Towards a theory of climate

Marvellous stuff from the Noble Lord as usual. On the subject of betting, I suggest that the only way one can get a drama green to make a prediction is by the implication inherent in a wager and sceptics should employ this method, within their means, to winkle warmists out of their holes.

I think Salby’s theory is very interesting, but I am a little – shall we say – sceptical.
So, is there observational evidence, e.g. in the ice cores, that supports the theory?
The ice cores clearly show that CO2 follows temperature, but this is over thousands of years. As the mechanism has a delay of around 800 years (oceans absorbing/emitting CO2) it only works over thousands of years, and could not explain the modern CO2 increase, which has happened over 100 years.
So is there evidence in the ice cores or elsewhere of CO2 rises being caused by temperature rises on the scale of a century or so? How about the MWP and Roman warm periods? If they don’t show any rises on this scale then it’s unlikely the theory could explain the 20th century CO2 rise.
Having said that, it would be wonderful if he were right. It would mean that not only the temperature rise was natural, but the very thing blamed for the rise was also natural.
Chris

“If these four groups are correct, and if Professor Salby is also correct, one can begin to sketch out a respectable theory of climate.”
I think they are correct and have taken an initial stab at how it could all fit together whilst obeying the basic laws of physics.
Note that this is a conceptual rather than quantitative description but good enough as a starting point for further investigation:
1) Solar activity increases, reducing ozone amounts above the tropopause especially above the poles.
2) The stratosphere cools. The number of chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere increases due to the increased solar effects with faster destruction of ozone.
3) The tropopause rises, especially above the poles altering the equator to pole height gradient.
4) The polar high pressure cells shrink and weaken accompanied by increasingly positive Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations.
5) The air circulation systems in both hemispheres move poleward and the ITCZ moves further north of the equator as the speed of the hydrological cycle increases due to the cooler stratosphere increasing the temperature differential between stratosphere and surface.
6) The main cloud bands move more poleward to regions where solar insolation is less intense and total global albedo declines via a reduction in global cloud cover due to shorter lines of air mass mixing.
7) More solar energy reaches the surface and in particular the oceans as the subtropical high pressure cells expand.
8) Less rain falls on ocean surfaces allowing them to warm more.
9) Solar energy input to the oceans increases but not all is returned to the air. A portion enters the thermohaline circulation to embark on a journey of 1000 to 1500 years. A pulse of slightly warmer water has entered the ocean circulation.
10) The strength of warming El Nino events increases relative to cooling La Nina events and the atmosphere warms.
11) Solar activity passes its peak and starts to decline.
12) Ozone levels start to recover. The stratosphere warms.
13) The tropopause falls, especially above the poles altering the equator to pole height gradient.
14) The polar high pressure cells expand and intensify producing increasingly negative Arctic and Antarctic Oscillations.
15) The air circulation systems in both hemispheres move back equatorward and the ITCZ moves nearer the equator as the speed of the hydrological cycle decreases due to the warming stratosphere reducing the temperature differential between stratosphere and surface.
16) The main cloud bands move more equatorward to regions where insolation is more intense and total global albedo increases once more due to longer lines of air mass mixing.
17) Less solar energy reaches the surface and in particular the oceans as the subtropical high pressure cells contract.
18) More rain falls on ocean surfaces further cooling them.
19) Solar energy input to the oceans decreases
20) The strength of warming El Nino events decreases relative to cooling La Nina events and the atmosphere cools.
21) It should be borne in mind that internal ocean oscillations substantially modulate the solar induced effects by inducing a similar atmospheric response but from the bottom up (and primarily from the equator) sometimes offsetting and sometimes compounding the top down (and primarily from the poles) solar effects but over multi-decadal periods of time the solar influence becomes clear enough in the historical records. The entire history of climate change is simply a record of the constant interplay between the top down solar and bottom up oceanic influences with any contribution from our emissions being indistinguishable from zero.
We saw the climate zones shift latitudinally as much as 1000 miles in certain regions between the Mediaeval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. It would surprise me if our emissions have shifted them by as much as a mile.

Well said your Lordship; CO2-AGW is pretty near zero because of something totally missed by Climate Alchemists; ditto the Methane Bomb. It’s all to do with the negative feedback from clouds.
Cloud and ice albedo increase is likely very soon; the real GHE. -0.5 K in 5 years is feasible. So is -1.5 K in 35 years. Trouble is, Carl Sagan got his aerosol optical physics wrong and that begat the claim that the GHE is lapse rate**. Then the alchemists made a whole load of mistakes getting the ‘positive feedback’ cheat going. The real AGW is polluted clouds have lower albedo.
I sympathise with the alchemists because unlike engineers like me, they were misled by MODTRAN. This predicts OLR quite well but they didn’t understand that the 16 deg C surface radiation field boundary condition is that in equilibrium with OLR = 238.5 W/m^2 for the present OLR spectral distribution, no matter whether the heat is convected or radiated.
Any new equilibrium has a different OLR spectral distribution which satisfies external irreversible thermodynamics requirements. Also, the model predicts radiation fields at a plane but the two-stream approximation is based on temperature not energy flux, which can be any combination of convection and net radiation.
**At the last glacial minimum, the GHE was ~2 K. It’s currently ~11 K. This is because the equilibrium radiative temperature with Space for no clouds or ice would be 4 to 5 deg. C. The -18 deg C only applies for present albedo. The 33 K/11 K = 3 positive feedback is a mistake.

Here is the graph that shows GMST driving the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/compress:12/derivative/from:1979/normalise/plot/uah/compress:12/normalise

Chris Wright says:
November 10, 2013 at 3:54 am
I think Salby’s theory is very interesting, but I am a little – shall we say – sceptical.
So, is there observational evidence, e.g. in the ice cores, that supports the theory?
The ice cores clearly show that CO2 follows temperature, but this is over thousands of years. As the mechanism has a delay of around 800 years (oceans absorbing/emitting CO2) it only works over thousands of years, and could not explain the modern CO2 increase, which has happened over 100 years.
So is there evidence in the ice cores or elsewhere of CO2 rises being caused by temperature rises on the scale of a century or so? How about the MWP and Roman warm periods? If they don’t show any rises on this scale then it’s unlikely the theory could explain the 20th century CO2 rise.
Having said that, it would be wonderful if he were right. It would mean that not only the temperature rise was natural, but the very thing blamed for the rise was also natural.
Chris
—————————————————————————————————————
Yes this also “concerned” me. But is this not just a question of resolution. Ice cores can only point to very long-term changes as they “average” or smooth out shorter term variations like those that have and are occurring in the 20th and 21 Century.

