Guest Post by WUWT Regular “Just The Facts” 
While the Pause in Earth’s temperature continues, currently 17 years and 10 months based upon RSS satellite data, it is important to note that Fossil Fuel and Cement CO2 emissions are at their highest levels ever.
We have been told by NASA “that carbon dioxide itself is a potent greenhouse gas (GHG)” and by NOAA’s UCAR that “the current spike in carbon dioxide is sure to result in a rapid increase in global temperature”. Anthroprogenic CO2 emissions have increased by over 60% since 1990;
and “the world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010.”
“That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, ‘the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.’” Economist
In order to make it easier to watch Atmospheric CO2 levels rise;
while Earth’s Temperature does not, we are pleased to introduce WUWT’s newest addition, the WUWT CO2 Reference Page. The WUWT CO2 Page offers an array of graphs on Atmospheric CO2, Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions and Land Use Change Based CO2 Estimates. In addition to the WUWT CO2 Reference Page. if you have not had the opportunity to our other Reference Pages they are highly recommended:
- Atmosphere Page
- Atmospheric Oscillation Page
- CO2 Page
- ENSO (El Nino/La Nina Southern Oscillation) Page
- “Extreme Weather” Page
- Geomagnetism Page
- Global Climate Page
- Global Temperature Page
- Great Lakes Ice Page
- Northern Polar Vortex Page
- Northern Regional Sea Ice Page
- Ocean Page
- Oceanic Oscillation Page
- Polar Vortex Page
- Paleoclimate Page
- Potential Climatic Variables Page
- Sea Ice Page
- Solar Page
- Spencer and Braswell Papers
- Tornado Page
- Tropical Cyclone Page
- US Climate Page
- US Weather Page
Please note that WUWT cannot vouch for the accuracy of the data within the Reference Pages, as WUWT is simply an aggregator. All of the data is linked from third party sources. If you have doubts about the accuracy of any of the graphs on the WUWT Reference Pages, or have any suggested additions or improvements to any of the pages, please let us know in comments below.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Just for the irony of it the CO2 page should have the Scripps Institution of Oceanography graph of O2 at the bottom of the page. It’s a near mirror image of the CO2 graph and should inspire a few questions and ideas about what’s happening with the carbon cycle.
http://scrippso2.ucsd.edu/
Geejam
All the industrial uses of CO2 you mentioned are accounted for. We produce CO2 for industrial use from natural gas. We count natural gas combustion and conversion in CO2 emissions.
Ferdinand
Industrial CO2 does not come from plants. It comes from natural gas. CO2 from dead people comes from the plants and animals they ate. Whether cremated or not, the carbon will return to the soil and air as part of the natural carbon cycle.
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
Ferdinand, I take exception to your post at August 3, 2014 at 3:32 pm which repeats a falsehood and repeats an untrue assertion that I used “crooked reasoning” to refute your circular argument.
I refuted those assertions in my post at August 3, 2014 at 1:57 pm which is here.
I there wrote
Ferdinand, making an offensive falsehood is beneath you. Repeating it when called on it is way beneath you.
Richard
Dr. Strangelove says:
August 3, 2014 at 10:45 pm
Not quite. If a single large scale vineyard (say in Marlborough, Australia) makes 2M gallons of wine, the additional CO2 manufactured by man in the fermentation process is unnaccounted for in any ’emissions’ figures. The amount of CO2 is approximately double of that if the grapes had just been left to naturally rot on the vines and return to ‘the soil’. If it were the same amount of CO2, I will never need to purchase alcohol again – just eat rotting fruit.
Likewise, if I apply half a bottle of ‘Valkial’ limescale remover to my bathroom taps, the additional CO2 manufactured by me is unaccounted for. When I bake bread (using deliberatly germinated yeast) or make a sponge cake, the same applies. Ramp this up to global industrial levels, then it should amount to a significant contribution to anthropogenic CO2 – which again is unaccounted for. Again, it’s not just about fossil fuels and cement.
Finally, not all man-made bottled (or liquid) CO2 for industrial processes derives from natural gas. It can be made from hydrogen and ammonia reaction using methane produced during industrial biomass processes for example.
