Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach [see update at the end of the head post]
I first got introduced to the idea of “half-life” in the 1950s because the topic of the day was nuclear fallout. We practiced hiding under our school desks if the bomb went off, and talked about how long you’d have to stay underground to be safe, and somehow in all of that we never pondered exactly how a cheap sheet metal and plywood desk would ward off an atomic bomb … a simpler time indeed. But I digress. Half-life, as many people know, is how long it takes for a given starting amount of some radioactive substance to decay until only half of the starting amount remains. For example, the half-life of radioactive caesium 137 is about thirty years. This means if you start with a gram of radioactive caesium, in thirty years you’ll only have half a gram. And in thirty more years you’ll have a quarter of a gram. And in thirty years there will only be an eighth of a gram of caesium remaining, and on ad infinitum.
This is a physical example of a common type of natural decay called “exponential decay”. The hallmark of exponential decay is that every time period, the decay is a certain percentage of what remains at that time. Exponential decay also describes what happens when a system which is at some kind of equilibrium is disturbed from that equilibrium. The system doesn’t return to equilibrium all at once. Instead, each year it moves a certain percentage of the remaining distance to equilibrium. Figure 1 shows the exponential decay after a single disturbance at time zero, as the disturbance is slowly decaying back to the pre-pulse value.
Figure 1. An example of a hypothetical exponential decay of a system at equilibrium from a single pulse of amplitude 1 at time zero. Each year it moves a certain percentage of the distance to the equilibrium value. The “half-life” and the time constant “tau” are two different ways of measuring the same thing, which is the decay rate. Half-life is the time to decay to half the original value. The time constant “tau” is the time to decay to 37% of the original value. Tau is also known as the “e-folding time”.
Note that the driving impulse in Figure 1 is a single unit pulse, and in response we see a steady decay back to equilibrium. That is to say, the shape of the driving impulse is very different from the shape of the response.
Let’s consider a slightly more complex case. This is where we have an additional pulse of 1.0 units each succeeding year. That case is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. An example of a hypothetical exponential decay from constant annual pulses of amplitude 1. The pulses start at time zero and continue indefinitely.
Now, this is interesting. In the beginning, the exponential decay is not all that large, because the disturbance isn’t that large. But when we add an additional identical pulse each year, the disturbance grows.
But when the disturbance grows, the size of the annual decay grows as well. As a result, eventually the disturbance levels off. After a while, although we’re adding a one unit pulse per year, the loss due to exponential decay one pulse per year, so there is no further increase.
The impulse in Figure 2 is a steady addition of 1 unit per year. So once again, the shape of the response is very different from the shape of the exponentially decayed response.
With that as prologue, we can look at the relationship between fossil fuel emissions and the resulting increase in airborne CO2. It is generally accepted that the injection of a pulse of e.g volcanic gases into the planetary atmosphere is followed by an exponential decay of the temporarily increased volcanic gas levels back to some pre-existing equilibrium. We know that this exponential decay of an injected gas pulse is a real phenomenon, because if that decay didn’t happen, we’d all be choked to death from accumulated volcanic gases.
Knowing this, we can use an exponential decay analysis of the fossil fuel emissions data to estimate the CO2 levels that would result from those same emissions. Figure 3 shows theoretical and observed increases in various CO2 levels.
Figure 3. Theoretical and observed CO2 changes, in parts per million by volume (ppmv). The theoretical total CO2 from emissions (blue line) is what we’d have if there were no exponential decay and all emissions remained airborne. The red line is the observed change in airborne CO2. The amount that is sequestered by various CO2 sinks (violet) is calculated as the total amount put into the air (blue line) minus the observed amount remaining in the air (red line). The black line is the expected change in airborne CO2, calculated as the exponential decay of the total CO2 injected into the atmosphere. The calculation used best-fit values of 59 years as the time constant (tau) and 283 ppmv as the pre-industrial equilibrium level.
The first thing to notice is that the total amount of CO2 from fossil fuel emissions is much larger than the amount that remains in the atmosphere. The clear inference of this is that various natural sequestration processes have absorbed some but not all of the fossil fuel emissions. Also, the percentage of emissions that are naturally sequestered has remained constant since 1959. About 42% of the amount that is emitted is “sequestered”, that is to say removed from the atmosphere by natural carbon sinks.
Next, as you can see, using an exponential decay analysis gives us an extremely good fit between the theoretical and the observed increase in atmospheric CO2. In fact, the fit is so good that most of the time you can’t even see the red line (observed CO2) under the black line (calculated CO2).
Before I move on, please note that the amount remaining in the atmosphere is not a function of the annual emissions. Instead, it is a function of the total emissions, i.e. it is a function of the running sum of the annual emissions starting at t=0 (blue line).
Now, I got into all of this because against my better judgment I started to watch Dr. Salby’s video that was discussed on WUWT here. The very first argument that Dr. Salby makes involves the following two graphs:
Figure 4. Dr. Salby’s first figure, showing the annual global emissions of carbon in gigatonnes per year.
Figure 5. Dr. Salby’s second figure, showing the observed level of CO2 at Mauna Loa.
Note that according to his numbers the trend in emissions increased after 2002, but the CO2 trend is identical before and after 2002. Dr. Salby thinks this difference is very important.
At approximate 4 minutes into the video Dr. Salby comments on this difference with heavy sarcasm, saying:
The growth of fossil fuel emission increased by a factor of 300% … the growth of CO2 didn’t blink. How could this be? Say it ain’t so!
OK, I’ll step up to the plate and say it. It ain’t so, at least it’s not the way Dr. Salby thinks it is, for a few reasons.
First, note that he is comparing the wrong things. Observed CO2 is NOT a function of annual CO2 emissions. It is a function of total emissions, as discussed above and shown in Figure 3. The total amount remaining in the atmosphere at any time is a function of the total amount emitted up to that time. It is NOT a function of the individual annual emissions. So we would not expect the two graphs to have the same shape or the same trends.
Next, we can verify that he is looking at the wrong things by comparing the units used in the two graphics. Consider Figure 4, which has units of gigatonnes of carbon per year. Gigatonnes of carbon (GtC) emitted, and changes in airborne CO2 (parts per million by volume, “ppmv”), are related by the conversion factor of:
2.13 Gigatonnes carbon emitted = 1 ppmv CO2
This means that the units in Figure 4 can be converted from gigatonnes C per year to ppmv per year by simply dividing them by 2.13. So Figure 4 shows ppmv per year. But the units in Figure 5 are NOT the ppmv per year used in Figure 4. Instead, Figure 5 uses simple ppmv. Dr. Salby is not comparing like with like. He’s comparing ppmv of CO2 per year to plain old ppmv of CO2, and that is a meaningless comparison.
He is looking at apples and oranges, and he waxes sarcastic about how other scientists haven’t paid attention to the fact that the two fruits are different … they are different because there is no reason to expect that apples and oranges would be the same. In fact, as Figure 3 shows, the observed CO2 has tracked the total human emissions very, very accurately. In particular, it shows that we do not expect a large trend change in observed CO2 around the year 2000 such as Dr. Salby expects, despite the fact that such a trend change exists in the annual emission data. Instead, the change is reflected in a gradual increase in the trend of the observed (and calculated) CO2 … and the observations are extremely well matched by the calculated values.
The final thing that’s wrong with his charts is that he’s looking at different time periods in his trend comparisons. For the emissions, he’s calculated the trends 1990-2002, and compared that to 2002-2013. But regarding the CO2 levels, he’s calculated the trends over entirely different periods, 1995-2002 and 2002-2014. Bad scientist, no cookies. You can’t pick two different periods to compare like that.
In summary? Well, the summary is short … Dr. Salby appears to not understand the relationship between fossil fuel carbon emissions and CO2.
That would be bad enough, but from there it just gets worse. Starting at about 31 minutes into the video Dr. Salby makes much of the fact that the 14C (“carbon-14”) isotope produced by the atomic bomb tests decayed exponentially (agreeing with what I discussed above) with a fairly short time constant tau of about nine years or so.
Figure 6. Dr. Salby demonstrates that airborne residence time constant tau for CO2 is around 8.6 years. “NTBT” is the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Regarding this graph, Dr. Salby says that it is a result of exponential decay. He goes on to say that “Exponential decay means that the decay of CO2 is proportional to the abundance of CO2,” and I can only agree.
So far so good … but then Dr. Salby does something astounding. He graphs the 14C airborne residence time data up on the same graph as the “Bern Model” of CO2 pulse decay, says that they both show “Absorption of CO2”, and claims that the 14C isotope data definitively shows that the Bern model is wrong …
Figure 7. Dr. Salby’s figure showing both the “Bern Model” of the decay of a pulse of CO2 (violet line), along the same data shown in Figure 6 for the airborne residence time of CO2 (blue line, green data points).
To reiterate, Dr. Salby says that the 14C bomb test (blue line identified as “Real World”) clearly shows that the Bern Model is wrong (violet line identified as “Model World”).
But as before, in Figure 8 Dr. Salby is again comparing apples and oranges. The 14C bomb test data (blue line) shows how long an individual CO2 molecule stays in the air. Note that this is a steady-state process, with individual CO2 molecules constantly being emitted from somewhere, staying airborne in the atmosphere with a time constant tau of around 8 years, and then being re-absorbed somewhere else in the carbon cycle. This is called the “airborne residence time” of CO2. It is the time an average CO2 molecule stays aloft before being re-absorbed.
But the airborne residence time (blue line) is very, very different from what the Bern Model (violet line) is estimating. The Bern Model is estimating how long it takes an entire pulse of additional CO2 to decay back to equilibrium concentration levels. This is NOT how long a CO2 molecule stays aloft. Instead, the Bern Model is estimating how long the increased atmospheric concentration from a pulse of injected CO2 takes to decay back to pre-pulse conditions. Let me summarize:
Airborne residence time (bomb test data): how long an individual CO2 molecule stays in the air.
Pulse decay time (Bern Model): how long the increased atmospheric concentration from a pulse of injected CO2 takes to decay back to pre-pulse conditions.
So again Dr. Salby is conflating two very different measurements—airborne residence time on the one hand (blue line), and CO2 post-pulse concentration decay time on the other hand (violet line). It is meaningless to display them on the same graph. The 14C bomb test data neither supports nor falsifies the Bern Model. The 14C data says nothing about the Bern Model, because they are measuring entirely different things.
I was going to force myself to watch more of the video of his talk. But when I got that far into Dr. Salby’s video, I simply couldn’t continue. His opening move is to compare ppmv per year to plain ppmv, and get all snarky about how he’s the only one noticing that they are different. He follows that up by not knowing the difference between airborne residence time and pulse decay time.
Sorry, but after all of that good fun I’m not much interested in his other claims. Sadly, Dr. Salby has proven to me that regarding this particular subject he doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. I do know he wrote a text on Atmospheric Physics, so he’s nobody’s fool … but in this case he’s way over his head.
Best regards to each of you on this fine spring evening,
w.
For Clarity: If you disagree with something, please quote the exact words you disagree with. That will allow everyone to understand the exact nature of your disagreement.
Math Note: The theoretical total CO2 from emissions is calculated using the relationship 1 ppmv = 2.13 gigatonnes of carbon emitted.
Also, we only have observational data on CO2 concentrations since 1959. This means that the time constant calculated in Figure 3 is by no means definitive. It also means that the data is too short to reliably distinguish between e.g. the Bern Model (a fat-tailed exponential decay) and the simple single exponential decay model I used in Figure 3.
Data and Code: I’ve put the R code and functions, the NOAA Monthly CO2 data (.CSV), and the annual fossil fuel carbon emissions data (.TXT) in a small zipped folder entitled “Salby Analysis Folder” (20 kb)
[Update]: Some commenters have said that I should have looked at an alternate measure. They said instead of looking at atmospheric CO2 versus the cumulative sum of annual emissions, I should show annual change in atmospheric CO2 versus annual emissions. We are nothing if not a full service website, so here is that Figure.
As you can see, this shows that it is a noisy system. Despite that, however, there is reasonably good and strongly statistically significant correlation between emissions and the change in atmospheric CO2. I note also that this method gives about the same numbers for the airborne fraction that I got from my analysis upthread.
w.
Why did fossil fuel emissions suddenly take a turn for the better in 2002? Is this another “adjustment” like for the temp record?
I think that was the global economic crash…but I could be wrong…
The global economic crash was not in 2002, it was in 2007/8.
Since the crash was caused by financial bubbles, it is unlikely that industrial activity slowed down prior to then, and indeed it is probable that global industrial activity slow down lagged, especially as China industrial output initially continued to grow See .http://www.business-in-asia.com/china/images/2008graph_gdp.jpg
No, no, figure 4 shows emissions going UP drastically about 2002 (GtC/Yr) (that’s what I meant by a turn for the better, because that’s the way I feel about it). However CO2 levels didn’t follow. That’s one of the reasons for the suggested adjustment (like they do with temp data).
@ur momisugly Richard Verney…there was a big market crash at the end of 1999. The market dipped down close to Dow 5,000 at the time.
“Why did fossil fuel emissions suddenly take a turn for the better in 2002?”
There are a lot of wiggles in the data. I think emission growth in the 80’s was higher than in the 90’s. Salby seems to be cherry picking the start and stop points he uses for his analysis.
Indeed it does. Rate of change of CO2 was actually reducing from 1995-2002, something he tries to fudge over with his single straight line on the CO2 time series with enough annual wiggle so that it is not apparent in a slide show.
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/mlo_ddt_co2.png
If we look at rate of change and filter out the wiggle we get a clearer picture.
Now we see that average rate of change since 1995 has been higher than most of the earlier period of the MLO record. Very close to 2ppmv / year.
But what is also see is that rate of change has pretty flat in that time in contrast to the earlier period. Now does that remind us of any other climate parameter that is having a little pause ??
Ah yes, hasn’t temp kinda slowed down too. Maybe there’s a link.