CMoB:
In due course Professor Salby will publish in the reviewed literature his research on the time-integral of temperature as the driver of CO2 concentration change. So, too, I hope, will the groups working on the time-integral of total solar irradiance as the driver of temperature change.
===
He’s been saying this ‘just about be to be published’ for two or three years now. The story is wearing thin.
I’m very interesting in seeing his work. The question of T vs CO2 is crucial and has never been properly assessed.
If he is being obstructed in certain journals he needs to go public with it any way. If there is anything to his work he is playing to warmists game by delaying getting this seen and verified.
I know Jo Nova has been encouraging him to publish too, the more he waits, the more it looks like he knows it will no stand up to scrutiny.
Let’s have it !

[i]In the meantime, I hope that those who predict a sharp, near-term fall in global temperature are wrong. Cold is a far bigger killer than warmth.[/i]
I can think of an even bigger killer than cold: tyrannical governments. I’ll take the cold because:
* It will wake the world up to the Watermelon tyrants, who will be disgraced and kicked out
* The cost of energy will drop again, to keep us warm in the colder climate
* Food will be cheaper; farmers will simply adapt their crops to suit the cold, but we won’t be subsidising stupid biofuels
* The cost of EVERYTHING will be less, due to no more tax-funding of stupid Green projects
* The Third World might just stand a chance of industrialising and lifting themselves out of poverty
Aye, give me the cold scenario ANY day.

Monckton complains:
So far only one troll has surfaced, saying he is dismayed at my calling Scotland’s daft wee parliament Scotland’s daft wee parliament.
Response:
As I said, you may not like it, but unlike you it is elected and reflects the will of the people of Scotland.You seem to want power returned to the UK, via UKIP, but are vehemently opposed to the people of Scotland having a say in self determination. Do I detect some cognitive dissonance there? By the way, just because I point out a truth does not make me a troll, annoying maybe, but tough. You utilise this site to campaign for a for your own right wing masters in UKIP, then whine when someone calls you to task on it. When you are in a hole, stop digging.
Monckton continues
Finally, the troll asks by whom I was elected to the House of Lords. I was elected by a Higher Authority.
Response:
Ah, I see, Monckton answers only to his God, who blessed us mere mortals by placing him on this earth. Some may contest that Monckton , some may even say it was an accident of birth which gives rather smaller mandate for governing than being elected by your fellow citizens. I believe in common with many that I would rather be governed by politicians I have a say in electing rather than those who govern by accident of birth or war. ( Please don’t moan about EU commissioners, I did not vote for Cameron but I accept his political role) Your politics differ,but you follow the same political line as North Korean political philosophy.

” I certainly wouldn’t bet on it as it would be a reversal of a long term warming trend we can observe for the last 350 years.”
Well it looks like a fairly convincing reversal of the bit we were supposed to panic about: the late 20th “run-away warming”.
“… over the years has been shown to be a reasonable proxy and indicator of Northern Hemisphere temperature.”
Were does that claim come from?
I’m not saying you’re wrong but I’ve learnt to mistrust such casual affirmations from any source in this game.

I have listened to Dr. Salby’s lecture in London, November 6 and asked him a few questions where he answered rather evasive. Unfortunately I wasn’t properly dressed (no tie…) to follow the organizers in the catacombs of the Parliament to have a follow up of the discussions.
Let us start with the math: It is perfectly possible to match the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere with the integral of the temperature anomaly, simply by choosing the right offset, as there is already a linear slope in the temperature trend, that will give a slightly quadratic increase (as can be seen in the CO2 trend) over time. But that is only curve fitting without a physical basis.
It is as perfectly possible to use a factor (0.53 will do) for human emissions which are slightly quadratic increasing over time. That gives a perfect match for the trend:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_acc_1960_cur.jpg
Over the past 50(/110) years, the match between increase in the atmosphere and human emissions is almost perfect:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1960_cur.jpg
while that between temperature and increase in the atmosphere is somewhat less:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_1960_cur.jpg
For the derivative, we see that more clearly:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
Where human emissions are twice the increase in the atmosphere and the variability around the trend is from temperature variability, see Wood for Trees
As Wood for Trees has the human emissions not in its database, we can’t plot them together there, but the previous plot shows what it is with yearly emissions.
As you see, there is no trend in the derivative of the temperature, thus temperature itself has zero influence on the slope of dCO2/dt, except if there was a process which releases CO2 non-linear with temperature (which fortunately doesn’t exist).
The huge variability of the CO2 rate of change is clearly linked to the huge year-by-year variability of (ocean) temperature, while the trend is linked to human emissions.
Then Henry’s law. Indeed Henry’s law shows that an increase of 1 K of ocean surface temperature will increase the pCO2 of seawater with 16 µatm. That means that an increase of ~16 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere will restore the in- and outfluxes between oceans and atmosphere back to what they were before the temperature increase:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
There is no way that a (small) sustained increase in temperature would give a constant increase in CO2 in the atmosphere without suppressing the influx from the equatorial upwelling from the (deep) oceans and increasing the outflux into the polar (deep) ocean sinks. It is an equilibrium reaction, highly depending of (partial) pressure differences of CO2 between the ocean waters and the atmosphere.
Moreover, look at the influence of temperature on the CO2 variability:
for seasons to 2-3 years, the CO2 variability is 4-5 ppmv/K temperature change. For 50 years to multi-millennia, the CO2 variability is 8 ppmv/K (Law Dome: MWP-LIA, Vostok: 420 kyr, Dome C: 800 kyr). Over the past 50 years, it should be suddenly over 100 ppmv/K, which again disappears over the longer time scales…
The whole biosphere is currently a net sink for CO2, as can be deduced from the oxygen balance:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
The oceans are a net sink for CO2, as regular ships and buoys measurements show:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
Then the ice core “migration”. There is no measurable migration of CO2 in ice cores. What Dr. Salby has done is calculating a theoretical migration to fit his hypothesis and isn’t based on any real world data. If there was migration as he supposes, then the maxima during an interglacial would have been 10 times higher than measured, but as migration does influence the difference between peaks and valleys, that doesn’t change the average. That means that the minima of 180 ppmv measured in the ice cores during 90% of the time in glacial periods would have been much lower, even negative, effectively destroying near all life on earth… Moreover, such a migration doesn’t stop until all differences are gone, thus for each interglacial back 100kyr in time, the peaks would fade further and further, but that isn’t seen at all.
Thus what Dr. Salby proposes may be mathematically possible, but practically non-existing.

