Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball –
[Note: Some parts of this essay rely on a series of air sample chemical analysis done by Georg Beck of CO2 at the surface. I consider the air samplings as having poor quality control, and not necessarily representative of global CO2 levels at those times and locations. While the methods of chemical analysis used by Beck might have been reasonably accurate, I believe the measurements suffer from a location bias, and in atmospheric conditions that were not well mixed, and should be taken with skepticism. I offer this article for discussion, but I don’t endorse the Beck data. – Anthony]
The failed predictions (projections) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are proof that there is something seriously wrong with the science. A useful analogy of how to analyze what we are witnessing is that it is like coming upon a car wreck. What you see and what happened is hard to figure out. It takes a lot of measurements and deconstruction to reconstruct what happened. Deconstruction of the IPCC wreckage must begin with determining what they did prior to the crash and those actions involved creating conditions for a self-inflicted crash. I know some of this material is not new. I covered some of it myself. However, it is time to revisit because more people are aware of what is going on and are now on the crash scene.
IPCC and their proponents drew the map, built the roads, and designed the traffic signals, but they also designed, built and drove the car. They did not plan to crash and did everything to reach their destination. The problem developed because of the assumptions they made and the manipulation of the data needed to pre-meditate the result of the trip; a crash was inevitable.
What were the conditions they considered necessary to reach their destination? There are two distinct lists. The first is a list of the assumptions made for the scientific part of the AGW hypothesis. The second is a list of the starting conditions necessary for the political part of the AGW objective.
Scientific Assumptions
1. CO2 is a gas with effectively one-way properties that allows sunlight to enter the atmosphere but prevents heat from leaving. It supposedly functions like the glass in a greenhouse.
2. If atmospheric CO2 levels increase, the global temperature will increase.
3. Atmospheric levels of CO2 will increase because humans are adding more every year.
Political Assumptions
1. Global temperatures are the highest ever.
2. Global temperatures rose commensurate with the start of the Industrial Revolution.
3. CO2 levels are the highest ever.
4. CO2 levels were much lower before the Industrial Revolution.
5. CO2 levels continue to rise at a steady rate because of the annual contribution of humans.
Data Sources
Major objectives were to start with a low pre-industrial level of atmospheric CO2 and have a steady rise over the last 150 years. Data sources included the following
1. Bubbles extracted from ice cores, but primarily the Antarctic record.
2. Stomata are the pores on a leaf through which plants exchange gases with the atmosphere. The size varies with atmospheric levels of CO2.
3. Approximately 90,000 instrumental readings from the 19th century. Measurements began in 1812 as science determined the chemistry of the atmosphere.
4. Modern instrumental readings primarily centered on the Mauna Loa record begun in 1958 by Charles Keeling as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY).
5. The recently launched NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory OCO2 satellite with the first published data of CO2 concentration for October 1 to November 11, 2014.
6. IPCC estimates of human production of CO2, known currently as Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP).
The first question is what are the non-human sources and sinks of CO2. The answer is we don’t know. All we have are very crude estimates of some of them but no actual useable measures. Remember what the IPCC said in Box 2.1 Uncertainty in Observational Records.
The uncertainty in observational records encompasses instrumental/ recording errors, effects of representation (e.g., exposure, observing frequency or timing), as well as effects due to physical changes in the instrumentation (such as station relocations or new satellites). All further processing steps (transmission, storage, gridding, interpolating, averaging) also have their own particular uncertainties. Because there is no unique, unambiguous, way to identify and account for non-climatic artefacts (sic) in the vast majority of records, there must be a degree of uncertainty as to how the climate system has changed.
It is important to note that they identify one exception because it is important to their narrative, but also for recreating the IPCC wreck.
The only exceptions are certain atmospheric composition and flux measurements whose measurements and uncertainties are rigorously tied through an unbroken chain to internationally recognized absolute measurement standards (e.g., the CO2 record at Mauna Loa; Keeling et al., 1976a).
The IPCC provide a bizarre and confusing diagram (Figure 1) that is more about creating the base scenario for their narrative than it is about providing clarification.
Figure 1
I don’t normally include the legend of a graph or diagram but, in this case, it is informative. Not that it provides clarification, but because it illustrates how little is known and how important it is to direct the focus on human production of CO2 over the Industrial Revolution period. This is not surprising since that is the definition of climate change they received in Article 1 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). If you drive like this, a crash is inevitable.
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Figure 6.1 | Simplified schematic of the global carbon cycle. Numbers represent reservoir mass, also called ‘carbon stocks’ in PgC (1 PgC = 1015 gC) and annual carbon exchange fluxes (in PgC yr–1). Black numbers and arrows indicate reservoir mass and exchange fluxes estimated for the time prior to the Industrial Era, about 1750 (see Section 6.1.1.1 for references). Fossil fuel reserves are from GEA (2006) and are consistent with numbers used by IPCC WGIII for future scenarios. The sediment storage is a sum of 150 PgC of the organic carbon in the mixed layer (Emerson and Hedges, 1988) and 1600 PgC of the deep-sea CaCO3 sediments available to neutralize fossil fuel CO2 (Archer et al., 1998). Red arrows and numbers indicate annual ‘anthropogenic’ fluxes averaged over the 2000–2009 time period. These fluxes are a perturbation of the carbon cycle during Industrial Era post 1750. These fluxes (red arrows) are: Fossil fuel and cement emissions of CO2 (Section 6.3.1), Net land use change (Section 6.3.2), and the Average atmospheric increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, also called ‘CO2 growth rate’ (Section 6.3). The uptake of anthropogenic CO2 by the ocean and by terrestrial ecosystems, often called ‘carbon sinks’ are the red arrows part of Net land flux and Net ocean flux. Red numbers in the reservoirs denote cumulative changes of anthropogenic carbon over the Industrial Period 1750–2011 (column 2 in Table 6.1). By convention, a positive cumulative change means that a reservoir has gained carbon since 1750. The cumulative change of anthropogenic carbon in the terrestrial reservoir is the sum of carbon cumulatively lost through land use change and carbon accumulated since 1750 in other ecosystems (Table 6.1). Note that the mass balance of the two ocean carbon stocks Surface ocean and Intermediate and deep ocean includes a yearly accumulation of anthropogenic carbon (not shown). Uncertainties are reported as 90% confidence intervals. Emission estimates and land and ocean sinks (in red) are from Table 6.1 in Section 6.3. The change of gross terrestrial fluxes (red arrows of Gross photosynthesis and Total respiration and fires) has been estimated from CMIP5 model results (Section 6.4). The change in air–sea exchange fluxes (red arrows of ocean atmosphere gas exchange) have been estimated from the difference in atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 since 1750 (Sarmiento and Gruber, 2006). Individual gross fluxes and their changes since the beginning of the Industrial Era have typical uncertainties of more than 20%, while their differences (Net land flux and Net ocean flux in the figure) are determined from independent measurements with a much higher accuracy (see Section 6.3). Therefore, to achieve an overall balance, the values of the more uncertain gross fluxes have been adjusted so that their difference matches the Net land flux and Net ocean flux estimates. Fluxes from volcanic eruptions, rock weathering (silicates and carbonates weathering reactions resulting into a small uptake of atmospheric CO2), export of carbon from soils to rivers, burial of carbon in freshwater lakes and reservoirs and transport of carbon by rivers to the ocean are all assumed to be pre-industrial fluxes, that is, unchanged during 1750–2011. Some recent studies (Section 6.3) indicate that this assumption is likely not verified, but global estimates of the Industrial Era perturbation of all these fluxes was not available from peer-reviewed literature. The atmospheric inventories have been calculated using a conversion factor of 2.12 PgC per ppm (Prather et al., 2012).
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This is likely one the most remarkable examples of scientific obfuscation in history. Every number used is a crude estimate. The commentary says we don’t know anything but are certain about human CO2 production in the Industrial Era. To my knowledge, there are no cohesive, comprehensive, measures of CO2 exchanges for most of the land surfaces covered by various forests, but especially the grasslands. The grasslands illustrate the problem, because, depending on the definition the extent varies from 15 to 40 percent. The important point is that we have little idea about volumes or how they change over time. A supposedly knowledgeable group, the American Chemical Society, provides confirmation of this point. Of course, we know how professional societies were co-opted to support the IPCC positions. In an article titled “Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks” they present a diagram from the IPCC (Figure 2).
Figure 2
The text says from the American Chemical Society, who presumably knows about atmospheric chemistry says,
The sources of the gases given in these brief summaries are the most important ones, but there are other minor sources as well. The details of the sinks (reactions) that remove the gases from the atmosphere are not included. The graphic for each gas (or class of gas) is from Figure 1, FAQ 7.1, IPCC, Assessment Report Four (2007), Chapter 7. Human-caused sources are shown in orange and natural sources and sinks in teal. Units are in grams (g) or metric tons (tonne: international symbol t = 103 kg = 106 g). Multiples used in the figures are: Gt (gigatonne) = 109 t = 1015 g; Tg (teragram) = 1012 g = 106 t; and Gg (gigagram) = 109 g = 103 t.
As a professional group surely they should know about the lack of knowledge about gases in the atmosphere, yet they promote the IPCC illusions as fact. There are few caveats or warnings of the scientific limitations that even the IPCC include as in Box 2.1
Creating A Smooth CO2 Curve
A major flaw of the hockey stick involved connecting a tree ring record, the handle, with an instrumental temperature record, the blade. It was done because the tree ring record declined and that contradicted their hypothesis and political agenda. Ironically, a major challenge in climatology is to produce a continuous record from data gathered from different sources. H.H. Lamb spends the first part of his epic work, Climate, Present, Past and Future (1977) discussing the problems. He also provides a graph showing the length of possible climate time scales and the overlap problem (Figure 3). There are three areas, the instrumental or secular, the historic, and the biological and geologic.
Figure 3
Data from different sources had to link to create the continuous smooth curve of CO2 from the pre-industrial levels through to the present. This involved three data sources, ice cores, 19th century instrumental readings and the Mauna Loa record. Figure 4 shows Ernst-Georg Beck’s reconstruction of the three sources. If you remove the 19th century data, it is another example of a ‘hockey stick’. The ice core data is the handle, from a single source, an Antarctic core. The blade is the Mauna Loa instrumental measure. As the 2001 IPCC Working Group I Report notes,
“The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from close to 280 parts per million (ppm) in 1800, at first slowly and then progressively faster to a value of 367 ppm in 1999, echoing the increasing pace of global agricultural and industrial development. This is known from numerous, well-replicated measurements of the composition of air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been measured directly with high precision since 1957; these measurements agree with ice-core measurements, and show a continuation of the increasing trend up to the present.”
These measurements are not well replicated and have many serious limitations. Some of these include
1. It takes years for the bubble to be trapped in the ice. Which year does the final bubble represent?
2. As the ice gets thicker, it becomes impossible to determine the layers and, therefore, the relative dating sequence. Some say that at 2000 meters it requires 245 cm of ice to obtain a single sample, but under the compression and melding that represents one bubble for several thousand years.
3. Meltwater on the surface, which occurs every summer, moves down through the ice contaminating the bubbles. As Zbigniew Jaworowski said in his testimony to the US Senate,
“More than 20 physico-chemical processes, mostly related to the presence of liquid water, contribute to the alteration of the original chemical composition of the air inclusions in polar ice.”
4. A study by Christner (2002) titled “Detection, Recovery, Isolation and Characterization of Bacteria in Glacial Ice and Lake Vostok Accretion Ice.” Found bacteria were releasing gases at great depth even in 500,000-year old ice.
Figure 4
A deconstruction of these portions of the crash reveals how it was achieved.
Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski was attacked viciously during the latter years of his life because of his views on climate change and ice core data. Like all who are attacked it is a sure indication they are exposing the deliberate deceptions of the global warming political agenda. Here are Jaworowski’s credentials that accompanied his presentation to the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
“I am a Professor at the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection (CLOR) in Warsaw, Poland, a governmental institution, involved in environmental studies. CLOR has a “Special Liaison” relationship with the US National Council on Radiological Protection and Measurements (NCRP). In the past, for about ten years, CLOR closely cooperated with the US Environmental Protection Agency, in research on the influence of industry and nuclear explosions on pollution of the global environment and population. I published about 280 scientific papers, among them about 20 on climatic problems. I am the representative of Poland in the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), and in 1980 – 1982 I was the chairman of this Committee.
For the past 40 years I was involved in glacier studies, using snow and ice as a matrix for reconstruction of history of man-made pollution of the global atmosphere. A part of these studies was related to the climatic issues. Ice core records of CO2 have been widely used as a proof that, due to man’s activity the current atmospheric level of CO2 is about 25% higher than in the pre-industrial period. These records became the basic input parameters in the models of the global carbon cycle and a cornerstone of the man-made climatic warming hypothesis. These records do not represent the atmospheric reality, as I will try to demonstrate in my statement.”
There was nobody more qualified to comment on the ice core record and here is part of what he said to the Committee.
“The basis of most of the IPCC conclusions on anthropogenic causes and on projections of climatic change is the assumption of low level of CO2 in the pre-industrial atmosphere. This assumption, based on glaciological studies, is false.”
Of equal importance Jaworowski states,
The notion of low pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric level, based on such poor knowledge, became a widely accepted Holy Grail of climate warming models. The modelers ignored the evidence from direct measurements of CO2 in atmospheric air indicating that in 19th century its average concentration was 335 ppmv[11] (Figure 2). In Figure 2 encircled values show a biased selection of data used to demonstrate that in 19th century atmosphere the CO2 level was 292 ppmv[12]. A study of stomatal frequency in fossil leaves from Holocene lake deposits in Denmark, showing that 9400 years ago CO2 atmospheric level was 333 ppmv, and 9600 years ago 348 ppmv, falsify the concept of stabilized and low CO2 air concentration until the advent of industrial revolution [13].
Figure 5 shows the stomatal evidence of CO2 levels compared with the ice core data that Jaworowski referencs.
Figure 5
Apart from the higher overall average, notice the smoothness of the ice core curve partly achieved by a 70 year smoothing average, an action that removes large amounts of information, especially the variability, as the stomata record shows.
The other reference Jaworowski makes is to a graph (Figure 6) produced by British Steam Engineer and early supporter of AGW, Guy Stewart Callendar.
Figure 6 (Trend lines added by the author.)
The dots represent the measures of atmospheric CO2 taken during the 19th century by scientists using rigid methods and well-documented instrumentation. The objective of the measures, started in 1812, was not related to climate. It was to determine the constituent gases of the atmosphere. It continued the work of Joseph Priestly who, though not the first to discover oxygen, was the first with published reports (1774). Figure 6 shows the samples that Callendar selected (cherry picked) to claim a low pre-industrial level. Equally important, he changed the slope from a decreasing to increasing trend. Figure 4 shows the same 19th century data plotted against the ice core and Mauna Loa curves.
Disclaimer: Ernst-Georg Beck sent me his preliminary work on the data, and we often communicated until his untimely death. I warned him about the attacks but know they exceeded anything he expected. They continue today, even though his work was meticulous as his friend, Edgar Gartner, explained in his obituary.
“Due to his immense specialized knowledge and his methodical severity Ernst very promptly noticed numerous inconsistencies in the statements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC. (Translation from the German)
The problem with Beck’s work was it identified why Callendar dealt with the data as he did. In the climate community, the threat was identified and dealt with by a 1983 paper “The pre-industrial carbon dioxide level” published by Tom Wigley, then Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). I recall the impact because I ran graduate level seminars at the time on the significance of the paper.
Criticisms of the 19th century records are summarized with one comment; they were random. Yes, in most studies randomly sampling is more desirable and representative of the reality than pre-selected, pre-determined sampling at specific points and specific levels as is currently done. That only works if you assume the gas is well mixed. One criticism is that Beck’s record shows high levels around 1942 compared to the Antarctic record. This is likely because CO2 is not well mixed, as the OCO2 and other records record indicate, but also that most of the records were taken in Europe during the war. Besides, with the 70-year period required to enclose the Antarctic gas bubble that record would only be showing up in 2012. The truth is there are no accurate measures of CO2 in 1942 other than the ones Beck used.
Another criticism says the locations, including the height at which measurements were taken varied considerably. Of course, that’s the point. They were not narrowed and manipulated like the current Mauna Loa and similar records, so they only provide measures at a few points that essentially eliminate all natural influences. It is obvious from the preliminary OCO2, the stomata, and Beck’s record that great variability from day to day and region-to-region is the norm. Further proof that this is the norm of this is that they tried to eliminate all this natural variability in the ice core record and at Mauna Loa. When outgoing longwave radiation leaves the surface, it passes through the entire atmosphere. The CO2 effect operates throughout, not just in certain narrowly chosen spots at certain altitudes like Mauna Loa measures. As Beck noted,
“Mauna Loa does not represent the typical atmospheric CO2 on different global locations but is typical only for this volcano at a maritime location in about 4000 m altitude at that latitude.
Charles Keeling established the Mauna Loa station with equipment he patented. As Beck wrote, the family owns the global monopoly of all CO2 measurements. Keeling is credited with being the first to alert the world about AGW. As Wikipedia’s undoubtedly vetted entry notes,
Charles David Keeling (April 20, 1928 – June 20, 2005) was an American scientist whose recording of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory first alerted the world to the possibility of anthropogenic contribution to the greenhouse effect and global warming.
Keeling’s son, a co-author of IPCC Reports continues to operate the facilities at Mauna Loa. The steady rise in the Keeling curve, as it is known, is troubling, especially considering the variability in the records not considered suitable for the IPCC story. How long will that trend continue? We know the global temperatures rose until the satellite data produced a record independent of the IPCC. There is no independent CO2 record, the Keeling’s have the monopoly and are the official record for the IPCC.
As Beck explained,
Modern greenhouse hypothesis is based on the work of G.S. Callendar and C.D. Keeling, following S. Arrhenius, as latterly popularized by the IPCC. Review of available literature raise the question if these authors have systematically discarded a large number of valid technical papers and older atmospheric CO2 determinations because they did not fit their hypothesis? Obviously they use only a few carefully selected values from the older literature, invariably choosing results that are consistent with the hypothesis of an induced rise of CO2 in air caused by the burning of fossil fuel.
Now they have the dilemma that the temperature has not increased for 19 + years but CO2, according to Mauna Loa, continues its steady rise. How long before we see a reported decline in the Mauna Loa record to bring the data in line with the political message? Fortunately, thanks to the work of people like Jaworowski and Beck, it is too late for them to mitigate the damage from the slow motion crash that is inevitably evolving? The hockey sticks of the entire team were broken in the crash.
Thank you for the thorough background on the measurements and who made them
Test…
“There is no independent CO2 record, the Keeling’s have the monopoly and are the official record for the IPCC.”
This is nonsense. Here are just some of the CO2 measuring sites around the world.
And yes, Beck’s collection are just measuring CO2 variations in highly populated and vegetated environments. Does anyone really believe, looking at Fig 4, that CO2 changed its behaviour so radically in 1957? The CO2 changes shown by Beck would, if global, involve totally unphysical massive carbon fluxes.
“…the Keeling’s have the monopoly and are the official record for the IPCC.”
This is the problem.
And another thing.
Take a look up there at the OCO2 annualized carbon dioxide concentration show. Look at those colors.
Has the concentration in Antarctica always been that low? No wonder the official 70-year smoothed “pre-industrial” ice core concentration is so tractable, so congenial.
Now that’s picking a test site.
Yes, there are numerous sites measuring CO2 in the atmosphere, but Scripps (Keeling) is the source of primary reference standards for instrument calibration.
NOAA generates secondary reference standards (see following). http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccl/airstandard.html
These standards are likely biased low due to losses of CO2 during drying (coalescer and perchlorate filters). (Incidentally, industrial manufacturers have gotten away from perchlorates, such as this, due to quality and safety issues). If CO2 is biased low in the standard, this would have the effect of artificially inflating atmospheric measurements and it wouldn’t easily be caught due to the circular reference of measurements.
Pictures from the esrl.noaa show a lack of attention and professionalism. For instance, a dog (?) riding in the back of the vehicle transporting cylinders and lack of use of personal protective equipment by a technician filling cylinders (he’s wearing a T-shirt and has no eye protection). It would appear that an external audit of NOAA is warranted if for only improving safety.
R. Shearer,
The current WMO primary standards are under NOAA supervision, previously under Scripps, but still Scripps, (and the Japanese) have their own standards and scales, which are intercalibrated. There may be losses by drying the outside air, but that has no effect as the standards are made by adding doses of CO2, CO2, CH4 and different isotopes of C in CO2 to give the desired level. That mixture has a precision of 0.014 µmol/mol (one standard deviation) by the manometric method used for the calibrations.
Further, even if the level would be a few ppmv higher or lower (which it isn’t), that doesn’t make any difference in the trends over the past 57 years…
Nothing I hate more than a map with no Key.
Nick, the difference in 1957 could have to do with calibration issues as much as anything. His instrument was not all that accurate (the 1957 device). The chemical knowledge now that CO2 is not well mixed is also a contributing factor to a discrepancy.
The chemical method was more accurate by I recall 2 or 3 orders of magnitude at the time. I see no reason to think that the chemical methods were ‘wrong’. Further, this can easily be replicated using the same chemical methods and standard calibration gases. The old NDIR CO2 instrument is, i am sure, still around as well for recalibration of the record.
The easy dismissal of all chemical records is concerning. It is certainly not justified if the Keeling record is ‘the standard’. The instrument was simply not good enough to be ‘the standard’.
Using a combination of Nafion dryers and 0.01 micron filters it is easy now to get a clean, dry sample of air. It is routine in my work. I cannot anoint anyone’s historical work, but there are no solid grounds for criticizing the 1950’s chemical methods on the basis of a 1950’s NDIR machine.
Crispin (Just moved from Ulan Bator?),
The best performing chemical methods were accurate to +/- 3% or +/- 10 ppmv in the best circumstances. Not even enough to detect the seasonal changes at Barrow (+/- 8 ppmv)…
Keeling made a glass instrument (he was a skilled glass blower) to accurately gravimetrically measure CO2 in air with an accuracy of 1:40,000 and used that instrument to calibrate all NDIR equipment and calibration gases. That makes that the precision of the measurements he performed were better than 0.1 ppmv. Two orders better than the best performing chemical methods…
The “trick” that Keeling used and still is in use at all stations that use NDIR, is frequently recalibrating the instrument with 2 (later 3 + 1) calibration gases, so that any drift of the instrument is counted for. See:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html
The accuracy was not the main point of the difference between the methods, the main problem is where was measured: 90% of the historical measurements were over land, where one can find levels of 250 to 700 ppmv, depending of time of the day and inversion / wind speed in the neighborhood of huge sources and sinks. Especially vegetation, which respires CO2 at night and removes CO2 during the day.
All historical measurements made over land are essentially worthless for estimating the real “background” CO2 levels of the pre-1958 times. With one escape: if there are many measurements at high wind speed, these go asymptotically towards the real background levels, but the historical measurements had either too few points or still had huge ranges.
There were few historical measurements made on board of ships during ocean travels and some were coastal with wind coming from the seaside. These are all around the ice core CO2 measurements for the same period…
Thanks for the reference document. Nice compendium.
Had the chance to go fishing today with an old friend who recently finished a year long walkabout through east germany and poland.
I had read this and that about the WGBU and Schellnhuber. Also had known he is the gatekeeper to the new Pope concerning climate science.
What I didn’t know (as explained by my friend) was the depth of the belief that Schellnhuber and his circle believe they are the beginnings of the Age of Transition. They believe they have a populist mandate to move the world towards sustainable living ( a Rousseau type belief). They also believe that accelerated growth will occur in underdeveloped nations now that extreme poverty is likely to be nil over the next 15 years. And finally, they believe (now with the Pope’s blessings and force) that the growth will be unlike the West and more controlled and sustainable.
Europe has its hands full.
Btw, he thinks generally speaking that East Germans and the Poles perceive the whole sustainability push as a con meant to control people. They see Western Europeans as too naive and soft to know any better.
Very correct appraisal IMO, Knute. We always have to be on our guard against the Rousseau zombie:
http://figures-of-speech.com/2015-09/general-will.htm
RS
That was a great read. Very much appreciate the link. I’ll refer to it often.
Another great read:
http://figures-of-speech.com/2015-09/faith-tests.htm
Pay attention to the moral at the bottom!
Yes – good read. Thanks.
An excellent read. Erudite, quite humorous and engaging.
Aldous Huxley foretold the future in Brave New World:
…by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but Democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.
Yes, East Europeans recognize control when they see it. The era of Communism wasn’t that long ago.
He is absolutely correct. From half a century living under Soviet rule they are keen to the manipulations of that style of control and understand and see clearly the weakness of the west with it’s “soft” naive liberals and their trust and acceptance of the toxic ideas that will kill them…In the end. Or shortly. Ref “stupid or traitorous” Obama.
Is Obama really so stupid? Perhaps. If not, the only alternative is that he is out to inflict as much damage to the U.S. as he can without being too obvious about it. Motive? Who are his friends from his past… !
Liberals refuse to believe that Darwin is driving the bus–and always has been. They actually think people are motivated by altruism, which is another word for the PC approval of their like-minded peers.
Liberalism is thinking with your heart rather than your brain. Its one major failing is it assumption of the ultimate goodness of mankind when it only takes two weeks at Parris Island or Fort Jackson prove how thin the veneer of civilization is on the human.
Writes Joe Crawford:
Well, it’s widely known among recruits that Drill Instructors (and Drill Sergeants) are not even classifiable as members of species H. sapiens, much less representative of the civilizations that issue their pay.
As I see it, you guys are doing the work our manipulators on high want done. Repeat the bizzaro notion that “liberal” means illiberal group-thinker, and the reactive mind’s heartless impulses are the heart thinking . . The lingo mutilation game began long before the conjuring of imaginary people who deny climate arrived on the crime scene.
That (most) people feel discomfort when they witness suffering is not a bad thing, who wants to live in pschopath world? (I mean besides the hyper-wealthy psychopathic elite that I’m quite sure want exactly that).
I advise; If it’s the way the TV talking heads speak, avoid speaking that way yourself, it’s probably mind-control BS.
Yup, JK sometimes it’s hard not too slide into the same diatribe. Good catch. I offered the phrase ‘soft and naive’ from a fishing time chat a friend had concerning east European views of the West. One man, one view … anecdotal.
On another note … someone here noted Hoffer quote and it inspired me to pick up the book The True Believers again. The clarity of the book is terrific. He discusses the seminal need of the TB to be disillusioned with the status quo and empowered by a new vision. I know we don’t often quote Hitler but Hoffer did when discussing when TB groups start to erode …
According to Hitler, the more “posts and offices a movement has to hand out, the more inferior stuff it will attract, and in the end these political hangers-on overwhelm a successful party in such number that the honest fighter of former days no longer recognizes the old movement…. When this happens, the ‘mission’ of such a movement is done for.”
Are we there yet ?
Is it imploding ?
Knute,
Poles are no less susceptible to the environmental cult of global warming than are west Europeans.
Percentage of population believing that “global warming” is a scary man made threat:
* * * * * * * * * *
Australia – 54
Canada – 61
China – 58
Denmark – 49
Finland – 53
Germany – 59
France – 63
Italy – 65
Japan – 91
Netherlands – 44
Poland – 58
UK – 48
USA – 49
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_opinion_by_country
* * * * * * * * * *
Anecdotal reports from a friend may not accurately reflect the pulse of a nation.
Semi-socialist Norway, with nationalized oil and lots of money in the bank, appears to have the highest rate of skepticism in all of Europe.
