Neutral Fact Finder Points to Melting Glaciers as the Cause of Global Warming, Rising Sea Levels and Rising CO2 in Atmosphere
President Elect Trump and incoming EPA director Pruit rightfully skeptical of consensus climate scientists claims says Brian Kelleher, Engr.
SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — The following is the opinion of Kelleher & Associates Environmental Mgmt LLC regarding rising CO2 levels and Global Warming and their interrelationship with fast melting glaciers:
Dear President Elect Trump, NOAA, EPA and interested parties:
I am among the country’s top environmental engineers and have been used extensively over the past several decades by the California Courts as a neutral fact finder who helps case special masters and litigating parties resolve legal disputes over who is liable for legacy pollution of contaminated properties without the need for trial. Within this role I am provided many linear feet of technical reports, pleadings, case summaries, expert witness reports, etc. I conduct a dispassionate unbiased review of the data and provide the case special masters and litigating parties with concise unbiased conclusions and recommendations that cannot be used at trial. In so doing, I have developed an uncanny ability for quickly seeing the forest through the trees when it comes to assessing massive amounts of technical scientific data. Given all that is at stake and because it is right up my alley, I felt a moral and professional obligation to apply my special talent and experience to the vitally important question at hand. In conducting my review over the holidays, I reviewed data published on the NOAA website and many others.
Background – Data from polar ice cores shows that the earth’s climate going back many millions of years is aptly described as the cycling of major and minor advances and retreats of glaciers from the poles separated by brief interglacial periods of relatively warm weather. During the past 420,000 years there have been four major ice ages with a frequency of about 100,000 years with the prolonged cold intervals in between comprised of roughly 20,000 or 40,000-year cycles of minor advances and retreats. According to NASA, the natural cycle of ice ages is triggered by perturbations in the earth’s axis and its elliptical orbit around the sun as they relate to the amount of thermal energy the earth receives from the sun. In about 1860 A.D. global temperatures started rising, rapidly marking the end of what is referred to as the Little Ice Age which commenced in about 1300 after a period of global warming called the Medieval Warm Period that commenced in about 1000. Commencing in the 1860s atmospheric CO2 levels began to slowly rise concurrent with sea levels indicating that glaciers were melting/retreating toward the poles picking up steam in the late 1800s and 1900s. According to EPA, CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels did not reach levels of concern to climate scientists until about 1950.
Conclusions – The collective climate data is telling me that rapidly rising atmospheric CO2 is a signature identifier/direct result of rapid glacial melting and is not the cause of either today’s or historic rapid global warming. In my opinion, NOAA has failed to produce any factual evidence that would stand up in court supporting its claims that the current period of global warming is out of the ordinary much less the result of human activities. As I see it, the only way that NOAA could possibly substantiate its controversial claims that current temperature increases are a cause for major concern is by restricting its analysis to the current and immediately preceding interglacial periods and providing hard scientific proof that current data differs significantly from the parallel data for the handful of very similar past intervals when CO2 levels suddenly took off and spiked—with the focus on temperature. I predict that any attempts to provide such proof will be frustrated by accuracy and resolution limitations in using ice-core data. Moreover:
1. The start of the current period of rapid global warming coincides very closely with an ultra-giganormous sized solar flare striking the earth in 1859 strongly suggesting a relationship with solar storms/solar activity. The glaciers were already in full retreat from this or some other cause circa 1950 when fossil fuel CO2 emissions reached levels of concern to climate scientists.
2. There is nothing unusual about CO2 spiking during interglacial periods. This is the second major interval of CO2 spiking that has occurred during the current interglacial period and CO2 spiking occurred at frequent intervals during the immediately preceding interglacial period about 120,000 years ago. I found the published ice core data for the prior periods of rapid change to be of grossly insufficient resolution and reliability to draw meaningful comparisons with current data. I have no reason as a neutral fact finder to believe the current spiking period is significantly different than the prior ones with respect to temperature which is all that really matters.
3. Except for the incidental correlation I discuss in item 4 below, I found no correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and upward global temperature trends. For example: (a) CO2 was flat lined at about 275 ppm throughout the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age; (b) during the last four ice ages, the glaciers were in both full advance and full retreat at 250 ppm; and (c) rapid increases in CO2 during glacial retreats tend to lag behind rapid increases in temperatures.
4. Instead, I found vast unambiguous evidence that rapid CO2 increases occur only when rapidly melting/retreating glaciers are interacting with the earth’s oceans and atmosphere in creating rapid global warming, rising seawater levels and signature rapid atmospheric CO2 increases. The available evidence shows a linear relationship wherein rapidly melting glaciers cause atmospheric CO2 levels to rise higher and higher the closer the retreat gets to the poles, reaching levels far in excess of what can be attributed to Henry’s Law governed interchanges with a slowly warming ocean surface. By all appearances the excess CO2 in the atmosphere very slowly reenters the oceans once the glacial retreat stops.
5. I found that there is at least a five-fold effect that explains the well-documented atmospheric CO2 spikes as glaciers rapidly melt/retreat: (a) Henry’s Law related increases from the warming of the average surface temperature of the oceans combined with deep seawater up-welling; (b) the CO2 escaping the melting ice; (c) the CO2 degassing due to rapid warming of the massive deluge of frigid fresh water cascading across the land and glacier surfaces and then forming a floating skin of warming freshwater at the ocean surface; (d) the CO2 degassing from the deeps due to disruptive/turbulent effects on thermoclines; and (e) the CO2 emitting from bacterial decomposition of massive amounts of organic matter that had been trapped within and under the retreating ice and is being exposed to air.
6. I found overwhelming evidence that once a major or minor glacial retreat gains sufficient momentum, it becomes self-sustaining for a certain geologic period of time and causes rapid global warming on its own with incidental atmospheric CO2 increases.
7. I conclude that the driving force behind the self-sustaining glacial retreat has to be the greenhouse gas effect of the massive amounts of water vapor resulting from item 5(c) above taking into consideration that the warming effect is produced in the very areas where it is needed most.
8. I cannot tell how much the CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels commencing in 1950 have been incrementally contributing to the current rapid climb in atmospheric CO2, but I consider the increases a potential blessing to humanity rather than a threat. This takes into consideration the fact that the current interglacial period has already lasted longer than the last creating concerns that the glacial tide is about to turn. Once the current melting stops, high levels of atmospheric CO2 could hopefully help stall the onset of what could be the next major ice age.
Recommendations – President Trump should remain skeptical and charge the director of NOAA with evaluating my conclusions and request a response to be reviewed by a panel of qualified civil and environmental engineers. With the identification of the true driver of glacial retreats (lots of water vapor continuously hovering over the actively melting areas), I claim to have debunked the published and widely accepted climatic theory that increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 had an important greenhouse gas effect in accelerating the ending of the ice ages. Rather than fret and rant about global warming, I suggest everyone enjoy it while it lasts.
I warrant that I have conducted my investigations impartially and believe my conclusions are sufficiently supported by valid scientific evidence to stand up in a court of law.
Disclaimer – This press release contains the personal opinions of an American citizen based on his understanding of technical data and his experience as a neutral court consultant. Despite my professional standing, I am not claiming to be a professional engineer nor a consulting engineer given where I reside. California, unlike the rest of the country, does not grant licenses to environmental engineers given a long standing preference by its licensing board to rely primarily on state registered geologists to protect the state’s lands, indoor air and waters.
Sincerely,
Brian T Kelleher
Principal, Kelleher & Associates Environmental Mgmt, LLC
San Jose, CA 95121
(h/t to WUWT reader Robert Bissett)
Source: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/neutral-fact-finder-points-to-melting-glaciers-as-the-cause-of-global-warming-rising-sea-levels-and-rising-co2-in-atmosphere-300388426.html
Note: I don’t subscribe to some of the claims made here, especially #1, where he blames the Carrington event for kicking off the change. I provide this PR only for discussion – Anthony
We’ve heard a lot of bizarre claims over the past decade, but this one takes the cake–melting ice causes global warming and rising CO2??? Why even read this kind of garbage? It’s a total waste of time.
Reads like a circle-jerk of cause and effect.
Yes, and not much different from the warmist assertion that hot causes cold:
“The kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern we can expect to see with increasing frequency, as global warming continues.” -John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, 2014
If the glaciers are melting, it’s a safe bet that the oceans are also warming.
Warming oceans will out gas CO2. However this has been well known for a long time.
As to CO2 trapped in glaciers. The air pockets in glaciers contain samples of the atmosphere of the time, not just CO2. As CO2 is released, so are all the other atmospheric gasses, so the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere will not be changed significantly.
Finally, I tend to discount anyone who toots their own horn as loudly as this guy does.
The fact that he made it an open letter, rather than a private one to the incoming president also makes me skeptical.
MarkW-
Why do I feel like I read a different article than anyone else here? Every time he speaks of rapid glacier melt, he mentions warming FIRST…”3.C, #4 first sentence, #5 A…”.Atmosphere and oceans causing warming, then starts melting land ice (glaciers) and he differentiates between glacial advance and retreat and the point where “once a major or minor glacial retreat gains sufficient momentum, it becomes self-sustaining for a certain geologic period of time and causes rapid global warming on its own with incidental atmospheric CO2 increases.”
He blames the increase in rapid warming AFTER that point, on increased water vapor…with incidental CO2 release, not a “significantly changed” percentage.
He’s not claiming to be anything other than an unbiased analyst. Someone who gathers and examines evidence and research for a living. He examined the research and data during the holidays, on his own dime, because he “felt a moral and professional obligation to apply my special talent and experience to the vitally important question at hand.”
If he’s truly among the top environmental engineers in the country and has been used in the California Court system for decades, why does saying that you are really good at what you do, have any effect on the facts/conclusions?
https://realclimatescience.com/2017/01/national-geographic-1967-sunspots-control-glaciers/
https://realclimatescience.com/2017/01/national-geographic-1967-sunspots-control-glaciers/
Don, can you point out exactly WHERE in this article the author says that melting ice—> global warming AND rising CO2???? Did we read the same article??
“CONCLUSIONS-The collective climate data is telling me that rapidly rising atmospheric CO2 is a signature identifier/direct result of rapid glacial melting and is not the cause of either today’s or historic rapid global warming.”
“rapidly rising CO2 is the direct result (a signature) of rapid glacial melting”.
And #4 “Except for the incidental correlation I discuss in item 4 below, I found no correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and upward global temperature trends”
“Neutral Fact Finder Points to Melting Glaciers as the Cause of Global Warming, Rising Sea Levels and Rising CO2 in Atmosphere”
“I found overwhelming evidence that once a major or minor glacial retreat gains sufficient momentum, it becomes self-sustaining for a certain geologic period of time and causes rapid global warming on its own with incidental atmospheric CO2 increases.”
You are overlooking:
This is a qualifier underpinning the process.
Obviously some factor is required to cause the initial change and give rise to the initial momentum, but once that initial change and momentum is underway and has reached a critical level/pace, the process is self sustaining (well that is the claim).
Presumably thereafer, there must be some other factor intervening at some stage to halt the process and thence to bring about glaciers accreting once more.
I am not saying that I support the claim, but your criticism appears rather egged to me.
Don-what Richard Verney said plus the fact that the author didn’t write the title. So fact is, you could not point to anywhere in the article where the author claims that melting ice causes global warming and rising CO2.
If an CAGW or AGW believer twisted your words, or Anthony’s words, and conclusions as badly as they have been twisted here, I’d be defending your actual words just as vehemently and I’m defending his, and rightly so.
As ice melts it reduces the albedo of Earth. Area covered with ice reflects the sunlight back into space. Once the ice recedes, the sun’s energy can warm the surface which, in turn, warms the air. Also, as the oceans warm they release CO2. Warmer water holds less dissolved CO2 than cooler water. So yes, as ice recedes, it allows more warming of the atmosphere. As permafrost melts, microbes contribute more CO2 and as oceans warm, they contribute even more. That is why CO2 rise LAGS temperature rise, and does not lead it.
So it’s observed that CO2 lags temperature,
Now explain how the ice got there from
an ice free Earth in the past, and why
should that not be happening now today as
we seem to be observing in the real World.
How did an ice age occur in the past when CO2
was much higher than today ?
Does The Sun, and planetary cycles
have a far more significant effect than
living creatures of the Earth’s biosphere,
and their activity? Termites and ants are, it is
said, producing more CO2 than all of Mankind’s
activity, and lightning has destroyed more forests
than Mankind has done. In the past dinosaurs didn’t
have fire brigades, with aerial bombardment to put
the fires out, yet the planet survived, and its never
been greener in modern times, with the “excess”
CO2 being “miraculously” converted into Trees.
The gravest danger is that we could run out of
CO2, as it will eventually all be sequestered into
rocks by natural processes; isn’t that the case ?
The ice age of the last few million years resulted from a global cooling that started several million years ago when Antarctica moved to a position where it can accumulate year-round snow and ice cover.
Back when the sum of carbon in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere was largely constant, atmospheric CO2 change lagged (and reinforced) temperature change. The balance between carbon in the atmosphere (as CO2) and elsewhere (mostly the oceans) was a positive feedback mechanism for temperature change. Things are different now that humans are transferring carbon from the lithosphere to the atmosphere.
Donald K,
:You said, “The ice age of the last few million years resulted from a global cooling that started several million years ago when Antarctica moved to a position where it can accumulate year-round snow and ice cover.”
It is generally believed that Antarctica reached its current position 30 to 60 million years ago. That overlaps with a period of time called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. That ended with a volcanic episode during the Oligocene. The last great ice age — the Pleistocene — started about 2 million years ago. It seems that your assertion has little to support it.
Clyde: Antarctica is moving and its position 30 million years ago, let alone its position 60 million years ago, were quite different from its current position. And before 2 million years ago, global temperature was on a general slide for several million years, too long and too steady a decrease of temperature over that time to be explained by a volcanic episode.
Bizarre indeed Dr. Easterbrook,
and here of course is the truth
about the matter in a video I found,
“Global Warming HOAX & Facts”
By coincidence this was on yesterday’s
edition of the Climate Change Chronicle
Videos selection : goo.gl/6Dom0x
bottom left square in grid, Most videos
are political because of the Mainstream
media GSgate lies debacle, +Trump
exacting revenge upon the culprits !
Climate liars seeing their cash cows
disappear before their eyes, and they
can walk the plank or join the new
Captain Trump and his crew, but he
will write the agenda and not them.
What is agenda? Hear the man himself:
Worth seeing again his North Dakota
energy speech he gave in Bismarck
before he was elected as new POTUS,
I have to say that you guys do sound somewhat like alarmists criticizing what we all know as perfectly valid science and reliable data.
Here we have a new study with conclusions I have never heard before.
However I dont think one should dismiss it out of hand. There seems to be a lot of scientific work and research behind this and it is reasonable that we give it a fair go.
I would start in listing the key hypothesis’ that are evident in the article and see if they can be disproved.
1. “Glaciers melt because of the natural cycle of ice ages is triggered by perturbations in the earth’s axis and its elliptical orbit around the sun ”
2. ” rapidly melting/retreating glaciers are interacting with the earth’s oceans and atmosphere in creating rapid global warming”
3 “rapid increases in CO2 during glacial retreats tend to lag behind rapid increases in temperatures”
There maybe more inbedded in the article but which of these hypothesis’ can we disprove?
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
@ rogerthesurf
Roger,
#1 is a viable hypothesis or theory …… but the scientific evidence to prove it is lacking.
And #2 and #3 are little more than “tripe n’ piffle” junk-science rhetoric,
In both cases, …… the “tail” is wagging the “dog”.
Samuel C Cogar-
Let’s put #1 in context-
“According to NASA, the natural cycle of ice ages is triggered by perturbations in the earth’s axis and its elliptical orbit around the sun as they relate to the amount of thermal energy the earth receives from the sun.”
(ie-that is NASA’s theory….NOT the authors.)
#2- oceans and atmosphere cause global warming….and cause glaciers to melt/retreat. (Rhetoric or true?)
Then, as glaciers (NOT ICE SHEETS) begin to melt more RAPIDLY, they being to interact with the earth’s oceans and atmosphere in creating rapid global warming. (Glaciers on land must melt a lot before their melting even REACHES the oceans, much less influence them.He did not say the melting glaciers CAUSE the initial warming, he does not say how “rapid” any warming is. He does state REPEATEDLY that he sees nothing but a linear connection between rising CO2 and rising warming. He does NOT say it’s a causal correlation).
#3 Rapid increases in CO2 during glacial retreats tend to lag behind rapid increases in temperatures. (Why is this rhetoric? )
What “tail” and what “dog” are you seeing in #2 and 3??? I see the same dog-“thermal energy increases” being the dog in all three cases.
Aphan – January 14, 2017 at 12:55 pm
Aphan, ….. I agree, we both know that “thermal energy increases” is a mandatory prerequisite in all three (3) scenarios ……… but ya can’t be claiming that “the cart is pulling the horse”. As a matter of scientific fact, one cannot claim that “the horse is pulling the cart”, ….. because in actuality “the horse is pushing on the harness collar” and the harness is pulling the cart.
Anyway, to wit:
2. ” rapidly melting/retreating glaciers are interacting with the earth’s oceans and atmosphere in creating rapid global warming”
“DUH”, ….. “rapidly melting/retreating glaciers” are the RESULT OF …… rapid global warming, … not the cause or creator of it,
And, to wit:
3 “rapid increases in CO2 during glacial retreats tend to lag behind rapid increases in temperatures”
What the ell does “glacial retreats” have to do with “rapid increases in CO2”?
Claiming that …… “melting glaciers release the entrapped CO2 which then causes an increase in atmospheric CO2 quantities” …….. is a dog that won’t hunt.
When glacial ice melts ……. even iffen it releases entrapped CO2 molecules into the atmosphere ……. it produces CO2-deficient “ice cold” liquid water ….. which would immediately begin “ingassing” CO2 from the atmosphere as per defined by Henry’s Law.
It is an impossibility for melting glacier ice to release far more CO2 into the atmosphere than the “ice cold” meltwater can ingas from the atmosphere.
Likewise, it is a biological impossibility to claim that the wintertime (October thru April) increase in atmospheric CO2 ppm, ….. as per the Mauna Loa Record, ….. is the direct result of microbial decomposition of dead biomass in the Northern Hemisphere.