” the additional CO2 manufactured by man in the fermentation process is unnaccounted for in any ‘emissions’ figures”
Nor should it be. The carbon was from CO2 already in the air, reduced to sugars by the vine.
richardscourtney says:
August 4, 2014 at 12:18 am
Richard, in the other discussion I did make a clear distinction between seasonal, year by year and long term changes in CO2 caused by temperature:
1. The seasonal cycle is dominated by the NH extra-tropical forests:
T up:
CO2 down (5 ppmv/K)
13C/12C ratio up
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/seasonal_CO2_d13C_MLO_BRW.jpg
2. The short term variability is dominated by the tropical forests:
T up:
CO2 up (4-5 ppmv/K)
13C/12C ratio down
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
3. The long term gain is dominated by the oceans:
T up:
CO2 up (8 ppmv/K overall gain) by the oceans (but CO2 down by vegetation)
13C/12C ratio hardly changed
(I did not make a plot of that, but the long term ice cores T-CO2 plots are well known)
Either you haven’t read that (while you were very active on that discussion) or you are deliberately confusing the reader by fabricating assumptions that I never assumed and explicitly rejected.
Ferdinand Engelbeen.
Tyndall’s experiment had been forseen by Fourier who debunked the GHE (At least in a correct translation) some years before 1824.
Heat from the CO2 molecules will only transfer the bulk of their heat kinetically because O2 and N2 are poor IR adsorbers.
Look at the Moon, receives the same solar radiation and noon temperatures are 121C shade temperatures -150C. No atmosphere to REDUCE radiation.
Ferdinand Engelbeen.
CO2 lazers are common firstly because they can give very high energies enabling metal cutting and profiling. They are quite efficient, 20%, probably because they adsorbe IR readily. BUT they require a high input of energy to achieve this cutting ability. Low powered CO2 lazers are used for range finding because the bulk of the atmosphere is a POOR IR adsorber.
But I am sure you know this as well.
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
I am replying to your post at August 4, 2014 at 2:48 am which is here.
No! Ferdinand, this will not do!
I wrote that your “5 ppmv/K” value was determined from short term processes because it was derived from the seasonal and volcanic processes that are short term. Specifically at August 3, 2014 at 6:09 am I wrote here
You repeatedly accuse me of misrepresenting you for saying that.
Your most recent such accusation is in your post I am answering, and it says
YOUR POINTS 1 AND 2 ARE WHAT I SAID!!!
and your point 3 is an unsubstantiated assertion which was also answered in my post at August 3, 2014 at 6:09 am that I have linked from this post.
You have made a circular argument and – as I said – you refuse to see it is circular and try to excuse your error by repeatedly falsely accusing me of using “crooked reasoning” to refute your circular argument. I repeat, Ferdinand, this will not do.
Richard
dbstealey says:
August 3, 2014 at 2:17 pm
But there is no comparable data showing that changes in temperature are the cause of subsequent changes in CO2.
There are plots which show that CO2 increased much faster than expected from a temperature increase:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
(graph from Etheridge e.a. 1996: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1996/95JD03410.shtml )
The temperature drop between MWP and LIA was at least as much as the increase between LIA and current warm period (except if you accept Mann’s HS…). The CO2 drop was ~6 ppmv from MWP to LIA with a 50 year lag after the main temperature drop. The increase after 1850 is over 100 ppmv, hardly attributable to temperature.
While the CO2 increase is not caused by temperature, its effect on temperature is debatable, and theoretically not more than 0.9°C for a CO2 doubling before (negative and positive feedbacks).
johnmarshall says:
August 4, 2014 at 3:47 am
Heat from the CO2 molecules will only transfer the bulk of their heat kinetically because O2 and N2 are poor IR absorbers.
Yes, but that means that the atmosphere is warming up where CO2 absorbs its part of the outgoing IR radiation, as long as the possibility of a collision before re-radiation is present.
CO2 lazers are common firstly because they can give very high energies enabling metal cutting and profiling.
Each photon from a laser has the same energy at the same frequency as the photon captured and re-emitted by a CO2 molecule somewhere in the atmosphere. Thus such a photon re-send in all directions if it reaches the surface will add energy to the surface regardless of the temperature of the surface or the CO2 molecule where it originated…
richardscourtney says:
August 4, 2014 at 4:26 am
You wrote:
You assume that only the processes of the seasonal variation affect long term changes
while I wrote:
1. The seasonal cycle is dominated by the NH extra-tropical forests:
2. The short term variability is dominated by the tropical forests:
3. The long term gain is dominated by the oceans:
Your assumption of my assumption is not based on anything I did write.
That is my final word on this.
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
Your post at August 4, 2014 at 4:49 am says
I am not surprised that you have withdrawn because following much argument about the matter in tyhis thread, at August 4, 2014 at 2:48 am in your post here you admitted that your Point 3 was in another discussion on another thread.
I discussed what you wrote and you accused me of things I did not do.
But none of this is important compared to the point I made at the start of this fuss; viz.