KH
Thanks for the fallacy check. Indeed my friend’s survey is jaded as an anecdote and no doubt even more biased by his circle of travels. He stayed mostly with agrarian families and as he pointed out takes much of his general opinion from the elders who still remember the past. He did point out that much of the youth were eager to embrace the West, including a semi god admiration for the current president of the US.
Along the same vein of potential fallacy, I often take wiki numbers with a grain of salt because they are too easy to manipulate.
It is the ultimate irony that despite living in the most globally interconnected times in history, we struggle to validate the opinions of the masses.
Knute” “It is the ultimate irony that despite living in the most globally interconnected times in history, we struggle to validate the opinions of the masses.”.
Great insightful observation. And it should come as no surprise that the masterful manipulators of information are using the Greatest Fooling Machine Ever Invented to its full advantage.
Thanks Piper
I had “a moment”.
Ack! Missed the close italics thingie!
If you were to plot the median latitude of these countries vs. the percentage of their population believing in AGW, I conjecture that a linear least squares fit to that scatter plot would have negative slope; and of course a very low goodness of fit.
In other words, the further the latitude from the equator, the less they are concerned about AGW – maybe because populations in colder climates wouldn’t mind warmer weather.
It matters not what people think about dangerous man-made global warming. All that matters is the truth as best we know it, and as we know from past experience, it takes only one scientist to prove all the others wrong. Sadly, our knowledge of the climate system has a very long way to go before it can be fully understood.
Einstein once said, “We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.” His statement holds true on the issue of climate change.
On man-made global warming, reliance is placed on climate models by the IPCC, models which have never been validated, and will never be able to simulate the climate system for obvious reasons. Climate models do not represent science. For that reason alone, the IPCC’s hypothesis should be treated with a pinch of salt. Instead, it’s been treated as the ‘gospel truth’ … the science is settled, the debate is over … it’s time for action. Ridiculous!
M
“It matters not what people think about dangerous man-made global warming. All that matters is the truth as best we know it, and as we know from past experience, it takes only one scientist to prove all the others wrong.”
Thanks M. The horse has long since left the barn concerning science and CAGW. Wish it were not the case, but that is reality.
CAGW is now a popularity contest intertwined with economic and social justice interests. In some countries like the US, CO2 has been codified as a pollutant.
While I think it’s good that good science continues to pound the table concerning a flawed conclusion, it will take more than that to bring the horse back.
Who is Hans Joachim Schellnhuber?
Thanks ( well maybe not). this guy is scary and I doubt I’ll sleep better tonight. These master manipulators are truly frightening and the lack of care for their fellow humans is appalling.
Interesting. Someone with his nose so deeply in the grant-trough that he would not know objectivity and honesty if it smacked him over the head.
That is the man and his institute (PIK – Potsdam Institute for Klimawandelfolge – climate change consequences) who advised Angela Merkel into the “Energiewende” disaster in Germany and advised the Pope for his latest paper to the church…
A real dangerous man…
Not long, Dr. Ball. In the mind of the Social Justice Warrior (SJW) “reality” is what suits the Narrative, and that is – ever and anon – malleable.
The measurements were not made by Beck. They were made by many people in many locations over a long period of time. The readings were done purely to measure the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Beck analyzed them in remarkable detail looking at the instruments and the method. I urge everyone to go and read Beck’s articles and judge the scientific thoroughness of his work and the degree to which they provide important information. One of the links takes you to six of his works.
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/papers.htm
Another thing to remember is the extent to which Callendar and Wigley tried to downplay the record. In contradiction, they still used the record to confirm the low low pre-industrial level of CO2 they wanted.
Dr. Ball,
Callendar used stringent a-priori criteria for including or excluding measurements like “not used for agricultural purposes”. You may agree or not with these criteria – which would remove the two longest series used by Beck: Poonah (India) and Giessen Germany, which are at the base of Beck’s 1942 “peak”, but he at least had criteria and quality checks, which Beck had not.
Callendar was not interested in downplaying any record, why would he? Many scientists at that time saw higher temperatures as beneficial. His compilation was decennia later confirmed by the independent ice core record…
Ferdinand, Dr. Ball did explain the 1948 Callendar paper, which was cherry picked from word one. As a steam engineer he had no reason to cherry pick but he did. he wrote an “off expertese” paper. (He wrote about a subject he knew zero about).
johnmarshall,
He was interested in CO2 as good as we all are interested as “informed citizens”, no paper bull of “expertise” can change that. And “cherry picking”, based on stringent a-priory criteria is not cherry picking and way better than lumping everything between 200 and 800 ppmv for the same year together and calling the average of that mess the “background” CO2 for that year. That doesn’t make any sense…
BTW, the trend compiled by Callendar was decennia later confirmed by ice core measurements and several proxies, Beck’s impossible huge 80 ppmv (and worse if not smoothed) 1942 peak is not confirmed by any other measurement or proxy.
Dr. Ball
The huge unspoken and unproven Scientific and Political Assumption that is missing from your lists and that underpins this entire discussion is the claim that global warming is dangerously harmful. This unspoken assumption is rarely mentioned and rarely challenged and always assumed before the discussions even begin. It is the question that is always begged and never answered. It is the unspoken false premise that underpins the entire discussion of CO2.
Thus CO2 becomes a rabbit trail that that sends us all off barking through the tall grass and up the wrong trees.
Thank you for your work.
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Image-48.png
Is it plagiarism to rebirth ?
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
I am not a professional scientist; I’m a recently retired CFO, so I’ve dealt with my share of “questionable” numbers (unit cost calculations, benchmarks, project estimates, reserves, etc). As I’ve read and learned from WUWT over the past few years, I’ve definitely purged any naive thoughts that scientific numbers were somehow more “pristine”.
However, I seriously doubt the general public has faced this reality. One of the most effective arguments with my warmest friends (some of whom are NASA PhD physicists…) regarding “climate change” (or whatever we’re calling it this week) is the dawning realization that climate numbers have been manipulated.
I’ve seen hundreds of arctic ice charts, hundreds of hockey sticks, hundreds of temperature simulation charts for the 70+ climate models, and other such exhibits – all predicated upon the alleged warming. I’ve read many times on WUWT that the IPCC has (several times) “revised” the 1880-to-present day temperature data, BUT I HAVE NEVER SEEN A SIMPLE 1-PAGE CHART THAT ACTUALLY SHOWS THE MAGNITUDE OF ALL THESE ADJUSTMENTS (i.e.: a single chart from 1880 to present with each of the 5-10 “official” IPCC temperature data revisions).
The issue of corrupt data is a powerful concept in my collegial arguments with my more scientifically literate warmest friends (they even conceded “if the data has been manipulated, the case for warming alarmism may be overstated’).
I have unsuccessfully searched the web for this material. I feel strongly that it would be a huge step forward in this debate if one of the WUWT analytical gurus could produce and discuss this chart. This is a critical and missing piece of the argument.
“I’ve read many times on WUWT that the IPCC has (several times) “revised” the 1880-to-present day temperature data, BUT I HAVE NEVER SEEN A SIMPLE 1-PAGE CHART THAT ACTUALLY SHOWS THE MAGNITUDE OF ALL THESE ADJUSTMENTS”
The IPCC does not manage datasets, and does not adjust data. NOAA manages GHCN and publishes adjusted and unadjusted data. For each of its 7280 stations it produces a one-page chart showing all the adjustments. This is typical.
Your “this” does not reflect the historic difference in the charts published in the 80s and 90s, (not even close)
“I HAVE NEVER SEEN A SIMPLE 1-PAGE CHART THAT ACTUALLY SHOWS THE MAGNITUDE OF ALL THESE ADJUSTMENTS”
I’m sure that anyone with CRU’s budget, manpower, and access to CRU’s data and methods would have no trouble wading through the up to 6000 stations’ data and discovering the magnitude of the scam.
Tony Heller regularly shows his analyses of the NASA and NOAA temperature manipulations via their adjustments through the last several decades.
.
http://realclimatescience.com/
More specifically Tony Heller’s pages here http://realclimatescience.com/alterations-to-climate-data/
Chip, I would suggest that you ask this question at http://realclimatescience.com/ . Steve Goddard has a lot of graphs of adjustments, and perhaps one of them is what you seek.
Rich.
Paul Homewood has done extensive research into the manipulated NOAA and USHCN numbers as they attempt to ‘cool the past’. This a link to just one of his blog page comparisons:
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/cooling-the-past-in-nebraska/#comment-21147
This deceit is going on worldwide. Homewood has graphically displayed the data to show how obvious it is. This one post I linked to is one of several.
Visit Goddard’s site, Real Climate Science for evidence of manipulated data.
You can see the glaring effect of the adjustments in this simple plot. After moving in lock step for over 100 years, the NH temperature record suddenly diverges markedly from the SH.
The SH, on the other hand, is in agreement with the satellite data. Just about all of the supposed warming of the last 20 or so years comes from the obviously manipulated NH temperatures.
Anthony
Beck never performed any chemical analyses – and his first paper on the topic was published by me as then editor of AIG News. As Tim points above, Beck collated all the published data in the scientific literature but it helps to actually have read his papers.
Writes Louis Hissi:
In other words all of the referenced publications uttered by Beck had been review papers? Not reports of investigations (with close considerations of instrumentation, analytical methods, discrete limits of accuracy, and other confounding factors) but reports of reports, in which the work of multiple investigators had been aggregated as if one farmer’s pippins were pretty much precisely equal to another orchardman’s winesaps and a third guy’s crop of gala apples.
Not to mention the prospect of a few truckloads of oranges wandering into the juicing process.
Pardon me for getting all Sicilian here, but oy, gevalt!
Damn. I hate misspelling names. Sorry, Dr. Hissink.
Tucci78,
I have read and discussed all papers compiled by the late Ernst Beck with himself prior to his untimely death, for the period 1935-1955, as that shows a “peak” of ~80 ppmv around 1942 in his compilation, which doesn’t show up in any other measurement or proxy…
Indeed he lumped everything together: the good, the bad and the ugly… One data point in the US at 200 ppmv with 1000 data points with an average 415 ppmv (66 ppmv – one sigma!) in Europe. Methods sometimes known, many times even unknown. Accuracy sometimes known: the best around +/- 10 ppmv, the worst +/- 150 ppmv (that were the ugly data). Calibration: seldom mentioned, skill of the operators, fresh chemicals used? Never mentioned…
In the best cases, the standard deviation of the series and/or the range is given, which shows that there was a lot of local contamination…
I agree Louis. The comment by Anthony is not warranted or helpful in understanding. Beside reading Becks papers and looking at his presentations, Anthony should at least read some of the original papers of those who made measurements. The paper by W Kreutz (1941) is worth looking at because of the vast amount of data he acquired (there is a partial translation https://cementafriend.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/co2-in-the-atmosphere/). It is unfortunate that Kreutz had little understanding of mathematics and statistics. He should have looked at some time lags but these are obvious in his graphs (incoming radiation leads temperature which in turn leads CO2 – at ground level and two higher levels). Kreutz measured wind speed and wind direction. Prof Francis Massen and Ernst-Georg Beck used wind information to obtain better estimates of CO2 background levels (see the first paper here http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/papers.htm ) That is the sort of information which should be supplied about the measurements at Mauna Loa where there is volcanic outpouring of CO2 to allow some estimates of reliability.
2. Stomata are the pores on a leaf through which plants exchange gases with the atmosphere. The size varies with atmospheric levels of CO2.
Actually it’s the number of stomata that varies. Leaves will have more stomata when the CO2 is low. The stomata themselves open during the day and close at night to save water when photosynthesis isn’t going on.
In reality, both cell size and number change, so what is measured is the stomata index, the number of stomata cells per unit of area divided by the number of epidermal cells per unit of area.
We have two measures of paleo levels of CO2, stomata and ice-cores, that do not agree very much. In essence ice-core levels are a low band pass filter that eliminates most variability in the record. Unless ice-core CO2 data, stomata CO2 data is difficult to obtain and calibrate, so most scientists have decided to ignore what stomata data is saying.
17 Oct: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: Met Office shown to be wrong by its own data
In recent years the organisation’s forecasts have become skewed by its obsession with global warming
Imagine if Michael Fish, our most famous weatherman, had been sacked by the BBC for writing a book accusing the world’s climate scientists of having “manipulated” their data to promote panic over global warming. Something similar made headlines in France last week when its “top TV weatherman”, Philippe Verdier, was taken off air by the state-owned France 2 channel for writing a book claiming that we have all been made “hostages to a planetary scandal over climate change”…
Before this scandale erupted, I planned to start this column by asking “what on earth is happening to our British weather”?…
In a series of recent posts on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, Paul Homewood has been meticulously plotting the Met Office’s predictions against its own recorded data. In one, titled “Met Office forecasts contain a warming bias”, he compared all its running three-monthly forecasts for the first nine months of 2015, made on the basis of “observations, several numerical models and expert judgment”, with what actually happened…
Against its frequent claims that we can expect “a general increase in summer temperatures” thanks to “human influence on climate”, the Met Office’s own data show that, since 2006, summers have on average become cooler…
As remarkable as anything are the graphs on a guest post by Neil Catto, a former Met Office employee, who, as part of his scientific work, has plotted data from a representative sample of Met Office UK weather stations every day since 1998. On every one of his graphs recording temperature, rainfall and much else, the trend line over 18 years has been astonishingly consistent. Despite fluctuations, the overall trend has been flat. The general pattern of our weather has remained remarkably unchanged…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11938459/Met-Office-shown-to-be-wrong-by-its-own-data.html
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
Mr. Fish did not get the sack for predicting the weather in 1987 when Seven Oaks became One. That was one crazy night of weather.
Possibly too cryptic, Sevenoaks, Kent, UK and the Great Storm 28 years ago are the keys.
Much too cryptic.
Sevenoaks (one word) was a small town named after its seven very large and very old oaks. But after the great storm of ’87 that the Met Office failed to predict, six of them blew down. And so now Sevenoaks is known locally as Oneoak.
ralfellis,
It wasn’t much too cryptic.
I was aware of the Fish Storm (sorry) story and could handle the arithmetic pertaining to the oak trees.
>>It wasn’t cryptic. I was aware of the Fish Storm.
Yes, but this blog is mostly USA based. I doubt if many state-side would have any clue about a little English town called Sevenoaks.
Maybe someone could clarify for me, is the stomata variation a response of individual plants to short term environmental variation, or is it a long term effect involving descent with modification?
Juan Slayton:
You ask
Individual plants grow leaves with stomata for optimum photosynthesis with average atmospheric CO2 concentration in the leaf growing season of the previous year.
Hence, laboratory (i.e. sealed greenhouse) exposures of such plants to controlled atmospheric CO2 concentrations enables calibration of leaf stomata for indication of atmospheric CO2 concentration.
I hope this helps.
Richard
I believe each plant sets stomata density based on the CO2 level it finds as it grows, so short term.
Juan Slayton:
Further to my attempt to help you, I commend this paper which is in language comprehensible to non-botanists.
It says
The “mature leaves” can only convey information on CO2 concentrations they have experienced and, therefore, your definition of “short-term” requires clear specification.
Simply, all “mature leaves” have the pore distribution they were instructed to develop by their elders as they grew. Hence, “mature leaves” indicate the average atmospheric CO2 concentration when they grew (i.e. the previous leaf growing season).
In one sense this is mute because identification of the ages of leaves to individual years (e.g. by carbon dating) is problematic.
Richard
Richard, Mike: Thanx. Cleared that one up.
Juan,
It is indeed as Richard said: the stomata number of index (stomata cells / other cells) of new leaves is influenced on the CO levels in the previous growing season. In that way short-term, but if there are changes from season to season, one can use that to see a trend.
Stomata data are calibrated with the CO2 levels of the past century: up to 1960 with ice core CO2 data, later on with direct measurements (Mauna Loa):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/stomata.jpg
Which BTW refutes Beck’s compilation: if there was a real 80 ppmv CO2 peak around 1942, the stomata data would show SI levels far below the scale around that year (that is around 305 ppmv on the CO2 scale)…
Besides that the stomata data are proxies, that is not only influenced by CO2, but also by rain/drought, nutrients, the main problem is the local bias. CO2 levels over land are average higher than in the bulk of the atmosphere. For e.g. Giessen that is over 40 ppmv higher than “background”. The calibration compensates for that for the past century, but there is no guarantee at all that the local bias didn’t change over time due to changes in land use over the centuries in the main wind direction. Even the main wind direction may have changed in certain periods (like the MWP-LIA-current warm period)…
Thus while stomata data have a better resolution than ice core data, their absolute value should be taken with a grain of salt…
Hi from Oz. Great article and comments – thanks Dr Ball and readers. I have been following this and other skeptical web sites for about a decade, and I have never (to my knowledge) read that the Mauna Loa “lab” has exclusive global (?) rights to the measurement of atmospheric CO2! It triggered a few questions like: If Keeling has a patent on this method, which patent office issued it and when, and when does this patent expire? Is there no other possible way to measure CO2 than via the Keeling (patented) equipment / method? Do no scientists have doubts about the veracity of the Keeling method / equipment? I could go on, but you get the idea. Nullius in Verba!
There are other CO2 data sources, e.g. NOAA’s tall towers, but MLO is the only one followed by IPCC & MSM. IPCC AR5 TS.6 expressed uncertainty about the CO2 data over land. Preliminary OCO data does not look good for the CAGW crowd.
BoyfromTottenham,
Mauna Loa has no rights at all, but it is convenient to use its data, simply because it is the longest continuous series of CO2 measurements, although the measurements at the South Pole started a year earlier (but lack a few years of continuous measurements, still had regular flask samples). It doesn’t make any difference if you take one of the other NOAA stations or one of the 60 other non-NOAA stations which measure CO2 as good as possible away from local contamination, all show the same CO2 trends over the years. See:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/iadv/
For the rest, Dr. Ball shows some lively fantasy about what happens in the CO2 world, which I will respond to below…
“some lively fantasy”
An entertaining phrase. Makes me feel like someone is thwapping another in the forehead with a flick of the thumb and middle finger.
Delivered with a smile no less.
The planet is about to abruptly cool due to the solar cycle 24 abrupt change to the sun. There is now observational evidence of the start of the cooling mechanisms which are latitudinal and regional specific. When the planet cools atmospheric CO2 levels will abruptly fall. The increase in atmospheric CO2 in the last 150 years and the increase in atmospheric CO2 in the last 75 years has not due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
There are dozens of different peer reviewed papers which all support the assertion that the majority of the increase in atmospheric CO2 in the last 75 years is due to warming of the oceans and a mechanism that increases low C13 emission from the deep earth.
CH4, ‘natural gas’ has C13 levels three to four times lower than atmospheric CO2 and CO2 in biological sequestered material.
There is no biological mechanism to explain where the super low C13 CH4 comes from based on the late veneer theory of the atmosphere. The explanation for the super low C13 CH4 is that natural gas is CH4 that is extruded from the core of the earth when it solidifies. The super high pressure liquid CH4 breaks the mantel and is the cause of tectonic plate movement on the earth.
Comments:
1) There are two theories to explain why the planet is 70% covered with water and why hydrocarbon deposits on the surface of the planet have gradually increased in time.
2) Late in the formation history of the earth a large Mars size object struck the earth. The impact of this impact created the moon and removed the majority of the light volatile elements and light molecules (including water) from the mantel.
3)The late veneer theory hypotheses that a bombard of comets created a super atmosphere immediately following the big splat. The super atmosphere would require roughly 50 times more pressure than the current atmosphere. The noble gases in the current atmosphere do not match that of comets and there is no evidence in the geological record of the unique chemical bonds that would form in a super high pressure atmosphere. Those pushing the late veneer theory hand wave the noble gas paradox away by assuming an ancient source of comets that has different noble gas concentration than current comets.
4) The geological record shows a gradual increase in surface hydrocarbons overtime which does not support the late veneer theory.
5) The second theory to explain the fact that earth is 70% covered with water and the geological record shows a gradual increase in surface hydrocarbons is the deep core CH4 hypothesis. This theory hypotheses that super high pressure liquid CH4 is extruded from the core of the planet as it solidifies. It is known that there are light elements in the liquid core based on speed of wave measurements of earthquakes. Roughly 2% CH4 is required to explain the speed of wave measurements. The size of the liquid core is roughly the same as the moon. The super high pressure extruded liquid CH4 provides the force to cause tectonic plate movement. The continents float on the mantel due to the liquid CH4 that has accumulated at the base of the continents at roughly 110 to 150 km. The earth’s ocean flow is continually pushed under the continents. The oldest ocean floor on the earth is roughly 200 million years. The pushed ocean floor carries with it CH4, a portion of which is left at the thrust plate at the margin of continents. This explains why there are bands of mountains in the edge of continents and explains why the bands of mountains extend hundreds of miles inland into the continents. The deep core CH4 hypothesis also explains why there are very high plateaus in some regions of the earth.
The deep core CH4 explains why there are massive natural gas deposits in the Rocky Mountain range at very, very deep levels, up to 20,000 feet. There are very, very deep CH4 reservoirs throughout the world. As gas flows up not down, there is no explanation as to why CH4 is found at the deep levels, followed by oil, and final as one move closer to surface of the planet black coal. Where is the biological source of the super deep CH4?
An observation to support the core extruded CH4 hypothesis is the fact that there is helium associated with oil fields. Oil fields are the only source of commercial helium.
The earth’s helium is produced by radioactive decay of Uranium and Thorium. (The big splat removed all primordial helium form the earth.
Helium gas emitted by radioactive decay cannot break the mantel and would hence remain in the mantel unless there was a mechanism to enable it to move the surface of the planet. The super high pressure liquid CH4 dissolves heavy metals which creates concentration of heavy metals higher in the mantel where as the liquid CH4 pressure decreases such that the liquid CH4 can no longer carry the heavy metals.
The liquid CH4 breaks the mantel as it pushed higher in the mantel which provides a pathway for the helium gas to reach the oil fields. The deep core liquid CH4 is also the source of the oil in the oil fields as well as the source for CH4 natural gas fields and black coal. The late Nobel prize winning astrophysicist Thomas Gold provided more than 50 independent observations to support the assertion that fossil fuel is a myth in his peer published peer reviewed papers and his book The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuel. The helium connection with oil fields is one of the observations that supports the deep core CH4 hypothesis.
There is in the paleo record unexplained cyclic changes in C13. There are also massive deposits of ultra low C13. Both of these observations support the assertion that there is an enormous deep earth source of low C13. A large continual input of new CH4 into the biosphere requires there to be large continual sinks of CO2.
C13 Paradox Last 20 years
Changes in atmospheric C13 levels in the southern hemisphere do not support the assertion that the rise recent rise in atmospheric CO2 is due anthropogenic CO2 emission. C13 in the Southern Hemisphere remains the same for long periods (5 or 6 years) and then suddenly increases. As anthropogenic CO2 emission is constant C13 should if anthropogenic CO2 emission was the cause of the increase in atmospheric C2 increases gradually. That is not what is observed.
Sources and sinks of CO2 Tom Quirk
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/EE20-1_Quirk_SS.pdf
It is clear that we do not yet properly understand the formation of the solar system and the planets. The recent fly by of Pluto doubly confirms this point.
At the moment, we are widely speculating, that is all. Whether we will ever possess enough data to answer the questions I do not know since the data required may well lie in other solar systems, and without being able to study a representative sample of other solar systems in various states of formation, we may never know. But of course, we should not give up trying to find the answer.
It seems the more we ;earn, the more we find out that there is EVEN more to learn.
Thank you William, the current thoughts about our fuel supplies are indeed bogus, for the deeper we drill the more we find. Very hard to explain buried forests and critters so far down.
Wayne it might help if you got some education …. say a geology course or two and pick up a decent book on petroleum occurrences – for example Dynamics of oil & gas accumulations by A. Perrodon printed by Elf Aquitaine.
Stewart – your harrumph is a throwaway line with no particular usefulness. If you can explain why Wayne is wrong, if you can explain the biological origins of deeply buried hydrocarbons, do so.
Where is the biological source of the super deep CH4?
the deeper we drill the more we find
==============================
limestone, which is fossilized CO2 and calcium from the oceans is carried into the earth’s mantle by plate tectonics, along with water from the oceans. Under heat and pressure this will form hydrocarbons when reduced by iron. (steam and iron produce hydrogen) iron is the stable end product of both fusion and fission, and is present in large quantities within the earth. The excess calcium dissolves back into the oceans, waiting to be combined with CO2 to again form limestone.
Without this recycling of limestone back into hydrocarbons, all the carbon on earth necessary for life would eventually be turned into limestone and life would go extinct. likely most of the hydrocarbons produced within the earth simply percolate upwards to the surface and are recycled by living organisms. Some gets trapped by rock formations, which humans have learned to exploit as an energy source.
William,
As I told you before, Tom Quirk’s analyses is wrong, because he compared the seasonal δ13C changes in both hemispheres on a yearly zeroed base, where there is no difference in lag if the real lag is + or – 12, 24, 36 months…
In reality there are lags in CO2 of 6 months between ground stations and height and 12-24 months between the hemispheres and several years in δ13C trends. The latter is not only influenced by human emissions, but also by the huge variability in CO2 uptake by vegetation, due to e.g. El Niño. Vegetation uptake/release gives a strong opposite change in δ13C…
The real δ13C trends:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/d13c_trends.jpg
Needs some update for recent years, but what is clear is that the main source of the low-13C CO2 is in the NH and not caused by vegetation, as that is an increasing sink for CO2, the earth is greening…
It is right to place a caveat on the Beck data, but that said, I consider that the data could have significance, and should not simply be dismissed.
I have often suggested that the analysis should be replicated today and see what results are obtained, ie., air samples would be taken from the same location, same season, same time of day etc and analysed using the same equipment and methodology. If this is done, then one would expect to get the same results plus the rise in CO2 since say 1950.
Of course, some places may have changed beyond recognition, but I understand that there were about 70,000 analysis in the Beck data, so it is likely that some sites would remain similar, and hence valid for comparison purposes.
I have also raised the point that the Beck data suggests that CO2 is far from well mixed at low altitude and suggested that this may have an impact upon the AGW theory and/or its testability. If most of the back radiation comes from low altitude, then the fact that CO2 at low altitude is already circa 800 ppm in some places may give a way of measuring climate sensitivity (or at any rate climate sensitivity less the water vapour feedback)..
If I can ever get my comments out of “permanent double-secret probation” with regard to moderation, it might be worthwhile for others reading here to consider richard verney‘s remark:
…in light of the fact that (per Dr. Hissink‘s information) Beck’s publications were all review papers aggregating the surface-level observations of many investigators.
Not just “about 70,000 analyses” but a large (not as yet tabulated in this discussion) number of observers conducting the measurements, with untold varieties of instruments and methods, and at various times of the year.
Under boatloads of different conditions in terms of latitude, altitude, ambient temperature, cloud cover (insolation), relative humidity, species of photosynthetic ground cover at sites of measurement, prevailing winds – Borjemoi! – you bloody well name it.
Without consistencies in terms of variables such as these, can it be said that what’s gathered from Beck is really data at all, but rather nothing more than enticing intimations of what might be gotten through an approach more scrupulously structured?
The great virtue of Keeling’s observations at Mauna Loa is that at that single site, at very high altitude (dunno what the ground cover at the observatory is like, but it ain’t exactly a garden spot, meaning there ain’t no vegetable transpiration going on to any great extent) there’s the virtue of consistent admixture of the atmospheric components being measured.
Dr. Keeling never needed a “patent” on his claim to fame; he got it by way of location, location, location.