Patrick says:
November 10, 2013 at 4:24 am
“In debates about “climate” I often link to the RSS satellite graph, as above. In response, I am told by alarmists, that the RSS satellite system is unreliable however, they never support their claims with actual evidence. Is the RSS system subject to satellite orbit decay and thermometer device error and is there any evidence to support that claim?”
Here’s what Roy Spencer says:
”Anyway, my UAH cohort and boss John Christy, who does the detailed matching between satellites, is pretty convinced that the RSS data is undergoing spurious cooling because RSS is still using the old NOAA-15 satellite which has a decaying orbit, to which they are then applying a diurnal cycle drift correction based upon a climate model, which does not quite match reality. We have not used NOAA-15 for trend information in years…we use the NASA Aqua AMSU, since that satellite carries extra fuel to maintain a precise orbit.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/07/on-the-divergence-between-the-uah-and-rss-global-temperature-records/
”Based upon the evidence to date, it is pretty clear that (1) the UAH dataset is more accurate than RSS, and that (2) the RSS practice of using a climate model to correct for the effect of diurnal drift of the satellite orbits on the temperature measurements is what is responsible for the spurious behavior noted in the above graph.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/07/more-on-the-divergence-between-uah-and-rss-global-temperatures/

I’m surprised at the credulity given by so-called “skeptics” towards the proposition that the main source of rise in CO2 might be something other than human activity. I have three pieces of advice for people who still don’t believe the source of CO2 rise is mainly anthropogenic:
* No matter how desirable the theory, if it disagrees with observations, it’s false.
* Those who fail to perform arithmetic are doomed to talk nonsense.
* Shop keepers can reliably tell whether stock is being stolen from their shops without watching every item on every shelf and every customer in every shop every hour of the day, which also means we can tell if the CO2 is coming from us without accounting for every single CO2 event in every forest and ocean on the planet.
Rather than repeat the whole Mass Balance argument here, I’ll link to a previous discussion on NoTricksZone: [
http://notrickszone.com/2013/06/10/murry-salbys-presentation-in-hamburg/#comment-528413 ]
If you have the anthropogenic emissions figures from CDIAC and the the CO2 from MLO then you have all the facts you need. We can know that Dr Salby’s overly complicated analysis is wrong, because we already have an answer from the simplest way to answer the question.
Further, the conclusions of the paper by Humlum et al are, in my humble amateur experience, erroneous.
Their lagged correlation technique was new to me, but I’ve made an air/plants/ocean/industry model in a spreadsheet which confirms my first impression. It is only an approximate model running over 8 simulation years, but the essential relationships are all there, conservation of mass included. The derivative of 12-month smoothed SST and CO2 for this simple model shows a correlation between SST and CO2 which is strongest if CO2 lags 8 months behind temperature change, just like in Humlum’s results, except in my model there was an anthropogenic CO2 emission constantly pushing up the air CO2 levels. Same analysis result from a cause different to what they inferred, so their attribution conclusions do not necessarily follow from their analysis. For me that’s enough to prove their technique is bogus and cannot be used to identify the CO2 source. What’s really happening is… The yearly changing temperature of the ocean modulates the rate at which nature absorbs our CO2, which causes the correlation they find in the derivatives.
In short, a correlation of derivatives only tells you what is most rapidly modulating the derivative, not the cause of the original observed quantity. Or in more plain terms…. If your car’s speed shows lagged correlation with the position of the brake pedal, you would not conclude the brakes are driving the car forward.
Those who have refrained from jumping on the Natural CO2 bandwagon have already shown proper and justified skepticism.

“Our Lord” writes:
“…Murry Salby’s explosive conclusion that temperature change drives CO2 concentration change and not the other way about would have made headlines. As it is, scarce a word has been published anywhere.”
Maybe the reason is that only a few take Salby’s hypothesis seriously (the same goes for Humlum).
Fred Singer had this to say in an article in American Thinker:
“From time to time, skeptics have claimed that the CO2 increase was mainly due to global warming, which caused the release of dissolved CO2 from the ocean surface into the atmosphere. (A recent adherent of this hypothesis is Prof. Murry Salby in Australia.) However, the evidence appears to go against such an inverted causal relation. While this process may have been true during the ice ages, the isotope evidence seems to indicate that the human contribution from fossil-fuel burning clearly dominates during the last 100 years.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/a_tale_of_two_climate_hockeysticks.html#ixzz2h7ZyRVmo

I attended this from a political perspective, and the implications of his talk, if true, are extreme. From my notes at Westminster:
Prof. Salby went through his talk in detail, from the long term past which showed that temperature conclusively drives CO2 levels. The most interesting part was the demonstration that recent and short term CO2 levels do not directly follow temperature swings, but are induced by and dependent upon the time integration of the temperature changes.
If this is true, and the resultant integration plot does almost exactly follow the atmospheric CO2 level increase, then the assertion that CO2 levels affect global temperature cannot possibly be correct. Further, all those computer models programmed to show CO2 and temperature correlation are simply wrong.
This completely undermines any basis whatsoever for political campaigns for CO2 reduction or ‘decarbonisation’. The UN IPCC and its ARn reports are similarly rendered pointless. The subsidies for renewables are not needed. Carbon trading, green taxes, carbon energy price floors, the Climate Change Act 2008, carbon capture research, UEA and the global warming institutes, the premature closing of coal fired powered stations, manufactured hairshirt angst, and restrictions on shale gas exploration, are all history.
All the while that this systematic and stiletto-blade scientific dismantling of the case for AGW was unfolding in the Gladstone room, the debating chamber annunciating screens in the corner were flicking up some familiar names. The learned debate in the Commons was the ‘Energy Price Freeze’, with Caroline Flint and Ed Davey no doubt displaying their familiar level of understanding of energy fundamentals.
There is a heavy political fallout coming.

