Josh writes:
I had a request from Richard Betts to do a cartoon on this paper in Nature about soil CO2 emissions. The abstract says soil emits “60 petagrams of carbon per year to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide”.
It made me wonder why they talked about ‘carbon’ and not ‘carbon dioxide’ – after all, carbon is not a greenhouse gas. And why use petagrams and not gigatons, or is it gigatonnes?
I found out that a petagram is the same as a gigatonne or metric gigaton, but not a UK or US gigaton. Also the reason scientists use ‘carbon’ and not ‘carbon dioxide’ is that they are referring to the carbon cycle (carbon as fossil fuel burns to create CO2 which is reabsorbed by plants and converted back to carbon).
But between the scientists, the politicians and the media it is easy to get a bit confused. For example at Information is Beautiful you get this lovely infographic where they talk about 39 gigatons(!) of CO2 but call it ‘our carbon budget’. Their actual number for a ‘carbon budget’ should be 10.6 gigatonnes not 39 (though they do note the confusion in a footnote). Richard Betts says the amount of carbon in manmade CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are, in fact, 8 gigatonnes per year.
When you look at the data behind the infographic they add to the confusion by talking about ‘carbon emissions’.
Back to the Nature paper, we learn that “the response of soil microbial communities to changing temperatures has the potential to either decrease or increase warming-induced carbon losses substantially.”
Add this to the 60 petagrams of soil emissions, which dwarfs the manmade emissions of 8 Petagrams, and you have a lot more uncertainty – of the natural kind.
Many thanks to Richard Betts and Nic Lewis for helping with the research, educating me and correcting mistakes.
Peta confused if you were to ask me.
Eliminate all the CO2 on earth and you eliminate all life on earth.
What the hell’s wrong with the idiots that think this is a good thing?
A truly well-grounded observation…
Yep, they gave all the dirt on that one. Talk about soiling reputations…
So we know the models, according to Richard Betts, are useless for policy making. And now we can see that anthro-CO2 is a minor player compared to just one source of the global CO2 budget, soil.
So once again the skeptical perspective is correct: land use is a significant factor that is poorly accounted for and poorly understood by the so-called consensus.
Generally, in my years of cynical practice as a quality systems auditor and as a data systems consultant, ambiguous and unclear language is used when it is important to somebody that something be not clearly understood…
Carbon is Newspeak for carbon dioxide.
Anthropogenic CO2 emissions (‘fossil’ fuels and cement) are already (in 2013) around 10 Gt carbon and that’s 36.6 Gt CO2. There are also anthropogenic land use CO2 emissions, I’m not sure about the latest numbers.
http://i1054.photobucket.com/albums/s499/WeatherDem/CO2_emissions_Global_Carbon_Project_2013_zps7214b665.jpg
And 1 ppm of atmospheric CO2 is equivalent to 2.13 GtC, so 10 GtC is ~4.7 ppm of atmospheric CO2. The measured annual growth in atmospheric CO2 is only about 2 ppm and not growing since the end of the 1990s, just like the temperatures. That means that the airborne fraction must be decreasing.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo_anngr.png
No, no. It’s the growth that’s not growing!. CO2 is still increasing, but it’s maybe not accelerating(?). And you say that like it’s a good thing?? Anyhow, you should tell someone who can actually do something, if it really matters. Economical energy is the sole hope of mankind for a better standard of living. Today, that means carbon-based energy. Anyone who advocates “green” energy is also advocating perpetuated poverty and early death for much of the planet’s population. You can’t have one without the other. But maybe that’s the point after all?
Mike, yes it’s the growth that’s not growing (despite accelerating human emissions) and if it continues correlating with global temperature indices, it will start decreasing with the upcoming cooling.
“…it will start decreasing with the upcoming cooling.”
The usual suspects are already chirping that nature recently has apparently become more efficient at removing anthropogenic inputs. “Land use change” is apparently the latest epicyclic explanation for some.
If you take the Keeling growth chart above and overlay the RSS satellite lower trop curve, you’ll find they match in direction, if not necessarily in magnitude, for every year but 1990.
http://www.rockyhigh66.org/stuff/CO2_keeling_RSS.png
When the temperature rises, the CO2 emitted goes up. A drop in temperature drops the CO2 increase. This makes sense only one way. Soil at a certain temperature boils off a certain level of CO2. Warm it, it produces more, cool it, less.
This is what Salby was saying.
Here is the decadal mean growth rate of CO2 as a percent increase. Also the per year avg increase.
year —————— CO2 ppm – % increase/decade & average increase/year within decade
Decade end 1940 – ____ 300 ppm est.
Decade end 1950 – ____ 310 ppm – 3.1% (avg 1.0 ppm/year)
Decade end 1960 – ____ 316 ppm – 3.2% (avg 0.6 ppm/year)
Decade end 1970 – ____ 325 ppm – 2.7% (avg 0.9 ppm/year)
Decade end 1980 – ____ 338 ppm – 3.8% (avg 1.3 ppm/year)
Decade end 1990 – ____ 354 ppm – 4.5% (avg 1.6 ppm/year)
Decade end 2000 – ____ 369 ppm – 4.3% (avg 1.5 ppm/year)
Decade end 2010 – ____ 389 ppm – 5.1% (avg 2.0 ppm/year)
Year end _ 2012 – ____ 393 ppm – 1.0% (avg 2.0 ppm/year) ….. [year 2011 and 2012]
data source: ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt%20
And here is the same data but the world population data is included
increases in World Population & Atmospheric CO2 by Decade
year — world popul. – % incr. — Dec CO2 ppm – % incr. — avg increase/year
1940 – 2,300,000,000 est. ___ ____ 300 ppm
1950 – 2,556,000,053 – 11.1% ____ 310 ppm – 3.1% —— 1.0 ppm/year
1960 – 3,039,451,023 – 18.9% ____ 316 ppm – 3.2% —— 0.6 ppm/year
1970 – 3,706,618,163 – 21.9% ____ 325 ppm – 2.7% —— 0.9 ppm/year
1980 – 4,453,831,714 – 20.1% ____ 338 ppm – 3.8% —– 1.3 ppm/year
1990 – 5,278,639,789 – 18.5% ____ 354 ppm – 4.5% —– 1.6 ppm/year
2000 – 6,082,966,429 – 15.2% ____ 369 ppm – 4.3% —– 1.5 ppm/year
2010 – 6,809,972,000 – 11.9% ____ 389 ppm – 5.1% —– 2.0 ppm/year
2012 – 7,057,075,000 – 3.62% ____ 394 ppm – 1.3% —– 2.5 ppm/year
4.6 billion more people emitting CO2 over the past 60 years doesn’t seem to have had much effect on the mean CO2 growth rate.
But I betcha the the average increase in ocean surface temperatures will correlate better with the CO2.
Yeah well, it is growing
REPLY: silly wabbit, perhaps you missed the story we already covered? – Anthony
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/09/study-shows-record-high-increases-for-atmospheric-co2-in-2013-but-theres-still-no-warming/
Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever seen a carbon balance study that accounts for the carbon sink of human agriculture? Granted, most agricultural products are displacing annual plants that would otherwise grow in the areas we farm, but I’d still like to see agriculture as a percentage of total human contribution to the carbon cycle.
I am afraid I can’t help you with the study you are looking for, but modern crops are a great deal more efficient at fixing CO2 than annual crops or other perennials. You also need to consider that outside the temperate regions, modern cropping patterns essentially end up as annual anyway (tropical countries harvest rice two or even three times per year) so I suspect that the switch to higher productivity agriculture has meant an increase in the cycling rate of CO2 between plants and the atmosphere.
In addition, as one of the goals of modern agriculture is to increase the organic matter in depleted soils (definition of depleted is flexible here), there is an aim of increasing the soil as a sink for carbon while the increased rate of cycling goes on. Again, I don’t have numbers to point to, but while there was a still an exchange in carbon emissions, farmers were getting credits for things like no-till agriculture based on the expected increased carbon in the soil. Many development projects continue to use a nominal figure for fixed carbon to justify investments in soil management (bit of lily-gilding really as the increases in productivity usually justify the investment).
This shows that there is some kind of awareness of the issue you are asking about – perhaps someone else can point to a study of some kind.
Eh, let me add a bit to to the image above.
Natural CO2 is recycled but it’s not 100% efficient. Over the half billion years of vigorous plant growth, combined with the severe ice age we are in, CO2 was nearly depleted. Man’s liberation of buried CO2 is one of the best things to ever happen to the earth.
It should not be forgotten that not one ounce (gram?) of that soil-based carbon contributes to global warming. Only the human-caused emissions can do that. Ask the consensus – they wouldn’t just make that up, don’tcha know.
Wait, if they are referring to 60 petagrams of carbon then the actual amount of CO2 by weight is much higher. CO2’s molecular weight is 44.0095 g/mol and Carbon is 12 g/mol. So if I’m calculating that right the actual carbon dioxide created is 220 petagrams.
Soil (and peat?) is rarely given the importance it warrants as one of the leading players in the carbon cycle. It stores and emits vast amounts of carbon according to its state-cultivated/uncultivated-and is as important as the ocean in its own way.
An article about this topic would be welcome. perhaps based on the ‘Nature’ one referenced.
tonyb
There is a good reason to use carbon and not CO2 in the calculations: it is CO2 in the atmosphere, but only 1% CO2 in water, where the rest is 90% bicarbonates and 9% carbonates. In trees it is CO2 only where it enters the leaves, but for the rest it is transferred into sugars, starch, cellulose and a host of other carbon containing molecules…
Thus to make a mass balance, it is much easier to use carbon, regardless of where that carbon is incorporated…
Further, the soil releases of carbon (as CO2 in this case) are simply a part of the natural cycle, which is more sink than source: no matter if the cycle is 150 GtC/year or 220 GtC/year or 1000 GtC/year in and out, the net balance is about 5 GtC more uptake than release. The variability of the natural cycle is within 2 GtC/year. Here for the past 55 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
where 1 ppmv = 2.12 GtC = 2.12 PgC.
The individual natural fluxes may be largely unknown, including their natural variability. All we know is that the net result of all natural fluxes is more sink than source over the past 55 years. That makes that the full increase over the past 55 years is from the human contribution.
No, it only means that, with the human CO2 emissions, the net natural emission is negative or that nature has been a net CO2 sink over the last 55 years. Without the human CO2, who knows?
What we know is that the atmospheric CO2 accumulation is a temperature intergral, so lower the temperatures, lower the accumulation.
Edim, there is no temperature integral: the temperature variability causes most of the natural variability on seasonal (where the NH extra-tropical forests are dominant at ~5 ppmv/K) time frames and the year-by-year variability is mainly caused by the temperature influence (ENSO) on the tropical forests: opposite to the seasonal variations (4-5 ppmv/K).
Over longer time frames, the oceans are dominant: some 8 ppmv/K over the past 800,000 years with a variable lag for CO2. That is a straightforward ratio, directly related to Henry’s law of the solubility of CO2 in seawater.
The current increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is ~120 ppmv above the temperature driven setpoint. That gives the extra uptake of CO2 in the oceans and partly in vegetation. Temperature Is only a minor player in that process.
Ferdinand, I don’t accept the ice core CO2 data. Why would anybody? They’re highly uncertain.
Let’s stick to the last ~55 years when we have direct measurements, why speculate? In this period, atmospheric CO2 change (not only annual) seems to correlate with the global temperature indices. In fact, they’re almost directly proportional.