See my comment below about the historical and modern station at Giessen, Germany, where the modern station shows that the local data are simply unrelated to CO2 in the bulk of the atmosphere…
Further, if you use Modtran, one can include 280 and 1000 ppmv in the first 1000 meters and calculate the difference in outgoing radiation. You need less than 0.1 degree warming at ground level to overcome the difference. That means that the influence of the variability in CO2 levels in the first few hundred meters over land is negligible…
The main cause of the global warming scam, is the academic belief that any explanation – no matter how bad it is – is better than no explanation. As such if a sceptic says: “we don’t know what causes natural variation”, and some greenspin eco-nutter says “it was man-made”, they will readily accept those who give an explanation and reject those who rightly say the subject is far too complex.
From the post –
“When outgoing longwave radiation leaves the surface, it passes through the entire atmosphere.”
Golly gee!
What an amazing discovery! That probably explains how the Earth has managed to cool over the last four and a half billion years, and why the temperature drops after the Sun goes down. Wonders will never cease!
How many climatologists did it take to work that out? Or haven’t they woken up yet?
Good grief. Next thing someone will discover that the temperature drops in the shade.
Cheers.
“Next thing someone will discover that the temperature drops in the shade.”
I hope it’s that taking a sentence out of context is a really poor way to appraise someone’s lengthy explanation.
@Chip Javert,
“I’m a recently retired CFO, so I’ve dealt with my share of “questionable” numbers (unit cost calculations, benchmarks, project estimates, reserves, etc).”
Mr Javert, on you request of a one page chart that “actually shows the magnitude of all these adjustments”, here is my thought,
Your own description of what you have dealt with over the years as in, “unit cost calculations”, “project estimates”, “benchmarks”, “reserves”, show to me that even you as a CFO ( I was a DOO and as you definitely know even in business the “climate” changes every day), that you and I never had a one page solution because it varied every day, so let’s be honest.
And if you cannot find it in on the account sheets dealing with hard dollars and cents, how are you going to ever find it in the the incredible complex, ever changing climate around us?
( I’d rather be a CFO or a DOO than a climate accountant btw).
“unit cost calculations”, “project estimates”, “benchmarks”, “reserves” are exactly the kind of semantics the “warmists” use to confound and confront us. Every time people like Dr. Tim Ball, Dr Soon and others put forward a paper they get run over by personal attacks and even lawsuits ( like the RICO letter) and the warping of our language. But for some reason they never answer our questions with a one page letter now do they.
Wrt the Met Office, here’s a little test. Spot four lies in the ‘Climate Change’ section of their website.
So, accepting that CO2 is not well mixed, is it also accepted that it is not well mixed but predictably mixed in any certain are such as Mauna Loa, and if it is, is any trend observed at that spot a reliable indicator of rate of change of CO2 generally? This article doesn’t discuss the consequences of predictably mixed vs not well mixed regarding CO2 concentrations. The point being, not well mixed does not suggest or imply a local mixture is not predictable. The CO2 level at Mauna Loa may be average CO2 +- N where N is a constant.
dp,
Besides the seasonal changes, the variability of the raw data at Mauna Loa, including the infrequent volcanic vents and the depletion by upwind conditions from the valleys, is not more than 4 ppmv (1 sigma). At the South Pole it is even smaller. At many places used by Beck’s compilation, it was much higher: at one place with the longest series it was 66 ppmv (1 sigma) with a range from 200 to 700 ppmv…
All stations from near the North Pole to the South Pole show the same trends for yearly averages:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends_1995_2004.jpg
More data at:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/
Recently published satelleite data shows that “well mixed” is wishful thinking. Not only is it not well mixed, but the mix signatures vary widely over time.
No it does not, a 1% variation is ‘well mixed’, it isn’t ‘perfectly mixed’ but no one ever said that it was. When you have large localized fluxes you will get fluctuations particularly when you make measurements near those sources (as Beck did). Over the troposphere the turbulent mixing disperses the CO2 throughout the atmosphere to the observed 1% fluctuation and the timescale of the NH-SH transport.
I have seen the satellite data and the entire scale of variation of CO2 is 15 PPMV out of a mean of 400PPMV. That seems fairly well mixed to me.
Ben,
Here the raw hourly and “cleaned” daily average data of Mauna Loa (tropical NH, 3,400 m height) and Samoa (tropical SH, near sea level) for 2008 at full scale:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_raw_select_2008_fullscale.jpg
Seems quite well mixed to me…
Anthony Watts:
“[Note: Some parts of this essay rely on a series of air sample chemical analysis done by Georg Beck of CO2 at the surface. I consider the air samplings as having poor quality control, and not necessarily representative of global CO2 levels at those times and locations. While the methods of chemical analysis used by Beck might have been reasonably accurate, I believe the measurements suffer from a location bias, and in atmospheric conditions that were not well mixed, and should be taken with skepticism. I offer this article for discussion, but I don’t endorse the Beck data. – Anthony]”
Official measurements are made at a select ‘FEW’ locations. We are told this is to get the ‘BACKGROUND’ level. Sounds important huh?
Consider that there are no well mixed areas, just areas in flux with a range of values. Why measure Co2 at these select few areas?? We certainly are not getting any kind of idea of how much Co2 is actually in the atmosphere at any one day or time.
Why aren’t we measuring temps the same way??? Temps are being measured where we get the most anthropogenic contamination. Co2 allegedly the least along with the lowest range. Even so they must continually throw out out-of-range readings. WHY?????
You say not well mixed. I say the official data is taken in areas where Co2 is low. Words do make a difference. What is the AVERAGE??? By using these low areas it gives the models another break. If they were run with the real Co2 their output would be even higher and even less physical. They are simply tuned to what is desired. They have no skill.
kuhnkat,
See my own compilation of where to measure CO2 at:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html#Where_to_measure
It doesn’t make sense to measure CO2 over land, about 5% of the atmospheric mass, where huge diurnal changes of hundreds of ppmv are present, while in 95% of the atmosphere there is not more than 4 ppmv difference between the North Pole and the South Pole for yearly averages, mostly because the source of the increase is mostly in the NH and the ITCZ hinders the air exchanges between the hemispheres…
Ferdinand,
I always enjoy reading your comments, and I enjoyed that link you posted of your thoughts on CO2 measurement. Perhaps you should do a post written for this site on that subject? I would enjoy seeing it.
~ Mark
I’ve wondered why we want to discount any periodic variation. Anthony discounts Beck because of local variation and your sentence “It doesn’t make sense to measure CO2 over land…” Actually, I think it becomes too much work to account for local variations. I spent many years getting stuff in much smaller volumes than the global atmosphere “well mixed.” It takes a lot of energy and effort to get small volumes well mixed. On a global scale it seems to be assumed that it happens instantaneously. If CO2 is well mixed and we don’t need to look at local variations, why did we put up a satellite to measure local variations? And why doesn’t it show the base assumption of a well-mixed atmosphere? In other disciplines this might be known as a glittering generality. If you preface it with “climate” it seems to be hard science. What we get as hard science is one location, smoothed, giving out the climate science version of the mystical number 666.
We can use local variations when it suits us. We look at sweeping estimates of CO2 generation on a local level and can add it to the measurement of global CO2. We can look at local “carbon sinks” and mount an international crisis over these sinks that we can’t trust CO2 measurements on because they are too variable?
Where would climate science be if it couldn’t assume such instantaneous global mixing and smooth curves for the magic molecule that does that?
Bob Greene,
Actually, I think it becomes too much work to account for local variations.
It doesn’t make sense to measure over land, as that is the equivalent of measuring temperature near an AC exhaust, over a hot asphalted parking lot, etc. If you have millions of temperature measurements, it may make sense to include these badly situated places, but it is better to choose places away from local contamination, no matter the type of measurement.
In the case of CO2, there is no reason at all to measure CO2 near huge local CO2 sources and sinks (it is done, but that is for measuring CO2 fluxes), as that is only over land in less than 5% of the atmospheric mass. The only exceptions are on mountain tops, deserts and ice deserts like Antarctica…
Well mixed doesn’t imply instant mixing, only that the residence time is (much) longer than the mixing time. In the case of CO2, some 20% of all CO2 in the atmosphere is swapped with CO2 from other reservoirs within a few months over the seasons. The resulting measurements show not more than +/- 2% changes of full scale over the seasons, +/- 0.5% of full scale for yearly averages… I call that well mixed…
The OCO-2 satellite is meant to measure CO2 fluxes (to punish the human sinners…), the absolute values are +/- 1 ppmv, ground measurements (NDIR) are better than +/- 0.2 ppmv…
Mark Stoval,
The same discussions were held many times, so we made a 4-part series already 5 years ago where the same items were discussed (with hundreds of reactions…):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/why-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-1/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/20/engelbeen-on-why-he-thinks-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-2/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/16/engelbeen-on-why-he-thinks-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-3/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/24/engelbeen-on-why-he-thinks-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-4/
The foregoing link is a compilation of these thoughts, together with the following one:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
kuhnkat,
I agree. The fact is that there should be people measuring CO2 levels all over the world day and night. Nearly every university in the world should have some department measuring the CO2 levels. I have several temperature measuring stations within a few miles of me and no CO2 measuring stations. Why not?
Heck, if the stuff is so important they should give me a daily CO2 measurement on the local news!
markstoval,
There is an essential difference between CO2 measurements and temperature measurements: temperature hugely differs from place to place and from near surface to any height. CO2 is only badly mixed in the first few hundred meters over land, except with high wind speeds, but is within 1% of full scale for 95% of the atmosphere if taken anywhere over the oceans or over a few hundred meters over land up to 30 km height, besides the seasonal changes, as some 20% of all CO2 in the atmosphere is exchanged with CO2 from other reservoirs (oceans and vegetation).
As the full CO2 column gives some IR absorption, the effect of the first few hundred meters over land is negligible, any changes there, even a tripling or halving has little influence on the overall absorption and its influence on temperature before positive or negative feedbacks.
BTW, there are several tall towers in use, which try to measure the CO2 fluxes in and out a large area by measuring CO2 at different heights and the vertical velocity. Here for Cabauw, The Netherlands:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/cabauw_day_week.jpg
As you can see, the largest changes are at ground level while at 200 m height the variability is a lot smaller.
Ferdinand
Your comment (Ferdinand Engelbeen October 18, 2015 at 5:48 am) seems a little bit wishful thinking. My recollection of the OCO-2 data is that it suggested a variation between about 380 to about 415 ppm, so that is +/- 5% , not the 1% figure that you suggest. And whilst the full particulars of that data are not yet precisely known, it would appear that the OCO-2 data already includes some smoothing, so we are not actually see the extent of local near surface variability.
I consider that in the mid to upper atmosphere particularly so over oceans, CO2 is reasonably well mixed. I accordingly agree with you that Mauna Loa gives a reasonable account of global atmospheric CO2 levels.
However, CO2 does not appear to be well mixed in the first 1000 metres, and I am far from convinced that this fact is properly taken into account.
But the real problem is the lack of knowledge and understanding of the carbon cycle. In particular the fact that we do not have sufficient data of each individual sink, and each individual source, and how each has changed over time. Looking at the net position is not sufficient.
Richard,
OCO-2 measures momentary data which are influenced by the seasons (+/- 8 ppmv at Barrow, +/- 4 ppmv at Mauna Loa and +/- 1 ppmv at the South Pole), plus local emissions and sinks, mainly over land. If you remove the seasonal variations by averaging over a year, the difference between Barrow and the South Pole is not more than 4 ppmv…
Indeed we don’t know all individual C fluxes, but the overall fluxes are roughly known, based on CO2 / δ13C / O2 movements and we know the net result at the end of the year, after a full seasonal cycle: from +0.5 to +2.15 +/- 1 ppmv /year over the past 55 years.
It doesn’t make any difference if nature was a net sink caused by 100 GtC in, 104.5 GtC out or 200 GtC in, 204.5 GtC out, all what counts is that it was 4.5 GtC more sink than source (in last years) and that figure we have with reasonable accuracy…
The net increase of 70 ppmv over the same period is the only point of interest for any radiation imbalance, as far as that is not compensated by negative feedbacks…
“…all what counts is that it was 4.5 GtC more sink than source …”
Nonsense. This is, again, the horrifically misguided and widely debunked pseudo-mass balance argument. If you do not understand why it is so horrifically misguided, you should not be opining on the matter at all. It is not even remotely valid.
Bart,
So, you are back from vacation…
As we have had that discussion for years, here a short reply for the last not informed persons:
– The carbon mass balance must be obeyed in all circumstances, as no carbon can be destroyed or created (except traces of 14C – different story).
– The mass balance shows that nature was a constant sink over the past 55 year.
– Human emissions, increase in the atmosphere and net sinks all increased a 4-fold in the past 55 years.
– The only way that the natural cycle can be the cause of the increase is if the natural cycle increased a 4-fold over the same period, in complete lockstep with human emissions.
– Such a 4-fold increase in the natural carbon cycle is not seen in any observation, in fact it violates all known observations…
Thus sorry Bart, it is you who don’t understand why all observations point to one source: human emissions…
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
It’s a stupid argument, Ferdinand. You are really not technically qualified. You do not understand the basics of dynamically evolving systems.
[Snip. Sockpuppetry. ~mod.]
Bart,
I have enough practical knowledge of process dynamics to know that you are completely wrong: I have repeatedly shown that the only way that the natural carbon cycle can overwhelm human emissions is that it increased a 4-fold in the past 55 years in complete lockstep with human emissions.
For which is zero indication that the natural cycle increased anyway, to the contrary, as the average residence time slightly increased over time, which indicates a stable turnover in an increasing CO2 level within the atmosphere…
Not a 3-fold or a 5-fold. If you can show that a sufficient different increase in the total natural carbon cycle than a 4-fold can induce a 4-fold increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and a 4-fold increase in net sink rate together with a 4-fold increase in human emissions, then we may agree. Until now, I haven’t seen such a calculation from your side…
tim r.,
If that is aimed at me, first read the reasons why I am sure that human emissions are the cause of the increase:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
Official measurements are made at a select ‘FEW’ locations. We are told this is to get the ‘BACKGROUND’ level. Sounds important huh?
===============
by the same logic, we only need a couple of stations measuring temperature for the whole world. this would certainly make the adjustments simpler.
Sorry Dr. Ball,
I did think that the ideas of both the late Dr. Jaworowski and the late Ernst Beck, that they rest in peace, were buried with them, but you still use them, while completely debunked.
To begin with: the work of the late Ernst Beck. I had years of direct discussions with him, pointing to the problems with the historical data. Some measurements were extremely unreliable for the purpose he used them, because the instrument was intended for measuring CO2 in exhaled air (~40,000 ppmv) and was calibrated by using outside air. If the reading was between 200-500 ppmv (+/- 150 ppmv!) it was ready for use for that purpose. Beck used the calibration readings as true outside air CO2…
After a lot of discussion, he dropped readings like that, but still included a lot of questionable data, where many were measured on land nearby huge sources and sinks.
I have looked at all his data in the period 1935-1950, as his compilation showed a huge peak (~80 ppmv) around 1942, which in itself is questionable, as that is the equivalent of burning down of 1/3rd of all land vegetation and regrowth in a few years, for which is not the slightest indication in any other proxy like stomata data or coralline sponges.
The problem with the 1942 “peak” is that it is completely based on two long series, which were over land: Poonah, India and Giessen, Germany. The first series was from many measurements under, in between en over growing crops. That has zero value to know anything about “background” CO2 in the bulk of the atmosphere. The second series was from a semi-rural town. The diurnal changes are huge for any place within a few hundred meters over land, especially under inversion. Fortunately there is a modern station, measuring CO2 each half hour, a few km from the historical place. Its measurements show the following daily curves on a few summer days with inversion, compared to Barrow, Mauna Loa and the South Pole (all raw, uncorrected data):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/giessen_background.jpg
The historical data were taken 3 times a day, where 2 were taken at the flanks of the diurnal changes. The local bias for Giessen is already over 40 ppmv for the modern station. The variability of the historical data of Giessen was 66 ppmv (1 sigma), of the modern station around 30 ppmv and of Mauna Loa 4 ppmv…
Historical data taken at more representative places like from air above the oceans or coastal with wind from the seaside all are around the ice core CO2 data…
See further: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html
Then the late Dr. Jaworowski.
In short: he was a specialist in radionuclides and their migration in ice cores. I didn’t find anything that shows that he made any investigations about CO2 in ice cores. He only made a lot of objections in 1992 which may have influenced CO2 reading in ice cores, but almost all were answered by the work of Etheridge e.a. on three high accumulation ice cores of Law Dome, reflected in his report of 1996:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/95JD03410/pdf unfortunately behind a paywall…
What closed the door for me was his remark that CO2 readings in ice cores are too low, because CO2 migrates from the inside to the open air through cracks caused by drilling and expansion of the core. As we measure 180-300 ppmv in the air bubbles of the ice core, while the outside air was at 360-400 ppmv at measurement time, that is simply impossible, it is the other way out…
See further: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html
So Dr. Ball, it is of no purpose to use the historical compilation of the late Ernst Beck, or the remarks of Dr. Jaworowski, as the historical data don’t show real background CO2 data of these periods, as most were taken in 5% of the atmosphere where most fast sources and sinks were present. Ice core data are far more reliable, be it with one drawback: the resolution which gets worse the farther you go back in time.
Stomata data also have their problems, which are worse than the ice core data: if the CO2 average from the stomata proxy differs from the ice core direct data over a period longer than the ice core resolution, the stomata data are certainly wrong…
See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html#Where_to_measure
Thus sorry, Dr. Ball, this part of the AGW discussion is completely outdated and only can be used by warmistas to point to the stupidity of all the skeptics and undermines the rest of the real valid points that skeptics have: the lack of recent warming or the real impact of CO2 on temperatures, whatever its source…
@ferdinand meeus Engelbeen,
You say: “…if the CO2 average from the stomata proxy differs from the ice core direct data over a period longer than the ice core resolution, the stomata data are certainly wrong…”
What would the ice core resolution be for core samples taken from depths equivalent to 5,000 years ago? How do you determine that two core samples from different depths are sufficiently separated so as not to be correlated through diffusion?
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
willb02,
Ice core resolution depends mainly of the snow accumulation rate at the places where the ice is formed.
The highest resolution is at Law Dome, coastal with 1.2 m ice equivalent snowfall per year. That gives a resolution of less than a decade over the past 150 years, where the thick ice layers reached near rock bed. Other more inland cores have only a few mm of ice equivalent snowfall per year and have resolutions of 600 (Vostok) to 560 years (Dome C) which go back in time some 420,000 years (Vostok) and 800,000 years (Dome C). So resolution and time period are more or less inversely correlated.
For more info about ice cores see: http://courses.washington.edu/proxies/GHG.pdf
The repeatability of CO2 measurements in one ice core at the same depth is better than 1.2 ppmv (1 sigma) and the difference between different ice cores for the same average gas age is less than 5 ppmv. For 5000 years ago we have several cores with different resolution available:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_010kyr.jpg
of which the best resolutions are from Siple Dome (20-25 years resolution) and Taylor Dome (~40 years resolution).
Laboratory measurements under high pressure differences were insufficient to measure any migration, therefore they used an indirect method by looking at the CO2 levels near melt layers in the (coastal) Siple Dome ice core.
These are enriched in CO2, partially caused by migration (although questionable). But anyway, the result was that any theoretical migration did broaden the resolution of the Siple Dome ice core at middle depth from 20 to 22 years. At full depth (~70,000 years back in time) a doubling from 20 to 40 years, due to more time and thinner layers to migrate. All together no big deal and negligible in the much colder inland ice core like Vostok and Dome C.
If there was some appreciable migration, then the about 8 ppmv/°C difference between glacial and interglacial periods would fade over time for each interglacial 100,000 years further back in time, which is not seen at all, not even after 800,000 years…
Thus if the stomata data show other CO2 levels than the ice cores some 5,000 or 10,000 years ago, over a period longer than e.g. the Taylor Dome resolution of ~40 years, then the stomata data should be recalibrated for that period… But still they have their value as they show more rapid changes, especially with rapid temperature changes like the Younger Dryas event…
Ferdinand Engelbeen,
I appreciate your taking the time to answer my question.
In trying to estimate past atmospheric CO2 concentrations from ice cores, it seems to me there are a number of questions related to resolution that need to be answered:
1. How accurately can a particular depth in the ice core be sampled?
2. How accurately can a particular age be assigned to that sample?
3. What separation between depths is required to ensure that two distinct samples are uncorrelated?
I am concerned mainly with the 3rd question and the two factors that I believe determine the answer. One is the rate of snow accumulation, for which you’ve already provided a good explanation. The second is the extent of CO2 diffusion through the length of the ice core. The link you provided suggests that there are some uncertainties in the assumptions that go into the diffusion model. Here are a couple of relevant quotes:
“Diffusivity-porosity relationship is the most uncertain component of the gas diffusion model.”
“Gradual bubble close off during the transition from firn to ice leads to a smoothing of atmospheric concentrations over time.”
How much smoothing and over what time frame will be a major factor in determining the resolution of ice core CO2 estimates.
Ferdinand Engelbeen,
You say: “If there was some appreciable migration, then the about 8 ppmv/°C difference between glacial and interglacial periods would fade over time for each interglacial 100,000 years further back in time, which is not seen at all, not even after 800,000 years…”
Not so if migration ceased after 1,000 years.
Willb01:
Not so if migration ceased after 1,000 years.
Why would it cease? As long as there is a CO2 concentration difference (in general 100-120 ppmv over the past 800,000 years), migration should go on, if there is some migration. Except with some physical mechanism that blocks the pores (as far as there are) after 1,000 years. But the only difference that makes is that the changes need more time, for the long-term cores 1-2 samples for their 600 and 560 years resolution…
If there was real migration, the problem would be both in the peaks and the valleys: every peak back in time must have been higher and higher to maintain the same ratio over a longer period of migration and the “valleys” then were originally lower, which are already problematic at 180 ppmv for a lot of C3 plants…
Allow me once again to salute Mr. Engelbeen’s patience in explaining what is known about historical carbon-dioxide concentration. I know little of the area myself, so I hope I’m not being deceived, but to me his contributions always have the ring of truth.
That said, I wonder if there’s a typo in “a huge peak (~80 ppmv) around 1942.”
Joe Born,
Thanks for the compliment…
The 1942 “peak” of 80-100 ppmv was meant above the “baseline” before and after the “peak” and is from a more smoothed compilation of the same data as in Fig. 4 in the story by Dr. Ball. The smoothed version is already physically impossible: there is no source and sink in the world which can release and then pick up 80-100 ppmv in some 5 years time without being noticed in any other proxy or ice core measurements.
The unsmoothed version in Fig.4 shows a 120 ppmv drop in only 2 years time, then a 80 ppmv increase in 2 (or 3) years then again a drop of 120 ppmv in two years time, which is absolutely impossible…
And all these huge variations suddenly end when the accurate measurements at Mauna Loa started… That should ring a bell about the reliability of the historical data…
Willbo1 (sorry, Willbo2 was not for your brother…)
1. How accurately can a particular depth in the ice core be sampled?
2. How accurately can a particular age be assigned to that sample?
3. What separation between depths is required to ensure that two distinct samples are uncorrelated?
1. Is easily answered: with the sublimation technique one need only a few cm3 ice that can be taken circular (after removing the outer layer) from the same depth of the ice core. The repeatability is better than 1.2 ppmv (1 sigma) for samples at the same depth.
2. That is the most difficult to answer. The age of the ice is more easy: counting layers, as long as these are thick enough. They have counted all 110,000 layers in the ice core of the Greenland summit… If the layers get thinner, other means are used: electrical conductivity (winter and summer layers have different density and conductivity), radar, echo,… Certain historical events like ash layers from known huge volcanic events, etc…
For the average gas age that is a lot more difficult. That is mainly based on a firn densification model, which gives an answer on the time needed to fully close all the air bubbles. That gives the average age of the enclosed air, the resolution and the difference between the age of the surrounding ice and the average gas age at the same depth. The latter is the most uncertain part of the whole story and is prone to several revisions for many ice cores…
Here too there are some other age distribution possibilities with recent human chemicals like CFC’s, and the presence of cosmogenic nuclides,…
But on the other side, precipitation and thus ice age – gas age difference is different during glacial periods than during interglacials…
See some overviews at: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data/datasets/ice-core
3. In general I should say that the samples should be separated by at least the resolution, translated to depth difference, but I have the impression that they use some oversampling…
Ferdinand Engelbeen,
Again, thank you for your very informative reply.
“In general I should say that the samples should be separated by at least the resolution, translated to depth difference, but I have the impression that they use some oversampling…”
I would say that too. And if it is not known whether oversampling has occurred for a particular time period, I think this sentence of yours is overstating your case:
“…if the CO2 average from the stomata proxy differs from the ice core direct data over a period longer than the ice core resolution, the stomata data are certainly wrong…”
since the ice core resolution for the period in question may not be known with any accuracy.
Willb01,
I think this sentence of yours is overstating your case
Depends of the trend in such a period: if there is little trend, a constant offset is a sure sign of a bias in the stomata data, while at the flanks of an increase or decrease, it may be due to timing errors in the ice core…
In most cases I have seen, the difference between stomata and ice core CO2 data is in rather flat periods.
Ferdinand Engelbeen
“Why would it cease?”
Well, it clearly does cease, and for the very reason you mention – because of the presence of the peaks and valleys in the ice core record. There also clearly is real migration occurring for the period of time between snowfall and the complete close-off of all diffusion pathways. The question is, how long does it take for that to happen?
willb01,
The migration indeed is in the gas phase before bubble closing and slower with increasing density, thus decreasing pore diameter. There is a lot of time to migrate before full closing.
At the high accumulation cores of Law Dome, it takes ~40 years to start closing the bubbles, a few (~8) years more before fully closed. The composition at start closing depth of ~72 meters is average only 7 years younger than in the above atmosphere. At full closing depth the average gas age is about 10 years older than in the atmosphere, as that is a mix of early and late closed bubbles. That makes that for the same depth, the average gas age is a ~30 years younger than the surrounding ice with a resolution of less than a decade.
For Vostok, where the closing takes many centuries, at start closing (~80 m depth), CO2 also is only ~10 years younger than in the atmosphere, but the ice is already thousands of years old… Because of the time needed between the first and last closures, the resolution broadens to several centuries and the gas age – ice age difference is many thousands of years.
After full closing, there is no measurable migration through the ice, only a very small (theoretical) migration in relative “warm” (coastal) ice cores and none in the much colder inland ice cores. The only migration you see was thus in the gas phase and is incorporated in the width of the resolution.
Thanks Dr. Ball, very interesting. If Callender was a steam engineer he should have known better. It was early work with steam that hatched the laws of thermodynamics, yes folks the laws that AGW/GHE violate.
John,
The difference between Beck and Callendar is that Callendar used very stringent a priori criteria to include or exclude data, while Beck lumped everything together: the good, the bad and the ugly. After a lot of discussion, he dropped the ugly data, but still included bad data, which should have been rejected as not representative for “global” CO2 level in the atmosphere…
Whose opinion was the data “bad”? Beck was a scientist who knew his subject Callendar a steam engineer who cherry picked the data to prove his biased thinking.
Have you actually read the Beck paper in question?
John,
I didn’t only read all the published historical papers for the period 1935-1955 as that is the period of a huge “peak” in Beck’s compilation (which doesn’t exist in any other ice core or proxy), I also discussed them directly with E-G Beck until his untimely death. Including a direct confrontation of the data and results at the home of Arthur Rörsch in The Netherlands.
