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:
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jimmi, aka “the artful dodger” – kindly answer the question.
Bart – you may indeed be correct. We just lack clear evidence. There could be a humanmade component AND a natural component to the recent increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. However, as I keep pointing out, the humanmade component does not seem to leave any signature in yearly, seasonal or even daily data. Ferdinand only infers the humanmade component by indirect means, which Richard ably disputes.
Bart says:
August 22, 2013 at 4:16 pm
Wow, only one day off and again a flurry of messages back and forth…
No, not only temporarily. There is a constant flow of new CO2 coming in, and every new increment of CO2 added to the system is subject to additional outgassing due to the rise in temperature
Bart, this is really basic process knowledge.
Consider what is upwelling by the oceans: a certain amount of water with a certain concentration of carbon. For the temperature at the surface, that gives a certain pressure of CO2 at the water side. The difference with the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is what drives the CO2 flux between ocean and atmosphere. An increase of the concentration of the upwelling increases the pCO2(aq) at the upwelling side, which increases the influx. That increases the pCO2 in the atmosphere which decreases the influx and increases the outflux at the sink side. That ends with an increased throughput and a limited increase in the atmosphere (halve the increase of the pCO2(aq) at the upwelling side) with an e-fold decay rate of ~10 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_incr.jpg
Something similar happens with a temperature increase where an increase of 1 K gives ~16 ppmv extra in the atmosphere and no increase in throughput:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
The combination of both is simply additive, not multiplicative, as the influence of concentration on the temperature influence is limited:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_incr_temp.jpg
That implies that the influence of the ~0.6 K temperature increase of the ocean surfaces over the past 50 years did give a maximum of 10 ppmv increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, whatever the influence of an increase in upwelling (for which there is no proof).
richardscourtney says:
August 23, 2013 at 4:42 am
“Why do you think those graphs show that?”
As I said, coherence.
Richard,
Which graph shows the best coherence:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2.jpg
or this one:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2.jpg
where changes in temperature of about halve the scale have little effect on CO2 levels, but the full scale change over time would have an enormous influence on the CO2 level (over 100 ppmv/K), not seen on any time scale, including the MWP-LIA temperature change…
What we can learn from the temperature-increase graph is that there are two (near) independent processes at work: the short term, limited influence of temperature changes on CO2 changes and the trend over the past decades.
If the trend is caused by temperature or by human emissions, that is the current round of debate, but for what I know of the earth’s processes and the available observations, the biosphere as a whole is a net sink for CO2 and the oceans can’t be the cause, as the temperature increase over the past 5 decades is only good for 10 ppmv, per Henry’s law, of the 70+ which is observed…
Allan MacRae says: August 23, 2013 at 3:52 am
“Sorry Nyq but I do accept your argument. You effectively say “We KNOW that CO2 drives Earth’s temperature…”[etc]
Goodness Allan, if you are going to knock down strawmen you could at least make up ones with some more content than that. What I said we knew (many messages ago) was that Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas and so we know of a plausible mechanism by which higher levels of CO2 could lead to higher temperatures. We also know (and the main players in this argument seem to agree) that there really have been anthropogenic emissions.
As for “We KNOW that CO2 drives Earth’s temperature” I have argued that in there are many cases of the exact opposite – temperature drives CO2 when left to its own devices. Indeed the fact that we can find so many cases of that at time periods or time scales where the anthropogenic effects would be minimal and yet find CO2 not being driven by temperature when we look at a time scale and time period with significant anthropogenic emissions is one coincidence too many.
This all fits with what we know – without something forcing an increase in CO2 then we should find CO2 following temperature. Non-anthropogenic effects could cause an non-temperature dependent increase in CO2 but those effects would be relatively unusual and, for a parsimony of science perspective, unnecessarily complicating the explanation. Something is causing a non-temperature dependent roughly linear growth in CO2. Bart’s work, ironically, demonstrates that this linear growth is not determined by temperature. So does dbstealey’s. In Bart’s model a coefficient has to be included THAT CANNOT be found from the relationship of the differential of CO2 and the temperature anomaly.
There seems to be a hidden assumption (not made by Bart but apparently by some of the people cheering him on) that it can be either that CO2 never drives temperature or that CO2 drives temperature and that the mechanics of both must be mutually exclusive. We can put our graphs aside and check, like good empiricists/skeptics, and see that this is not the case. We know that temperature increases can lead to an increase in CO2 and we know of many ways this can occur. We know that an increase in CO2 can, in some circumstances, lead to an increase in temperature.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 23, 2013 at 12:08 pm
“Bart, this is really basic process knowledge.”
Yes, it is. And, you have got it wrong. Your tortured logic is a sight to behold. According to it, the oceans could become positively fizzy, and atmospheric levels would barely budge. Fail.