Edim, the ice core data are far more reliable than you think. But even over the past 55 years, the correlation between accumulated human emissions and accumulation in the atmosphere is almost perfect, while the correlation between temperature and CO2 increase is not so perfect:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
In the period 1959-1975 (or 1945-1975 if you include ice core data) there was a cooling trend while CO2 levels simply follows the human emissions at around 60% (with some year by year variability) and since 2000 there is no temperature increase, but CO2 levels still follow the human emissions at around 40%. The 60% or 40% are largely within the natural variability (which is between 10% and 90% of human emissions).
Ferdinand, I don’t see how your graph shows any correlation between human emissions and atmospheric CO2.
Atmospheric CO2 change is proportional to the global temperature level, NOT temperature change. Assuming direct proportionality:
dCO2 = k*T
Edim, the dCO2 = k*T violates Henry’s law and the dynamic equilibrium as seen in the oceans.
The influx and outflux of CO2 in the atmosphere from the oceans are directly proportional to the CO2 pressure difference between ocean surface and atmosphere. If the ocean surface temperature increases with 1 K worldwide, the pCO2 of seawater increases somewhat (the literature gives between 4 μatm and 17 μatm). That makes that the influx at the upwelling places near the equator increases with maximum 5% and that the outflux near the polar sinking places decreases maximum 5%. That gives an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The CO2 increase pushes the flux changes back to smaller changes, until the increase in the atmosphere fully compensates for the increase in pCO2 of the oceans and the fluxes are back to what they were before the temperature increase. Thus not more than 4-17 μatm (~ppmv):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
Thus the increase ends when a new equilibrium is reached (if ever), but there is no way that the increase of CO2 goes on indefinitely for a sustained T increase over an arbitrary base level.
The only possibility is a continuous increase in upwelling (either amount or concentration), which increased a fourfold since the 1960’s, in ratio with the fourfold increase of human emissions, but there is not the slightest indication for such an increase in CO2 circulation from the (deep) oceans, to the contrary: the more recent estimates for the residence time for any CO2 molecule in the atmosphere are slightly higher than the more past estimates, which points to a rather constant natural CO2 throughput in an increasing CO2 mass residing in the atmosphere.
Thermo only tells you the direction of flow, not the rate. The earth rotates and tilts on a regular basis and source and sink rates are never being controlled by some global “dynamic equilibrium”.
Ferdinand, dCO2 = k*Ta doesn’t violate Henry’s law – there’s a seasonal temperature cycle. For illustration, the North Atlantic SST here:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/AMO%20GlobalMonthlyIndexSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
What makes you think that the seasonal cycle produces zero change in atmospheric CO2? Equilibration time is not zero and the exchange coefficients are not equal during warming/cooling. Furthermore, the temperature cycle is also not symmetric, as far as I know. The annual change in atmospheric CO2 also correlates with the amplitude of the seasonal CO2 cycle. I wish I had time to analyze this…
In addition: the correlation between human emissions and CO2 increase in the atmosphere:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1900_cur.jpg
or since 1960:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1960_cur.jpg
or for temperature since 1960 (worse if plotted since 1900):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_1960_cur.jpg
Temperature changes of halve the scale have little effect, but sustained temperatures should have a huge influence?
It is proven that the short term variations in CO2 rate of change are caused by the influence of temperature on vegetation, while the long term influence of temperature (or more likely increased CO2 pressure) make that vegetation is a net sink for CO2, thus with zero to negative influence on the rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Thus the short-term CO2 variations caused by temperature and the long term influence of temperature are from different processes which have not the slightest connection with each other…
Edim
September 8, 2014 at 12:01 pm
There are three distinct parts in the CO2 changes caused by temperature: the seasonal cycle, the year by year (mainly 2-3 years) variability and the long term variability. Which one of the two main players: the biosphere or the oceans, is dominant in the CO2 response can be deduced from the δ13C changes. If the CO2 change is paralleled with a small δ13C change, then the oceans are dominant. If the CO2 change shows an opposite huge δ13C change, then the biosphere is dominant.
For the seasonal cycle:
– CO2 changes opposite to temperature changes (~5 ppmv/K)
– δ13C changes opposite to CO2 changes
– Dominated by the spring-summer uptake and decay by NH extra-tropical vegetation:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/seasonal_CO2_d13C_MLO_BRW.jpg
For the short term variations:
– CO2 changes follow temperature changes with a lag (4-5 ppmv/K)
– δ13C changes opposite to CO2 changes
– Caused by the decreased uptake / increased decay in tropical forests due to heat/drought
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
For the long term variations:
– CO2 changes follow temperature changes with a lag (~8 ppmv/K)
– δ13C changes parallel the CO2 changes, but hardly change over the ice ages (a few tenths per mil)
– Dominated by the (deep) oceans
The T-CO2 graphs from the ice cores (Vostok: 420 kyear, recently Dome C: 800 kyear) are well known…
That also means that the maximum 1 K increase in temperature since the LIA may have caused maximum 8 ppmv increase. The rest of the 120 ppmv increase is from the over 200 ppmv human additions…
Ferdinand, you’re comparing apples and oranges (your graphs 2 and 3). If you’re plotting cummulative emissions vs cummulative CO2 increase (1960 – 2011), then for proper comparison, you shoud plot the sum of temperature anomalies (the integral) vs the cummulative CO2 increase. See what you get.
“…for proper comparison, you shoud plot the sum of temperature anomalies (the integral) vs the cummulative CO2 increase. See what you get.”
You get this for the rate of change and this for total accumulation. A more-or-less perfect match.
Emissions and atmospheric concentration are, however, diverging. Emissions are accelerating, while concentration is not.
Edim
September 8, 2014 at 1:01 pm
Ferdinand, you’re comparing apples and oranges (your graphs 2 and 3).
The short term variability is from (tropical) vegetation, the long term variability is dominated by the oceans. That are different processes, where the first levels off in a few years (when the cause is gone or when the “fuel” – the fallen leaves of previous years – is burned up), but the latter can go on for hundreds of years before a new equilibrium is reached.
If you take the integral of temperature, one can show a similar increase of CO2 in the atmosphere as from human emissions, but there is no way that an increase of only 1 K since the LIA will give you 120 ppmv extra in the atmosphere, or that a ~0.5 K increase since 1960 will give you 80 ppmv extra, if you don’t like the ice core results.
The pCO2 increase of ocean waters is maximum 17 μatm/K. Any increase of CO2 in the atmosphere will reduce the influx from the oceans and increase the outflux to the oceans. At 17 ppmv extra in the atmosphere fro 1 K temperature increase, the original fluxes are restored. That is all. It is impossible that at a constant upwelling of CO2-rich deep ocean waters the CO2 levels will go up untouched by the increased pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Further, imagine what happens for different time frames: the increase in temperature over a glacial-interglacial transition is ~10 K for ~80 ppmv change. That takes ~5000 years or 0.0016 ppmv/K/year. Over the past 55 years it is ~0.5 K for 80 ppmv change or 2.9 ppmv/K/year, a factor over 1,000 times higher. Moreover there were sustained warm periods of ~10,000 years where CO2 simply follows temperature and sustained cold periods of ~100,000 years where CO2 simply follows temperature. With a k factor in dCO2 = k*T thus virtually zero over very long time frames, which means changing temperature baselines for different periods…
Ferdinand, NOT the temperature increase or change, it’s the temperature level that correlates with the change in atmospheric CO2! It doesn’t take any change in average annual temperatures! How many times do I have to repeat?
I hypothesise it’s the seasonal temperature cycle (SST, sea ice…) that does the trick, but that’s another story. In short, the non-zero equilibration time, unequal exchange coefficients for warming and cooling, asymmetry in the seasonal cycle can all result in a change in atmospheric CO2, after an annual cycle is completed
Bart, thanks.
Bart
September 8, 2014 at 1:51 pm
Hello Bart, you have a good follower with Edim here. But he is as wrong as you are.
The short term variability is the response of (tropical) vegetation on temperature variations.
The pre-industrial longer term response is not from vegetation but from the oceans.
Thus any influence of temperature on CO2 levels is different for the short term as for the long term processes.
The increase in temperature (and/or the increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere) caused an increased uptake of CO2 in the biosphere.
Any increase in temperature gives a direct increase of the ocean surface of maximum 17 μatm/K. The dynamic response of the ocean-atmosphere system is an increase of maximum 17 ppmv in the atmosphere. At that increased pressure, the original in/out fluxes between atmosphere and (deep) oceans are restored.
The increase with 0.5 K since 1960 is thus good for an increase of maximum 6.5 ppmv of the 80+ ppmv increase since 1960.
Further, the “airborne” fraction of human emissions still is largely within natural variability and still responsible for almost all increase in the atmosphere, besides the small addition from temperature:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em4.jpg
where the red line is the CO2 increase as function of the delta pCO2 in the atmosphere and the pCO2 in the oceans, calculated from the temperature changes.
“It is impossible that at a constant upwelling of CO2-rich deep ocean waters the CO2 levels will go up untouched by the increased pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere.”
It is ridiculous to imagine that a continual upwelling of CO2 rich waters would not create a continual increase in atmospheric CO2. If the pCO2 of the waters is trending upward, so will the pCO2 of the atmosphere.
“Further, imagine what happens for different time frames…”
No, don’t. You don’t need to. The long term dynamics can be constrained by further processes which are not observable in the shorter term. But, we don’t need to know them. We can see what is happening right now, and in the time period 1958-present in which the greatest share of the rise has occurred.
Ferdinand Engelbeen
September 8, 2014 at 2:27 pm
Emissions are accelerating, concentration is not. That is enough to show that your artificial agreement from least squares fitting is spurious.
Edim
September 8, 2014 at 2:17 pm
Ferdinand, NOT the temperature increase or change, it’s the temperature level that correlates with the change in atmospheric CO2! It doesn’t take any change in average annual temperatures! How many times do I have to repeat?
Edim, the CO2 cycle is a dynamic system, which shows a tight correlation between temperature and CO2 levels over very long time frames. Any constant temperature level of the oceans gives a constant CO2 level after a certain time. That is as good the case for a static equilibrium between an ocean water sample and adjacent air shaken in a flask as for the full oceans-atmosphere CO2 cycle.
It is physically impossible that such a dynamic system doesn’t respond to increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere, whatever the cause.
A constant temperature level (above some arbitrary variable zero line) gives an initial increase in CO2, which decreases towards zero until a new equilibrium is reached, where the average pCO2 of the atmosphere is equal to the pCO2 of the oceans. Then it stops.
A constant temperature level doesn’t give a constant increase of CO2. That is physically impossible.
Bart
September 8, 2014 at 2:30 pm
Emissions are accelerating, concentration is not. That is enough to show that your artificial agreement from least squares fitting is spurious.
Concentration increase currently is not accelerating, but still largely within natural variability, where several periods of non-accelerating, even decrease in concentration change are visible.
Nothing to do with least squares fitting: direct calculation of the residual increase caused by human emissions minus the calculated uptake by oceans + biosphere from the CO2 pressure difference between atmosphere and equilibrium pCO2 level for the actual (ocean) temperature, plotted on the same scale and without different offset as you have done in your plot…
@ Edim: September 8, 2014 at 9:20 am
“What we know is that the atmospheric CO2 accumulation is a temperature integral, so lower the temperatures, lower the accumulation.”
——————-
Right you are, Edim.
But Ferdinand will still attempt to bedazzle you with all of his pretty graphs and mathematical rhetoric ……. but none of it will explain ….. or even discredit …… the factual data that is portrayed on this copy of the Keeling Curve graph.
http://i1019.photobucket.com/albums/af315/SamC_40/keelingcurve.gif
I have told him before that his “claims” are in direct violation of my …. Refrigerator/Freezer Law which governs CO2 emissions from rotting biomass as a result of microbial action.
