to what degree either of them is ‘right’.
I write to draw attention to your helpful post.
Richard
“So, in the context of your question, yes, a chart show cause and effect if it is known that there is a causal relationship between two parameters.”
Well that was a rather long winded way of getting around to the same point I’d made several messages ago. Causality is something that has to be established via multiple lines of evidence. A graph, in itself, does not show causality. Let’s start there and then run through the other aspects of your posts.
“Absence of correlation indicates absence of a direct a causal relation between two parameters.”
Even that is a little too strong. Parameter A can have a direct causal relation with parameter B but not show correlation because parameter C also has a direct casual relation with B and the magnitude of change of C means the correlation is not easily observed. For example arsenic poisoning is certainly a cause of death but annual fluctuations in levels of arsenic poisoning aren’t going to show a correlation with annual death rates because motor vehicle accidents and heart disease etc make a more significant impact. Statistically if those other parameters are known we can control for them and identify the correlation. However if those other causes of death somehow weren’t known it would still be fallacious to assume arsenic was not deadly because the correlation couldn’t be demonstrated in annual death rates. Of course with arsenic poisoning we can look at evidence from direct controlled experiments to establish a causal mechanism at a different level of analysis.
“And, as has been repeatedly explained in this thread, global temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration cohere such that changes in the CO2 follow changes in the temperature at all time scales.”
The relationship that was under discussion was that changes in THE RATE OF CHANGE of CO2 follow changes in the temperature. Your statement there that changes in CO@ follow changes in temperature is trivially false. Take 1960 to the present: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/normalise/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1960/normalise
I forget the actual graph presented but it was essentially this relationship: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/derivative/mean:12/normalise/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1960/normalise
Which shows rate of change of CO2 pretty much following similar wobbles as the temperature anomaly. Now that is a neat graph but it doesn’t show that CO2 concentration follows (or coheres with) temperature over that time scale. It doesn’t even show that the rate of change of CO2 *follows* temperature – indeed it is easy to find periods were a rise or fall of the rate of change of CO2 precedes a related change in the temperature anomaly.
Nick Stokes:
Thankyou for you reply to me at August 14, 2013 at 4:28 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1390278
Bart addressed the error in your reply in his post at August 14, 2013 at 5:01 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1390305
Unfortunately, your post to Bart at August 14, 2013 at 6:16 pm.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1390359
indicates that you have missed – or failed to understand – the point.
You claim the anthropogenic CO2 emission is responsible for the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. But you refuse to understand that when considering a complex system it it is NOT sufficient that a possible explanation is “amply sufficient to explain the effect” . There are often “amply sufficient” and plausible but wrong explanations of complex system behaviour.
If this were merely an abstruse scientific issue then your mistake could be ignored: eventually data and understanding will be obtained to resolve the matter. However, others are now using the same mistake as an excuse to attempt imposition of harmful changes to energy and economic policies world-wide.
If the anthropogenic emission is harmful then responses to that harm need to be considered.
But
If the anthropogenic emission is not harmful then harmful responses to that emission need to be avoided.
In this situation it is essential that there be honest research to determine the true cause of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Lysenkoist adoption of “amply sufficient” explanations need to be vigorously opposed.
And the ‘sides’ here represented by Ferdinand and Bart are important. Their promotion of their different interpretations of existing data can point others to needed research to obtain other data and to devise other interpretations of data.
The truth will out. External influences provide a need to rapidly ‘out’ the truth. And determination of the truth is prevented by adoption of Lysenkoist “amply sufficient” explanations.
Richard
Nyq Only:
Your post at August 15, 2013 at 2:13 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1390622
displays much misunderstanding of the issues I tried to explain to you in my post at August 14, 2013 at 12:39 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1390029
You had said and asked
And I replied
I then explained that reply and concluded my explanation saying.
To which you have replied
NO!
You asserted, “A chart can only show correlation between two variables”. I explained YOUR ASSERTION IS PLAIN WRONG. And you now claim you said something else!
Nick, there is much else wrong with your reply, too. But the important issue is that if – as you claim – there is a causal relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration and global temperature then the coherence demonstrates that the temperature is causal. You were asked to provide a chart which showed the opposite coherence. And you are making excuses for your inability to do that.
