By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
I have just had the honor of listening to Professor Murry Salby giving a lecture on climate. He had addressed the Numptorium in Holyrood earlier in the day, to the bafflement of the fourteenth-raters who populate Edinburgh’s daft wee parliament. In the evening, among friends, he gave one of the most outstanding talks I have heard.
Professor Salby has also addressed the Parliament of Eunuchs in Westminster. Unfortunately he did not get the opportunity to talk to our real masters, the unelected Kommissars of the European tyranny-by-clerk.
The Faceless Ones whose trembling, liver-spotted hands guide the European hulk of state unerringly towards the bottom were among the first and most naively enthusiastic true-believers in the New Superstition that is global warming. They could have benefited from a scientific education from the Professor.
His lecture, a simplified version of his earlier talk in Hamburg that was the real reason why spiteful profiteers of doom at Macquarie “University” maliciously canceled his non-refundable ticket home so that he could not attend the kangaroo court that dismissed him, was a first-class exercise in logical deduction.
He had written every word of it, elegantly. He delivered it at a measured pace so that everyone could follow. He unfolded his central case step by step, verifying each step by showing how his theoretical conclusions matched the real-world evidence.
In a normal world with mainstream news media devoted to looking at all subjects from every direction (as Confucius used to put it), 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.
You may well ask what I might have asked: given that the RSS satellite data now show a zero global warming trend for 17 full years, and yet CO2 concentration has been rising almost in a straight line throughout, is it any more justifiable to say that temperature change causes CO2 change than it is to say that CO2 change causes temperature change?
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.
I had first heard of Murry Salby’s work from Dick Lindzen over a drink at a regional government conference we were addressing in Colombia three years ago. I readily agreed with Dick’s conclusion that if we were causing neither temperature change nor even CO2 concentration change the global warming scare was finished.
I began then to wonder whether the world could now throw off the absurdities of climate extremism and develop a sensible theory of climate.
In pursuit of this possibility, I told Professor Salby I was going to ask two questions. He said I could ask just one. So I asked one question in two parts.
First, I asked whether the rapid, exponential decay in carbon-14 over the six decades following the atmospheric nuclear bomb tests had any bearing on his research. He said that the decay curve for carbon-14 indicated a mean CO2 atmospheric residence time far below the several hundred years assumed in certain quarters. It supports Dick Lindzen’s estimate of a 40-year residence time, not the IPCC’s imagined 50-200 years.
Secondly, I asked whether Professor Salby had studied what drove global temperature change. He said he had not gotten to that part of the story yet.
In the past year, I said, four separate groups haf contacted me to say they were able to reproduce global temperature change to a high correlation coefficient by considering it as a function of – and, accordingly, dependent upon – the time-integral of total solar irradiance.
If these four groups are correct, and if Professor Salby is also correct, one can begin to sketch out a respectable theory of climate.
The time-integral of total solar irradiance determines changes in global mean surface temperature. Henrik Svensmark’s cosmic-ray amplification, which now has considerable support in the literature, may help to explain the mechanism.
In turn, the time integral of absolute global mean temperature determines the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Here, the mechanism will owe much to Henry’s Law, which mandates that a warmer ocean can carry less CO2 than a colder ocean. I have never seen an attempt at a quantitative analysis of that relationship in this debate, and should be grateful if any of Anthony’s readers can point me to one.
The increased CO2 concentration as the world warms may well act as a feedback amplifying the warming, and perhaps our own CO2 emissions make a small contribution. But we are not the main cause of warmer weather, and certainly not the sole cause.
For the climate, all the world’s a stage. But, if the theory of climate that is emerging in samizdat lectures such as that of Professor Salby is correct, we are mere bit-part players, who strut and fret our hour upon the stage and then are heard no more.
The shrieking hype with which the mainstream news media bigged up Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, ruthlessly exploiting lost lives in their increasingly desperate search for evidence – any evidence – as ex-post-facto justification for their decades of fawning, head-banging acquiescence in the greatest fraud in history shows that they have begun to realize that their attempt at politicizing science itself is failing.
Whether they like it or not, typhoons are acts of God, not of Man.
I asked Professor Salby whether there was enough information in the temperature record to allow him to predict the future evolution of atmospheric CO2 concentration. He said he could not do that.
