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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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
Bart says:
August 15, 2013 at 12:40 pm
There is no question at all. Suggesting that temperatures respond to the rate of change of CO2 is absurd.
I am not suggesting that, it is the opposite: CO2 rate of change responds to the rate of change of temperature, which is clear for the 1998 El Niño episode
The integral over the period 1960 – 2013 is 0.4 K temperature increase. With the short term response of ~4 ppmv/K that gives an increase of 1.6 ppmv. With the long term response of CO2 to temperature of ~8 ppmv/K, that gives 3.2 ppmv extra. The rest of the 70 ppmv increase over that period is from human emissions…
David Riser says: August 15, 2013 at 5:14 pm
“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.”
Good point – after all I’ve been so blinded by dogma I haven’t even been able to see any of your comments on this post where you offered any scientific arguments at all (rather than name calling).
jimmi_the_dalek says: August 15, 2013 at 2:55 pm
“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.”
dbstealey’s is the change in CO2, Bart’s is the rate of change. Actually dbstealy’s should help Bart identify what it is that he things should lag.
Bart says: August 15, 2013 at 12:56 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.”
Obviously I should believe your conclusions rather than my lying eyes (apparently blinded by dogma – bad dogma! naughty). Joking aside I am trying to help. Think through what I’ve shown you. You conclude from your graph that “phase lag in absolute CO2 relative to temperature anomaly”. Now that is easy to check because we really can look at absolute CO2 and the temperature anomaly – as I showed you. When you do you don’t see what you claim. Hmmmmmmmm.
So what to do? Has mathematics gone horribly wrong? No. Have you misunderstood what your graph is showing you? Yes – as several people have explained. So the question is not whether I’m blinded by dogma – after all I’m not saying very much – but whether you can debug your reasoning. You seem like a smart person and I’m betting you can.
Chris Schoneveld says:
August 15, 2013 at 11:23 pm
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”
You need to know some background about our years long discussions…
All that Bart has done is interpretating one nice fit of temperature and CO2 increaase. From that he concludes that a sustained small difference in temperature against a baseline is responsible for both the short term and longer term (over 5 decades) increase in CO2. That is also the claim of Murry Salby.
While that is clearly right for the short term (1-3) years variability, it is impossible for the longer term trend, because that is violating near all observations over the past 50 years. The “match” of the trend is pure coincidence based on an arbitrary baseline.
The only possible source for such an increase are the oceans. Vegetation is a net sink for CO2, as is proven by the oxygen balance (the “greening earth”):
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
The ocean surface is a proven sink for CO2: DIC (dissolved inorganic carbon) increased over time in ratio with the atmosphere at a rate of ~10% of the increase, due to the buffer factor (Revelle factor).
Thus the only possible real source are the deep oceans.
That also means that the influx (and outflux) of CO2 must be mimicking human emissions at an incredible constant ratio.
From a process view, as the net result of all natural and human flows is a net sink of ~half the human emissions, that means that the near 3 times increase of the sink rate over time and the same increase of human emissions must be balanced by a near threefold increase in turnover of total CO2 inputs and outputs (the behaviour of human and natural CO2 is identical, except for some small influence over different isotopes):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
But lots of empirical observations only show a slowdown of the residence time of ~5.3 years, not a near threefold shortening over recent decades, which is consistent with a rather stable turnover in a growing reservoir.
Further, an increase of the turnover from the deep oceans increases the 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere, while human emissions lower the ratio. The observed ratio shows a steady decline, partly diluted by ~40 GtC CO2 circulation from the deep oceans. If the oceans were a huge increasing source/sink over the past 50 years, then the ratio would go up:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_increase_290.jpg
Besides other observations, a constant output rate from an increase (or decrease) in temperature is physically impossible, as the extra output from the deep oceans at the upwelling places (and the decrease of input at the downwelling places) gives more CO2 in the atmosphere, but that increase in atmospheric pressure reduces further releases of CO2 from the oceans. An increase of ~16 ppmv in the atmosphere is sufficient to bring the fluxes back to what they were before a temperature increase of 1 K.