Also, I refuse to nibble the ‘red herrings’ of your “run through”.
The facts are clear; viz.
You were wrong: a chart can show what you said it cannot.
And you are incapable of providing a chart which is consist with your claims.
Richard
jimmi_the_dalek says: August 14, 2013 at 10:25 pm
Allan,
Yes, but that did not really answer my question. Do the derivatives agree? Where did you publish this? And, since there is now 5 years more data, what has changed since?
___________
Please understand that this work was done five years ago and I ran almost 100 different spreadsheets analyses, so finding the right one took some time.
Yes the derivatives agree although Barrow, with the greatest amplitudes, displays much greater variability, as would be expected.
In summary, the dCO2/dt plots are in-phase and agree.
I also recall examining some other CO2 measurement sites but did not find those spreadsheets.
I did not publish the work. It did not change the conclusions of my January 2008 icecap.us paper and 2008 was a very difficult year. One major injury, two major surgeries, a 2-month preemie baby delivered by emergency C-section, and lost a fortune in the market crash. Other than that it was a good year.
The paper is located at
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
I last updated my work in 2010 and did not see any change to that time. I examined the same analysis back to 1958 using Hadcrut3 and the correlations held, although Hadcrut3 showed a possible warming bias of (as I recall) ~0.07C/decade versus UAH LT.
Chris Schoneveld says: August 15, 2013 at 1:37 am
Thank you Chris. I agree with you (and Richard) that the two realities (humanmade CO2 contributions and the “CO2 lags temperature” evidence) are not mutually exclusive, at least in theory.
It is indeed possible, even probable, that the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 has both a natural and a humanmade component, since the counter-assumption that there is absolutely NO humanmade component has a small probability of occurrence.
So it logically becomes a question of the magnitude of the natural versus the humanmade components in the observed CO2 increase. Ferdinand, using the mass balance argument, states that emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels are double the annual CO2 increase in the atmosphere. Richard states the counter-argument far better than I can repeat here.
The fact remains that the ONLY signal I can detect in the data, that survives ALL the complexities of this huge global-scale equation, is that dCO2/dt correlates with temperature T and CO2 LAGS temperature by about 9 months. The fact that this “dCO2/dt vs T signal” survives all this noise suggest to me that it is significant and DOMINANT – the dominant factor in the huge global CO2 flux equation.
In contrast, the global warming alarmists grudgingly accepted that the dCO2/dt vs T signal exists, but dismissed it as a “feedback effect”. I regard their feedback hypo as a ”Cargo Cult” digression, lacking credibility. It is like saying you can hear the piccolo in the orchestra, but you cannot hear the orchestra. I suggest they ARE hearing the orchestra, but refuse to admit it.
I suppose it is possible that the gradual (but not linear) increase in humanmade CO2 emissions is overlain by the dCO2/dt vs T signal, but it seems unusual that the dCO2/dt vs T signal survives intact.
Rapid cooling triggered Bronze-Age collapse and Greek Dark Age
http://iceagenow.info/2013/05/rapid-cooling-triggered-bronze-age-collapse-greek-dark-age/
[Excerpt]
Of course the politically correct verbiage is “climate change.”
Between the 13th and 11th centuries BCE, most Greek Bronze Age Palatial centers were destroyed and/or abandoned throughout the Near East and Aegean, says this paper by Brandon L. Drake
A sharp increase in Northern Hemisphere temperatures preceded the wide-spread systems collapse, while a sharp decrease in temperatures occurred during their abandonment. (Neither of which, I am sure – the increase or the decrease – were caused by humans.)
Mediterranean Sea surface temperatures cooled rapidly during the Late Bronze Age, limiting freshwater flux into the atmosphere and thus reducing precipitation over land, says Drake, of the Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico.
This cooling and ensuing aridity could have affected areas that were dependent upon high levels of agricultural productivity. The resulting crop declines would have made higher-density populations unsustainable.
Indeed, studies of data from the Mediterranean indicate that the Early Iron Age was more arid than the preceding Bronze Age. The prolonged arid conditions – a centuries-long megadrought, if you will – lasted until the Roman Warm Period.