Cheers, ….. Sam C
100+
Don, I share your judgement but not your conclusion. This kind of silly stuff is why warmunists label skeptics as flat earthers. Half appeal to authority, half just wrong. It is to be as vigorously rebuted as any warmunist nonsense. Rebutting confirms skeptical scientific integrity. Personally, I welcome all comers. Most can easily be shown abjectly silly, as here, with many other examples in Blowing Smoke essays. Those few that I cannot show silly force me to rethink and restudy. A very valuable thing.
The headline is crap, obviously. Although the language in the text is a bit hill billy inplaces, isn’t the thrust of his argument that during inter-glacial warming temperature rise precedes rising CO2 not t’other way round? This accords with the evidence of ice cores (Vostok and EPICA) covering 8 glacial cycles. And so you would expect glaciers to melt following a rise in temperature. And you would expect CO2 to be released. And you would expect sea levels to rise. N-est-ce pas? Am I being naive?
Yes. On a careful reading of the,guest post, you are.
Why even read this kind of garbage?
==============
because many of our scientific opinions are based on assumptions that correlation means causation. one of the chief assumptions is that rising CO2 is caused by humans. but what if the correlation between human energy use and the increase in atmospheric co2 is co-incidental, and not due to causation? that would turn a great many climate truisms on their heads.
@ ferdberple
GIMME a break, ferd, …… there is no actual, factual, sensible, reasonable and/or mathematically correct derived “correlation” between human caused CO2 emissions (as a result of burning fossil fuels) and increases in atmospheric CO2 quantities.
The proponents of CAGW use their “fuzzy math” talents to create a bogus “correlation” in an attempt to justify their “junk-science” claims.
Samuel:
No correlation between human emissions and increase in the atmosphere?
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1960_cur.jpg
The assertion that rising temperatures are the cause of the rise in CO2 and not the reverse is not new. Pointing out the lag time between rising temperatures and rising CO2 has been presented many times. You’ve really never heard this before?
Don’t necessarily agree, but don’t feel time was wasted.
Pretty much agree on soils, and he doesn’t even mention clathrates.
You might convince someone if you provided some sort of logical argument rather than a rant.
As of now, his argument is 1000 times better than your rant.
The author of this piece overlooks one very important point: The last century and a half of fossil fuel use are the first time in the history of the planet that a sustained, increasing reintroduction of hundreds of millions of years of sequestered carbon back into the climate has occurred. Models based on the ancient behavior of the climate do not apply.
Models based on the ancient behavior of the climate do so apply. Particularly models that allow for large scale warmings and Ice ages for no particular reason. The ice core data shows a long history of repeated warming and coolings in the absence of James Watt and Henry Ford. It is more likely that the past record is more accurate than existing UN sanctioned prognostications of the near future.
Really, models of the known are more accurate than those of the unknown. Who’d have thought…
And large scale warmings and ice ages do not occur “for no particular reason”.
Geologic history along with evolution and adaptation of life are far more accurate than any model.
Sure, Ian Malcolm’s “life finds a way” is fiction. Or at least from science fiction but it has merit. Stromatalites are still around today.
“And large scale warmings and ice ages do not occur “for no particular reason”.”
Not for no reason, certainly. But we have ample evidence that they don’t occur because of CO2. If you think the computer models are correct, you should perhaps show where they demonstrate the how the last four glacial/interglacial periods happened without CO2.
No, they don’t because they are wrong.
Slipstick, I think you have made yet another unsupportable claim. “the first time in the history of the planet that a sustained, increasing reintroduction of hundreds of millions of years of sequestered carbon back into the climate has occurred”
Were you around for the past 4.5 Billion years? Were you able to measure the CO2 output from a planet with 1000s of large forest fires burning uncontrolled across many continents? OR even a giant fire burning on Pangea? How about fom a world where 100s to 1000s of active volcanoes out gassed daily.
And large scale impacts. These would penetrate to fossilized carbon layers and oxidize most carbon..even strip mining coal leaves behind more fossil carbon than a large impact crater. The pressure required to form shocked quartz (iimpactor signature) would vaporize graphite…in this field of physics, pressure and temperature go hand in hand.
Volcanism can and has intersected with fossil carbon. Kimberlite is but one example.
To claim fossil carbon was permanently removed from the atmosphere is sheer ignorance of geology. And we are overdue on a planetary geology event.event.
Or how about when giant asteroids smash into the planet
First, correlation is not causation.
Second, these is indeed good correlation between the length of the solar sunspot cycle and global temperatures. The longer cycles are also weaker cycles, meaning less solar wind, more cosmic wind, and thus more clouds. Physical blocking of insolation is a very effective way to cool a planet.
One can stipulate that the Sun’s cycles DO strongly influence our climate particularly as it would be stretching reality quite a bit to maintain that Earth’s climate drives the solar cycles.
With the Sun going on holiday for awhile, cooling is to follow.
It is too bad that he did not address the short, about 5 year half-life of atmospheric CO2, which means that spikes in CO2 from warming are rather dynamic and thus short lived the warming stops.
Also, gases can cook out of (even a bubbles) the warming oceans a lot faster than they redissolve in cooling oceans. being limited by the surface area of the air/water contact when redissolving.
Brian T Kelleher,
Several remarks on your essay:
2. There is nothing unusual about CO2 spiking during interglacial periods.
No, but the current spike is 100 ppmv higher than the previous spike, which was at a higher temperature than today (The Eemian, 120,000 years ago).
A similar spike as the current spike of 110 ppmv in 165 years time above the current (dynamic) equilibrium would be measurable in all ice cores, whatever their resolution, be it with a lower amplitude.
3. CO2 was flat lined at about 275 ppm throughout the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age
Ice cores with sufficient resolution (~20 years Law Dome DSS core) show a dip of ~6 ppmv for a dip of ~0.8 K or ~8 ppmv/K:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
reaching levels far in excess of what can be attributed to Henry’s Law
??? References?
(b) the CO2 escaping the melting ice; (c) the CO2 degassing due to rapid warming of the massive deluge of frigid fresh water
(b) is peanuts and contains in general less CO2 in the air bubbles than already in the atmosphere.
(c) is peanuts as CO2 is hardly soluble in fresh water and most was first absorbed high in the atmosphere where rain was formed.
Little problems with the rest of the essay…
Ferdinand,
Too literal, you need to allow for diffusion, we have no Idea what the last CO2 spike did or how long it was because the high CO2 concentration diffused through the ice to create a flatter wider spike. So while on the surface it’s looks like you’re right upon applying a few braincells and some basic chemistry one can see that it’s inconclusive.
bobl,
Somwhere down I have put the reference to the only attempt to determine the migration speed of CO2 in ice cores. It is so low that it isn’t diectly measurable, it was deduced from higher CO2 levels near remelt layers in relative “warm” (coastal) ice cores. That shows a migration at a few hundred meters depth which broadens the resolution from ~20 years to ~22 years and at the bottom of the core to ~40 years. That is all. No mass migration through the ice and no measurable migration in the much colder inland ice cores.
See: http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3773250
Unless you are arguing that CO2 that was sequestered by dinosaurs behaves differently than other sources of CO2. So freaking what.
All that matters is CO2 levels, not where the CO2 is from.
We have sufficient examples of other instances where CO2 levels have risen and fallen to know that there is nothing special about the current era.
Sure, but how did the dinosaurs behave? I believe we now know the reason they went extinct…
F.E.
#2-You both agree that there is nothing unusual about CO2 spikes during interglacials.
#3. He said “CO2 was flat lined at about 275 ppm throughout the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age”
You posted a chart quibbling over a change of 6 ppm…which can be described as a flat line pretty much.
YOU then move on to quote his #4 and #5 without indicating that you’ve moved on from #3 and use only random quotes as if they are somehow related to the #3 “flatline” comment….
So let’s put those quotes BACK in the context he wrote them into.
“4. Instead, I found vast unambiguous evidence that rapid CO2 increases occur only when rapidly melting/retreating glaciers are interacting with the earth’s oceans and atmosphere in creating rapid global warming, rising seawater levels and signature rapid atmospheric CO2 increases. The available evidence shows a linear relationship wherein rapidly melting glaciers cause atmospheric CO2 levels to rise higher and higher the closer the retreat gets to the poles, reaching levels far in excess of what can be attributed to Henry’s Law governed interchanges with a slowly warming ocean surface. By all appearances the excess CO2 in the atmosphere very slowly reenters the oceans once the glacial retreat stops.”
“5. I found that there is at least a five-fold effect that explains the well-documented atmospheric CO2 spikes as glaciers rapidly melt/retreat: (a) Henry’s Law related increases from the warming of the average surface temperature of the oceans combined with deep seawater up-welling; (b) the CO2 escaping the melting ice; (c) the CO2 degassing due to rapid warming of the massive deluge of frigid fresh water cascading across the land and glacier surfaces and then forming a floating skin of warming freshwater at the ocean surface; (d) the CO2 degassing from the deeps due to disruptive/turbulent effects on thermoclines; and (e) the CO2 emitting from bacterial decomposition of massive amounts of organic matter that had been trapped within and under the retreating ice and is being exposed to air.”
Do you see how he seems to state that there are 5 things, which combined together, explain the atmospheric C02 spikes as glaciers “RAPIDLY MELT/RETREAT”…(not when they begin to melt/retreat…or slow down….a specific time frame of behavior during glacier melting.)
As far as the Henry’s Law thing….https://climaterx.wordpress.com/2014/07/26/carbon-dioxide-and-henrys-law/
Do the math.
As far as diffusion rates in antarctic ice cores goes….
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/01/antarctic-ice-cores-the-sample-rate-problem/
Do the chemistry and then compare to plant stomata results.
The last century and a half of fossil fuel use are the first time in the history of the planet that a sustained, increasing reintroduction of hundreds of millions of years of sequestered carbon back into the climate has occurred. I would suspect the amount of CO2 released by a warming ocean makes the anthro-CO2 contribution trivial.
…and you would be right
And why is the ocean warming? Spontaneous combustion?
stevekeohane,
Depends of the surface temperature, not the total CO2 mass in the oceans. The (dynamic) equilibrium between oceans and atmosphere over the past 800,000 years was ~16 ppmv/K.
According to Henry’s law, confirmed by over 3 million seawater samples, the equilibrium is around 16 ppmv/K.
For the current (area weighted) average ocean surface temperature the dynamic equilibrium would be around 290 ppmv. Which it was in previous interglacial era’s and for most of the current Holocene it was in the range of 280-300 ppmv. Currently we are at 400 ppmv, thus 110 ppmv above equilibrium, reason that the oceans absorb some of the extra CO2 due to its increased pressure in the atmosphere…
You just keeping slipping up, Slip. There is no observational evidence that the oceans ARE warming significantly. Try stepping to the side when the Climate Clowns toss down another banana peel….
“And why is the ocean warming? Spontaneous combustion?”
Natural causes. The ocean has been warming continuously since the last glacial period.
You don’t need to blame humans for everything.
“And why is the ocean warming? Spontaneous combustion?”
Natural causes. The ocean has been slowly warming up ever since the LIA officially ended in the mid 1800’s.
Ferdinand,
It surprises me that people continue to talk about outgassing of CO2 from the oceans. I did a quick back of the napkin a couple years ago, and by simple partial pressure calculations, the ocean’s a net absorber (at current temps and CO2 levels).
rip
Why are the oceans warming? Probably something to do with the sun. What warming there has been started over 100 years before the CO2 concentration started rising.
@ ripshin – January 13, 2017 at 8:07 am
OK, I can see on the following graph that it musta been back in 2008 that you did your “back of a napkin” calculation, …… right?
http://i1019.photobucket.com/albums/af315/SamC_40/1979-2013UAHsatelliteglobalaveragetemperatures.png
Yup, had ta ben those “running average centers” that did the trick.
ripshin,
You did the calculations on the back of a napkin? Was it the size of a towel?
“Like all equilibrium constants, the Henry’s Law constant is temperature dependent. Therefore, an average partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 must be carefully calculated. That is, it is not acceptable to determine the partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 at various points around the globe and average them together.”
https://climaterx.wordpress.com/2014/07/26/carbon-dioxide-and-henrys-law/
“It is important to note the silliness in measuring CO2 levels around the globe and assuming that the average has some statistical meaning. Look at the data in Table 3. Simply based on ocean temperature around the equator, CO2 levels are well over 400 ppm, while levels in Antarctica are similar to those found during ice ages. This, obviously, has to be the case to get an average somewhere between these two extremes. This really puts into question the validity of ice-core data as a proxy for “global” CO2 levels. It is difficult to understand how samples of ice taken from Antarctica could represent global CO2 levels in violation of Henry’s Law.”
Aphan, ….. I shur like the way you think and write. Keep up the good work.
Aphan,
Your reference to Barrante’s work only shows that he doen’t have any idea how the CO2 balance between atmosphere and ocean surface works.
Ripshin is completely right: the (measured!) area weighted average CO2 pressure (pCO2) of the ocean surface is lower than the pCO2 in the atmosphere thus the net CO2 flux is from the atmosphere into the oceans not reverse.
Table 3. in Barrante’s work is complete nonsense, as he simply adds all areas as having a small pressure contribution to the atmosphere, the cold areas less than in the warm areas, but still a contribution…
All what Henry’s law says is that the net flux of a gas is in direct (linear) ratio to the pressure difference between a gas above a liquid and the same gas in the liquid until a temperature dependent fixed equilibrium between the gas in and above the liquid is reached.
In the case of the oceans that is a dynamic equilibrium, as the pCO2 of the upwelling waters near the equator is constantly (much) higher than of the atmosphere, while at the poles it is reverse: these remove CO2 out of the atmosphere (thus a “negative contribution” to the CO2 pressure…), but still the same ~16 ppmv/K is observed for the full oceans as for a single sample…
If one uses the current sink rate (~2.15 ppmv/year) from the extra pressure (~110 ppmv) above equilibrium (~290 ppmv) for the current average sea surface temperature (that gives a linear e-fold decay rate of ~51 years), the average increase in the atmosphere is nicely in the middle of the temperature induced noise:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em6.jpg
He’s saying that the last century and a half, pretty much match the empirical evidence ON THIS PLANET, that demonstrates that over and over again, millions of years of CO2 that has been sequestered in glaciers gets released back into the climate when ice ages terminate. Also ocean upwellings, that occur during deep ocean cycles bring up gigatons of millions of years old CO2 from the ocean floor and release it into the atmosphere. And oceanic floor vents release tons of hot, CO2 rich minerals from deep inside the earth’s crust into the oceans all day every day.
Models of the climate today DEPEND on there being a difference between today and ancient times in order to PROVE that today there’s something “different” and “bad” going on. So far, they’ve proved nothing.
And what constitutes proof to your satisfaction? Should we wait until Miami is underwater before considering whether there might be a problem when basic physics tells us that increasing the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will cause the equilibrium temperature to rise?
Slipup: “Basic physics” says no such thing. Speculation and conjecture about CO2’s effect as a driver of climate shifts is all the AGWers have. And there is anti-correlation evidence, now: CO2 UP. WARMING STOPPED.
Re: waiting until Miami is underwater…. at the rate of sea level rise, very small and fairly constant over the past several millenia…. you’ll be waiting a loooooooooooooooooooooooong time.
What an inane remark slipstick – we engineers have tools for 1.3mm P/A rises in sea levels, we call them “piles of dirt”. Japan recently built an airport on one of their man made piles of dirt! Norway has been doing piles of dirt for over 2000 YEARS.
1.3mm P/A that’s a levy bank around 3 grains of sand higher per YEAR
My dog could dig enough dirt to keep my house above global warming sea rise and still spend the 99% of his time in front of my fossil fuel powered aircon in his favourite spot – sleeping. If I built a nice sandpit, a two year old could do it in their play time, 50 times over.
Sometime the lack of commonsense is just astonishing – you have no concept of scale.
Slipstick,
You DO know that Miami used to be COMPLETELY under water….right? SEVERAL TIMES in the past. Geology, physics, and basic common sense tell us that humans shouldn’t be so cavalier about building massive cities on land that planet Earth has submerged over and over again by itself.
Lab experiments performed in glass jars are not proxies for the Earth and it’s atmosphere. Its like saying that because microwave ovens excite molecules and cause temperature increases, that atmospheric temperatures are rising because of the increase in microwave ovens over the past 60 years!
I love it when you warmistas pretend to be able to do science.
First off, while physics does tell us that more CO2 will lead to a warmer world. Real world science puts this warming in the few tenths of a degree range.
Not only nothing to worry about, it is actually a good thing.
Models don’t apply full stop as they have been all but useless at predicting anything to do with the climate.
mikebart
Many models do successfully predict that the modeller needs [wants] more [taxpayers’] money.
Auto
Slipstick,
Your statement, “The last century and a half of fossil fuel use are the first time in the history of the planet that a sustained, increasing reintroduction of hundreds of millions of years of sequestered carbon back into the climate has occurred.”, is not true.
During mountain building, coal beds can and will be tilted up and exposed to erosion and the atmosphere, where they will oxidize. Even today, natural coal fires started by lightning are common. So, as James Hutton was so fond of stating, “The present is the key to the past.” Further, there is good evidence that some past flood basalt eruptions came up through coal beds and burned the coal while the eruptions were taking place. Because no one was around to observe and measure, it isn’t clear how those events compared to today’s use of fossil fuels. However, your statement is categorically wrong.
first time in the history of the planet that a sustained, increasing reintroduction of hundreds of millions of years of sequestered carbon back into the climate has occurred.
================
nonsense. the vast limestone deposits visible in many places on earth are formed from hundreds of millions of years of sequestered carbon. plate tectonics routinely recycles this limestone into the earth where it is heated and the sequestered CO2 returned back to the atmosphere, either as CO2 or as longer hydrocarbons created by the reduction of water and limestone in the presence of iron, heat and pressure. These hydrocarbons are occasionally trapped within rock formations, but more typically bubble up to the surface where they are consumed by microbes to produce CO2 and water.
human released CO2 is a tiny, tiny fraction of the CO2 returned to the surface by natural forces over the millions upon millions of years plate tectonics has been in action.
@Slipstick January 12, 2017 at 12:13 pm
You appear to underestimate the power of the feedback mechanisms in nature.
An average hurricane in a day produces uses energy that “is equivalent to 200 times the world-wide electrical generating capacity – an incredible amount of energy produced!”
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html
The hubris of humans is amazing with all our SUVs and power stations we still produce less CO2 than ants and termites. Even if we manage to create an energy imbalance in a day a single average hurricane can undo all of that. Now think about the energy continually being uplifted to space by the weather systems around the planet a minor increase in them and all humankind’s inputs are negated.