See e.g. the discussion of the ocean “atmospheric” data here.
After long discussions with him, he dropped the data from Barrow (accuracy +/- 150 ppmv!) and Antarctica (+/- 300 ppmv for CO2, +/- 400 ppmv for O2). But others with sampling and especially big local contamination problems remained in his compilation…
And why would Callendar have a biased thinking? Many at that time saw higher temperatures as beneficial.
OMG not this Beck tripe again?
OMG not this Hans Erren tripe again?
Yes Hans,
Again and again, the same discussion which has not the slightest interest, even is negative in any discussion with warmistas…
Another thought provoking essay from Dr. Tim Ball. Thanks.
There are many reasons to believe that the CO2 level of pre-industrial times was not the value that the IPCC says that it was. Just the fact that the political organization IPCC said it makes the stated values suspect. What we do know is that CO2 levels have been much higher in the past without “destroying the earth”. That fact goes hand in hand with the fact that the temperatures have gone up in the distant past and then after a long time lag the CO2 levels went up. (the thing that came after did not cause the thing that came before)
We also know that the laws of thermodynamics tell us that CO2 is not the driver of the earth’s temperature. All in all, I normally believe the laws of thermodynamics over the rent-seekers, politically motivated “scientists” and railroad engineers of the IPCC.
~ Mark
markstoval,
My main response to Dr. Ball is still in moderation, but in short: the assumption by the late Dr. Jaworowski is false and was completely refuted by the work of Etheridge e.a. already in 1996. Dr. Jaworowski made statements which are simply impossible, like migration of CO2 from low levels (180-300 ppmv) in ice core bubbles via cracks in the ice to the outside air (at 360-400 ppmv), which is contrary to what any engineer can tell you…
Further refuted by other proxies like coralline sponges, which show the opposite movements of δ13C and CO2 changes in ocean surface waters and air, firn and ice cores:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.jpg
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
IPCC AR5 Figure 1 is in Petagram C not CO2!! One gr C makes 3.67 gr CO2!!
How does the sudden appearance of 2.6 trillion trees affect this graphic?
Pretty much every article I have read on climate change and the claimed nexus with CO2 levels has stated that CO2 is a well mixed gas in the atmosphere. This post is the first time I have seen that claim challenged yet the questioning of that claim herein seems to fit with my own experience in the wine making industry.
Alcohol and CO2 are the two chief products of fermentation of grape must which for some red wines is often done in open vats prior to disgorgement into barrels for maturing and then eventually filled into bottles. All wine makers are cautioned about the dangers of entering a poorly ventilated winery with open vat fermentation because of the presence of the invisible odorless CO2 in concentration because CO2 is heavier than air and lies low at or around head height..
Winemaker workers have been known to be asphyxiated, as indeed were hundreds of villagers in central Africa some decades ago when a local lake disgorged many cubic metres of CO2, which then lay around the low-lying valleys and flat lands trapping the villagers who of course were unaware of its presence.
I always found such facts about this heavier than air nature of CO2 difficult to square with the frequent assertions that CO2 is a”well mixed gas” but maybe there is some effect I am unaware of that enables it to be so in the atmosphere.
Can anyone shed any light on this apparent conundrum ?
Wind
thomho,
If released in huge quantities at once, it creeps over the ground and can kill trees and animals, including humans. With sufficient wind speed, it is mixed in the bulk of the atmosphere and stays there forever, until captured by a tree or the oceans.
Wind brings much heavier sand from the Goby desert up to Phoenix (AZ) or from the Sahara to where I live at 3000 km distance…
In stagnant air, some CO2 can settle out over very long periods: in the firn of Law Dome at the bottom of the core, just before full closing, CO2 is increased with about 1% after 40 years at 72 m depth…
If CO2 concentrations were indeed higher in the 19th century, what would have made them decrease to about 1900 ish, and then rise again? There needs to be a physical mechanism to go alongside these measurements.
ralfellis:
You assert
NO!
In science observation comes first, and explanations for the observation are postulated and tested after that.
In pseudoscience a mechanism is assumed to exist and observations that support the assertion are then searched.
Your assertion would be true if it said;
There needs to be research to determine the physical mechanism(s) responsible for these measurement results.
Richard
spot on. there has been two warring parties in science for thousands of years. those that insist that you can divine the nature of the universe from logic – the universe must make sense. and those that insist that the logic of the universe is not the logic of humans, thus observation must be our guide.
in a logical universe, heavier items fall faster than light items. CO2 must have been less prior to the time we started measuring, because it is increasing now. clouds are made of animals, because when I look at them I see animal shapes.
what we know about humans is that our brains work much like the official weather data. When we don’t know something, our subconscious brain simply infills the blank spots with made up data.
And it all seems perfectly logical to us, because we have no idea that we are working with made up data. as a bonus, the sub-conscious always fills in the blanks with whatever answer seems most reasonable at that time, even if it is in reality completely wrong, so the made up data appears more correct than the real data.
As a result, humans are incapable of acting without bias, because they cannot detect their own bias. Thus the need for double blind controls on experiments, to eliminate the possibility of bias affecting the results.
Richard,
There may be a mechanism that gives a sudden release of CO2 out of the oceans by a sudden release of strong acids from undersea volcanoes or from burning 1/3rd of all land biomass, but there is no mechanism on earth that can absorb 80 ppmv CO2 in only a few years time.
One can be sure that the measurements in this case are of no value for knowing the real “background” CO2 levels in the pre-Mauna Loa period. Not because the measurements accuracy (which were around +/- 10 ppmv), but because of the places where was measured: never measure temperature on a hot asphalt parking lot to know “global” temperature trends, never measure CO2 over land near huge sources and sinks to measure “background” CO2 levels or trends…
Ferdinand:
You say
True, because one can be sure the measurements in this case are of the CO2 that existed in the air and not of some mythical “background” value that did not exist in the air.
Richard
Richard,
If one can measure the same CO2 levels in 95% of the atmosphere within 0.5% of full scale for yearly averages in the past 55 years, one can call that “background” CO2 levels. If that exists today, there is no reason to dismiss the possibility that similar conditions existed in the pre-Mauna Loa period, the more that values measured in non/less-contaminated places are around the ice core values.
Anyway what is sure is that local measurements over land near huge sources and sinks have not more value than measuring temperature on an asphalt parking lot…
Ferdinand:
You say
And I say that when somebody invents a time machine then – but not before then – they will be able to measure the CO2 levels in 95% of the atmosphere for yearly averages in the past 55 years.
Unless, of course, you want to claim that a single measurement site on top of a volcano measures 95% of the atmosphere, but nobody would be silly enough to claim that.
Richard
Richardcourtney
In science observation comes first, and explanations for the observation are postulated and tested after that.
_________________________________
Which is exactly what I said, you moron.
We have the data. And now we need a mechanism that might explain it. Is that too difficult for you, Rich? Yes, I daresay it is. New Labour lives on spin and mirrors, not logic and reason.
Until you understand the mechanism all you have is a series of data points, that may be completely erroneous.
And that is exactly what is being claimed here. The data has been ignored because it appears anomalous, and has therefore been presumed to be incorrect. And since you cannot redo the 19th century experiment to achieve more accurate data, the only other option is to back it up with a logical mechanism. And if that is not done, then the data will remain in the data-bin.
R
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
…you moron.
That wasn’t necessary.
ralfellis:
I replied to your original comment and ferdberple considered my reply to be of sufficient import for him to bother writing to respond that my reply was “spot on”.
In your subsequent post you have made an unsubstantiated and clearly untrue assertion when you claim of Beck’s data
Beck’s data cannot be “anomalous” – and cannot appear to be “anomalous” – because they are the ONLY direct measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentration taken at those times. There are thousands of the measurements, they were made by superb scientists (some Nobel Winners) using excellent equipment, and their measurement results agree with each other. Beck’s collation of these data is excellent.
And as Tim Ball says in his above essay, Beck’s data has not been “ignored”: it has been reviled and/or discounted because it is inconvenient for the AGW narrative (please see Figure 6 of the above essay by Tim Ball).
Richard
PS
I recently asked you to try providing posts that are accurate honest and not abusive. I see this request has again proven too difficult for you.
Richard,
A single measurement? Lots of measurements at 70+ places in the bulk of the atmosphere which all show the same increase is not enough? Here a few of them:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends.jpg
Lots of more data at:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/iadv/
Richard:
and their measurement results agree with each other. Beck’s collation of these data is excellent.
Come on Richard, the measurement results don’t even agree within one series, or do you think that a range of measurements between 200 and 700 ppmv at Giessen of daily averages from 3 samples (variability 66 ppmv – 1 sigma) even from one day to the next, is sufficient to give any knowledge of a possible “peak” in CO2 levels of 80 ppmv? See Fig 2 in:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html
Such a “peak” is completely in the local noise and further compare that to the noise at Mauna Loa, even including seasonal variations and local outliers… Which of these two places can be better used to measure CO2?
Further, if such a “peak” doesn’t show up in any other measurement or proxy, is not even physically possible in such a short time, is it not time to think about the possibility that the “peak” didn’t exist at all?
The main problem with Beck’s compilation is that he didn’t perform any quality control on the data and completely ignored local CO2 sources and sinks with their local bias…
Sorry the direct link to the data from Giessen by Kreutz is:
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/kreutz/Kreutz_english.pdf
for the English translation, the original German report is in:
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/kreutz/kreutz.zip
Ferdinand:
I am replying to two of your posts in this one reply. I do this solely for convenience.
You claimed
and I replied
to which you have responded
Sorry Ferdinand, Mauna Loa Observatory was the first such “place” and it started measuring in 1958.
Even if all 70+ of your “places” did have the required time machine to measure before they existed then they would NOT be measuring “95% of the atmosphere”.
You say
The quality control was conducted and reported by the scientists who conducted the measurements. Beck assessed it in his reports (so I assume you cannot have read them) and he reported the achieved accuracies, precisions and reliabilities.
Local variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration matter. They exist.
Importantly, the fact of such rapid local variations is indicative of the abilities of local environments to sequester CO2 near its emission sources. This is disliked by e.g. you because it refutes your desired narrative of CO2 being “well mixed” in the atmosphere.
Richard
Ferdinand,
I’ve read quite a bit over the years about Dr. Beck’s collation of CO2 measurements. I don’t know if they show just a local effect, or global CO2 levels. But I have a few thoughts, and I’d like your response:
When CO2 was being measured by Callendar, Pettenkoffer, Haldane and many other scientists, Nobel laureates among them, their reputations as scientists were more important than anything. There is no way they would play games or misrepresent the measurements they were taking, and they took many thousands of CO2 measurements. They used chemical titration and volumetric gas analysis.
Question: how accurate do you think those measurements were? Would their claims of ±3% be reasonable?
Next, even if we discard the top and bottom 10% of measurements, that still leaves a record showing significantly higher CO2 than is currently accepted. Contradictions like that do not last in science. There must be an answer, and simply saying that Beck’s compilation wasn’t accurate is not a good answer.
Those CO2 measurements were taken on mountain tops, by the sea shore, and on ships traversing the world’s oceans, including the Arctic ocean, the Antarctic, the Atlantic and Pacific, the sea of Okhotsk, the Mediterranean, and many others. Those measurements were deliberately taken on the windward side of the ships, in the middle of the oceans in order to obtain an accurate reading of atmospheric CO2 levels.
Question: do you consider those measurements to be accurate?
Final question: on average over time, according to various proxies CO2 has been steady, at under 300 ppm. Do you think it’s possible that despite the average, CO2 could be fluctuating on much shorter time scales, which do not show up in the proxies? If not, how would you explain Dr. Beck’s vast collation of CO2 measurements?
Richard,
The South Pole was where CO2 was measured first, a year before Mauna Loa. But that is not relevant. What is relevant is that the levels all over the earth above a few hundred meters over land and everywhere over the oceans are within +/- 0.5% of full scale of each other for yearly averages. That is for every old and new station added over time and flight and ship’s measurements. So in the past 57 years every measurement at any place of the earth in the bulk of the atmosphere, the same CO2 levels are found +/- 0.5%.
Thus even a single station represents the CO2 levels in 95% of the atmosphere within +/- 0.5% of full scale for yearly averages. Seems more than sufficient to me.
and he reported the achieved accuracies, precisions and reliabilities.
He didn’t report the accuracies, precisions and reliabilities, I had to look them up in the original reports, like the +/- 150 ppmv accuracy of the Barrow measurements, or the +/- 300 ppmv CO2 (+/- 400 ppmv O2) accuracy of the measurements at Antarctica… All data used in the original compilation by Beck without any quality control…
See: http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/070/mwr-070-05-0093.pdf
db:
Would their claims of ±3% be reasonable?
The +/- 3%, that is +/- 10 ppmv is the best they could achieve with chemical titration at that time in laboratories. More problematic is if the same performance would be reached by less skilled people in worse circumstances in the field, on sea ships, etc.
The main problem is that it is not the upper and lower 10% of the measurements that should be discarded, it is the 90% higher measurements that must be discarded, as these were taken at the wrong places: in the direct neighborhood of huge sources: the middle of towns, crops, forests, where the diurnal measurements show a huge positive bias.
If you look at the minima of all these measurements, these near all lie below the ice core average:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/beck_1925_1955.jpg
The only exception being a “pocket” at a forested mountain slope near Vienna…
There are two extremely good places where was measured: Barrow and Antarctica. Unfortunately, the equipment there was completely unsuitable for such measurements: +/- 150 ppmv for Barrow, +/- 300 ppmv for Antarctica.
Several other measurements were taken over the oceans and coastal, with better equipment. Even if one sees variations far beyond the +/- 10 ppmv, these measurements are all around the ice core averages for the same period, again unfortunately there are very few seaside data in the period 1935-1955, where Beck’s “peak” is situated.
The resolution of e.g. the coralline sponges is 2-4 years, far better than ice cores or even stomata data. While it is an accurate measurement of sea surface δ13C, not CO2, it exactly follows the δ13C changes in the atmosphere with a half life time of less than a year. Thus any change in the atmosphere of 80 ppmv either by vegetation or the oceans would be visible as a huge spike – either direction – in the coralline sponge δ13C record, but nothing is seen there around 1942, besides a steady decline in ratio to human emissions of low-13C CO2…
If you look at the variability over the past 57 years, that is not more than +/- 1 ppmv around the trend. Even including the seasonal variations at maximum at Barrow (+/- 8 ppmv), that was even within the accuracy of the best performance of the historical measurements… So in my opinion, all variability you see in the historical data is mainly local contamination (over land) and measurement errors (of any kind) if taken over the oceans or coastal…
Thus as general conclusion: while I respect the late Ernst Beck for the tremendous amount of work he has done to find back such an enormous amount of data, he made a mistake by not taking into account the current knowledge that local CO2 levels over land are not reliable for estimating the historical CO2 levels in the bulk of the atmosphere…
Ferdinand,
Thanks for your reply.
However, there were thousands of measurements taken on many ocean crossings. You didn’t comment on those. Don’t they show higher CO2 levels?
Ferdinand:
You assert
Well, such a claim seems more than daft to me when it is refuted by e.g. the measurements made in the nineteenth century collated by Beck and the measurements made in the twentyfirst century by the OCO-2 satellite for daily and monthly averages.
Richard
db:
However, there were thousands of measurements taken on many ocean crossings. You didn’t comment on those. Don’t they show higher CO2 levels?
That was another error of Ernst Beck: indeed there were thousands of CO2 measurements at different depths in the oceans during several trips of the “Meteor” by Wattenberg in the 1920’s. Ernst Beck interpreted the samples taken at 0 m as being in the atmosphere, while these were from the sea surface waters…
I still do admire all what Ernst did in tracking down all the old reports from a lot of sources, but his interpretation of many of them and their reliability was not particularly good…
Ferdinand:
In reply to dbstealey having asked
You have replied
Say what!?
You are claiming those atmospheric CO2 measurements collated by Beck were actually measurements of CO2 dissolved in the oceans!?
That is an astonishing claim. Please state your evidence for such a claim and say what measurement methods you think were used to determine the dissolved CO2.
Indeed, please say why you think the research vessels did not measure the atmospheric CO2 concentrations they reported.
Richard
Thanks Ferdinand.
In summary, what you are saying is that anyone who took these anomolous-looking early data-points as gospel, without looking for an underlying explanation or mechanism that could explain them, would be a bit of a moron.
Thanks for the clarification.
R
Richard,
I never used that argument before, as it was not relevant for the discussion of the 1942 “peak”, but it is true.
Look at the most recent overview by the late Ernst Beck at:
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/stations.htm
Where besides the most Nordic ships track all others are from the “Meteor”, a German research ship making measurements of ocean waters in the late 1920’s.
You can download an overview of all reports at:
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/literature/CO2-stations1800-1960.pdf
Where is noticed by E-G Beck for 1925:
and about the methods:
Translation: About the alkalinity, hydrogen ion concentration, CO2 and pCO2 in water of the seas around Finland, Helsinki.
Emphasizes are of mine…
Further the report itself:
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/wattenberg/meteor-reise.jpg
That shows the trips of the “Meteor”.
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/wattenberg/wattp1.pdf
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/wattenberg/wattp2.pdf
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/wattenberg/wattp3.pdf
That are the three report parts (each several MB scans).
From these reports it is clear that the measurements at 0 m depth were from the sea surface waters not from the atmosphere, as they measured the pH of the samples, which is not that easy in air…
I didn’t find one measurement in air above the sea surface in that report, which is a pity as that would give values around the “background” CO2 levels of that time.
Anyway an example of the skills of that time, as they sampled seawater even beyond 5,000 m depth…
Thus sorry, Richard, the late Ernst Beck wrongly attributed the 0 m measurements to atmospheric, while they were from the surface waters. I did warn him about that, but he was a little stubborn about his data sources…
ralfellis,
The main problem is human: one is too easy apt to accept anything one likes or does agree with, without any (quality) control of what is said can be true…
I try to be as critical to what skeptics say or write as to what “warmistas” do. Not always easy, as I am human too, and it gives me a lot of (sometimes, but seldom hostile) reactions from both sides…
Ferdinand, you say:
Ernst Beck interpreted the samples taken at 0 m as being in the atmosphere, while these were from the sea surface waters…
That would be very easy to check, wouldn’t it? If the measurements were done at ‘0 metres’ as you say, then it would be very easy to replicate them.
(I should mention that I seriously question your “0 metres” elevation, which would require dragging the collection vessel along the ocean surface, waves and all. How would that be done from aboard a ship?)
I’m stranded at home. But with all your travels, maybe you could take some mid-ocean measurements at the same elevation that Beck reported, and tell us what you find. Maybe even write a WUWT article about it (I would help with editing).
Hello db,
No need to do that myself, as it is frequently done by modern research ships and more and more by commercial vessels during their trips over the oceans: they have fully automatic pCO2 measurements from the main cooling water intake, including temperature measurements. Even more and more automatic (colorimetric) pH measurements are added.
Times do change – was sailor (engine room) during a few years after my studies (chemical engineering) to see something of the world and even was paid for it… Relative speed still was by literally counting knots of a rope thrown overboard (have seen that done), Ocean surface temperature measurement still was probably with buckets overboard (can’t remember that for sure), while we had the motor cooling water intake temperature available…
See: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/index.html
and for the ship’s tracks:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/bottle_discrete.html
The results were compiled by Feely e.a. at:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/background.shtml
but may need an update…
Some longer series from Bermuda and Hawaii and a few other places at:
http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/27-1_bates.pdf
which shows seasonal and longer term changes in pCO2, pH, DIC,… at these places.
I am pretty sure that the 0 m samples were from the ocean surface, as they measured the pH of the samples, I don’t think they did that in air… Further all graphs were made from 0 m to full depth, including values taken at 0 m. As the atmospheric value were around 300-310 ppmv at that time and modern ocean values range from 250-750 μatm, depending of temperature and bio-life and the historical values too show a huge range, that can’t be from the atmosphere above the oceans…
Hi Ferdinand,
You wrote upthread that there were thousands of CO2 measurements taken aboard ships. That means not just the Comet. (I don’t speak German so I couldn’t read your first link).
However, the measurements in your links were from just one ship. Do you have evidence that those were the only ocean measurements taken? Has anyone stated that at the time? According to Dr. Beck there were many ships involved, over all the world’s major oceans. All those scientists were taking atmospheric CO2 measurements on land, at the sea shore, and on mountain tops, so it is hard to believe they would stop taking those same measurements during ocean crossings, especially since that would give the best atmospheric data of all.
There is a lot missing here, Ferdinand. You cannot just throw out Beck’s conclusions based on your belief that all measurements were taken at “0 metres”. I wouldn’t accept that from someone in the alarmist camp. We should hold ourselves to the same rigorous standards.
Unless you can show conclusively that all ocean measurements were taken under the surface, you have not falsified Beck’s conclusions.
Hi db,
I am pretty sure that no atmospheric data were published by Wattenberg in his report about the ocean measurements of the “Meteor”. That doesn’t mean they didn’t, but I haven’t found any in his report.
I doubt that E-G Beck had knowledge of other publications that atmospheric measurements were taken by Wattenberg, as that was never mentioned in my discussions with him about these data, where he still insisted that the 0 m depth were from the atmosphere (despite the pH measurements).
As you can see in the overview I made for Richard, Wattenberg reported over 10,000 measurements in the deep oceans, of which “312 calculated CO2 values over sea surface”, according to E-G Beck.
There are 294 places where several samples were taken at different depths, from the surface down to over 5,000 m (as far as possible), at regular distances, down to the bottom (which was separately reported) for pH, temperature and pCO2. The tables in the second and third part of the report are easily readable, no knowledge of German necessary.
Besides that, there was a pre-expedition and another series of samples (of unknown origin) where clearly is mentioned “Solltiefe” and “Wahre Tiefe” (target depth and real depth) for the samples, including the 0 m samples, all with temperature, pH and pCO2 readings. All together 7 samples at zero meter depth, which makes 301 samples at 0 m depth. Maybe I do miss one or more tables, as not all pages of the report were copied, but the 301 samples counted and 312 “calculated” values more or less match.
BTW: “calculated”? Either the atmospheric values were simply measured, or E-Beck calculated them from the ocean surface measurements, which makes no sense as the CO2 mixing in the atmosphere by wind and turbulence is far faster than any influence of a CO2 flux from/to the ocean surface.
Further the description by Wattenberg of what was used as apparatus was only for water samples, no mention anywhere of apparatus for atmospheric measurements…
I have the impression that the “thousands of measurements” mentioned were including the over 10,000 deep ocean measurements from this expedition. Thus only 312 of them “atmospheric” which were not atmospheric at all.
As the chart provided by E-G Beck shows only one ships expedition besides that from Wattenberg, I need to get that one to know what was measured there. As far as I remember, I plotted its data (which were really atmospheric) some time ago together with what was measured coastal with wind from the oceans. But I don’t find that plot back…
db,
Found the main report of the other sea ship trips in the Nord Atlantic used by Ernst-Georg Beck at:
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/buch/buch1939.pdf
and a shorter essay at:
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/buch/buch1948.doc
That describes for measurements taken 1932-1936 by:
– On board of a herring fisher ship, from Denmark to Iceland, mainly off-coast North of Iceland.
– Denmark – USA and back air probes on board of a ship and a few coastal.
– On board of a ship on the route Narvik (North Norway) to Spitsbergen
– Coastal samples in the North of Finland (at that time still had a harbor at the Ice Sea).
Repeatability within 10 ppmv for duplicate samples, accuracy rather questionable:
– averages around 320 ppmv (ice cores in that period around 310 ppmv), but still with a huge spread 150-400 ppmv for the “outliers”, which is not seen nowadays in similar trips (~10 ppmv between polar and equatorial air above sea level)…
The herring fisher ship did take samples from water and air, where water samples pCO2 is average ~20 μatm lower than atmosphere. Again with a huge variation in measured pCO2…
While the averages are quite reasonable, the huge spread in measurements does not give much confidence in the accuracy of the methods used and/or its quality control…
One thing has bother me for a long time. Who set the “0” when data sets say the anomaly temperature is above or below said data point? If “0” was set during the average Holocene maximum time then all anomalies would be negative. If “0” was set over the last 10 million years then all anomalies would be positive. So who decided the present day “0” data point?
old construction worker,
Your question still was not answered I see…
As far as I know:
The WMO uses standard a 30-year baseline over full decades. The current baseline thus is 1981-2010.
Satellite data by UAH use that baseline, but others still use 1971-2000 or longer periods, WUWT has a nice page about temperature trends of the different organizations including what baseline they use:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/global-temperature/
The problem with temperatures before modern times is that these are based on proxies, where the error bars are far beyond any trend in current times, even with all the adjustments involved…
It would not surprise me if there is a strong AMO signal in atmospheric CO2 levels, with higher CO2 levels during a warm AMO.
There probably is with 300mb humidity too, which I would expect to increase during the next cold AMO mode.
The main temperature signal is more in the tropics: El Niño / La Niña (ENSO), which influences rain patterns – and drought – in the Amazon and consequently the increase rate of CO2 in the atmosphere…
The AMO visibly has a huge impact on global surface temperatures, the signal is also present in the southern hemisphere. Very large areas of northern hemisphere continental interiors are drought effected by a warm AMO mode, causing far greater temperature and moisture variability than in the tropics.
And the irony is that the increased negative NAO/AO driving the warm AMO mode since the mid 1990’s, caused by the decline in solar plasma density/pressure/temperature, has completely overwhelmed the opposing positive effects on the NAO/AO from increases in CO2 forcing:
http://snag.gy/HxdKY.jpg
Science assumption 2 is wrong. CO2 has no effect on climate as demonstrated in a peer reviewed paper at Energy & Environment, Volume 26, No. 5, 2015, 841-845 & http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
Well, I really have an issue with assumption #1
” CO2 is a gas with effectively one-way properties that allows sunlight to enter the atmosphere but prevents heat from leaving. It supposedly functions like the glass in a greenhouse.”
I do not accept that as an explanation of the way CO2 functions.
That’s not how a greenhouse works either. Most polythene is transparent to infrared but polytunnels work.
I agree, CO2 does not act as a “one way” optical element that “traps radiation” (or “prevents heat from leaving”).
There is an optical device which only allows for light to travel “one way”, it is an optical isolator, it is the optical equivalent of the electrical diode or rectifier. An optical isolator only works with monochromatic coherent polarized light (i.e. a laser beam).
CO2 instead acts as an optical delay line by causing photons to bounce back and forth (atmosphere to surface) while traveling from the surface to the energy free void of space. This delay of a few tens of milliseconds is not sufficient to affect the average temperature of the Earth.
Numerous experiments (including R W Wood about 100 years ago) confirm this.
Cheers, KevinK
simple CO2 is completely transparent for visible light but absorbs in the infrared.
Visible sunlight heats the surface, the surface emits infrared, the infrared is trapped by CO2.
The trick is the wavelength change.
Agree nothing to do with real greenhouses.
Climatology or particle physics, there are certain irreducible statistical criteria for inferring any Gaussian-probability outcome. These include comparable inputs (“apples-to-apples”), a relevant time-frame plus geophysical distribution, in all circumstances a math/statistically requisite sample size.
Moreover, technical methodology simply must be fully disclosed, unambiguous, detailing researchers’ analytical approach via positing a Conjecture, formulating a Hypothesis, empirically sifting negative as well as positive outcomes to derive a correspondingly predictive Theory.