We also see the 1998 El Nino and the “hot” years of 2003, 2005 and 2010. There is also a dip matching the cooling effect of Mt Pinatubo.
So despite Sably’s presentation being a bit like that of a double-glazing salesman, that does not mean he is wrong.
It certainly looks a lot more like the global temperature record than it does the ever increasing human CO2 emissions.
Mike,
The high variability in the sink rate doesn’t allow any conclusion. Take the period 1976-1996, or even cut it before the Pinatubo: a decrease in rate of change, while temperatures had their maximum increase in that period and human emissions were increasing too…
That is all natural variability in the sink rate.
Is there a difference between this average time and the time for 50% of the injected dollop to have DISAPPEARED from the air?
Technically it’s the median time for removal of the C14, the average (mean) will be somewhat longer because the distribution of the lifetimes is skewed towards longer lifetimes..
The difference between the C14 lifetime and the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is as explained above the difference between first order decay and near equilibrium kinetics. In the case of the bomb test the level of C14 in the atmosphere doubled from the natural level and the amount absorbed made virtually no difference to the concentration in the ocean, consequently it’s a one-way process. However, the annual increase in pCO2 is less than 1% so you’re looking at the response to a small perturbation from equilibrium so it’s a slightly unbalanced two-way process.
Well, of course The 14C data and the Bern Model, “are measuring entirely different things”, but, still, we can compare and plot them on the same graph. In fact, as stated by
TonyL April 20, 2015 at 5:26 am,
any model (including the Bern Model) is the sum of a A -> B process, which C14 data shows to be an exponential decay law [at the month/year span of time] , and a B -> A process. (“A” : atmosphere; “B” : biosphere, land, ocean, etc. but NO new CO2 injection : no volcanoes, human use etc.)
So all you have to do is to plot them on the same graph to plot the difference, which will be the B -> A process according to the Bern Model.
I guess this will show how hilariously and counter-physically the parameters of this model have been chosen. The model itself is pretty trivial ; its parameters are not, and they make it nonsense; because it essentially state that the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more the “B” part of the cycle will send back in the atmosphere (when chemical and biologic law says the exact opposite).
I guess the Bern Model has a hidden build-in warming process : the more atmospheric CO2 the more warming, and the more warming the more ocean and biosphere carbon release …
in short : it makes MUCH sense to plot the decay plot and the Bern Model on the same graph.
paqyfelyc,
The problem is that for the 1960 situation, at the peak of 14C from the bomb tests, the return from the deep oceans was quite different for 12CO2 and 14CO2:
100% 14CO2 going A -> B, 45% going B -> A
100% 12CO2 going A -> B, 97.5% going B -> A
Which gives a hell of a difference in decay rates…
The main problem with the Bern model is that it expects a rapid saturation of the deep oceans (for which is no sign), that means that vegetation must take over, which has a much slower sink rate…
i missed your first point (different B -> A rate for C12 and C14), thanks. But does it change the whole picture ?
paqyfelyc,
While the decay process is similar, the 14CO2 decay rate is much faster than for 12CO2, the difference is at least a 3-fold…
Speaking of conflating – 1 lb of carbon produces 3.67 lb of CO2. (12+2*16=44/12=3.67)
Not all carbon ends up as CO2.
Another case of apples and pomegranates, pls.
Even the IPCC reports acknowledge that the natural sources and sinks of CO2 dwarf man’s contribution and that most of the natural sources and sinks are related to vegetation rather than the oceans. It seems to me that, as far as CO2 is concerned, the atmosphere should behave more like river than a reservoir with the partial pressure of CO2 indicating its flow rate. Using the IPCC’s figures for the 1990’s, if all sources of CO2 suddenly ceased while the sinks continued removing CO2 at their present rate, the CO2 in the atmosphere would completely disappear in less than 3 years
We know that plants respond to higher levels of CO2 by growing faster thus removing CO2 at a faster rate and consequently, producing CO2 at a faster rate when they decay. Both processes are highly temperature/weather dependent and should not be considered as constant as the alarmists seem to do. If the earth’s climate has been warming, then the atmosphere’s CO2 flow rate has been increasing from all natural sources thus resulting in a higher atmospheric CO2 partial pressure. There should be a numerical factor that expresses the relationship between flow rate and partial pressure of CO2. Then that factor can also be used to express man’s contribution to the flow rate of CO2 through the atmosphere and its contribution to the partial pressure increase.
It seems to me that man’s contribution would be rather small compared to natural changes if one assumes an increase in CO2 flow rates are the cause of the recent increase in atmospheric CO2 partial pressure. The alarmists, however, would have you believe that a flow increase from a small stream feeding a large river will cause a major flood by assuming the river’s flow rate will remain constant.
Willis, nice post. Figure 3 is particularly informative, showing that about 42% of produced CO2 is sinked.
I agree Salby’s arguments are wrong. Perhaps better said, ‘not even wrong’. But on different grounds. The essence of his theory that ‘natural’ CO2 contributions swamp a minor anthropogenic contribution is ‘fast’ (he calculates 10 months) temperature sensitive carbon cycle source-sink changes. There are two fundamental observational falsifications.
First, CO2 has continued to rise in the 21st century while temperature hasn’t. That is a lot longer than his deduced 10 month natural response time.
Second, there are only two large potentially temperature sensitive source-sinks. Land is acting as a net sink. This is proven by ground truthed satellite observation of NDVI. CO2 ‘fertilizes’ C3 plants, which comprise >85% of terrestrial biomass. Greening the Sahel because C3s transpire less water with more CO2. Oceans are also acting as a net sink independent of probable increases in biomass/calcification, simply via Henry’s Law. Surface water (mixed layer) pCO2 is increasing in lockstep with atmospheric CO2 concentration, measured at station Aloha north of Oahu and station BATS west of Bermuda. So the observed CO2 rise is anthropogenic, since vulcanism is not changing much in either annual eruptions or their VEI (as you previously posted).
“Lockstep” is one of those words, like “robust” that usually indicates it’s anything but.
Could you point out the “lockstep” in the graph I posted above. Looks more like lockstep with SST to me. To be realistic both effects are mixed but the short term variability is certainly temperature driven.
To put some numbers on that : from 1960-1995 the fitted slope was 2ppm/y increase in a century; from 2011-2015 give 0.44 ppm/y in a century.
The rate of increase has fallen dramatically while the human emissions are getting ever stronger. Clearly some other factor is at play.
Search Google images for pCO2 Aloha (or BATS). The charts are self evident and one click away.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/mapco2_plots/open_ocean/mooring_mosean-all.png
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/mapco2_plots/open_ocean/mooring_whots-30days.png
Yeah, right. That is usually what I find “lockstep” means, like I said.
That India Ocean buoy actually makes a good case for an inverse relationship. Thanks for the tip. 😉
opps, seems to have lost the Indian one :
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/mapco2_plots/open_ocean/mooring_BOBOA-30days.png
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/BOBOA
Mike, you are looking at the second derivative of a noisy system. So you can prove anything and nothing by choosing the right start and end dates: taking 1976-1996 even shows a negative rate of change with maximum increasing temperature and increasing CO2 emissions…
And looking at a fraction of a year is like looking at daily temperatures over a month to deduce something like a temperature trend over years…
The longer term trends of several sea stations can be seen at:
http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/27-1_bates.pdf
One can try the other way out and look at what the increase in the atmosphere should be if that is a direct function of human emissions minus a function of the pCO2 difference between atmosphere and equilibrium pCO2 for the ocean temperature of each year. That gives the following graph (the red line):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em4.jpg
Still widely within natural variability, so why all the fuss over a few years of a not increasing rate of change in the atmosphere, but by far still more natural sink than natural source, thus mostly human?
Assumptions made:
– Equilibrium base 290 ppmv pre-industrial.
– Equilibrium change: 8 ppmv/K.
– Linear sink rate: 2.15 ppmv at 110 ppmv pCO2 above equilibrium.
Ristvan, are you sure that land is acting as net sink? Measurement of CO2 source/sink is taking to account also Methane? Methane is part of carbon cycle and one would expect that Carbon is returning from land cycle as Methane not CO2. It enters atmosphere and changes to CO2 later on some other place.
Peter,
Methane is rapidly oxidized into CO2 with a half life of ~10 years, it presents less than 1% of the annual CO2 cycle. Total biomass is a proven sink, thanks to the oxygen balance: more O2 release than use, thus more CO2 uptake than release, the earth is greening…
I am not qualified to say in all the above posts/arguments who is right and who isn’t.
The part that gives me hope is that what we have had here is a TRUE DEBATE!
This is in stark contrast to the “Warmist/Religious” Climate sites that state, “The Science is Settled”….
Congratulations to us all!….
Looking forward to a peer reviewed paper on Dr. Salby’s work.
Obviously…….after he finally publishes it.
Very well explained Willis. I totally agree but I could not have explained it with such eloquence.
I have seen many people making the same errors as Salby though.
About your digression, pondering “exactly how a cheap sheet metal and plywood desk would ward off an atomic bomb” …
Studies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have shown us exactly how. Most of the energy from the bomb is carried away by the flash – at the speed of light. The concussion of the blast propagates at about the speed of sound. Some survivors of the Hiroshima flash were less than 300 metres from the “ground zero” of detonation, but were shielded from the flash and the blast by a building they were inside of. Post-detonation photographs revealed that some buildings still stood.
It depends upon how far away one is, from the detonation. Within a certain radius, of the places with direct line-of-sight to the flash, Hiroshima blast survivors illustrated that even a single plant-leaf, between the flash of the explosion, and the victim, made a noticeable difference in the burns they received. A sheet of paper made a difference. These were survivors – not the dead. A cheap wooden desk, between the flash, and the victim, could very well make the difference between the victim surviving, or perishing.
Word spread, of the experience of skies full of formations of bombers. People were not afraid of an unescorted, high-flying, single airplane. As the shiny aluminum bomber was flying by, lots of people stopped and looked up – many were shirtless, labouring outside on a hot day. People who were inside, came to the windows, and watched the single, silent, falling object – and were pelted with shattered glass as a result. Had these people sought shelter –any shelter- instead of standing, with a sheet of glass between them and and the blast, many, many more would have survived.
Really simple “duck and cover” techniques can make the difference between long life and painful death… don’t discount it. With the “mutually assured destruction” stand-off between the USA and the Soviets, any discussion of “duck and cover” or any survival behaviour, or preparation, was cast off – and a prevailing opinion of “if it happens, we’re all gonna die” propagated. This is patently false. That attitude reinforced both goverments’ “assured destruction”, which would be less assured, if the governments kept up the training of how to survive a nuclear war. I cannot say that the USA government perceived this, and rationally decided to de-emphasize “duck and cover”, or, that the ordinary people (employed by government) suffered the same psychological depression that “we’re all gonna die” … but the government of the USA clearly did reduce and eliminate “duck and cover” and other preparedness. One does not need an extensive, underground cave, with years of food and water, preserved… there are simple behaviours that people could do that would double their chances of living long after a nuclear explosion.
Yeah, I know that “duck and cover” is actually a good strategy … it just seemed like it was all running on the assumption that you’d have time to duck or cover. In any case, as you point out, being prepared to survive is a good thing and is valuable whether it’s an earthquake, a hurricane, or any other catastrophe.
w.
Anyone surviving the flash would have time to duck and cover from the blast effects, unless very close to GZ. Some have suggested that the drive to suburbanize during the ’50s was partly from fear of living near the center of a likely target city.
Seems to me the ridicule of “duck and cover” came mainly from the left. Seems I recall songsters of the Pete Seeger, Tom Lehrer, etc., type mocking the idea. In popular culture there was a movie, “Matinee”, wistfully remembering the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the female lead, a girl from a leftist family, expressed just the opposite of Brian’s views (which I believe are correct). The film is probably anachronistic, but its attribution of skepticism to the left is probably right.
Please list the simple behaviors you’d recommend in the wake of a nuclear blast.
Brian April 20, 2015 at 10:01 am
One would be, take iodine tablets.
Bart April 20, 2015 at 7:06 pm
Thanks. Apparently, iodine is commonly administered orally with tablets of Potassium Iodide.
I participated in those duck & cover drills as a schoolboy back in the 50s, My faded recollection is that the drills were held for only a couple years before the nation’s attention drifted to Elvis and tail-fins, but we also had the occasional Civil Defense movie that had some of the kind of information I hope that Brian would provide because, you know, these are not our father’s bombs.
Downstream, evanmjones April 20, 2015 at 9:11 pm
No argument there. evanjones also offers further valuable insights on thermonuclear war, including a link to a sampling of a book of the same name for which he wrote the introduction. I’ve just had a peek at it…
Well anyway, getting back to those simple steps, and assuming I’ve managed to have something, anything between me and the blast, so the flash is blocked & I’m not fried, and owing to my lightning reflexes and superior athletic conditioning, I’ve ducked and covered like, well, an old hand, and I’ve popped a few Potassium Iodide tablets, and start fishing around for the remote…
What next? I’d offer that the next decision would be to sit tight or evacuate. Of course, in So. Cal. we have all those great freeways like the 10, 405, 210, 101, and 5 that make getting around such a breeze that evacuation would have to be a prime option if you happen to be one of the lucky survivors, but everything in your vicinity has been blown away.
Just zip on out to your cool & well-stocked mountain hideaway/bachelor pad with the barbwire fence, and wait out the catastrophe in comfort.
Disclaimer: I was a Boy Scout, and I agree with Willis:
Be Prepared
You say: Before I move on, please note that the amount remaining in the atmosphere is not a function of the annual emissions. Instead, it is a function of the total emissions, i.e. it is a function of the running sum of the annual emissions starting at t=0 (blue line).