The Ice sheet has been retreating for 10-15,000 years. The Ice Age came for some unknown reason, and we are experiencing the end of it for an equally unknown reason. Variability in the warming rate should not be a surprise.
The glacier retreat is part of that general process.
There is no evidence to include or exclude repeated Carrington like events 10-15 K years ago.
It is just as good as the CO2 global warming theory. Some theories that sound like they might be true enough. We can get a whole science going and maybe obtain $20 billion per year in research funding and get the whole world to switch energy systems based on it and maybe we can even put some taxes on something.
The warming definitely caused all of the CO2 rise from the Last Glacial Maximum through 1700 or so. And from 1700 to about 1960, atmospheric CO2 was rising faster than emissions… So warming must have driven some, if not most, of that rise.
Melting ice can contribute to warming by lowering albedo.
But, I can’t rationalize melting ice being the driver of warming.
Melting ice from lower latitudes would decrease the planet’s albedo.
Actually, we can’t honestly say that the warming caused all the CO2 rise from the last glacial maximum through 1700. The truth is, we don’t know enough about the planet as it sits now, much less what was happening 400 years ago to know anything for a fact. We are still, and have been all along, “guessing” and that is all. For all we know, there may have been 1000 active volcanoes in shallow seas sending up all that CO2. We do NOT know hardly anything before about 300 years ago when “science” started to become more inquisitive. And the skyrocketing rate of scientific growth in the last century has been fed more by guessing and building on guesses. Some of it will turn out to be right and some of it will eventually be found to be the wrong guess.
David,
Between 1700 and 1910, the emissions were smaller than the natural variability + probably the rise in seawater temperature, but from ~1910 on emissions are faster rising than CO2 levels:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1900_1959.jpg
He NEVER SAYS that melting ice is the driver of ANY warming other than what occurs when melting land ice causes more water vapor to enter the atmosphere! Where is everyone getting that idea?????
“…but from ~1910 on emissions are faster rising than CO2 levels:”
Pseudo-mass balance junk science yielding no conclusion. All it says is sinks are active. If they are active enough, then virtually all of the emissions can be diverted to other reservoirs, and have negligible impact on atmospheric levels.
No Bart,
Simple first grade calculus: 2-1=1.
After years of discussion you still have not come with one observation that proves that there is any change in speed of the natural carbon cycle, which is necessary to prove your thesis, while human emissions are “consistent” with every observation on earth, your thesis violates them all, every single one…
And you, Ferdinand, still believe in the ridiculous pseudo-mass balance argument. It is so dumb.
Bart, Ferdinand’s mass balance argument explains where the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is coming from. Your argument doesn’t explain where the CO2 is coming from.
Rob – You may not be aware that Ferdinand and I have been going at this for years now. My claim is that the remarkable agreement between the rate of change of atmospheric concentration and temperature anomaly, in both the short term variability and the long term trend, demonstrates that atmospheric CO2 concentration is a temperature dependent phenomenon.
As emissions are not temperature dependent, they are superfluous, and have at most a minor impact. They are not needed. Give me a record of temperature anomalies and the initial concentration, and I can tell you to high fidelity what the CO2 concentration was over the recorded interval of time. Emissions are not needed.
Ferdinand maintains that the agreement with the long term trend is just happenstance, and has hypothesized that the variability only is explained by temperatures, while the long term trend is due to human forcing. That argument fails on three counts: 1) the odds of the agreement with the long term trend being happenstance are virtually zero 2) it requires a more complicated structure, running afoul of Occam’s Razor, and 3) it requires that natural and anthropogenic inputs be treated on an unequal basis in terms of how nature disposes of them.
There are many potential explanations for how the relationship comes about. My personal belief is that it is long term temperature related equilibration with the deep oceans. Ocean upwelling is delivering new parcels of CO2 to the surface every minute, but the amount of CO2 that downwells is temperature dependent, and the imbalance produces a steady rise over timelines short relative to oceanic overturning.
That may or may not prove to be the case, but it does not matter for the conclusion. There other processes which might cause the same result that are either known but insufficiently quantified, or completely unknown to us at this time. Regardless, the relationship between the rate of change and temperature holds, and it is not happenstance.
Bart, you post “My personal belief…..”
…
As you might be aware, beliefs do not comprise evidence. When and if your “theory” can explain where the CO2 is coming from, and you provide real empirical measurements that back up your “belief” then you may be able to counteract Ferdinand.
.
You say: “Ocean upwelling is delivering new parcels of CO2 to the surface every minute” but you cannot provide evidence that this is actually happening. Can you please show real measurements of CO2 in upwelling flows?
“…beliefs do not comprise evidence…”
As I said, it does not matter. The temperature/CO2 relationship speaks for itself. That is the evidence. I don’t have to know how it arises any more than I need to know how a diesel locomotive works to know I better give off the track when it is coming torwards me.
“…but you cannot provide evidence that this is actually happening.”
Say what? You think upwelling waters do not have CO2 dissolved within them? Is this a serious comment? If so, I cannot help you. You need to do investigation on your own.
Bart says: “You think upwelling waters do not have CO2 dissolved within them”
…
I say, show me the measurements of CO2 in upwelling water.
Bartleby….but, but, but….F.E. took “calculus” in the first grade!!! (evil grin….sorry….couldn’t resist)
Rob Bradley-
For measurements of pCO2 upwelling, here’s one for starters-
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GB005031/full
from that point just go here- (Bart can help you with the big words if you need it)
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2013&q=ocean+upwelling+of+pCO2&hl=en&as_sdt=0,45&as_vis=1
LMAO @ Aphan:
..
From your link: ” Here we employ a basin-scale, fully coupled physical-biogeochemical model ”
..
Please note the word MODEL
..
I will repeat what I said: “I say, show me the measurements of CO2 in upwelling water.”
Get back to me with actual measurements.
Rob-
I understand that the word “model” is scary for you. It should be. But context is everything…
You see, the model was designed to evaluate “the similarities and differences between these two basins in terms of temporal variability”. Not to calculate the annual flux.
As we read further we find (bolded)
Our model estimates an average sea-to-air CO2 flux of 0.521 ± 0.204 Pg C yr−1 for the tropical Pacific (18°S–18°N, 150°E–90°W), which is in good agreement with the observation-based estimate (0.51 ± 0.24 Pg C yr−1). On average, sea-to-air CO2 flux is 0.214 ± 0.03 Pg C yr−1 in the tropical Atlantic (10°S–10°N), which compares favorably with observational estimates.
If you keep reading articles from that second link, you’ll find things like this-
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967064516302338
“Through a series of deployments beginning in March 2012, two versions of the Wave Glider autonomous surface vehicles from Liquid Robotics, Inc. have been instrumented with sensors to measure pH, partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) of the atmosphere and sea surface, and wind speed and direction, from which instantaneous sea-air fluxes of CO2 can be calculated.”
See that word there….MEASURE? And here:
“These deployments, most near Monterey Bay, California, were highly correlated with ΔpCO2 measurements obtained from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s (MBARI) long-term mooring station M1, as well as from shipboard observations. In the central California upwelling system with highly variable pCO2 levels, the gliders captured large spatial gradients associated with upwelling fronts. Differences in sea surface pCO2 as large as 470 μatm over < 0.5 km were observed. Unlike traditional ship sampling methods,” (what???? mooring stations? Ship sampling???? As in…measurements???”)
I can do this all day
LMAO all day @ Aphan
..
“observation-based estimate” ….. ESTIMATE
..
“observational estimates” …… ESTIMATES
…..
Now with regard to the word “measure” …….”of the atmosphere an sea surface” …… You have to dive BELOW the surface to measure upwelling CO2.
..
Now, with regard to Monterey Bay…..you see that nasty word “correlated????” oh my, my my……..
…
Lastly, you post: ” Differences in sea surface pCO2 as large as 470 μatm over < 0.5 km were observed. " ….. note the word SURFACE
…
Got any measurements of …oh….say 2 km deep upwelling water pH ?????
….
HINT: Argo Bouys …. http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110902_oceanacidification.html
“You have to dive BELOW the surface to measure upwelling CO2.”
Did you know that the Monterey Bay Mooring Station takes readings at the 60m and 100 m depths all day every day????
Do you know how “upwelling” is defined? http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/upwelling.html
“Winds blowing across the ocean surface push water away. Water then rises up from beneath the surface to replace the water that was pushed away. This process is known as “upwelling.” Upwelling occurs in the open ocean and along coastlines.”
(This is why we can take readings at the surface….because that “upwelled” nutrient rich water is what replaces the not so nutrient rich surface water that is blown away by the winds…if the surface water measurements doesn’t change….there’s been no actual upwelling…see how that works??)
GASP….Argo Floats??? (not buoys, which you spelled wrong and are different than floats) They take measurements?? Who knew? *cough cough* YOU did. Which makes me wonder why you pretended not to know…..
Continuing to LMAO @ Aphan
..
1) 60 & 100 meter depths at one geographical location
…
Too funny, the Argo floats dive to 2000 meters, and there are almost 4000 of them !!!!!
…
2) Before the water “upwells” it happens to be below the surface. That happens to be where the Argo floats are, and (believe it or not) they can measure the pH and the organic C !!!!!!
…
Argo is Argo Aphan, call one a buoy or a float, your nit picking doesn’t relive you of your inability to understand you have to measure the CO2 in the water BEFORE it gets to the surface…
…
Keep posting, I’m enjoying LMAO @ U
PS Aphan (re: buoy v float)
…
“Argos offers ocean data telemetry services for a broad spectrum of applications including ocean modeling, moored buoy monitoring and more.”
..
Notice the word “BUOY????”
..
Reference: http://www.argos-system.org/applications-argos/oceanography/
Rob Bradley,
Thanks for the help…
For you and Aphan:
You probably may not know the background of the years of discussion between Bart and me. Here in (not so) short:
– Bart sole proof of a non-human increase in CO2 is the nice fit between the temperature rate of change and the CO2 rate of change. That is really all he has. For the rest, his theory that “temperature fits all” violates every single observation known to man…
– About everybody, including the “warmistas”, agree that the variability around the trend is caused by temperature variability.
– The opposite CO2 and δ13C changes show that the main response is from (tropical) vegetation, more than from the oceans.
– As the oxygen balance shows, vegetation is a net, growing CO2 absorber over periods longer that 1-3 years. Thus NOT the cause of the upgoing trend in CO2 rate of change. Thus variability and trend are from different processes, largely independent of each other, where the trend may be or not be caused by temperature.
– Rests the oceans as possible source, but that violates Henry’s law (confirmed by millions of seawater samples), as the ratio (even seen over 800,000 years in ice cores) is about 16 ppmv/K, maximum 16 ppmv since the LIA… And it violates the trend in 13C/12C ratio as seawater has a higher 13C/12C ratio than the atmosphere while we see a firm decrease in the atmosphere and ocean surface and it violates the observed pCO2 difference between atmosphere and ocean surface from over 3 million seawater samples:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/maps.shtm
And it violates the increase in DIC (total inorganic carbon) in the ocean surface layer with a slightly decrease in pH, which shows, together with the pCO2 difference, that the net CO2 flux is from the atmosphere into the oceans, not reverse…
Bart has zero observation that his theory reflects reality, to the contrary…
Last but not least, his theory to circumvent the mass balance is that human emissions are dwarfed by the natural carbon cycles. Based on different estimates of the residence time of any CO2 molecule in the atmosphere, that is just above 5 years or about 150 GtC in and out the atmosphere of currently ~800 GtC.
Human emissions increased a fourfold since 1959 when the measurements at the South Pole and Mauna Loa started. So did the increase rate in the atmosphere and thus the net sink rate, as that is the difference between these two (or you violate the mass balance, pseudo or not).
If human emissions were not the cause of the increase in net sink rate, the only way to get that right is that the natural carbon cycle also increased a fourfold in the same time span in exact ratio to human emissions. Or you violate the equality of CO2 of any source for any sinks (except between isotopes, but that is a small fraction in mass).
There is zero evidence that the natural carbon cycle even increased a little bit over time, to the contrary: more recent estimates of the residence time give average longer times than older ones, which points to a stable natural throughput of CO2 in a growing mass of CO2…
In short: there is zero support from any observation for Bart’s theory, besides his “match” between two curves, of which the variablity is real but the trend is from a different process: human emissions at twice the rate as the increase in the atmosphere…
Even that is not unique: exactly the same curve can be shown as a result of temperature + human emissions:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/25/about-spurious-correlations-and-causation-of-the-co2-increase-2/
It gets interesting from item 2.3 onwards…
Aphan,
CO2 levels in ocean deep water upwelling are rarely measured. Monteray bay is an exception, but extfremely variable. That is not a huge problem if you have other, more reliable observations. That is the case for the 13C/12C decline and the 14C bomb spike decline that can act as “tracers”.
Both show a rather constant throughput of ~40 GtC deep oceans CO2 exchange with the atmosphere: slightly less from warmed up deep oceans upwelling waters near the equator than goes back into the deep near the poles…
There is no indication of an increase in natural CO2 throughput from/to any reservoir over the past 55+ years of accurate measurements.
Ferdinand is presenting a narrative. His explanations for the dC13 ratio and the oxygen balance are conjectures, not facts. His modeling effort assumes virtually instant equilibration of CO2 distribution over the entire oceans in response to temperature, when we know such equilibration necessarily takes centuries to millennia.
The trend in the rate of change of CO2 matches the trend in temperatures with remarkable precision, when the data are scaled to match the variation. Ferdinand dismisses this amazing consilience out of hand. The odds he is right are virtually zero.
The rate of change of atmospheric CO2 matches temperature in both the short term and the long term within the modern era. Human inputs are not needed to estimate what they are at any given time, just the temperature record.
Furthermore, the assumption of significant human impact requires a kluge, a speculation that natural sinks have gotten proportionately more powerful in the past two decades, to explain the fact that the fictitious “airborne fraction” appears to be decreasing. It is not decreasing. It was just never very large in the first place.
It is foolishness to cling to the presumption that puny human inputs have any significant impact, and the disparity between that presumption and the observations is only going to grow in the future.
Bart:
As you know from our discussions, I had no problem to show exact the same variability and trends by using both the established influence of temperature and human emissions as sources as you did with only temperature:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/rss_co2_emiss_deriv.jpg
Where RSS_CO2 is the increase + variability caused by temperature according to the RSS satellite data and
emiss-nat-CO2-derive is the increase + variability based on the response of nature to temperature changes + human emissions – the sink rate calculated from the observed linear response of the sinks to the increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere.
If you see any difference between these two I like to see an explanation…
Thus your solution is not only not unique, it is not supported by any observation on earth. It even violates every single observation on earth… You can call that conjecture, but what are the odds that two theories show the same graph and one theory is backed by every single observation, while another is backed by none and that the first still is wrong and the second is right?
His explanations for the dC13 ratio and the oxygen balance are conjectures, not facts
As good facts as if you add an acid to a solution that the pH goes down…
His modeling effort assumes virtually instant equilibration of CO2 distribution over the entire oceans in response to temperature
My “model” includes huge speed differences between fast reactions of vegetation (1-3 years observed response times, ~4 ppmv/K, which level off to zero) and the ocean surface (~16 ppmv/K) to temperature changes and a much slower reaction of the different actors, (deep) oceans and vegetation, to the increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere: a net sink rate of ~2.15 ppmv / 110 ppmv above dynamic equilibrium or an e-fold response time of ~51 years.
The influence of the increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere is nowhere in your theory, which is impossible, as that violates Henry’s law…
I don’t include any short term (decades to 1.5 century) response of the deep oceans to temperature changes, as the deep oceans may have warmed some extremely small bit over that time period. That plays zero role in the CO2 equilibrium over such a short time span, only the ocean surface temperature plays a (small) role.
natural sinks have gotten proportionately more powerful in the past two decades
They didn’t become more powerful, they simply respond remarkably linear to the increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere above dynamic equilibrium…
Your model, Ferdinand, assumes a priori stability, with no mechanism for stability to actually occur. It thereby assumes a different treatment for natural and anthropogenic emissions.
CO2 concentration became very linear with the onset of the “pause”, while emissions kept accelerating.
Bart:
Your model, Ferdinand, assumes a priori stability, with no mechanism for stability to actually occur.
Not at all, my “model” is based on the established temperature – CO2 dynamic equilibrium of 16 ppmv/K according to Henry’s law, proven by over 3 million seawater samples and by the glacial-interglacial changes…
It thereby assumes a different treatment for natural and anthropogenic emissions.
Not at all. The difference is that human emissions are independent of temperature changes, while many natural processes are heavily influenced by temperature changes.
Human emissions as good as volcanic emissions add extra CO2 to the atmosphere, which increases the pressure in the atmosphere above the temperature controlled equilibrium. That induces an extra flux into the oceans and vegetation, quasi-independent of the temperature variations and an order of magnitude slower than the effect of temperature:
Seasonal: global ~4 K temperature increase/decrease: ~110 GtC in and out within months. Net effect ~5 ppmv/K. See:
http://models.weatherbell.com/temperature.php
Continuous: some 30 K temperature difference between upwelling near the equator and the sinks near the poles are good for ~40 GtC/year throughput.
Year by year: some 8-10 GtC/K variability (4-5 ppmv/K).
These three items together level off to ~zero after 1-3 years for an average constant temperature over time, but are responsible for the ~5 years residence time (150 GtC throughput at 800 GtC in the atmosphere)
The overall long term temperature effect is:
Multi-decades to multi-millenia: 16 ppmv/K, that is maximum 16 ppmv since the LIA.
Human emissions: 2-9 GtC/year (volcanic emissions: less than 0.1 GtC/year), that is an over fourfold increase over 57 years, increasing the CO2 pressure in the atmosphere with 110 ppmv above the temperature controlled equilibrium. That is good for a net sink rate of ~2.15 ppmv or an e-fold decay rate of ~51 years. Simply said: the removal of any excess CO2 pressure (whatever the source) above the temperature controlled equilibrium is too slow to remove all human emissions in the same year as introduced…
Thus while CO2 from any source simply followed the same temperature fluxes in and out the different reservoirs, the extra pressure in the atmosphere did introduce an extra outflux, which is composed of any mix of CO2 present in the atmosphere, whatever the source. The source of the extra CO2 is not important, the speed of removal is important…
CO2 concentration became very linear with the onset of the “pause”, while emissions kept accelerating.