On this basis, “peer review” can never apply Argumenta ad Vercundiam (“arguments from authority”) to establish truth or falsity of any natural-scientific proposition, for only Nature can do that. Experts do not pass on propositional validity but supply an objective, rational filtering mechanism to ensure that a conjecture-hypothesis-theory’s premises do not conflict with established disciplinary norms: No anti-entropic violations (“perpetual motion”), “mere opinion” entailing paranormal forces or supernatural powers, need apply.
Since AGW Catastrophism in all its sociopathic Luddite glory is manifestly a totalitarian political-economic (“One World Government”) demarche using so-called “hothouse Earth” as Climate Commissars’ excuse for a perpetual Free Lunch, “science” per se has never been the point. Philo-phobic Thanatists such as Keith Farnish, Kentti Linkola, Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, can never be defeated on the merits– but there are other means.
“Philo-phobic Thanatists”?… I don’t understand! And, I have tried.
From the context, I assumed John Blake harvested the wrong root from “phil-anthropy” (love of mankind). anthropo-phobic would be the proper way to phil in the blank.
Observes John Blake:
Shooting to death by musketry?
After all, those of us on the political right are the ones who have maintained and practiced the exercise of our inalienable individual human right to keep and bear arms (i.e., we’re the people with the guns; the sociopathic Luddites of the left are also hoplophobic victim disarmament fanatics), and after the Climategate exposures confirmed the connivances among the charlatans perpetrating the AGW fraud, is there any doubt remaining that retaliatory deadly force isn’t warranted?
(Or hasn’t the #RICO20 kerfluffle adequately demonstrated that the warmists are bent upon the aggressive use of armed violence – in the form of government goons with guns sent forth to arrest “deniers” and prosecute us under the coloration of the R.I.C.O. statute – to their own purposes?)
There are two incontrovertible facts regarding CO2:
1. Atmospheric CO2 has been rising very fast since the mid-20th century.
2. Mankind is mostly responsible for that.
The debate is about what effects this raise has and whether they are positive or negative. A more profound debate is about the causes of climate change and the relative importance between greenhouse gases and solar forcings versus internal variability.
In my opinion greenhouse gas variability in the atmosphere plays a very secondary role in determining Earth’s climate, and its effect can only be positive as it tends to quell Holocene cooling variability and counteract some of the cooling produced by the inexorable polar insolation reduction from the obliquity cycle.
Currently science is dominated by the greenhouse gas theory of climate change probably due to the effects of greenhouse gases being most amenable to scientific research. Solar theory of climate change continues being disreputable due to the lack of a physical mechanism linking solar variability to climate variability, despite striking correlation. Ocean-atmosphere internal variability theory is still confusing and far from unified. This is why most scientists join the ranks of the dominant theory that is easy to understand even if it requires an ad-hoc explanation for every period where there is no warming, aerosols for the 60-70’s and ocean warming for the present hiatus.
There are two incontrovertible facts regarding CO2:
1. Atmospheric CO2 has been rising very fast since the mid-20th century.
2. Mankind is mostly responsible for that.
==================
1. Define “very fast”. CO2 is increasing at about 2% per year. Is 2% annual increase “very fast”
2. Women control 80% of the wealth on planet earth, so they would be responsible for 80% of the increase caused by industrialization. Men only 20%.
However, since God created the Universe and Mankind, it seems to be rather harsh to place the responsibility on us. We are simply playing the game with the cards dealt us. Maybe God’s plan is for Humans to increase the CO2 on planet earth, to help feed the plants and end the current cycle of Ice Ages. Those that seek to stop this may be living in sin, outside of Gods will.
“Maybe God’s plan is for Humans to increase the CO2 on planet earth”
Ferd, whilst I prefer connotation The Great Electron to God, I do agree with the Human impetus to create CO2, particularly in its thermoplastic polymer manifestation. Reference; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBRquiS1pis
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
” Javier
October 18, 2015 at 5:54 am
There are two incontrovertible facts regarding CO2:
1. Atmospheric CO2 has been rising very fast since the mid-20th century.
2. Mankind is mostly responsible for that.”
1. – How much faster, exactly, than it was rising between 1850 and 1950?
I believe the unscientific answer would be: Not much.
2. – Define “mostly”.
Then fit it in here:
Mankind is (mostly) responsible for the not much increase in the rate of the rise in the atmospheric CO2 level since the mid-20th century.
One will also discover that the “not much” difference is having a not much effect on the temperature of the atmosphere.
And so it goes…
John,
A 30% increase in only 160 years in geological terms is damn fast. Compare it to the changes during a deglaciation: a similar increase of 100 ppmv needed ~5000 years…
Here the CO2 levels over the past 1,000 years. The DSS ice core has a resolution of ~20 years, the other Law Dome ice cores less than a decade and there is an overlap of ~20 years between ice core measurements and direct atmospheric measurements (1960-1980):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_001kyr.jpg
If the 30% increase has much influence of temperature is an entirely separated question. I don’t think so, as a CO2 doubling is only good for about 1°C increase based on its IR absorption.
Ferdinand,
Thank you for the reply.
Just “eye-balling” that chart and I can see that the rise of CO2 from 1900 to 1950 was quite rapid. My question is “how much more rapid was the rise from 1950 to 2000 (or 2015)?” While I can see it is an increase, I am not sure it is so much more as to be a concern.
John,
Here the graph from 1900 to 2014 and human emissions up to 2012 plus temperature:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
1960-2014 is about +60 ppmv and still going strong, be it more linear nowadays than slightly quadratic before the last decade…
The correlation between human emissions and increase in the atmosphere is a near fit, With temperature a lot less: lowering or flat temperatures in some periods and CO2 still going up…
Javier,
I agree with you. The whole debate about the origin of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is completely outdated, given that humans release twice the amount of CO2 than measured as increase in the atmosphere. And that the human release fits all observations. And that all alternatives I heard of in these debates violates one or more or even all observations…
So it is completely fruitless and only removes the attention of where the real debate is: the influence of CO2 on climate, where the warmistas are in a much more problematic position to explain the lack of warming with increasing levels of CO2…
FB
“So it is completely fruitless and only removes the attention of where the real debate is: the influence of CO2 on climate, where the warmistas are in a much more problematic position to explain the lack of warming with increasing levels of CO2…”
The fervor or perhaps blood rush is felt in the observation that CO2 is rising alot. There are 6B of us and we create/expel lots of CO2, therefore it MUST be us. And yes, temperature hasn’t risen but that’s just temporary. More importantly, it is reckless to not account for that RISK in the way we live.
I see the above belief as flawed on many levels but deliciously attractive to so many.
Why ?
It appeals to our fundamental western values that waste is bad and putting our future humans at risk is worse.
The science approach is good, esp the parts about data manipulation and 18 years of no change in temp, but people will not hear it until you address how they express the above core values.
The recent approach that CO2 is good for the planet and people is relatively new and novel. We’ll see how much traction it gets. My first impression, is not much. It’s still science with a twist.
There is tremendous waste in wealth that has been spent to deal with something that is very likely to be a nonissue. That type of waste drives people to change their opinions. Perhaps this will gain traction, but I think it will take much more time for the waste bubble to pop.
Again with the horrifically misguided pseudo-mass balance argument. Absolute nonsense.
I have little to go on, but suspect “Steve Jones” is “David Socrates”, or any of the other dozen or so names he has gone under. Probably demonstrating, once again, that he does not understand calculus.
(Reply: That commenter has been using numerous fake names. -mod)
“2. Mankind is mostly responsible for that.”
Absolute nonsense. The rate of change of atmospheric CO2 is a function, essentially affine over at least the past 57 years, of global temperature anomaly.
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
Human inputs are not temperature anomaly dependent. Hence, human inputs are not the driving force.
It’s absolutely ridiculous how inane the assumption of human culpability is. The graph above means precisely what it so obviously indicates. I am just stunned that morons keep arguing the point. It never ceases to amaze me how people can ignore what is right in front of their eyes in order to keep believing what they want to believe.
[“affine” = “a flat line” ?? .mod]
[Snip. Sockpuppetry. ~mod.]
B
“I am just stunned that morons keep arguing the point. It never ceases to amaze me how people can ignore what is right in front of their eyes in order to keep believing what they want to believe.”
Such a pity. You seem capable of observation. Sit, watch the species. Why is it a male of the species is more apt to let a pretty one rob them while hold a homely to a higher standard ?
And so why is it, the species allows itself to be deceived for an unsupported crisis ? Is the crisis sexy ? Does it appeal to a deeper need ?
What is that need ?
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affine_transformation
Bart,
This moron is not very impressed by your graph, as anybody can match two linear trends by using an arbitrary offset and factor and as I am pretty sure that the variability around the trend and the trend are not caused by the same processes:
That the variability is caused by the influence of temperature variations on vegetation is proven beyond doubt by the opposite CO2 and δ13C changes, while the trend is NOT caused by vegetation, as that is an increasing sink for CO2:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
Thus trend and variability have nothing to do with each other.
Further, you have not the slightest indication that temperature is the cause of the trend, the effect on vegetation is opposite and on the oceans too small (~10 ppmv extra) to explain the 110 ppmv (60 ppmv in the past 55 years) increase, while the twice higher human emissions can easily do that…
You’re 90 degrees out of phase, Ferdinand. You have no match at all.
As I have stated, you do not understand this. You do not understand the requirements for matching the data. You are in over your head, pontificating as if you understood what you were doing, but you do not understand what you are doing.
Writes Bartemis:
Do not be in such a rush to afford these sons of bitches any sort of “diminished capacity” defense (i.e., that they’re merely “morons” and therefore too stupid to reason) when, in fact, their motivation is much more reliably imputed to pure malevolence.
When examining the political left – the turf of las warmistas, absolute and unalloyed – the conscientious examiner comes to only three explanations of their motivations for acting so malignantly in (or toward) the violation of their fellow human beings’ unalienable individual rights.
They’re either evil, stupid, or insane.
Since the confirmation provided by the Climategate revelations had come to public attention in 2009, there can be vanishingly little doubt that what we’re dealing with here is malice aforethought and undeniable criminal mens rea.
Tucci quoted
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
— Eric Hoffer
The True Believer is one of the best books on mass behavoir. It was Mr Hoffer’s first book and his moment of genius. Should be required reading for anyone who wishes to be part of society.
Bartemis, you just showed that you don’t understand the concept of the first derivative and cannot go beyond looking at two curves and judging by eye how similar they are without understanding what each curve really represents.
The first derivative of CO2 levels will show the seasonal rate of change, not the secular rate of change. This seasonal rate of change is known to depend on temperature since the 70’s, since it is due to the massive flux of CO2 in an out of living organisms following the yearly summer-winter cycle. I think the first paper to report this was:
Bacastow, R.B. 1976. Modulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide by the Southern Oscillation. Nature 261, 116-118.
Charles Keeling himself (the guy responsible for setting up and measuring CO2 from Mauna Loa) published the same graph that you so proudly display in your ignorance. See figure 2 a and b from this paper:
http://lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk/ajw/Geochemical_cycling/keeling_cd_1995.pdf
But don’t worry, you are not alone in making a fool of yourself claiming that the seasonal dependence of CO2 of changes in temperature (something everybody knows) proves that there is no man made CO2. Luminaries as Professor Murry Salby have publicly made the same mistake.
Bart, i really think you need to address ferdinands objections to your graph. (“arbitrary offset and factor”) It seems that he’s really getting away with one here. Any number of graphs have shown exactly what you’re showing in your graph. Back in ’09 i picked up a xerox copy of the official ipcc graph, scaled the years to a satellite temp graph and held it up to a window. NOAA also has the yearly totals at their site which also dovetail with true global temps. I recall mike jonas also producing the exact same thing here at wuwt. That ferdinand so readily dismisses something that is so obvious (and with such shallow analysis) is quite disturbing. (but, then again, the shallowness with which he treats the mass balance argument has always been quite disturbing) Vintage engelSPIN, i suppose…
You know a while back Dr Spencer regrettably banned doug cotton from his site. Maybe it’s time anthony put old ferdi out to pasture, too. The intellectual bullying really has got to stop. It’s stifling honest debate… fonzie
Bart,
The response of CO2 to temperature changes lags 90 deg. because it is a transient response which need time to reach a new equilibrium. Take the derivatives and you shift both 90 deg. back in time which makes that the CO2 derivative changes MUST lag temperature changes with 90 deg. and T changes synchronize with dCO2/dt changes.
Your “match” of T changes with the dCO2/dt changes is only the result of that shift and doesn’t prove that T changes cause dCO2/dt changes. It is the changes in dT/dt which cause the changes in dCO2/dt with a lag and as dT/dt has no slope (in fact is slightly negative), it is not the cause of the slope in dCO2/dt, which is from an entire different process, no matter if the second process is temperature dependent or not.
But that all will be explained in a guest opinion I will send to Anthony one of these days, if I find some time to finish it without these stupid discussions about the origin of the CO2 increase in the atmosphere…
And Bart, it is clear that you have a lot of experience with signal processing, but don’t understand simple first order processes and the consequences of all the observations around them…
afonzarelli,
It is clear that you don’t understand what a honest debate is.
My objection against Bart’s graph is that he thinks that the slope of dCO2/dt and the variability are both caused by temperature.
I fully agree that the CO2 variability around the trend is caused by temperature variability (on tropical vegetation). I disagree that the increase in CO2 – the trend – is caused by temperature for the simple reason that the temperature trend is too small to give more than 10 ppmv from the 110 ppmv increase. That is Henry’s law, which is confirmed by over 3 million measurements at the sea surface… Vegetation meanwhile is a growing sink for CO2.
Thus when Bart matches the trends by choosing the “right” factor and offset, that is simple curve (straight lines in this case) fitting, not based on any physical process. The problem in this case is that for 35 of the 57 years, the match is negative, thus moving the amplitudes upside down. Thus the entire “match” of the slopes is purely because the overall trends are more or less parallel.
Further, all what you see in the variability is natural noise of +/- 1 ppmv around the trend of over 60 ppmv over the 57 years of Mauna Loa. That is peanuts, hardly visible in the trend, even for the largest influences: the 1991 Pinatubo and 1998 super El Niño:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_1990-2002.jpg
Even with a factor 8 for temperature influence on CO2 levels, that gives not more than +/- 1 ppmv in variability – with a 90 deg. lag – and 1 ppmv in trend over the period 1990-2002, while CO2 increased 17 ppmv in the same period, thus mostly not by the increased temperature…
Thus before banning me, have a better look at the arguments…
Ferdinand, i asked bart, i did not ask you… All i get from you is more spinmastered crap which makes for very poor debate. (especially when it comes from someone with the shear intellectual gravitas that you possess) I referenced to bart other graphs to get away from the notion that his graph is somehow flawed. (the ipcc graph will do just fine) And all these graphs show the same thing. Without the rise in temperature there is no rise in the carbon growthrate. You can clearly see this in the step rise circa 1980 as well as the step up at the turn of the millenium. As well, the two data sets run lock step for the entire length of the mauna loa data set. Many of us are interested in this basic correlation as it means (at the very least) that human emissions don’t impact the growth rate. The obviousness of this argument is astounding. And i find it very disturbing that people like yourself don’t give it any credence, spinmastering it away in very unconvincing fashion. (then you have the gall to reference these as “stupid discussions about the origin of the CO2 increase”) If barts graph was convenient for your anthropegenic rise agenda you would be embracing it whole heartedly in your usual shallow fashion…
I don’t want to leave you here in an ugly way. You ARE a brilliant man ferdinand. (and i’ve never quite seen you as brilliant as you are today, on this particular post) I just wish you’d slow down, get off your high horse and talk to people as opposed to at them. Maybe it’s too hard to do (these are polarizing times), but the debate deserves this even if the people don’t…
afonzarelli
Without the rise in temperature there is no rise in the carbon growthrate.
That is the crux of the debate! You don’t know that. Bart and you are assuming that the slope in growth rate is caused by temperature, while the slope of human emissions is twice as steep. And the slope of the process that causes the variability (vegetation) is negative over time: an increasing sink…
Again: variability and slope of the CO2 rate of change are from different, independent processes
It is physically impossible that a rise of 0.6°C gives over 110 ppmv extra in the atmosphere, that violates Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater (~16 ppmv/°C at steady state with the atmosphere) and negates the millions of measurements which show that the oceans are a net sink for CO2, not a source. As good as the biosphere is a net, increasing, sink for CO2…
As well, the two data sets run lock step for the entire length of the mauna loa data set. Many of us are interested in this basic correlation as it means (at the very least) that human emissions don’t impact the growth rate.
Again, the correlation is between the variability’s, not the slopes. There are several periods where the slope of temperature and CO2 rate of change are opposite, all together 35 years of the 57 years record. That confirms that the two slopes have nothing to do with each other…
If barts graph was convenient for your anthropegenic rise agenda you would be embracing it whole heartedly in your usual shallow fashion…
Sorry, I started with a belief that the oceans were the cause of the increase, but as I saw the amounts of human emissions and the increase in the atmosphere and their 99% parallel evolutions, I did start to doubt that and looked further in depth. I am not convinced by one graph, I am only convinced if all the observations point in one direction: human emissions in this case… Bart’s solution violates them all, point by point…
Ferdinand, without the temperature step rises in the late seventies and again at the turn of the millenium, we don’t have our corresponding step rises of the carbon growth rate. And the growth would be about 1ppm per year still. Those two step rise are the obvious keys to this… Step rise in temps equals step rise in carbon growth rate. No step rise in temps equals no step rise in growth rate. And these step rises are corroborated by the fact that temps track with the carbon growth rate at all times. (it’s a very close detailed correlation that lasts as long as the mauna loa data set) Those step rises give it away…
As for henry’s law, it has been said that this may have nothing to do with it. Higher temps cause an inefficiency in the sinks causing anthropogenic co2 to pile up. Some think this is a pretty dubious argument. None the less it does make the case for the rise being caused by a natural imbalance (henry’s law…) less than definitive. There is, i might add, at least one study floating around out there that accounts for the entire rise since MLO being due to henry’s law. I see no need to interject that here (i’m not bright enough to do that anyway), it’s enough to say that temperature is causing the rise without invoking henry’s law…
I appreciate your tone in the comment here. Don’t be too nice (or you’ll get hammered!) After all you are the “kingelpin” and everybody is aiming to knock you down. These forums are a strained, unnatural medium, so you really have to look out for number one. Especially so in your case because you actually ARE number one… fonzie
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/dco2.jpg
I thought i’d bring in a clearer graph of the co2 growthrate here. (wft are so “sketchy”) You can see that from 1960 til the late 70s carbon growth trends essentially flat at about 1 ppm per year. (peaks and troughs are essentially the same heights and depths save ’74) Then we get our first step up in the carbon growth rate (which corresponds with the known step up in temperature). The growth rate then trends flat again until the turn of the millenium at a rate of about 1.5 ppm per year. (again peaks and troughs at the same height and depth save pinatubo and the ’98 el nino) Then we get our second step up in the carbon growth rate which also corresponds with the known step up in temperature. After which carbon growth trends essentially flat at about 2 ppm per year…
Fonzie,
You are looking at the noise around the trend, not at the trend itself.
Indeed temperature shifts the rate of change, but that is mostly both sides and there is no trend at all in the temperature derivative, only a lot of variability:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_der.jpg
As CO2 changes lag temperature changes, it is a transient response, the net effect of temperature is a small offset of less than 0.2 ppmv/year in the derivatives or ~10 ppmv in the past 57 years overall increase. That is all. Even negative for the cause of the CO2 variability, vegetation.
Positive for the oceans, but not more than 16 ppmv/°C. Henry’s law applies for all surface points of the oceans, that gives that there are huge CO2 sources at the upwelling places in the Pacific equator (near Chili, Ecuador) and huge CO2 sink places near the poles. See:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/maps.shtml and the next page.
2.2 +/- 0.4 GtC/year more uptake than release by the oceans in 1995.
The area weighted average steady state level for the current ocean temperature is around 295 ppmv. Any temperature increase will temporarily increase the CO2 output and decrease the CO2 input of the oceans, which gives a transient response of the CO2 level (= pressure) in the atmosphere, until average ocean and atmospheric pCO2 are back in equilibrium. Here for a step response of 1°C:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
It is the total CO2 partial pressure in the atmosphere above steady state that influences the sink rate. With increasing CO2 emissions per year (a fourfold since 1960) and increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere (also a fourfold) and temperature fluctuations, one can calculate the theoretical sink rate for any year and thus the residual increase in the atmosphere (current tau ~51 years). That gives the following graph:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em6.jpg
Where the whole increase in rate of change is explained by the emissions and the linear sink rate plus the short-term variability in CO2 rate of change caused by the temperature influence on (tropical) vegetation.
BTW, don’t worry about my feelings, I have been hardened by much worse aggressive reactions on “green” blogs for my defense of chlorine/PVC on anti-dioxin discussion lists… What I have experienced is that even if you never can convince the hardliners, most of the lurkers do appreciate what you say and its tone and even some were convinced…
“Fonzie, you are looking at the noise around the trend, not at the trend itself…”
Ferdinand, the way you’re seeing it, the trend in carbon growth would be there regardless of what temperature does… (if temps had remained flat since around the time of the inception of MLO, we would still be seeing roughly a 2 ppm per year increase. I, on the other hand, would say that co2 would be growing at a rate of 1 ppm, roughly what it was back then) The problem with your logic is that if the carbon growth trend does what it does regardless of the temperature trend then bart would never be able to produce his pretty little graph. The temperature would bear little or no resemblence to the change in the carbon growth rate. In essence what we’re seeing, according to you, is a temperature trend that is coincidentally the same as the carbon growth rate trend. In fact the temperature shows no divergence whatsoever from the carbon growth rate for the entire length of the MLO data set. If your version of events is true, we should see some divergence in Bart’s graph and we don’t…
This is not quite as well articulated as i want it to be. I did, however, wish to reply to you without delay as sometimes we move on if there’s too much of a delay between comments. I’ll have plenty of time to mull this one over and eventually present my argument exactly as i see fit… I hope at least that you’ll see that what i (,bart and others) are getting at is not a “stupid discussion about the origin of the CO2 increase” rather an argument that at the very least has merit. Lastly, i just want to reiterate that i’m not particularly interested here in whether or not this proves that the rise is natural. It’s enough just to say that temperature (for what ever the reason) is the driver of the growth rate and not human emissions. China can build as many factories as it wants, it won’t affect the carbon growth rate. Not only does this have huge policy implications, but it could also scuttle agw as well…
It’s interesting how bart uses the word “affine” to describe his graph and the moderator cuts in asking, “affine = a flat line??”. Affine indeed…
Getting back to those step rises… If you don’t have your step rises in temps (circa 1980 & 2000), then you don’t HAVE your trend. Like wise, if nature doesn’t soon get it’s butt in gear and produce some warming, then your trend is OVER. The entire trend depends entirely on those step rises in temps. Without them we would see a growth rate still at 1 ppm per year OR there would be a massive divergence in bart’s graph of the two data sets (just to maintain your trend). And these are two data sets that have shown no divergence whatsoever for the entire length of record (save pinatubo)…
Fonzie,
Have a look at the correlation between total human emissions and the increase in the atmosphere:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1960_cur.jpg
It is a near fit. Just coincidence? If nature reacts as a simple first order process to disturbances (Le Châtelier’s Principle), it will react proportional to the disturbance, that is proportional to the extra CO2 pressure above steady state for the current average ocean temperature.
For a linear process, the e-fold decay rate tau can be calculated in a simple way:
tau = net reaction / disturbance = 2.15 ppmv/year / 110 ppmv = ~51 years
That nature reacts quite linear can be seen as a few decades ago, the e-fold decay rate didn’t change much:
http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
Then temperature over the same period:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_1960_cur.jpg
There is some correlation, but also something which can’t be right: a change in temperature of halve the scale has hardly an effect on CO2 levels, but the full scale would give 80 ppmv extra over time…
That points to different processes: the variability is from one process, the trend from another process, meanwhile confirmed by the opposite CO2 and δ13C changes for the variability caused by vegetation.
Thus remains the question, what caused the rise in CO2: human emissions or the oceans (vegetation excluded, as that is a proven net sink for CO2). The oceans and vegetation are the only huge, fast possible sources/sinks.
But that violates all observations: over 3 million measurements show that the oceans are a net sink: the average pCO2 in the atmosphere is higher than of the oceans, in all cases the carbon derivatives level in the upper oceans increases with the atmospheric levels, not opposite, the δ13C level of the oceans is too high compared to the atmosphere and where would the human CO2 go if the oceans were no net sink (the biosphere is a sink for only ~1 GtC of the ~9 GtC human emissions).
Last but not least it violates Henry’s law that says that for the current average ocean temperature the steady state CO2 level in the atmosphere should be around 290 ppmv, not 400 ppmv…
Thus while temperature modulates the CO2 rate of change, its net effect is overall not more than 10 ppmv over the past 55 years.
Further, the temperature trend 1977-1995 and 2000-current and the trend in CO2 rate of change for 1977-1995 and 2000- current are opposite to each other (see Wood for Trees for the first period), that means that for over 35 years of the 57 years of Mauna Loa the two datasets don’t match in trend, but still match in variability…
Conclusion: temperature is the main cause of the variability around the trend, while the trend is caused by human emissions.
afonzarelli October 18, 2015 at 7:26 pm
Bart, i really think you need to address ferdinands objections to your graph. (“arbitrary offset and factor”) It seems that he’s really getting away with one here.
Actually it’s Bartemis (formerly known as Bart) who’s trying to get away with one, he has done so for years and never addresses the deficiencies in his graph.
Taking this version, he doesn’t plot global temperature as he says but the SH temperature (ML is situated at 20ºN, Bart thereby introduces the delay in CO2 transport across the equator, sneaky!). Second he rescales and offsets the temperature to make it look like a match which greatly exaggerates the fluctuation in the CO2 compared with its overall growth (he also averages the CO2 over 24 months but not temperature to make it look like a better match).
In reality the fluctuation is small with respect to the sustained growth of CO2 (as Ferdinand repeatedly points out), what the data shows if plotted honestly is sustained growth due to anthropogenic release to the atmosphere with modulation due to temperature (mostly due to Henry’s law since the SH is predominantly ocean). A range of 0.7ºC over the course of the graph is not adequate to cause the observed growth in CO2 (~100ppm since 1959). Ferdinand and I have made these points before and Bart’s response is usually insults as he has done here.
“Just coincidence?”
YES, just coincidence !!! Ferdinand, i don’t want to be biting off more than i can chew here, so i’ll just try to keep my focus on the one graph (your first). Without the step rises in temps and the corresponding step rises in the carbon growth rate your graph wouldn’t look so nice. MLO has three periods where the average ratio of the carbon growth rate to the emissions rate goes from 60% to 45%. (the average for each period being your 53%) It is those step rises in temperature circa 1980 & 2000 that bring the growthrate back up to 60% BOTH times. Without those step rises carbon growth would be less than 25% of the emissions rate now. (you might try plotting your graph with that scenario just to see how it looks) Furthermore we are fast approaching the day when we can say that ratio will approach just 40% (2 ppmv/5 ppmv) if nature doesn’t produce some warming. Only TEMPERATURE will bring that growth rate back up to 60% of emissions. Without it your correlation is finished. AND what about the overwhelming “coincidence” that bart’s graph brings? Why not give credence to that? It looks like we have two contradictory “coincidences” running simultaneously. (if two men say they’re jesus, one of them must be wrong) If we see no future warming and your (53%) ratio is maintained, then bart’s graph will finally show some divergence between the two data sets. But, it does beg that question, how is it possible for the ratio to get back up to 60% without a corresponding hike in temperature? It has NEVER happened before…
Fonzie:
MLO has three periods where the average ratio of the carbon growth rate to the emissions rate goes from 60% to 45%.