Not strictly true – obviously because t=0 is not a meaningful time. The amount remaining in the atmosphere is a band-pass filtered version of the annual emissions. If you ignore saturation effects and increasing absorption coefficient as forests grow, it is the very simplest form of low-pass filter: (k1 / (k2 + s)) where s represents the frequency, k2 is the inverse of the time constant, and k1 is the integration coefficent. Thus if emissions rise or fall, the amount remaining will gradually rise or fall over a period of about ten years.
Thank you willis, the litmus test of the Bern model will be the behaviour of the airborne fraction in the coming forty years. I personally think the sinks won’t saturate as the Bern model predicts.
Compare the pulse response for a constant airborne fraction:
I personally think the sinks won’t saturate as the Bern model predicts.
Is it that the Bern model is showing sink saturation or is it sink starvation?
If plant life thrives in 500 ppm CO2 compared to 300 ppm, then the decay rate must be a function of the concentration.
What does the Bern model say if we start from a 600 ppm CO2 concentration?
Do we get to 320 ppm in 100 years instead of 80?
is the hyperbolic asymptote at 310 ppm (sink starvation level ?) regardless of starting CO2 concentration?
Hans, you might want to distinquish sinks. Possible that terrestrial sinks might saturate at some point if decay caught up to growth. Not possible in the oceans for two reasons. In physical chemistry, Henry’s Law does not saturate. In biology, calcification by diatoms and coccolithophorids does not saturate; whether and by how much it might be affected by ‘acidification’ thanks to Henry’s law is uncertain given the ocean’s chemical buffering.
I find change in sink rate, but not saturation, plausible.
What I do observe when tundra turns forest, is that biomass keeps increasing until a tropical rainforest equilibrium has been reached. The mild temperature increase stimulates plantgrowth also in midlattitudes where the greening of the earth is dominant. We are a long way from saturated plant growth, i think we need to go back to Carboniferous conditions for that to happen.
ristvan,
The terrestrial sink doesn’t saturate, but the oceans do. Henry’s law is only for the small part of dissolved CO2 in seawater (1%) not for bicarbonates (90%) or caronates (9%).
That makes that a 100% change in the atmosphere gives a 100% change in free CO2 in seawater, but that is only 1% of all CO2 (DIC: dissolved inorganic carbon) in seawater.
Thanks to the following chemical reactions, the total extra CO2 uptake in seawater is about 10% of the change in the atmosphere. That is the Revelle/buffer factor. See:
http://www.eng.warwick.ac.uk/staff/gpk/Teaching-undergrad/es427/Exam%200405%20Revision/Ocean-chemistry.pdf
The ocean surface is readily saturated with an exchange speed of 1 year in the Bern model, but saturated at 10% of the change in the atmosphere. That also is observed
The next sinks are the deep oceans, which have much more capacity but a much slower exchange rate. The saturation of the deep oceans is the main problem in Hans and my opinion: no saturation in sight, while there should be, according to the IPCC.
The next sink rate is vegetation with near unlimited capacity, but much slower than the oceans (currently ~1 GtC sink rate for ~110 ppmv above equilibrium)…
The Bomb C14 data is a valid Lower Bound on residence time for the Bern model.
But what is a valid upper bound on residence time to check the Bern model?
It is all well and good to realize that the C14 isotope is sequestered at one rate, but reemitted into the atmosphere at another much more diluted rate. Sure.
But is there an assumption is that C14 re-emitted rate is zero since C14 comprises so small a fraction of total non-atmospheric carbon? That I think may be in error.
Carbon cycle respiration, atmosphere to biosphere to atmosphere may better be viewed as a LIFO system, Last In, First Out. So much of the carbon load goes into leaves and food plants that it decays in the fall and gets consumed by animals.
If one gram of C14 goes from atmosphere into plant leaves in the spring, wouldn’t one expect that a sizable fraction (50%) of the C14 goes back into CO2 when it decays in the fall? If so, then what the Bern model represents really should be much closer to the Bomb curve with a half-life of 20-40 years.
If one gram of C14 goes from atmosphere into plant leaves in the spring, wouldn’t one expect that a sizable fraction (50%) of the C14 goes back into CO2 when it decays in the fall?
Wrong mechanism, or at least wrong constants in the equation.
You are mixing two reservoirs of isotopes of C – the reservoir that’s the atmosphere, and everything else. “everything else” is much larger and has very little C14, so the level of C14 in the air decays quickly just like a little bit of smoke quickly disappears into a large room, because air molecules exchange places in the room. (and between the two reservoirs).
The Bern mechanism is different, and therefore has a different time constant. Not sure why this continues to be so hard to grasp…
No. You are committing the error of which I write.
If you took a fraction of C14 and absorbed it into the ocean and mixed thoroughly, then you would be right, the CO2 that returned to the atmosphere would have no C14 to speak of. But that is not what happens.
Take the Mauna Loa C02 signal, and annual sinusoid with an amplitude of four years of average gain. Absorbtion and release. A sizable percentage of C14 must be in a LIFO, Last In First Out inventory. C14 is absorbed by leaves as they grow. Surely some of it goes into bark and wood, but much of the C14 remains in the leaves to decay or be eaten as food and be released back into the atmosphere. Leaves and crops are an obvious mechanism, but the mixing of surface ocean waters isn’t thorough either.
If a gram of C14 is absorbed by the biosphere in the spring, certainly not 1.0000 gram will be released back within the span of the four seasons. But it is not reasonable to believe in a planet with a sinusoidal CO2 signal that little of the C14 returns. Life is LIFO.
Stephen,
One can assume that most of the 14C that is absorbed in the seasonal cycle is re-emitted in the second halve of the same cycle. That is the case for the ocean surface and the fast growth and decay of leaves.
The main difference is in the exchanges with the deep oceans: what goes in is the isotopic ratio of today (with some shift at the atmosphere – ocean border). What comes out is the isotopic ratio of ~1000 years ago, which is a lot lower (for any 14C peak), be it not zero.
That makes that the decay rate for a 14CO2 spike is much shorter than for a 12CO2 spike.
Some more detailed fluxes and concentrations for the different isotopes can be found here.
That makes that the decay rate for a 14CO2 spike is much shorter than for a 12CO2 spike.
I do not doubt that. What I doubt is the 12CO2 spike is as long a Bern model says.
The 14CO2 spike is as short as it with a presumed seasonal re-emission of 14CO2 from decay of leaves and digested food, That argues for a faster uptake of 12CO2 than if you maintain that re-emission of 14CO2 is near zero because it constitutes such a small fraction of total CO2.
I don’t buy the Atmosphere – Deep Ocean fluxes in the model in your link. They seem to state that CO2 flux from atmosphere to Deep Ocean is of a rate similar with Atmosphere to surface. A better model would be Atmosphere to Surface, Surface to Mid layer, Mid Layer to Deep Ocean. Furthermore, that model doesn’t allow for increased mass in vegetation and soils and CO3 sinks in ocean.
Stephen,
I agree with you that the Bern model has much too early saturation and at much too high levels. The Bern model is right for the ocean surface, which does absorb only 10% of the change in the atmosphere, but it does that also for the deep oceans, where there is no sign of saturation and it is impossible for vegetation, where there are hardly any limits in uptake (at the current or far future rates).
The deep ocean – atmosphere fluxes are quite defined to less than 5% of the oceans surface each way: downwelling is mainly in the NE Atlantic, upwelling mainly in the Equatorial Pacific. That largely bypasses the surface – mid layers, which for 90% of the surface have little exchange in heat and CO2 (directly, indirectly some 6 GtC/year from organic and inorganic drops of dead plankton, fish excrements,…) with the deep oceans.
The 40 GtC exchange rate between deep oceans and atmosphere can be deduced from the “dilution” of the low-13C CO2 from human emissions: what is measured in the atmosphere is only 1/3rd of the theoretical value. As most from the ocean surface and the deep oceans returns the next season, you need some 40 GtC continuous exchange between atmosphere – deep oceans – atmosphere to have that 2/3rd reduction in 13C/12C drop.
Moreover, the remaining ~50 GtC/year seasonal CO2 exchanges between ocean surface and atmosphere, and the opposite ~60 GtC seasonal exchanges between vegetation growth and decay (mainly in the NH), give a slight dominance of vegetation over the seasons: +/- 10 GtC which is measured as a +/- 5 ppmv global change over the (NH) seasons…
An interesting paper on tracking the various CO2 isotopes in the atmosphere: Modern Records of Carbon and Oxygen Isotopes in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Carbon-13 in Methane
Introduction
This page provides an introduction and links to records of carbon-13 (13C), carbon-14 (14C), and oxygen-18 (18O) in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), and also to 13C in methane (CH4) in recent decades. We emphasize large data bases each representing many currently active stations. Records have been obtained from samples of ambient air at remote stations, which represent changing global atmospheric concentrations rather than influences of local sources. Fossil carbon is relatively low in 13C and contains no 14C, so these isotopes are useful in identifying and quantifying fossil carbon in the atmosphere. Although the 14C record is obfuscated by releases of large amounts during tests of nuclear weapons, this isotope is nonetheless useful in tracking carbon through the carbon cycle and has limited use in quantifying fossil carbon in the atmosphere. Oxygen-18 amounts are determined by the hydrological cycle as well as biospheric influences, so they are often harder to interpret but are nonetheless useful in hydrological studies. Oxygen-18 and deuterium (2H) in polar ice cores provide information about past temperature long before the beginning of instrumental records. A gateway page to chronologies of isotopes in ice cores is here.
……………………..
Trends
Carbon-13 in CO2 is decreasing, as the fraction of atmospheric CO2 that is realized from combustion of fossil carbon is increasing. Ratios of 13C/12C in CO2 tend to be lower in the Northern Hemisphere, suggesting a fossil-fuel source that resides mainly in the Northern Hemisphere.
Carbon-13 in CH4 has decreased since 2008, but the short record (only back to 1998) combined with multiple sources precludes any simple explanation at this point. Ratios of 13C/12C in CH4 tend to be lower in the Northern Hemisphere.
Carbon-14 in CO2 is decreasing, and 14C/12C ratios are lower in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere, suggesting a northern hemisphere source of 14C-depleted carbon (e.g., fossil fuels). However, things are not quite that simple; although 14C from bomb testing has largely been removed from the atmosphere by the biosphere, the biosphere is now giving some back, precluding any simple interpretation of the rate of 14C decline. For more on this topic, see Levin et al. (2010).
Variations in 18O in CO2 reflect not only the carbon cycle, but the water cycle as well. Oxygen-18 evaporated from the oceans will eventually fall out as precipitation and make its way into CO2 respired from the biosphere. Therefore these variations reflect complex processes and are not always easily interpreted, although 18O is useful in hydrological studies. Oxygen-18 in CO2 has an annual cycle but has otherwise tended to stay constant in recent decades. Like the other isotopes discussed above, ratios of 18O/16O tend to be lower in the Northern Hemisphere.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/delta_13c_in_co2.jpg
Nylo April 19, 2015 at 10:39 pm
Thanks, Nylo. You are right that we would NOT expect the trend in airborne CO2 to remain the same … and in fact, it didn’t stay the same. It increased, exactly as you expected it would.
I fear you’ve been hornswoggled by the good Doctor. As I pointed out in the head post, he’s carefully cherry-picked his time periods to give him the “no change in trend” claim. If you use the same time periods for both the variables, here’s what you get for the trends:
Emissions 1990-2002: 0.03 ppmv/yr^2
Emissions 2002-2013: 0.13 ppmv/yr^2
Airborne concentration 1990-2002: 1.63 ppmv/yr
Airborne concentration 2002-2013: 2.05 ppmv/yr
Note that when the calculation is done in the proper manner, the CO2 concentration trend does NOT stay the same, it increases by about 30% … in other words, it did just what you said that you expected it to do. Well spotted.
I say again, Dr. Salby’s claims can NOT be trusted. My advice is to grab each and every one of his claims, turn them over, shake them hard, check the fastenings, hold them up to the light, and don’t take even the smallest thing for granted.
w.
PS—Please bear in mind that the two trends (emissions trend and airborne concentration trend) CANNOT be directly compared, because they measure different things. This is confirmed by the fact that they have different units.
Fitting a straight line to d/dt of MLO CO2 ( 12mo cycle removed ) I get: in ppm/yr^2 :
using the same periods you used for emissions:
fit [2002:2013]
m = -0.0252396 +/- 0.01131 (44.83%)
fit [1990:2002]
m = 0.0616526 +/- 0.01655 (26.85%)
That is the complete opposite to what is happening to emissions.
Thanks for the reply Willis. Yes, I went to the Mauna Loa data and verified what you say. And the increase is increasing 🙂 In the last 5 years Mauna Loa CO2 concentration has averaged an increase of 2.3 ppm.
It is very interesting to see how the rise in atmospheric CO2 is modulated by El Niño and La Niña effects. This is specially noteworthy in the years 1997-2002. 1998 and 2002 (El Niño) see increases similar to what today is normal, but the others (La Niña) see only tiny increases. I guess this is partially due to the change in ocean’s surface temperature affecting its capability to absorb CO2. But given the size of the change, that’s probably not the only effect in action.
Nylo,
The increase in (seawater) temperature, especially during El Niño episodes gives higher temperatures in the tropical forests, which show less uptake and partly drought and wildfires. That makes that it is mainly land vegetation which is the cause of the decreased sink capacity. That land plants dominate the uptake deficiency can be seen in the opposite CO2 and δ13C changes:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
You all know the old joke about a mathematician designing a labor-saving chicken-plucking machine: “Assume a spherical chicken.”
For sake of discussion, assume a simple model where the atmospheric reservoir holds 1000 units of CO2, the surface ocean reservoir holds 1000 units of CO2, and there is 100 units of CO2 emitted per year from the ocean into the atmosphere and 100 units of CO2 emitted per year from the atmosphere back into the ocean. Forget, for now, where these numbers come from, and forget the terrestrial biosphere and the human emission of fossil fuel combustion gas. This is just a “thought experiment” model.