Allan MacRae says: August 23, 2013 at 10:19 am
“However, as I keep pointing out, the humanmade component does not seem to leave any signature in yearly, seasonal or even daily data.”
Why would you expect it to show a signature at those time scales? The increase we are looking at is a steady additional amount of CO2 over time. A significant amount but small compared to the scale of the carbon cycle. It is not unlike saying we can’t see the temperature trend by looking at the daily up and down in temperature in my garden- of course not because it gets a lot colder at night than it does in the day at a scale greater than temperature trend in question.
Or lets step away from climate – I could look at my mass and weigh myself regularly and determine that a major component of my mass on an hour by hour basis or even a daily basis is associated with changes in the amount of water. I’d be mad to therefore declare that my steady weight gain had nothing to do with the mismatch between the kilojoules consumed and the kilojoules used.
Allan MacRae says:
August 23, 2013 at 10:19 am
Ferdinand only infers the humanmade component by indirect means, which Richard ably disputes.
Allan,
My work was mainly developing chemical processes invented by smart people like Bart from laboratory scale to factory scale. I have learned a lot about the differences between theory and practice, like mechanical and time scale differences causing lots of troubles…
Solving problems in many cases used to be much faster not by looking at the different possibilities, but by eliminating the impossibilities. So it is -again- in this case: it is near impossible to prove which is the cause of the CO2 increase over the past decades: temperature or human emissions. But it is possible to eliminate the impossibilities.
– Vegetation is not the cause, as the oxygen balance (and d13C balance) prove, the whole biosphere is a net sink for CO2. The earth is “greening”.
– The oceans are not the main cause, as the temperature increase over the past decades gives a maximum of 10 ppmv increase, while there is an observed increase of 70 ppmv. Further, more release from the oceans would increase the 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere, but we observe a decrease.
If the only two existing (relative) fast natural sources/sinks are not the cause of the increase, which other natural source then can be the cause?
Bart says:
August 23, 2013 at 1:12 pm
Yes, it is. And, you have got it wrong. Your tortured logic is a sight to behold. According to it, the oceans could become positively fizzy, and atmospheric levels would barely budge. Fail.
Bart, you are a very smart guy in theory, but you have obviously no idea what an increase in temperature does in the ocean-atmosphere system. If you were right, then shaking a bottle of Coke or increasing its temperature from the fridge to ambient would always lead to explosions of the bottle, as there is no influence of the increased pressure under the cork on the outflux of CO2 from the liquid…
Richard,
I think I am in a different timezone (Australia) to most of you, so my answer may take a while. However as a teaser, I am going to produce some graphs which deconstruct the process by which dbstealey’s graph was produced. They will show that “CO2 follows temperature” is a bit oversimplified to say the least. This will take a while.
Allan,
I am not evading your question, I am saying your question cannot be answered. The reason for this may be clearer when I produce some graphs.
Bart says:
August 21, 2013 at 11:46 am
If upwelling waters continually pump CO2 into the system, then the waters will trend upward in CO2 content. Part of that upward trend will outgas to the atmosphere. Atmospheric concentration will keep rising as the CO2 rich waters diffuse into the surface system over time.
Bart you need to learn some physics, apparently mass balance is not the only principle you don’t understand, read up on continuity. For every cubic meter of upwelling seawater there’s a cubic meter of downwelling seawater carrying absorbed CO2 into the depths.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 23, 2013 at 1:37 pm
Ferdinand – think what happens if you have a fizzy drink in the refrigerator, and you take it out and set it on your countertop. It will begin to outgas and, eventually, it will reach equilibrium with the ambient temperature and stop.
Now, assume you have numerous such drinks in the refrigerator and, every time the last one you took out starts to lose its fizz, you take out another one and place it on the counter. Now, you have a constant source of outgassing to the air in your home.
Now, while doing this, you reach up and tweak your thermostat a little higher. As your home heats up, the original glass starts to outgas again, as do all the others, and the amount of additional outgassing is proportional not only to the temperature, but to the number of glasses you have on the counter.
Each new glass added on the counter increases the amount of additional outgassing you get from raising the temperature.
It is the same way here. This is a dynamic system, and there is a continuous source of new CO2 rich waters surfacing all the time. As you increase the temperature, you accelerate the amount of CO2 outgassing.
This is very simple. Think it through, and try to do so dispassionately, and avoid the blinders you put on because of how you want the system to behave.
Phil. says:
August 23, 2013 at 2:33 pm
Another mind-numbingly stupid comment from Phil. How do you manage to breathe and type at the same time?
Where does the water upwell, Phil? Where does it downwell? What possible physical reason can you advance which requires the two quantities to be the same at all times? (hint: none)
Bart says: August 23, 2013 at 3:00 pm
“Another mind-numbingly stupid comment from Phil. How do you manage to breathe and type at the same time?”