No, the CO2 increase in the atmosphere became linear, thus the pressure difference still increased linear at more or less constant temperatures, thus the net sink rate increased.
As in the last years human emissions were flat, the increase rate in the atmosphere even decreased:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em6.jpg
If human emissions stay flat, the increase in the atmosphere would stabilise at ~510 ppmv.
If human emissions dropped to ~4.5 GtC/year today, the increase in the atmosphere would be zero…
Theories are yet to be disprove. What we have with CAGW is hypothetical.
When much of the northern hemisphere is covered with mile-thick ice sheets (glaciation) and then rapid melting occurs, and at the same time atmospheric CO2 and water vapor (the primary greenhouse gas) rise, this seems to be an indicator that increasing CO2 is a product, not the driving force, of the warming. Since we are now in the coldest 10% of the past 10,000 years, as shown by Greenland ice core and north Atlantic sediment studies, it seems obvious that something other than anthropogenic forces causes climate change. Previous warm periods of the past 10,000 years, the Holocene Optimum, Minoan, Roman, Medieval, and present, were each cooler than their predecessor.
Climate change – it’s what climate does.
Well to be honest no IPCC model applies – at all – none of the models have ever showed what is observed or was observed. Which I guess is why the IPCC documents are always E.&O.E. 🙂
And here I thought global sea level rise was the cause of GW. My bad.
‘Utra-giganormous’?? Did he just invent that word? Why not say ‘The Carrington Event’ and briefly explain that? Or use ‘Yooooge’. Gotta write for your audience. Color me twaddled.(if he can do it, I can do it)
Also, how much CO2 does a kg of melting ice release?
Use of nonsense words like that detract from any professional demeanor the author is trying to project.
Makes him sound like a used car salesman.
Agreed. I hope he doesn’t use words like that in court. The judge(s) would be very suspicious.
Ultra-giganormous…it’s one of those legal terms used in courts of law…..[face palm]
rocketscientist January 12, 2017 at 1:19 pm
MarkW January 12, 2017 at 1:01 pm
I’m not so sure it is a made up word. At least the “gig” half.
I am not ready to buy the Carrington event ether.
But to point I have come across references to a large display of the “northerner lights” over the Fredricsburg Battlefield in 1862. odd
anyway the word seems real.
michael
http://definithing.com/giganormous/
chilemike,
Ice cores have some 10-15% air volume in ice at bubble closing depth. As air at (about) atmospheric pressure at that depth is ~1000 times lighter, it represents 0.01% in weight of the ice mass or 10 g/kg of ice of which 0.04% is CO2 or 0,4 g CO2 / kg ice…
More important: when the ice was formed, CO2 levels were falling, thus CO2 in the air enclosed in ice has lower CO2 levels than in the atmosphere when melting today (180-300 ppmv), where the current level is around 400 ppmv…
Anyway, any CO2 increase in the atmosphere doesn’t come from melting ice bubbles, but in the pre-industrial past from warming oceans…
Forgot that 0.04% is the current CO2 level in the atmosphere. The pre-industrial level was 0.018-0.03%…
Wim Röst did show that I need to go back to school to learn what percentages mean, obviously need some sleep now…
WR: 0,01% van 1 kg ice = 0,01 x 1000 gram x % = 10gr x % = 0,1 gram
“of which 0.04% is CO2 or 0,4 g CO2 / kg ice…”
WR: 0,04% van 0,1 gram = 1% van 0,1 gram x 0,04 = 0,001 gram x 0,04 = 0,00004 gram per kg ice
Indeed peanuts…
Gracias Ferdinand! I suspected it was quite low. Thanks for the numbers.
The pre-industrial level was 0.018-0.03%…
=========
nope. that is assumed after 1 researcher (Keating?) cherry picked samples from the 19th century to create a smooth curve, while omitting the very many samples showing much > 0.03%.
ferdberple,
Many of the historical wet chemical measurements were taken in towns, forests,… which show even today huge variations (250 to over 500 ppmv) for day/night changes. Completely unsuitable to have an idea what the real “background” level in 95% of the atmosphere was in pre-Mauna Loa times.
Samples taken on board of seaships or coastal with wind from the seaside show much lower average levels and the values are around the ice core levels for the same periods. That is where “background” CO2 levels are measured today + regular flights above 500 m over land + satellites nowadays…
It is well known that melting glaciers did not contribute much to CO2 increasing from 280-285 PPMV before the Industrial Revolution, from the low 300s in the 1950s, to around 405 now. And previous interglacials in the past 400,000 years did not have CO2 getting much past 280-290 PPMV. And that nature removed about half of manmade CO2 from the atmosphere, otherwise CO2 would now be over 500 PPMV.
It is not possible to draw the conclusions you present based on the data we have. Closing and sealing the firn takes 50 years or more. Plenty of time for CO2 spikes to equilabrate and smear themselves out of existence. We know all about “Mike’s Nature trick” of tacking the instrument record onto the proxy record. That’s not going to fly here.
D. J. Hawkins,
Depends of the resolution, which depends of the local snow accumulation rate. The best resolution ice cores were from the summit of Law Dome with an ice equivalent snow precipitation rate of ~1.2 meter ice equivalent/year. It takes less than a decade to close all bubbles there and at closing depth, CO2 levels are ~7 ppmv below atrmospheric, which means that the average gas age is ~10 years older than in the atmosphere.
Interestingly, there is an overlap of ~20 years (1960-1980) between ice core CO2 levels and direct measurements in the atmosphere at the South Pole:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_sp_co2.jpg
So, in this case there is no Mike involved, just a comparison of the data…
The high resolution has one drawback: one could only go some 150 year back in time before rock bottom was reached. But with such a resolution any 1-year spike in CO2 of 20 ppmv would be measurable or a sustained increase of 2 ppmv over 10 years…
Other ice cores have less precipitation, less resolution but go gradually farther back in time.
Deep inland ice cores have very little precipitation, but can go back 420,000 years (Vostok, resolution ~600 years) and 800,000 years (Dome C, resolution ~560 years). Even in these ice cores the current increase of 110 ppmv over 165 years would be measurable, be it with a much lower amplitude…
DJH,
I’ve long been suspicious of the claimed temporal resolution of ice precisely because it take so long to close the pores in snow and firn. As I recollect, the accumulation of snow and firn has to reach a thickness of about 200′ before the ice begins to deform plastically. It is thickness, not time that is the primary driver that closes up pores. Snow accumulates much more slowly in Antarctica than in say, the Alps.
“False Low Pre-industrial CO2 in the Atmosphere”
“Determinations of CO2 in polar ice cores are commonly used for estimations of the pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric levels. Perusal of these determinations convinced me that glaciological studies are not able to provide a reliable reconstruction of CO2 concentrations in the ancient atmosphere. This is because the ice cores do not fulfill the essential closed system criteria. One of them is a lack of liquid water in ice, which could dramatically change the chemical composition the air bubbles trapped between the ice crystals. This criterion, is not met, as even the coldest Antarctic ice (down to -73°C) contains liquid water[2]. 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[3].
One of these processes is formation of gas hydrates or clathrates. In the highly compressed deep ice all air bubbles disappear, as under the influence of pressure the gases change into the solid clathrates, which are tiny crystals formed by interaction of gas with water molecules. Drilling decompresses cores excavated from deep ice, and contaminates them with the drilling fluid filling the borehole. Decompression leads to dense horizontal cracking of cores, by a well known sheeting process. After decompression of the ice cores, the solid clathrates decompose into a gas form, exploding in the process as if they were microscopic grenades. In the bubble-free ice the explosions form a new gas cavities and new cracks[4]. Through these cracks, and cracks formed by sheeting, a part of gas escapes first into the drilling liquid which fills the borehole, and then at the surface to the atmospheric air. Particular gases, CO2, O2 and N2 trapped in the deep cold ice start to form clathrates, and leave the air bubbles, at different pressures and depth. At the ice temperature of -15°C dissociation pressure for N2 is about 100 bars, for O2 75 bars, and for CO2 5 bars. Formation of CO2 clathrates starts in the ice sheets at about 200 meter depth, and that of O2 and N2 at 600 to 1000 meters. This leads to depletion of CO2 in the gas trapped in the ice sheets. This is why the records of CO2 concentration in the gas inclusions from deep polar ice show the values lower than in the contemporary atmosphere, even for the epochs when the global surface temperature was higher than now. ”
https://www.john-daly.com/zjiceco2.htm
Statement written for the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
March 2004
Statement of Prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski
Chairman, Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection
Warsaw, Poland
Aphan,
The late Dr. Jaworowski did have a lot of knowledge about the migration of radio-isotopes in ice, but zero knowledge about CO2 in ice cores. His objections from 1992 were one by one refuted by the work of Etheridge e.a. on three ice cores at Law Dome in 1996, still he was repeating the same objections in 2004…
Several of his objections are physically impossible (migration of CO2 from low to high levels), completely wrong (he looked at the wrong column of measurements of the ice core data by Neftel), etc…
Let him rest in peace, together with his ideas of CO2 in ice cores…
For a complete overview of my objections against what Dr. Jaworowski said:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html
Clyde Spencer,
Total pressure (= depth) plays a huge role, but time too, as the time needed between the start and the end of bubble closing makes the difference in resolution. That depends of the precipitation rate, which shows enormous differences: from 1.2 m ice equivalent / year snow precipitation (coastal, Law Dome) to a few mm/year far inland at Vostok and Dome C.
At the start of closing the first bubbles, most pores still are open to the atmosphere. Even if the migration gets slower with pores getting smaller, the average CO2/air composition at bubble closing depth (~72 m at Law Dome) is only 7 ppmv below atmosphere, that is ~10 years older, while the ice is already 40 years old at that depth. Down to ~80 m, all bubbles are closed. That makes that any sample is a mix of very small amounts of ~40 year old air up to near actual air with an average gas age 30 years younger than the ice age and a mix for the bulk of the gas compostion (= resolution) of less than 10 years.
For inland ice cores, the start of bubble closing is somewhat deeper, due to colder temperatures, but as there is little precipitation, it takes far more time to close all pores/bubbles. The resolution of Vostok then is ~600 years. That of Dome C ~560 years.
I agree that It’s a bit of a stretch to say the Carrington event kicked off the recent epoch of warming. Sunspot activity and perhaps greater output of the sun began to occur about 100 years prior to 1859 (post Maunder min). Given that it would perhaps require a 100 + years of more “warmth from the sun” before the glacial melting got underway would seem reasonable. What would be interesting data to have would be what if any the change in the albedo of Earth might be since about 1800. Is there a positive warming/melting feedback cycle that will continue until perhaps the sun stays quiet for a long while?
Wow, first Buzzfeed throws junk out for its readers to “vet” and WUWT follows suit
I can buy that increased CO2 may be a result of glaciers melting, especially if the receding glaciers expose organic matter which then decomposes.
But if warming is a result, rather than a cause, of the glaciers melting, then what caused the glaciers to melt? Did UFOs sprinkle fairy dust on them?
He doesn’t say that warming is a result, not a cause. He pretty much says that natural warming melted the glaciers, which then release Co2 as a result.
jdgalt,
There have been suggestions that the retreat of the North American ice sheet started with the impact of a fairy asteroid changing the reflectivity of the ice sheet.
Astroid or comet, it matters not. Or how about a bolide? Just call them impactors and know it is a far more disruptive event than any gradual increase of carbonic anhydride 😉
The adiabatic compression alone will dissociate limestone. And vaporize graphite. Whic then goes boom.
He has developed an uncanny ability ….
Really?
No to mention Carrington type events would be a mistake. This is an important independent report that has merit, all things considered. His assessment could be as close as anyone can come to the issue, given all that we do know and the unknowns, those known and unknown. It is not just geological, but solar system and even galactic in extent (perhaps even universal given high energy cosmic particle effects). The main and important agreement here, for me, is that the temperature rises first, then the co2. People keep forgetting that. That creates a perspective that makes many ‘other’ considerations redundant.
That is wonderful logic. Ice traps CO2, you melt the ice it releases CO2. The ice core data proves there is CO2 sequestered in the ice. You gotta love it.
Anthony said-
“Note: I don’t subscribe to some of the claims made here, especially #1, where he blames the Carrington event for kicking off the change. I provide this PR only for discussion – Anthony”
Not really Anthony. #1 says- (bold mine)
“The start of the current period of rapid global warming coincides very closely with an ultra-giganormous sized solar flare striking the earth in 1859 strongly suggesting a relationship with solar storms/solar activity. The glaciers were already in full retreat from this or some other cause circa 1950 when fossil fuel CO2 emissions reached levels of concern to climate scientists.”
He SUGGESTS that there might be a relationship, but his point is that the glaciers had already begun to retreat “from this or some other cause” long before CO2 emissions were of concern. I’m not saying you are wrong in your interpretation, but I am calling you out for interpreting something stronger than what the author actually says. 🙂
“Ultra-giganormous” is a most appropriate scientific term to apply in a field where the certainty of “scientific” truth is ginormously overstated.
But, seriously, I was surfing around the web trying to find an answer to the question, “How much CO2 does a kg of melting ice produce?’, and I did NOT find an answer, but I found these interesting articles:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160104163203.htm
http://sciencenordic.com/arctic-sea-ice-helps-remove-co2-atmosphere
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/melting-tundra-releases-carbon-dioxide-quickly/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/04/01/the-arctic-climate-threat-that-nobodys-even-talking-about-yet/
I think there’s something here to consider.
Maybe the melting glaciers, by themselves, do not release so much CO2, but what’s exposed UNDER the glaciers after the melting might make some pronounced CO2 contribution.
Glaciers melt, release a little CO2, … exposed, thawing ground underneath releases more CO2, … lifeforms start chowing down on what’s underneath, as THEY release significant CO2, … sea ice melts and unplugs deep-ocean vats of CO2 —- it could all add up. But does CO2 really matter that much ? … is what I am still questioning, given that the mass of the atmosphere moves as a complex fluid, with North/South wind currents, East/West wind currents, and vertical convection all redistributing heat, … seemingly far outpacing mere radiative transfer of a few CO2 molecules that also ride along in these massive fluid motions, possibly with other fluid dynamic effects that we do not understand well enough to know that they might even be significant.
The … “science” … might be … “settled” … in a select power elite of society, but I surely am NOT “settled”. In fact, I have become MORE unsettled each day.
Okay, looking closer:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160104163203.htm
So, what I deduce from this article is that lower CO2 as measured during some ice ages might have been a consequence of the ice itself … “corking” … CO2 into the ground and oceans, until the ice melted to release it all. In light of this, depending on how much CO2 we might be talking about here, what are ice core records really telling us about the CO2 content (potential) of the world ? … other than only a certain potential amount of it was in the air, telling us nothing about how much might have been “corked” within the ground and oceans during a given era, nor how this corked amount came to be before the ice formed ? … Humans did not put it there, obviously. A natural process put it there to be released … “naturally” later.
http://sciencenordic.com/arctic-sea-ice-helps-remove-co2-atmosphere
This article is very confusing. If I could understand the CLEAR steps of the process, then I could better apply it to give insight. As is, I do not see EXACTLY what happens to calcium carbonate in the ice. The article says that CO2 splits off calcium carbonate, and then it says calcium carbonate is still in the ice after the split off, … so I am totally confused on what the heck the steps are that enable the ice to absrob the CO2, collect it in the brine, and it still be in the ice to dissolve out during the melt. A more clear explanation would go a long way towards making this research useful.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/melting-tundra-releases-carbon-dioxide-quickly/
My takeaway here is that frozen ground during ANY era of Earth’s geological record is subject to the same process. Ice covered land gets exposed, thus, initiating a CO2-releasing cascade of events. Again, no humans required.
The point is, there are blatantly obvious “natural” processes at work that current climate models are NOT taking into account.
“NOAA has failed to produce any factual evidence that would stand up in court supporting its claims that the current period of global warming is out of the ordinary much less the result of human activities”
You have basically two groups of people in the climate discussion, those who believe the climate computer model predictions and those that don’t. This guy doesn’t, and rightfully so, but to present to this to a warmist and they will point at the climate models that predict rapid temperature rise as CO2 increases, saying that the greenhouse gas effect is proven science and anyone who doesn’t believe it is a denialist. No one will ever make any progress on cracking the warmist “The science is proven” wall until those climate models are exposed for the garbage that they are. The models are the ring the warmists wear that makes them invincible to criticism because to them they ARE the science, and if you disagree with the models you are denying science.
Steve
The above article by Brian Kelleher, together with your comments, show fundamentally different ways of doing science. The NOAA approach is inductive, building a house of cards of assumption upon assumption upon assumption. By contrast the approach of Kellerer is deductive, looking at the most important historic data on glaciation, temperatures and CO2. And deriving sound and parsimonious logical conclusions. This is what Karl Popper, the most important philosopher of science, devoted his career to demonstrating: that science can only be deductive, not inductive. Even basic statistics show that error is multiplicative for variables factored together in series.
Brian Kellerer’s article is a much needed breath of fresh deductive air into an epistemologically dysfunctional inductive climate narrative.
They are process models – unvalidated and unverified – and as such are not suited to be used to predict, or project, future climate variables beyond a few weeks. This is the crack in their armor which must be pounded on relentlessly.
and if you disagree with the models you are denying science.
============
Even IPCC 1 concluded that models cannot PREDICT future climate. As a result every IPCC since then has shown model PROJECTIONS. Most people of course assume that they are the same, but there is a vast difference.
A Prediction is right or wrong, based on skill. A Projection however is simply a mathematical construct of the model trend, devoid of skill. The reader is left to assume the model projection has skill, without any proof that it does.
I must admit that I have wondered if the effect on air temperatures of the melting back from the last ice age has been factored in fully.
I may be completely wrong in this, and please correct me if I am, but, looking at the process at the end of the last ice age, and assuming a constant energy budget
You start with the situation of lots of ice (low surface to volume ratio), so assumption is that air temperature would start to rise.
The increased air temperature would then trigger some ice melt, causing a slight reduction in air temperature.
At some point the surface area to volume ratio of the ice cover would hit a point where the rate of melt in terms of actual ice volume would start increasing rapidly, and the air temperature would drop sharply. (Medium Volume to medium Surface are)
The final stage of the process would be where you hit low volume high surface area. Ice melt as a percentage would accelerate (though actual volume of ice melting would decrease, as there would be less ice to melt, and this would accompanied by air temperature rise.
If my assumptions are correct then that would back up the contention that the ice melt was driving the temperature fluctuations not the other way around (and that most of the current change is simply a result of the change that triggered the end of the last ice age).