Those four centuries – known as the ‘Greek Dark Ages’ – were typified by low population levels, rural settlements, population migration, and limited long-distance trade.
The Late Bronze Age collapse is associated with the loss of writing systems such as Linear B, and the extinction of Hatti as both a written and spoken language. Writing and literacy do not return to the Aegean until the end of the ‘Greek Dark Ages’ in 8th century BCE with the spread of the Phoenecian alphabet.
…
Chris Schoneveld says:
August 15, 2013 at 1:37 am
“…while the charcteristic pattern of ∆CO2 (which correlates with ∆T) rides on top of that…”
Misses the point. ∆CO2 does not correlate with ∆T, but with the integral of ∆T. The integration of the slope in ∆T begets the curvature in the observed CO2. Adding in human emissions increases that curvature beyond the level which is observed. Therefore, significant contribution of human inputs is ruled out.
Allan MacRae says:
August 15, 2013 at 4:51 am
“I agree with you (and Richard) that the two realities (humanmade CO2 contributions and the “CO2 lags temperature” evidence) are not mutually exclusive, at least in theory. “
They are mutually exclusive, for the reason given above.
Nyq Only says:
August 15, 2013 at 2:13 am
“The relationship that was under discussion was that changes in THE RATE OF CHANGE of CO2 follow changes in the temperature. “
No! The rate of change of CO2 IS COINCIDENT WITH temperature anomaly. This naturally begets a 90 degree phase lag in absolute CO2 relative to temperature anomaly.
Allan MacRae says: August 15, 2013 at 4:51 am
Allan: “I agree with you (and Richard) that the two realities (humanmade CO2 contributions and the “CO2 lags temperature” evidence) are not mutually exclusive, at least in theory. “
Bart: They are mutually exclusive, for the reason given above.
____________
Please re-read my post Bart.
Perhaps there was a lack of clarity on my part.
Restating:
Humanmade CO2 contributions to atmospheric CO2 growth and the “CO2 lags temperature” phenomenon can both exist at the same time on Earth, at least in theory. In theory, one can overlay the other.
However, the “CO2 lags temperature” signal survives amidst all the noise of the huge CO2 seasonal flux equation, and this fact suggests to me that it is the dominant factor in this equation.
Bart says:
August 15, 2013 at 9:34 am
No! The rate of change of CO2 IS COINCIDENT WITH temperature anomaly. This naturally begets a 90 degree phase lag in absolute CO2 relative to temperature anomaly.
The changes in the rate of change of CO2 follow changes in temperature. That is observed with a lag of 6-9 months. The rate of change of CO2 is coincident with temperature anomaly. That is observed without lag. The question is which one is the real driver.
Any change in temperature will in/decrease the outflux of CO2 from the oceans, which in/decreases the rate of change in the atmosphere. But to give an instantaneous in/decrease in lockstep with the temperature change, one need an enormous change in influx or outflux, which is near impossible to obtain from deep ocean exchanges, which only change with less than 5% for 1 K in temperature change. If the extra CO2 release/absorbance comes from the ocean surface, then it is possible, but limited in time (and quantity).
See the WTF plot…
Allan MacRae says:
August 15, 2013 at 10:26 am
However, the “CO2 lags temperature” signal survives amidst all the noise of the huge CO2 seasonal flux equation, and this fact suggests to me that it is the dominant factor in this equation.
CO2 lags temperature on all time scales, except for the trend over the past 5 decades, where there is no discernable lead or lag. That is a problem for the attribution of the cause of the increase. Be it that other indications show the right direction…
Ferdinand,
You write:
“CO2 lags temperature on all time scales, except for the trend over the past 5 decades, where there is no discernable lead or lag.”
I agree with a lot of what you write. But your comment here is flatly contradicted by empirical evidence. There is a clear, easily discernable lag of CO2 behind temperature changes over the past 5 decades.
“NO!
You asserted, “A chart can only show correlation between two variables”. I explained YOUR ASSERTION IS PLAIN WRONG. And you now claim you said something else!”