FrankK says:
November 10, 2013 at 6:53 am
Yes this also “concerned” me. But is this not just a question of resolution. Ice cores can only point to very long-term changes as they “average” or smooth out shorter term variations like those that have and are occurring in the 20th and 21 Century.
Different ice cores have different resolutions, depending on the snow accumulation speed. The Law Dome DSS core has a resolution of ~20 years and covers the past 1000 years, thus including the MWP-LIA transition:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
The drop of ~0.8 K between the MWP and LIA caused a drop of ~6 ppmv in the ice core with a lag of ~50 years. Thus about 8 ppmv/K, the same as seen in the Vostok and Dome C ice cores over 420 and 800 kyears.
That means that the current increase in temperature out of the depth of the LIA is only good for maximum 8 ppmv CO2 of the 100+ ppmv increase we see today. Humans meanwhile emitted over 200 ppmv CO2 all together in the same period…

The second link: http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=223

Stephen Wilde says:
November 10, 2013 at 4:06 am
Your climate theory sequence begins with and depends wholely on changes in solar activity. It seems that accurate solar activity predictions are necessary for weather/climate models to actually work. A true climate theory to be comprehensive must include external solar forcing.
My focus of personal research for nearly seven years has been the causes of solar activity and its effect on people, weather and climate (climate equals the time-integral of daily weather.) I saw that solar flares, CMEs, filament eruptions, and coronal holes emit vast amounts of charged particles that accelerate outwards towards the planets. These particles, mostly protons, interact with our magnetosphere, charge up the Van Allen belts, and ultimately discharge to ground here on Earth via various pathways creating weather. I call this sequence the electric weather effect.
Years later I found out others recognized this concept too. A good primer on the subject is “Solar Rain” by Mitch Batros (2005). I was pleasantly surprised to see many citations in that book to a real pioneer in the Sun-Earth climate science, astrophysicist Piers Corbyn from WeatherAction long-range weather forecasters. I had already known of Piers’ for a few years at that point and had seen him sucessfully predict solar activity levels and Earth weather.
Corbyn’s forecasts are not that expensive and I find it interesting to watch it all play out every month. For instance he forecasted 30 days ahead the highest solar activity level for the last week of October, and we had all those x-flares. His weather forecasts for that period were correct for both sides of the Atlantic. There are so many great examples of electric weather – I’m working on something to reveal all that…

Stephen Wilde says:
November 10, 2013 at 8:42 am
For example biological activity in the oceans can affect the isotope type of CO2 released by the oceans to the air.
Any substantial release of CO2 from the oceans would increase the 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere. Biological activity in the ocean surface increases the 13C/12C ratio even more, both in the ocean surface as in the atmosphere (if there was more release than uptake). But we see a firm decrease in ratio in both, in lockstep with human emissions:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif
The CO2 “evidence” of AIRS is for July only. If you look at the December plot, it shows just the opposite change in CO2 levels. Human emissions are not detectable in the AIRS data, as the resolution is too coarse (+/- 5 ppmv) and the human contribution is about 0.07 ppmv/month, even if that is concentrated in the NH.

Gareth Phillips says:
November 10, 2013 at 7:19 am
“You seem to want power returned to the UK, via UKIP, but are vehemently opposed to the people of Scotland having a say in self determination.”
Curious interpretation, I thought he meant quite the opposite when he said “… turning the daft wee rubber stamp into a real parliament at last.”
“You utilise this site to campaign for a for your own right wing masters in UKIP, then whine when someone calls you to task on it.”
No, he campaigned against tyranny. It appears your comprehension could do with a polish. And “whining”? … You do like to exaggerate, don’t you?
“When you are in a hole, stop digging.”
Perhaps you should take your own advice.

The Chicago Board of Trade is the proper place to bet on climate, and it’s still a game of chance that should be shunned by investors and savers.
Furthermore, there are now 15 or 20 different models that are regularly reported about in aggregate in the press. When are journalists going to start answering the obvious question, namely, which is doing best? Or more realistically, of all the wrong answers coming from the models which is least wrong? This ploy by the scientists of creating an ensemble of models needs some dissection by the journalists.

Greg Goodman says:
November 10, 2013 at 8:44 am
With the right offset and factor, you can fit any linear change with any other linear change. With a change in order, you can fit any linear increase with any other quadratic increase. But that doesn’t say anything about attribution of the cause of the increase.
There is no natural process that gives a non-linear increase of CO2 for a linear increase in temperature. Or that gives a constant increase of CO2 in the atmosphere for a sustained (small) change in temperature above an arbitrary baseline…

M Courtney, November 10, 2013 at 9:05 am, says:

The “shop” is a warehouse that is far bigger than the observed sales and has many flows in and out. … It is more like the Amazon warehouse. You can’t tell if total stock in the warehouse is rising or falling by looking at your own purchases on your own PC.

You ignored my analogy and substituted your own strawman argument. Then you assumed that Amazon have no way of knowing whether they are losing stock through theft because their own operation is too big to monitor. Guess you better tell jeff bezos all those barcode scanners are wasted!
My analogy was correct; accounting can tell you the answer for a conserved quantity.
The choice of a 3-repository carbon model of Earth for solving the mass balance equation is explicitly a partition of the planet, so by definition there is no carbon process excluded from it. There is nothing missing. It’s so simple it can’t be wrong, there’s nowhere for a mistake to hide.

And that is why you can’t just assume…

Nope, your studied ignorance does you no good. It’s not an assumption, it’s the result of observation and arithmetic. You can’t actually criticise an argument that you don’t understand, you can only make noise trying.

Ron Richey says:
November 10, 2013 at 7:01 am
Patrick and Gareth,
OK, you don’t like Monckton. We got that.
You got anything intelligent to contribute on the subject matter or not?
Ron Richey
———————————————————————————–
Thank you Ron, I can’t say I dislike Monckton , I don’t know him so cannot make that judgement. I believe I am commenting on Moncktons post, I am responding to what he has said, it just happens to be in a different area of his essay than your subject. People ask me why, as a lefty and a warmest I like this site. Well, it’s because I like the freedom of expression here and the right to be wrong as it were without condemnation from moderators. Something which is severely lacking on the warmest side of the debate. And on this day above all it’s good to recall all the people who fight and died to give us that freedom from people who thought they had a God given right to rule over us. While Monckton writes climate related essays that I read, find interesting and occasionally agree with, his criticisms of a democratic process in a small country while writing of his belief that he has a God given right to his position over the people of the UK was crass in nature and in opposition to much of philosophy the site embodies, especially on this day of all days. If Monckton does not like being challenged on his political stance, his best bet is to stick with climate issues and use the site to promote his extremist political views.

I’m willing to be corrected but wasn’t the higher power that called the esteemed Lord the one and only Anthony Eden, best known now for the sheer stupidity that was the Suez Crisis.

Monckton: ” I should certainly have felt more confident in Professor Salby’s argument if he had been able to say why the time-integral of global mean surface temperature drives the changes in CO2 concentration. ”
Only basic notion is outgassing of the oceans. Everything else is an attendant issue. eg. Animal life growing by relative respiration faster than plant life. Ice melt. Perhaps greater chance of fires, or greater chance of larger fires. Beyond the oceans, it’s largely a matter of angels on a pin.