However, one of the groups working on the dependence of global temperature change on the time-integral of total solar irradiance makes a startling prediction: that we are in for a drop of half a Celsius degree in the next five years.
When I made a glancing reference to that research in an earlier posting, the propagandist John Abraham sneeringly offered me a $1000 bet that the fall in global temperature would not happen.
I did not respond to this characteristically jejune offer. A theory of climate is a hypothesis yet to be verified by observation, experiment and measurement. It is not yet a theorem definitively demonstrated. Explaining the difference to climate communists is likely to prove impossible. To them the Party Line, whatever it is, must be right even if it be wrong.
The group that dares to say it expects an imminent fall in global mean surface temperature does so with great courage, and in the Einsteinian spirit of describing at the outset a test by which its hypothesis may be verified.
Whether that group proves right or wrong, its approach is as consistent with the scientific method as the offering of childish bets is inconsistent with it. In science, all bets are off. As al-Haytham used to say, check and check and check again. He was not talking about checks in settlement of silly wagers.
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.
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. Not that the climate communists of the mainstream media will ever tell you that.
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Brandon Shollenberger says:
November 10, 2013 at 9:45 am
No he didn’t! He said you are culpable for being silent about them. There’s a difference. There’s also a difference between insulting somebody and simply lampooning a fool. Monckton has done verbally to Brussels what Josh does to Michael Mann.
HenryP said: “The proposed mechanism for AGW implies that more GHG would cause a delay in radiation being able to escape from earth, which then causes a delay in cooling, from earth to space, resulting in a warming effect. Clearly, as the graph shows, that is not happening.”
It is because Qin = Qout = Qsurf + Qatmo, and so if some Qsurf gets absorbed by the atmosphere then the atmosphere simply emits more Qatmo. The atmosphere might warm but this doesn’t warm the surface and is not quite greenhouse mechanics. Now, if CO2 increases atmospheric emissivity then Qatmo increases independently, and so to keep Qout constant (since Qin is constant, from the Sun), then both the atmosphere and surface can cool to a lower temperature and still emit the same amount of energy that is coming in. The graph shows the real physics…as measured, because it is measured from reality. Reality trumps theory. Cooling is an expected result if CO2 increases emissivity…and emitters do that.
It’s a shame it wasn’t written without all the insults. I eagerly await publication of Prof Salby’s work, with data and computer code. What he has given us so far is the functional equivalent of advertising.
If a step toward a theory of climate is desired, then the first should be to base heat flow in the climate on thermodynamics. Salby’s work, while mathematically and logically valid and correct for its rather simple purpose, is simply physical mechanics, not thermodynamics. Thermodynamics doesn’t actually enter Salby’s work at all. That being said it doesn’t enter climate science in general either. Salby’s work (and similar) should replace climate science as it is just so that the mechanics can be simplified and parameterized; but then a thermodynamic theory of climate really needs to be created in order to actually get the fundamental principles actually solved. They’re not currently.
The gentrified English viscount title and position is grand and all that, and I appreciate the author’s sharp tongue and mind in this important debate, but boy am I glad that the only American title that mattered in the early stages of Pioneer life was who was the best shot at both spitt’n and shoot’n.
papiertigre, I think it was ” aquatic bint” and “sabre”, from memory. 😉
Patrick says:
November 10, 2013 at 5:46 am
======================
Boring. Obsessive. Who cares? He’s a good ‘un. That’s all that matters. What’s YOUR contribution towards shining a light into the dark recesses of the CAGW cesspit?
Bart says:
Nope. Try again. This is the second time you have not understood what I have written about the sink rates being dynamic. The mass balance principle applies to the total change over a period, regardless of the size of the individual changes in that sum. There is nothing in the carbon accounting argument which says the sink rates must remain the same size over time. You must re-solve the unknown for each year. The mass balance principle is applied year-by-year. You keep imagining this assumption of “static sinks” because it is your only way to pretend the carbon accounting argument is wrong, but there is no such assumption in the carbon accounting argument.