Source ref for my above Law, to wit:
“United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety
Refrigeration slows bacterial growth. They are in the soil, air, water, and the foods we eat. When they have nutrients (food), moisture, and favorable temperatures, they grow rapidly, ….. Bacteria grow most rapidly in the range of temperatures between 40 and 140 °F, the “Danger Zone,” ….. ……………….
A refrigerator set at 40 °F or below will protect most foods.”
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/934c2c81-2a3d-4d59-b6ce-c238fdd45582/Refrigeration_and_Food_Safety.pdf?MOD=AJPERES
Samuel C Cogar
September 8, 2014 at 5:46 pm
Samuel, the seasonal δ13C changes are opposite to the CO2 changes, mainly in the NH. That proves beyond doubt that the biosphere is the dominant cause of the seasonal changes, not the ice area or the rest of the oceans. If it were the oceans, the largest change would be in the SH, not the NH and the δ13C changes would parallel the CO2 changes.
Thus while the organics decay slows down in winter, it doesn’t stop, especially not under snow, where piles of leaves are warm enough by bacterial life to maintain the decay even at -20°C in the atmosphere. I do see that result each year where the pile of fallen leaves in my backyard nearly halves over winter time.
If you look at the δ13C changes at Mauna Loa, that shows decreasing levels from September to May without pause. Thus the biological decay for most of the NH goes on all winter.
@ Ferdinand Engelbeen: September 9, 2014 at 12:50 am
“If you look at the δ13C changes at Mauna Loa, that shows decreasing levels from September to May without pause. Thus the biological decay for most of the NH goes on all winter.”
——————
YUP, and the Sun shines part of the day, all winter long, in most of the NH. But, Ferdinand, that wee bit of biological decay that occurs in most of the NH during the winter months is immaterial simply because of the frozen ground, snow pack and ice cover inhibits said CO2 from being outgassed into the atmosphere. And if there is liquid water below the frozen surface it will absorb most of that CO2. Does not Henry’s Law also apply in “underground” situations?
=============
“I do see that result each year where the pile of fallen leaves in my backyard nearly halves over winter time. ”
—————-
Ferdinand, dry biomass is not subject to decay. That pile of leaves in your backyard is being COMPRESSED, it is not decaying at the rate you think it is. Spring “cleanup” is still required.
Ferdinand, none of your “weazelworded” associations, correlations, estimations, guesstimations, obfuscations, percentageations and/or gibberish explains the steady and consistent 6 ppm average bi-yearly cycling and the 1 to 2 ppm annual increase in atmospheric CO2 quantities that has occurred during the past 56 years as confirmed by the Mona Loa Record and/or Keeling Curve graph.
Ferdinand, today is September 9, 2014 and the atmospheric CO2 was 395.62 ppm on Sep 7 2014 as per NOAA-ESRL measurements at Mauna Loa ….. and I will guarantee you that it will continue its bi-annual decrease until post-September 23, 2014 ….. and prior to October 5, 2014, it will begin its bi-annual increase and continue said increasing until post-mid May 2015. Just like is has been doing, steadily and consistently, in each successive year, for the past 56 years.
Ferdinand, there is nothing in the natural world that has a “steady and consistent” cycle that can be associated or correlated with “measured” atmospheric CO2 quantities other then the bi-yearly cycling of the equinoxes. There is absolutely nothing that is “steady and consistent” with the long-term bi-yearly activities of humans ….. or of the bi-yearly variations associated with the different “emergent phenomena” of different weather patterns (temperature, pressure, Sunshine, cloudiness, winds and/or precipitation).
Association does not equal causation.
But, long term (56 years) correlation does in fact infer causation.
I have found that atmospheric CO2 in kilograms per square meter per year at one atmosphere is a more useful metric in calculating mass balances in changing flow systems at sources and sinks. Anthropogenic emission rates can be expressed globally in these units by dividing by the earths surface area.
These units would be useful in this study. The rate of uptake by leaves shows up in the atmosphere around ten years later as decay in soils emits it back into the atmosphere. These rates are always changing and are never in thermodynamic equilibrium. You need to know these natural changes before you can attribute atmospheric changes of CO2 entirely to anthropogenic emissions.
Fred, the extra uptake by the biosphere, that is all land + sea vegetation, microbes, molds, insects and animals is known from the oxygen balance: if there is more uptake than release by the biosphere, then some extra oxygen is emitted, or reverse if there is more release than uptake.
From the oxygen balance we can see that since the 1990’s the whole biosphere is an increasing source of oxygen, thus an increasing sink of CO2 and preferably of 12CO2. Thus can’t be the cause of the CO2 increase or the reduction in 13C/12C ratio. See:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
Neither are the oceans: any substantial extra release of CO2 from the (deep) oceans would increase the 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere, while there is a huge decrease in the atmosphere and the ocean surface, in ratio with human emissions:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.jpg
Decay and microbial production of CO2 consumes oxygen and you are neglecting these processes in your mass balance calculations like you neglect the changes in natural processes in your atmospheric CO2 mass balance. If the oceans were net sinks, there would be no long term rise in atmospheric CO2. Only the assumption that anthropogenic emissions is causing all the increase in your mass balance calculations lead you to believe oceans are a net sink.
Fred, the oxygen balance + the δ13C balance take into account all biological processes. That include the uptake by plants, the respiration by plants (at night) and the decay/use of plants by microbes, molds, insects and animals. That shows that the whole biosphere is a net, increasing sink for CO2, currently around 1 GtC/year.
The ocean surfaces are net sinks for CO2, as can be seen in the measured increase of total inorganic carbon (DIC: CO2 + bi + carbonates) of ~0.5 GtC/year.
The deep oceans are taking the remainder 3 GtC/year from the mass balance (hardly measurable via tracers), as all other known sinks are either too small or too slow. But if you know of any other sinks that would fit the balance, I am very interested…
That means that the full increase of ~4.5 GtC/year is from the 9-10 GtC/year human emissions, as these don’t disappear in space…
If the oceans were a net source, where should the human emissions go? Not in the oceans, only for 1 GtC/year in vegetation, where goes the rest of the 9-10 GtC/year human emissions?
WTH?
The “beautiful information” referred to above says we have 17 years before we have released enough CO2 to have a greater than 20% chance of exceeding the magic 2C – above which we all die horrible deaths from ‘global warming’.
17 years? Wasn’t the entire premise of weepy Bill McKibben’s 350.org the notion that anything more than 350ppm CO2 puts us squarely over the 2C limit? Well, we blew through 350ppm 17 years ago. Now they are telling us we have 17 more years of CO2 before we meet our doom?
And of course, there hasn’t been any warming at all over the last 17 years, even though CO2 has been rocketing skyward and is now waving bye-bye to 400 ppm in the rearview mirror. Meanwhile, NASA’s Ben Santer has conveniently figured that you can’t falsify the models for periods less than 17 years…
Seems like 97% of warmists have decided that 17 years is the magic number for ‘global warming’ propaganda statements. It’s far enough into the future that there is still time to put the desired leftwing policies in place, but close enough to the present that people feel they have to worry about it, but not so close that it will be proven false before the rat bastards have had time to migrate the narrative or retire from their cushy government jobs onto their cushy government pensions.
Who wants to bet that 17 years from now, we will have experienced 17 years of cooling and will be sitting at ~550 ppm CO2, and yet we will still be just 17 years of CO2 emissions away from Warmageddon …
Yes, soil bacteria release more than 8 times as much as CO2 as humans do. It always amazes me how few climate believers even know that, let alone admit it..
But they can’t do that unless the soil has absorbed it. After nearly half a billion years of life on land, the absorption-release system can only be stable. Dynamically stable in this case, or course. Any other state would have ceased hundreds of millions of years ago.
Yes, perturbations in the system can change the stable balance point. And changing temperatures are one such perturbation. But it does not affect things in only one way.*
That the net effect of these changes is adverse is a claim that needs demonstration, not assumption.
*These bi-directional changes can include things like: Extra CO2 in the air causes extra plant growth, which causes more plant matter to be buried in soil, which reduces Carbon in the atmosphere. Extra plant matter plus extra bacteria trapped in lake-bottoms and soils becomes the fossil fuels of future millennia at an increased rate to that of cooler temperatures. Warmer temperatures plus adequate moisture causes extra bacterial activity in the soil, and causes extra CO2 release. Warmer temperatures that cause drier soil cause lesser CO2 release. Warmer temperatures cause greater mineral carbonation trapping Carbon in the soil. Warmer temperatures causes faster microbial metabolism causing more Carbon to be trapped in microbe bodies but more carbon to be released from microbial activities.
All I seem to read about is how much CO2 (that bad gas – also know as bad carbon) is being emitted, but never does it say how much of that emitted CO2 is naturally reabsorbed in the natural cycle of things. It’s only about how much we emit!!!
(y)
To keep perspective..
Our Oceans emit between 90 and 107 GTonnes of CO2 annually!
Yes and they absorb between 93.5 and 110.5 GtC annually… (the 90 to 107 GtC is carbon, CO2 = C*44/12).
The oceans are net sinks for CO2, not net sources…
So you have to admit if you neglected anthropogenic emissions, oceans would presently be net sources of CO2. Also, changes in the 13CO2 index are inversely related to CO2 concentrations.
Fred, I have to disagree: If humans should stop all emissions today, the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere still would be much higher than the equilibrium for the current (ocean) temperature. Thus at the current pCO2 in the atmosphere, the 120 ppmv extra pushes 1 GtC extra in the biosphere and 3.5 GtC extra in the oceans.
That doesn’t change the first year after the human emissions did stop, thus that causes a drop of ~2 ppmv in the atmosphere. The second year the pCO2 in the atmosphere is a little less, thus less uptake, etc. until the old equilibrium of ~290 ppmv for the current temperature is reached again.
The e-fold decay rate of the extra CO2 is slightly over 50 years, or a half life time of ~40 years.
Think about it. The Partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is it’s highest in the arctic winter and rises as more ice covers the water sink which is at below 0 C. Then it goes to a minimum when the ice cover is a minimum. The ice is controlling the sink rate, not partial pressure. Like wise, when the ground is frozen, the biosphere including microbes neither absorb or emit CO2 significantly. When the ground does emit, the CO2 is more depleted of the heavy CO2. Quantify these process over the long term before claiming that all these changes are related to anthropogenic emissions. This paper is a snapshot in time in quatifying one source as a function of latitude and would be a mistake to assume that it has been constant with time.
fhhaynie
You say
Yes!
I have been saying that to Ferdinand for many years, and I have been saying it in several ways.
But Ferdinand is fooled by his circular mass balance argument and, therefore, seems unable to consider that different processes in the carbon cycle have different rate constants.
Richard
So have I and several others. He will continue to defend his mass balance approach because the IPPC uses it, inspite of evidence to the contrary. After all, if the IPPC were to admit that anthropogenic CO2 emmisions were not all of the cause in the rise of CO2, they would have no “justification” for trying to control emissions.
Fred, the seasonal δ13C changes I have plotted in one of the comments above definitively show that it is vegetation that dominates the seasonal cycle, not the oceans or their ice cover. And you underestimate how much CO2 is emitted by bacteria in winter even in the high North under a snow deck. Or in mid-latitudes with their milder winters…
And the processes are quantified:
– human emissions: 9-10 GtC/year
– biosphere: net sink of ~1 GtC/year
– ocean surface: net sink of ~0.5 GtC/year
– deep oceans: net sink of ~3 GtC/year
– global natural variability in the past 55 years: +/- 2 GtC/year
No need to know any individual in/out flux of CO2 or its variability for the carbon balance, but still of academic interest…
“No need to know any individual in/out flux of CO2 or its variability for the carbon balance, but still of academic interest”
That is where you are making your mistake. Assuming the net natural fluxes are as you state and do not vary significantly over the past 55 years. Put some confidence numbers on those calculated values and show me observed data that they have not changed significantly in the last 55 years.