If temperature has something to do with the overall rate of change, that would line out over the largest part of the graph, not the smallest parts. In 35 years of the 57 years, temperature trend and CO2 rate of change trend are opposite. That is impossible if temperature was the main driver for the rate of change, as an opposite trend will reverse the amplitudes. That -again- proves that variability and trends have nothing to do with each other: the variability is the result of a transient response of vegetation on temperature changes, where dCO2/dt lags dT/dt. The latter has zero trend (even a negative offset for vegetation). With zero trend, the process that is responsible for the variability is not responsible for any trend in the CO2 rate of change…
The match of the trends of T and dCO2/dt is pure arbitrary. Take the case that T has a very small slope and dCO2/dt a huge one, then you need a huge factor to match the slopes of T and dCO2/dt, which makes that the amplitudes of the variability’s get way different, or reverse… Only if the slopes are more or less scaled the same, the amplitudes match…
BTW, even if the CO2 growth rate was 10% or 90% of human emissions, still human emissions are responsible for the increase. If it was 110% of human emissions, the growth was 100% from humans and 10% from natural causes and if it was -10%, then there is no growth anymore…
Ferdinand, how many times do i have to say it? If the step rises in temperature are there, then the step rises in co2 are there also. If they are not there, then the step rises in co2 are not there either… Let’s look at the current situation. Carbon growth rate is essentially trending flat. It will remain so until the next step rise (or even gradual rise) in temperature comes along. If the temperature does not rise then we will not see any rise in the carbon growth-rate. The relationship between human emissions growth and carbon growth-rate will be broken. (your pretty little graph showing that relationship won’t look so pretty) Do you really think that the carbon growth rate will rise without a corresponding rise in temperature? It has not happened for the entire length of the MLO data set…
Just a footnote ferdinand: comparing trends of carbon growth rate and southern hemisphere temps (from the late 70s to the mid 90s) is of no value. Pinatubo cooling registers in northern hemisphere and satellite data, but not in the southern hemisphere. I would, however, be interested in seeing trends with other data sets or other parts of hadcrut4sh if you have the time. I think that would be interesting. (i’d attempt to do it myself, but always find it to be a good springboard when i have some one else’s handy work to work with— people pass it on to me and i learn how to do it from there) Oh, and please (PLEASE!) no mass balance argument. Aren’t we in enough of a tangled mess as it is?! (wink…)
Fonzie,
The contribution of temperature to the slope of dCO2/dt in average is zero, I will prove that in a near finished guest contribution on WUWT. That doesn’t mean that there are no momentary influences: these are relative huge, but level off towards zero in 1-3 years. All the slope is from human emissions, all variability is from temperature and a small offset which gives 10 ppmv of the 110 ppmv increase.
I used the SH temperatures as their variability best matches the variability of dCO2/dt, Bart does the same: just picking the best fit, but you can switch to other temperature series, it only makes things worse for Bart’s/your theory.
Saying something over and over again does not make it so! There has NEVER been a change in the carbon growth rate without a corresponding change in temperature for the entire duration of the MLO data set (save pinatubo). What you are suggesting, that a change in the growth rate would occur even without a change in temperature, is inconsistent with the data…
Ferdinand, this has been fairly rewarding for me personally. It’s given me an opportunity to hone my argument (much of which i have not even presented here). Challenges are good, they make us better. I don’t know how much further we’ll be going on here, so i at least want to express my gratitude before either one of us goes wandering off. I haven’t been looking round much at the other comments at this post lately. We may be the only two drunks left at the party. (correction: i’m the last drunk, you’re the designated driver) If we do continue on, i think that i’ll be heading in the direction of a cross examination of bart’s graph. I’ll demonstrate that his plot is not even possible if what you’re saying happens to be true…
AF
Before you sober up can you please bulletize what you now know. And yes, please be patient. In return, I promise to save the email and review it thoroughly so as not to waste your time.
Fonzie,
Just a few days more patience, I am finishing my definitive proof that the variability of the temperature has zero influence on the CO2 rate of change. If Anthony allows publication – it is his blog – we can discuss things out there…
“Bart, This moron is not very impressed by your graph, as anybody can match two linear trends by using an arbitrary offset and factor…”
Ferdinand, i think that i will wait till that comes out… I have a counter argument to your above quote (which was in response to bart’s initial comment), but i’d hate to dive into it at this point for fear that you might not come back to read it. Plus, with time i should have it better articulated as time is a layman’s best friend. (in a nutshell, i’d say that if you change the scale to create a matching slope, you’ll also change the amplitude of the peaks and troughs so that they won’t match up nicely as bart’s do) I could also use a break here as i am an insomniac having “doctor problems”, which is far superior to having “medication problems”. (i can always find another doctor, but i can’t always find another medication) Thanks again for taking time out for me, it’s been enriching and i look forward (hopefully) to reading your guest post…
Knute, i’m not exactly a bulletizing kind of guy. (in fact, i had to look the word up, never having heard it before) My talking point is pretty simple: With a change in temps you get a change in carbon growth rate. Without it, you don’t…
Thanks for your time.
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
There is a reason for local CO2 measurements taken near the surface, such as the chemical measurements mentioned by Beck, to have irregularities where deviation is disproportionately upward from overall atmospheric levels. This effect had been demonstrated by CO2 measurements at the Wisconsin Tower. When the sun is shining, biomass is generally a net sink of CO2 due to photosynthesis, but solar heating usually causes convection which causes the atmosphere to mix. When there is little or no sunlight, there is likekelt to be little or no convection, and biomass becomes a net source of CO2, causing local surface-level CO2 to increase above the overall atmospheric level.
Prior to MLO the atmospheric CO2 concentrations, both paleo ice cores and inconsistent contemporary grab samples, were massive wags. MLO data must be adjusted and corrected for the out gassing of adjacent volcanos. Data at some of NOAA’s tall towers passed through 400 ppm years before MLO reached that level. IPCC AR5 TS.6 claims uncertainty in CO2 concentrations over land. Preliminary data from OCO suggests that CO2 is not as well mixed as assumed. The high methane concentration in the Four Corners region is explained by the large amount of oil, gas, and coal extraction.
IPCC AR5 attributes 2 W/m^2 of unbalancing RF due to the increased CO2 concentration between 1750 and 2011. In the overall global heat balance 2 W (watt is power, not energy) is lost in the magnitude and uncertainty of ToA, 340 +/- 10, fluctuating albedo of clouds and ice, and the absorption and release of heat from the ocean and water vapor cycle.
IPCC AR5 acknowledges the pause in Text Box 9.2 and laments the failure of the GCMs to model it.
The sea ice and sheet ice is expanding not shrinking, the weather (30 years = climate) is less extreme not more, the sea level rise is not accelerating, the GCM’s are repeat failures, the CAGW hypothesis is coming unraveled, COP21 has all the making of yet another embarrassing fiasco, IPCC AR6 will mimic SNL’s Rosanna Rosanna Dana, “Well, neeeveeer mind!!”
Nicholas,
While I agree with most of what you say, you are wrong on a few points:
Mauna Loa data are not “adjusted” in any way, except if there are problems with the calibration gases. If there are huge variations due to downwind from the volcanic vents, these data are marked and not used for averaging. The same for upwind conditions, where slightly depleted levels from the valleys blow in. All together with or without these outliers, the yearly averages and trends differ with not more that 0.1 ppmv from each other, here for Mauna Loa and the South Pole (which has no volcano or vegetation in the far neighborhood), mind the scale…:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_mlo_spo_raw_select_2008.jpg
Tall towers measure CO2 (fluxes) over land, where there is in general a positive bias, compared to “background” CO2 levels: inversion at night can give enormous CO2 levels, while photosynthesis during the day is mixed away by more wind during the afternoon/day in warmer conditions…
2. Mankind is mostly responsible for that
IPCC can’t quantify mankind’s share of the atmospheric CO2 since they have no decent numbers for the natural fluctuations. Like the 2.6 trillion trees. Considering the uncertainties listed in AR5, mankind’s share could be anything from 4% to 96%. So much for certainty.
Nicholas,
Yes they have: human emissions are known with reasonable accuracy, based on fossil fuel sales (taxes! +/- 0.5 ppmv). CO2 levels in the atmosphere are accurately known (+/- 0.2 ppmv). The difference is what nature has added or removed. That shows that nature was a net sink for CO2 in the past 55 years with a variability of +/- 1 ppmv around the trend which is currently +2.15 ppmv/year for human emissions at +4.5 ppmv/year:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
Besides a small contribution of the warming oceans (less than 10 ppmv), the rest of the 110 ppmv increase above steady state (Henry’s law) is by humans…
“The difference is what nature has added or removed.”
Begging my point.
IPCC AR5 has no idea what those natural differences are. Just wags at best.
“…but there is no mechanism on earth that can absorb 80 ppmv CO2 in only a few years time.”
How about 2.6 trillion trees?
Nicholas,
Simple math:
increase in the atmosphere = human emissions + natural emissions – natural sinks
4.5 GtC/year = 9 GtC/year + X – Y
X – Y = -4.5 GtC/year.
Whatever X or Y may be, however they changed from one year to the next, even if one part tripled or halved. Even if vegetation turned from a net source into a net sink…
The current biosphere as a whole is a net sink for ~1 GtC/year CO2, that is 11% of human emissions:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5462/2467.short
and
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
Even in war time, there is no sign of any huge destruction or regrowth of massive amounts of trees.
Even the fastest growing trees on barren ground (a mature forest is hardly a sink) are not capable to remove 80 ppmv in only a few years time…
Yes Nicholas, and plants growing in places that were desert during colder times.
No, Ferdinand. No!
It DOES NOT MATTER that the value is negative. That is NOT what determines whether nature is a net sink.
It is ONLY a net sink IF AND ONLY IF it would be negative without the response to human inputs.
In a dynamic system, there are two ways to add to the output:
1) By having a positive value
2) By having a LESS NEGATIVE value than otherwise would be
Your Y is composed of two separate variables, YN and YA. YA is the response to anthropogenic forcing. YN is the response to natural forcing.
Only if X – YN were less than zero could you say that nature is, on its own, a net sink.
ONLY IF X – YN WERE LESS THAN ZERO COULD YOU SAY NATURE IS, ON ITS OWN, A NET SINK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is not “simple” math. It is simplistic math.
It is STUPID to the Nth power, with N a very high number.
Thanks Ferdinand,
¿Do you know why if CO2 sink rate is going down, of the total human added CO2 despite constantly increasing, a fixed 45% remains in the atmosphere and the rest is removed? I mean, the more CO2 we add, the same fraction gets removed by sinks. It does not make sense to me.
Bart,
To begin with: the sinks react on the total increase in the atmosphere above steady state governed by Henry’s law for the oceans, not the momentary releases in any given year.
Either the sinks are mostly natural, if the increase in the atmosphere is mostly natural, as you think, or the sinks are all human if humans are the main cause of the increase.
In the first case, YA is small and YN is huge, but as YA + YN is only around half the human emissions (call that XA), YA is much smaller than XA, thus most of the residual increase is from XA, which is opposite the assumption that the residual increase in the atmosphere is natural.
In the second case, all sinks are human caused and YN is zero, but YA is only half XA and XA is fully responsible for the increase.
Thus sorry Bart, if nature was responsible for most of the increase then YA is too small and more of human emissions remain in the atmosphere which means that XN – YN is always negative in that case and nature is NOT responsible for the increase…
Yes, simple math and a little knowledge of first order linear processes does help…
Javier
See here…
Bartemis October 18, 2015 at 12:48 pm
No, Ferdinand. No!
It DOES NOT MATTER that the value is negative. That is NOT what determines whether nature is a net sink.
It is ONLY a net sink IF AND ONLY IF it would be negative without the response to human inputs.
Bart’s usual facile argument! According to him a natural sink is only the part that absorbs natural CO2. So a forest that is a net absorber of CO2 is only partly a natural sink, the part that absorbs human generated CO2 is not ‘natural’. The ocean will follow Henry’s wrt CO2 absorption, the amount absorbed depends on the concentration in the atmosphere, take out the human generated flux and the ocean will remove the same amount of CO2 from the atmosphere which will cause the concentration to drop until a balance is reached.
Ground measurements are of little interest, climate-wise. CO2 radiates at approximately the tropopause height — that’s where the concentration is of importance, at least in that regard.
“that’s where the concentration is of importance,” It is? Where the “hot spot”?
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
According to the theory the upper part of the troposphere must warm faster than surface temperature. Since we have had weather balloons for a over 60 years as CO2 has increased, recorded temperature data show of no warming of the upper troposphere faster than surface temperature. Don’t give me this build up BS.
The bottom line is how much the “notch” of CO2 radiation changes (deepens), and this happens at around -50C to -60C (at that atmospheric temperature’s associated altitude). Problem w/this is that changes in the “notch” are so subtle/small w/the current CO2 increases is that it’s very difficult to detect.
I don’t really understand where or how the “hot spot” is supposed to occur, or even if it’s actually important (it’s a model prediction).
‘tim r’ says:
up to the past 18 yrs ago. there has been a approx. 1.7 deg. increase that has remained.
Wrong.
As one of the authors of the Massen/Beck paper on finding a “background” CO2 level by using an exponential fit to the CO2 versus wind-speed data, I would like to add these comments:
1. the method we introduced in this paper gives good results with modern measurement series, like those I continue to do at Diekirch, Luxembourg (see here ) where daily levels vary often very spectacularly. An “infinite” wind speed would mix the CO2 thoroughly so that the corresponding readings should be close to this “background”. This is what happens at maritime stations (or at Mauna Loa) where the influence of local emissions (anthropogenic or natural) is diluted by the practically always high wind speeds. The important criterion is: does the CO2 versus wind speed plot show an asymptote (what we called a “finger” pattern). If yes, this should be the “background”. If no, the conclusion becomes much more uneasy to make. The Kreutz CO2 data at Giessen and those measured by Steinhäuser at Wien are very spread out at the highest wind speeds measured, so the late Ernst-Georg Beck and I concluded prudently that these plots “give the impression of a higher historical European background than that shown by ice-core proxies”. My opinion is that historical (pre 1958) global CO2 levels had much more variation than shown by the usual ice-core graphs. Was the global background also sometimes (much) higher? I think there still is no definitive answer on this.
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
Hello Francis,
Some time ago…
While I agree that there might have been more variability than can be seen in ice cores, the direct measurements at the South Pole or Mauna Loa (or global) also show little variability, not more than +/- 1 ppmv around the trend.
The best resolution ice cores (Law Dome) have a resolution of better than a decade over the past 150 years, thus overlap part of the historical data. These are capable to detect a peak value of ~20 ppmv over one year or a sustained change of 2 ppmv over a decade. That means that any such change over the past 150 years would be detected in these ice cores.
It is a pity that most of the historical measurements were taken at the wrong places and those that were at the most interesting places (Barrow and Antarctica) had insufficient accuracy to be of any value…
Indeed high wind speeds could have given an indication, but unfortunately there were insufficient data, still with a high spread at Giessen at high wind speeds…
So all together, there is little we can do with the enormous amount of data from the past, besides rigorous selection based on place where was measured and the accuracy of the equipment used…
Many greetings,
Ferdinand
Dr. Ball,
Sorry, but that is pure nonsense. Charles Keeling made a brand new instrument to measure CO2 at an accuracy of 1:40,000, unparalleled to anything on the market at that time. As far as I know, he never applied a patent on that. That instrument was used to calibrate all NDIR equipment and calibration gases over the years by the Scripps Institute until the main calibration was taken over by NOAA. Still Scripps uses their own calibration procedures independent of NOAA and their own samples at Mauna Loa. The manometric instrument made by Keeling Sr, still was in use until a few years ago…
Keeling Jr. now works at NOAA, but the CO2 measurements at Mauna Loa are under supervision of Pieter Tans, not Keeling Jr.
Keeling Sr. was not an alarmist, his only goal was to measure CO2 in the best possible way. Like many at that time, he thought that higher temperatures were beneficial for agriculture. Remember that he started at the South Pole in 1958, before the “global cooling” scare and long before the “global warming” scare…
Again, Dr. Ball with such nonsense you make yourself only unbelievable. CO2 is measured at some 70 “good” places for “background” CO2, of which 10 by NOAA, the other 60 by different organizations, different countries, different people and different equipment. It would be a hell of a conspiracy to make that they all show the same trends over time… The more that Scripps is still angry to have lost their monopoly in calibrations, still use their own and own samples. If they would find any error in what NOAA does, they would be very happy to put that in world view…
I don’t think you will see that in our lifetime: only if humans emit less than halve than what they emit today, that may happen. That is not in the next 50 years, as China (and India) will triple their emissions up to 1930…
That is in fact the main message skeptics should bring: increasing CO2 levels, no increase in temperature.
The non-human-origin of the current increase in CO2 is a lost case and a very bad argument in any debate…
Ferdinand E says:
That is in fact the main message skeptics should bring: increasing CO2 levels, no increase in temperature.
And it should be added that the increase in CO2 has been entirely beneficial. Agricultural productivity is rising along with the rise in (harmless) CO2.
There may have been a legitimate concern many years ago whether there might be problems associated with the rise in CO2. But over time it has become clear that there has been no global damage or harm from the rise in CO2. Thus, CO2 is ‘harmless’. We wouldn’t even be aware of it without sensitive instruments. Only the plants know.
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
“Agricultural productivity is rising along with the rise in (harmless) CO2.”
if you buy that correlation, then its hard to object to the correlation between c02 and temperature
http://berkeleyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/annual-with-forcing-small.png
Steven Mosher,
^That^ is an overlay chart you posted. It says nothing about cause and effect.
The only cause and effect is this: ∆CO2 is caused by ∆temperature.
That’s the only corellation between T and CO2:
DB
“^That^ is an overlay chart you posted. It says nothing about cause and effect.”
I didnnt say anything about cause and effect.
Here is what YOU said
“And it should be added that the increase in CO2 has been entirely beneficial. Agricultural productivity is rising along with the rise in (harmless) CO2.
1. you provided no data
2. you imply that rising c02 has caused an increase in productivity.
I said.
IF you buy that correlation argument, then the C02 and temperature simultaneous rise should
also be good proof for you.
here’s a little nugget. AGW theory says that
1. c02 rise will sometime lead temp increase and sometimes lag it
2. there will be periods where they ANTI correlate.
Why?
temperature is a function of ALL FORCING
Hi Steven,
I was simply pointing out that the correlation between CO2 and global T is a one-way street. Changing T causes CO2 to follow. That’s the only cause and effect I have been able to find.
I have lots of charts like this, showing that ∆CO2 is caused by ∆T:
Will post more if you like, on many different time scales.
But despite repeated requests, I’ve never found any similar charts, showing that changing CO2 causes changing global T. Specifically, I can’t find any charts showing that rising CO2 causes global warming. If you have any charts like that, please post them. I keep asking, but no one ever responds.
And there is plenty of evidence like this showing that higher CO2 concentrations cause greater plant growth. Again, if you want more peer revieweed papers or other links, ask and I’ll post them.
[Snip. Sockpuppetry. ~mod.]
I have lots of charts like this, showing that ∆CO2 is caused by ∆T:
Hopefully they’re better than this one which doesn’t show that at all.
You calculate 12 month change, smooth it by 12 month averaging, plot it at the center of the time period and then claim that there’s a 6-month delay, a claim for which your massaged data is inadequate.
tim r,
When you’re done with that wild-eyed nonsense (shifts/shunts Droughts) you can explain why Ferdinand and I are wrong. Can you identify global harm from CO2? Or are you just parroting alarmist scare words?
The rise in CO2 has been entirely beneficial. No global damage or harm has ever been identified. None whatever. Thus, we can confidently state that the rise in CO2 has been “harmless”.
db,
In the early days of (very expensive at that time) personal computers I had an Apple II (paid by the boss), which had a random sentence generator program (don’t remember its origin). Seems that tim r. has a modern version…
Ferdinand,
Funny, and apparently true. ☺
**********
Steven Mosher,
As I wrote here several days ago:
If you have any charts like that, please post them. I keep asking, but no one ever responds
I’ve requested charts similar to the numerous data-based charts I have linked to, showing that ∆CO2 is caused by ∆T — but which show that CO2 is the cause of ∆T. I have made that request dozens of times over the past several years. But as of today, no one has ever produced such a chart.
To me, that is the central question. Because if ∆T is the cause of ∆CO2, then the alarmist crowd has gotten its causality backward from the start. Their original premise (CO2=AGW) was wrong, so naturally their conclusions will be wrong (I acknowledge that there is some small effect on temperature from CO2, but it is too minuscule to measure).
Steven, you say that doesn’t matter. But to me it is everything. Blaming CO2 for the rise in global temperature is the basis for the entire ‘dangerous AGW’ scare.
If global T changes are the cause of changes in CO2, rather than the effect, then the eco-contingent has been arguing something they got backward from the get-go. In any normal science discipline, a realization like that would cause massive embarrassment, and they would go back to their drawing boards.
But climate science is special; it has its own special rules, and apparently they get a special dispensation from the Scientific Method, and from Occam’s Razor, and from the climate Null Hypothesis.
Because they’re, like, special. ☺
DB
“But climate science is special, and it has its own special rules, so apparently they get a special dispensation from the Scientific Method, and from Occam’s Razor, and from the climate Null Hypothesis. Because they’re, like, special. ☺”
I included the special happy face. Your pitching easy to hit softballs DB. The counter from the true believer is that temperature change is in a temporary pause. Indeed, they are stalwarts of protecting man from catastrophe because they are open to the possibility that the pause will explode into a steep rise.
The counter
“CO2 is rising. It’s been proven. Temperature is pausing, but only to rest. We must continue the course to head off its eventual release of this stored energy”.
Disclaimer … I happen to be an oft attacked doubter. Mocked, ridiculed and ostracized. It’s okay because I hear the marketed counter typically before it becomes mainstream. I read WUWT to get a point of view that I don’t get elsewhere.
Does having the Mauna Loa measurements under the direction of a 911 Truther detract from their credibility?
I agree with everything you say except this. If the climate starts cooling, and we go past peak oil, we may well see a decrease in CO2 levels. This is not impossible and could happen in as little as a few decades. Of course this would be bad news, not only for IPCC but for everybody outside the tropics.
Javier,
That would be hard to perform: the reaction of CO2 levels in the atmosphere is a transient response. If human emissions were constant at ~4.5 ppmv / year and the sink rate would remain constant at ~2.15 ppmv/year (which is the case if the extra CO2 in the atmosphere remains the same), the temperature drop would need to be 0.13°C/year (~16 ppmv/°C) to remove the remaining 2.85 ppmv increase we see today. Continuously, as the emissions still are going on. After 10 years already a drop of 1.34°C, which is about twice the approximated MWP-LIA drop in temperature, which shows a drop of only ~8 ppmv CO2.
Peak oil or gas may be of help, but with fracking, that is -again- postponed for the next 50 years. Even then we still have coal which is sufficient for a few more centuries and can be transformed into oil and gas…
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
DB
Bravo + 5 for clarity
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
tim r,
Thanx for your “speculation/hunches”. But at this “Best Science” site, we need verifiable, empirical and testable evidence and measurements.
Sorry, but your 'hunches' and 'thought concepts' don't cut it here. Post verifiable facts, evidence, and measurements. If you can.
Why would anyone measure for CO2 on top of a volcano spewing out…CO2 ????
There are worse places to work than Hawaii.
Because since you can separate both measurements, you get to publish papers on atmospheric CO2 and volcanic CO2. It is clear that it was a very good idea, because it worked.
Have you even been there?
Bartemis, what is the vertical axis of your graph
Thank you, Dr. Ball for updating your very valuable reconstruction of the carbon dioxide forcing gospel according to the IPCC. It will replace my printout of the earlier discussion.
It is easy, of course, to forget in this furor that Charles Keeling was an honest and talented scientist. What has become of his work is an object lesson in political interference in basic research.
Judith Curry had an interesting post on the subject this January at
http://judithcurry.com/2015/01/13/what-would-charles-keeling-think-science-in-spite-of-politics/
In it she refers to, “An interesting postscript on this in the NYTimes article in 2010 (5 years after Keeling’s death):
“In an interview in La Jolla, Dr. Keeling’s widow, Louise, said that if her husband had lived to see the hardening of the political battle lines over climate change, he would have been dismayed.
“’He was a registered Republican,’ she said. ‘He just didn’t think of it as a political issue at all.’”
And it is interesting to note that in Keeling’s unfinished memoirs, part of which Dr. Curry reproduces, he seemed to be turning away from a causal relationship of carbon dioxide to temperature fluctuation, but was unable to further pursue the intimations of natural climate variability:
“With our records now 30 years long, these fluctuations [variations in the atmospheric CO2 records on the decadal time scale] looked like a repeating decadal oscillation. Was the cause oceanic or terrestrial? Did El Nino events in some way contribute? Our quest to find out led us, however, well beyond our original focus, because once again we found a surprising relationship between CO2 and temperature.
“Our curiosity was now drawn towards what could be causing approximately 10-year fluctuations in temperature. We turned our attention to exploring a possible tidal connection with temperature, encouraged by a relevant discussion in the same treatise on climate where Bacastow had discovered the Southern Oscillation. Also, in an article by Loder & Garrett we found mention of a plausible mechanism: that strong tides may cause vertical mixing of stratified surface ocean water with cooler deeper water, sufficiently to cause appreciable transient cooling at the sea surface.”
(Sockpuppet. Comments deleted. ~mod.)
A necessary addendum –
In my haste to bring up the above reference, based on a discussion of his autobiographical essay, I failed to introduce it with Keeling’s critical prefatory remark about the effect of intrusive government policy on his research.”
“At editorial request, the following sketch is focused on a particular aspect of my career: my desire to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide. For much of my professional career, this desire met with heavy opposition from certain agencies of the US Government that wanted such measurements to be managed principally, or even solely, as in-house programs of the federal bureaucracy. I have attempted to intertwine the portrayal of this struggle with a narrative of the concurrent gain in knowledge from my measurements which repeatedly helped me to argue for their continuance.”
My apologies.
Thank you.
This is what we know of Keeling.
Tom,
Thanks for that, Keeling Sr. was an outstanding scientist in the true meaning of that word. His persistence and skills in measuring and maintaining the quality of the CO2 data are seldom seen in science, even (or especially) today.
His autobiography can be found at:
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/sites/default/files/publications/keeling_autobiography.pdf
It is a fascinating struggle of one man with the help of a few others against the administrations over the years…
Thanks for setting the record straight Tom Anderson,
Two of last Keeling’s articles were on the influence of Moon cycles and tides on climate. There’s nothing better published on the issue despite being 15 years old. He was a very good open-minded scientist. Much better than most of the current bunch of climatologists. Dr. Tim Ball should stop badmouthing him to score points. It doesn’t look good.
J
“He was a very good open-minded scientist.”
A genuine compliment.
Agreed Javier. When you point a finger at something, always remember there are three pointing back at you. I’m as guilty as the next person. May I garner more tolerance of all views.
Andy: Thank you for being responsible and including a note warning about the controversial nature of Beck’s work.
Interesting article, but since my knowledge of the CO2 factor is very limited I concentrate my attention on another natural variable, geomagnetic field.