Indeed yes they are, and in my own basic simulation of the carbon repositories I have a Plants component which absorb a percentage of available atmospheric CO2 depending on temperature and releases it six months later also proportional to temperature, which means their peak sink rate in Spring (and emission rate in Autumn) increases as both available CO2 and temperature increases, exactly as you prescribe. Similar for the ocean which I model as absorbing as much as it had to have absorbed in any given year to make the total mass change balance to zero, allowing for some emission from the ocean due to higher temperatures, all in accordance with the mass balance principle. My model has ocean CO2 decreasing and air CO2 increasing slightly during high sea temperatures, and my virtual plants are so hungry for CO2 they increase their winter biomass by 4% in just 6 years due to more CO2 being available from industry.
So the main relationships are modelled, it is not a “static analysis”, the natural sinks increase capacity over time, the mass balance principle is applied to ensure it is physically plausible, the dCO2/dt vs dTemp/dt lagged correlation analysis shows CO2 change lags 8 months behind temperature change, and the cause of rising CO2 in this model as designed is anthropogenic. No contradiction.
No it doesn’t, because nature does not know or care where the CO2 came from and does not distinguish between them when absorbing it. Trees have trunks which respond slowly to elevated CO2 and seasonal leaves which can respond quickly to elevated CO2, and exactly what portion of absorbed CO2 goes rapidly into leaves versus slowly into trunks is irrelevant to the argument. To model trees and trunks (or natural and boosted growth portions) as separate repositories would be futile as these could never be measured, indeed making the equation impossible solve or verify. This is probably your fundamental misunderstanding.
The purpose of this carbon accounting argument is NOT to model how the sinks and sources change over time. The carbon accounting argument is simply trying to determine for a SINGLE given year whether nature acted as a NET source or a NET sink, and by how much in gigatonnes of carbon. When comparing 1 Jan 2004 to 1 Jan 2005 the only important thing is the total change in a repository over that period.
Again the only way to disbelieve the carbon accounting argument is to misunderstand it.
Greg Goodman says:
November 10, 2013 at 4:13 pm
150 Gt in 6 mo going in ; then 150 Gt in 6 mo going out. that’s an exchange rate of 300 Gt/a in a reservoir of 800 Gt
The definition of residence time is reservoir content/throughput which is equivalent to content/input or content/output:
800/150 = 5.33 years residence time
800/154 = 5.24 years residence time
It doesn’t matter if the real exchange is over halve a year, as the other halve year there is no net input, only a net output and vv.
In your answer to Jimmy:
Sorry, that’s silly. You can’t just linearly project everything over unlimited range.
Jimmy is right: migration in ice cores does flatten the peaks, but doesn’t change the average. Thus any flattened peak must have been compensated by lower CO2 levels than measured over the rest of the 100 kyr period. That means very low to negative values during the (90% of the time) glacial periods, if Salby’s theory is right…
That’s good , could you post a link to the up to date emissions data?
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=90&pid=44&aid=8 up to 2011, that are metric tons CO2, conversion factor to GtC (or PgC): 12/44,000
Greg Goodman says:
November 10, 2013 at 6:18 pm
The inter-annual change is 8ppmv/K/a but inter-decadal is about half that. It takes time for CO2 and heat to diffuse to lower, larger sinks.
The essential error you and Bart make is that you suppose that a sustained step change in temperature causes a continuous increase in CO2. For the oceans, that is not what Henry’s law says: a step change in temperature causes a finite increase of CO2 until a new (dynamic) equilibrium between oceans and atmosphere is reached:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
Thus your ppmv/K/year changes for 1 K step from about 1 ppmv/k/year to 0.01 ppmv/K/year after 30 years. Far from a constant ratio over the whole period.
The overall change for seawater is about 16 ppmv/K at equilibrium. As the biosphere in general gets more active with higher temperatures (and occupies more land, less ice sheets), the overall ratio between CO2 changes and T changes is 8 ppmv/K as can be seen in ice cores with resolutions of 20 years (Law Dome: MWP-LIA transition) to 560/600 years (Dome C: 800 kyr; Vostok: 420 kyr). This 8 ppmv/K holds for the full 800 kyrs, no matter the cooling, warming, speed of change, with a variable lag of CO2 to temperature, depending of the speed of change. Except for the past 150 years, where the short term variability still is around 4-5 ppmv/K (seasons to 2-3 years) but the medium term CO2 increase is far larger than the Henry’s law equilibrium level for the temperature increase, while human emissions do fit the trend…
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley writes:
“First, I asked whether the rapid, exponential decay in carbon-14 over the six decades following the atmospheric nuclear bomb tests had any bearing on his research. He said that the decay curve for carbon-14 indicated a mean CO2 atmospheric residence time far below the several hundred years assumed in certain quarters.”