In this simple model, the emission of CO2 from the surface ocean into the atmosphere is balanced by the sequestration of atmospheric CO2 back into the surface ocean. It is like Willis’ factory inventory, where there are large flows of materiel into and out of the factory, but the level of inventory in the factory stays more or less constant, or if it does change, it takes a long or longer time to change.
Now, assume an entirely hypothetical model where there are 1000 units of CO2 in the atmosphere and 0 units of CO2 in the surface ocean. According to what is called Henry’s Law, the sequestration of atmospheric CO2 at least starts out at 100 units per year whereas the emission of the ocean starts out at zero. Again, this is in the entirely hypothetical model, so please don’t get ahead of me here on what this model should do.
In the hypothetical model, and because there is 100 units of CO2 leaving per year and 0 units entering, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere should diminish at an initial rate of 10% per year. This initial situation, however, can only go on for about 5 years until there are only 500 units of CO2 left in the atmosphere, 500 units of CO2 now in the surface ocean. According to Henry’s Law, the sequestration rate from atmosphere to ocean is reduced to 50 units per year, the emission of the ocean back into the atmosphere is increase to 50 units per year. Even though there is turnover of the actual carbon atoms in the atmosphere at this point, the atmosphere and ocean are in equilibrium and do not change further in concentration. Also, the equilibrium state is finally reached, for practical purposes, at some multiple of the 5 year interval, because as the difference in CO2 between surface ocean and atmosphere decreases, the net rate of change of their respective concentration diminishes according to the exponential law given by Willis, where 5 years is what Willis and others calls the “e-folding” time duration.
Again, consider another hypothetical case, properly distant from reality so don’t call me on this quite yet, where the surface ocean and atmosphere each hold 1000 units of “normal” CO2 and where 10 units of radioactive CO2 is added to the atmosphere. It really doesn’t matter that much whether this small amount (1 percent in this pretend example) is added CO2 to make a total of 1001 units of total CO2 in the atmosphere or whether it replaces some CO2 to make 999 units of “normal” CO2 and 1 unit of radioactive CO2 for a sum of only 1000 units.
There is this theoretical concept called “partial pressure” that another commentator referred to. Partial pressure was a scientific breakthrough in the understanding of chemical reactions (consider gas dissolving in a fluid as a “chemical” reaction for now according to Henry’s Law). The way partial pressure works is that this new system is indistinguishable from one where the atmosphere is at a near vacuum, the 10 units of radioactive CO2 are the only gas molecules in the air, and there is zero radioactive CO2 in the surface ocean.
Even through there is still 100 units of normal CO2 going from ocean back to air and 100 units going from air back to ocean per year, there is one unit (10 percent of 10 units equals 1 unit) of radioactive CO2 going from the air to surface ocean and zero units of radioactive CO2 going from ocean back to air. That has to be because initially there are zero radioactive CO2 atoms in the ocean water for any to leave back into the atmosphere. This state of affairs continues until there are 5 units of radioactive CO2 in the atmosphere, giving a flux of .5 units of radioactive CO2 per year from atmosphere to ocean, and there are 5 units of radioactive CO2 in the surface ocean, giving a flux of .5 units of radioactive gas back to the atmosphere, establishing a new equilibrium where half of the “new” CO2 is in the air and half of it is in solution in the surface ocean.
In fact, this is what people observe with CO2 emitted from fossil fuels. About half of the cumulative fossil CO2 ends up in the air and half of it is presumably in the ocean or other “sink.” But this is not what we observe with the bombtest radioactive CO2 (from neutron activation of nitrogen to make fresh C14). Were the bombtest C14 to level out halfway between the pre-bombtest level and the peak level shortly before the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, this would be strong evidence that equilibrium between the air and the “fast” reservoir (surface ocean in my very simplified treatment) is reached rapidly, but the CO2 emitted from fossil fuel combustion gets divided evenly between air and surface ocean. According the the Bern model, the rate of mixing of the surface ocean and the much larger deep ocean is much less rapid, which means the CO2 we emit that ends up split between air and surface ocean will be there for 200 years.
But this is not what the bombtest curve shows. The radioactive CO2 has dimished to way past halfway between the bombtest peak and what people believe to be the pre-bombtest floor. Remember, the initial rate of decline of the radioactive CO2 is between the air receiving a pulse off radioactive CO2 and a reservoir without that excess radio-CO2. It appears that not only does CO2 transfer rapidly between the air and that reservoir, it also appears that this reservoir, whatever it is, is larger than simply equal in size to the atmospheric reservoir.
Well, how do you explain that the total CO2 in the atmosphere is rising at the rate it does? Murry Salby conjectures that it is coming from the ocean reservoir because the oceans are warming, not necessarily due to fossil fuel CO2 but because of natural trends. How do you explain that the concentration of non-radioactive C13 in the atmosphere is diminishing according to its own “Keeling Curve” measured in Hawaii? Murry Salby conjectures something about (small) differences in mobility of carbon isotopes for CO2 between reservoirs — water warming ejecting CO2 is well known. Data on C13 and its actual concentration over time in air and ocean and plants is harder to come by an an initial search on this topic.
But according to the fictional Sherlock Holmes, if every other hypothesis is ruled impossible, the remaining hypothesis, however improbable, must be the truth.
If the bombtest carbon is diminishing at a much greater rate than the “200 year lifetime of anthro CO2 claim”, and (should I put this in caps as AND?) it has diminished to well below half the pre-1950 radio-carbon concentration in the atmosphere, there must, has to be, a reservoir, with a rapid transfer time, for all CO2, that has a much higher capacity than the atmosphere. Even with (slight) isotopic differences in diffusion rate, CO2 equilibrates with this reservoir at a much higher rate than thought (more like 10 years than 100-200 years), which means that not half but most of the historical fossil fuel combustion CO2 is in that other reservoir and not in the atmosphere, and the apparent “half of the cumulative increase in atmospheric CO2” is an artifact of the assumption that there is no natural discharge of CO2 into the atmosphere of that magnitude.
Paul Milenkovic,
You wrote: “For sake of discussion, assume a simple model where the atmospheric reservoir holds 1000 units of CO2, the surface ocean reservoir holds 1000 units of CO2”. But it seems you just made those numbers up. Then you wrote “But this is not what the bombtest curve shows. The radioactive CO2 has dimished to way past halfway …”. But halfway is only significant because of the numbers you made up.
So I don’t think that you have demonstrated anything.
Paul,
The difference is in what returns out of the deep oceans: here for the year 1960:
– 100 parts 12CO2 go out the atmosphere into the oceans, 97.5 parts come out the oceans into the atmosphere.
– 100 parts 14CO2 into the deep oceans, 45 parts 14CO2 come back from the deep oceans due to the practical disconnection between ins and outs.
That makes that the e-fold decay rate of a 14CO2 peak is a lot faster than of a 12CO2 peak…
How is it your graph matches exactly the measured CO2 when the only variable is Anthropogenic CO2?
Is it that every other source and sink of CO2 is flat and neutral? Do you seriously expect that we will believe this?
Cold sea water accumulates CO2
Warm sea water discharges CO2
The lag time is between 200 and 800 years from start of warm period to large CO2 Atmospheric increases.
We know the Oceans have been warming as well as the atmosphere since the little ice age.
The little ice age consists of 2 periods of cold. 1300s to 1400s and 1600s through 1800s.
Time since… 500 years and 200 years.
Now, tell me again that your graph which uses a single variable of anthropogenic co2 creation matches exactly the measured co2 at mauna loa… Then explain why you think there is absolutely no other sources which are changing…
astonerii,
Humans emitted twice the amount of CO2 as measured in the atmosphere. If there was another natural source of extra CO2, the increase in the atmosphere would be larger than from the human contribution alone…
Nature is a net sink for CO2 for every single year of the past 55 years, not a source.
Not so. Your clinging to the discredited “mass balance” argument calls into question your judgment elsewhere.
He Bart,
I like to see your calculation of the mass balance for human emissions, the increase rate in the atmosphere and the net contribution of natural in and out fluxes over the past 55 years…
This is ridiculous, Ferdinand. You claim it is “mass balance”, but it is not. You do not know the entire carbon cycle, and you are only looking at pieces of it. The “mass balance” argument, as you and others proffer it, is a trivial observation regarding the size of the human input and the observed rise which has no bearing on the attribution question.
It all depends on the power of the sinks, Ferdinand. I have shown this many times, most recently here at Bishop Hill. This silly “mass balance” argument is naive beyond measure, and its continued repetition idiotic. Your continuing devotion to it only reveals in stark relief your mental block regarding the evolution of dynamic systems.
Fortunately there is evidence that this is not the case. CO2 levels change with out human contribution. Sometimes nature is a net sink and other times nature is a net source. This has been the case ever since the Earth Formed and especially since plants and animals have roamed the planet.
With the argument that we are in an era of increasing temperatures, it stand to reason that we should be in an era of naturally increasing CO2 levels without needing human contribution.
Then the argument for the last 18 years of a pause in the warming being that all that heat is hiding in the Oceans only doubles down on this, because if all of the heat is in the Ocean then the CO2 is leaving the Ocean even faster.
But looking at the chart, there is no increase in the rate of change of CO2 in the Atmosphere.
Natural Variation argues that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere changes. Billions of years of fossil records say so. Millions of years of ice core records say so.
The argument that all of a sudden, that at 2:37:02.592039571 on January 2nd, 1950 the entire universe and the Earth became in total and solid lock equilibrium is just nonsense. That the only contributors to the changes in climate are now wholly human is insane. That the current net sink status of the natural environment was neutral right up until that point in time is ludicrous.
But that seems to be your argument and your allies arguments.
astonerii,.
We have ice cores with a resolution of less than a decade which covers the past 150 years which can measure CO2 with a repeatability of 1.2 ppmv (1 sigma). That means that any change of 2 ppmv, sustained over 10 years or a one-year peak of 20 ppmv can be detected in that ice core.
The past 1,000 years is covered by ice cores with a resolution of ~20 years and the past 70,000 years with an ice core with a resolution of ~40 years.
The current increase of 110 ppmv in 160 years would be detected in all ice cores, even the worst resolution, 800,000 years back in time.
The overall ratio between CO2 and temperature is 8 ppmv/°C over the past 800,000 years, which is visible in the 1,000 years Law Dome ice core as a drop of ~6 ppmv between the MWP and LIA. The increase in temperature since the LIA is thus good for ~6 ppmv. That is all…
The measured variability in the past 55 years is +/- 1 ppmv around the trend, lasting 1-3 years with an amplitude of 4-5 ppmv/°C. That is all. The rest is from human emissions, which were and are about twice the measured increase in the atmosphere.
Bart,
Whatever you think of the mass balance, it can’t be violated at any moment. You can’t have ánd a net contribution of human emissions ánd a net contribution of natural sinks and still see an increase in the atmosphere which is less than the human emissions alone.
Except if you have extreme fast sinks and a fourfold increase of the natural fluxes, for which is not the slightest indication…
If there’s an exception, then it isn’t generally true. So, you need to make up your mind.
You can, indeed, have a “net contribution of human emissions ánd a net contribution of natural sinks and still see an increase in the atmosphere which is less than the human emissions alone.” You can easily have a feedback which takes out up to all of the human input, and whatever is left must be due to natural sources.
It isn’t negotiable. It is elementary in the theory of dynamic feedback systems.
Bart, the sinks don’t make any differentiation between human and natural input. Over the past 55 years:
There is a 4-fold increase in human emissions
There is a 4-fold increase in rate of change in the atmosphere
There is a 4-fold increase in net sink rate
There should be a 4-fold increase in natural circulation to get the same result with only a small contribution of human input
There is no evidence of an increased natural circulation, to the contrary: several estimates of the residence time show a relative constant natural circulation in an increasing atmospheric content.
I’m going to declare victory. Let us declare once and for all, the so-called “mass-balance” argument is dead and buried.
Ferdinand agrees that it is not dispositive, that the mere fact that the observed rise is smaller than the sum total of human inputs is not enough to assign attribution for the rise to humans. It all depends on the power of the sinks.
Ferdinand still thinks it is unlikely that the sinks are powerful enough. I disagree. And, that is that for now.
Bart,
The difference between you and me is that I look at all the available evidence. You only look at one “match” which is based on an arbitrary factor and offset, declare it all proof you need to conclude that temperature is the one and only cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
All contra-evidence is put aside, ridiculed or simply d*nied…
You didn’t supply any shred of evidence that the natural cycle increased in the past 55 years, which is necessary for any role of the natural contribution to the increase in the atmosphere. Only theories and theories again, which one by one violate all available evidence…
Thus I agree that the mass balance alone is not sufficient to be sure that humans are the main cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, if and only if the natural cycle increased in lockstep with the human emissions in exactly the same timing and increase rate as human emissions did.
For which is not the slightest indication…
The difference, Ferdinand, is that I recognize what is surmise, and what is imperative.
Your counter-evidences are merely surmise of how you think things ought to be. But, the recognition that the trend in dCO2/dt is due to the trend in temperature is not surmise. It is imperative.
Bart,
But, the recognition that the trend in dCO2/dt is due to the trend in temperature is not surmise. It is imperative.
Nothing imperative here: there is no link between the trend in temperature and the trend in dCO2/dt. The link is between T and CO2 and between dT/dt and dCO2/dt…
BTW, the only possibility for a natural increase is when the carbon cycle increase is exactly the same as the human and the “airborne fraction” increase: a fourfold increase over the past 55 years. Not a threefold or a fivefold…
Sorry, no. The trend in temperature necessarily causes the trend in dCO2/dt. It is imperative due to the lack of phase distortion. There is no way around it.
And, no, the rest is your usual static analysis silliness.