Since it appears that no-one mentioned it I think it is worth of a short comment, if nothing else but for its high correlation with Crutem4 and the PAUSE.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GT-GMF1.gif
I posted detailed guide how to reproduce graph here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/14/september-2015-global-surface-landocean-and-lower-troposphere-temperature-anomaly-model-data-difference-update/#comment-2051879
Ferdinand
Simple math:
increase in the atmosphere = human emissions + natural emissions – natural sinks
4.5 GtC/year = 9 GtC/year + X – Y
X – Y = -4.5 GtC/year.
Whatever X or Y may be, however they changed from one year to the next, even if one part tripled or halved. Even if vegetation turned from a net source into a net sink…
Per IPCC Chap 6 esp figure 1 and table 6.1 (If I recall)
The global CO2 balance equation looks more like this:
(.50 or .43 or .45 times mankind contribution sequestered +/- 10%) plus (oceans +/- 20%) + (vegetation +/- 50%) plus (land use +/- 40%) + (unknown unknowns +/- who knows) = no clue!
Nicholas,
The IPCC has no clue where exactly the sinks are or their variability (they have, but only rough estimates), but that doesn’t make any difference: what is sure is that nature was a net sink for the past 57 years, thus its contribution to the increase is zero, nada, nothing, except for a small part caused by warming oceans (less than 10 ppmv). Thus near all of the increase is due to human emissions. That is all that counts…
There is only one theoretical alternative possible: if the natural cycle increased a 4-fold in lockstep with human emissions, but that violates all known observations…
Abe,
If you are so blind that you can’t make a differentiation between what is known (the overall difference) and important for the cause of the increase and the details (individual fluxes), because you don’t like the result, then sorry, I can’t help you…
Dr. Ball: It doesn’t matter whether the pre-industrial CO2 levels was 280 ppm (ice core data) or 300 ppm (stomata data). The level was fairly constant through the Holocene, but both technics show large changes in earlier eras. This implies that natural uptake and release of CO2 (from the very large reservoirs that do exist) was fairly constant for many millennia. Keeling showed that CO2 was 315 ppm in 1960 and was continuing to rise steadily. All three are incompatible with Beck’s data – data that was not acquired from locations suitable for estimating the mean GLOBAL CO2 level. (Keeling chose a location 3.3 km above the surface and took measurements at night when undisturbed air from even higher was descending to supply nightly off-shore winds. Steady trade winds bring in undisturbed air daily from a 100 miles away.) There is certainly no reason to doubt that we were emitting enough CO2 in 1960 to raise CO2 by about 2 ppm/yr (now 4 ppm/yr) and that the atmospheric CO2 was rising at rate of 1 ppm/yr (now 2 ppm/yr). No hand-waving can change this data.
I’ve always read your earlier posts with interest, deferring to your expertise. This post indicates I need more skepticism.
Frank, do you know why the fraction of anthropogenic CO2 remaining in the atmosphere is a fixed 55% despite an increase in emissions of over 100%?
Javier,
Just coincidence, it is the result of a slightly quadratic increase of human emissions over time, which leads to a slightly quadratic increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and in sink rate. If human emissions were constant, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere would increase asymptotically towards a new steady state equilibrium where human input and sink rate are equal at a constant CO2 level…
Thank you Ferdinand. I’ll have to think about it.
The fact that CO2 is a ghg combined with the sustained mantra that CO2 causes warming is so entrenched in the thinking of many folks that they reject outright any evidence this is not true. Thus they do not even look at, let alone try to grasp, a demonstration that CO2 has no effect on climate and an analysis that identifies the two factors which explain 97% of average global temperature trajectory since before 1900. The analysis and demonstration are at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
I believe Mauna Loa only started measuring supposedly well mixed CO2 in 1968, before that proxies were used, didn`t that occur in Mikes nature trick, Actual temp measurements grafted to proxies.
Your belief is unsupported by the the facts, the first full year of CO2 monitoring at the South Pole and Mauna Loa was 1958, part of the IGY program.
Dr. Ball, I would add another “science” assumption at the beginning of your list.
2. Bizarrely, water vapor, the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, by far, isn’t counted as a primary greenhouse gas but rather is treated as “feedback” caused by CO2-caused warming. (This is akin to scientists arguing that no water vapor would exist in the atmosphere if there were no CO2 in the atmosphere).
I thought Anthony Watts was distancing himself from the sky dragons?
I think it’s those seeking to slay sky dragons that are personae non gratae.
mebbe,
If you’ve ever read the really vicious, ad hominem personal attacks against Anthony on the ‘Slayers’ blog, you will understand why the blog owners are not very welcome.
I don’t think Dr Ball is a “sky dragon”. Sky dragons typically just dismiss the greenhouse radiational physics — Dr Ball doesn’t do that.
Sorry Dr Ball, but there will be no forensic investigation into the car crash that is the UN, IPCC or CAGW hysteria.
Shovel and Lie (You shut up) is the UN Cliches only skill.
As with the CRU emails, any “official investigation” of this insanity will be an interesting spectacle in its own right.
This mass hysteria and the resultant waste of resources and lives, will never be investigated by the people who orchestrated it.
The official explanation for the crash; “The Natural Causes of Climate Change, leapt up and overpowered us.”
An act of the Gods for sure.
There is far too much attribution of motive than data. I prefer my science unadulterated with opinion.
“I prefer my science unadulterated with opinion.”
Good luck. Won’t happen until science is unadulterated by money and egos.
+ 10
Watson and Crick’s fame and fortune seemed to be one of the turning points to fame and fortune in science. Could be biased from my generational point of view …. but I remember the shift from primarily nerdy, quiet researchers to rock star pursuits.
Knute, I think you’d have to go back to at least Einstein to see such a shift.
The Cloud Mystery by Svensmark, Shaviv and Veizer…
. . .Best explanation of climate change … IMHO
https://youtu.be/_3jXCo3BVuA
And an update…awesome video
indefatigablefrog
October 17, 2015 at 8:03 pm
For anyone who is interested in the above, “Cloud Mystery” documentary, this has been taken up by Jasper Kirkby, conducting further related experiments at CERN. Physicists are commonly very suspicious of confident assertions regarding “consensus” climate science. Whether they publicly admit it, or not.
So it’s interesting that this research has managed to survive the alarmist takeover of science.
https://youtu.be/63AbaX1dE7I
The minutes of the APS workshop of January, 2014 expressed significant uncertainty about CAGW theory they just hadn’t the backbone to be up front about it. Download available on web, a 500 page slog.
Yes, Billy Liar, the moral at the bottom:
Belief should not be questioned, we are told.
97 percent of the common will says ‘the science is settled’.
Call for Isaac, Abraham is in the ‘following voices’ mode.
– Hans
Billy Liar,
: ‘Mariam Ben Isa’,
‘Marias Sohn Jesus – marians son jesus’:
the icon all that 97 percenters wahabitic consensus ‘common volunteers’ go clockwork.
____
religion is private property. And let’s leave the real world to the real world.
____
Thx – Hans
Since this post is about CO2, I thought I would put this reference from AGU in about Carbon sinks that I had not seen discussed here before although perhaps I missed it:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL064222/full
My gawd. .. it has just dawned on me. If and when CO2 NAAQS get published there will be be an explosion of lawyers hiring data validators and independent CO2 monitoring experts. Perhaps a company equipped with drone operated, real time analysis pumping big data to central control. Probably even a website displaying the data to see if you should contact Howie, Cheatham and Son.
Carbon sinks and carbon emitters. Maybe Google will have a real time map display.
Svalgaard of Stanford confirms: global temperatures since 1850 are correlated to the Earth’s magnetic field change, see here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/18/weekly-climate-and-energy-news-roundup-201/#comment-2052183
Unfortunately, I do not find your plots well labelled or clear. Maybe, it is my poor eyesight.
What is the yellow line meant to depict?
What is the brown line meant to depict?
The yellow and brown lines appear well correlated until about 1970 when the brown line rises at a significantly different rate to the yellow line. But perhaps more significantly there are a lot of overshoots when you compare the yellow and brown lines to temperature. At times, they stay within close bounds, and at other times whilst the direction of travel may be similar, there are significant overshoots and this suggests that they are not so closely correlated as you may be inferring.
Obviously like many readers I have seen your many exchanges with Dr Svalgaard. What does Dr Svalgaard actually say about the claimed correlation between the yellow and brown lines with temperature and with the Earth’s magnetic field ? Does he claim that this is just another exercise in curve fitting?
Indeed, but as a good critical thinker knows, correlation is not causation. There are likely a million plus things that correlate with CO2, none of them prove causation.
Knute,
Of course a critical thinker knows correlation does not prove causation, but it is vital to any attempt at proving causation, right?
“There are likely a million plus things that correlate with CO2, none of them prove causation.”
Perhaps, but one of them is not (as of this writing ; ) temperature records, according to my eyes anyway. That other possibly causal factors have been detected and recorded, which said records do correlate with temperature change records (for now ; ) is at least worthy of some critical thought/consideration, it seems to me.
Good one JK. I like the concept of causations often begin as correlations. Of course then we seek evidence when we are honest.
Yup, Temp is not cooperating. The true believer then lurches to …. well, it’s of course just lagging. If temperature was actually getting colder, the true believer would make up some other nonsense. If CO2 weren’t increasing, we’d be looking for hidden indicators yet undiscovered.
The entire debate is gross and smacks of ridiculousness. It’s exhausting in real life to enter into the debate and reminds me of that ole truism that any discussion over politics or religion is likely to end up unresolved and the participants not walking off into kumbayah happy land.
The saddest (to me) thing of all this hooey is the wasted energy put into meaningless problem solving. Imagine all the anger and betrayal that will roll thru the land when the gig is finally up.
Sorry for the rant. Tough day.
So what. Temperatures since 1850 correlate to so many things that one more doesn’t matter. Anything with about ~60 year cyclicity can be correlated to temperatures, or detrended temperatures or inverted temperatures. And if you can even move the signals X years to improve the fit, then even an elephant can be made to correlate to global temperatures.
Javier,
“And if you can even move the signals X years to improve the fit, then even an elephant can be made to correlate to global temperatures.”
Any such signals must have a time delay aspect to any fitting they exhibit, as I understand global temperature change, to be considered rational candidates at all. Simultaneous signals would indicated co-effect relatedness, perhaps, but not causality. It’s the consistency and reasonableness of the time delay, that warrants attention in this case vukcevic is asking us to examine and consider, it seems to me.
PS, consideration does not equal acceptance . . or wedding ; )
CO2, CO2 ….. that is all anyone refers to in the global warming stakes. H2O however in the form of water vapour and cloud cover have a far far greater effect on global and local air temperatures than CO2′ which pales into insignificance in comparison
Only on Planet Alternate Reality could you codify CO2 as a pollutant and then try and tax it. I’m pretty sure even Planet Alternate Reality couldn’t pull off taxing H20, but I’ll put it in the suggestion box at the UN.
The priority should given to reducing H2O emissions not CO2 emissions as it is here on planet …..
Robert
So now we need to track clouds and water vapor in order to save the world ? I hope your just being silly and trying to tickle my funny bone.
There must be a planet out there in the multiverse similar to your planet alternative reality where there are oceans of CO2 but not much water vapour; the natives keep warmish by burning H2 with the inevitable perceived global warming and a downer on H2O emissions
Robert S October 19, 2015 at 9:44 am
There must be a planet out there in the multiverse similar to your planet alternative reality where there are oceans of CO2 but not much water vapor;
Wouldn’t that be Venus?
Venus has an opaque atmosphere and rains sulphuric acid not much primary radiation reaches the surface. On the multiverse planet they also burn H2 to drive their vehicles.
Interesting match between the 40s CO2 and warming blips.
Why the blips?
JF
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/04/under-the-volcano-over-the-volcano/#comment-403530
Read the PDF above, it is a short 17 pages, and as he stated in June, resolves many of issues of local and wind. Final take, “A validation check has been made for 3 historical CO2 series. The overall impression is one of continental European historic regional CO2 background levels significantly higher than the commonly assumed global ice-core proxy levels.”
DD More,
A reaction from Francis Massen is here, with a reaction of mine below it…
Main problem: too few data at high wind speed and still with a huge range to be of real use for the method that Beck/Massen used for the important Giessen series, which is at the base of the 1942 “peak” in Ernst Beck’s compilation…
So I take it figure one is not a good representation of what goes on. How much is wrong or missing? The pictorial is a good idea. Especially when i am trying to understand some of what you folks post here.
JBP
My concern with CO2 is a bit different. I don’t actually doubt the Mauna Loa numbers. It’s probably has been rising during the record period. In my book, that’s a good thing. I get nervous below 1000PPM and below 500PPM, I know every day is a gift. Imagine an asteroid strike or some other catastrophic event that reduced impinging solar flux, at the much vaunted 350PPM. Talk about an extinction event!
Excerpts from IPCC AR5 WG1 Chapter 6 Table 6.1
“The table does not include natural exchanges, (e.g. rivers, weathering) between reservoirs.”
Anthropogenic PgC 1750 – 2011
(.50 or .43 or .45)………………….+/- range….+/- %
Atmospheric Increase…. 240………….10………4%
Fossil Fuel & Cement……375………….30………8%
Ocean to Atmosphere…-155………….30……-19%
Land to Atmosphere
Net Land Use……..…….180………….80……..44%
Residual Land Sink………-160…………90…….-56%
Math Check……………….240
My point is that while the PgC (times 3.67 to get CO2 PgCO2) added by anthropogenic sources, FF & cement, is fairly well defined, +/- 4%, the natural sources and sinks are way not! Also note that the caption excludes natural exchanges. This table supposedly and exclusively WAGs exactly & precisely (Yeah, right!)how the 265 year anthropogenic increase was partitioned between global sources and sinks.
These guesstimates are just pulled out of someone’s +/- wide load rear end!!!!!
Rear ends footnoted below the table.
NS
“These guesstimates are just pulled out of someone’s +/- wide load rear end!!!!!”
Your not with them so your against them. Hoffer over 50 years ago was right. The mass movement is born of disillusionment with the present and future. Perhaps that’s why NASA was one of the first de-missionizing of this administration. It certainly provided a boldly go future. They took it away. Created more disillusionment with the future.
If you were to loft all boats with a new movement (Hoffer offers this as an alternative and as an aside it is often used to move a cultist away from the current cult), what would it be ?
Knute: Got science?
NS
Got _____________ .
Whatever it is in the US at least will have to counter the perception that CAGW simultaneously gives protected classes such as latinos better air quality and job growth. Here is a link to a Yale article that describes how Latino voters connect the issues. Yale is part of the Ivy intellectual elite that are promoting the disparate impact … CAGW movement. They feed the message to major NGOs, who then sub to smaller community targeted NGOs. The US agencies (as well as other well heeled elites like Soros, Silicon Valley and Hollywood) fund these smaller NGOs thru feeder grants. Occupy Wall Street, Hands Up, Green NGOs, are just a few of the splinter groups that come together as part of the mass movement.
http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/07/hispanics-and-global-warming/
Abe,
If you have real arguments why the overall difference in sinks and sources of CO2 doesn’t show that nature is a net sink for CO2 and thus that humans are responsible for the CO2 increase in the atmosphere, then we may have a discussion. Shouting about religion and thermometers are not arguments…
Ferdinand,
“…humans are responsible for the CO2 increase in the atmosphere,…”
Can you back this statement with certainty, with science & facts? Can you provide a comprehensive atmospheric CO2 mass balance, not just anthro and CO2 – not carbon, that shows clearly and precisely 1) how much CO2 is in the atmosphere, 2) where it came from, 3) where it goes?
A link, google category, publication book or paper, any would work.
Nicholas,
If all observations point in one direction and a theory doesn’t violate any observation, one can accept that theory as working base until proven wrong by even one observation.
The “theory” that humans are responsible for the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere does match:
– the mass balance
– the process characteristics
– the 13C/12C ratio changes
– the 14C/12C ratio changes
– the oxygen use
– the oceans pH and pCO2
– the short and long term influence of temperature
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
Every alternative explanation fails one or more observations:
– The biosphere can’t be the cause, as the biosphere as a whole is a net sink for CO2, based on the oxygen balance. The earth is greening.
– The oceans can’t be the cause, as the 13C/12C ratio of the oceans is higher than of the atmosphere, thus should increase that ratio in the atmosphere, while we see a firm decrease in ratio to human emissions.
Moreover, CO2 (derivatives) levels in the ocean surface increase while pH drops, that means CO2 is entering the oceans from the atmosphere, not reverse.
– All other possible sources (volcanoes, rock weathering,…) are either too small or too slow.
If you know of any alternative theory that does explain the increase in the atmosphere without violating any observation, I like to hear it…
1) how much CO2 is in the atmosphere
Average 2014 397 +/- 2 ppmv globally, based on the average of several ground level stations and the variability over 95% of the atmosphere.
2) where it came from
~300 ppmv natural, ~97 ppmv human as origin of the mass.
~360 ppmv natural, ~37 ppmv human as original molecules.
See the remaining fraction of human CO2 emissions (FA = ~9%) after years of exchanges, still humans are responsible for the full increase in mass, except for ~10 ppmv by temperature:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/fract_level_emiss.jpg
Where FA is the remaining fraction of human CO2 molecules in the atmosphere, FL in ocean surface waters and tCA calculated total CO2 increase in the atmosphere, based on human emissions and sink rate.
3) where it goes
Although not relevant at all where exactly and how large the sinks are (only the total net sink is known with reasonable accuracy), some rough estimates per year:
From the ~9 GtC human emissions as mass (NOT the original molecules):
~1 GtC into vegetation
~ 0.5 GtC in the ocean surface layer
~ 3 GtC in the deep oceans
Not right at hand, hmmm. Would Jeopardy music help? Do, do, do, do, do doo doo……
Nicholas,
Sometimes I have another life than reacting on everything I know that is scientifically wrong…
BTW, I prefer classics like Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz,…
So lots of jargon and hand waving, but no answers.
At 400 ppm CO2 in atmosphere I get 3.099 E15 kg, 3,099 Gt, 3,099 Pg of CO2. That’s 844.5 Pg carbon equivalent. Where’re your numbers?
Where does ALL that CO2 come from? IPCC AR5 says that between 1750 and 2011 anthropogenic sources added 555 Pg C or 2,037 Pg CO2. That’s 65.7% of the entire current amount!! Can that be correct? Does anybody check these numbers? Where are yours?
Where does ALL the CO2 go? IPCC AR5 says that 315 Pg of the anthropogenic C sank into the oceans and lands, +/- 50%, nice band of uncertainty, leaving behind 240 Pg of the anthropogenic C. And just whose butt did they pull that partitioning from?
What are all the non-anthropogenic sources and sinks up to? Where’s that comprehensive atmospheric CO2 balance?
Nobody really knows so let’s just make man’s fault.
Nicholas,
400 ppmv with a factor 2.12 gives 848 GtC in the atmosphere, so we do agree here.
Sources:
The amounts emitted by humans are known with reasonable accuracy, in the far past more estimated, in recent decades by inventories from each country based on fossil fuel sales (taxes) and burning efficiency. Error estimates +/- 0.5 GtC/year. My opinion: -0.5 to +1 GtC/year, more underestimated than overestimated, seen the human spirit to avoid taxes…
All inventories must be delivered in the same form, see:
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=90&pid=44&aid=8
and especially the notes:
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/docs/IPMNotes.html
Human sources from land use changes are more problematic, but are more than compensated by the growing biosphere, which is a net sink see next item.
Sinks:
In the biosphere, based on the oxygen and δ13C balances:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5462/2467.short (full report after free subscription)
and
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
In the ocean surface layer: 10% of the atmospheric change, due to the Revelle/buffer factor
The remaining difference between emissions and increase in the atmosphere in the deep oceans, as there are no other fast enough sinks. The oxygen balance gives following partitioning between emissions, atmosphere, biosphere and oceans for the years 1990-2000:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/bolingraph.gif
Nicholas:
That’s 65.7% of the entire current amount!! Can that be correct?
That is indeed correct and the main reason why you see an increase in the atmosphere: the increase over the equilibrium (steady state) with the oceans is only halve what humans have emitted in the past 165 years, nature can’t cope with the speed of the emissions (the e-fold decay rate is ~51 years, half life time ~40 years). Still the emissions remain increasing slightly quadratic, while the sinks remove between 10-90% of the emissions (as result of the total extra pressure, not the emissions in a particular year), modulated by temperature variability, 40-60% if averaged over decades and 53% overall rate over the past 57 years (even around 50% over the past 115 years).
Fossil fuel is about 2/3rd of the anthropogenic C.
Nicholas:
Fossil fuel is about 2/3rd of the anthropogenic C.
Yes, but emissions due to land use changes are more than compensated by the extra growth of vegetation, the overall uptake being ~1 GtC/year (~0.5 ppmv/year) by the whole biosphere. The remaining ~9 GtC/year human emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement manufacturing is far more certain and the difference with the ~4.5 GtC/year increase in the atmosphere is the net sink somewhere in nature.
Land use changes only add to that, thus the real sink in vegetation is the net sink of ~1 GtC/year calculated from the oxygen balance plus the human releases caused by land use changes.
All my calculations and graphs are based on emissions from fossil fuel use and cement manufacturing only.
Further:
What are all the non-anthropogenic sources and sinks up to? Where’s that comprehensive atmospheric CO2 balance?
Before humans emitted a lot of buried carbon as CO2, the only huge influence was temperature. What is seen in ice cores is a balance of ~8 ppmv/°C over the past 800,000 years, but as the temperatures at the poles changes twice as fast as global, the overall balance is about 16 ppmv/°C.
Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater gives 4-17 ppmv/°C change. Thus 16 ppmv/°C is not far off.
Vegetation reacts opposite to temperature, thus on long term, the oceans win the battle.
Seasonal changes are mainly vegetation (NH extra-tropical forests) driven and show globally about 5 ppmv/°C change.
1-3 years fast variability also is vegetation (tropical forests) driven and also is around 4-5 ppmv/°C
That means that from the ~110 ppmv increase since 1850 some 10 ppmv may come from the temperature increase, the rest is human…
The assumption that the CO2 concentration is/was balanced or static therefore changes are due to man is fallacious.
http://marshall.org/climate-change/how-much-of-atmospheric-co2-increase-is-natural/
NS
“The assumption that the CO2 concentration is/was balanced or static therefore changes are due to man is fallacious”
Powerful point of uncertainty. When I make this point in public debate, you can often hear a pin drop with the associated brain scamper.
After recovery, the typical reply is :
“But surely you aren’t willing to put our future at risk by saying we shouldn’t DO something”.
Knute:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_001kyr.jpg
Ice cores precision: +/- 1.2 ppmv (1 sigma), difference between different ice cores maximum 5 ppmv.
Resolution: Law Dome DE-08 cores: less than a decade (past 150 years)
Law Dome DSS, Siple Dome: 20-25 years (past 1,000 years)
Taylor Dome: ~40 years (past 70,000 years).
Same curve for CH4, opposite curve for δ13C in ice cores. Same curve in stomata index data, opposite δ13C curve in coralline sponges taken in the ocean surface layer.
The only measurable change in pre-industrial times was temperature at 16 ppmv/°C that is all. Good for 10 ppmv extra in current times…
Nicholas,
The assumption that the CO2 concentration is/was balanced or static therefore changes are due to man is fallacious.
Come on Nicholas, that discussion was originally held at Dr. Spencer’s blog, where I did react a lot. At last I could convince him that the CO2 increase is almost all human…
In his current article (“Gimme Three Steps Toward the Renewable Energy Door”, http://www.drroyspencer.com/ ), he adds:
1. Do humans significantly contribute to climate change?
I actually mostly agree with him on #1. I believe humans have caused maybe 50% of the recent warming of the oceans and the atmosphere, say since the 1950s since we have a published paper analyzing that time period.
As many before you, you are looking at the noise around the trend. The natural unbalance is not more than +/- 1 ppmv around the trend, which zero’s out after a few years, thus has zero influence on the trend of meanwhile 110 ppmv above steady state equilibrium between atmosphere and oceans. Humans have emitted around 200 ppmv in the same period. Temperature is good for 10 ppmv increase over the same period per Henry’s law (and 800,000 years of history).
Thus humans are NOT responsible for the increase?
You need a damn good explanation to get rid of the human emissions and point to another source which mimics the human emissions in effect, in exactly the same time span and increase rate, without violating one observation…
Here’s the CO2 balance I was seeking.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/research/themes/carbon/
Anthropogenic participation is about 4%.
And some more links unsettling the science.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/03/02/most-of-the-rise-in-co2-likely-comes-from-natural-sources/#sthash.DjSme7BG.dpbs
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-natural-or-manmade/
http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/06/10/climate-scientist-dr-murry-salby-explains-why-man-made-co2-does-not-drive-climate-change/
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/man-made-co2-vs-natural-co2/
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/energymyths/myth10.htm
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/energymyths/
Nicholas,
Anthro “participation” in the cycle is currently about 6% (9 GtC/year / 150 GtC/season in and out), that is not much, but it is one-way addition, while the huge natural cycle is a cycle with even slightly more sink than source over the course of a year…
Which makes that despite whatever small the human addition is, there wouldn’t be an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, except for the 10 ppmv from warming oceans…
Then the links:
– Notrickszone looks at the variability: 100% caused by temperature variability, but zero effect on the trend: vegetation is the cause of the variability, but is a net sink for CO2. Common error of many skeptics…
– Dr. Spencer says in his text that he thinks that humans increase the CO2 in the atmosphere…
– Dr. Salby makes the same error as described in Nothrickszone, plus a few more, but that was discussed in several pages of WUWT (look up “Salby”)
– Monte Hieb counts the “Natural additions” in his total balance, but forgets to subtract the “Natural sinks”, which makes a hell of a difference…
– Steven Goddard: nice joke, but his sentence:
“Nature generates 30X as much CO2 as humans, but it is happy CO2.” also forgets to add:
“Nature sinks 1.03x as much CO2 as it generates”…
– The Manhattan institute makes the same error: humans give 3% of the input, but there are zero natural sinks?
So where are the natural sinks in the skeptical balances?
FE
Allow me to mirror back.
You say that your data allows you to:
1. know the total quantity of CO2 on earth
2. know the average [CO2] worldwide at any moment
3. know the regional sinks and emitters with a yearly net
4. separate out natural vs anthropogenic CO2
Trying to simplify because it allows me to think more clearly.
Did I get it right ?
Knute,
1. know the total quantity of CO2 on earth
Only with high accuracy in the atmosphere: 397 ppmv +/- 0.1 ppmv or 841 +/- 0.2 GtC as CO2. The accuracy may be +/- 2 ppmv (+/- 4 GtC) for absolute global values, the +/- 0.1 ppmv is for the accuracy of the trend over the years.
Amounts in the ocean surface: 1000 +/- 100 GtC
Amounts in the deep oceans: 37,000 +/- 4,000 GtC
Amounts in sediments / carbonate rocks/layers: gigantic, not known to any accuracy…
2. know the average [CO2] worldwide at any moment
Again, only in the atmosphere +/- 2 ppmv globally in absolute levels, +/- 0.1 ppmv in trend. See:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html
3. know the regional sinks and emitters with a yearly net
Only roughly globally: +/- 0.25 ppmv (+/- 0.5 GtC) for oceans and vegetation, Very roughly for regional sinks and emitters, as that is an ongoing work with tall towers and satellites like the OCO-2, which are measuring local/regional levels and fluxes.