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 10, 2013 at 7:52 am
“But that is only curve fitting without a physical basis.”
Physical basis right here.
“Indeed Henry’s law shows that an increase of 1 K of ocean surface temperature will increase the pCO2 of seawater with 16 µatm.”
As shown at the link, Henry’s law dictates a temperature dependent integral just as observed.
“Over the past 50(/110) years, the match between increase in the atmosphere and human emissions is almost perfect:”
There is no match to the bumps and wiggles in the rate of change of CO2. Temperature, however, matches both the bumps and wiggles and the trend.
“The whole biosphere is currently a net sink for CO2, as can be deduced from the oxygen balance:”
No, as can be conjectured from the oxygen balance. The data are not comprehensive, and in any case are open to many interpretations, not just the one you proffer.
rgbatduke says:
November 10, 2013 at 8:14 am
“After all, if we increase the Earth’s mean temperature by (say) 0.5 C, we don’t expect CO_2 to increase indefinitely, we expect it to increase from a former equilibrium to a new equilibrium, so we expect CO_2 to have a negative curvature once we get past the initial transient associated with the warming pulse.”
Indeed, that is why CO2 cannot be significantly driving temperature. Otherwise, there would be a positive feedback loop, as discussed at the first link above. As for negative curvature, the curvature has already flattened (linear slope in CO2) with the flattening of temperatures. There is every reason to expect it will go negative as temperatures decrease.
” But the cause of the original warming could equally well have been a change in the external forcing or a bolus of CO_2, because CO_2 causes warming which causes the release of CO_2 which causes warming.”
This is the positive feedback cycle of which I speak. It is self-reinforcing. It would have started eons ago, and it would have driven us to a boundary of the system eons agon. Therefore, it cannot be. We know from basic principles that temperature must increase CO2 in the atmosphere. The ineluctable conclusion is that temperature sensitivity to CO2 at the current state of the system is negligible.
“It is not (as I know that you know very well) sufficient to prove that there is no GHE or any such thing…”
As alluded to above, it is not necessary that the GHE be equally powerful in all conditions. There can be a GHE, yet its effects can be countered by other conditions/feedbacks in the current state of the system, rendering it effectively nil at the present time.
Andrew McRae says:
November 10, 2013 at 8:28 am
“Rather than repeat the whole Mass Balance argument here…”
The “Mass Balance” argument is a naive proposal put forward by people who do not understand feedback systems. It is simple arithmetic in an application which demands calculus.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 10, 2013 at 9:12 am
“Any substantial release of CO2 from the oceans would increase the 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere.”
You think. This is narrative, not evidence.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 10, 2013 at 9:33 am
“There is no natural process that gives a non-linear increase of CO2 for a linear increase in temperature.”
Yes, there is. First link above.
Andrew McRae says:
November 10, 2013 at 9:39 am
“You can’t actually criticise an argument that you don’t understand, you can only make noise trying.”
You should listen to your own advice. The bougus “mass balance” argument has been thoroughly eviscerated on these pages many times in the past. It thorougly relies on a “weak sink” assumption which has no foundation. It assumes all CO2 flows have been observed and accounted for, again without foundation. It is a very stupid argument.

> “there is something wrong with the mass balance proposal.”
Then you better tell the chemists that conservation of mass doesn’t apply to the atmosphere. They will be upset to hear that the time they spent balancing their reaction equations was wasted because carbon atoms can just appear or disappear into nothing.
Or you could try arguing the anthropogenic emissions figures are exaggerated by a factor of more than 4x, but good luck proving it.

I have several times suggested that climate is the integral of weather; a bit simplistic, in that many things affect climate, all on different time scales. But an interesting consequence of integration, is time delay.
Professor Salby’s thesis that the time integral of temperatures determines CO2, as Lord Monckton relays here, is a bit subtle I think, because planet earth is not busily computing mean global Temperature, as humans try to do. Salby’s time integration is going on at all points, simultaneously and independently. The CO2 over the Indian ocean may heed the local temperature, but pays no heed to the Atlantic Temperatures, which will do their own local thing, as regards CO2.
And the offset delay time of the integral might be also expected to depend on local peculiarities.
But is it just co-incidence, that 800 years prior to the present CO2 up ramp, we had the medieval warm period. Integration does not replicate functional shape. A step in Temperature, or even a short impulse, tends to integrate as a ramp. Well after an impulse passes, the ramp will terminate, but not head down again unless a negative impulse follows.
So I find Salby’s idea very interesting.
I have also stated on several occasions, that the 6ppm annual ML CO2 cycle indicates a decay time constant of just a handful of years, which would support Professor Lindzen’s 40 year residence for CO2 in the atmosphere.
I don’t believe nature pays any attention to averages. Each event leaves its effect, as it happens, and they tend to accumulate. Only humans, with time on their hands see merit in computing averages; it has the advantage that it can’t be observed experimentally , so it can’t be questioned by critics.

Salby’s thesis that the time-integral of global temperature determines CO2 concentration change (corr coef ~0.9), as reported by Monckton, can be considered in regard to the following WUWT post and discussion from almost 4 years ago:

{note: all bold emphasis by me – JW}
WUWT post => ‘New paper on mathematical analysis of GHG’, posted on February 14, 2010
‘Polynomial Cointegration Tests of the Anthropogenic Theory of Global Warming’ by Michael Beenstock and Yaniv Reingewertz – Department of Economics, The Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, Israel.
Abstract:
We use statistical methods designed for nonstationary time series to test the anthropogenic theory of global warming (AGW). This theory predicts that an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations increases global temperature permanently. Specifically, the methodology of polynomial cointegration is used to test AGW when global temperature and solar irradiance are stationary in 1st differences, whereas greenhouse gas forcings (CO2, CH4 and N2O) are stationary in 2nd differences.
We show that although greenhouse gas forcings share a common stochastic trend, this trend is empirically independent of the stochastic trend in temperature and solar irradiance. Therefore, greenhouse gas forcings, global temperature and solar irradiance are not polynomially cointegrated, and AGW is refuted. Although we reject AGW, we find that greenhouse gas forcings have a temporary effect on global temperature. Because the greenhouse effect is temporary rather than permanent, predictions of significant global warming in the 21st century by IPCC are not supported by the data.

The differencing (& associated idea of integration) of the various time series appear to be stimulating more interest on and funding for the formation of a new climate theory versus the insufficient AGW one.
John
Personal Note: As soon as it came out in January 2012 I purchased Salby’s textbook ‘Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate’. It is my initial go to reference in checking on basic climate science statements on this and other blogs.