Nah – we were discussing causality and the sentence you quoted was in relation to the issue of causality and correlation on which I had made several statements as part of a conversation. You can take my sentence out of context and, for example, you could claim that it is easily refuted by pointing out a graph can show the price of bananas – but that would be just telling the world something about reading comprehension. What you did in your explanation to me was go a long way around the houses back to a point I’d made several messages earlier. Now fair enough it is hard to follow the threads of discussion on a blog posts with lots of comments but that is just something we have to cope with. Back to the bottom line – to establish causality you need more than a graph showing correlation of two variables or even a lag between the two. As far as I can see you agree. If you think I should have worded what I said better then I shan’t disagree with you.
Bart,
Sorry I didn’t mean to say ∆T but meant T anomaly. Yet, I (with my limited knowledge of the subject) don’t see why that would not allow for the possibility that the changes in ∆CO2 could not be derived from a contribution of a linear anthropogenic portion and a varying (with T) natural portion.
dbstealey says:
August 15, 2013 at 11:31 am
I agree with a lot of what you write. But your comment here is flatly contradicted by empirical evidence. There is a clear, easily discernable lag of CO2 behind temperature changes over the past 5 decades.
The plot shows the lag of CO2 behind short time (1-3 years) temperature variations of 4-5 ppmv/K. But it is impossible to know which leads or lags for the 70+ increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and the 0.6 K increase in temperature over the past 50+ years. Which implies an increase of over 100 ppmv/K…
Bart says August 15, 2013 at 9:34 am “No! The rate of change of CO2 IS COINCIDENT WITH temperature anomaly. This naturally begets a 90 degree phase lag in absolute CO2 relative to temperature anomaly.”
Genuine apologies. I didn’t intend to misrepresent what you had claimed.
So you see the derivative of CO2 being coincident with the temperature anomaly from which you infer that CO2 concentration must lag behind temperature. Well I’m sure we are all committed to basic empiricism here – lets do a sanity check on that and compare a graph of CO2 concentration with the temperature anomaly. Normalised and smooth for ease of looking at http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/normalise/mean:6/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1960/normalise/mean:6
Um… the rise in temperature in the last quarter of the twentieth century didn’t precede the rise in CO2. CO2 has been a steady upwards climb (ignoring its seasonal wobbles).
Here is the same graph smoothed some more http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/normalise/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1960/normalise/mean:48
Now step back a minute and consider what mainstream climate science would say about CO2. What is inconsistent here?
OK forget CO2 and consider water vapor as a less politically charged greenhouse gas. What is the nature of the causal relationship between water vapor and temperature that we can a. infer directly from what we know about water vapor on planet Earth and b. what we’d be able to see in graphs.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 15, 2013 at 11:05 am
“The changes in the rate of change of CO2 follow changes in temperature.”
No, they are coincident. These lay right on top of each other.
“That is observed with a lag of 6-9 months.”
No, the lag in absolute CO2 from temperature is by 90 deg of phase. The time lag is frequency dependent.
“The question is which one is the real driver.”
There is no question at all. Suggesting that temperatures respond to the rate of change of CO2 is absurd.
“…which only change with less than 5% for 1 K in temperature change.”
It is a temperature dependent process, not necessarily temperature driven.
Nyq Only says:
August 15, 2013 at 12:27 pm
The fact that an integration produces a 90 deg phase delay is really, really, basic. You do not understand so you do not know what to expect to see, but none of your plots are inconsistent with this. If the derivative matches in phase (and, it does, as I have shown repeatedly), then the original quantity lags by 90 deg in phase. It is an equivalence relation – the one means the other, and you are making a spectacle of yourself.
Chris Schoneveld says:
August 15, 2013 at 11:52 am
“I…don’t see why that would not allow for the possibility that the changes in ∆CO2 could not be derived from a contribution of a linear anthropogenic portion and a varying (with T) natural portion.”
Because the varying-with-T portion already explains features for which significant influence from human inputs would cause them to deviate from observations.
Look at this plot. What do you see? You see two time series with an offset, a linear trend, and a bunch of up-and-down variation superimposed on them. In order to match those ups-and-downs, I have chosen the scaling factor for temperature to be 0.2, as you can see in the tables at the right of the page.