…
The only thing you know with any degree of “exactness” is the total annual rate of rise in atmospheric CO2. You are calculating that being attributed to anthropogenic emissions by assuming changes in natural sources and sinks make no difference. Try regressing your annual rise rate data on UAH tropics temperature data and compare the R^2 to that of your R^2 with emissions data. Which do you think will give the better fit?
They both rise over the long term. I’ve done it and the much better fit is with the temperature data that leads the CO2 rise rate data by a couple of months.
fhhaynie
September 8, 2014 at 3:54 pm
That is where you are making your mistake. Assuming the net natural fluxes are as you state and do not vary significantly over the past 55 years.
I am not assuming anything about the individual natural fluxes, for me these may have halved or doubled over the past 55 years or changed from sinks to sources or the opposite…
What is exactly known is the net global natural fluxes: more sink than source in every year of the past 55 years: between 0.2 ppmv sink rate in 1959 and 2.5 ppmv in 2012.
It is not even important how the sinks were distributed between the different reservoirs, oceans and biosphere in these 55 years. The natural cycle was a net absorber of CO2 in all these years. That means that here was zero natural contribution (besides a small one by the temperature increase) to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere…
Ferdinand
You assert
NO!
It means NOBODY DOES OR CAN KNOW how all the many and different natural sources and sinks of CO2 each changed but one net result of all those changes and the anthropogenic activities was an increase to CO2 in the atmosphere.
It does not and it cannot “mean” anything else because nobody does or can know what each of those natural changes would have been in the absence of the anthropogenic activities. The increase to CO2 in the atmosphere may have been the same or different if there had been no anthropogenic activity. Indeed, it is hypothetically possible – although unlikely – that the net effect anthropogenic actions may have suppressed some natural emissions (e.g. by land use changes) with resulting NET REDUCTION to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Our ignorance of the carbon cycle is almost total. Hence, any assertions about its behaviour are products of the assumptions adopted to generate the assertions.
Richard
richardscourtney
September 9, 2014 at 12:34 am
nobody does or can know what each of those natural changes would have been in the absence of the anthropogenic activities.
Richard, you forget that for the oceans Henry’s law is at work: if the CO2 level in the atmosphere increases above the temperature controlled equilibrium, then more CO2 is pushed into the oceans, whatever the cause of the increase.
What the carbon balance says is that currently 4.5 GtC/year is absorbed by nature, of which 1 GtC/year by vegetation, based on the oxygen balance. That gives 3.5 GtC/year absorbed by the oceans.
That is independent of the actual human emissions, only depends of the difference between pCO2 of the atmosphere and pCO2 of the oceans. Thus if human emissions ceased today, over the next year the uptake would be the same as today, but decreasing over time as the CO2 levels reach the temperature controlled equilibrium.
The change caused by human emissions is that each year the human emissions are larger than the uptake by oceans and biosphere together, which leads to a continuous increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and thus a continuous increase in uptake. There is simply no room for any alternative explanation, as that violates one or several observations.
Ferdinand:
Thanks for the reply but it ignores the issue; e.g. I mention land use changes and you reply about oceanic uptake.
As you know, I reject your mass balance argument as being very flawed. However, consider the issue in your terms and not mine. The US is measured to be a net sequester of CO2 because of forest regrowth. Assume your mass balance argument is true, then anthropogenic effects say the US has reduced the increase to atmospheric CO2. And with our existing lack of knowledge it is hypothetically possible that this is true for the total of all anthropogenic activity.
Please note that this does not mean I accept your mass balance argument: I don’t.
It means that even on your own terms you were stating an assumption when you wrote
Richard
Richard, I didn’t mention land use changes, as the figure of the net result of land use changes is included in the net uptake based on the oxygen and δ13C balances.
That shows that the biosphere as a whole, including positive and negative land use changes, is a net, increasing sink for CO2 since the 1990’s. The current net uptake by the biosphere is 1 GtC/year. Human releases are 9-10 GtC/year. Thus still a lot of extra CO2 coming from human sources, not natural sources.
Again it doesn’t make any difference if the US is a net absorber of CO2 or a net emitter, all what counts for the increase in the atmosphere is the total balance at the end of the year, which is known with reasonable accuracy.
Ferdinand:
I write as a courtesy to say that I read your response. Others can assess our views of this matter and you have had the ‘last word’. I am content with that.
Richard
Honestly, Ferdinand, it is very difficult to keep arguing this mass balance nonsense with you. It is so obviously wrong on its very face, and yet you keep asserting it confidently. It is like arguing with a medieval medicine man about the efficacy of using leeches for healing. It is so obviously wrong from a learned perspective, but how do you get the fellow to understand? How do you break through the mental barrier he has erected to assure himself that he is right?
Occasionally, you seem to get that it all depends on the power of the sinks, but then you slide right back into it.
Bart, a mass balance must be in balance, whatever the individual fluxes are. There is no way that nature can be the cause of the increase in the atmosphere, as long as the net increase in the atmosphere is less than the human input.
The only exception is if the carbon cycle increased at exactly the same rate and timing as the increase of human emissions over time. Then it would be the increase in circulation which dwarfs the human emissions increase. But there is not the slightest indication of such increase, not in any of the different types of observations. To the contrary, observations show that there is no decrease, even an increase in CO2 residence time, which points to a rather constant natural throughput in an increasing mass of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Thus your theory of fast sinks which accommodate to an increased throughput is proven false and the mass balance excludes a natural cause, together with all other observations.
The power of the sinks is modest with an e-fold decay rate of over 50 years, less if you take into account the less certain emissions from land use changes.
Bart, perhaps you should talk to a Chem Engineer or Chemical Kineticist about species balances perhaps then you’ll understand how it works?
LeeHarvey September 8, 2014 at 9:00 am
Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever seen a carbon balance study that accounts for the carbon sink of human agriculture?
Yes, you can find the data on the CDIAC site, http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/landuse/houghton/1850-2005.txt
No, Ferdinand, no. You are not doing a true mass balance because you do not have a controlled volume, and you are filling in the gaps in your knowledge with rank speculation. There is every indication in the world that nature is responsible for driving atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Emissions are accelerating. Concentration is not.That fact, by itself, contradicts everything you are saying here.
Phil – you are a lost cause. No point in engaging.
Bart, the controlled volume is the atmosphere, measured with an accuracy of better than 0.2 ppmv or 0.5 GtC of the about 800 GtC present in the atmosphere. That is very accurately known.
Human emissions from fossil fuel burning are known with reasonable accuracy, of about +/- 1 GtC around the inventories, + far less accurate estimates of the result of land use changes. But these only add to the human emissions.
All we know with reasonable accuracy is the difference between these two: that shows that nature was a net sink over the past 55 years. Add to that the oxygen balance and the δ13C balance which show that the biosphere is a net sink for CO2, and the latter proves that the oceans are not the source of the CO2 increase. Thus besides your arbitrary curve fitting, there is no indication in this world that the recent CO2 increase is from nature.
BTW, the yearly average MLO level of 2013 gives +2.05 ppmv increase at Mauna Loa, which is 0.55 ppmv down since the previous year… But that is simply within the natural year by year variability, which is within 10-90% of the human emissions.
@ Ferdinand Engelbeen: September 9, 2014 at 3:59 pm
“Bart, a mass balance must be in balance, whatever the individual fluxes are. ”
———————
Ferdinand, your above statement is not only illogical, …. it is both asinine and silly.
If a “balance” must be in ”balance” then there is no frigging reason in science for anyone to be calling it a “balance”.
Such an entity can not exist in the natural world because it would be contrary to the definition of the word “balance”, regardless of its use as a noun or a verb. The word itself INFERS “unequalness”.
“DUH”, an intelligent person would surely call the aforesaid “individual flux” weighing thingy a “platform scale”.
“All we know with reasonable accuracy is the difference between these two: that shows that nature was a net sink over the past 55 years”.
No, it does not. You have not accounted for the artificial sinks. The artificial sinks are that portion of the natural sinks which have been induced by artificial forcing. If the artificial forcing goes away, so does that portion of the sinks.
“BTW, the yearly average MLO level of 2013 gives +2.05 ppmv increase at Mauna Loa, which is 0.55 ppmv down since the previous year… But that is simply within the natural year by year variability, which is within 10-90% of the human emissions.”
But, that is simply your rationalization, your own made-up percentage band of reasonableness for your rationalization, and quite ridiculous when the decrease perfectly tracks the temperature graph.
Sam: ‘If a “balance” must be in ”balance” then there is no frigging reason in science for anyone to be calling it a “balance”. ‘
So true. Ferdinand has locked the mechanism in place, and triumphantly declared that the fact that the balance doesn’t budge is proof that the feather weighs the same as the sack of grain.
“If the artificial forcing goes away, so does that portion of the sinks.”
And, please note, this is the balancing mechanism which Ferdinand has locked into place.
Samuel C Cogar
September 10, 2014 at 5:27 am
If a “balance” must be in ”balance” then there is no frigging reason in science for anyone to be calling it a “balance”.
Samuel, my English may not be perfect, but a balance must be zero if you add all ins and subtract all outs. That is what I learned from my sister in law, who was a bookkeeper all her working life.
At every moment the total amount of carbon, in whatever form that may be, must be the same in all reservoirs on earth together. With the extreme low amounts of cosmogenic induced 14C as exception.
You can make a balance for the atmosphere:
increase in the atmosphere = human emissions + natural releases – natural sinks
4.5 GtC/year = 9 GtC/year + X – Y
that gives:
X – Y = -4.5 GtC/year
No matter if
X and Y are around 100 or 1000 GtC/year. In all cases Y was larger than X in all 55 years of Mauna Loa.
It only may matter if X and Y tremendously increased over time: then the extra input may have been the cause of the increase in the atmosphere, thereby dwarfing the human contribution. But that implies:
– a natural source which increased a fourfold in exact timing with human emissions.
– natural sinks which are very actively adjusting to the increase in the atmosphere.
But there is not the slightest indication that the natural cycle increased over time in any of the observations, to the contrary, there are indications that the residence time increased, which shows a rather stable throughput in an increased CO2 mass in the atmosphere…
Bart
September 10, 2014 at 8:34 am
No, it does not. You have not accounted for the artificial sinks.
If the increase in the atmosphere is mostly natural, as you think, then there are hardly any “artificial” sinks caused by humans. If humans are responsible for the full increase in the atmosphere, the total sink rate of ~2.15 ppmv/year is caused by humans. If we stop all emissions, the excess 110 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t disappear at once but has a decay rate of slightly over 50 years.
But, that is simply your rationalization, your own made-up percentage band of reasonableness for your rationalization
As the year by year variability in rate of change is between 10% and 90% of the human emissions, I don’t panic for a decadal average which is lower than the previous decade… Your temperature fit is only true for the year by year variability, the trend is not caused by temperature, as there is no measured increase in CO2 circulation from oceans or vegetation – to the contrary.
“Samuel, my English may not be perfect, but a balance must be zero if you add all ins and subtract all outs.”
You are missing his point. A dynamic balance is established by mechanisms which enforce an equilibrium condition. If one side of the equation changes, then the other will react to reestablish equilibrium.