Well now I’m jealous. How come Phil gets better insults than me?
“What possible physical reason can you advance which requires the two quantities to be the same at all times? (hint: none)”
To preempt the lame response I realize I have unfortunately allowed an entryway, let me rephrase that:
What possible physical reason can you advance which requires the two quantities to have the same CO2 concentration at all times? (hint: none)
Nyq Only says:
August 23, 2013 at 3:04 pm
You’re an amateur compared to Phil.
Bart says: August 23, 2013 at 3:10 pm
“You’re an amateur compared to Phil.”
Yay! 🙂
Bart says:
August 23, 2013 at 2:56 pm
Bart, the current upwelling of CO2 near the equator is estimated some 40 GtC. That is the result of a continuous upwelling of deep ocean waters. That is your continuity.
At the other side, there is a continuous uptake of 40 GtC into sinking waters. That is the other continuity.
If there is no change in temperature and no change in concentration in the upwelling waters, then everything is in dynamic equilibrium and there is no change in atmospheric CO2 levels.
Now the temperature of the ocean surface suddenly increases everywhere with 1 K. That gives an increase of the CO2 pressure in the oceans of 16 microatm, as well as at the hot side as at the cold side, (near) independent of the concentration. That leads to more continuous outgassing, as you said and I agree, and it leads to less continuous uptake at the other side. Both lead to an increase of CO2, and thus an increase of the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere.
What you completely fail to see is that the increase of pCO2 in the atmosphere reduces the outgassing at the hot places and increases the uptake of CO2 at the cold places, thus opposing the initial disturbance. That reduces the increase in the atmosphere until a new dynamic equilibrium is reached at exactly the same partial pressure increase in the atmosphere as caused by the temperature increase in the ocean surface. That is thus at 16 microatm or ~16 ppmv increase.
The CO2 fluxes between oceans and atmosphere are directly proportional to the partial pressure differences between the oceans and the atmosphere. Thus any change of the CO2 level in the atmosphere has the same effect as any change in pCO2 of the ocean surface.
The impact of an increase in concentration at the upwelling places is (near) completely independent of the impact of a simultaneous temperature increase. Both are additive and both lead to an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere until a new equilibrium is reached at a level only dependent of the combined effect of both on the pCO2 of the ocean surface.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 23, 2013 at 3:45 pm
“What you completely fail to see is that the increase of pCO2 in the atmosphere reduces the outgassing at the hot places and increases the uptake of CO2 at the cold places, thus opposing the initial disturbance.”
No, I have not failed to see that. It is simply not a description of the scenario I have put forth.
In my analogy, that is what happens with the first fizzy drink you placed on the counter. But then, you reach in the refrigerator and pull out another one. It will eventually reach an equilibrium as well. But then, you pull out another. And, another. And, another.
Just so, in the scenario I am talking about, there is a continuous flow of CO2 rich water coming to the surface. Each new quantity of rising water releases its CO2 into the atmosphere in proportion to its partial pressure differential, and that differential is temperature dependent. This produces a temperature dependent pumping action into the atmosphere of the form
dCO2/dt = k*(T – Teq)
This is a dynamic flow problem, and your static analysis is inapplicable.
Bart says:
August 23, 2013 at 4:18 pm
Just so, in the scenario I am talking about, there is a continuous flow of CO2 rich water coming to the surface. Each new quantity of rising water releases its CO2 into the atmosphere in proportion to its partial pressure differential, and that differential is temperature dependent.
You completely ignore that the increase in the atmosphere reduces the partial pressure differential, thus reducing the release of CO2 from each new quantity of rising waters into the atmosphere…
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 23, 2013 at 4:29 pm
“You completely ignore that the increase in the atmosphere reduces the partial pressure differential, thus reducing the release of CO2 from each new quantity of rising waters into the atmosphere…”
By an insignificant amount, just as placing a fizzy drink on your counter and letting it go flat does not generally prevent the next fizzy drink you place on the counter from going flat, too.
Bart says:
August 23, 2013 at 4:34 pm
By an insignificant amount, just as placing a fizzy drink on your counter and letting it go flat does not generally prevent the next fizzy drink you place on the counter from going flat, too.
The Coke in your bottle is filled with several bar CO2 at ambient temperature. The ambient air is at 0.0004 bar or 400 microatm CO2. So when left open, the several bar in the Coke liquid will go down to 0.0004 bar, whatever the temperature of that moment. That is a one-way process until equilibrium is reached. An atmospheric change in this case has little effect on the total amount of CO2 released from the liquid.