Now, it happens that when I use that scale factor, I also match the linear trend. When I integrate this relationship, I get a result very close to the actual observations. As I must, because the result of integration is unique, and if I match the derivative, I am going to match the integral.
Now, human emissions also have a pronounced linear trend in their rate of input (top plot here). But, I’ve already accounted for the quadratic term which will emerge in the integration from a linear trend. I have accounted for it with the temperature relationship. The only way I can fit a significant portion of the human inputs in would be to lower that scale factor of 0.2. But, if I do that, I will not longer match the variations, the ups-and-downs, in that original plot, as here.
It necessarily follows that human inputs cannot be a significant driver. The only way around it is to assume that this excellent correlation between temperature and the rate of change of CO2, especially as observed in highest accuracy measurements such as this, are mere happenstance. Personally, I consider the likelihood of such happenstance to be vanishingly small.
Nyq Only:
re your post at August 15, 2013 at 11:48 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1391078
You are allowing your dogma to blind you to the words you wrote yourself.
Please again read my post at August 15, 2013 at 3:06 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1390641
Richard
Bart, dbstealey
Bart says there is no lag, and produces a graph where the peaks lie on top of each other.
dbstealey says there is a lag and produces a graph where the peaks are offset.
How are these contradictory graphs produced. I think you need to sort this out.
What worries me most about time offsets if this graph,
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/insitu.html
which shows CO2 concentrations from widely separated areas of the world. The graphs all track each other, but with clear offsets going from north to south. These offsets are 2 or 3 years, which means that the conclusions regarding which is the chicken and which is the egg depends upon which CO2 dataset you take. A possible interpretation of the CO2 distribution is that it originates in the northern hemisphere and drifts south, which opposes the idea that the CO2 is outgassing from the southern oceans. Is there another, plausible, explanation?
jimmi,
I clicked on your link and saw this.
Do you see the problem? Instead of starting at a zero baseline, the chart begins at a high CO2 level. That is alarmism. Compare it with this John Daly chart.
See what the NOAA is doing? They are manufacturing a chart with a very scary, artificial rise, due to the offset. That is climate alarmism, and they do it all the time.
Our tax money at work — alarming the populace with scary charts. That is what should ‘worry you most’.
jimmi_the_dalek says:
August 15, 2013 at 2:55 pm
dbstealey is plotting absolute CO2. I am plotting the rate of change of CO2. dbstealey is correct – there is a lag in absolute CO2. There is no lag in rate of change of CO2, which means there necessarily is a 90 deg phase lag in absolute CO2, which is what dbstealey sees. Sorry for the confusion, but there is no contradiction. Instead, they are mutually supportive.
On your linked graph, I do not see a big difference in measured CO2 levels. The lower level lines are CH4, per the legend.
Yes, I realised that after I posted it.
I know the lower lines are CH4. What I was pointing out is that he difference in the upper lines is about 2 years worth i.e the values in Antarctica are those from Barrow displaced by two years, approximately, which is enough to affect interpretation of what any displacement means.
The only way you can see the difference between the CO2 curve and dCO2/dt that you do, is if there is a strongly periodic component – the 90 deg phase lag that you keep mentioning is only true for periodic functions (derivative of sine is cosine). I have been assuming that you would have removed the seasonal dependence before doing the analysis. Have you?
dbstealey – unlike some people around here I am not fooled by the choice of scale on graphs – I am referring to the difference between north and south.
Well I must say that Doctor Salby sparked a most interesting discussion concerning CO2 and Temperature. Go Doctor. I do hope that the folks persecuting Doc Salby get theirs as it were. Since I rather enjoy his science. He is an articulate speaker and should be given a chance to publish his science for a proper debate. Proper science would flourish if it weren’t for the actions of a bunch of dogma infused folks such as hockey stick Mann and apparently Nyq only screaming their dogma with their eyes closed and ears plugged.
v/r,
Dave Riser
jimmi_the_dalek says:
August 15, 2013 at 4:06 pm
“…which is enough to affect interpretation of what any displacement means.”