@ur momisugly Bart and Ferdinand,
You two have given me one of the most interesting sparring sessions I’ve seen on WUWT for a long time, and without the decent into yahboo we so often see. It’s been a fascinating exchange and I think I understand both your positions. If I could try to characterise:
Ferdinand is taking the view that there is no evidence that natural sinks have increased to the extent that a simple mass balance won’t explain human contributions to atmospheric CO2 concentration. He accepts (I think) that it’s possible that the “mass balance” argument is not adequate because it is possible that sinks and sources can vary to the extent that it won’t explain attribution, but that he doesn’t see evidence that there has been this variation, so mass balance is sufficient.
Bart is of the view that one shouldn’t even start with the mass attribution argument because it is misleading, and that we simply do not know whether or not those sinks have sources have completely dominated ACO2 or not. I suppose absence of evidence is not evidence of absence…? Because it is possible that natural sinks and sources can vary in response to ‘whatever’ (temperature possibly alla Salby) then it isn’t valid to invoke the mass balance argument in the first place. Bart’s is a ‘dynamic system’ argument.
How have I done? Would both of you concur with these very rough characterisations?
Once again, these exchanges are incredibly valuable. As frustrating as it might seem to both of you at times I am sure, I really do thank you for them.
Sounds good to me. My analysis favors Bart over Ferdinand but Quantifies the relative contributions using a dynamic mass balance. Click on my name for details.
agnostic2015 @ur momisugly April 23, 2015 at 1:54 am
More or less. The “mass balance” argument is proffered by others than Ferdinand. It is claimed that it settles the debate, and proves beyond any doubt that humans are responsible for the rise.
But, as I have described, it is an utterly fatuous argument, with no rigorous foundation. To one such as I, who deals with the control of dynamic systems on a daily basis, it is like a child getting red in the face and insisting that 2 + 2 = 3. It makes me blink and shake my head to blot out the stupid.
I have tried laying out all manner of four objects, separating and counting them, dividing them into two sets, and describing step by step how the law of addition dictates that the same number of matches is evident in both cases, and all I get in reply is, “No! 2 + 2 = 3!” It is surreal. The child simply cannot learn.
If I have not adequately conveyed my consummate contempt for the argument, please fill in the gaps in your own imagination of how you would react to the most stultifyingly wrong thing you can imagine anyone pushing on you, all with earnestly smug assurance of their unassailable position.
agnostic2015,
Bart is brilliant in the theoretical knowledge of systems, I was quite good in my working life for implementing the theoretical knowledge of smart people like Bart into real world chemical processes, including solving practical problems like feedback systems which should react in fraction of seconds, but need 10 seconds to get the right reaction and material cycles through a factory that returns after 6 days to disturb the input…
Thus in short: the theoretical knowledge of Bart is by far superior, but I think my practical knowledge is a lot better.
Your summary is quite good, the reaction of Bart is that he knows better, but he never gives any evidence that his theory is backed by any observation. If I then shows that his theory violates about all observations, then the observations are no good or it is my interpretation of the observations which is wrong…
Nevertheless, as I can’t convince Bart, I can try to convince others that Bart is wrong.
Part of what follows is a repeat from here:
Take his main theory:
The temperature dictated equilibrium is a moving target, which evolves according to
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
Which violates all physics and all observations, including Henry’s law which says that
ΔCO2 = k*(T – T0)
In the real world, a step increase of seawater temperature will increase the pCO2 of the seawater with ~8 μatm. That gives an extra CO2 input from the equatorial upwelling zones and a decreased output into the polar sink zones. That results in an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, but that increase reduces the pressure differences with the oceans at the upwelling zones and increases the pressure difference at the sink zones. Net result: at 8 μatm (~8 ppmv) the pressure increase in the atmosphere equals the pressure increase in the oceans and the original in/out fluxes are restored. Thus Bart’s theory that with a small sustained temperature jump the extra input of CO2 goes on until eternity without any feedback from the increased pressure in the atmosphere seems quite impossible…
Another violation is the δ13C evolution: δ13C measurements all over the oceans show a deep oceans δ13C level around zero per mil. the ocean surface gets 1-5 per mil, due to bio-life, which extracts preferentially 12CO2, thus leaving more 13CO2 behind. Thus any increase of in/out fluxes from the oceans would increase the δ13C level of the atmosphere.
The atmosphere was at -6.4 +/- 0.2 per mil over the Holocene up to 165 years ago. Then it starts to decline in lockstep with human emissions to below -8 per mil today. Fossil fuels have a δ13C level which is average around -24 per mil.
δ13C measurements are as accurate as CO2 measurements in the atmosphere, there is no way that these can be manipulated as a lot of people of different organizations are involved at different places on earth.
Thus if the natural cycle between atmosphere and oceans changed over the past 55 years, that would be measured in the δ13C changes. Nothing to see there: only a monotonic decrease in ratio with human emissions… If the natural cycle increased a 4-fold over the past 55 years via the oceans, that should give an increase in δ13C of the atmosphere, despite the human input:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_increase_290.jpg
The 40 GtC/year exchange is the estimated deep oceans – atmosphere exchange rate, based in the 14C bomb spike decay rate and the dilution of the δ13C changes from human emissions. If the natural emissions from the oceans were the cause, then these need to increase a 4-fold in general, but for the oceans as sole case, they should increase from 40 to 290 GtC/year, but then the increase of δ13C changes would violate the observed δ13C changes…
Mr Engelbeen, I agree with your assessment of Batt’s brilliance, however, one does not balance a checkbook with calculus. The simplicity of the mass balance argument, the fact that a high school student can grasp it, and the supplemental evidence we have that the origin of atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic seems to be unable to penetrate Bart’s preconceived religious belief system.
“Which violates all physics and all observations, including Henry’s law which says that
ΔCO2 = k*(T – T0)”
That’s not what the data say. They say directly that dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0). As clearly and directly as looking at the sky, and determining that it is blue.
Ferdinand appears to be engaging in the classic fallacy of attempting to make the data fit the theory, rather than the theory the data.
Bart, Salby is making the same mistake John McLean made, and you are defemding this same error.
Here is a graph of the “data” that shows your “error”
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http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/offset:-370
There’s been no mistake Ollie. The so-called “mass balance” argument is pathetically naive, and the evidence is very clear to one who is intimately familiar with the design and control of dynamical systems. There is no doubt about it. It isn’t even a close call.
Your mistake is to confuse a temperature induced variation of a linear trend with causation.
..
The variation is not the cause of the trend, it’s an artifact.
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You are free to make the same mistake John McLean made, but rest assured, if Salby attempts to publish, it will be humorous.
Here ya go Bart
.
http://nldr.library.ucar.edu/repository/assets/osgc/OSGC-000-000-000-521.pdf
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Enjoy reading about the mistake that Salby and you are making.
To paraphrase,
.
“Foster et al examine the filtering process that McLean et al applied to the temperature and ENSO data. This filtering has two steps – they take 12-month moving averages then take the differences between those values which are 12 months apart. The first step filters the high-frequency variation from the time series while the second step filters low-frequency variation. The problem with the latter step is it removes any long-term trends from the original temperature data. The long-term warming trend in the temperature record is where the disagreement between temperature and ENSO is greatest.
Why do McLean et al remove the long-term trend? They justify it by noting a lack of correlation between SOI and GTTA, speculating that the derivative filter might remove noise caused by volcanoes or wind. However, taking the derivative of a time series does not remove, or even reduce, short-term noise. It has the opposite effect, amplifying the noise while removing longer-term changes.”
..
So Bart, the Mclean error is well understood within the scientific community. Salby and you are repeating this flawed analysis.
..
You really should pay attention to the what has been published.
There has been no mistake on my or Salby’s part, Ollie.
Bart,
That’s not what the data say. They say directly that dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0). As clearly and directly as looking at the sky, and determining that it is blue.
Bart the data are composed of two completely independent processes: one that causes the variability and one that causes the trend. The first is proven caused by the temperature influence on vegetation. The second is proven not caused by the temperature trend influence on the vegetation trend (which is opposite). Thus there is no proof that the trend in the data is caused by temperature, none at all.
Your formula is not based on the data, it is based on you artificial match of two straight lines with an arbitrary factor and offset.
Moreover, the integration is between T and CO2, per Henry’s law and by extension between dT/dt and dCO2/dt and not between T and dCO2/dt.
No, Ferdinand. Your are fitting your data to your theory, rather than your theory to the data.
Thanks to a tip from ristvan I went to check out some of the buoy data. Most is a bit messy and broken but most suggest the same thing. About the only fairly complete data set was CRIMP2 : Kaneohe Bay, located on the eastern side of Oahu, Hawaii
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/mapco2_plots/coastal/coastal_crimp2-all.png
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/CRIMP2 Click “show full dataset”
Sea water CO2 is consistently about 50 to 100 umol/mol HIGHER the atmospheric CO2 and it clearly close to being in anti-phase with it. Hardly “lockstep” maybe lock anti-step would be a better term.
Also bear in mind there are contemporaneous surface readings from the say buoy, this is not MLO on the top of a volcanic mountain.
With swings in SW CO2 being of about 200 umol/mol it’s hard to argue this is being caused by the piffling changes in atmospheric CO2.
What seems odd is that SW CO2 peaks in late summer when I would assume that water is warmest.
Maybe that’s due to out gasssing from the warmer water?
I think SW means salt water, and thus, outgassing is correct, but if it outgassed, why the higher measure?
What is your point Mike? That CO2 is taken up and released by living organisms? Duh. From the link you provided: “Kaneohe Bay, located on the eastern side of Oahu, Hawaii, is a complex estuarine system with a large barrier coral reef, numerous patch reefs, fringing reefs, and several riverine inputs.” So obviously there is a lot happening there leading to diurnal variations that, on short time scales, are very large compared to any anthropogenic changes on those time scales. But the uptake and release by organisms goes around in a circle, while the burning of fossil fuels goes in one direction, at least on a human time scale.
“But the uptake and release by organisms goes around in a circle”
Is that comment supposed to suggest that it all averages out? Well if that was the case there would be coal and no oil , so you stuck out with that idea.
“So obviously there is a lot happening there ..”
Well if it’s all so obvious to you how is that you can’t explain it and just make meaningless hand waving statements?
There surely is an explanation but it is not SW pCO2 being “in steplock” with atmospheric CO2 , it is not I much higher, much larger in variation and in the wrong sense: anti-phase.
ristvan’s comment was totally ill-informed but useful in inciting me to find a data source I had not seen before.
“That CO2 is taken up and released by living organisms? Duh. ”
Taken up from where? What organisms? How does that explain the observations? Duh, indeed.
Mike,
“Is that comment supposed to suggest that it all averages out?
Yes, it all averages out. Well, to within 99.999999% or so.
“Well if that was the case there would be coal and no oil , so you stuck out with that idea. ”
That would be the 0.000001%. (OK, I am just guessing as to how many zeros.) But every year we burn the fossil fuels that took millions of years to form.
It is not obvious to you that there is a lot happening in “a complex estuarine system with a large barrier coral reef, numerous patch reefs, fringing reefs, and several riverine inputs.”? Then I am afraid I can’t help you.
“ristvan’s comment was totally ill-informed but useful in inciting me to find a data source I had not seen before. ”
If you mean his use of the word “lockstep” I agree with you. But if you want to refute him, you need to use appropriate data, such as Aloha and BATS.
“Taken up from where? What organisms? How does that explain the observations?” You’ve heard of photosynthesis? Respiration? Calcification? Corals? Phytoplankton? etc.
Duh. Indeed.
Mike,
After following the link, I found this for the site in question: “the seawater conditions reflect changes in seawater properties driven by both organic productivity/respiration and carbonate calcification/dissolution”. The former is your diurnal variation. The latter would be:
CO2 + H2O + CO3– = 2HCO3-
Ca++ + CO3– = CaCO3
Calcification (presumably growing coral in that environment) is the second reaction in the forward direction. It removes CO3– as causes the first reaction to shift to the left, releasing CO2. So, thanks to corals, the area is a net source of CO2 to the atmosphere.
You wrote “What seems odd is that SW CO2 peaks in late summer when I would assume that water is warmest.” I guess corals like it warm.
Thanks for the neat link.
Of course, carbonate should have a double minus sign, but that seems to show up as a dash.
Thanks, that sounds like a credible explanation on the face of it.
“The former is your diurnal variation. ” , I don’t recall ever mentioning a “diurnal” variation here.
There is an annual variation that is out of phase with atm CO2 , so while coral is pumping up pCO2 landbased plant life is dropping atm CO2, hence the approximate antiphase relationship.
In conclusion neither has any directed relationship beyond covariability caused by warmer conditions affecting different parts of the biosphere in different ways.
Lock-step and suggested causation seems to be a non starter, then.
Mike, stations Aloha and BATS were deliberately located in barren ocean where confounding biological activity is minimal (but not zero). Of course biological activity overwhelms Henry’s law In biologically rich suface waters. Seen not just in pCO2 but also in resulting pH. Estuarine pH swings of 1.4 in the Pacific are known. Please use the Aloha and BATS data supervised by WHOI. Rumor has it those oceanographers know what they are doing. Using data from an estuary shows you don’t. See essay Shell Games (oysters posted at Climate Etc suffices; corals and oysters in the full Blowing Smoke ebook version) for more on the biology part.
I started with Aloha above, it barely has 2.5 years of data and shows the same anti-phase relationship.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/mapco2_plots/open_ocean/mooring_mosean-all.png
It certainly does not show anything in “lockstep” as you claimed.
Maybe you could explain where you see evidence of your “lockstep” relationship.
Mike,
Aloha has about 30 years of data. Here is a somewhat old graph of it: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/file/pH+Time+Series
The atmospheric and oceanic trends agree, but unlike ristvan I would not use the word “lockstep” unless there is more than a similarity in trend.
Mike, my WHOI charts for station Aloha start in 1988. Try harder. I even explained how to do so.
Well I’ve spend over 20min today trying to find the data that you insist is “just a click away” yet abstain from providing any more “guidance” than “use Google”.
However, it is pretty clear from the limited segment that I found on NOAA’s PMEL and what Mike M found, that your claim that they are in “lockstep” is complete BS. That probably goes a long way to explaining why you being so unhelpful about about either of us finding the data.