This is a common misunderstanding of the carbon cycle and confuses the residence time (or turnover time, defined as the ratio of the mass of a reservoir and the total rate of removal from that reservoir) with the adjustment time (the the time scale characterising the decay of an instantaneous pulse input into the reservoir), which are not at all the same thing. The rate at which atmospheric CO2 increases depends on the adjustment time and is essentially independent of the residence time. Nobody assumes that the atmospheric residence time of CO2 is several hundred years, the IPCC for example clearly state that the turnover (residence time) is about four years and that the adjustment time is about 100 years (for the initial removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, full removal requires processes that operate on still longer timescales). See the glossary of the AR4 WG1 report under “lifetime” for a concise and unambiguous statement. Nobody claims that residence time is hundreds of years, anybody that thinks that has not done their basic scholarship (such as looking it up in the IPCC reports).
The residence time argument was most recently introduced by Prof. Robert Essenhigh in his paper “Potential Dependence of Global Warming on the Residence Time (RT) in the Atmosphere of Anthropogenically Sourced Carbon Dioxide”, published in Energy & Fuels ( http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef800581r ). I wrote a peer reviewed comment paper on this also published by Energy & Fuels ( http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef200914u ), explaining why residence time is indeed short, but that is completely in accord with the rise in atmospheric CO2 being anthropogenic. The paper also explains how we can be very sure that the natural environment is a net carbon sink and hence opposing the rise in CO2 rather than causing it and provides a very simple model (very similar to that of Prof. Essenhigh) that shows that a short residence time, a long adjustment time and a constant airborne fraction are exactly what we should expect to see if the cause of the observed rise is purely the exponential rise of anthropogenic emissions.
I wrote the refutation of Prof. Essenhigh’s paper because argumennts such as this, which are very easily refuted, do neither side of the climate debate any good. I recommend that people read Fred Singer’s article “Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name” ( http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/climate_deniers_are_giving_us_skeptics_a_bad_name.html ), while I don’t agree with all that he says, he is exactly right in pointing out that there are many skeptic arguments that are so obviously wrong that they ought to be dropped. The idea that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is not anthropogenic is one of the arguments that he singles out.
P.S. The flaw in Prof. Salbys integral argument is discussed here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/salby_correlation_conundrum.html
Another way to estimate the dCO2 vs SST ratio.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=623
I’m not making any assumptions about what the long term equilibrium result is, I am evaluating the short term dynamic response (on two time scales).
That is consistent the kind of exponential asymptote that you show.
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
The initial slope is steeper , that is exactly what I am finding.
I have said I expect it to be less again on centennial scale.
You will remember Gosta Petterson’s papers, he looked at 1998 too but made a similar mistake to you in using the wrong period. He found 4.5 IIRC. I will have to re-read his paper to recall the details.
Bart says:
November 10, 2013 at 5:20 pm
You are completely wrong. Henry’s Law demands that continuous upwelling of CO2 enriched waters produces a steady rise in atmospheric concentration at the interface between oceans and air. In addition, the proportionality factor in Henry’s Law is temperature dependent, which leads to temperature modulation of the flow.
Your curvature needs a coincidence of three independent variables: a steady increase in concentration (or volume) of the upwelling waters in the equatorial oceans and an increasing temperature, which combination matches human emissions in increase rate and timing. Temperature increase is measured, but an increase in upwelling is not observed, to the contrary: there is no increase in ocean pCO2 measured at the upwelling places, neither a decrease in residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Moreover, as said before: one need an increase in deep ocean upwelling from an estimated 40 GtC/year to 290 GtC/year to suppress and mimic the near threefold increase of human emissions in the trend. Which isn’t seen in any observation.
The maximum enrichment of upwelling waters (from e.g. the cold LIA) is about 3%, far from the sevenfold increase you need to dwarf the human emissions…
If it is too high, then you have a problem – humans would have to be removing CO2 to make it balance. Since we obviously aren’t, there are either other forces involved, or the data are simply not precise enough to make a conclusion.
Or your theory is simply wrong. The variability in sink (not source) rate is (near) entirely from temperature variations, while the increase in increase rate is (near) entirely from human emissions.