“At every moment the total amount of carbon, in whatever form that may be, must be the same in all reservoirs on earth together.”
You do not know the quantities in all reservoirs on Earth. You are assuming that you do.
“increase in the atmosphere = human emissions + natural releases – natural sinks
4.5 GtC/year = 9 GtC/year + X – Y”
But, Y = Yn + Ya, the part which reacts to natural CO2, and the part which reacts to anthroogenic CO2. If anthropogenic CO2 generation ceases, then Ya decays to zero.
This is the nature of a dynamic system. This is how feedback systems work. The sink activity increases in response to forcing. Any forcing, from any source. When anthropogenic inputs are added, Yn does not shrink to allow Ya so that Y stays constant. Ya gets added to increase overall Y.
You cannot solve for Yn and Ya separately. You only know the total Y.
“If the increase in the atmosphere is mostly natural, as you think, then there are hardly any “artificial” sinks caused by humans.”
No, the artificial sinks induced by humans is then well near equal to what is produced by humans.
“I don’t panic for a decadal average which is lower than the previous decade…”
You should. Because the alternate model based on temperature fully explains it, without any resort to handwaving, or need for faith that it is just a fluke.
“Your temperature fit is only true for the year by year variability, the trend is not caused by temperature, as there is no measured increase in CO2 circulation from oceans or vegetation – to the contrary.”
The trend is caused by temperature. It matches just right. The odds of that being happenstance are miniscule, and furthermore, nature has no mechanism by which it can respond to the variation, but not the trend.
Bart
September 10, 2014 at 12:42 pm
But, Y = Yn + Ya, the part which reacts to natural CO2, and the part which reacts to anthropogenic CO2. If anthropogenic CO2 generation ceases, then Ya decays to zero.
Bart, the sinks don’t make any distinction between X and human emissions, the sinks react on the total increase of CO2 in the atmosphere above equilibrium, whatever the source of the increase. The current increase is about 110 ppmv above the equilibrium for the current temperature. The current net removal by nature X-Y = 2.15 ppmv, that still gives an e-fold decay rate of over 50 years, no matter the partitioning between Ya and Yn. In all cases, a drop natural or human releases needs a lot of time to get back to equilibrium.
We know that human emissions increased a 4-fold in the past 55 years and so did the sinks. That implies that if the natural emissions were the main cause of the increase in the atmosphere, that the sum of all natural inputs, X and most of all outputs, Yn, must have increased a 4-fold over the past 55 years.
If you have any real world indication that the influx of natural CO2 increased a 4-fold over the past 55 years then you may have a case. If you haven’t, then humans are the (near) sole cause of the increase.
Further:
furthermore, nature has no mechanism by which it can respond to the variation, but not the trend.
As repeatedly said to you: the short term response of CO2 to the temperature variability is from (tropical) forests, the long term trend is NOT from vegetation. It is from a different process. If the e-fold decay rate for an excess amount of CO2 is in the order of 50 years, the response to short term variations in temperature will be what is observed and the human emissions may be largely responsible for the increase in the atmosphere.
“Bart, the sinks don’t make any distinction between X and human emissions, the sinks react on the total increase of CO2 in the atmosphere above equilibrium, whatever the source of the increase.”
Which is exactly why they expand for both! It is you who is trying to claim that the sinks behave differently for differently sourced CO2.
This is exactly why a portion of the sink capacity has to be a response to anthropogenic forcing. This is why there is a Ya, and why you cannot just assume Y = Yn.
“We know that human emissions increased a 4-fold in the past 55 years and so did the sinks.”
You don’t know how much the sinks increased. You are tossing out figures based on your preferences, not on evidence. It is an assertion, not a fact.
“If you have any real world indication that the influx of natural CO2 increased a 4-fold over the past 55 years then you may have a case.”
Right here.
“It is from a different process.”
There is no evidence of it. It would cause phase distortion in the match between the temperature series and the rate of change of CO2. This, again, is an assertion on your part, not a fact.
There is most certainly a long term response from vegetation. The greater your expanse of vegetation, the more CO2 it draws out of the air. And, vegetation is not the only sink with both long and short term responses.
This is exactly why a portion of the sink capacity has to be a response to anthropogenic forcing. This is why there is a Ya, and why you cannot just assume Y = Yn.
I don’t assume that Y = Yn, I assume that the difference between X and Y is caused by the extra CO2 in the atmosphere above equilibrium. That is ~2.15 ppmv for 110 ppmv extra in the atmosphere. In my opinion (and a lot of others) completely caused by the continuous human emissions in the past 160 years. Or an e-fold decay rate of ~51 years.
If you really want to split the causes of the sinks in “natural” and human caused, then the first are ~150 GtC/year in and out, the latter are currently 9 GtC/year extra in and 4.5 GtC extra out. or 6% extra in and 3% extra sink, where 3% remains in the atmosphere, 100% man-made. Be it that a lot of different processes are at work, where the bulk of the natural in/outs are temperature dependent seasonal processes and the extra output is mainly pressure dependent.
If, as you assume, the increase in the atmosphere is not caused by humans, then Ya is also (near) zero.
You don’t know how much the sinks increased. You are tossing out figures based on your preferences, not on evidence. It is an assertion, not a fact.
Bart, both human emissions and the measured net sink rate increased a 4-fold since 1960. That is a proven fact, based on the difference between human emissions and what is measured as increase in the atmosphere:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
There is no differentiation in sinks for Yn or Ya. As Xa increased a 4-fold and Xn+Xa-Y increased a 4-fold, then Xn must have increased a 4-fold too, as the sinks increase in ratio to the total increase, Xn+Xa, not in ratio to Xa alone.
Right here.
Bart, that is curve fitting, no proof. Proof is when you can show that the increase of Xn matches the increase of Xa, the human input, in any observation like residence time, 13C/12C ratio,…
There is most certainly a long term response from vegetation. The greater your expanse of vegetation, the more CO2 it draws out of the air.
Yes and that is the opposite of the short term response of vegetation, which gives more regional CO2 back to the atmosphere (or less global absorption) with increased temperatures. Thus short term and long term responses from vegetation are opposite to each other (short term response is mainly in tropical vegetation, long term expansion/uptake in the extra-tropical forests). That are proven facts.
That means that the variability of the rate of change of CO2 is caused by vegetation, but the long term increase is not caused by vegetation. Thus that are two different, independent processes at work. The first is temperature related, the second may be temperature related, or not. There is no must that it is temperature related, the net result then is the sum of the short term processes and the second process, without phase distortion if it isn’t temperature related…
“If you really want to split the causes of the sinks in “natural” and human caused, then the first are ~150 GtC/year in and out, the latter are currently 9 GtC/year extra in and 4.5 GtC extra out. or 6% extra in and 3% extra sink, where 3% remains in the atmosphere, 100% man-made.”
You don’t know this. It is just a storyline, a narrative, which matches how you want things to be.
“If, as you assume, the increase in the atmosphere is not caused by humans, then Ya is also (near) zero.”
Completely backwards. If the increase in the atmosphere is not caused by humans, then Ya is equal to the human input. The sinks expanded rapidly to effectively remove that input.
“There is no differentiation in sinks for Yn or Ya.”
Exactly! The sinks will expand whether the excess input is anthropogenic, or natural. Yn and Ya are not physical divisions, but mathematical ones. It is simply saying that if the input is the sum of anthropogenic and natural, then the sinks will respond in proportion to that sum, and not just in response to the natural input. I.e., the sinks are not wholly “natural”, because part of them would not exist without the anthropogenic forcing.
See this post for possibly some clarification.
“Bart, that is curve fitting, no proof.”
It is reasonable proof that CO2 is being driven by a temperature sensitive process. Since human inputs are not temperature sensitive, they are not driving it.
“Yes and that is the opposite of the short term response of vegetation, which gives more regional CO2 back to the atmosphere (or less global absorption) with increased temperatures… That means that the variability of the rate of change of CO2 is caused by vegetation, but the long term increase is not caused by vegetation.”
If there are strong growth rates such that live mass is increasing faster than dead mass is decaying and outgassing (and, not all dead mass does this), then you are taking CO2 out of the air. And, that does not matter if it is short term or long term.
But, I am not arguing that vegetation is the source of the increase at all. My argument is that vegetation forms part of the vast network of sinks which is able to remove anthropogenic inputs without much effort.
“…without phase distortion if it isn’t temperature related…”
If there were some process which responded only to the temperature variation, and not to the trend, then there would be phase distortion.
Bart:
If the increase in the atmosphere is not caused by humans, then Ya is equal to the human input. The sinks expanded rapidly to effectively remove that input.
The sinks don’t expand rapidly to human input, they expand to the total extra pressure in the atmosphere, which is currently 110 ppmv above equilibrium. That gives not more than 0.25 ppmv net sink rate in the ocean surface layer, 0.5 ppmv net sink rate in vegetation and the rest of the 2.15 ppmv net sink is in the deep oceans. That is what the figures show.
The sink rate in the ocean surface is measured on a lot of places, the sink rate in vegetation is calculated from the oxygen use and the rest is going into the deep oceans.
The uptake by the ocean surface is limited to 10% of the change in the atmosphere, and the uptake by vegetation is unlimited but very slow. There is not the slightest sign that the deep ocean – atmosphere exchanges increased over time, thus can’t be responsible for the increase in the atmosphere…
In the Arctic and around the Antarctic the rate of uptake of CO2 by the cold water containing phytoplankton is not limited by partial pressure differences (thermo) but by how fast the CO2 is being delivered to the ocean surface (kinetics). The sink rates at these surfaces is orders of magnitude greater than anthropogenic emissions. So a small percentage change over time of natural emission and sink rates can swamp a smaller change over time of anthropogenic emissions. You should not assume that these changes cancel each other and do not make a difference in your mass balance.
“The sinks don’t expand rapidly to human input, they expand to the total extra pressure in the atmosphere…”
To which human inputs contribute. For a linear, or linearized, system, superposition holds. It is thus equivalent mathematically to break each input out into its own proportionate subsystem.
You seem to think this is all magic. It isn’t. It is typical behavior of a feedback system.
Fred, the outflux near the poles as good as the influx near the equator is directly in ratio with the CO2 partial pressure difference between atmosphere and ocean surface. That gives a continuous exchange of ~40 GtC/year, slightly more sink than source: with the current atmospheric pressure of 110 ppmv above equilibrium, the difference is ~3 GtC/year.
Diffusion rates of CO2 in water are very slow, it is wind speed that makes the difference by mixing water and air over a much larger contact surface. If that changed, the uptake may be enhanced or reduced. But the main influence is from the pressure difference.
See:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/maps.shtml
The frozen Antarctic is neither a source or a sink. The cold waters circling the Antarctic is a big sink. With all the biological activity in these waters there is little chance for the partial pressure in the water to ever be greater than the partial pressure in the atmosphere above it. Yes, local wind enhances the exchange rate, but the controlling factor is how fast the CO2 is being delivered from the tropical oceans to that surface by the upper winds (jet streams). So the partial pressure above these cold waters is function of tropical emission rates and upper air wind speeds that change over long time periods as well as seasonally. These cold waters hardly ever have a chance to net outgass CO2 and will suck up nearly all the CO2 that gets to it. The same is true for the Arctic when that ocean is not covered with ice.
Bart,
The problem with your formula is that you think that the sinks response to human (and/or natural) emissions is very rapid.
If the response of the equilibrium processes in oceans and vegetation are slower than the human addition in the atmosphere, then the levels will go up, fully caused by the human input. If the response is fast, as you think, then the relative human/natural inputs are important.