I was not aware there was any mystery about rising CO2 levels. The rise in CO2 is about 1/2 what is produced by human activity with the rest being taken up by natural sinks. Claiming that the rise in CO2 is due to melting glaciers then raises the obvious question of what has happened to all the CO2 that humans have produced?
Jeez. Applying logic to an illogical post. A good question, indeed.
This is such a silly question, and yet one that people ask again and again as though it were profound.
It goes to the same place all the natural flows, which are orders of magnitude larger, go. It only takes a fractional imbalance in those natural flows to overwhelm our puny inputs.
Except that the natural imbalance is less than +/- 2 ppmv each year over the past 57 years and level off to a net sink of ~2 ppmv/year, while human emissions are ~4 ppmv additionl each year again…
Moreover, the bulk of all natural in and out fluxes (seasonal to multi-millennia) is temperature driven, while human emissions give extra pressure (about 110 ppmv) in the atmosphere above the (dynamic) equilibrium for the current average ocean surface temperature…
Nonsense. This is just a narrative.
Bart,
Still assuming that temperature and pressure have the same impact on the sinks?
Hmmm, I wonder what causes the glaciers to melt?
Heavy breathing by polar bears. Don’t ask what the bears are doing.
The Carington Event should have left some signature in the form of increased ammounts of certain elemental Isotopes that can be indicated in the ice core data. If this is the case, and the Carington Event is a cause of the end of the LIA, the Ice Core Data could be used as an indicator. IF it also indicates similar such isotopic increases at semiregular 120,000 year intervals, this could be used to bolster the hypothesis or potentially refute it
Fascinating: it fits in with my conclusion that carbon dioxide is not the cause of observed global warming. Like Anthony, I too am reluctant to credit any warming to solar activity because I could not find any warming associated with the 11 year cycles that we know of. Other than that, the author is completely right in dismissing the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. The greenhouse effect of water vapor is there but it is obviously temporary and dependent on other changes taking place. Because of the cooperation of carbon dioxide and water vapor by which a joint absorption window is created in the infrared we might suspect that some greenhouse effect emanates frim there. But Miskolczi has shown that addition of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels to this joint absorption window results merely in condensation of water vapor until the original IR transmittance is restored. The associated IR absorbency of water vapor is also lost and no greenhouse effect is possible. I have described this in more detail in other recent comments. The fact that carbon dioxide is not involved in any greenhouse effect at all is clearly shown by the observation that the Keeling curve is absolutely smooth starting in 1850. At the same timer, global temperatures go up and down and may even show cooling for inexplicable reasons. If the warm peaks of global temperature curve really are produced by the greenhouse effect there has to be a counterpart to these warm peaks in the Keeling curve showing where the carbon dioxide came from. But there are none at all, proving that Miskolczi’s analysis is correct. And if the ups and downs of the temperature curve are not the product of carbon dioxide we need a new explanation for them. Here is where the current paper by Brian Kelleher, Engr. fits in perfectly. The concept of melting ground can easily explain the numerous ups and downs of the global temperature curve, but burning of fossil fuels can not. Kelleher maqy not be right about the solar effect warming but his explanation fits right in with my proof that carbon dioxide is not causing the warming attributed to it by the global warming pseudo-science.
Arno, please. CO2 is a GHG and has a GHE. The different from water vaper is because themtemperwture lapse rate affects upper altitude water vapor concentration, but not CO2 concentration. The effective rsdiating altitude MATTERS.
The main warmunist issues to attack are three. 1. Feedbacks. 2. ECS. 3 Models of 1 and 2 versus observations of 1 and 2. Models can be disproven severa ways such as: The attribution problem buried in unavoidable (computational constraints) parameterization tuning; the missing modeled tropical troposphere hotspot; observational ECS ~ half modeled.
You bare quite right, Istvan, the radiating altitude matters when we are talking radiation. Miskolczi is not talking of radiation but what happens when carbon dioxide is added to the mix of CO2 and air. What happens first is hat the optical thickness of the absorption window in the IR increases. At that point a peculiar aspect of the atmosphere comes into play that attempts to return the optical thickness to its original value. The only way to do that is by causing water vapor to condense and this is exactly what does happen. It is hard to understand so Miskolczi undertook to demonstrate it using NOAA aerosonde records that went back 61 years. His paper came out in 2010. During these 61 observation years the atmospheric CO2 concentration increased by 21.6 percent but its optical thickness did not change. I even included his results as a graph in my paper on Arctic warming. You can see it in E&E, Volune 22, No. 8 as figure 6.
And now I have to say that I am not sure the current article we both commenting on today is for real. Brian Kelleher says he is a top engineer in the environmental field who worked for decades with California courts. But when I went to check his work I could not find anything about the environment. What I did find, however, was a 2015 press release about having solved the mystery of the Kennedy assassination. Interesting, but what does it have to do with the environment? I am not against doing any kind of investigations but where does that fit in with climate? I would really appreciate it if someone could determine that he actually does what he says he does. Until such time I must consider the conclusions in my first comment as tentative until more information becomes available. Just want to avoid becoming a victim of fake facts.
Miskolczi is not talking of radiation but what happens when carbon dioxide is added to the mix of CO2 and air.
===============
when you add CO2 to a mix of H2O and air, this will drive H2O out of the air according to partial pressure law. this is basic indisputable science in support of Miskolczi.
Ferd,
CO2 did go from 0.018 to 0.03% in the atmosphere that is an increase of ~0.012%, where water near sealevel can reach 4% in the tropics. Not much influence of the increase in CO2 on water vapor, except maybe near/in the stratosphere where water vapor levels are much lower.
For radiation, besides a few common bands, CO2 absorbs/releases in a narrow band where water vapor is not active, thus the radiation effect is largely additional.
There is very little radiation from the earth in the one band where CO2 does not overlap H2O.
MarkW,
Not much, but still ~3.7 W/m2 for each CO2 doubling over the full air column. Measured in laboratories, but also seen as a reduction of outgoing radiation in that band.
Can be fully compensated with ~1°C higher surface temperature. That is all. The rest of the temperature increase is from failed models…
I’ve stopped reading here “I am among the country’s top environmental engineers…”
I went a bit further than that but when he developed an uncanny ability I quit.
That is when I did a google search and found links to the Kennedy assassination.
Brian Kelleher raises the interesting point about what is admissible in court. I suspect that his evidence would stand up as well as James Hansen’s evidence. The result would likely depend on the judges who make up the court.
The Donald will likely have the opportunity to stack the supreme court. link I would welcome a CAGW case once several of the members of the supreme court have retired and have been replaced.
As a lawyer, based on this, I would get him disqualified pronto in any trial I was involved in.
In Canada, someone has written a book about the disgraced pathologist Charles Smith so the case is in the news again. What we learn from that case is that someone who is good at being a witness can sound convincing to a court in spite of the fact that their work was fatally flawed. As a result, a bunch of innocent people were convicted of murder.
My speculation about Kelleher was that, because of his experience as a witness, he could sound as convincing to a court as could James Hansen.
Reminds me of Al Gore’s (and others’) logical fallacy, “After the fact, therefore because of the fact.”
The “fact” being CO2 rising. The “after” being CAGW.
(Al “et al” even had the CO2 and temps backwards.) The “Catastrophic” part is correct and it is Man-Made. But it is not due to rising CO2.
The “Catastrophic” is due to how those seeking power and quick cash have used the hockey stick to the detriment of us all.
(Fortunately, such a lever no longer works when the resources of a Government are no longer pushing on it.)
As bad as Salby’s stuff. It can be shown isotopically (12C/13C ratio change over time) that most of the increase in atmospheric CO2 since the Keeling curve in 1958 came from combustion of fossil fuels or biomass (or land clearing). Moreover, it can be shown that the difference between estimated combustion releases and observed increases in atmospheric CO2 must be the various carbon sinks (the biological,ones are preferentially 12C, see e.g. ciasis et. al. science 1995); the difference is roughly half. It follows that the guest poster’s expertise in environmental pollution isn’t expertise in ‘carbon pollution’. Perhaps confused by the gross CO2 misnomer. Perhaps just confused as a newcomer to the ‘science’. Perhaps just confused.
Some sound bite level skeptical stuff:
The entrained in melting ice CO2 logic here doesn’t work; there isn’t enough entrained CO2. The Henry’s law logic (Gore Inconvenient Truth, paleo ice cores) doesn’t work; the T then CO2 lag is ~800 years thanks to the THC. The CO2 AGW attribution to ~1975-2000 T rise doesn’t work for two reasons. 1. Except for the now rapidly cooling El Nino blip of 2015-16, no T rise this century, a period during which ~35% of the increase in atmospheric CO2 occurred since 1958 (Keeling curve). 2. That warming period is essentially indistinguishable from ~1920-1945 warming, a period which AR4 WG1 SPM figure 8.2 said could not have been AGW. Natural variation did not magically stop in 1975.
This is as bad as Ferdinand’s stuff. You are investing in plausible sounding narratives. But proof demands more than plausibility.
Lol — yes. Worse, actually. At least Ferdinand Engelbeen lays out his case (albeit implausible, imo) and doesn’t just breezily toss off, “It can be shown.” I would LOVE to see a debate between R. Istvan and Murry Salby. Heh, heh. Or, between Bartemis and R. Istvan! (didn’t want to say that, for I know how long it takes to keep countering mistaken assumptions about carbon sinks/sources, etc., comment after comment, day after day….. — you have done SO MUCH HARD WORK for WUWT already in that department)
IIRC, Rud Istvan is in (or wants to be in) the “energy storage” business (if I am correctly recalling a comment he made on WUWT to that effect). He won’t make any money if human CO2 emissions are not seen as a significant potential problem (small, yes, but, juuuuust significant enough…..).
He also touts “peak oil” a lot — this also plays into Mr. Istvan making money via his energy storage venture (or planned energy storage venture). That is, he makes (or would make) money if electric cars/hybrid cars get artificial market share via government regulation.
Perhaps, I am mistaken and all Mr. Istvan has written here and there on the web about energy storage and peak oil and how strong, how certainly very strong, a GHG CO2 is (in the system called “earth”), and especially, that human CO2 emissions are a problem (no, no, not a HUGE problem, just enough of a problem that we should demand more electric storage capacity for motor vehicles….).
That is: “peak oil” + “human CO2 emissions drive climate change” (just a little) = $$$ .
I may be mistaken. But, I no longer trust Mr. Istvan. He comes off as an interested, sly, self-promoter — to me.
That’s just me.
I could be wrong…..
Janice, why not buy my cheap 2014 ebook Blowing Smoke, foreword from Dr. Judith Curry, and figure me out for yourself. You appear to object here because I object to posted scientific crap. Proud to do so. And will continue to do so. My objective is to win the skeptical war, not to befriend all possible pseudoskeptics and camp followers.I need no pseudofriends at all. You can now get to study my ebooks and decide where you land. Bon Voyage.
Janice Moore January 12, 2017 at 7:42 pm
Hi Janice, Odd thread,
I don’t know what to make of the Author but I think some people here are over looking the point that he made himself a target by writing this. There are going to be forces in both the California government and and CAGW NGOs looking to do him an injury. I will not be one to vex him.
michael
I got as far as this …
I can’t even count the number of errors in that single paragraph, so I stopped there.
Sadly,
w.
Completely agree, WE. But since there are newbys and lurkers here, in my opinion always better to spell out the logic than assert authority. Contrast your post to mine just above for the difference intactics that takes about 5 minutes more. Highest regards from one who scientifically skated on the under side of the ice concerning supercapacitance.
Quote *I can’t even count the number of errors in that single paragraph, so I stopped there.*
All very dramatic but like Don’s first post it comes across as someone having a hissy fit and doesn’t clarify anything.
MB, said the same thing just above, only more diplomatically. Skeptics simply cannot resort to warmunist countertactics. If do, fail. I plan to prevail, not fail.
List the errors as bullets, just for our education. (^_^)
Also is this the same Brian Kelleher who recently wrote to President Obama offering new evidence in
the shooting of JFK? (http://www.kelleherassoc.com). And who claims to know where the galleon San
Agustin is located – “Brian Kelleher, a San Jose environmental engineer who dabbles in lost ships.” see
http://www.mercurynews.com/2012/03/14/san-jose-man-says-ship-and-perhaps-treasure-is-beneath-sand-at-drakes-bay/
He is definitely a busy guy.
Brian’s hunt for treasure has finally led him to the global warming pot of gold.
That would be one heck of an off course Spanish galleon. They sailed from northern eastern South America to Spain. As I recall, the Panama canal did not yet exist. And Drakes passage requires going several thousand miles south, not east, to then turn north. Movie ‘Master and Commander’. has a nice example. A simple compass malfunction? Only using Jack Sparrow’s compass (allusion to Pirates of the Caribbean movie). Proves crackpot stuff. OTH, the post itself is more climate crackpot stuff. See main comment and a few subcomments for multiple reasons.
I must say, ristvan, it seems you have a tendency to dismiss things out of hand without doing your homework. It took me longer to type this than it did to look it up on Wikipedia:
ristvan January 12, 2017 at 5:02 pm
Drakes passage and Drakes Bay are two different places.
you made the comment about new people here and yet you make the statements in your above post.
Anyway the link below gives some insight on the San Agustin.
michael
This is not like you, are you okay?
http://www.caribbeanarchaeology.com/SanAgustin.htm
I am fine, Bartemis. Did you ever think that a spanish ship sent wrong way round the world could not have loaded much new world silver/good? Unless wrecked from SE America to Spain? Good luck with alt history theories.
Wow, ristvan. You apparently haven’t read either the article or the Wikipedia link. This actually happened. It is a matter of the historical record. You need to climb down, or be labeled a nutter yourself.
While I don’t like the use of made up words, nor the breezy writing style, Mr. Kelleher makes some good points, pretty much all of which have been made from time to time on this blog. The real take home is that we don’t know the precise mechanism that caused the ice to advance and recede in the past and today’s warming is indistinguishable from those events. So ergo, we don’t know why the Earth seems to be warming today (and the ice is receding). This gives us a chance to collect some good data on the event, which may be of use to future scientists. In the mean time I agree with his advice that we should enjoy the warmth while it is here, because eventually the cold and ice will return. And if we as a species are not ready, we will be in big trouble. Only our technology and enormous amounts of cheap power will save our civilization from being wiped off the planet. Now is not the time to be deindustrializing.
I disagree strongly. He makes easily discredited/stupid points that do the skeptical side harm. See my comments above. You want to win this war, DO NOT grab onto everything that superficially seems helpful. If you do, you lead a charge of the light brigade. That is stupid. Get smart or get off the skeptical team. There are plenty on the sidelines there. Skydragons and such.
“Get smart or get off the skeptical team.”
Really? So are you the team captain or something? Hell, I didn’t even know I had joined a team. Silly me, I thought this was about science. Instead it seems you are playing the same insipid game as the CAGW supporters, just claiming the other side of the field.
Actually I’m not on your team, or any other team for that matter. I’m interested in the science, and as far as I’m concerned, anybody that can make a rational, cogent argument is welcome. While I don’t agree with everything that Mr. Kelleher wrote, he does make some good points, and the primary one is: nobody really knows what causes the major warming and cooling events. And anybody that says they do are not practicing science, IMO.
So have fun arguing about your favorite hypothesis; that’s what scientists do best, it seems. But I will not fall in line just because someone is on a mission to save the planet, or is opposing them. I will make up my own mind, thank you. THAT is a true skeptic.
PP, take s much offense as you wish. And keep feeding Obimmer his flat earther evidence. The argument here in this guest post is niether cogent nor rational. If you think it is, that is your problem, not mine. You think differently, present evidence.
I will repeat ad infinitum, accepting poor arguments just because they seem to bolster your position, DOES NOT.
Paul. Agree. My position is the same as yours. I appreciate your succinct explanation.
Ristvan-
It’s NOT a guest post. It’s a letter he wrote and published elsewhere. Anthony even posted the NOTE that he didn’t agree with the entire thing AND that he posted it simply for discussion.
And your response to Paul was filled with a lot of logical fallacies for someone who is complaining about the author not being rational.
We Brits have a word for this…
It starts with a “b” has “ll” in the middle and ends “ks”.
An itemised critique….
1.
No.
Ask Leif Svalgaard.
Actually CO2 forcing did not overcome the -be forcing of aerosols until ~ 1970.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/about-that-almost-carrington-event-two-weeks-ago/
2.
Nothing unusual except for the fact that it is because of fossil burning … as evident in the C13 reduction vs C12 atmospheric content. ( Fossil carbon is C12).
Therefore that isotope will increase over absorption of C13.
CO2 rise follows temp in interglacials – temps driven by orbital eccentricity.
3.
The MWP was not caused by CO2 forcing … and neither was the LIA.
CO2 is NOT the only driver of climate.
And CO2 normally does lag.
Because that is the natural course of events in the carbon cycle.
You can’t have looked hard enough.
Here a graph showing a striking correlation….
http://decarboni.se/sites/default/files/imagecache/620xH/publications/22562/advanced/fig01.jpg
4.
Well you would do.
In the past melting/retreating glaciers were not caused (solely) by CO2 increase. That came as a feedback to the solar TSI forcing caused by orbital changes, fed back into ocean warming/ currents changes.
Yes CO2 should re-enter the oceans. It is a carbon cycle. The anthro CO2 content, although a small portion of the natural cycles CO2 – is in excess of what the CC can handle – hence the rise in ppm and decreasing ph of oceanic water.
5.
Yes, yes.
You have explained how the CC increases Atmospheric CO2 NATURALLY.
What has that to do with anthro forced CO2 rises?
6.
Yes, the Earth warms by there being more solar energy incident in the higher latitudes of the NH, specifically by melt of ice sheets over 100’s/1000’s of years.
THEN CO2 feeds back via the CC in response to the increase in temp.
They act together.
7
You conclude wrongly. WV increase on temperature increase is again a natural feedback. WV condenses. It rains/snows out at a point subject to it’s VP, which is subject to atmospheric temp/ pressure. CO2 does not condense. It cannot be “rained” out. As a consequence it sets a floor by which WV would drop away precipitously over wintertime NH land (especially) and start a -ve feedback (only around 10% of water evaporated from oceans falls on land).