Well, it seems almost a constant bias on a yearly average basis, which of course would not manifest in the dCO2/dt – I missed it previously because it is kind of small compared to the seasonal spread, to which I have not paid a lot of attention.
I don’t think I could really say more without looking at the individual data sets, but this harkens back to what I said earlier that these are somewhat crude, bulk measurements, and a truly perfect agreement between them and a simple model should not be expected in general. I am actually amazed that the agreement is as good as it is – practically perfect, as I have suggested. It is that near-perfection which convinces me that this indicates a very strong and fundamental governing dynamic.
“The only way you can see the difference between the CO2 curve and dCO2/dt that you do, is if there is a strongly periodic component…”
Well, any non-trivial, information rich time series, anyway. You can calculate a sort of average delay for any particular interval by picking out the dominant somewhat periodic formation, as I did above.
“I have been assuming that you would have removed the seasonal dependence before doing the analysis.”
That is the purpose of the integer X 12 month averaging which you can see in the WFT plots I have shown.
Allan MacRae – impressive web site. At first, I thought it said “oils and sexpert”, and was afraid I might call up some freaky, new-age site that might not be safe for work 😉
Bart, Thanks, you convinced me. Now, how do you respond to Engelbeen’s conclusion that in that case we have to assume a CO2 “increase of over 100 ppmv/K”
Thank you Bart for your kind comments regarding Oil Sands Expert .com
I was 37 when I co-initiated the move to new Tax terms for the Canadian Oilsands, and 41 when I initiated the move to new Royalty terms, so my average age was 39. These two initiative, along with SAGD in-situ recovery technology, were the key factors that revitalized the moribund Canadian oilsands industry and the Canadian economy, now the strongest in the G8. So I guess it is true that we do our best work before the age of 40.
To my knowledge, I also initiated in early January 2008 the still-heretical notion that dCO2/dt changed ~contemporaneously with temperature and therefore CO2 lagged temperature by about 9 months, and thus CO2 could not primarily drive temperature.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
I later learned from Richard Courtney that others (Kuo et al 1990, Keeling et al 1995) had noted the lag but apparently not the dCO2/dt relationship with T. Roy Spencer was kind enough to acknowledge my contribution at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/25/double-whammy-friday-roy-spencer-on-how-oceans-are-driving-co2/
I am fairly sure this concept was new because of the very hostile reaction it received from BOTH sides of the CAGW debate. All the warmists and most skeptics completely rejected it.
First I was just plain wrong – the dCO2/dt vs T relationship was merely a spurious correlation“.
Then I was grudgingly admitted to be correct, but the resulting ~9 month CO2-after-T lag was dismissed as a “feedback effect”. This remains the counter-argument of the global warming alarmists, apparently the best they’ve got – a faith-based “Cargo Cult” rationalization, imo.
Now we are embroiled in the “mass balance argument” as ably debated by Ferdinand and Richard, and I frankly think this is quite worthwhile. To me, this is the cutting edge of climate science, and it is interesting.
I also infer that some parties, notably Jan Veizer at the University of Ottawa, had gotten almost this far some time ago.
Intellectually, I think the alleged global warming crisis is dead in the water, although politically it sails on, a ghost ship with the Euros and Obama at the helm. Not to forget our own Dalton McGuinty in Ontario – now a “have-not province” collecting transfer payments , our national welfare scheme for failed economies.
The global warming alarmists have squandered more than a trillion dollars of scarce global resources on foolish “alternative energy” schemes that we condemned in writing in 2002. We said then that “the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels” and this is now proven to be true. The economies of the European countries and their fellow-travellers have been hobbled by green energy nonsense, and millions are suffering and thousands are dying each winter from excessively high energy costs.
I am concerned, I hope incorrectly, about imminent global cooling, which we also predicted in a Calgary Herald article in 2002. I really hope to be wrong about this prediction, because global cooling could cause great suffering. Our society has been so obsessed with the non-existent global warming crisis that we are woefully unprepared for any severe global cooling, like the Maunder or Dalton Minimums circa 1700 and 1800.
Solar activity has crashed in SC24, and although our friend Leif says not to worry, I continue to do so.
Best regards to all, Allan