The two do seem to be generally trending upwards, a fact that is as unsurprising as it is uninformative. Thanks for the waste of time.
Mike,
Many equatorial (upwelling) waters are permanent sources of CO2, polar sink waters are permanent sinks of CO2. The area weighted average pCO2 difference over the ocean is about 7 μatm higher in the atmosphere than in the oceans. See for the graphs:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/maps.shtm
The anti-phase is mainly a matter of vegetation: the ocean surface warms and emits more CO2 in summer, but land vegetation in the NH is a stronger sink for CO2 in summer than the oceans are a source.
What is measured is the pCO2 of seawater, which is a function of at one side temperature and at the other side bio-life. That is better seen in more detail for six fixed stations at different parts of the oceans:
http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/27-1_bates.pdf
The pCO2 difference with the atmosphere is the driving force for the uptake or release of CO2 to/from the ocean surface. In the case of the buoy, it is clear that for most of the time, the waters are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.
The momentary releases of one buoy are not important. What is important is the increase in DIC (total inorganic carbon) and pCO2 over time. The six stations above and several other fixed points show that the increase in DIC and pCO2 follow the increase in the atmosphere, which for the buoy is drowned in the wide variability of the observations. Hawaii makes regular measurements farther away from the islands and as it seems far less variable.
Good work Willis.
It never ceases to amaze me how many skeptics will waste their precious brain power and time of Salby’s busted idea. In the beginning it was kinda fun to see all the various challenges to the science. Skeptics didnt need to be pinned down to one or two good arguments they could scatter shot the approach, but as time goes on the lack of focus on the part of skeptics is a problem.
1. It allows your opponents to paint you all with the same broad brush as science d&niers.
2. Like it or not you are judged as a group, the same way climate scientists are judged as a group
in the end there are two good paths for skeptics to follow
A) the heretic path– you lay that out pretty well
B) the Nic Lewis path
Indeed, SW is seawater, that is why I find it surprising.
The above Salby remarks, which were focused on the IPCC claim, were in reference to this slide of two charts from the 9:00 minute mark of his recent London talk:
In the period shown, it appears to me that there is an observed insensitivity of growth of CO2 levels to significant changes in the rate of anthropogenic emissions of CO2. The IPCC claim needs to explain the observations.
John
John, there is divergence at the beginning of that fitted line that Murry Salby wilfully ignores. This is less distinct than in his first graph because the first one is rate of change , the second is the cumulative sum of CO2 emissions.
That is the crux of Willis’ objection and difference of units. It’s a valid point.
However, when we look at ppm/yr^2 for both emissions and atm CO2 , there is indeed a mis-match. Salby has a legitimate point but presents it badly. Emissions are accelerating and CO2 is decelerating.
There’s a problem.
Mike on April 20, 2015 at 1:36 pm
– – – – – – –
Mike,
I appreciate your civility. Thanks.
As to difference of units in the two graphs, Salby is taking observation data as given in the original sources. One can see that one graph is in rate of change of change (an ‘acceleration’ of sorts if you will) and the other is in just change in time (a ‘velocity’ of sorts if your will). Those do not invalidate the observations when taken together show inconsistency wrt the IPCC claim of 100% anthropogenic attribution of change in CO2. Hell, even I can take an eyeball time derivative of the green ppmv/yr line and find it to be essentially zero in value which fits Salby’s point about the IPCC claim.
As to the fit of the green ppmv/yr line on the ‘CO2 observed’ chart, I took it originally as merely a visually useful eyeballed trend, which looks sufficient to point out the IPCC has a problem explaining the two graphs in the context of its claim. It looks like Salby’s point is reasonably valid and reasonably displayed.
NOTE: As to your point about presenting badly; between you, me, Salby and Willis (or anybody) does it matter who is presenting their case badly? Badly? Screw badly or not badly. This isn’t a style point competition. It only matters whether the essential thrust of the case being made is reasonably consistent wrt both observations and logic while having some discernable level of circumspection on the nature of the EAS (Earth Atmospheric System).
John
Mike and John,
Looking at the second derivative in an extremely noisy system is just not done: you can’t prove or disprove anything with that. Take the 1976-1996 period and you have a negative rate of change growth with increasing temperatures and CO2 emissions. According to Salby’s reasoning, does that prove that CO2 is not increasing in the atmosphere – it still is – or that humans are not responsible for the increase? As long as the increase is above zero and smaller than human emissions, humans are responsible for near all emissions (besides a small temperature factor).
But suppose that annual reductions are a percentage of the amount in the atmosphere. For example, suppose 150GT natural additions, 5GT human additions and X% of CO₂ is taken out, resulting in 150GT being taken out for a 5GT net increase. Is all the net increase attributable to humans just because that was the amount of the human addition?
Ferdinand Engelbeen on April 20, 2015 at 3:17 pm
– – – – – – –
Ferdinand Engelbeen,
The Mauna Loa observed CO2 curve has small annual variations sure but that curve looks pretty well defined since measurements began in the middle of the 20th century. It looks pretty close to a straight line in shape over the period Salby is considering, so the rate of change of that line is pretty close to zero.
The Anthropogenic Emission plot in the later part has definitely significantly increased rate of change of the emission however you want to plot the change.
The two can reasonable be compared for purposes of evaluating the IPCC claim.
What does the comparison of the two show? It shows that there is a reasonable expectation that there is a plausible significant level of insensitivity of observed CO2 to large changes in the rate of change of anthropogenic CO2 emission. That is sufficient to justify and stimulate further formal science community dialog and research that runs counter to IPCC’s claim that observed CO2 increase is entirely anthropogenic.
John
There you go again calling anything that does not fit your warmist hypothesis “noise”.
Where is it written : thou shalt not look at the second derivative, only use cumulative integrals and turn everything into nice straight lines that are a “function” of CO2 ?
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/ddtco2_sst_15mlanc.png
You point to 1979-1996, there’s strong similarity in that period too, both in the decadal rise and the inter-annual variability. Carry on dismissing that a coincidental similar of the “noise” in both signals and claiming we should not even be looking at it is not going to build your credibility much.
@ur momisugly Ferdinand… that is definitely not true. There is something wrong with input of co2 and the corresponding amount of co2 in the atmosphere before and after the Industrial Revolution. The before is that decreasing amounts of co2 was a slow slide towards plant death (actually not so slow). The carbon sinks are much larger than a balanced co2 system. In fact since 2006 to 2013 half of the entire co2 output was sunk, meaning not in the atmosphere, that’s 4 years of total man made carbon emissions that went somewhere. Additional, my math shows a difference in the math used to convert carbon into a molecule of co2. I show a much higher level of molecule growth that should be there but isn’t (I show 3.48 molecules for 18.4 billion metric tons in 2010. half of the 38 bmt released. ) . One other thing to consider, there are no negative numbers. Tell me the importance of no negative numbers. Additional, the temps are not really growing in line with accumulated co2 and the atmospheric co2 is not in line with output. This year they are forecasting a growth of 4 molecules. And if the sun goes quite that will probably happen ( maybe 3 something) . That’s what I show, even for this year. But what happened last year or the year before? For 2013 NOAA shows an increase of just 2.05 and 2013, 2.13, both years should have been closer to 4. If I’m right fully 70% of the released carbon isn’t coming back or even around. Since 2007 to 2013 at least 32 billion metric tons of carbon( Multiply by 3.67 to get co2) has vanished. ( 117 billion metric tons of co2) That’s the official numbers. My numbers would put that amount 20 – 30 % higher ( and I lowballed that on purpose) . And you are implying that the earth was somehow different in the 1960’s and couldn’t swallow half of what’s being produced today? Aside from the amount in free form from year to year, there shouldn’t have been any increase. Negative numbers anyone? AGW, too much wrong, too little right. While we are at it, tell what happened in 1992 that resulted in a 0.48 increase? From 1987 the numbers slowly slid till 1992 then slowly rebounded and hit what is still an all time high of 2.93 in 1998. Care to explain that?
swood1000,
Indeed: if the increase in the atmosphere is larger than human emissions, the increase is a mix of human and natural emissions. If the increase is less than the human emissions, human emissions are fully responsible. If there is a decrease, natural sinks are larger than human emissions…
John,
Please have a look at the influence of the variability at Wft on the total increase in the atmosphere…
There is no measurable variability in the emissions, all variability in the rate of change is in the sink rate, which is heavily temperature dependent. But that is only variability: +/- 1 ppmv around the trend. The CO2 trend caused by the small increase in temperature is not more than 5 ppmv over the past 55 years.
It may be of academic interest where the origin of the variability is (mostly in tropical vegetation), but its influence on the total increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is small…
Mike,
Have a look at the influence of temperature on the total increase of CO2 over the full period (in the precious message to John): 5 ppmv over a period of 55 years. Natural variability in rate of change: +/- 1 ppmv/year. Average increase rate in the past 55 years: 1.5 ppmv/year. Human emissions over the same period: 3 ppmv/year. Total measured increase over the past 55 years: 80 ppmv.
Even if the increase rate was 0% of the emissions one year, 100% in the next year, average 10% in one decade and 90% in the next. What does that prove about the cause of the increase? Nothing.
You are looking at the derivative, where most of the trend is eliminated. The trend is in the offset (1 ppmv) and the slope (+1 ppmv over the full period). That is where the human emissions are. The influence of temperature is in the variability, hardly in the offset (0.09 ppmv/year) and not at all in the slope.
Thus whatever the cause (temperature on tropical forests) of the variability in the rate of change, that has hardly any influence on the total increase in the atmosphere.
rishrac,
Your questions are difficult to follow…
To start with: humans emit about 9 GtC/year as CO2. For the current CO2 level of 395 ppmv in the atmosphere the emissions reflect about 9 / 2.13 = 4.2 ppmv/year as input to the atmosphere.
It may be more or less, depending of the total mass of air, etc. but that is not the main point.
As far as I have seen, CO2 and CH4 levels during the Holocene increased slightly over time, although temperatures did go downward, maybe as result of the growing need for food and feed of a growing population, but I don’t know and let the anthropological historic scientists fight that out.
Anyway the pre-industrial increase of CO2 and CH4 was small and for me of no interest for what happened over the past 55 years.
since 2006 to 2013 half of the entire co2 output was sunk, meaning not in the atmosphere, that’s 4 years of total man made carbon emissions that went somewhere.
The sinks act in ratio to the increase in the atmosphere, that is average over the past 55 years slightly over half the average yearly emissions: ~0.5 ppmv/year for the ~1 ppmv/year emissions in 1960 to ~2.15 ppmv for the 4.2 ppmv of human emissions today.
Where does that go? Based on a lot of measurements, of the 9 GtC extra mass per year:
– 1 GtC/year goes into vegetation.
– 0.5 GtC/year goes into the ocean surface layer.
– 3 GtC/year goes into the deep oceans.
– 4.5 GtC/year remains in the atmosphere.
Human emissions increased over time and so did the increase in the atmosphere and the natural sinks. Natural sinks are very variable and change year by year and decade by decade. Temperature is one cause, light scattering (Pinatubo) is another cause and since about 1990, the biosphere (vegetation) changed from a small CO2 source into a small, but increasing sink for CO2, thanks to the extra CO2 in the atmosphere. That may be one of the reasons that the sink rate in the past decade increased. The flat temperatures since 2000 may be another reason. Good stuff to be investigated, but doesn’t make any difference for the cause of the increase in the atmosphere…
Ferdinand Engelbeen –
Thanks for your response.
Suppose we start with 750GT, have 150GT natural addition and 5GT anthropogenic addition for a total of 905GT. Suppose that during the year 0.165746 of the 905 is removed naturally, which is 150GT removed. This results in a 5GT net increase but 0.165746 of the anthropogenic 5GT addition was removed so 0.83GT of the 5GT net increase was not anthropogenic. Or suppose the same scenario with zero anthropogenic addition. Of the 900GT total 0.165746 would be removed, which is 149.17GT removed, still showing the 0.83GT net natural increase.
swood1000
You make the same error as many before you: a part of the human contribution (near 20%) is removed, but that amount is simply exchanged for natural molecules. That doesn’t change the total amount in the atmosphere, it only changes the concentration of the human contribution. That has nothing to do with the origin of the increase in mass, which is fully from the human contribution.
In the second case, the entire increase is from the natural unbalance.
For a better insight, have a look at Willis “blue painted CO2“.
sword1000
“Is all the net increase attributable to humans just because that was the amount of the human addition?”
Yes.
“have 150GT natural addition and 5GT anthropogenic addition for a total of 905GT. Suppose that during the year 0.165746 of the 905 is removed naturally, which is 150GT removed.”
That is 150 GT natural addition, 150 GT natural removal, net 0 GT natural change. You might not like the semantics, but that is how it is defined. I believe it is the only logically consistent way to do it given the constraints of mass balance and the fact that we can not tell which CO2 molecule came from where.
In fact, as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere goes up, the amount removed naturally goes up, so that the natural removal exceeds the amount of natural addition. That is why only a fraction of the anthropogenic CO2 emitted remains in the atmosphere. If we suddenly stopped burning fossil fuels, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would start going down.
Ferdinand Engelbeen and Mike M. –
Do I have my math right here? Dave added 0.83. After Tom added his amount the total was 5. How much did Tom add? Answer: 5?
Ferdinand Engelbeen and Mike M. –
Is this a true statement:
Dave took action X and Tom took action Y. The total at the end was 0.83 higher than it would have been had Dave not taken action X. Therefore, 0.83 of the final total is attributable to the action of Dave.
Ferdinand Engelbeen and Mike M. –
Is this a valid way of determining the anthropogenic contribution: (a) determine what the total would have been without any anthropogenic contribution, (b) determine what the total is with the anthropogenic contribution, (c) the difference is the anthropogenic contribution.