“I cannot tell how much the CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels commencing in 1950 have been incrementally contributing to the current rapid climb in atmospheric CO2, but I consider the increases a potential blessing to humanity rather than a threat. This takes into consideration the fact that the current interglacial period has already lasted longer than the last creating concerns that the glacial tide is about to turn. Once the current melting stops, high levels of atmospheric CO2 could hopefully help stall the onset of what could be the next major ice age.”
Yes you can…
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/engelbeen-1.jpg
Around half of anthro CO2 is absorbed by the biosphere, leaving the other half in the atmosphere.
A blessing so far. And we’re about at it or beyond, as we have the same warming (~1C) to come again before we reach Equilibrium.
No, if ice is melting then it must be warmer. If it is warmer then Atmos WV will increase, which will increase temp, etc, etc.
You have to stop the DRIVER.
Not the feedback.
WV cannot be a driver.
Because, as I said above, It CONDENSES out at the point where the temp can no longer hold it.
If that were not the case then we would have runaway warming/cooling merely via WV content.
The only forcing that could be a driver of climate currently is the GHE caused by increasing CO2.
Of that the science is settled.
How/where, and at what time scales energy moves about the climate system is not.
Oh, BTW – we are 10’s of thousands of years away from an ice age.
Go check the Milankovitch cycle computations.
This assertion is contradicted by your plot of the 21 year moving average and temperature. It is clear from that plot that something other than CO2 is at work. I would suggest that had you analysed your plot (accompanying your point 7), you would not have made that statement. The take home message of the plot is as follows.
First there is a small rise in CO2 between 1900 and 1920, and yet temperatures fall.
Second, there is a modest rise in CO2 between 1920 and 1940, and yet the rate of temperature rise is at its greatest during this period. The slope of the 21 year moving average during this period is clearly slightly greater than the slope during late 20th century rise in temperatures, even though during the late 20th century the amount and rate of increase in CO2 is far more than that during the 1920 to 1940 period.
Third, the 21 year moving average temperature flat lines during the period 1940 to 1975, and yet CO2 is increasing significantly during this period.
Fourth, the only time when there is good correlation between the 21 year moving average temperature and the rise in CO2 is the period between 1975 to 2000, but as already noted, the amount of CO2 and the rate of rise of XCO2 during this period is significantly higher than that existing during the period between 1920 and 1940 and yet the rate of increase in the 21 year average temperature is less during the period 1975 to 2000, than it was during the period 1920 to 1940.
Fifth, and this is speculation since the future is yet to unfold, but I would suggest that if your plot is completed/reworked in say 2021 when the next 21 year moving average temperature will be in, it will once more show the disassociation with CO2. We can debate whether there was or was not a pause in temperatures during the period 1998 to 2016, but one thing is clear, the rate of temperature increase has been considerably slower than was seen during the period 1975 to 2000. We also know that so far, ie as from 1998 to date, there has been no diminution in the rise of CO2, or if so, the diminution in the rise of CO2 has been very modest. Certainly, globally, manmade CO2 emissions have continued unabated Whilst there is still approximately 5 years of data yet to come home, from what we presently know from about 70% of this period, we can predict that the 21 year moving average temperature rise between 2000 and 2021 will be at a lower rate than seen during the period 1975 to 2000, and yet the CO2 emissions will show there same upward trajectory. So your plot will show a fifth period of disconnect/no correlation with CO2.
In summary, until we can explain the warming between 1860 to 1880 (not covered by your plot) the cooling between the 1880s and 1910/20, the warming between 1920 to 1940, the cooling between 1940 to 1975 (which on your plot has largely been flattened due to adjustments made to the raw data and previously accepted data), there is absolutely no chance of ascribing a cause to the late 20th century warming. That difficulty is compounded by the reduced rate of warming during the 21st century.
One thing is obvious from your plot, CO2 cannot explain the pattern of observed temperature change.
His plot also ignores other factors that he himself brought up. Specifically aerosols. According to his own argument, much of the post 1970 warming can be attributed to aerosol’s being removed from the atmosphere.
First off, the actual contribution of aerosol’s have never been quantified.
We have no accurate number regarding type and volume of aerosol’s releases.
We have no accurate research that shows just how much various aerosol’s impact cloud albedo.
Like most of your warmist nonsense, you just proclaim your imagination as proven fact and work from there.
Secondly, if aerosol’s do provide a cooling impact, then the various clean air acts all around the world should have created a noticeable warming as aerosol levels dropped. Yet you and your compatriots try to claim all that warming for CO2.
Yes. There is a logical disconnect.
I am far from convinced that today is any warmer than it was in the 1940s, but if it is, it could all be explained as the product of clean air, the reduction in aerosol emissions. Of course, it could also be fully explained by small variations in the extent of cloudiness and/or changes in the rate/position of ocean upwelling on which we have no data.
Prior to ARGO there is no worthwhile data on ocean temps, and yet this is the most important driver of climate and temperatures. But even with ARGO, the warmists have screwed up, so we cannot even have confidence in that data set (which in any event is of too short a duration to me much use, and has spatial coverage issues, as well as there has been no validation for biases inherent in the free floating nature of the buoys being swept along with currents which currents are themselves an artefact of temperature/salinity differences in the ocean).
When ARGO was first rolled out, many buoys showed cooling. There may have been good reason to consider that these buoys and their data was suspect. But those in charge of the data set rather than returning the offending buoys to the laboratory for testing to see whether there was a problem and if so the extent of the problem, chose instead to simply delete/remove these buoys from the data set/network. What other science would have taken that approach and not actually tested and ascertained whether there was or was not a problem with these buoys? Talk about preconceived bias. See more generally: http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/
As a consequence, ARGO may show more ocean warming than is truly the case.
Richard, I’d forgotten that last part. Have to remember it for the next time I deal with a troll trying to claim that the oceans are warming.
And yet “atmospheric CO2” is not rising, “global temperatures” are not rising, “glaciers” are not “melting” and all of the Democrat Party’s “cures” for globall warmining come down to stealing money from people who actually work. Period. Full stop. Take your anti-human, anti-science, anti-America religion and shove it back up your a$$ where it came from.
Democratic Party? Anti-American religion. Sigh, he’s not talking about Democratic CO2, He’s talking about Labor Party CO2.
Democrat Party, Labor Party, same Party, only thing separating them is an ocean. They both hate America and push a false religion.
There is plenty to love and hate. False religion; as in you know the true one?
A self aggrandizement. It did provoke a thought in me about the probable incompleteness of ice core data or at least in its interpretation, which should make ice core investigators somewhat embarrassed. It is this: the CO2 levels in ice cores is a measure of the CO2 in a cold atmosphere when conditions for significant ice accumulation are present. It is likely that this would occur after a period CO2 drawdown into the oceans. To put a finer point on it, the ice record records only when it is relatively cold.
I’ve been a bit dissatisfied by the idea that in the MWP CO2 was only about 280ppm, yet crops were abundant, wine grapes were flourishing in Scotland grain was growing in a temperate Greenland etc. etc. I. e. the planet was greening indeed. Now I realize there was likely a bit of missing record in the core and in the MWP, CO2 had spiked higher. Alternatively, the core may lose CO2 at higher concentrations through diffusion or some other process during consolidation of the layers. This would make core data less meaningful than we think.
Everything from the ice cores should be considered provisional, IMO. We have no way to verifying them in an end-to-end test.
Bart,
That is the problem with all new measurements with a better resolution. I had some discussions in the past with the late Ernst Beck, who didn’t like modern NDIR CO2 measurements, because they were “never verified” by the old wet chemical methods. Problem: the old methods had a repeatability of at best +/- 10 ppmv. the NDIR of +/- 0.2 ppmv… The old methods were even too coarse to show seasonal variations…
Ice cores have a repeatability of 1.2 ppmv (1 sigma) for samples taken from one core at the same depth and maximum 5 ppmv taken from different cores for the same average gas age, including the uncertainty for that gas age and the enormous differences in average temperature, layer thickness and resolution of different ice cores.
Several proxies confirm ice core data over the past century and up to and beyond the 800,000 oldest ice core record, be it with a worse resolution.
There is an overlap of ~20 years (1960-1980) between the Law Dome ice cores and direct atmospheric levels, which show the same levels within the accuracy of the measurements.
Thus sorry Bart, ice cores are quite reliable reflections of the CO2 in air levels of the past, be it with a worse resolution the more you go further back in time…
In fact, other proxies generally disagree. That is why the ice cores are used – they give the desired story. It is quite possible they are all wrong.
Again, you cannot do an end-to-end test. Speaking as someone with over 30 years lab experience, I can tell you that all kinds of surprises generally await when you can actually do an end-to-end test. Surmise rarely survives contact with testing unscathed.
Bart,
Every proxy has its specific problems, but ice core CO2 is not a proxy, that are direct measurements of CO2 in the ancient atmosphere, done with the same type of measurements. Etheridge (1996) used the same GC to measure CO2 in the atmosphere, firn and in the ice bubbles of the Law Dome ice cores.
Of course ice cores have their own problems, the main one is the resolution, which gets worse the further back you go in time.
Indeed you have no begin test to compare the ice cores with direct measurements in the atmosphere, but you have an end test with direct measurements, which looks good. You have a test for the period 1850-1935 where rough measurements taken at “ideal” places over the oceans and coastal show values around the ice cores and you have a “stepped” backward comparison between ice cores with extreme differences in precipitation, temperature and resolution each with overlapping end periods, completely independent of each other.
If there was anything going wrong with the CO2 levels in the ice core bubbles, that should result in huge differences between ice cores with high resolution and low resolution, Between extremely cold inland ice cores and relative “warm” coastal ice cores. And fading of the glacial-interglacial CO2/T ratio each interglacial 100,000 years back in time…
“…but you have an end test with direct measurements, which looks good.”
It’s beside the point. The fundamental problem is that we do not know how the content varies over time. Being able to match things at the end points does nothing to solve that. In fact, to the degree that matching the ends requires calibration factors, it may mean nothing at all.
Bart,
to the degree that matching the ends requires calibration factors, it may mean nothing at all.
In the case of ice cores, no calibration factor is used, except for the fact that heavier isotopes and molecules tend to increase at the bottom of stagnant air. The rate of increase is monitored by measuring the 15N/14N ratio and correcting the other isotopes and molecules according to their atomic/molecular weight. For CO2 the correction is less than 1% of the ratio.
we do not know how the content varies over time.
We do know that migration is no problem in any ice core, only broadens the resolution in the “warmest” cores. And we do have near-identical changes in overlapping time periods in ice cores with extreme differences in temperature, accumulation rate, etc…
So, I don’t see any reason to distrust the ice core data…
This is just rationalization, Ferdinand. You will never know for sure until you can replicate the conditions, and perform and end-to-end test.
5. I found that there is at least a five-fold effect that explains the well-documented atmospheric CO2 spikes as glaciers rapidly melt/retreat: (a) Henry’s Law related increases from the warming of the average surface temperature of the oceans …
Deglaciations ending glacial intervals are rapid. This is because when polar ice caps grow beyond a certain size they become unstable. Understanding this requires understanding the foundational Lyapunov exponent and theory of stability of movement of complex dynamic systems, set out in his paper “Ob ustoichivosti dvizhenii”. The big deglaciations at the inception of interglacials are catastrophic events driven by excursions of positive feedback. During them, global temperatures rise sharply including ocean temperatures. This of course outgasses CO2. Sea levels rise by hundreds of meters, drowning vast amounts of coastal forest and other vegetation, removing their CO2 absorbing effect and releasing more CO2 in their bacterial decomposition. So not surprising that CO2 spikes at glacial termination.
Ob ustoichivosti dvizhenii = On the stability of movement (1950).
Mr Kelleher hypothesises that the 1859 Carrington event started the post-LIA warming. Well, fine, but you can’t just say: this happened and that happened so this caused that. That’s not science it’s just rambling.
If he expects to be taken seriously, he should at least try to sketch out some sort of mechanism that leads from this to that.
This sort of posting doesn’t do much for the sceptical point of view. Fortunately WUWT attracts enough serious and thought-provoking articles, not to mention the comments, that we can ignore most of the nonsense.
And now I’ve skimmed through the rest of it, it didn’t get any better. Sorry, guy, go back to making up stories for the courts of sunny California.
My take on the 1859 event and some of the others since is that solar flares cause a lot of damage/weakening of the outer atmosphere especially to the ozone layer. NASA has recently reported giant bursts of pure hydrogen arriving with solar flares. On that basis, I see massive increases in UV radiation during and for perhaps years and years after the events based solely on damage to ozone layer. I think NASA is looking at this. I have not researched how long it takes ozone to regenerate. I recall there was lots of controversy about that subject at one time.
NOAA says increasing CO2 causes global warming that makes glacial retreats due to greenhouse gas effects in the vast atmosphere as a whole. I honestly can’t see how that causes glaciers to rapidly melt. Seems far fetched.
My take on the same climate data is that water vapor continuously hovering over and around the entire line of melting glaciers is the driver because it is providing the heat exactly where it is needed to melt the ice and also taking into consideration that the greenhouse gas effect is boosted by radiation reflected off the glacial surfaces.
Also I see layers of cold ice that reflect fast dissipating solar energy replaced with cascading and floating fresh water that readily absorbs solar radiation and gives off water vapor and CO2 in the process.
Thank (insert deity or object of choice) you’re here to defend your own article! I tried. Now give these animals the data to back up the stuff they are arguing about, after they have insinuated what they think you meant, but actually did not say. *grin*
When/IF you get to dig up the ship…I wanna come! I’ll work for free! 🙂
I am definitely using ‘ultra-giganormous” in my next technical report.
Right. And if am am your boss, you are fired. Your sarc much appreciated.
‘As I see it, the only way that NOAA could possibly substantiate its controversial claims that current temperature increases are a cause for major concern’
Controversial? Their claims are mainstream.
‘The available evidence shows a linear relationship wherein rapidly melting glaciers cause atmospheric CO2 levels to rise higher’
Correlation is not causation.
“Instead, I found vast unambiguous evidence that rapid CO2 increases occur only when rapidly melting/retreating glaciers are interacting with the earth’s oceans and atmosphere in creating rapid global warming, rising seawater levels and signature rapid atmospheric CO2 increases.”
Sea levels vary by about 140 meters over long time scales. So the oceans increase in volume by a bit less than 4% as they rise by 140 meters. I feel this is a significant amount of water that was warmed.
How to warm water and retain the short wave sunlight? Have upwelling near the ENSO region. Cool ocean bottom water brought to the surface heats more as it evaporates less than IPWP water does. To warm water, cooler water is better.
Bottom water is similar to ice sheets as the question is, when is it coming back and how much is coming back? It is true that ice sheets are not in the ENSO region.
“This research makes it clear that glaciers represent a substantial reservoir of organic carbon,” said Hood, a scientist at the University of Alaska Southeast.
Every time we lose CO2, how do we know it’s coming back later? We store it in ice until it’s needed.
“Marshall and Clark:
“…Our simulations suggest that a substantial fraction (60% to 80%) of the ice sheet was frozen to the bed for the first 75 kyr of the glacial cycle, thus strongly limiting basal flow. Subsequent doubling of the area of warm-based ice in response to ice sheet thickening and expansion and to the reduction in downward advection of cold ice may have enabled broad increases in geologically- and hydrologically-mediated fast ice flow during the last deglaciation.
Increased dynamical activity of the ice sheet would lead to net thinning of the ice sheet interior and the transport of large amounts of ice into regions of intense ablation both south of the ice sheet and at the marine margins (via calving). This has the potential to provide a strong positive feedback on deglaciation.”
Above it is suggested that ice causes warming. It shifts closer to the equator. As we look at long time frames, we are looking for a tipping to explain the spike upwards out of a glacial. There suggest says, given enough ice, this shift occurs.
I found to article interesting and it helped further my understanding how the system may work.
An interesting article with a few interesting ideas. It would be great to see more details.
Tony Heller keeps showing us that glaciers are NOT melting.
And you keep believing him?
Instead of relying Tony, the world’s leading glaciologist, can I suggest you look to other sources – any other source. Hell, if you ask me…
An interesting article
==========
I also found it interesting and thought provoking. not saying it is correct. rather it presents a number of new ideas that will of course immediately sound wrong, as all new ideas do.
Just wondering, if the natural cycle for the past million years has been a series of cooling ice ages each followed by a warming interglacial age and each series having a natural cycling of atmospheric carbon levels, then have any of the avid, prolific, and well funded climate modelers put forward for review a predictive model that accurately follows the differences and timings of these past cycles as known from the proxy data?
Has anyone actually experimented creating snow in say a 1000 ppm CO2 atmosphere, compressed it into ice then tested that ice for CO2 the same way ice cores are tested?
One problem is time.
It is not clear whether the ice over large periods of time retains the precise composition of the atmosphere that existed at the time of the creation of the ice. As time increases in orders of magnitude, going back hundreds of years, thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, there is plenty of time for migration/seepage.
Personally, I consider that whilst direct observation can be had from ice, it should be seen akin to a proxy and viewed circumspectly. I give it more credence than other proxies (which are ripe with uncertainties), but I still approach ice data with caution since we do not know enough about its integrity.
The experiment that you suggest has not been done and cannot be done. We will know much more say in a 1000 years when ice laid down in the late 20th century can be compared to Mauna Loa CO2 measurements, or Antarctic CO2 measurements.
“The experiment that you suggest has not been done and cannot be done.”
I cannot think of a reason it cannot be done. Why can’t a large refrigerated room be pumped up to even 5000 ppm CO2 and then make snow inside of it? Collect enough snow into a long cylinder then compress it with a big hydraulic press. It doesn’t seem like rocket science. If I had the means I’d do it just to find out what happens…
Richard,
There was a 20 year (1960-1980) overlap between CO2 in the ice core air from Law Dome and direct measurements at the South Pole:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_sp_co2.jpg
Further the migration of CO2 in ice over time is difficult, if not impossible to measure as it is extremely small, but one has tried to calculate that on theoretical basis by measuring the increase in CO2 at the edge of remelt layers in relative “warm” coastal ice cores (average -23°C at Siple Dome):
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3773250
The theoretical migration worsens the resolution of that core from ~20 to ~22 years at middle depth and up to 40 years at full depth.