What we know is that only the ocean surfaces are fast responding to any increase/decrease in the atmosphere, but limited to 10% of the change. The other sinks are much slower and can’t accommodate to the human emissions over a very short period.
If the sinks should be reacting very rapid, then the 40:1 ratio should be maintained in the increase rate of natural and human contribution, as that is the only way that the 4-fold increase of human emissions and total sinks can be maintained, but still there is not the slightest indication that the natural cycle increased over time, to the contrary.
Fred, the pCO2 of the atmosphere near the Arctic is about the same as near the equator and only slightly higher than near Antarctica. The difference, including the seasonal changes is less than 2% full scale. Thus the supply of “fresh” CO2 from the equator to the poles is NOT the limiting factor, it is the transfer rate from the atmosphere into the cold waters, where the transfer rate is maximum, but still limited to ~40 GtC/year output and a similar input near the equator…
So how do you explain CO2 concentrations being higher in the Arctic sink winter than in the tropics source? My best guess is that clouds are controlling concentration by absorbing CO2 and returning some of it to the surface in rain and releasing some of it to the stratosphere as the tops of thunderclouds freeze. The strong updrafts in those clouds also pumps CO2 into the upper atmosphere. This pumping action occurs where the vertical temperature gradient is favorable. At the poles, there is an inversion most of the time and the vertical motion is downward delivering air containing CO2 to the surface. In the Arctic winter that surface is frozen so the air must travel south to find a sink for the CO2. Thus, the CO2 being pumped up into the stratosphere and delivered to the Arctic builds up. The thermodynamics at play is in the clouds. Not the ocean surface.
“If the response of the equilibrium processes in oceans and vegetation are slower than the human addition in the atmosphere”
It isn’t, because it isn’t a steady rate that matters, but a change in the rate. The rate of change of the rate of human additions is not exceedingly large.
“…but still there is not the slightest indication that…”
You keep saying that. But, there are indications of what I am arguing. And, far more than “slight”.
fhhaynie
September 12, 2014 at 12:25 pm
Fred, the input of winter air in the Arctic is largely from the mid-latitudes via the Ferrel cells. The seasonal amplitude at Schauinsland – Southern Germany at 1,000 m height, atop of the Black Forest, is as large as at Barrow, coastal in the Arctic Ocean.
The CO2 transfer between the equatorial upwelling places and the polar sink places is largely unaffected by the seasons, as the seawater temperature at these places is not much seasonal affected. Even not at the polar side, where only the sink place moves with the edge of the ice cover, but the temperature remains near freezing, thus the pCO2(aq) doesn’t change much.
There is no similar seasonal variation in the SH, where the sea-ice movement is even larger than in the NH.
Your argument is even less convincing. The surface water temperature in the tropical pacific raises significantly in a matter of months as it travels from the cold upwelling in the East to warm spot in the West and we observe those changes in atmospheric CO2 that sync with ENSO. Regress your year to year rate change data on HADCRUT4 for tropical near surface air temperature and see for yourself.
CO2 = the base of our planetary food chain. More CO2 = more food. More food = more Humans (and pretty much every other form of life).
More Humans = the worst nightmare of the ‘Ehrlich’ acolytes.
If one were to accept the GEOCARB model then one should see that, left to its own devices, this Planet will be devoid of life as we know it in a few million years (blink of an eye in Geological terms) unless the ‘virus’ (formerly known as mankind) boosts CO2 levels and extends the time before photosynthesis falls below the level (Circa 100ppm CO2) that life (as know it) cannot continue.
9 Billion people by 2050? No problem if we keep CO2 levels rising ….
CO2+H2O+some of that ‘free’ energy’ from the Sun (Photosynthesis) = FOOD (not just for humans but for Krill and Whales too). An attack upon CO2 is an attack upon life itself. All life depends upon it – we have no shortage of energy from The Sun or Water … Just CO2!
Agreed–an attack on CO2 is an attack on human beings along with the entire biosphere. Then again, many enviros seem willing to accept any amount of damage to the biosphere as long as they can hurt or kill people.
I believe the basis of life on Earth is abiotic oil under the crust, originally seeping up thru deep sea vents, resulting in disequilibria that eventuated in RNA and simple RNA life where phosphorus was present in adequate abundance..About two billion years ago, a bacterium with internal membranes arose, producing mitochondria and chloroplasts/algae. This recycled the carbon back to reduced forms, allowing life to continue indefinitely.
We are now in the early stages of the Third great Transformation, as humans learn how to manage the biosphere to increased abundance and then colonize other worlds.
Any time an intelligent species learns something new, it makes mistakes. This is not a disaster, it is learning. We will get there.
Why peta though? It can only be to make it sound bigger. You dont explain to soneone that is lost to follow the road for 120,000 inches then turn left.
I do if I’m a sadist.
Their science may be crap but their use of words is top notch.
Carbon=black sooty dirty stuff as opposed to C02 which is a harmless, beneficial trace gas.
NOAA=Noah (saving creation from the impending flood)
Grace=dodgy satellite system which allegedly measures ice loss or goodness and beauty…take your pick!
GreenPeace=if you’re against them then presumably you’re in favour of ‘brown-war’?
Fracking=ugly word for breaking rocks.
Warmists always were on top of the propaganda.
“the response of soil microbial communities to changing temperatures
has the potential to either decrease or increase warming-induced carbon losses substantially.”
Hmm… CO2 depends on temperature. Who would have thunk it?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/08/how-much-of-atmospheric-co2-increase-is-natural/
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2014/9/3/salby-in-blighty.html
There are tricky little references to equilibrium wrt to oceans and ppCO2, this is sheer handwaving, as the cheerful little plankton are messing with the chemical equilibrium – actively messing with it. So are the corals, and a lot of other living organisms. Making the whole thing sound like basic chemistry is missing what is really going on. It’s about living organisms using their adaptations to survive. Those who are looking at the problem as just chemistry are missing the biochemistry and biophysics. Chemical approaches work for the solutes, but are totally out of place in describing the real world (other than that tiny chunk).
The big bio sink is the Arctic when the ice melts and phytoplankton blumes in the spring time sunrise. Nearly every molecule that reaches the cold, open water will be consumed. Similar processes occur in the Antarctic but are not complicated by the seasonal covering of the cold water sink and the seasonal variability of atmospheric CO2 is not as great.
Fred, the sea ice change in the Arctic is +/- 5 million km2 over the seasons. The sea ice change in Antarctica is +/- 7 million km2 over the seasons (see the WUWT sea ice page). If the algal blooms are responsible for the huge uptake in spring, that would be more pronounced in the SH than in the NH. But that is not reflected in the CO2 level changes, neither in the δ13C changes.
The main seasonal variations are by NH land vegetation, not by phytoplankton or the oceans.
It isn’t the area of sea ice that is controlling. It is the area of open cold water where the blooms occur. That area in the south is not covered but moves north when the sea ice forms.
Those persons who don’t fully understand the biology of the natural world should quit trying to impress others with their presumed “expertise” on the ingassing/outgassing of atmospheric CO2.
And they should cease the quoting of all “fuzzy math” calculated numerical figures as being actual factual scientific evidence or proofs.
Freeman Dyson touched on this issue in “A Many Coloured Glass: Reflections on the place of Life in the Universe”-
“To understand the movement of carbon through the atmosphere, we need to measure a lot of numbers. I do not want to confuse you with a lot of numbers, so I will ask you to remember just one number. The number that I ask you to remember is one- hundredth of an inch per year. Now I will explain what this number means. Consider the half of the land area of the earth that is not desert or ice cap or city or road or parking lot. This is the half of the land that is covered with soil and supports vegetation of one kind or another. Every year it absorbs and converts into biomass a certain fraction of the carbon dioxide that we emit into the atmosphere. Biomass means living creatures, plants and microbes etc. We don’t know how big a fraction of our emissions is absorbed by the land, since we have not measured the increase or decrease of the biomass. The number that I ask you to remember is the increase in thickness, averaged over one half of the land area of the planet, of the biomass that would result if all the carbon that we are omitting by burning fossil fuels were absorbed. The average increase in thickness is one-hundredth of an inch per year.
The point of this calculation is the very favourable rate of exchange between carbon in the atmosphere and carbon in the soil. To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing we only need to grow the biomass by a hundredth of an inch per year. Good topsoil contains about 10 per cent biomass( Schlesinger 1977), so a hundredth of an inch of biomass growth means about a tenth of an inch of topsoil.
….I conclude from this calculation that the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management , not a problem of meteorology . No computer model of atmosphere and ocean can hope to predict the way we shall manage our land”.
“I conclude from this calculation that the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management , not a problem of meteorology .”
———————-
Me thinks that this paleo-climate CO2 proxy graph will confirm the truth of the above statement.
http://www.unitypublishing.com/Government/Global%20warming_files/image004.gif
Abstract source: http://www.biocab.org/carbon_dioxide_geological_timescale.html
Please note the “natural” land management’s ….. CO2 sequestration ….that occurred during the Carboniferous Period
Q/ I conclude from this calculation that the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management , not…/Q
Exactly, and how could I resist adding to a thread with my full name at the top :-O (Wonder if I’m related to young Richard, certainly 40 years ago there were very few of us in the UK phone-book)
To my mind, this entire CAGW business is almost entirely down to the activities of farmers in the northern hemisphere, where of course most of them are and indeed must be.
I’ve stated my argument about nitrogen fertiliser before and how its arrival in the mid-forties started the ramp-up of CO2 levels but also…
… how bare ploughed fields have very low albedo
… how sunlight acting that bare soil oxidises any organic material
… how even (dead) surface trash left by no-till farming is ‘burned’ or oxidised by sunlight
… that the reduced organic content holds less water within soils
… leading to floods along major and not so major rivers
… how the increased dryness allows temperatures to rise higher than they would
… how the increased dryness allows temps to fall more than they would
Contrary to popular opinion, farmers are not increasing their soil fertility. They dearly would love to, they really would but in an exact parallel with the Tragedy of the Commons, they can’t afford to. They operate in a free market and anyone who abuses the fertility of the soil gets a financial lead over the guy who doesn’t and sooner or later puts him right out of business.
This is really deeply ingrained almost everywhere in the notion that there is such stuff on this planet as ‘Agricultural Waste’
There is no such thing.
Certainly there is bulky, heavy, smelly stuff generated on farms that the farmer will grumble about, not least because he has to do something with it but that that ‘doing’ is time and money consuming and yet does not generate a quick financial return. Farmers live in the world of banks and insurance companies like everyone else these days. This Ag Waste is the ‘food’, the substrate, the water supply for many future generations of crops yet many folks believe it should be burned to supply ‘sustainable energy’ Its slow and natural decomposition in the soil produces not only CO2 plant food but, the acidic waste of the bacteria doing the decomposing attacks the mineral fraction of the soil releasing the myriad of trace elements that plants need.
Nitrogen fertiliser speed up that decomposition and that is why it makes plants grow faster. But, farmers use it on tiny baby plants and even mature plants such as wheat are now dwarves compared to how they used to be. They cannot capture all the CO2 being released (unlike inside a mature forest) and likewise all the mineral nutrients – hence dead zones on places like the Gulf of Mexico. Also, the massive increase of acidic microbial waste can only find its way in rivers, streams, lakes and eventually coastal waters where – guess what – multitudes of shell fishermen are complaining about (supposed) Ocean Acidification. Nitrogen fert will knock one whole point off soil pH inside 20 years, it really is very potent stuff and us farmers are throwing around 170 million tonnes of it every year. Compare that to the guy who spread 100 tonnes of iron in the Pacific – forecast by doom-mongers to bring about climate he11 of course.