The oceans at the upwelling places have a measured pCO2 of maximum 750 microatm. Or a sea-air difference of 350 microatm. That drives the continuous outgassing of the continuous upwelling.
A temperature increase of 1 K increases the local pCO2 with ~16 microatm, thus increases the pressure difference ánd the continuous outgassing with 4.5%.
But an “insignificant” increase of 16 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere will drive the pressure difference back to 350 microatm, thus decreasing the outgassing back to what it was before the temperature increase…
That is a two-way process (in fact a four-way process, as at the other side of the earth the sink places also act on pressure differences which are influenced both by temperature/concentration in the ocean surface and concentration in the atmosphere), where a change in the atmosphere is as effective on the fluxes as a change in the oceans.
Some comments on graphs.
First on of the big picture. Graph1 displays the CO2 dependence from 1958 to the present, including the monthly numbers showing the seasonal dependence, the numbers averaged over 12 month periods, and a trend line. As expected the overall trend is up, by approximately 1.5ppm/year and, as seen from the curvature of the line, the increase is accelerating.
Graph2 is the one quoted frequently here to claim that “CO2 follows temperature”. It has several features but the first thing to notice is that the CO2 data in this graph looks nothing like any part of the main trend shown in graph1. So what is it?
Graph3 just shows the CO2 part of graph2 by itself to make it clearer. The isolate function in WFT takes the monthly values, calculates a mean centred on that month, then subtracts the mean from the original value. WFT comments that this just leaves ‘the noise’ though it is possible that the ‘noise’ contains useful information. In this case the mean is taken over a 60 month period. It would be possible to use a different period, for example, a 120 month period merges some of the detail to produce fewer but broader peaks. The graph also contains an averaging over 12 month period to remove the seasonal dependence.
The graph shows a lot of short lived peaks 1 or 2 years in width. The peaks and troughs are small compared to the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, they are also smaller than the seasonal variation, which is 6 or 7 ppm, but not enormously smaller than the average annual increase which is about 1.5 ppm/year. The positive and negative regions of the graph do not represent periods where the CO2 is rising and falling – they show periods where there is a bit more CO2 than the longer term trend would suggest, and periods where it is still rising, but there is a little less than the longer term trend. However they cannot be used to explain the longer term rise, because they sum to zero. The total effect of all those fluctuations is to contribute absolutely nothing to the net rise in CO2 (from 315 ppm to 397 ppm) over the period of the graph. It follows that whatever those fluctuations represent, they cannot explain anything about the cause of the net rise, and conversely, whatever is the cause of the net rise, it will not be found by looking at this graph.
Why is it said that the graph shows that “CO2 follows temperature”. Go back to graph2 with the temperature anomalies. This shows that (in most cases) a temperature anomaly peak is followed a little while later by a peak in CO2. However as already pointed out, the peaks and troughs sum to zero, so the graph cannot be used to claim “CO2 follows temperature” except on the time scale of the peaks themselves i.e a few years. It says nothing about the longer term – and nothing means that it also says nothing about “temperature follows CO2” either. Besides there is an alternative explanation. Note that every time there is a CO2 peak following an anomaly peak, it must be the case that the CO2 peak sits over a period where the temperature is falling a little. Furthermore the troughs in the CO2 record correspond to points where the temperature is rising a bit. So how about this – instead of the usual claim namely that the anomaly peak stimulates some source of CO2 production to produce more Out-gassing!) , it is equally plausible that slight rises in temperature make a sink more effective, so less CO2, and slight drops in temperature make a sink less effective, so more CO2. The obvious possible sink would be the growth in vegetation, more growth in warmer years, less growth in slightly cooler years.
In summary graph2 tells you nothing at all about the long term trend and its cause, nor does it support unambiguously the idea that temperature peaks stimulate a source of CO2, because it could equally well be temperature changes modulating a sink.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
August 24, 2013 at 1:35 am
Ferdinand think! If rising CO2 concentrations of the oceans cannot drive atmospheric levels up because it then starts pushing down faster, then nothing can raise the CO2 level. Even your assumed influx of human produced CO2 would just create faster downwelling.
This is farcical. Get a grip. You are rationalizing with specious reasoning in a vain attempt to keep your preferred narrative afloat.
jimmi_the_dalek says:
August 24, 2013 at 4:15 am
But, BOTH the variation AND the trend ARE THE SAME here. Human inputs also have a trend (top plot). There is no room to fit additional trend in the first plot. Ergo, there is no room for them. The temperature dependent process explains all, and human inputs have little impact, QED.
Bart says:
August 23, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Where does the water upwell, Phil? Where does it downwell? What possible physical reason can you advance which requires the two quantities to be the same at all times? (hint: none)
As I told you it’s the Principle of Continuity, that upwelling water has to come from somewhere!
What a troll you are Bart.