4. separate out natural vs anthropogenic CO2
With reasonable accuracy, based on δ13C and O2 changes, see the graph here
Be aware that is about quantities, mass, not how much original human emitted CO2 still is in the atmosphere. While about 90% of the current increase of about 30% in the atmosphere is caused by human emissions, only 9% of the current atmosphere is originally by human emitted CO2, the rest is distributed in vegetation, ocean surface and mainly in the deep oceans by the huge seasonal exchanges between the different reservoirs…
“Knute,
1. know the total quantity of CO2 on earth
Only with high accuracy in the atmosphere: 397 ppmv +/- 0.1 ppmv or 841 +/- 0.2 GtC as CO2. The accuracy may be +/- 2 ppmv (+/- 4 GtC) for absolute global values, the +/- 0.1 ppmv is for the accuracy of the trend over the years.
Amounts in the ocean surface: 1000 +/- 100 GtC
Amounts in the deep oceans: 37,000 +/- 4,000 GtC
Amounts in sediments / carbonate rocks/layers: gigantic, not known to any accuracy…
2. know the average [CO2] worldwide at any moment
Again, only in the atmosphere +/- 2 ppmv globally in absolute levels, +/- 0.1 ppmv in trend. See:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html
3. know the regional sinks and emitters with a yearly net
Only roughly globally: +/- 0.25 ppmv (+/- 0.5 GtC) for oceans and vegetation, Very roughly for regional sinks and emitters, as that is an ongoing work with tall towers and satellites like the OCO-2, which are measuring local/regional levels and fluxes.
4. separate out natural vs anthropogenic CO2
With reasonable accuracy, based on δ13C and O2 changes, see the graph here
Be aware that is about quantities, mass, not how much original human emitted CO2 still is in the atmosphere. While about 90% of the current increase of about 30% in the atmosphere is caused by human emissions, only 9% of the current atmosphere is originally by human emitted CO2, the rest is distributed in vegetation, ocean surface and mainly in the deep oceans by the huge seasonal exchanges between the different reservoirs…”
FB
First of all, I want to offer a genuine thanks. It would have taken me days to wade thru the relevant emails and links for the summation.
Second, I think you have a herculean challenge in being able to stay clearheaded concerning what you know and don’t know. The normal route of peer review science has itself become suspect concerning climatology, so I’m not sure where you can turn to seek CONSISTENT clearheaded review. It’s also clear to me that you are aware of the problem. You are likely to fail to get good review more often than you receive it under the current polarizing environment. Herculean indeed.
I’m not going to seize on one uncertainty vs another because there are just too many to be adequately addressed in my email. Instead, you’ve given me valuable focus by categorizing the areas of uncertainty. There is so much uncertainty, that there are subcategories of layers of it to individual items identified above.
I can’t help but be shocked (again) by the speed with which CAGW has gone from a hypothesis to a worldwide call to action. I’m also not going to drag you through an identification of the countless items that could be included in the total bell curve of risks we should be spending limited assets on.
Most times anecdotal stories are distracting, but I’ll share one from today. A friend’s daughter (4 yrs) was drawing during lunch and I asked her what she was doing. It was the earth and she had surrounded it with heat releasing yellow and pink lines and surrounded that with cold dark gray for space.
She said “well you see, the earth is putting out heat just like an egg does when you take it out of boiling water”.
I’ll probably be back with more questions and hope you’re around to point me in the right direction.
Knute,
Here one link to a similar view:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef200914u
My own view in detail:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
Most of the arguments made by Ferdinand in this thread and offered as ‘proofs’ such as the mass-balance argument, the isotope argument, the argument that the growth of human emissions and the growth of atmospheric CO2 are highly correlated, and the argument that the oceans cannot possibly explain the assumed 120ppmv increase are covered here: http://chipstero7.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/the-revelle-factor-vs-henrys-law.html
Richard,
Of course all these factors are highly correlated, as they all are caused by the same source: human emissions! That is exactly the point.
If vegetation was the main source, the δ13C level would go in the same direction as what human emissions do (after all, coal is ancient vegetation). Then the oxygen use by rotting/burning vegetation would add to the oxygen use by burning fossil fuels, but one measures the reverse: oxygen use is less than from burning fossil fuels, so the biosphere as a whole is a net producer of oxygen, a net sink for CO2 and preferential of 12CO2, thus leaving relative more 13CO2 in the atmosphere, the opposite of what is measured.
Independently confirmed by satellites: the earth is greening.
If the oceans were the main source, the δ13C would go up, not down as is measured in direct ratio to human emissions and that would violate Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater which for the current weighted average seawater surface temperature dictates a steady state (dynamic equilibrium) level of 290 ppmv in the atmosphere. The atmosphere is current at near 400 ppmv, thus the average flux is from the atmosphere into the oceans, not reverse…
Further the Revelle/buffer factor – Henry’s law link, has so many problems that it needs some full page to explain them. Here in short (?) a few remarks:
– Henry’s law indeed says what the ratio is between the atmosphere and dissolved CO2 as gas in the ocean surface. That would be all, if dissolved CO2 was the only species in water. In fresh water and coke, it is 99% free CO2, no problem. In seawater it is less than 1% free CO2, 90% bicarbonate and 9% carbonate. If the pCO2 (~ppmv) in the atmosphere doubles, dissolved CO2 doubles, but the other species only increase by about 10%, as that is a matter of equilibrium between CO2, bicarbonates and carbonates, which are heavily influenced by pH. The latter gets (slightly) lower with increased CO2. The Revelle factor thus shows the ratio between increase in the atmosphere and increase of all carbon derivatives, not only dissolved CO2, in the ocean surface. Both Henry’s law and the Revelle factor are right. See for the chemical explanation:
http://www.eng.warwick.ac.uk/staff/gpk/Teaching-undergrad/es427/Exam%200405%20Revision/Ocean-chemistry.pdf
Water has a phenomenal capacity for CO2-absorption as the existence of fizzy-drinks testifies.
At 6 bar CO2 pressure in the atmosphere it does. Poor it on a plate and wait a few hours and it will get flat in equilibrium with the atmosphere at 0.0004 bar pCO2 (per Henry’s law!)… Fresh water contains 10 times less CO2 than seawater at the same temperature, acid waters like Coke (phosphoric acid) even less…
– The residence time again… The residence time only shows how fast any CO2 molecule – whatever its origin – is exchanged with a CO2 molecule from another reservoir. That has zero effect on the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, as long as it is pure exchange. That says nothing about how long it takes to remove an extra shot of CO2 – whatever its origin – back to steady state. The residence time indeed is ~5 years, the e-fold decay rate for the extra 110 ppmv in the atmosphere currently is over 50 years…
It is the same difference as between the throughput of capital and goods through a factory – the turnover – and the gain – or loss – of capital at the end of a fiscal year…
That doesn’t imply that the IPCC’s Bern model is right. The Bern model is based on the saturation of the different sinks, which is only true for the ocean’s surface layer (per Revelle factor), there is no sign that the deep oceans are getting saturated and certainly not ever the biosphere…
– Tom Quirk: The constancy of seasonal variations in CO2 and the lack of time delays between the hemispheres completely wrong: he compared the seasonal changes between the hemispheres, but these are the same with zero, 12, 24, 36,… months lags… There is a real lag between the hemispheres see here.
I can go on with a lot of other points which are completely wrong, like what is said by the late Dr. Jaworowski about ice cores, but I think this is already sufficient…
These are the balances I sought in earlier comments:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/research/themes/carbon/
IPCC AR5 Figure 6.1
Some thoughts about these two balances.
First of all they are in peta grams of carbon, PgC, NOT CO2. The IPCC diagram is much more detailed, but the amounts appear similar. Different data bases, maybe, or time frames.
The NOAA graphic distribution is tabulated thus:
Fluxes, PgC………………To Atmos…From Atmos…..Net Diff…….Share
Vegetation & Soils………119.0……….120.0……………-1.0………….55%
Land Use…………………..1.7……………1.9……………-0.2……………1%
Ocean……………………..88.0…………90.0……………-2.0…………..41%
Fossil Fuels………………..6.3……………………………..6.3…………….3%
Net of fluxes…………….215.0……….211.9……………3.1
Reservoirs, PgC……..Amount…….Share……..Net Flux
Atmosphere……………..700………….1.72%….0.004429
Ocean…………………..38,000……….93.37%
Vegetation & Soils……….2,000……….4.91%
Total…………………….40,700…………….………..0.000076
The net outgoing FF source is balanced by the incoming sinks at a ratio of about 50%. The FF outgoing is a paltry 3% of the total outgoing. Since all of these values are massive WAGs per IPCC AR5 table 6.1 with +/- 20% 45% 50%? certainty, the 3% of FF is meaningless, lost in the decimal points, rounding, and limited significant figures.
The ocean reservoir holds 93.37% of the carbon/CO2. Even trivial fluctuations in this storage eclipse all of mankind’s puny contributions.
End of line.
Nicholas,
The individual uncertainties are quite large, but the overall uncertainty is not the sum of the individual uncertainties, as the overall variation in natural sinks/sources balance is measured with an accuracy of +/- 0.5 GtC (+/- 0.25 ppmv).
The variations in total unbalance are +/- 1 ppmv around the trend which is around 2 ppmv/year, whatever the variability in the individual fluxes…
“Nicholas,
The individual uncertainties are quite large, but the overall uncertainty is not the sum of the individual uncertainties, as the overall variation in natural sinks/sources balance is measured with an accuracy of +/- 0.5 GtC (+/- 0.25 ppmv).”
FE
But FE, you’ve already stated that the “known” of what is known is great concerning sinks and sources. In essense, you are saying that despite the individual uncertainties being quite large, the variation in measuring those uncertainties is small.
Can you “hear” how that is difficult to swallow as something approaching a replicable fact, unless what u want to prove is that the overall degree of uncertainty is … well .. great ?
Knute,
The individual uncertainties still are large, but the uncertainty of the total sum of all natural inputs and outputs is small, because that is the difference between human emissions (with a small error in inventories) and the measured increase in the atmosphere (with a very small error in measurements). One doesn’t need to measure any individual flux to know the net result of all fluxes together…
Thus even if you have not the slightest knowledge of any individual natural sink or source, the total difference between all natural inputs and all natural outputs together is known with a small error…
That shows that the natural variability is surprisingly small, despite the huge ins and outs involved: +/- 1 ppmv around the trend in the past 57 years and always more sink than source, increasing a factor 4 over that period, together with human emissions and the increase in the atmosphere. See the graph here.
FE
Thanks for the followthru FE.
“The individual uncertainties still are large, but the uncertainty of the total sum of all natural inputs and outputs is small, because that is the difference between human emissions (with a small error in inventories) and the measured increase in the atmosphere (with a very small error in measurements). One doesn’t need to measure any individual flux to know the net result of all fluxes together…”
I’m almost home. I’m not sure if I agree with the last statement, but I can understand that your greatest degree of certainty is with measuring ATMOSPHERIC CO2.
You acknowledge that understanding the amount of CO2 in plants, seabeds, soil, water metabolic life is confounded with tremendous uncertainty.
Because you can measure a change in CO2 in the atmosphere that is outside the normal bounds, you then ascribe that to man-made contribution. The assumption is that mankind’s activity did it because mankinds activity is the only thing that changed amongst the variables ?
Phewww, sorry I’m struggling with this.
Some analogy:
Someone with a shop starts the day with $ 1,000 in his/hers cash register.
During the day he/she has a lot of huge expenses and huge sales all day long.
At the end of the day, he/she counts $ 950 in the cash register.
Even without knowledge of any transaction, he/she will know that there was a $ 50 loss that day…
Knute:
Because you can measure a change in CO2 in the atmosphere that is outside the normal bounds, you then ascribe that to man-made contribution.
Not what I said… One does know human emissions with a reasonable accuracy and one can measure the increase in the atmosphere. There are several possibilities:
1. CO2 levels in the atmosphere are getting lower:
– Natural sinks are larger than natural + human sources
2. CO2 levels in the atmosphere stay the same:
– Natural sinks are equal to natural + human sources
3. CO2 levels in the atmosphere increase less than human emissions:
– Natural sinks are larger than natural sources but less than natural + human sources.
4. CO2 levels in the atmosphere increase equal to more than human emissions:
– natural sinks are equal to less than natural + human sources and any increase is the result of both sources.
In the past 57 years, we see situation 3 for every year, thus nature was more sink than source over the full period and the only cause of the increase is the human contribution…
FE
Thanks for the correction.
“in response to Ferdinand Engelbeen:
Nicholas, The individual uncertainties are quite large, but the overall uncertainty is not the sum of the individual uncertainties, as the overall variation in natural sinks/sources balance is measured with an accuracy of +/- 0.5 GtC (+/- 0.25 ppmv). The variations in total unbalance are +/- 1 ppmv around the trend which is around 2 […]
Knute:
Because you can measure a change in CO2 in the atmosphere that is outside the normal bounds, you then ascribe that to man-made contribution.
Not what I said… One does know human emissions with a reasonable accuracy and one can measure the increase in the atmosphere. There are several possibilities:
1. CO2 levels in the atmosphere are getting lower:
– Natural sinks are larger than natural + human sources
2. CO2 levels in the atmosphere stay the same:
– Natural sinks are equal to natural + human sources
3. CO2 levels in the atmosphere increase less than human emissions:
– Natural sinks are larger than natural sources but less than natural + human sources.
4. CO2 levels in the atmosphere increase equal to more than human emissions:
– natural sinks are equal to less than natural + human sources and any increase is the result of both sources.
In the past 57 years, we see situation 3 for every year, thus nature was more sink than source over the full period and the only cause of the increase is the human contribution…”
Are we really that confident in knowing man made CO2 vs natural sources ? It seems like such a mind boggling task to be able to tease out man’s contribution.
Can you please point me to the source that defends the above position ?
Knute,
I know, it seems very difficult for a lot of people to understand the difference between not knowing any of the individual fluxes and knowing the overall change…
We don’t know individual CO2 fluxes in and out the atmosphere (we know, but only roughly). We do know the overall budget: what remains in the atmosphere (and is accurately known) is our known emissions minus what is distributed in other reservoirs. As both our own one-way source and what remains in the atmosphere is known, the net difference is known too, without any knowledge of any individual natural CO2 flux in or out…
Let us try another analogy:
Each month you bring $ 100 to a local private bank to put on your savings account. At the end of the year you have $ 1,200 more on your account.
Each year, the private bank shows it yearly balance: for every year in the past 57 years they have made a meager $ 600 gain.
Even without any knowledge of any of the many thousands of transactions by other clients over the years, you know that bank is making a loss without your own money, so my advise would be to get away with your money and look for a more solid investment…
The same is true for the CO2 increase in the atmosphere: 9 GtC/year human emissions in, 4.5 GtC/year remaining in the atmosphere (as mass, not the original molecules), thus 4.5 GtC/year going into other reservoirs (oceans, vegetation). Nature is a net sink for CO2…
If all human emissions would cease at once, still next year there would be a net sink of 4.5 GtC, as that doesn’t depend of the emissions but of the extra CO2 pressure (~110 ppmv) above equilibrium with the oceans. That extra pressure decreases with the continuing sinks, so the sink rate decreases linear with the excess pressure, until the equilibrium with the oceans (~290 ppmv) is reached. That is an e-fold decay curve with a time constant of over 50 years or a half life time of ~40 years.
Knute,
Sorry posted that under the wrong comment:
Knute,
Here a link to a similar view:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef200914u
My own view in detail:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
The fluxes and reservoirs on NOAA’s “CO2” balance (it’s really actually only carbon) are most curious. How someone decided how much carbon a given sector sources to the atmosphere and how much sinks back from the atmosphere is a mystery to me. WAGs I suspect, but I will use what is presented.
What caught my eye is that the greater the source the lesser the sink. So I converted to PgCO2/ppm and plotted the ratio of sink to source, an Excel trend line fit. A second order polynomial has an R square of 0.9999. I understand that means good things.
The notion that FF is a source with no sink is simply bogus. The atmosphere doesn’t know the difference, can’t discriminate between an ocean molecule or land use molecule or vegetation molecule or FF molecule. This goes back to the belief that the atmospheric CO2 is in some kind of equilibrium or grand balance and all FF does is imbalance that equilibrium. Nonsense.
So if FF sources 6.3 PgC/23.1 PgCO2/2.98 ppm into the atmosphere, per the curve fit the earth is going to sink 7.0 PgC/25.69 PgCO2/3.32 ppm of the FF back out of the atmosphere, same as the other three sectors
If the atmospheric CO2 concentration is increasing it is because everything is sourcing more or sinking less. The big dogs that really make a difference are the ocean and vegetation/soils, FF is a minor foot note.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/research/themes/carbon/
Fluxes, PgC……….To Atmos….From Atmos……..Net Diff
Land Use…………….1.7……………1.9…………….-0.2…..0.8%
Fossil Fuels…….……6.3……………7.0…………….-0.7……2.9%
Ocean……………….88.0……….…90.0…………….-2.0….40.9%
Vegetation/Soils…..119.0………….120.0…………….-1.0….55.3%
Total & Net………..215.0………….218.9…………….-3.9
Reservoirs, PgC…..….Amount……..Share
Atmosphere…………….700…………1.72%
Ocean………………….38,000……….93.37%
Vegetation/Soils……….. 2,000……..….4.91%
Total……………………40,700
Fluxes, PgCO2………Source ppm…sink ppm………sink/source
Land Use…………………..0.805………. 0.900…………….1.118
Fossil Fuels………………..2.984……….3.315…………….1.111
Ocean………………………41.680……..42.627…………….1.023
Vegetation/Soils……………56.362……..56.836…………….1.008
Total & Net…………….….101.830……103.678……………1.018
Only an egg (37 yr BSME, PE egg).
Nicholas,
Some problems with your reasoning here:
This goes back to the belief that the atmospheric CO2 is in some kind of equilibrium or grand balance and all FF does is imbalance that equilibrium. Nonsense.
Never heard of Le Châteliers principle? A process in (dynamic) equilibrium that is disturbed by an external factor changes its equilibrium to counter the disturbance.
For the past 800,000 years, the oceans, biosphere and atmosphere were in dynamic equilibrium with as only driving force for changes the earth’s temperature. Mainly the ocean temperatures. For the current area weighted ocean surface temperature, the CO2 level in the atmosphere should be around 290 ppmv.
We are near 400 ppmv in only 165 years time, not seen in any ice core or proxy (foramins) over the past few million years. Ice core resolution of all ice cores are good enough to detect the current peak if that happened in the past 800,000 years, but it didn’t happen.
The processes that make that CO2 was rather equilibrated in ratio to temperature changes – with a lag – seems to be quite linear and quite slow. For the current increase above equilibrium (~110 ppmv), the sink rate is ~2.15 ppmv. That gives a half life time of slightly over 50 years: fast enough to follow the temperature changes over thousands of years, but not fast enough to coop with human emissions.
Fossil Fuels…….……6.3……………7.0…………….-0.7……2.9%
The crux of the matter is that your reasoning of equal influence of human CO2 for the sinks is only true if the sinks react extremely fast on the momentary emissions for any given year, but that is not the case. The sink rate only reacts on the total CO2 level in the atmosphere above equilibrium, not on yearly emissions.
The bulk of the exchanges is seasonal as result of the huge seasonal temperature changes. A much smaller exchange is the year-by-year variability in temperature and its effect on (tropical) vegetation. An increase in CO2 in the atmosphere hardly influences these processes: after 57 years and an increase of 70 ppmv, there is hardly any measurable increase in seasonal amplitude. But there is in the difference between inputs and outputs: that reacts quasi-linear on the increased pressure in the atmosphere…
FE,
“For the past 800,000 years, the oceans, biosphere and atmosphere were in dynamic equilibrium with as only driving force for changes the earth’s temperature.”
Gold Medalist in the Conclusion Jumping Olympics.
I think Knute has you nailed…
Michael,
Do you have any indication that temperature was not the main driver of CO2 levels in the past 800,000 years, except for the last 165 years?
Ferdinand says: “If vegetation was the main source, the δ13C level would go in the same direction as what human emissions do”.
That’s not true. It depends on how much the biological source was contributing to the atmospheric increase and what other positive δ13C sources were counteracting the negative δ13C source. It is possible that a negative and positive source could both be contributing to the increase at the time and at similar proportions too thereby keeping δ13C changes within relatively narrow bounds. These alternative possible causes have not been eliminated and therefore it is not possible to state as a scientific conclusion that the δ13C decrease is only the result of human CO2 emissions. Sorry, but such a causal linkage has not been scientifically established. I am not arguing that human causation of the atmospheric CO2 increase is not a fact. I am simply arguing that it being the only cause is not supported by any real evidence and that the purported evidence for it, e.g. the IPCC’s figures and formulae, does not really support it either when you do the maths. For example the IPCC’s figures in AR5 imply that there should be around 4% of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere before absorption even though the δ13C measurements show there is little over 6% (thereby implying there other sources contributing).
Ferdinand says: “The residence time only shows how fast any CO2 molecule – whatever its origin – is exchanged with a CO2 molecule from another reservoir. That has zero effect on the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, as long as it is pure exchange”.
On the contrary, I do understand them. I have gone to great lengths in my post to make sure the reader understands the difference between ‘residence time’ and ‘adjustment time’. My refutation for the IPCC’s long adjustment time and why the increase in atmospheric CO2 is largely natural is the fast-equilibria of Henry’s law which is not a measure of residence time. I have shown, as too as Tom Segalstad, with different sets of calculations that this assertion of the Revelle Factor (and hence a long adjustment time) is refuted by the laws of physics. I have shown how your objections to them up to now have been misconceived and now you are objecting that they simply come to the wrong answers because those are not what you believe, i.e. that human causation of the atmospheric CO2 increase is a fact! But if it really was a fact, the applied laws of physics should confirm it, shouldn’t they? However, they do not.
Ferdinand says: “If the oceans were the main source, the δ13C would go up, not down”.
Not so. This has be explained to you before by others on this blog, i.e. that CO2 outgassing from the oceans could decrease δ13C if the source were biological and this is a very real possibility.
Ferdinand says: “Henry’s law indeed says what the ratio is between the atmosphere and dissolved CO2 as gas in the ocean surface. That would be all, if dissolved CO2 was the only species in water”.
The calculated 1:50 partitioning ratio (from NASA’s data) includes all forms of dissolved CO2. That is why I am saying that for every gigatonne of fresh CO2 we emit to the atmosphere each year, at least 98% of it will ultimately dissolve into the oceans and at most only the remaining 2% will stay in the atmosphere as a permanent addition to the resident greenhouse at *equilibrium*. Do you have an objection to that?
Ferdinand says: “http:Teaching-undergrad/es427/Exam%200405%20Revision/Ocean-chemistry.pdf”.
The reference that you say I should read is the same reference I have used in my post when calculating the Revelle Factor as PCO2 increases. I have read it and it’s nonsense for reasons explained in the post.
Ferdinand says: “I can go on with a lot of other points which are completely wrong”.
If you were to transpose yourself for me in that sentence you would be speaking truth. The problem Ferdinand, as Bart has pointed out, is your own refusal to accept reality as it is without turning it into something else in your mind that you can control and manipulate. Your mind is fixated on ‘humans did it’ as though you are caught in a hypnotic trance impervious to facts and reason alike.
Richard,
It depends on how much the biological source was contributing to the atmospheric increase and what other positive δ13C sources were counteracting the negative δ13C source.
OK, we see an increase in CO2 and a decrease in δ13C in the atmosphere. That may be (partly) caused by decaying or burning vegetation, but then there is a problem with the mass balance: there are two sources of low δ13C together at work, human emissions + net biosphere releases. Together more than human emissions alone.
The increase in the atmosphere is less than human emissions alone. That is only possible if the oceans do sink the net release of all biosphere emissions + about halve human emissions (as total mass, not the original partitioning). That only makes that the partitioning between biosphere (source) and oceans (sink) is different than thought and humans still are fully responsible for the increase, as that is one-way addition.
Sorry, but such a causal linkage has not been scientifically established.
Ice cores show very small changes in δ13C over glacial – interglacial changes of 100 ppmv, which shows that the CO2 changes were mainly from the oceans. Over the Holocene, the average changes again were only +/- 0.2 per mil δ13C in the atmosphere until ~1850, confirmed by similar small variability in the sea surface over the past 600 years (with a resolution of 2-4 years) in coralline sponges. Since 1850, δ13C levels dropped with about 1.8 per mil in exact ratio to human emissions. A similar drop caused by vegetation would need to burn down 1/3rd of all land vegetation on earth… Oceans only drive the δ13C slightly up, thus can’t be the cause either. Moreover, since 1990, the biosphere is a proven net sink for CO2…
Thus the cause of the δ13C is the human contribution, as scientifically certain as can be.
I have shown, as too as Tom Segalstad, with different sets of calculations that this assertion of the Revelle Factor (and hence a long adjustment time) is refuted by the laws of physics.
Richard, you haven’t shown anything like that, neither has Segalstad (with whom I had a lively discussion). Segalstad uses the residence time which has zero influence on the adjustment time.
You do not understand the implications of ocean chemistry: Henry’s law is obeyed both for fresh water as for seawater: a 100% increase in CO2 in the atmosphere gives a 100% increase in free CO2 in solution.
In fresh water, free CO2 is 99% of all carbon species, thus a 100% increase in the atmosphere gives an about 99% increase in total carbon forms (CO2 + bicarbonate + carbonate).
In seawater free CO2 is only 1% of all carbon species, thus a CO2 doubling in the atmosphere per Henry’s law initially only gives a 1% increase in total carbon species. That is all. It is only because there are equilibrium reactions at work, that the other species also increase, which leads to a 10% increase (NOT 100%) of all inorganic carbon forms for a 100% increase in the atmosphere. That is the Revelle/buffer factor.
That the Revelle factor is true is easily proven: look at the increase in the atmosphere and at the time series in Bermuda for the increase in DIC (dissolved inorganic carbon) of the ocean surface: DIC increased at about 10% of the increase in the atmosphere over the same time span:
http://www.biogeosciences.net/9/2509/2012/bg-9-2509-2012.pdf Fig. 5
CO2 outgassing from the oceans could decrease δ13C if the source were biological and this is a very real possibility.
Sorry, impossible. CO2 releases from the oceans are mainly dissolved CO2, where the biological pump at the surface increases the δ13C of the surface waters (1-5 per mil) compared to deep ocean waters (around zero per mil). Direct releases of organics from the sea surface is peanuts compared to inorganic CO2. Moreover, the continuous CO2 flux from ocean upwelling to ocean sinks of ~40 GtC/year dilutes the δ13C “fingerprint” of the human contribution, thus certainly is positive compared to the atmosphere.
at least 98% of it will ultimately dissolve into the oceans and at most only the remaining 2% will stay in the atmosphere as a permanent addition to the resident greenhouse at *equilibrium*.
No problem with that, but the emphasizes is on the word “ultimately”: that will need time, as that must get into the deep oceans mass (the surface is only 1:0.8 of the atmosphere and readily saturated at 10% of the change). The adjustment time for an excess CO2 level decay is over 50 years, or a half life of ~40 years…
The problem Ferdinand, as Bart has pointed out, is your own refusal to accept reality
Richard, Bart and (frequency) theory is way over my head, Bart and reality is a different matter.
It takes a long time before I do accept any theory, from whichever side, as I like to see all evidence pro and con, before making up my mind. I have studied about everything about the carbon cycle before concluding that all observations show that human emissions are the cause of the CO2 increase in the atmosphere. All alternative explanations violate one or more observations, Bart’s solution even violates all observations, including Henry’s law.
What always wonders me is that many skeptics don’t accept that humans are the cause of the CO2 increase, while nature was a continuous net sink in the past 57 years, only because that is an essential part of the AGW theory, while most housewives with a household budget know that if they spend more money that they receive, they will get into trouble…