On C-14 decay rate and CO2 residency in the atmosphere …
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24833148
Towards the end of the piece …
‘Recent research indicates that the rate of increase in emissions might be slowing down, but the gases can continue to concentrate in the atmosphere and exert a climate influence for hundreds if not thousands of years. ‘
40 years? Pah, it’s thousands I tell you. 🙂

Andrew McRae says:
November 10, 2013 at 11:02 am
“Seems you needed my advice too.”
(Sigh). All right. Put up your stupid argument in mathematical terms and I will once again show you where it goes wrong, as I have shown so many others before you.

“The Professor headed that one off at the pass. During his talk he said it was not global temperature simpliciter but the time-integral of global temperature that determined CO2 concentration change, and did so to a correlation coefficient of around 0.9.”
For the mathematically challenged, could someone put into simple English what “the time-integral of global temperature” means? I might have intuited the right meaning, but I’m not sure.

Stephen Wilde says:
November 10, 2013 at 9:39 am
The thermohaline circulation (THC )would subduct CO2 poor waters during a warmer spell such as the MWP and CO2 rich waters during a colder spell such as the LIA and the Dark Ages.
Indeed that is the case, but if you look at the changes in subduction and release, the maximum change is about 3% in outflux from the atmosphere into the polar sinks, which gives a maximum of 3% in influx many centuries later. The return flux gives a change in equilibrium of halve the change of the past (as the sinks will increase with increasing CO2 in the atmosphere). Or a 6 ppmv drop during the LIA would give a 3 ppmv increase today if nothing happened of mixing inbetween and constant temperature… Here a graph for what happens with a 10% increase in CO2 concentration in the upwelling seawaters:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_incr.jpg
and what happens if the temperature increases five years later:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_incr_temp.jpg
temperature and concentration are hardly influencing each other. There is a near linear increase of upwelling from both higher concentration and temperature, near independent of each other (the deviation from linear is 2% for 1 K change in temperature).

Stephen Wilde says:
“Here is something about the mass balance proposal”
Nope. That’s not the mass balance proposal. That’s a totally different argument which is referred to by various names such as the Isotope Ratio Argument, but it’s not a plain application of the general mass balance principle. I have never believed the Isotope Ratio argument because I never saw why ancient plants would have a different 13C ratio than modern plants. The mass balance argument has nothing to do with the isotope ratio argument and does not rely on isotope ratio measurements at all.
Again, you have to understand an argument to be able to criticise it.

Bart: ” At the same time, global anthropogenic emissions have continued accelerating.”
Let’s assume then that Salby’s math is beyond reproach. (No idea whether that’s the case or not.) Then the take away is not that dT leads dCO2 and thus causality in AGW is spurious or simply backwards. It is that whatever determines dCO2 is significant enough that it dwarfs whatever man is doing for output. (Assuming here that the estimates of man’s CO2 output is fit for use.)
Putting aside all else, the only relevant question is: Are there any interesting flaws in Salby’s math? (It’s guaranteed the there are many objections, it’s only relevant if they are dispositive.)

Bart says:
“… as I have shown so many others before you.”
Oh? So many others? Then there is no need for me to post the equation (all one line of it), since you can just point me to two previous occasions where you have “shown” that the disappearance of carbon atoms from one place does not require them to reappear at any other place. That will be either educational for me or hilarious, depending on how it goes.
Those links are….?

“Professor Salby’s thesis that the time integral of temperatures determines CO2, as Lord Monckton relays here”
If this is indeed what Salby is now saying he’s drifting off course. I have yet to see anything in writing from Salby so the “if” should be taken literally. I suspect there is some misreporting going on here.
Though it may appear similar it is not the same as saying temp determines d/dt(CO2).
There is temperature dependency in rate of emission of any gas from a liquid , this is due to the temperature dependency of the “constant” of Henry’s law. But this does not start at absolute zero, maybe closer to zero deg. C, though water also gives up most of its CO2 before freezing. Neither is it linear except approximately, over short range.
If the bulk water temperature changes it will absorb/out-gas to move towards a new equilibrium with CO2 content. As atm CO2 rises, the difference will reduce and the rate of outgassing will thus also reduce. This is what rgb was objecting to above. CO2 can’t just be the integral of temperature, otherwise it will never fall and must always rise. I’m sure Salby is far more competent than to suggest that so I’m sure someone has got the wrong end of that particular stick.
As temp has been fairly stable for some 15 or more years, rate of CO2 increase should be slowing as atm CO2 get nearer to the new equilibrium value. And we can see this happening.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=223
The rising SST from 1974 to around 1995 saw increasing rate of change of CO2 (ie. accelerating change of CO2). Since 1997 ‘plateau’ in SST d/dt(CO2) has also seen a ‘plateau’. That is it’s rate of change has been fairly constant on the decadal scale.
That 2ppmv/year plateau could be read several ways.
1. current SST is a long way from thermodynamic equilibrium so little sign of d/dt(CO2) falling towards zero. Just remaining level with level SST.
2. It’s already equilibrated with SST and the remaining rate of change is due to ever increasing emissions.
3. something else….

Gareth Phillips says:
November 10, 2013 at 3:59 am
“Unfortunately he did not get the opportunity to talk to our real masters, the unelected Kommissars of the European tyranny-by-clerk”
Gareth, I think your baggage dragged you to a wrong interpretation. However, using the interpretation that I believe Monckton was using, I wish you independence next year, complete independence, only then will your baggage be unloaded from the your hold.

Andrew McRae says:
November 10, 2013 at 11:20 am
Strange. my link clearly refers to mass balance in relation to the isotope ratio which was what I was referring to.
I now have no idea what mass balance concept you were referring to.

I am a little saddened to the extent which Christopher Monkton uses sarcasm in this article. It does little to assist the credibility of his thoughts and gives ammunition to his detractors. However it raises some interesting ideas which are enhanced by subsequent comments.
We should appreciate that Henry’s Law applies to dilute solutions (as does Raoult’s Law to concentrated solutions) in equilibrium with their atmosphere. The oceans/atmosphere system is never in equilibrium and therefore Henry’s Law can only be used to indicate the direction in which mass transfer will occur and indicate at what rate the system will endeavour to obtain equilibrium.
There has been much comment regarding the implications of ice-core data and the 800 year time lag, together with some numbers to indicate the amount of movement to be expected from a temperature change. One simplistic thought strikes me, though. We are presently about 800 years from the MWP which suggests, despite arithmetic estimations as to extent, present CO2 levels may well be tracking temperature movements in the MWP.
Finally, I am intrigued with the parallel that considerations of time-integrals of temperature (warming or cooling) offer with the classical Ziegler-Nichols process control theory. That theory uses three factors in the control of chemical and physical processes: a proportional factor, a rate (or differential) factor, and an offset (or integral) factor. The latter uses the accumulated error, or deviation from the control set point, to increase the driving force required to bring the system back to the set point. The situations are not necessarily analogous, but do offer the possibility of another method of analysis.