For the much colder (~-40°C) inland cores like Vostok and Dome C, there is no appreciable migration visible, as the CO2/temperature ratio between interglacial and glacial periods remains the same for each 100,000 years period back in time. If there was the slightest migration, the ratio would fade over time…
It’s my suspicion that a very significant % volume of the bubble gas they are testing in an ice core was created simply when they uncompressed the ice at the time of extraction much like the “bends” SCUBA divers can get. Given the difference in solubility between N2 and CO2, wouldn’t that favor a lower concentration of CO2 in the bubble than the original ancient atmosphere? So I’ve been wondering if anyone has done a gas chromatography analysis of an entire ice core sample, bubbles and ice together, (heated into steam), rather than only the bubbles? If my simple test results in bubbles with way less CO2 than what we started with then the reminder went into the water and much remained there. Does anyone test the entire sample or is all core analysis based only on bubbles?
richard verney,
Ice cores are drilled from top to rock bottom. The first meters are snow, compressing with depth to ice. At ~70 meter depth the density is high enough to start closing until then still open pores with the atmosphere and at ~80 meter all bubbles are closed. At that moment the air bubble volume is 10-15% of the ice colume. That gets smaller and smaller with depth and at a certain depth, the bubbles completely disappear as they form clathrates with water/ice.
The opposite happens when the ice cores from the depth are brought to the surface. To prevent cracks when the ice is expanding from the pressure in the depth, the ice is kept locally at -20°C for at least a year before transport and sampling. The volume then may get 50% more than initial.
If there were cracks and bubbles would lose their air, that would be from decomposing O2/N2 clathrates first, as these decompose at much lower temperatures than CO2 clathrates. Thus escaping O2/N2 long before CO2.. If there are cracks, that should give higher CO2 levels, not lower…
No CO2 can hide in the (small) water layer in the bubbles, as measurements are done by grating the ice under vacuum, where the water layer is removed and trapped in a cold (-70°C) trap. That recovers less than 80% of all air/CO2 in the ice.
Alternatively more and more another method is used: the ice sample is completely sublimated just under the meltpoint and everything is trapped cryogenically and with selective distillation measured by mass specrometer. That gives a >99% recovery of everything available and at the same time the isotopic ratio’s can be obtained. The results found are the same for both methods.
Melting everything and distilling it off gives a lot of problems, especially in Greenland ice cores: sea salts, including carbonates are blowing in, especially coastal. That is normally not a problem for CO2 measurements, but in Greenland there are also frequent deposits of quite acidic ash from nearby Icelandic volcanoes. These react with the carbonates and form in-situ extra CO2, even worse if you melt everything at measurement time. That (early) method is completely abandoned.
For a lot of information about ice cores, see:
http://courses.washington.edu/proxies/GHG.pdf
Sorry, my comment was for The Original Mike M…
Ferdinand, to try to summarize from what I can tell from your helpful link http://courses.washington.edu/proxies/GHG.pdf … Would it be correct to say that the CO2 data reported from ice cores does not include any that may be dissolved into the water itself? Yes or no?
Another supplemental question, is it possible that when WV condenses and then crystallizes into snowflakes that CO2 might not “go along for the ride” at all so that the resulting snowflakes have little or no CO2 at all but the ice later absorbs CO2 from the surrounding bubbles at depth under great pressure?
The Original Mike M:
Would it be correct to say that the CO2 data reported from ice cores does not include any that may be dissolved into the water itself? Yes or no?
The grating technique is done under vacuum, so any water layer on the surface of the bubble walls is evaporated including any CO2 hiding there. Then that water vapor is frozen out over a cold trap at -70°C, where there is no interfering layer of water on the ice surface anymore and simple adhesion of CO2 on the surface is accounted for by first passing a calibration mixture at about the expected CO2 level to calbrate the total equipment train before the samples are measured. Thus the asnwer is no, it includes allmost all CO2, in the air and in the (small) water layer at the bubblw walls.
is it possible that when WV condenses and then crystallizes into snowflakes that CO2 might not “go along for the ride” at all so that the resulting snowflakes have little or no CO2 at all but the ice later absorbs CO2 from the surrounding bubbles at depth under great pressure?
Snow flakes are mostly air, less ice. That can be seen in its specific weight of ~300 g/dm3 and a porosity of ~65%. The air composition of the surface snow layers is the same as in the air of the atmosphere above it. At bubble closing depth, bubbles still represent 10-15% of the volume, but remaining open porosity is zero. Between surface and bubble close off, the firn remains open and air with its different molecules can migrate up and down, of course in general from higher concentration to lower. Migration gets more difficult the deeper you go as the pores under the increasing pressure get smaller and smaller.
That makes that from the surface to full bubble closure depth the air get “older” the deeper you go. For the fast accumulating (coastal) ice cores, the difference is ~10 ppmv that is a difference in average age between air at the bottom of the air column and in the atmosphere of ~7 years, while the surrounding ice is already 40 years old:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_firn.jpg
Figure from Etheridge e.a. 1992, see:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/95JD03410/full unfortunately behind a paywall…
For inland ice cores where far less snow accumulates, the difference in gas age between closing depth and atmosphere can go up to ~40 years, while the surrounding ice is already hundreds to thousands years older…
A lot more details about CO2 in ice during densification can be read here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/94/16/8343.full
If sure a lot of journalists at CNN, ABC, BBC would class themselves as “neutral” fact finders, too
toneb, griff etc also probably call themselves “neutral” fact finders, as well.
Is this guy real? It sounds like fake news crafted to discredit those who circulate it.
The piece contains too many ‘hooks’ that will be used later to discredit the skeptical science claims it contains. It feels like a carefully crafted joke. It has peculiar grammar errors and iffy science facts.
I also found this article to be interesting and thought-provoking, possibly even containing some useful and overlooked observations — even if I am not qualified to judge the relative plausibility of all the author’s points.
At least it is something fresh, something I could read from the beginning to the end — unlike the repetitive condescenduing lecturing, overladen with unnecessary abbreviations and obfuscating esoteric references, lavishly offered here by irascible egomaniacs of ristvan’s and ferdinand’s ilk.
Those who really understand something are always able to explain it in clear and concise language.
Except that the CO2 in the atmosphere is definitely human produced – you can tell that from its isotopic signature.
Would that be the case if it was a signature of glacial melt? no.
Really this guy is an informed climate scientist? No.
The isotopic signature (δ13C) of CO2 from fossil fuels is circa -26 per mil. The isotopic signature of incremental atmospheric CO2 is -13 per mil.
Jim,
The isotopic “fingerprint” of human emissions is diluted by the ~40 GtC/year carbon cycle between the deep oceans and the atmosphere. The deep oceans return CO2 from ~1000 years ago with a 13C/12C ratio of +1 to +5 per mil from the surface (due to ocean life, the deep oceans are at about zero per mil)…
Ferdinand,
My main point was to highlight the fact that the statement by Griff, and similar statements above by ristvan and Toneb (his point 2), are potentially misleading. The δ13C data are not consistent with an anthropogenic source UNLESS you invoke an additional independent source of variation in δ13C, which is of course what your explanation seeks to do. Also, as mentioned previously, I would really like to understand how your “ocean thinning” model can lead to a linear relationship of atmospheric δ13C versus 1/CO2?
Jim,
The formula used to calculate the δ13C level is not linear. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9413C
It is a division of the 13C/12C ratios in a sample by a standard ratio. That makes that 1/[CO2] changes linear with δ13C, or absolute [13C] changes linear with [CO2]…
Human emissions should have dropped with ~11 per mil if all human emissions would have remained in the atmosphere. Of course that is not the case, as some 20% of all CO2 in the atmosphere each season is exchanged with other reservoirs. That redistributes human CO2 rapidly over other reservoirs like the ocean surface layer and the fast growing and decaying seasonal carbon mass of leaves with a response of less than a year. The deep oceans have a larger influence, because what is going into the deep has the isotopic composition of today, while what returns has the isotopic composition of ~1000 years ago… But that needs more time…
Consistent doesn’t mean that there is a 1:1 match, that is only possible if there were no other influences than human emissions. As good for the CO2 increase as for the δ13C decline, the oxygen use, you name it… are all consistent with human emissions.
If the CO2 would decrease with inceasing emissions, that would be inconsistent, or if the δ13C level in the atmosphere would increase with increasing emissions,…
The latter would be the case if the oceans were the real driver of the current CO2 increase, or if there was more vegetation decay than plant uptake of CO2.
Sorry Ferdinand, I am missing your point here. You say “The formula used to calculate the δ13C level is not linear.” and then “That makes that 1/[CO2] changes linear with δ13C”. The latter is of course the Keeling equation, which is precisely what I am using. I do not believe that I ever said or implied that δ13C is linear with CO2 – absolutely not, it is linear with 1/CO2, which is why your model of “ocean thinning” is so questionable, at least until you can demonstrate numercially that it is still consistent with all the data, which clearly demonstrate a linear relationship of δ13C with 1/CO2. If that is how how it works, please demonstrate it numerically and I will accept it. But then you say “or if the δ13C level in the atmosphere would increase with increasing emissions”,”that would be inconsistent” but that is exactly what the data show!
When I say that is what the data show, I am, of course, referring to those periods clearly evident on the plot posted by Toneb that show limited periods of atmospheric δ13C increasing when we know that CO2 was increasing during that same period.
Sorry Jim, I misinterpreted your question…
I was referring to the general trend caused by human emissions at one side and ocean “thinning” on the other side. That says nothing about short living disturbances of δ13C (or CO2) around the trends.
In the case of the CO2 rate of change, the disturbances are mainly in vegetation as the opposite CO2 and δ13C changes show:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
If the oceans were the cause, CO2 and δ13C changes would parallel each other, as the ocanic δ13C level is higher than in the current atmosphere (even including the isotopic shift at the water-air border).
Compare that to the “pause” in the δ13C drop over time (needs an update…):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/d13c_trends.jpg
I don’t know what the extra drop in δ13C caused for 1988-1990 (was there an El Niño?) but the increase 1991-1994 is caused by the Pinatubo eruption, which besides cooler temperatures, increased photosynthesis due to scattered sunlight (reaching more leaves normally in the shadow of other leaves part of the day). That gives more CO2 uptake and preferentially 12CO2 uptake, leaving relative more 13CO2 in the atmosphere.
The opposite happened during the 1998 El Niño where tropical forests were drying out, releasing relative more 12CO2…
Whilst I consider that a strong argument can be made that if man had not emitted CO2 by burning fossil fuels, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere would likely be less, the crux is that there is no correlation between the rise in CO2 and the observational temperature record as we know it. You might like to look at my comment set out at richard verney January 13, 2017 at 2:38 am above.
The fact is that to date, we have been unable to isolate the Climate Sensitivity to CO2 signal, if any at all exists, from the background of natural variation. Our data sets are not sufficient for the purpose; they have so many deficiencies and errors, that they are not capable of serious scientific study. The land based thermometer record has been so horribly bastardized that it might as well be chucked in the bin; the only signal in that is the artefacts of our own adjustments to the raw data, and should be chucked in the trash bin. The data sets are unable to answer the central question: is the climate sensitive to CO2, and if so what is the sensitivity?
If one looks at the data set before the late 20th century revisions/rewriting, the position is even more stark. I set out below the record as it was thought to be in the mid 1970s for the Northern Hemisphere. We do not have any worthwhils data on the Southern Hemisphere which is mostly ocean or Antarctica, or the outback of Australia.
“there is no correlation between the rise in CO2 and the observational temperature record”
Stated with such emphatic certitude it must be true…
Hmmm…
http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/zFacts-CO2-Temp.gif?w=240
http://www.icr.org/i/articles/af/does_carbon_dioxide_fig3new.jpg
Looks to be just a smidgen of correlation going on there.
I guess it all depends upon how much emphasis that you place on the word smidgen
There is some similarity, but correlation is something very different to similarity.
When someone asserts that there is correlation periods of anti-correlation, become a big issue. For example:
First, look at the blue temperature line between 1890 and 1910.It goes from about -0.4 to -0.8, and yet the red CO2 shows a steady increase during this period. Where is the correlation? Problem, Problem.
Second, look at the blue temperature line between 1920 and 1965. During this period, there is a steady increase in CO2, but the temperature during this period is anything but steady, the peak in temperature around the early 1940s cannot be explained by CO2, the divergence is far too great, and it contains a 15 year period between the early 1940s and late 1950s when temperatures drop significantly (a fall of some 0.5 degrees from about +0.1 to -0.4) whilst C02 rises unabated. That is significant anti-correlation
Third, I would accept that there is strong similarity during the period late 1960s through to early 2000s. If there was similar strong similarity during the earlier periods, ie., the period prior to 1960, one might even consider your assertion about correlation to be correct even though there are short lived problems with the temperature dips around the late 1970s and again around the late 1980s.
Fourth, look at the rate of warming between 1910 and the early 1940s. The rise in temperature during this period is some 0.8 deg C from about -0.7 to + 0.1 deg C. The rate of increase in temperature is about the same as the rate of increase in temperature between the period around the 1970s through to the early 2000s, and yet the gradient of CO2 emissions (the amount and rate of increase) is significantly different between these two periods. WupWT?. Given the very steep increase in the rate of CO2 emissions during the latter period, if CO2 was a driver one would expect to see a far greater rise in the rate of temperature increase during the period around 1970 to early 2000s when compared to the earlier period 1910 to early 1940s given that during the earlier period CO2 was far less and the rate of increase of CO2 far less. Once again, there is a breakdown in correlation.
Overall, there is nothing like correlation in your first plot. The devil with correlation is always in the detail. Some similarities, YES, but correlation certainly not.
I did not comment on your second plot, but we know that on paleo time scales, CO2 lags temperature changes. CO2 is a response not a driver of temperature on paleo scales.
Richard:
” CO2 is a response not a driver of temperature on paleo scales.”
Correct – it was a feedback …. except where out-gassing occurred from massive volcanic events (out of ice-ball Earth?).
However, if CO2 is put into the atmosphere OUTSIDE of the carbon cycle it will drive/lead.
Richard, I’m not a statistician….but I can tell you the first graph is showing an excellent correlation between temperature and CO2 and the second is an even better one.
On the second plot, whether one lags the other is immaterial to their correlation.
And no I have not mentioned causation once, but, where there is causation there is always correlation…
Which begs the question:
http://dangerousintersection.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/CO2-Temperature.gif
What happens next?
“The δ13C data are not consistent with an anthropogenic source UNLESS you invoke an additional independent source of variation in δ13C, which is of course what your explanation seeks to do.”
Jim:
From: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/outreach/isotopes/c13tellsus.html
“The relative proportion of 13C in our atmosphere is steadily decreasing over time. Before the industrial revolution, δ13C of our atmosphere was approximately -6.5‰; now the value is around -8‰. Recall that plants have less 13C relative to the atmosphere (and therefore have a more negative δ13C value of around -25‰). Most fossil fuels, like oil and coal, which are ancient plant and animal material, have the same δ13C isotopic fingerprint as other plants. The annual trend–the overall decrease in atmospheric δ13C–is explained by the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere that must come from the terrestrial biosphere and/or fossil fuels. In fact, we know from Δ14C measurements, inventories, and other sources, that this decrease is from fossil fuel emissions, and is an example of the Suess Effect.
Recall that the Suess Effect is the observed decrease in δ13C and Δ14C values due to fossil fuel emissions, which are depleted in 13C and do not contain 14C.
Total atmospheric carbon dioxide levels (not isotopic ratios, but just total carbon dioxide) show strong seasonal variations. In the summer (in the northern hemisphere–where most of the Earth’s land sits), carbon dioxide decreases as it is fixed by plants via photosynthesis. In the fall and winter, carbon dioxide increases as many plants stop photosynthesizing and some of the carbon dioxide they fixed is released through respiration from plants, animals, and soils. Seasonal δ13C variations show the opposite pattern. δ13C increases in the summer and decreases in the winter, as you can see on the graph below. This opposite trend is termed anticorrelation, and is explained using the same reasoning behind the total carbon dioxide pattern. When plants take up carbon dioxide, they prefer 12C over 13C. This leaves relatively more 13C in the atmosphere, which increases the δ13C of the atmosphere. However, in the winter, when the plants release more carbon dioxide than they consume, this carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere is relatively poor in 13C. This decreases the δ13C of the atmosphere during the fall and winter of each year since the carbon dioxide released from the plants is relatively rich in 12C–decreasing the ratio of 13C to 12C in the atmosphere. Of course, the seasons are opposite in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, so why don’t the trends in the two hemispheres cancel each other out? The answer is as easy as looking at a globe. There’s a lot more land and a lot more land biota in the Northern Hemisphere, so on average across the globe, the δ13C and CO2 change with the Northern Hemisphere seasons.”
I appreciate you sharing this Toneb, but this is actually a very good example of the misinformation that I was referring to. We all can see that δ13C values are generally decreasing over time and are currently around -8 per mil. So we can all agree that, on average, the incremental CO2 has a δ13C value that is lower than this. But we can quite easily determine the actual value and it is -13 per mil, not -25 or -26 per mil. I can post the plot if you wish. This is a long term average and varies over shorter timescales with ENSO activity.
The other “problem” which is clearly shown on the plot that you posted is that there are times when atmospheric CO2 is increasing and yet the atmospheric δ13C value is also INCREASING (e.g. 1998-2001). These appear (to me at least) to correlate with La Niña events. Regardless, they demonstrate that some of the time, the incremental CO2 has a δ13C content that is higher (less negative) than current atmospheric levels. I believe this to be an extremely important point. You may also note that there are times when the rate of decrease in δ13C is faster (e.g. 1997-1998), which reflects a content that is significantly less that -13 per mil and these periods would appear to correlate with El Niño events.
Thus, my view of the δ13C content of the INCREMENTAL atmospheric CO2 averages out at -13 per mil, which happens to be roughly half way between a deep oceanic source and a biosphere/fossil source, and moves towards extremes of circa zero (during a La Niña) and – 26 (during an El Niño).
Jim,
It is like with many things in nature: it is not because there is a lot of natural variability that this denies a trend (natural or not). That is the case for temperature, CO2 increase rate, δ13C changes, sea level change,… In many cases you need several years (25 years for sea level) of data before you can (statistically) prove that there is a trend and what that trend is.
In the case of the CO2 increase you need at least 3 years of data to show the trend (~2 ppmv/year) over the noise (+/- 2 ppmv year by year).
In the case of δ13C you need ~8 years to separate the trend from the “noise”.
It can be proven from both the δ13C changes and the O2 changes that vegetation is the main cause of the variability around the trend, both for CO2 changes and δ13C changes. See:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
Vegetation is not the cause of the trend, as that is an increasing sink for CO2, preferentially 12CO2, thus increasing the relative 13CO2 content in the atmosphere and thus not the cause of the fast δ13C decline…
The oceans are higher in δ13C level than the atmosphere, thus neither responsible for the δ13C decline, but the deep ocean – atmosphere CO2 exchanges are responsible for the “dilution” of the δ13C decline caused by human emissions.