Willis – good post
With regard to your first two graphs. Your Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 are equivalent to a discrete time system (“difference equation” or simulation of a continuous system) of:
y(n) = gy(n-1) + x(n)
where y(n) is the output, x(n) is the input, and g is the positive feedback of just a hair over 0.9. For Fig. 1 we have an “IMPULSE response” (technically a “unit-sample response) of g^n. That is, x(n)=1 for n=0 and x(n)=0 thereafter. Fig. 2 is thus the “STEP response” of the same system. That is, x(n)=1 for n=0 AND thereafter. This is a constant or “DC” input. The final level of the step response is (asymptotically) 1/(1-g) which is a hair over 10, as you show.
What we have is a simple system responding to a SHIFT of a constant in the input. It’s the same system, and the characteristic time is unchanged by the input chosen. I can get the time constant from g from the step response, but most easily, directly from the impulse response (g^1).
And the response to a step, or any general shape, (which would be a convolution of the input with the impulse response – likely looking quite different from each other), just makes it a bit harder to determine the unique time constant (but still trivially – often by Prony’s method). So I think that your apples/oranges is fundamental, if one uses a conventional impulse/step terminology, even before we consider that the system isn’t even Linear Time-Invariant.
@ur momisugly Willis, I used a different method for estimating the ppmv of co2 from carbon. For the year 2010 I got 4 ppmv when 2.42 ppmv were reported. (Not on the total amount since half went into the ocean and land) I did overweight the atmosphere by at least 10%. Less weight and the ppmv would have been higher. It is worth noting that several of the years when the growth of co2 molecules was less than what would be projected provided again that each year half of the carbon was sinking and not being pulsed back into the climate system. It appears that the carbon that is sinking is NOT being pulsed back. Am I mistaken that the amount of co2 for 2013, for example, 9.9 billion metric tons of carbon is purely man made or is it a composite of man made and natural? If 9.9 bmt is all man made, and using 2.13 as the relationship, then for a number of years now the sink has been 50% and not being pulsed back. (from 2006 to 2013 a 18% rise in carbon, there is no corresponding rise in the co2 being pulsed back) In any case, some co2 must surely be being pulsed back, wood fires, vegetation etc. , what percentage of the growth rate of co2 would that be? More troubling, what was happening before the advent of burning fossil fuels to maintain the 283 or 270 ppmv as has been reported over time? !000 years is too long of a time frame without major inputs of co2, and then why isn’t it showing up in the records?
FTA:
“The clear inference of this is that various natural sequestration processes have absorbed some but not all of the fossil fuel emissions. “
No. The clear inference is that various natural sequestration processes have absorbed anywhere from 42% to all of the fossil fuel emissions. There is nothing in this that says it did not take all, and that the growth cannot be almost entirely due to natural processes.
“Next, as you can see, using an exponential decay analysis gives us an extremely good fit between the theoretical and the observed increase in atmospheric CO2.”
It is a superficial, low order polynomial fit, which is not at all difficult to get by chance.
The poorness of the fit can be seen when you look in a domain where you don’t get superficial, low order polynomial resemblances. In the rate domain, it is very clear that CO2 has been at a steady rate since the advent of the “pause”, whereas emissions have kept marching ever upward
http://s1136.photobucket.com/user/Bartemis/media/CO2_zps330ee8fa.jpg.html?sort=3&o=13
“…they are different because there is no reason to expect that apples and oranges would be the same…”
You do, in fact, expect them to track proportionately. In the rate domain, they are not tracking. See above plot.
“In fact, as Figure 3 shows, the observed CO2 has tracked the total human emissions very, very accurately.”
It hasn’t. It is quite poor. See above plot. This is a better fit, and it fits the rate domain as well.
“Airborne residence time (bomb test data): how long an individual CO2 molecule stays in the air.
Pulse decay time (Bern Model): how long the increased atmospheric concentration from a pulse of injected CO2 takes to decay back to pre-pulse conditions.”
And, these two times must approach one another when sinks are very active. The indications are that the sinks are very active. That is why atmospheric CO2 can be very closely calculated by integrating the temperature relationship, with little to no consideration of human inputs necessary.
Forgot to link directly to the jpeg…
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/CO2_zps330ee8fa.jpg
Bart,
As usual you have the same misleading plot: using similar variables, but plotting them with different units and an offset for one of them. The same comparison, but properly plotted on the same scale without offset gives a complete different impression:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em4.jpg
where the red line is the theoretical increase in the atmosphere with similar coefficients as calculated by Willis.
As the calculated increase rate still is widely within the natural (caused by the sink rate) noise, there is nothing to fuss about…
No. The clear inference is that various natural sequestration processes have absorbed anywhere from 42% to all of the fossil fuel emissions. There is nothing in this that says it did not take all, and that the growth cannot be almost entirely due to natural processes
Of course, if you bring $ 1,000 per month to your savings account at the local bank and the bank shows in its balance at the end of the year a net gain of $ 6,000, all that gain is from other clients, not from your money.
In such a case, I prefer to get my money as fast as possible out there and look for some more solid investment…
Your plot is misleading, Ferdinand, because you have scaled it in a manner to mask the divergence in the trend since the “pause”. But, even in your plot, the emissions are accelerating, and the atmospheric concentration is not.
“Of course, if you bring $ 1,000 per month to your savings account at the local bank and the bank shows in its balance at the end of the year a net gain of $ 6,000, all that gain is from other clients, not from your money.”
If your wife has been withdrawing $1000 per month, but you had $120,000 to begin with and an interest rate of 5%, then yes, all that gain is from other sources.
“As the calculated increase rate still is widely within the natural (caused by the sink rate) noise, there is nothing to fuss about…”
The data only vaguely fits your proposed relationship but you dismiss any deviations as “noise”. That just about typifies the AGW argument.
The “noise” in question, my friend, is temperature: SST. The big spike in 1998 should be a clue, emissions dropped but there was a big “noise” spike followed by a couple of low years where emissions were rising.
Mike,
All extra input is from the one-way human emissions, 100% input, no sink.
Natural emissions are more than compensated for the past 55 years: more sink than source.
All the variability in the rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere is caused by the influence of temperature variability on the sink capacity, not the source contribution, which based on the opposite δ13C and CO2 movements is the influence of temperature and drought on (tropical) forests.
The biosphere is over time a net, increasing sink for CO2. That means that variability and trend in the rate of change are from two independent processes, where the variability is temperature dependent, but the trend may or may not be temperature dependent.
Even if the increase in the atmosphere was 99% of human emissions during a decade and the next decade it was only 1%, still humans are fully responsible for the increase in the atmosphere, as long as the increase rate is between zero and all human emissions/year…
Bart,
My plot misleading? You surely should read that book “How to Lie With Statistics”, which shows that your plot is misleading. All I have done is plotting the calculated CO2 increase rate at the same zeroed scale as the emissions and the measured increase rate in the atmosphere. The 53% line is just coincidence, but shows that the rate of change of CO2 simply follows human emissions over the past 55/115 years.
In the period 1976-1996 the atmospheric increase is even decelerating with increasing temperatures and emissions…
If your wife has been withdrawing $1000 per month
Bad analogy, as there is hardly any CO2 withdrawal by humans at all…
“All extra input is from the one-way human emissions, 100% input, no sink.”
Wrong. The human input induces sink activity all its own. It is a dynamic system. The sinks expand due to the extra pressure humans put on them. For all intents and purposes, that is artificial sink activity.
“All I have done is plotting the calculated CO2 increase rate at the same zeroed scale as the emissions and the measured increase rate in the atmosphere.”
And, scaled it arbitrarily by 53%, to make it appear that they are coincident. In a few more years, you will have to scale it by 50% to keep it on track. Then 40%. Then, less. It’s a moving target, because the two are not tracking. Eventually, you are going to have to give it up.
The period 1976-1996 matches the temperature record, as does the current lull.
“Bad analogy, as there is hardly any CO2 withdrawal by humans at all…”
Wrong. The human input induces sink activity all its own. For all intents and purposes, that is artificial sink activity.
Bart,
Wrong. The human input induces sink activity all its own.
OK, let’s do the calculation: Humans emit 4.2 ppmv/year. That adds to the 110 ppmv CO2 above equilibrium for the current temperature, thus making it in first instance 114.2 ppmv, of which 3.7% pressure increase caused by fresh human CO2. The last year sink rate was 2.15 ppmv caused by the 110 ppmv extra CO2 pressure. The new sink rate for the increased pressure difference will be 2.15 * 114.2 / 110 = 2.23 ppmv, of which 0.08 ppmv is caused by the fresh human CO2 emission… Big deal. In fact half of that, as about half the extra increase (in mass) gets into sinks before reaching a higher CO2 level.
Simply said: besides a negligible extra sink, all human CO2 as mass is one-way added to the atmosphere.
And, scaled it arbitrarily by 53%, to make it appear that they are coincident.
Do you have some reading comprehension problem? I have repeatedly said that the 53% line is only the average increase in the atmosphere, by coincidence also within the natural variability.
It is NOT about the 53% line, it is about the calculated trend which is only based on the emissions minus the sink rate based on the CO2 pressure in the atmosphere vs. the equilibrium pressure.
No scaling, no offset, no manipulation by using different units, just straight-forward calculation.
The period 1976-1996 matches the temperature record, as does the current lull.
Of course, again by cherry picking the temperature series (a different one for different purposes) and the start-end date you can match the data. In this case the UAH series, which starts in 1979, not 1976. But even there, the CO2 rate of change trend is negative with a small increase in temperature…
Take your beloved HadCRU SH series, or the 30N-30S series and plot the trend lines: they are strongly opposite…
“OK, let’s do the calculation
You do not know the sink rate. This is where you err. You implicitly assume the answer before you make your calculations, framing the problem on that basis, and then seem to think it is compelling evidence when you get the answer you preordained. It is circular logic.
There is a full range of natural inputs and sink rates which satisfy the observations, beginning with 110 natural input and half of everything, including human inputs sunk, to all but a fraction of natural and human inputs sunk, with the fraction of natural input remaining by happenstance being roughly 1/2 of human emissions.
If the sinks are active, and they are, then almost everything coming in will be removed. Which means that the natural inputs simply have to be enough that the remaining fraction is the rise observed, whatever it may be.
“No scaling, no offset, no manipulation by using different units, just straight-forward calculation.”
You have assumed the 53% because it produces results you like. But, there is no fundamental reason for 53%. None at all. You are engaging in a cicular argument, yet I just cannot seem to make you see it.
“…even there, the CO2 rate of change trend is negative with a small increase in temperature…”
You are keying off of outlier data, fitting a trend to noise. This is meaningless, obfuscatory legerdemain. A cursory look at the plot is enough to see directly that there is close agreement. The picture is worth 10,000 trend lines.
Bart,
You do not know the sink rate.
We do know the sink rate: whatever the natural and human fluxes, the current increase in CO2 pressure in the atmosphere is 110 ppmv above the equilibrium for the current temperature, whatever caused it, dynamic or static.
The sink rate for a linear process is proportional to the pressure difference in the atmosphere. In this case, the 110 ppmv pressure difference gives a net sink of 2.15 ppmv/year.
That is independent of how much CO2 gets in and out in general or for any individual flux, human or natural. Of course the year by year variability does play a role in the sink rate: it varies from one year to the next, in this case the 2.15 ppmv/year is the value for the linear trend in sink rate for last year, in whatever compartment the CO2 may sink.
You have assumed the 53% because it produces results you like.
Bart, I didn’t assume anything, I just plotted two lines: the 53% line, as that was the average “airborne fraction” over the past 55 years and the calculated trend, based on emissions and the calculated sink rate caused by the pCO2 difference between current and equilibrium level. Here the same graph without the 53% line:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em6.jpg
Without scaling, offset, or any other manipulation, just straight-forward calculation based on a simple linear equilibrium process.
The picture is worth 10,000 trend lines.
A picture which pretend to prove that the trends do match without showing the trends is highly misleading. You make a lot of fuss about the last decade where the sink rate increased somewhat, but don’t refer to other periods in the past where the trends are opposite to each other, even over longer periods (even if you truncate before the 1991 Pinatubo)…
Ferdinand,
Please re-visit my blog(which I have revised after additional analysis) and critique it there. Just click on my name. Others who have been following the arguements between Bart and Ferdinand may find it interesting.
“We do know the sink rate”
No, you do not. There is a continuum of sink rates and natural inputs which will produce the same observations. Only by a priori assigning attribution do you impose a unique solution. You are engaging in circular logic.
“Bart, I didn’t assume anything, I just plotted two lines: the 53% line, as that was the average “airborne fraction” over the past 55 years…”
Yes, you did. You assumed a 53% airborne fraction. You assumed, at the very beginning, that 53% of emissions are staying in the atmosphere. Small wonder that you then conclude that 53% of emissions are staying in the atmosphere. Circulus in probando.
“A picture which pretend to prove that the trends do match without showing the trends is highly misleading.”
A least squares trend line is merely a calculation. When performed on stochastic data, it becomes a stochastic variable, with mean and variance and other statistical properties. It is not a fundamental measurement of “truth”. It is not magic. It cannot confer the ability to “see” beyond the noise.
Your eye is a highly refined instrument. It can take in a mass of data which your wondrous brain can process in massively parallel fashion. Just by looking at the plot, you can see immediately where the outlying deviations occur, and that they are a small portion of the overall excellent fit.
Sometimes, in borderline cases, the eyes and brain can fool you into seeing things that are not there. But, this is no such borderline case. This is very straightforward. The temperature record is an excellent fit across the entire time series. Very obviously a much better fit than emissions scaled for an assumed “airborne fraction”.
Bart,
We know the NET sink rate, as that is the difference between human emissions and increase in the atmosphere, whatever the individual sinks and source did.