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 10, 2013 at 8:40 am
FrankK says:
November 10, 2013 at 6:53 am
Yes this also “concerned” me. But is this not just a question of resolution. Ice cores can only point to very long-term changes as they “average” or smooth out shorter term variations like those that have and are occurring in the 20th and 21 Century.
Different ice cores have different resolutions, depending on the snow accumulation speed. The Law Dome DSS core has a resolution of ~20 years and covers the past 1000 years, thus including the MWP-LIA transition:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
The drop of ~0.8 K between the MWP and LIA caused a drop of ~6 ppmv in the ice core with a lag of ~50 years. Thus about 8 ppmv/K, the same as seen in the Vostok and Dome C ice cores over 420 and 800 kyears.
That means that the current increase in temperature out of the depth of the LIA is only good for maximum 8 ppmv CO2 of the 100+ ppmv increase we see today. Humans meanwhile emitted over 200 ppmv CO2 all together in the same period…
_________________________________________________________________________
Thanks for your input Ferdinand.
You imply that the contribution by humans is 200 ppmv since industrialisation, but is that not just simply based on the difference between what was purportedly the concentration pre-industrialisation and what it is at present? Notwithstanding that ice core CO2 concentrations are considered by some not to be all that accurate (i.e. much greater in the past and now much less) due to diffusion over time (e.g. Salby’s view) the CO2 contribution by humans is estimated to be only 9 Gt/yr yet natural emissions at idealised steady state to be around 150 Gt/yr with the same assumed to be absorbed.
However, under transient conditions the natural emissions in-out can vary substantially particularly if temperature varies (Salby view) which when you integrate the temperature over time you can show that this can yield the Hawaii measured CO2 concentration levels to a high degree of accuracy (See his Hamburg lecture and verified by a Swedish researcher). And the argument that fossil fuel emissions have a a particular carbon isotope ratio that counters that view has been dismissed by Salby. (See his lecture in Hamburg)
OK its a hypothesis but one that needs, and is worthy of further investigation rather than accepting the constant dogma promulgated by the usual AGW crowd.

Bart: ” Though there was, for a time, a superficial similarity between the two, there is a marked divergence between them now which is growing with time”
That seems to be what Ole Humlum’s paper says in some detail though he goes about it rather poorly and does some fairly horrible data processing errors:
Humlum et al: ” The most serious consequence of smoothing or filtering is the shift of peaks and troughs in the smoothed curve, relative to the original data. If several data series are to be compared, identical filtering must therefore be applied at all series, as spurious effects else may arise, perhaps even inviting a false interpretation (see, e.g. discussion in Stauning 2011).”
The “shift of peaks and troughs” is not a necessary consequence of filtering data, it is a direct result of choosing to use friggin running means.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/triple-running-mean-filters/
If someone knows how to contact Ole, I’ll send a link and suggest how he can redo his analysis without shifting peaks and troughs.

Gareth Phillips says:
November 10, 2013 at 3:59 am
“Unfortunately he did not get the opportunity to talk to our real masters, the unelected Kommissars of the European tyranny-by-clerk”
——————————————————————————————————
And who elected you Monckton to the House of Lords to which you assert to be a member? At least ‘ Edinburgh’s daft wee parliament’ was elected by the people of Scotland who may irritate you by longer being seen as an English Lords property, but who have a right to a democratic process. Stick to climate comments , otherwise the words ‘glasshouse’ and ‘throwing stones’ tends to spring to mind when you use this site to roll out your right wing landed gentry view of the world.

Attacking the speaker does not an argument make. The usual epithets used by left-wing believers/deniers, that are responsible for this ridiculous scare-mongering are lost whenever they are required to argue facts and always resort to verbal and personal abuse as noted above. One would rather be a rational, thinking, functioning “right-wing” conservative than a mealy-mouthed, lunatic that all CAGW followers have clearly demonstrated themselves to be. Move along and find a site where your abuse is the standard method of communication.

Off topic I know.. but I hope everyone has seen Jo Nova’s lead article this morning.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/11/australia-says-no-to-un-wish-list-of-billions-will-not-support-socialism-masquerading-as-environmentalism/

ps.. at the moment.. the Cheshire cat has nothing on me :-)))

Numptorium in Holyrood
Can’t think of something that sounds much more English than that.

To work toward a scientific theory of climate is a splendid idea. This theory would have to be built upon the events underlying the theory. Currently, global warming climatology holds no such events. Thus, step 1 in the design of the associated study is to identify them.

Gareth,
Monckton does not have power over our lives.

“Finally, I am intrigued with the parallel that considerations of time-integrals of temperature (warming or cooling) offer with the classical Ziegler-Nichols process control theory. ”
Ah , the PID controller. That implies a second order ODE model. Someone suggested that for the regulatory effect of tropical storms, where I’d already shown evidence of the degree.day integral being held constant.
I don’t know whether that is necessary for CO2 (simpler the better in principal, at least for my brain).
However, I don’t think temp is enough on it’s own. Atmospheric pressure (as revealed by arctic oscillation) seems to correlate better during recent ‘hiatus’ of temperature:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=259
During post ’75 warming temperature seemed to dominate. That suggest that a combination of the two may be needed.

Bart says:
“this site does not have an advanced search function…”
Ahh, this is hilarious already, not only do you deny that the chemistry principle of mass balance applies to the atmosphere, but you deny that Google applies to wattsupwiththat.com.
Which is why you will never be able to find this comment of yours, in which you show only that you don’t understand the carbon accounting argument where you say:

Ferdinand basically assumes the sinks are constant, and do not vary in response to the amount of CO2 in the system. Only in such a static situation is his “mass balance” argument applicable.