Nobody knows the effect of temperature rise from the LIA on atmospheric CO2 concentration, and much more information and understanding of the carbon cycle are needed before the effect can be quantified.
Richard
Greg Goodman says:
August 3, 2014 at 2:28 pm
Where do you find that?
I found 8ppm/year/kelvin for inter-annual variation.
Note that is a rate of change per K , not a fixed change per K which implies that it is equilibrating on annual timescales. I don’t think that can be justified.
The CO2 levels have not the time to equilibrate with the temperature changes: while they still are going up, the temperature is already going down, which gives the 90 deg. lag between the direct and derivatives plots of T and CO2:
I plotted the same data as yours as simple derivatives:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
The problem is that plotting direct changes, derivatives and derivatives of derivatives show the same sinusoids, thus direct effect, effect in the derivatives, etc… are all possible.
What is known from the ocean surface is that an increase of 1 K gives a change of maximum 17 ppmv in the atmosphere as new equilibrium (Henry’s Law). Thus any change in temperature gives a finite change in CO2 levels of the atmosphere, not a continuous one. Here for a step function:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
Over all time frames (except the past 160 years), there is a rather fixed ratio between temperature changes and CO2 changes, with very variable rates of change per K for each period (glacial-interglacial transitions and back, near zero during an interglacial,…).
richardscourtney says:
August 4, 2014 at 5:08 am
Nobody knows the effect of temperature rise from the LIA on atmospheric CO2 concentration, and much more information and understanding of the carbon cycle are needed before the effect can be quantified.
Richard, you often say that you don’t know, but want to know. My impression is that you don’t want to know anything that does fit the human cause of the increase in the atmosphere.
The effect of temperature on CO2 levels is 8 ppmv/°C over longer term: decades to multi-millennia. That is as scientifically rock solid as can be. That the oceans are the main driver of this ratio is also rock solid, as that can be deduced from the 13C/12C ratio changes over the same time frames.
That has nothing to do with any knowledge of the carbon cycle, as what is measured is the final result of that cycle, which is all what counts for the amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The effect from the MWP – LIA cooling in the 20-year resolution Law Dome DSS ice core is 6 ppmv. The temperature increase LIA – current is quite certainly not more than the MWP-LIA temperature drop. Thus the CO2 increase since the LIA is not more than 6 ppmv. Not the 100+ ppmv which is measured.
Is is interesting to me that the cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions between 1750-1875 were ~1.2ppmv and the cumulative CO2 increase over the same period was ~12ppmv, so the CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere was occurring at a rate 10 times father than what humans emissions could do. 12ppmv over 125 years of course doesn’t sound a lot but assuming the ice-core data were correct and 1C corresponded to 8ppmv it would imply that the oceans warmed by 1.5C and the paleo-climate data doesn’t appear to suggest that. Just thought I’d put that out there.
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
At August 4, 2014 at 5:34 am you say to me
Well, I don’t know how you could rationally obtain that “impression” because I challenge those who assert unjustifiable assertion on both ‘sides’ of the argument. Your problem is that you create arguments which support your view and ignore all the uncertainties: indeed, with the ice core data you pretend the uncertainties don’t exist!
And when the uncertainties are acknowledged then the truth of my statement which you quote is obvious. That statement is
Nobody knows the effect of temperature rise from the LIA on atmospheric CO2 concentration, and much more information and understanding of the carbon cycle are needed before the effect can be quantified.
You say
I know you think that but it is plain wrong. It derives from your mistaken idea that the ice cores trap air as though they were – to use your words – sample bottles. THEY DO NOT. The ice core data is proxy data and we know from the stomata data that it is very inaccurate, but we do not know how inaccurate. And your mistake also exists because you refuse to recognise that the system of the carbon cycle would be different in a different temperature regime and we do not know how different it would be.
Richard
CHIPSTERO7:
Thankyou for your post at August 4, 2014 at 6:53 am which says
Yes, if one accepts the ice core and the stomata data then the recent increase to atmospheric CO2 began about a century before the anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) emission was sufficiently large to induce the rise.
Of itself this does not disprove an anthropogenic cause of the recent atmospheric CO2 rise. However, it does indicate much more natural variability to atmospheric CO2 than is admitted by advocates of the putative anthropogenic cause.
I refer you to my above post at August 3, 2014 at 1:14 am which is here.
Richard
CHIPSTERO7:
Of course, my reply to you should also have acknowledged that the data you mention also provides doubt – as you say – to the atmospheric CO2 vs temperature relationship indicated by the ice cores.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
August 4, 2014 at 7:19 am
The ice core data is proxy data and we know from the stomata data that it is very inaccurate, but we do not know how inaccurate.