That is the result of the increased pressure in the atmosphere. That is the driving force. The net sink rate is the result for the driving force. That force tries to re-establish the dynamic equilibrium after a disturbance, whatever the origin of that disturbance: ocean upwelling, volcanoes or humans…
If it is simple first order process, then the net sink rate is proportional to the disturbance, in this case the increased pressure in the atmosphere above the temperature dictated equilibrium.
That it is indeed proportional can be seen in the fact that the increase in the atmosphere and the increase in net sink rate both is a fourfold over the past 55 years.
Yes, you did. You assumed a 53% airborne fraction. You assumed, at the very beginning, that 53% of emissions are staying in the atmosphere.
Bart, you are completely lost on that. I never, ever assumed anything about the airborne fraction. For me that may be 1% or 99% of human emissions, that still shows that human emissions are the main cause of the increase in the atmosphere. The only reason that I plotted the 53% line (which I regret by now), is that it was the slope of the measured airborne linear trend over the past 55 years.
Again, there is not the slightest hint of the 53% in the calculated trend which is:
CO2(yr) = CO2(yr-1) + CO2(humans) – 2.15 * (CO2(atm) – CO2(eq)) / 110
Where CO2(eq) = 290 + 8 * (T – T(1850))
The temperature record is an excellent fit across the entire time series. Very obviously a much better fit than emissions scaled for an assumed “airborne fraction”.
Of course, the variability fits, as temperature variability is the direct cause of the CO2 variability and in this case, you have synchronized them by taking the derivative, but my calculated trend follows the average variability without problems…
“We know the NET sink rate…”
Sorry. Not enough to calculate what you want to calculate.
“If it is simple first order process, then the net sink rate is proportional to the disturbance, in this case the increased pressure in the atmosphere above the temperature dictated equilibrium….”
The temperature dictated equilibrium is a moving target, which evolves according to
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
“I never, ever assumed anything about the airborne fraction.”
This is really tiresome. You processed the data to convert the blue line into the red line in a manner which gives a superficial, low order polynomial, agreement. It is accelerating since 2000 while atmospheric concentration has not been accelerating. Meanwhile, the temperature relationship fits that time period, and all other time periods since at least 1958.
“…but my calculated trend follows the average variability without problems…”
It doesn’t fit at all. It is particularly bad since temperatures stopped climbing. The temperature relationship
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
fits better.
Bart:
Sorry. Not enough to calculate what you want to calculate.
No problem at all: we have extra information from the 55 years of data:
– Human emissions are known: a factor 4 increase over the full time span
– The levels in the atmosphere are known: a factor 4 increase over the full time span.
That gives some extra equations (H = human and N1…N3 = natural contribution, L1…L3 = level in the atmosphere):
L1 = tau*N1
L2 = tau*(H + N2)
L3 = tau*(4*H + N3)
where
L3 – L1 = 4*(L2 – L1)
or
tau*4*H + tau*N3 – tau*N1 = tau*4*H + tau*4*N2 – tau*4*N1
or
N3 – N1 = 4*(N2 – N1)
which has two and only two solutions: the natural cycle increased a 4-fold, in lockstep with human emissions or there was no increase in the natural cycle at all and N1 = N2 = N3 = N4.
There is not the slightest indication that the natural cycle increased a 4-fold, there are several indications that the natural cycle didn’t change much over time…
The temperature dictated equilibrium is a moving target, which evolves according to
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
Which violates all physics and all observations, including Henry’s law which says that
ΔCO2 = k*(T – T0)
For a step change in temperature, the CO2 levels integrate towards a new equilibrium whatever the time it may cost.
You processed the data to convert the blue line into the red line in a manner which gives a superficial, low order polynomial, agreement.
This is getting extremely annoying: I didn’t assume anything, I only used the very long term influence of temperature on the CO2 equilibrium rate and the measured increase in the atmosphere and the measured net sink rate based on the ΔpCO2 between measured CO2 level and equilibrium CO2 level.
It is accelerating since 2000 while atmospheric concentration has not been accelerating.
So what? Even if the rate of change increased between 1% and 99% one year or between 10% and 90% from one decade to the next: that is the natural variability in sink rate (not the source rate) which is only +/- 1 ppmv around the trend which is already 110 ppmv above equilibrium.
“That gives some extra equations…”
I am afraid I am going to have to be harsh, and call this out as pure mathematical gibberish, on a level that should cause embarrassment. One cannot solve for two variables with one equation. It is not possible. No matter how you try to rationalize it, you can’t get something for nothing.
“Which violates all physics and all observations, including Henry’s law which says that
ΔCO2 = k*(T – T0)”
That is not what the data say. Clearly, directly, and distinctly. Your theory must fit the data, not the data the theory.
Henry’s law applies to a steady state, closed volume. This system is not in steady state. To the degree it is, it is not closed. You are stuck with your mental block of imagining everything to be part of a static system, when there are dynamic flows involved.
“I didn’t assume anything, I only used the very long term influence of temperature on the CO2 equilibrium rate and the measured increase in the atmosphere and the measured net sink rate based on the ΔpCO2 between measured CO2 level and equilibrium CO2 level.”
You assumed in that one sentence:
1) the long term influence of temperature on the CO2 equilibrium rate
2) That the measured increase in the atmosphere was due to human emissions
3) that you could even measure the net sink rate without knowing the natural equilibrium to which the net is referenced
4) the equilibrium CO2 level
You do not see it, but I continually read what you write, and wince at every unwarranted assumption that you blithely toss out as established fact. There is no end to the lengths you will go to rationalize what you want to believe, and ignore the data which tell us clearly that it is a fantasy.
Bart,
One can not solve for two variables with one equation.
The fact that both the increase in the atmosphere (whatever the cause) and the net sink rate increased a 4-fold in lockstep with human emissions gives extra equations which solved the equations with two and only two solutions:
– either the natural emissions increased a 4-fold in lockstep with human emissions
– or the natural emissions didn’t increase.
But as you don’t like the result, you just are hand waving that there still is only one equation left without even looking at the math or saying where the math is wrong…
That is not what the data say
Bart your data are composed of two completely independent processes: one that causes the variability and one that causes the trend. The first is proven caused by the temperature influence on vegetation. The second is proven not caused by the temperature influence on vegetation. Thus there is no proof that the trend in the data is caused by temperature, none at all.
Henry’s law applies to a steady state
Pure nonsense. Henry’s law applies to static and dynamic processes alike. No matter if a lot of CO2 continuously circulates through the deep oceans and returns via the atmosphere: a change in temperature of 1°C will give a change of ~8 ppmv in the atmosphere. That is all:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
(the graph still is made for 17 ppmv/°C, but the principle is the same)
And I “assumed” many things which all were measured:
1) The long term influence of temperature on CO2 levels was measured (for CO2) and calculated (for temperature proxies) in ice cores over the past 800,000 years: 8 ppmv/°C
The influence of temperature on CO2 levels in the atmosphere above seawater according to Henry’s law is between 4-17 ppmv/°C, where the above 8 ppmv is in the middle of the ball park.
The influence of temperature on CO2 levels according Henry’s law was confirmed by millions of direct measurements of seawater in laboratories and in the field.
2) I didn’t assume that human emissions were the cause of the increase, the sink rate is directly proportional to the difference in measured pCO2 of the atmosphere (whatever the cause of the increase) and the equilibrium pCO2, which is based on 1).
3) Human emissions are known, the increase in the atmosphere is measured.
Net sink rate = human emissions – measured increase. Simple math, something like 2 = 4 – 2.
Nothing to do with any equilibrium.
4) The equilibrium CO2 level is what the CO2 level would be for the current average seawater temperature per Henry’s law, see 1).
You see, every “assumption” is based on physical laws and simple math…
Bart, you are a brilliant person, but completely blinded by your one theory based on an artificial match of two straight lines, which violates all known observations…
“The fact that both the increase in the atmosphere (whatever the cause) and the net sink rate increased a 4-fold in lockstep with human emissions gives extra equations which solved the equations with two and only two solutions:”
Nope. You are imposing an arbitrary constraint. Sure, a constrained solution to an underdetermined set of equations can be unique. But, if the constraint is arbitrary, so is the solution.
You can’t get something for nothing, Ferdinand. You can’t get something for nothing.
“Thus there is no proof that the trend in the data is caused by temperature, none at all.”
You are in a flight against reality. There is proof. There is, indeed, no doubt.
“Henry’s law applies to static and dynamic processes alike.”
Nonsense. It is steady state only. It takes time for CO2 to diffuse. Henry’s law only tells you where everything will end up when equilibrium is achieved.
“The long term influence of temperature on CO2 levels was measured (for CO2) and calculated (for temperature proxies) in ice cores over the past 800,000 years: 8 ppmv/°C”
A) Assumes the ice core measurements are a valid proxy with perfect fidelity
B) Assumes that conditions that hold today are the same as in the past
“I didn’t assume that human emissions were the cause of the increase…”
You said “and the measured increase in the atmosphere and the measured net sink rate”
To get sink rate, you have to make an assumption about what is driving the increase.
“Net sink rate = human emissions – measured increase”
And, Net sink rate = Net sink rate due to human emissions + Net sink rate due to natural inputs. Again, you keep trying to solve for two variables with one equation. Sorry. That does not work.
“The equilibrium CO2 level is what the CO2 level would be for the current average seawater temperature per Henry’s law…”
Henry’s law does not apply directly. See above.
Bart,
You are imposing an arbitrary constraint
A “constraint” which is measured…
It is steady state only
Henry’s law is for all static and dynamic processes. If the pCO2 in the atmosphere is below the steady state level of the oceans, then the oceans will be a net source of CO2. If the atmosphere is above the steady state level of the oceans, then the oceans will be a net sink for CO2.
At this moment the atmosphere is 110 ppmv above the steady state of the oceans for the current average ocean temperature.
Moreover, as the CO2 sinks/sources are extremely sensitive to temperature changes, according to your theory, there is no problem to sink all extra CO2 which is nowadays in the atmosphere above steady state…
A) assumes that ice core measurements are a valid proxy with perfect fidelity
Besides the fact that ice cores are not a “proxy” for CO2, if I take Henry’s law for the oceans today, that gives values between 4-17 ppmv/K, which give between 3-11 ppmv extra for the 0.6°C warming over the past 55 years at steady state, hardly a difference in the 110 ppmv increase which is measured.
B) Assumes that conditions that hold today are the same as in the past
The ratio seen in ice cores are the same over each interglacial 100,000 years back in time. They are the same including high resolution ice cores over the MWP-LIA transition. And they are in the middle of the range which Henry’s law dictates over the past 212 years…
To get sink rate, you have to make an assumption about what is driving the increase.
Not at all, the net sink rate is caused by the total increase of CO2 above steady state, whatever the cause of the increase.
Net sink rate = Net sink rate caused by human emissions + Net sink rate due to natural inputs
Again, not at all, it doesn’t matter what did drive the increase in the atmosphere, neither the composition of the sinks. The calculation was based on total net sink rate driven by total increase in the atmosphere.
Besides that, the human caused extra sink rate is negligible.
.
The evidence is there that the entire GHG effect thus CO2 is a consequence of natural variability from biological processes ,to ocean processes ,to forestation, to geological processes and last but not least global temperature.
This is not to say human emissions do not contribute to the rise in CO2, but rather to suggest they will be overwhelmed by natural variability. That is what past data shows but with the advent of AGW theory , all data
which does not support this theory is either inaccurate, not good or needs to be revised.
This is evident today and is always the case no matter what that data may be if it does not support AGW theory.
The case Dr. Salby, makes is quite convincing as are so many of the skeptic arguments.
All AGW offers and those who support it is speculation. They can never present data which does not meet up with opposing data to suggest otherwise. How could that be? The answer is because their data is built on a house of cards that is being used to further their absurd theory which is in the process of being proven wrong.
I know, the data the skeptic’s use is not correct. We shall see.
In reply to:
William,
You obviously have absolutely no knowledge concerning the abiotic theory and have obviously have not read Gold’s book or research the subject. There is no point asking if you have any logical points to support your name calling as you are have no knowledge of the subject.
Gold’s theory that the origin of black coal, CH4 and petroleum is CH4 that is released from the core as it solidifies is not a new theory. It is the standard theory for the formation of petroleum in Russia and in the Ukraine. There are more than a hundred peer reviewed papers that support the abiotic theory.
http://www.gasresources.net/plagiarism%28overview%29.htm
Gold has more than 50 observations in his book that support the abiotic theory over the organic theory.
The deep earth hypothesis can explain super deposits of petroleum in the Middle east – Why Saudi Arabia has 25% of the planet’s oil reserves half of which is contained in only eight fields. Half of Saudi Arabia production comes from a single field the Ghawar.
Excerpt from this wikipedia article on Oil Reserves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves
The following is an excerpt from Thomas Gold’s book the Deep Hot Biosphere which that outlines some of the observations that unequivocally supports an abiogenic origin (non-biological, primeval origin), for petroleum and natural gas.
http://www.gasresources.net/VAKreplytBriggs.htm
Additional support for the abiotic theory for the origin of petroleum, black coal, and ‘natural’ gas.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090910084259.htm
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n8/abs/ngeo591.html
http://www.gasresources.net/VAKreplytBriggs.htm
WA, first army rule of holes is, when in one stop digging. So, there are no fossils in all coal beds? No fossils in any source rocks? And, most important, any petroleum deposits without organic biomarkers? Now, the last was ‘explained’ by Gold via contaminating deep bacteria. You and he need to try better, since those bacteria have been shown to exist in sedimentary formations only. Metamorphic and igneous rock is too hot for life, by definition. Get a grip.
The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, if successful, will reach the boundary between thin oceanic crust and the mantle. Extremophilic microbes have been found living at 120 degrees C, which is the temperature of oceanic crust between seven and eight km deep, ie near the boundary. IODP will discover how far down microbes can exist.
Microbes can live in metamorphic and igneous rock after the hot formation of the rock and its transport to cooler regions. They’re mainly autotrophs, primarily living off hydrogen gas.