The larger the human contribution to the trend, the better the amplitude is matched around the trend (because of the factor needed to match the trend). Which shows that temperature is not the cause of the trend…
Narrative, not proof.
Hardly. I simply demand that your “evidence” have a unique explanation. When there are multiple possibilities, it is not proof.
Whatever you try, it is impossible to decrease the 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere by adding CO2 from the oceans with a higher 13C/12C ratio. That is a unique explanation. If you see another possibility, I like to hear that.
There is no difference. If I took away the label on the left hand side, you would have the same plot.
Have a better look:
Here is Bart’s plot using different units for the two variables and
here is the same plot using the same units for emissions and increase in the atmosphere. Quite a difference in impression.
The emissions still are widely above the natural, temperature dependent variability in sink rate and the “airborne” fraction still is widely within the natural variability…
No. If the sinks are very active, the increase of natural emissions must dwarf the increase in human emissions. This allows for a much greater set of possibilities, and is, in fact, the usual way in which feedback systems work.
Sorry, but nature doesn’t make a differentiation between natural and human CO2 (except a small one in the isotopes). If human emissions increased near a threefold in 50 years time, the natural sources must have increased a threefold in the same period to show the same behavior as seen in the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and to dwarf the influence of human emissions. That is how feedback systems work…
http://www.false-alarm.net/author/gosta/
paper 3:
During the period (6 months in 1997) indicated by the blue area
in Fig. 1, the temperature increased 0.18 ̊C. Concomitantly, the rate of change of the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide increased by about 1.8 ppm/year.
This corresponds to a sensitivity measure of 5 ppm/ ̊C, if the carbon dioxide level is assumed to
respond instantaneously to temperature changes.
===
Not the error as I recalled. His dynamical value is about 10ppmv/K/a but he then looked at change in CO2 assuming it equilibrated (unlikely) in 6 months.
anomalatys says
Cooling is an expected result if CO2 increases emissivity…and emitters do that.
henry says
well, to me the whole concept of GHG is a total misnomer
as without the GHG’s, most notably the ozone, peroxides and n-oxides TOA,
we would probably fry….
You say that more CO2 causes more cooling?
If you want to prove that to me you must come up with a balance sheet showing me how much warming is caused by an increase of x % of Y gas (by re-radiation of earthshine) versus the cooling caused by an increase of x% of same Y gas (by back radiating sunshine)
in the meantime, the reason why we see what we are seeing, ,
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2014/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend
is that from around 2002 there is actually less energy coming through the atmosphere
as expected from my results…
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
The CO2 has no effect on temps.
but more of it beneficial to the biosphere
anomalatys says
Cooling is an expected result if CO2 increases emissivity…and emitters do that.
henry says
well, to me the whole concept of GHG is a total misnomer
as without the GHG’s, most notably the ozone, peroxides and n-oxides TOA,
we would probably fry….
You say that more CO2 causes more cooling?
If you want to prove that to me you must come up with a balance sheet showing me how much warming is caused by an increase of x % of Y gas (by re-radiation of earthshine) versus the cooling caused by an increase of x% of same Y gas (by back radiating sunshine)
in the meantime, the reason why we see what we are seeing, ,
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2014/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend
is that from around 2002 there is actually less energy coming through the atmosphere
as expected from my results…
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
The CO2 has no effect on temps.
but more of it is beneficial to the biosphere
People forget the seasonal temperature cycle – the real temperature is never constant. When one seasonal cycle is over, atmospheric CO2 concentration doesn’t necessarily return to its starting point, even when the temperature does. The exchange coefficents during the warming and cooling phases of the seasonal cycle may be different and the CO2 lifetime is not zero.
The annual increase in atmospheric CO2 correlates with the amplitude of the seasonal cycle too and this is consistent with the seasonal temperature cycle causing the variation in atmospheric CO2.
“Again the only way to disbelieve the carbon accounting argument is to misunderstand it.”
If people misunderstand it, it must be because you haven’t explained it. Have you explained it in this thread?
Ferdi, what is the basis for your graph. Once again, you just throw stuff out , without any explanation and expect it to be accepted as fact.
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
I note that after the step there is an increase of about 15ppm in 20 year = 0.75 ppmv/K/a
about 10ppm in 7 year = 1.4 ppmv/K/a
My measurements are substantially more that that but not wildly so.