As I said before: if you don’t like the data, then the data must be wrong. The ice core data are accurate to +/- 1.2 ppmv for the same part of the same ice core and +/- 5 ppmv for different ice cores for the same average gas age. That are direct measurements, not “proxies”, of a mix of CO2 levels of several years, from 10 to 600 years, depending of the snow accumulation rate.
Stomata data are proxies which are influenced by CO2, but not only by CO2 and with their own problems like growing in local biased CO2 levels, of which nobody knows how the local bias changed over the centuries. They are calibrated against ice cores over last century, because these are the standard…
That the carbon cycles (and the ocean cycles) are quite different during the LIA than during the MWP is quite sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that the net result is known with reasonable accuracy.
CHIPSTERO7 says:
August 4, 2014 at 6:53 am
The smaller the effect, the more that the error bars will give trouble: ice cores are accurate to +/- 1.2 ppmv (one sigma) for the same part of the same ice core. Different ice cores can differ +/- 5 ppmv from each other for the same average gas age, here for the past 300 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_000_3kyr.jpg
The problem is more in the timing of the average gas age, which is influenced by the snow accumulation rate (which gives the modeled firn densification = diffusion rate) than in the measurements themselves.
Besides that, the human emission figures are estimated on fossil fuel use, which started mainly after 1850 as industrial use. But human induced land use changes from the past few hundred years are largely unknown. A similar increase of CH4 is also seen in ice cores, without really known reason. Some speculate that rice cultivation was already much larger than expected over a much longer time frame.
But that doesn’t make much difference for the larger changes, where the error bars give much less trouble. Here for the 420,000 year Vostok ice core:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/Vostok_trends.gif
recently confirmed by the 800,000 years Dome C record. The main deviations from the 8 ppmv/°C trend are from the long CO2 lags after temperature changes during glacial-interglacial transitions (800 +/- 600 years) and worse during interglacial-glacial transitions (several thousands of years).
As the glacial – interglacial change is about 100 ppmv, the error bars of +/- 5 ppmv span some 10% of the change, thus 8 +/- 0.8 ppmv / °C. By far not enough to explain the current 100+ ppmv increase since about 1850…
Anthony
In view of Murry Salby’s assertion that atmospheric CO2 content is not correlated to global anthropogenic emissions, is there a way the relation of annual global emissions to atmospheric CO2 content could be shown on this reference page.
Ferdinand,
Thanks for your reply. In the link you posted it says:
The CO2 data overlap with the record from direct atmospheric measurements…
So that is merely an overlap of two charts. Overlaps are improperly used to show cause and effect. But they show no such thing. All they show is coincidence, not which came first; CO2 or T. Overlapped charts do not show causality.
The charts I posted show very clearly and decisively that ∆T causes ∆CO2. I have asked repeatedly for someone to post a similar chart, showing that changes in CO2 cause changes in global temperature. No one has ever posted such a chart.
Yet, you say:
While the CO2 increase is not caused by temperature…
That is so obviously wrong that all I can do is refer you back to the numerous charts and data that I have posted, showing that changes in CO2 are, in fact, caused by changes in T.
I do agree with your statement that the maximum change in global T would be at most ≈0.9ºC. That is not only nothing to worry about, it would be a net benefit to the biosphere. Warmth is good; cold kills.
Finally, you refer to possible feedbacks and secondary effects from CO2. While those are theoretical possibilities, there is no evidence that they exist in the real world. If they did exist, then global warming would not have stopped.
For consideration
CO2 from burning/plants etc uses CO2.
CO2 outgassing from seas does not use O2 (O2 also outgasses)
Measurement of O2 will therefore show an inverse plot to CO2 concentrations in atmosphere if the CO2 increase is burning based.
O2 will change little if CO2 changes are the result of sea temperatures.
http://bluemoon.ucsd.edu/publications/manning/ManningandKeeling2006.pdf
http://bluemoon.ucsd.edu/images/ALLo.pdf
CO2 and O2 on same chart shown here:
http://bit.ly/1kzIa4t
(note different scales)
with phytoplankton linked to the annual cycle:
http://www.elcamino.edu/faculty/tnoyes/Readings/10AR.pdf
Most phytoplankton/plants in NH so dip is largest in north.
The O2/N2 ratio is continually declining, matching the CO2 increase so burning o2 (inside green plants or inside fossil burners) is outpacing the absorption of CO2 by photosynthesis.