Well I cannot comment on “Ferdinand” or his arguments, but the only mass balance argument I have ever heard, and the argument I put forth, does not assume anything about the size of the sourcing/sinking for any repositories that we don’t actually have measurements for already.
Since Google does not apply to WUWT, you will also never be able to find this other comment of yours last year, again arguing against Ferdinand’s mass balance arguments, where you say:

it all conflicts with the simple observation that the rate of change of CO2 is proportional to the properly baselined temperature anomaly

No it doesn’t, Bart! The warmer the oceans are the slower they absorb our CO2 and so the quicker it accumulates in the air. Having a correlation in the short term between delta Temperature and delta CO2 is completely expected, but that is fine-grained dynamics of the situation. It does not conflict at all with the requirement for mass balance, which means no matter how quickly or slowly the carbon is increasing in the atmosphere, the sum of carbon derivatives of all repositories must equal zero.
Since Google does not apply to WUWT you will also be unable to recall this comment of yours where you said:

The fundamental reason I doubt that the recently recorded rise in CO2 is most significantly of human origin is the simple fact that accidents do not happen in Nature. If the feedback loop governing CO2 concentration is so weak as effectively to allow 100% accumulation of the anthropogenically released CO2 in the oceans and atmosphere, then it is too weak to have established an equilibrium and maintained it tightly for thousands of years before the Industrial Age.

So firstly you assume correlation is always causation, because “accidents do not happen in Nature”. Then you use what appears to be a strawman argument about all aCO2 going into the air and ocean and none of it going into plants, which is not part of the carbon accounting argument and certainly not part of the general chemistry principle of mass balance.
In that same thread you also say:

Bottom line: This is a dynamic system, and you guys are doing static analysis. And, you are assuming greater precision in the quantification of natural fluxes than actually exist, and when anthropogenic influx is less than 3% of natural fluxes, you do not need a lot of error to destroy the conclusion.

So many errors packed into such a short comment.
How is a balance of the rate of change of carbon in linked repositories a “static” analysis?? A dynamic analysis is the only type possible because we cannot count how many carbon atoms are in the ocean at a snapshot in time.
As for precision, the required precision to resolve the issue depends on what the analysis shows. As it turns out the measured d.Air/dt is half the d.Anthro/dt, so an error of at least 50% is needed in one of those measurements to put any doubt over the result, and our annual emissions would have to have been exaggerated by a factor of 4x for the real data to support your preferred belief of majority CO2 rise being natural.
Further you again show you do not understand the carbon accounting argument when you invoke uncertainty on natural fluxes, because natural fluxes do not need to be measured in this argument at all, indeed I’d say they are impossible to measure, that’s the advantage of the Carbon Accounting Argument; It requires knowing only the things we have actually measured.
Finally you trot out the tired red herring of annual anthropogenic “flux” being only 3% of annual natural “fluxes”, which has nothing to do with the carbon accounting argument. I have answered that already on NoTricksZone here (where Alfonso was smart enough to see how he was mistaken and that I was right about that). Basically the only important thing for the argument is how much each repository gains or loses year-on-year, the actual path that individual carbon atoms take is not relevant.
It again looks like the only way to disbelieve the carbon accounting argument is to misunderstand and mischaracterise it.
Again I ask, is there a comment or post, just one, where you have shown you actually understand the mass balance principle as applied to the carbon accounting argument for the origin of current rise in CO2, and have then precisely “shown” how it is false?
I know what measurements I would have to see to disprove the conclusions of this carbon accounting argument, as I explained in that same comment on NoTricksZone, and we did not see net rises in atmospheric CO2 of over 8ppm per year during 2004/2005. My hypothesis is tested by the measurements and it passes.

Lord Monckton advances the Svensmark’s hypothesis while Dr. Brown advises about the importance of various time constants.
Here is an alternative view:
The N. Hemisphere’s long term temperature variability is well reflected in Loehle’s temperature reconstruction. It is known fact that N. H’s. long term temperature variability is decisively affected by the N. Atlantic circulation. Its the large currents circulatory systems is known as N. A. Subpolar gyre (SPG), where overflow of the cold Arctic currents is mixed with the warm Gulf Stream’s waters. The circulatory period of the SPG is variable, mainly in range 20-30 years.
WHOI: “The North Icelandic Jet is a deep-reaching current that flows along the continental slope of Iceland. North Icelandic Jet (NIJ), contributes to a key component of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), also known as the “great ocean conveyor belt,” which is critically important for regulating Earth’s climate. As part of the planet’s reciprocal relationship between ocean circulation and climate, this conveyor belt transports warm surface water to high latitudes where the water warms the air, then cools, sinks, and returns towards the equator as a deep flow.”
Continental slope of the North Iceland is tectonically vary active; however this is not an easy variable to reconstruct, but the surface magnetic records are a reasonable even if not very accurate proxy either in the intensity or timing.
Calculated 20 and 30 years delta for magnetic field change along the continental slope of North Iceland and the Leohle’s temperature anomaly reconstruction are shown here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CT.htm
This may be or not a coincidence, but if not, may not wise to dismiss, even if a direct operating mechanism is not readily recognised.
If in the unlikely event either Lord Monckton or Dr. Brown consider above worth of a further attention I would be glad to forward the annual magnetic data for the 1650-2000 period. extracted from the global geomagnetic data base.

Whatmenare… — “It is not the case that CO2 is not “fire friendly” and will actually reduce fires from starting or spreading or producing such intensities as recent fires have shown, ”
It’s certainly possible if you had enough CO2. But on the idea that temp leads CO2, then high temps are generally considered to lead to drier conditions and so it’s hardly out of line to expect more fires, or fires to spread more. And from there to greater CO2. Though, if you’re into the runaway feedback, then more temp = more humidity. And so the converse would be the expected case would be less or smaller fires and so less CO2. In any ad-hoc partition or combination of the two, it’s anyone’s guess and so angels on pins.

It’s the cfcs what did it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24874060
[Please use a valid email address. — mod.]

Viscount Monckton, says, in answer to question by Chris Wright,
“Chris Wright asks whether CO2 concentration tracks the time integral of global mean surface temperature on all timescales. Is there, he wonders, any evidence for Professor Salby’s proposition in the ice cores?
Indeed there is, and the Professor specifically discusses ice cores in some detail. He has given considerable thought to that question, and has concluded that the diffusion of air trapped in ice increases with age, so that the further back one goes in the record the greater the degree to which the CO2 concentration in the samples understates the CO2 concentration that actually obtained.
Murry Salby is attempting to argue that the data rather than the theory is wrong. However his explanation requires a major coincidence. The long-term ice cores indicate that in each interglacial the peak CO2 is about the same (approx 280ppm) and in each glacial the throughs are approximately the same. If the gas is constantly diffusing through that period, then the original concentrations would have had to start at exactly the right amount, so that when we come to measure the concentrations, those peaks all come out the same. This is not plausible.
There are other series problems. For example, if the modern rise in temperature, which is less than a degree, is sufficient to produce a rise of ~100ppm in CO2, then the fall in temperature of about 5 degrees during the glacials, would give a negative CO2 concentration.