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.
——————————-
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).
—————————-
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.
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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.