Ferdinand,
Three points (with apologies if they sound blunt):
1. If I have two separate measurements of a trend, however short term they might be, I take notice.
http://i64.tinypic.com/fw0tvt.jpg
2. Do you agree that the long term decline of atmospheric δ13C over vastly more than 8 years is consistent with an average content of the incremental CO2 of -13 per mil? The plot below shows 40 years. If not, please provide your numerically-based analysis that fully explains this linear relationship.
http://i64.tinypic.com/2qlwg42.jpg
3. Why do you post a link to a paper on O2/N2 when we are discussing δ13C content of CO2? I am surprised that any scientist could publish such a paper and discuss the O2/N2 decline only in terms of an annual decline rate (Gt C yr-1). I would not have accepted this paper if I had been asked to peer review it (but then I am not a “peer”). The relationship is linear with CO2 – did they really miss this?
http://i66.tinypic.com/d9ov5.jpg
Jim,
1. Shows that there is a decline in δ13C everywhere, starting near ground level in the NH (where 90% of human emissions are) and with some delay reaching the height of Mauna Loa and passing the ITCZ near the equator reaching the south pole a few years kater.
2, Yes.
3. I did post the link to the O2/N2 ratio, because that shows us what the biosphere is doing. The biosphere is the only other source or sink for low-13C. All other known sources of CO2 have higher δ13C levels than the atmosphere: the (deep) oceans, volcanoes, carbonate rocks,… Only ancient (“fossil”) organic carbon and recent organic carbon is low to extremely low (natural gas) in δ13C level.
Thus the biosphere can be another source of low-13CO2, besides humans. The link did show that this is not the case: the biosphere is a net sink for CO2, not a source.
Of course the O2/N2 ratio goes down in exact ratio with fossile fuel use, as that uses oxygen. The point is that after distracting the fossil O2 use from the O2 decline, what rests is the oxygen use or production by the biosphere. In this case there is less O2 used than calculated from fossil fuel burning. Thus the biosphere produces more O2 than it uses, thus takes more CO2 in than it releases and preferentially 12CO2…
4. Thus the average decline in δ13C is with a CO2 increase which is in average -13 per mil, while what we add to the atmosphere is average -26 per mil. That only means that part of human emissions are redistributed between the atmosphere and other reservoirs and/or other reservoirs “dilute” the human δ13C “fingerprint” either by additional CO2 with a higher δ13C level or simply pass by in sufficient quantity to never come back (at least not in the next centuries).
The redistribution is a fact, as the same δ13C changes are found in the ocean surface as in the atmosphere:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.jpg
See the difference between the δ13C of the ocean surface and the atmosphere in that graph…
If there is any CO2 exchange between the oceans and the atmosphere, that would increase the δ13C level of the atmosphere: that is the source of the “dilution” of the human “fingerprint”. One can calculate that CO2 exchange that matches reality:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_zero.jpg
Thus a deep oceans – atmosphere and back flow of ~40 GtC/year is sufficient. Independently verified by the decay speed of the 14C level after the 1960 atomic bomb tests spike…
Ferdinand,
I will respond more fully tomorrow, but why would you say “Of course the O2/N2 ratio goes down in exact ratio with fossile fuel use, as that uses oxygen”? No it doesn’t (go down in the exact ratio), as I am sure you know. The ratio for fossil fuels is generally accepted as circa 1.4, whereas the graph demonstrates the reality to be 2.2 (10.81/4.8). I am familiar with the so-called oxygen balance model, which requires several other parameters to miraculously combine to give this beautiful long-term linear relationship (R2 of 0.9975). If we are going to progress these discussions, it is essential that we make a clear distinction between what the data actually show and what are the model(s) that have been proposed to explain that data. Currently, I am entirely focussed on what the data (observations/measurements) show. The explanatory models can come later.
On the other hand, I am pleased to see that you do accept that the decline in δ13C is consistent with an incremental CO2 content of -13 per mil.
Jim,
From the O2/N2 balance work:
Table 3. Conversion Factors and Other Terms for Calculating the Anthropogenic Mass Balance
GtC to ppm CO2: 0.471
ppm O2 to per meg δ(O2/N2): 4.8
fuel mean ΔO2/ΔCO2 during combustion: 1.45
bio mean ΔO2/ΔCO2 during photosynthesis/respiration: 1.1
You have an extra factor 4.8 in your graph between the O2 change in ppmv vs. per meg δ(O2/N2) and the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is only about half (in mass) of the CO2 from combustion by humans…
Ferdinand, please read what I said …
“The ratio for fossil fuels is generally accepted as circa 1.4, whereas the graph demonstrates the reality to be 2.2 (10.81/4.8).” Note the division by 4.8!
The reality (2.2) is what the data tell us is the actual observed exchange ratio between O2 and CO2 in the atmosphere. The cause of it being double the value seen in photosynthesis/respiration (1.1) and 50% higher than the value for burning fossil fuels (1.4) is unproven, but is hypothesised (in the so-called oxygen balance model) to be due to the anthropogenic CO2 being partly taken up by the terrestrial biosphere and partly the oceans (in just the right proportions). In order to balance, however, it then needs to invoke some O2 outgassing in addition. All these parameters, which are all time-variant, then combine to provide the remarkable linear relationship. Apparently. Elephant’s trunk anyone?
Incidentally, have you noticed that since the rate of emissions increased during the first decade of this century, the amount of inferred O2 outgassing has had to increase significantly in order to maintain the “balance” (based on the CDIAC carbon (sic) budget: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/)?
It bothers me greatly that plots of δ13C vs 1/CO2 and O2/N2 vs CO2. which are utterly fundamental to our understanding of atmospheric changes, are rarely updated/published. Why is this?
Jim,
Sorry, indeed you used the conversion factor, but you didn’t take into account that the oxygen use is for the full burning of fossil fuels (+/- what the biosphere does), but the change of CO2 levels in the atmosphere is only about half human emissions.
The oxygen use or production O2/CO2 ratio is not far from 1:1, measured in the fields like here:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004GB002242/pdf
The “airborne fraction”, what remains of the CO2 emissions in the atmosphere (as mass. not what remains of the human emissions alone) is known with high accuracy: that is what is measured at Mauna Loa. Human emissions are from national inventories of fossil fuel sales and burning efficiency, with an accuracy of +/- 0.5 GtC/year for ~9 GtC/year . Probably more underestimated than overestimated… That gives 50-55% of human emissions remaining in the atmosphere.
Oxygen changes are mainly from fossil fuel burning and photosynthesis. O2 changes from the oceans are limited as that is mainly a question of solubility in seawater, but I have the impression that they didn’t take into account biolife in the ocean surface, or included that in the overall O2 balance…
Indeed the O2 measurements need an urgent update, but I suppose that the main problem is the extremely care needed in sampling and measurement as you need an accuracy of better than 1:1 miilion…
Ferdinand,
You make the comment “… but I have the impression that they didn’t take into account biolife in the ocean surface, or included that in the overall O2 balance…”
That is certainly consistent with what I have read so we can agree on that!
100% of the CO2 in the atmosphere is produced by man?????
MarkW,
Of course not, but ~90% of the increase in CO2 since the LIA is caused by the ~200% emissions by man. That is for the increase in total CO2 mass, not the original molecules which are distributed over all reservoirs. Currently ~9% of the total CO2 mass in the atmosphere is from fossil fuel use…
“I believe thi§ §cienti§t i§ having hi§ “Michael Fi§h”-moment!”
“ultra-giganormous”
S.L.B.T.M.
Perhaps relevant to this is a post found on another well known blog See:
and a clip from the article:
So that was NASA’s view back in the day.
Makes more sense than a climate model.
I found Kellehers essay to be very interesting for several reasons:
“…the forest through the trees when it comes to assessing massive amounts of technical scientific data.”
Coupled with ptolemy2’s remark :
” This is what Karl Popper, the most important philosopher of science, devoted his career to demonstrating: that science can only be deductive, not inductive.”
From my own approach to complex issues, these two statements are equivalent. My own experience in 40 years of applied science and engineering is that most folks fundamentally do not get this. I think this is a fundamental root cause of why so much scientific work is, well, not particularly useful (ie crap).
I did not read Kellehers essay closely, or try to analyse or validate any specific point. My own take is to do so somewhat misses the point. My own summary is that he concludes that the earths climate changes all the time, and it likely involves big stuff like glaciers, ocean circulation, orbital variance, solar variance, water vapor and probably some other stuff, and that we really don’t have the foggiest useful idea of how these all work together in any meaningful predictive way. Arguing about a couple ppm of CO2 in this context just seems rather pathetic.
The forest I am seeing through the trees is the global warming effect focused directly along the glacial melt lines during all rapid glacial retreats and periods of rapid CO2 increases.
I see the solar flare of 1859 damaging the outer atmosphere
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/saber-solarstorm.html
NOAA says current global warming is caused by greenhouse gas effect of increases in atmospheric CO2 levels. Brian says climate data is showing that global warming during major glacial retreats is from greenhouse gas effects of water vapor hovering over melting glaciers boosted by solar reflection off ice sheets plus rapid warming of freshwater piling up on the glaciers and ocean surface and replacing ice
> During the past 420,000 years there have been four major ice ages with a frequency of about 100,000 years…
That is not true. There has been ONE major “Ice Age”. We are currently living in the Pleistocene Ice AGE which began about 2.6 million years ago.
It would be correct to say: “During the past 420,000 years there have been four major Glacial Periods with a frequency of about 100,000 year.”
AGE is a very long time. PERIOD is relatively short.
Yes, I know what you meant, but conflating “Ice Age” with “Glacial Period” although very common only serves to confuse people. It is especially poor practice for one of “the country’s top environmental engineers”.
Some thoughts from an old guy with no professional qualifications.I think the author has actually claimed that the melting ice causes global warming.?Did I read it wrong?Can’t be true .Ice absorbs heat when it melts.
The atmosphere is colder than it otherwise would have been.With 90 to 99 % of earths freshwater in Greenland(10%) and Antartica(90%) depending on who’s #s are used ,these ice sheets form an enormous heat ‘sink’ which serve to moderate temperature swings.As they melt they cool the atmosphere and since the melt water is colder then the average temp.of the oceans,cools the oceans also.Air colder, oceans colder.Where did the heat go?In the Oceans.The average temperature is lower but the volume is larger
and contains more heat.Don’t see how it effects CO2 much.At the end of the day I think we are all stuck with a lot of conjecture about systems that are too complex for human understanding.
It’s an interesting read, but who is the audience?
I find the closing statement
>> I warrant that I have conducted my investigations impartially and believe my conclusions are sufficiently supported by valid scientific evidence to stand up in a court of law.
to be troubling.
Thus it is not science, for a court of law can’t decide science. If it could PI would equal 3.
Here’s a scary bunch of research on sea ice, as it relates to CO2, for anyone who might want to plow through it:
http://www.natur.gl/fileadmin/user_files/Dokumenter/Afhandlinger/PHD_Dorte_Haubjerg_Soegaardr.pdf
… very scary.
… and from S. F. Ackley
http://oceans11.lanl.gov/trac/CICE/raw-attachment/wiki/WorkshopPresentations/1Ackley.ppt
… we have THIS:
Again, processes in ice seem to exist that we might be overlooking in our assessment of the CO2 story. And if such processes exist in sea ice, then do similar processes (or other processes) exist in glacial ice over millions of years, to render our expectations of records derived from ice records a bit overblown ?
Bet on it. People come up with Just So stories, which gain credence by persistent repetition, but actually are based on very shaky foundations, if not entirely on sand.
The number of things we don’t know about these processes will fill volumes in years to come.
Robert,
There are a huge differences between sea-ice and glacial ice: sea ice starts at temperatures just below freezing and still contains a lot of water and salts (and biolife) in that water, which remains open until much lower temperatures.
Glacial ice is from snow deposits and has little impurities (coastal more than inland), very little liquid water (some 5 atoms thick at -40°C at the bubble wall) where CO2 can hide at much lower temperatures (-20 to -40°C for most cores) and besides some extremophyles no life forms that can survive the long storage in deep ice…
Further, the 0.025 Pg CO2/year extra sink by melting sea ice in spring is part of the natural cycle which was more or less in equilibrium with the pre-industrial atmosphere at 280-300 ppmv over the whole Holocene. Meanwhile humans emit ~9 Pg/year…
This extra sink may interfere with the calculation of the amount of human induced CO2 in ocean waters near Antarctica…
There are lots of unknowns in the natural cycles. While that is very interesting, it is not important for the CO2 balance, as the current overall result of all natural cycles together is known to reasonable accuracy: a net sink of ~4.5 Pg/year…
I’m amazed at the number of ad hominem attacks on the author of the feature article in this thread. Where would be be if a scientific theory could be dismissed simply because of the originator’s playful wordsmithing, or lack of modesty?
Personally, I’m repulsed by people who accept high praise and awards with the words “I’m deeply humbled”. I want to jump up and say “so what the hell would you say if you were branded a pumped up has been?”.
But that wouldn’t justify my dismissing any coherent argument they might offer, nor lessen my appreciation of whatever skill was demonstrated to win this public acclaim.
otropogo,
You are, of course, right. Despite my precautionary note (see below), arguments should be evaluated on their own merits and not the merits of their author.
Has anyone else tried a web search for “Kelleher & Associates Environmental Mgmt LLC”? Yahoo brought up [… 1963,” occasional researcher/writer and full time environmental scientist/engineer Brian T. Kelleher is … Kelleher & Associates Environmental Mgmt LLC … ] and a link to http://www.kelleherassoc.com/ [full time environmental scientist/engineer Brian T. Kelleher] which brought up a “The Complete Unraveling of the JFK Assassination” blog.
Yes, David in Texas, I have tried that very search, and nada, except the JFK thing.
Seems a bit sparse, doesn’t it ?
“I am among the country’s top environmental engineers….”
BS! Engineering is about doing the job correctly. The legal profession is often about winning an ‘argument’. It is unethical for an engineer to make claims outside their field of expertise.
For example, might ethically testify in court that his client remediated a property by meeting California EPA requirements using established environmental engineering practices.
I am trained as a mechanical and environmental engineer. I have used this training to design systems to protect people (safety) and the environment while producing power from nuclear power plants. Understanding science makes it easy to recognize when some lawyer is dishing out a load BS on CAGW (POTUS Obama).
“Given all that is at stake and because it is right up my alley, I felt a moral and professional obligation to apply my special talent and experience to the vitally important question at hand.”
BS, Brian Kelleher has a moral and ethical obligation to not represent himself as an expert.
There is a clear difference between between an informed opinion and a sack of manure.
Please read my disclaimer. I went out of my way to emphasis that I considered myself not just qualified but uniquely qualified to weigh in on this subject and explained my motives. Go ahead a call me delusional but I would very much appreciate it if you do not accuse me of being unethical or conniving. As I trust you can clearly see I am 100 percent confident in my conclusions and recommendations and contend that time will tell that I have sufficiently proven my points though I wish I had added a little more detail here and there.
The question of whether humans are causing climate change is a real big deal. I see NOAA jumping at conclusions and making an enormous mistake. I am taking the most proactive substantive actions I can come up with to do something about it. Go ahead an throw out whatever insults you so desire. I have a very thick skin for that stuff given my profession.
Since writing the release I have had a change to review NASA data on solar flares, and there is no longer any doubt in my mind that the ultragigameganormous one in 1859 set off the current period of global warming and that subsequent ones are also having an effect. When I have a chance, I will be comparing the timing with temperature changes. That 1859 event was so big it had to have substantially damaged the outer atmosphere and in particular the ozone layer which translates to massive increases in the thermal energy reaching earth over an extended period with most of it presumably heading into the arctic. Oh by the way, this is an example of an ability to see the forest through the trees. Its right there staring at everyone and nobody else can see it. So now that NASA has told us that solar flares bring bursts of pure hydrogen (which is lethal to ozone) who has the strongest argument. The industrial revolution? Seems far fetched. I expect that climate scientists in the not too distant future will be blaming solar flares for the onset and perserverence of most of the glacial retreats using current data to create the model.
Who has presented the most sensible and defensible arguments on what greenhouse gas emissions causes glacial retreats? CO2 dispersed trough the vast atmosphere? Seems very far fetched.
At any rate, I want to thank everyone who did for reading the release and especially those that provided kind and/or encouraging words. Although my short visit to this site was not my cup of tea, I appreciate both the exposure Mr Watts provided and all the feedback—except the overt nasties.
Best regards to all
BTK
What I think I noted was that this letter originated as a press release from an information distribution company whose job it is to target this information to audiences whom the writer pays this company to target.
This, in combination with the lack of information about the author on the web, raises questions in my mind. And, yeah, given the writer’s tone of strong self assurance and expertise, I see it more as a piece designed to sell something.
There might be some valid directions of thought within the piece, but its overall purpose seems pretty transparent — to sell a particular side of the issue for the sake of winning a position and the advantages of doing so. It’s a marketing piece, in other words, more than it is anything else.
I might be making a super-giganormous mistake in saying this, but that’s my take on it now.
“…There might be some valid directions of thought within the piece, but its overall purpose seems pretty transparent — to sell a particular side of the issue for the sake of winning a position and the advantages of doing so. It’s a marketing piece, in other words…”
BINGO!
Maybe it’s The Donald making an “hommage” appearance reprising his own early entrepreneurial self. And maybe Russian hackers are helping by covering up his online tracks while the NSA, CIA and US military intelligence are busy reading Hillary’s e-mails again, in case they missed something.
Pure, unalloyed self-marketing. But the argument offered may have merit.
Let’s remember that it wasn’t Shah Jahan who designed and built the Taj Mahal, nor Peter the Great who built the Ladoga Canal that made St. Petersburg possible. Yet very few people know the names of the actual builders. Very few technical geniuses are also whizzes at marketing and self-promotion.
So it is ok to start with unethical statements if there is a disclaimer at the end.
As an engineer, I am not qualified with regard to BTK being delusional. If is just by opinion.
…. ultra-giganormous sized solar flare…..
Yes, those are the ones you have to watch out for. Sneak up on you, they do!
A knowledgeable intern probably did the actual writing of the piece, before the claimed author signed off on it to send to the information distribution (i.e., press release) company that distributed it. … just a guess, of course.
v’