Circumstantially the case is proven, everything fits, but, how to prove it…
I believe the main source of the Keeling graph is dying soil organisms. I have seen contradictory claims about how much carbon we get from fossils and other sources. So my conclusions are uncertain.
Our current farming methods are not sustainable. That means they will be replaced and all will be good. But in the meantime, we are doing a lot of damage. Learning faster is better.
Man Bearpig September 8, 2014 at 2:12 pm
Why peta though? It can only be to make it sound bigger.
Because that’s the system of prefixes that are used by scientists, makes for much easier calculations.
Ah Phil-dot, you’re so cute when you try to be a condescending ass.
By not using the Reply function, you made it harder to see how you badly you butchered his original comment:
With the full comment you can see the reference to using petagrams instead of gigatonnes as mentioned in the original post, by using inches instead of miles.
By carefully truncating his comment, you got to portray Man Bearpig as a scientific doofus and showed yourself to be so much smarter than that mere climate change skeptic.
You must be so proud of yourself, using such tactics to belittle Man Bearpig and make yourself feel so much better. It’s a pleasure to see you work your magic. Your mother would be so proud of you as well.
Phil is our own Walter Mitty, imagining himself a true scientist, mowing down the doofuses with the ta-pocketa-pocketa of his dry razor wit.
With the full comment you can see the reference to using petagrams instead of gigatonnes as mentioned in the original post, by using inches instead of miles.
I was referring to his remark that using peta was done to make it seem bigger rather than the proper application of the International system of units, exactly why a ‘quadrillion grams’ seems larger than a ‘billion tonnes’ is not clear. As I pointed out proper use of the prefixes makes calculation easier without the difficulty of using two conversions which is necessitated by the use of the non-SI unit, tonne. Referring to inches instead of miles introduces problems associated with non-decimal systems such as imperial units which is entirely different, had he said 100,000,000 cm there would be no difficulty in making the conversion, but the convention would to be to use 1000 km.
By carefully truncating his comment, you got to portray Man Bearpig as a scientific doofus
No, just someone who apparently doesn’t understand the way scientific units are used.
From Phil-dot on September 10, 2014 at 6:29 am:
Ah, Phil-dot, we saw what you did. Man Bearpig’s original comment shows he knows. Inch or mile, gram or tonne, gauss or tesla, select the units based on the scale of the work. Do you wonder what is the average Mauna Loa CO2 increase every 3.1558*10^7 seconds?
@ Ferdinand Engelbeen: September 8, 2014 at 3:23 pm
“And the processes are quantified:
– human emissions: 9-10 GtC/year {??? during the past 55 years}
– biosphere: net sink of ~1 GtC/year {??? during the past 55 years}
– ocean surface: net sink of ~0.5 GtC/year {??? during the past 55 years}
– deep oceans: net sink of ~3 GtC/year {??? during the past 55 years}
– global natural variability in the past 55 years: +/- 2 GtC/year”
——————
Ferdinand, how do you plan on quantifying … your 1st four (4) above “fuzzy math” calculated quantities with these statistical facts of/for …. the past 55 years, to wit:
Increases in World Population & Atmospheric CO2 at Decade End
year –– world popul. — % incr. —– CO2 ppm – 10y % incr — avg CO2 incr/year
1950 —- 2,556,000,053 – 11.1% ____ 310 ppm – 3.1% —— 1.0 ppm/year
1960 —- 3,039,451,023 – 18.9% ____ 316 ppm – 3.2% —— 0.6 ppm/year
1970 —- 3,706,618,163 – 21.9% ____ 325 ppm – 2.7% —— 0.9 ppm/year
1980 —- 4,453,831,714 – 20.1% ____ 338 ppm – 3.8% —– 1.3 ppm/year
1990 —- 5,278,639,789 – 18.5% ____ 354 ppm – 4.5% —– 1.6 ppm/year
2000 —- 6,082,966,429 – 15.2% ____ 369 ppm – 4.3% —– 1.5 ppm/year
2010 —- 6,809,972,000 – 11.9% ____ 389 ppm – 5.1% —– 2.0 ppm/year
The balance can be calculated for each year of the past 55 years, here in graph form:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
The average increase per year increased from 0.6 ppmv/year in 1960 to 2.2 ppmv/year in 2013. The human emissions are appr. double that.
The oxygen balance shows that the biosphere was a small emitter of ~0.5 GtC/year up to a small absorber of CO2 of currently ~1 GtC, growing since ~1990.
The ocean surface follows the atmosphere at ~10% of the increase (Revelle/buffer factor) in the atmosphere in 1-3 years.
Of course there is some correlation with world population, including world production, transport and consumption, but the main increase is from human CO2 emissions, modulated by year by year temperature variability.
@ Ferdinand Engelbeen: September 10, 2014 at 12:41 pm
“The balance can be calculated for each year of the past 55 years, here in graph form:”
——————–
“YUP”, and I betcha you could “calculate the mass balance” for each year of the past 55 years, for the total tonnes of turnips grown in Ireland …. relative to the total tonnes of Llama feces produced in Peru …… and then generate 2 or 3 pretty colored graphs to prove that the “mass balance” between Irish turnip consumption and Llama feces emissions has a direct effect on the mosquito population in Antarctica.
====================
“The average increase per year increased from 0.6 ppmv/year in 1960 to 2.2 ppmv/year in 2013.”
——————
Ferdinand, to wit: “Visual illusions reveal that perceptions generated by the brain do not necessarily correlate with reality. Hallucinations, dreams, and delusions illustrate the same point.”
Ferdinand, this is reality, to wit:
…… mth
1958 5 1958.375 317.50
1959 5 1959.375 318.29 ….. 0.79 ppm increase from year before
1960 5 1960.375 320.03 ….. 1.74 ppm increase from year before
1960 10 1960.792 313.83 ….. 6.20 ppm total flux quantity Y1960
1961 5 1961.375 320.58 ….. 0.55 ppm increase from year before
1962 5 1962.375 321.01 ….. 0.43 ppm increase from year before
1963 5 1963.375 322.25 ….. 1.24 ppm increase from year before
2011 5 2011.375 394.21 ….. 1.17 ppm increase from year before
2012 5 2012.375 396.78 ….. 2.57 ppm increase from year before
2013 5 2013.375 399.76 ….. 2.98 ppm increase from year before
2013 9 2013.708 393.51 ….. 6.25 ppm total flux quantity Y2013
2014 5 2014.375 401.78 ….. 2.02 ppm increase from year before
===================
“The human emissions are appr. double that.”
——————
“SURE NUFF”, Ferdinand, ….. you will always be 103% correct as long as you continue to claim that your visual illusions of “human emissions are approximately double” …. whatever the “quantity” is that your “fuzzy math” calculations determined the “average increase in atmospheric CO2 ppm is/was”.
Conscious thought consuming religious beliefs will “rot your mind”, … ya know. And when said persists for too long, …. the damage is irreversible and “reality” will never again be a factor in one’s decision making.
Cheers
“Thus at the current pCO2 in the atmosphere, the 120 ppmv extra pushes 1 GtC extra in the biosphere and 3.5 GtC extra in the oceans.
[snip]
The e-fold decay rate of the extra CO2 [n the atmosphere] is slightly over 50 years, or a half life time of ~40 years.”
—————
The CO2 secret they don’t want you to know.
There is a nasty ole Anthropogenic Global Warming secret about CO2 that the proponents of CAGW are not telling you.
Surprise, surprise, there are actually two (2) different types of CO2 …… with both types having the same isotope variations.
There is both a naturally occurring CO2 molecule and a hybrid CO2 molecule that has a different physical property. The new hybrid CO2 molecule contains an H-pyron which permits one to distinguish it from the naturally occurring CO2 molecules.
The H-pyron or Human-pyron is only attached to and/or can only be detected in CO2 molecules that have been created as a result of human activity. Said H-pyron has a Specific Heat Capacity of one (1) GWC or 1 Global Warming Calorie that is equal to 69 x 10 -37th kJ/kg K or something close to that or maybe farther away.
Thus, said H-pyron is very important to all Climate Scientists that are proponents of CO2 causing Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) because it provides them a quasi-scientific “fact” that serves two (2) important functions:
1) it permits said climate scientists to calculate an estimated percentage of atmospheric CO2 that is “human caused” …….
and 2) it permits said climate scientists to calculate their desired “degree increase” in Average Global Temperatures that they can then claim are directly attributed to human activity.
As an added note, oftentimes one may hear said climate scientists refer to those two (2) types of CO2 as “urban CO2” and ”rural CO2” because they can’t deny “it is always hotter in the city”.
And there you have it folks, the rest of the story, their secret scientific tool has been revealed to you.
Yours truly, Eritas Fubar
Samuel, what I wrote is true for all CO2, no matter its origin. The 110 ppmv extra CO2, whatever the cause, pushes 2.15 ppmv extra CO2 into oceans and vegetation. That is what is measured. That gives an e-fold decay rate of slightly over 50 years or a half life time of ~40 years. Less if you take into account the extra emissions from land use changes…
Shur it is, Ferdinand, …. it is as approximately “true” …. as is your “true” approximation of human emissions.
Such mathematical wizardly via use of abstract numbers should never be questioned by anyone.
Bart September 9, 2014 at 6:25 pm
Phil is our own Walter Mitty, imagining himself a true scientist, mowing down the doofuses with the ta-pocketa-pocketa of his dry razor wit.
No Bart, I am a true scientist, you appear to be an undergrad who thinks that ‘wiggle matching’ is the answer to all problems and that the lack of knowledge of the underlying science, (something you demonstrate every time you post here), is no impediment to understanding a problem.
You appear to be an unimaginative, dull-witted functionary who never had an original thought in his life, and who takes textbook formulas as holy writ, with no understanding of how they are derived or under what circumstances they are valid.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) September 10, 2014 at 11:28 am
From Phil-dot on September 10, 2014 at 6:29 am:
“No, just someone who apparently doesn’t understand the way scientific units are used.”
Ah, Phil-dot, we saw what you did. Man Bearpig’s original comment shows he knows. Inch or mile, gram or tonne, gauss or tesla, select the units based on the scale of the work. Do you wonder what is the average Mauna Loa CO2 increase every 3.1558*10^7 seconds?
Precisely, which is why in SI units the correct unit is Pg (peta-gram), usually the prefix is chosen so that the number falls between 1 and 999, i.e. 100.1m not 10010 cm nor 0.1001 km. Again I referred to his objection to the use of Pg rather than Gt which is why I made no reference to his comment on inches and miles since that had no bearing on the issue. You appear to be picking a fight about something which I did not say.
Phil-dot, if you choose the unit based on the scale of the work, and you’re agreeing with that, why choose the tiny gram instead of the many times larger tonne when referring to such enormous masses of carbon (dioxide)? So you can use larger (and scarier) numbers, which Man Bearpig was correct on in his original comment.
And how often have you complained when climate scientists talk of gigatonnes of carbon emissions instead of petagrams?
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch7s7-3-2-2.html
The IPCC in AR4 was using gigatonnes (Gt). Point me to your great denunciations of the IPCC for their not using the proper scientific units.
Phil-dot, it is obvious by what you said in your original comment what you meant:
You said prefixes, not units. It is obvious what you did, if you had used the rest of Man Bearpig’s comment your mumbling about prefixes wouldn’t have worked.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) September 10, 2014 at 8:54 pm
Phil-dot, if you choose the unit based on the scale of the work, and you’re agreeing with that, why choose the tiny gram instead of the many times larger tonne when referring to such enormous masses of carbon (dioxide)? So you can use larger (and scarier) numbers, which Man Bearpig was correct on in his original comment.