So far my pleed…
Ferdinand Engelbeen and Chris Schoneveld:
In hope of aiding clarity, I write to make a comment on the post by Ferdinand at August 16, 2013 at 2:27 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1391812
I think the most important point in his post is his statement saying
I share that opinion, but it is important note that it is only an opinion.
And, as is his usual want, Ferdinand bolsters his view with an interpretation of evidence. In this case
Well, yes, but the oceans contain much biota, too.
However, I agree with Ferdinand that the atmospheric CO2 concentration rise must be an oceanic effect if temperature is – as Bart claims – the causal variable. But this says nothing concerning whether Ferdinand or Bart is right because it does NOT exclude either of their interpretations.
As I said, the rise may result from a change in the equilibrium state of the carbon cycle. In that case, the predominant change is probably alteration to the exchange rate of CO2 between the ocean surface layer and the deep ocean. Biota in the ocean surface layer will ‘process’ CO2 at rates affected by CO2 concentration, nutrient supply, temperature, and pH. This makes Henry’s Law inapplicable, and dead biota transfer carbon to the deep ocean.
I hope this helps.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
August 16, 2013 at 3:50 am
Where we largely agree, here a small disagreement:
Biota in the ocean surface layer will ‘process’ CO2 at rates affected by CO2 concentration, nutrient supply, temperature, and pH. This makes Henry’s Law inapplicable, and dead biota transfer carbon to the deep ocean.
Compared to land vegetation, CO2 is abundantly present in the oceans, mainly as bicarbonates (which are used for the shells of cocclithophores). That is not the limiting factor in seawater. In general the limited availability of nutritients like iron are the limiting factors.
Further, any increase in temperature will speed up plant growth in the oceans, thus increasing uptake of CO2 and carbon dropout (organic and inorganic) into the deep oceans, while Bart’s theory shows the opposite, thus completely depending on Henry’s Law from an increase in temperature and upwelling…
Ferdinand, on the one hand I have difficulty is accepting coincidance as an explanation for the extraordinary ∆CO2-T anomaly match, on the other hand I have difficulty in accepting that the tiny ∆CO2 signature and its correlation with T anomaly remains preserved in the huge sinks and sources (both terrestrial and oceanic) that control the global CO2 budget.
Allan MacRae and Bart,
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
“…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…” makes perfectly good sense.
SST and air temperature are linked as has been shown time and again at WUWT.
Henry’s law shows that as ocean temperature increases the oceans will out gas CO2 or as the temperature decreases oceans will absorb CO2.
FROM WIKI:
Finally Gerard Roe and Nigel Calder before him also figured out the right parameter to look at was derivatives in relation to the Milankovitch cycles.
As Luboš Motl put it
In chemistry we call this relationship the Rate of Reaction
As I said Rate of Reaction make perfectly good sense. This type of leap in understanding is why those outside a narrow discipline can see the answer to a problem that has been puzzling the ‘Experts’ who were never trained in anything but their narrow field of expertise. The knowledge, widely known in another field is not only unknown but not even thought of by these ‘Experts.’
It is also why showing all data and your method is so important when publishing.
Thank you for your kind comments Gail.
For those who are interested, my initial data and analyses were included at the time of publication in January 2008 in Excel at
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRaeFig5b.xls
The paper was published in January 2008 at
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
The original critique of my paper occurred in February 2008 at
http://climateaudit.org/2008/02/12/data-smoothing-and-spurious-correlation/
and was revisited in 2013 at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/30/the-pitfalls-of-data-smoothing/
Even though the process was a bit rough, it was fast, honest and transparent. I suggest that this publishing process is far superior to the pal-reviewed nonsense that has been the standard for Nature and Science in recent decades (especially with regards to papers in climate science by the hokey team).