What is the initial, instantaneous slope and what do you base this calculated response on?
tonyb says:
November 10, 2013 at 7:28 am
“Here is Central England temperature from the Met Office…..”
The dramatic cooling since around 2000 is quite extraordinary, and it does feel chilly. During the 1990’s the BBC endlessly told us it was getting warmer because of climate change. But now the exact opposite is happening they’re strangely silent on this subject.
But of course the lies just go on and on. Here’s the heading from a report in the Telegraph a few weeks ago:
“British climate warming much faster than the rest of the world”.
Needless to say, the clowns at the Grantham Research Institute were involved.
What can decent people do against these lies, when even the President of the United States tells us that global warming is accelerating?
Chris
Edim “The annual increase in atmospheric CO2 correlates with the amplitude of the seasonal cycle too and this is consistent with the seasonal temperature cycle causing the variation in atmospheric CO2.”
Temp drives CO2 on an annual and inter-annual basis. It drives it on the millennial time scale. What those who seem to think CO2 drives temperature need to show is at what point this relationship flips from lead to lag and then at what time-scale it flips back again.
Such a behaviour seems improbably but I’m always open to new evidence. So far we still seem to be at the stage of confusing assuming a vague long term correlation in monotonically rising time series somehow “proves” CO2 is driving , while studiously avoiding any serious evaluation of correlation such as done by Allan MacRae, Ole Humlum and evidence I have presented.
Ferdi, since you are here, are you aware of any evidence on any time-scale showing CO2 leading temperature change or even being in phase (with any identifiable features).
If now, how do you explain cause following effect?
Vince Causey, it (the mass balance equation) has been discussed here repeatedly. It is basically this:
Step 1 : the carbon cycle obeys the principle of conservation of mass, it is a closed system and carbon is not created or destroyed, but is merely exchanged between atmosphere and the oceans and terrestrial biosphere.
Step 2 : This means that if more CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere each year than is taken up by the ocean and terrestrial biosphere each year then the atmospheric CO2 level will rise by an amount equal to the difference between total emissions into the atmosphere each year and total uptake from the atmosphere each year.
Step 3 : Lets restate that algebraically: Let Ea represent annual emission from anthropogenic sources (e.g. fossil fuel use, land use changes), En represent total annual emissions from all natural sources (e.g. oceans, volcanos etc.), Un represents total annual uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere into all natural sinks (e.g. primary production, oceans again), and C’ represent the annual change in atmospheric CO2 then
C’ = Ea + En – Un
Technically there is also Ua, which is anthropogenic uptake of CO2, but since we are not currently making any significant steps in carbon sequestration this is to all intents and purposes negligible.
Step 4 : rearrange the equation, we get
C’ – Ea = En – Un
Note that we don’t have direct measurements of En or Un, but we do have reliable measurements of C’ (from Mauna Loa) and Ea (as fossil fuel use is taxed and hence governments keep records). Note that in Prof. Salby’s Sydney Institute talk, he explicitly states that both of these sources of data are reliable and states that the rise in CO2 depends on the difference between total emissions and total uptake, which is exactly what the first equation states. However, as we do know C’ and Ea with good reliability, we can use the equation to work out En – Un.
Step 5 Get the data for C’ and Ea (both available from the Carbon DIoxide Information and Analysis centre), and use the equation to determine En – Un. A plot of the results are shown here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/3_mass_balance.png
Every year for since the start of the Mauna Loa record, C’ – Ea has been negative (i.e. the annual rise in atmospheric CO2 has been less than anthropogenic emissions) in which case En – Un must also be negative, i.e. total annual emissions from all natural sources is less than total annual uptake by all natural sinks. In other words, the natural environment is a net carbon sink, and takes more CO2 out of the atmosphere each year than it puts in, and is OPPOSING the rise in atmospheric CO2, rather than causing it.
Now Bart will claim that the above argument assumes source and sinks are constant. This is clearly not true, if you follow the link to the image given above, you will find that the difference between total natural emissions and total natural uptake is both very variable from year to year and has on average been increasing with time. That would be rather difficult to achieve if the sources and sinks were constant! ;o)
Hope this helps.
Dikran, nobody claims that the natural environment is a net CO2 source. The observation is that the change in atmospheric CO2 is temperature-dependent.