You don’t choose the unit, the whole point of the SI system is that there is only one unit for any quantity, for mass it is the gram, the prefixes are chosen so that the numbers are a maximum of three digits before the decimal point. So in this case the correct SI unit is the Peta-gram. In this case the number is the same whether you use Pg (SI) or Gt (non-SI) so your point about ‘larger (and scarier) numbers’ isn’t valid. Man Bearpig was somehow suggesting that use of the correct scientific nomenclature was intended to scare the reader. He then made an incorrect analogy, which I ignored but seems to have you all riled up.
Phil-dot, even scientists don’t adhere strictly to the SI system, for which you blather on in your dissembling as if it was a requirement for science. The use of the gauss has not been banned from publications. The climate scientists you revere continue to use gigatonnes.
Where are all those numerous past denunciations of yours from all the many times they used gigatonnes instead of petagrams in the IPCC reports, in the peer-reviewed papers, in the press releases? Surely you must be quite worked up at how unscientific the IPCC and the climate scientists have been!
It is Man Bearpig who is denouncing the use of peta-gram with the implication that it was done for nefarious motives, I merely pointed out that it was the proper use of the international system of scientific units and actually made for simpler calculations. I did not denounce the use of the Gigatonne, despite your ravings to the contrary.
The only post I can recall posting on a related matter was to deprecate the use of ‘million km^2’, which while convenient conceptually, frequently leads to errors in calculation due to the use of multiple prefixes (an SI no-no). Should be Mm^2 but that’s a lost cause.
Phil-dot, with so many others using gigatonnes, how can using petagrams simplify calculations? When does adding numerous unit conversions simplify a calculation?
When done there will be complaints you are not using the commonly-used units thus your results are not directly comparable. Will you stick to your principle and insist it is all those others that have done it wrong and they should change their numbers, or will you also provide your results in the commonly-used units?
You are making me believe Bart’s assessment of you as a “unimaginative, dull-witted functionary” etc by appearing to not understand sarcasm.
That is the point, you do not denounce, you do not complain. All this time you have been silent as scientists and quasi-scientific organizations freely use the gigatonne instead of the petagram.
And now suddenly you claim you were moved to complain about Man Bearpig’s comment by saying that’s how science uses prefixes, while saying what you meant is in science one uses petagrams instead of gigatonnes which is what you were really complaining about, when you have not previously complained about scientists and quasi-scientific organizations not being unscientific by their not using the proper scientific units.
That you clipped Man Bearpig’s comment so you could denigrate him was the obvious conclusion. Your circumlocution to evade the obvious conclusion has collapsed, leaving the obvious conclusion even more clearly obvious.
Phil-dot, it is obvious by what you said in your original comment what you meant:
“Because that’s the system of prefixes that are used by scientists, makes for much easier calculations.”
You said prefixes, not units. It is obvious what you did, if you had used the rest of Man Bearpig’s comment your mumbling about prefixes wouldn’t have worked.
The rest of his comment no made sense: ‘You dont explain to soneone that is lost to follow the road for 120,000 inches then turn left’, because that’s not what they did.
Wow. Great diatribes/debate re: CO2 accounting. I’ve followed this debate thread here & on judithcurry.com as it pops up repeatedly. I learn some stuff from Engelbeen but Bart’s insistence on dynamical feedbacks seems decisive to me, at least at a conceptual level.
Can’t anyone write an animated bit of computer graphics that illustrates the whole source/sink/flux argument? Such that one could adjust assumptions / numbers and see what happens graphically?
Of course, to Bart’s point – there are interacting feedback loops (a few? a dozen? thousands!?). Visualizing those may be impossible.
I am always confused by this argument, but it seems like a more productive confusion than just taking an activist’s hyper-simplification at face value – “humans are emitting one milliion tons of CO2 per hour”!!!! Oh no!!!!
Bludgeon me over the head with a big number and I will submit. 😉
Rhyzotika:
Thankyou for that.
Ferdinand and I have been arguing the matter for more than a decade with no progress although others have joined the debate especially in recent years. For a simple comparison of the difference between his and my views please see my above post here and responses from Ferdinand.
Ferdinand basically supports the IPCC opinion that human activities (anthropogenic activities) are the cause of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration sine 12958 when measurements began at Mauna Loa. For a clear explanation of this please see his excellent web site which is the ‘goto-place’ for collated information on atmospheric CO2.
I assess that it is not possible to determine if that rise has an anthropogenic or a natural cause in part or in whole
ref. Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005)
Bart asserts that the rise is a response to global warming and, therefore, is entirely natural.
Richard
since 1958
not
sine 12958
Sorry
Well, not entirely a response to global warming, but natural and modulated by global temperatures anyway.
@ Rhyzotika: September 11, 2014 at 6:09 pm
“Wow. Great diatribes/debate re: CO2 accounting. I’ve followed this debate thread here & on judithcurry.com as it pops up repeatedly. I learn some stuff from Engelbeen but Bart’s insistence on dynamical feedbacks seems decisive to me, at least at a conceptual level.
I am always confused by this argument, but it seems like …………….”
——————–
Rhyzotika, assuming that you are not well learned in the Physical Sciences then your confusion doesn’t surprise me in the least.
But it is not all your fault ….. simply because the supposedly learned individuals are, quite often, guilty of authoring “confusing commentary”.
And me thinks the primary “root” cause of your confusion is the aforementioned authors use of the term “global warming” which is a per se “catch-all” term which should only be used when talking in generalities and/or discussing non-scientific issues.
Rhyzotika, the literal fact is that there are two (2) specific types of “global warming”: … 1) Interglacial Global Warming (IGW); … 2) Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW);.
The former one (IGW) having begun some 22,000 years ago and is still in progress as far as anyone knows, …. whereas the latter one (AGW) only came into existence post-1958 but was, per se, “mathematically reversed engineered” (interpolated) back to 1880 …. whereat said time it (AGW) “high-jacked” all the calculated “increases” in Average Surface Temperatures.
In other words, ….. all increases due to the IGW “warming” of the near-surface atmosphere …. are now being credited to AGW …. and/or the increase in atmospheric CO2 ppm (CAGW).
Tis an amazing thingy that the IGW suddenly terminated in circa 1880 when the NWS decided that was the “official start” of the thermometer based Surface Temperature Record.
And a highly questionable Record, ….. to say the least.
Cheers
Rhyzotka,
The main difference in view between Bart and me is the speed at which the sinks respond to an increase in the atmosphere and therefore what causes the increase.
There is no difference in opinion about the short-term reactions of CO2 to temperature: seasonal changes are caused by the influence of temperature mainly on the NH forests, year by year variations are caused by ENSO (El Niño / La Niña) mainly on tropical forests. Both are opposite to each other.
The difference is in what causes the long term trend. What is known is that the long term increase is NOT caused by vegetation, as that is a proven small but increasing sink for CO2.
According to Bart, the increase is (near) entirely caused by temperature, as you can fit the variability and the trend of the derivative by a factor and an offset against an arbitrary baseline. That is simply curve fitting and doesn’t say anything about the cause of the trend, as the variability of the rate of change and the trend are anyway from different processes and a common factor is just a matter of choosing the right offset…
Further, it is impossible that a temperature increase of ~0.5°C will give a 70+ ppmv increase without feedback from the increased pressure in the atmosphere. The historical T-CO2 relationship is 8 ppmv/K, thus at maximum 4 ppmv is what can be expected.
Bart’s theory is from an increased input from the oceans, but even a 10% increase either from ocean current overturning or CO2 concentration can’t give a constant CO2 increase in the atmosphere without feedback from the increased CO2 pressure. Here such a reaction for a 10% increase in ocean input:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_incr.jpg
A constant increase in CO2 input gives a limited increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. To give a constant increase in the atmosphere, one need an increasing input, which fits the human emissions, but which is not observed in the ocean input, to the contrary…
The same for a temperature increase of the oceans:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
Again a limited increase for a fixed temperature increase, not a continuous increase.
Talking about curve fitting. Bart’s curve fit is better than your “mass balance” curve fit. What you have done by assuming that anthropogenics account for all the long term rise and making residual difference all sink rate is a poor form of curve fitting. There is a strong correlation between your residual sink rates and ENSO, which is strong evidence that temperature is having a long term effect. You can get an idea about the relative contributions of each by doing a multiple regression on both anthropogenic emmision rates and an ENSO proxie temperature. The resulting coefficents take care of unit conversions. Using those coefficients, you can separately plot the contributions of each. Try it. I have.
Fred, I didn’t assume anything, I only looked at the probabilities: if humans emit twice the amount which is found in the atmosphere as increase, it must be a hell of a coincidence that some natural input just started to increase at exactly the same moment and in exact ratio with the human emissions and the increase in the atmosphere.
As the human emissions further fit all known observations and none other explanation does, then it is clear to me that humans are the cause of the CO2 increase. Have a look at the human emissions – increase ratio since 1960:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1960_cur.jpg
and compare that to the influence of temperature, including ENSO over the past 17 years. Zero temperature increase and 40 ppmv added. Even if that is from the oceans or volcanoes (which is impossible as the 13C/12C ratio of both is too high), that had nothing to do with temperature.
The residuals are hardly visible in the trend. By focusing on the derivative you only look at the cause of the small variability around the trend, not at the cause of the trend…
You are now assuming probabilitys. Do the regression that I have asked you to do and you can get a measure of the probabilities. We observe that atmospheric CO2 concentrations lag temperature on all time scales. Should we expect the rate of rise in CO2 concentrations to decline some time in the future? It has been declining since 1958 while the rate of anthropogenic emissions has been increasing along with increasing temperature until the last 17 years.
Fred, the rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere increased a fourfold since 1958, together with a fourfold increase of human emissions and a fourfold increase in sink rate:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
Some focus on the -temporarily- “pause” in the increase rate for still increasing human inputs, but that indeed is natural variability and may last a decade or more, as it has in the past and then catches up.
The equilibrium between oceans and atmosphere is between 4 and 17 ppmv/K, as good static as dynamic. Any temperature increase over the past 55 years is good for not more than 8 ppmv/K (the historical average). That is based on the solubility of CO2 in seawater.
You can try to find a multiple regression solution, but that has no real solution if you have two variables which both (partially) trend up and one has a huge influence on the variability, while the other has not. Better look at what the physical constraints are…
kadaka (KD Knoebel) September 12, 2014 at 2:02 pm
Phil. “I merely pointed out that it was the proper use of the international system of scientific units and actually made for simpler calculations.”
Phil-dot, with so many others using gigatonnes, how can using petagrams simplify calculations? When does adding numerous unit conversions simplify a calculation?
Performing calculations in the base units is simpler since it requires no conversions.
When done there will be complaints you are not using the commonly-used units thus your results are not directly comparable.
Hardly, since Pg is the commonly used unit. Just as a check I googled ‘global CO2 fluxes’, 7 out of the first 10 papers used Pg, the remaining 3 used Gt.
Will you stick to your principle and insist it is all those others that have done it wrong and they should change their numbers, or will you also provide your results in the commonly-used units?
See above.
And now suddenly you claim you were moved to complain about Man Bearpig’s comment
I made no such claim. Man Bearpig said “Why peta though? It can only be to make it sound bigger”
which I answered by saying that’s how science uses prefixes, I made no complaint.
while saying what you meant is in science one uses petagrams instead of gigatonnes which is what you were really complaining about, when you have not previously complained about scientists and quasi-scientific organizations not being unscientific by their not using the proper scientific units.
This is a figment of your imagination.