Guest essay by Rud Istvan
Dr. Murry Salby has been getting substantial attention in the climate blogosphere, for two reasons. First is his theory that at least 2/3 of the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 is natural and temperature induced. Second are the circumstances surrounding his departure from U. Colorado and later termination from Macquarie University. This post covers the first and not the second, and is motivated by a very recent WUWT post on the mysteries of OCO-2, where the Salby theory was raised yet again in comments.
Background
Dr. Salby developed a substantial scientific reputation for work on upper atmosphere wave propagation and stratospheric ozone. He has published two textbooks, Atmospheric Physics (1996) and Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate (2012). His new theory that most of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is naturally temperature induced (NOT anthropogenic) is not published. He explicated it in a Hamburg lecture 18 April 2013, and a London lecture 17 March 2015. Both are available on YouTube. (Search his name to find, view, and critique them before reading on if you want to deep dive.) This post does not reproduce or critique his arguments in detail. (There are fundamental definitional, mathematical, and factual observation errors. Perhaps a more detailed companion post will follow detailing them with footnotes if this does not suffice.) This post only addresses whether his conclusions are supported by observations; it is a macro Feynman test rather than a Salby details deep dive.
Controversial CO2 Atmospheric Concentration Theory
The core of Salby’s theory is derived using CO2 data from MLO’s Keeling Curve since 1958, and satellite temperature data since 1979. (His few charts reaching back to 1880 contain acknowledged large uncertainties.) His theory builds off a simple observation, that in ‘official’ estimates of Earth’s carbon cycle budget, anthropogenic CO2 is only a small source compared to large natural sources and sinks. This is illustrated by IPCC AR4 WG1 figure 7.3.
He then deduces there must be rapidly responding temperature dependent natural CO2 net sources much greater than anthropogenic sources. This is a very questionable argument on short decadal time frames. Gore got it wrong, and Salby got it wrong. The ice core based CO2 lagged change to temperature is about 800 years, common sensically corresponding to the thermohaline circulation period. (For rigorous calculations on Salby’s decadal time scales using residency half-lives and efold times, see Eschenbach’s post at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/19/the-secret-life-of-half-life/
He observationally bolsters his conclusion by ‘showing’ that highest CO2 concentrations are over relatively uninhabited/unindustrialized regions like the Amazon basin, so must have natural origins. The following ‘observational’ figure is from his Hamburg lecture. Except it is completely disproved by OCO-2.
Critique
As Feynman said, observation trumps theory.
First, if Salby is right, the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations should have slowed or stopped because of the ‘pause’. They haven’t. They bear no short or long term relationship to one another. Since 2000, CO2 has increased about 35% on the 1958 Keeling curve base; temperatures haven’t (the pause). The seasonality of the northern hemisphere terrestrial photosynthetic sink is apparent in the Keeling curve, as is the temperature/CO2 discrepancy disproving Salby.
Second, satellites have NOT generally observed higher CO2 concentrations over uninhabited/ unindustrialized regions in past two decades. (The following NASA charts use AIRS IR sensors on various satellites to estimate gridded CO2 concentrations from peak CO2 OLR absorption wavelengths. The new OCO-2 data is even more stark.)
Third, Salby’s theory requires that land and/or sea serve as the temperature dependent CO2 net sources that ‘overwhelm’ anthropogenic CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement production. That is NOT true either; both land and sea have been serving as net sinks.
Terrestrial biomass (net primary productivity, NPP) is an increasing sink. This has been observed in multiple ways, including NASA AVHRR (1982-2009) and MODIS (2000-2009) ‘normalized difference vegetative index’ (NDVI). NDVI has been ground truthed by sampling NPP including both ‘roots and shoots’ by ecosystem. The terrestrial net biological sink has increased since 1980. It is not a source. The most recent paper is NASA’s 14% greening in 30 years, published 4/16/2016 and previously remarked at WUWT.
That leaves oceans. Biologically, oceans are a net carbon sink through photosynthesis and calcification. Satellites detect this through planktonic chlorophyll concentrations.
But there are certainly large ocean zones that are relatively barren (mainly from lack of iron fertilization in the form of dust). Those large blue barren swaths are where ocean water pCO2 and pH are monitored, precisely to minimize confounding biological sink influences recently explained on WUWT by Dr. Jim Steele. Could those also be a net source?
Barren ocean regions are mainly influenced Henry’s Law and Le Chatellier’s Principle. The first says partial pressures of ocean dissolved CO2 and atmospheric CO2 will equilibrate. The second partly says colder water stores more dissolved CO2. ARGO suggests the oceans are warming. Could Le Chatellier be stronger than Henry, in which case oceans could provide Salby’s requisite rapidly temperature dependent net natural source? There are two stations, Aloha 100 km north of Oahu (maintained by University of Hawaii and WHOI) and BATS off Bermuda (maintained by WHOI) where the hypothesis can be tested by observations. Both show even barren oceans are a net carbon sink since 1980. Barren ocean pH declines as pCO2 increases.
If there are no observational temperature dependent natural CO2 sources, and temperature dependent sinks (NH temperate terrestrial vegetation) increase with temperature, then Salby’s natural carbon dioxide theory cannot be true. It is falsified. Even before detailing his definitional, mathematical, and factual errors.
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sorry OP but biomass sinks increase emissions year on year in a warming climate. The trend of emitted CO2 is going up since the 1910 1940 warming and slight warming there after, it takes decades for nature to respond to warming with population growth relatively speaking per species ect.Take one insect that produces CO2 and calculate its growth from 1900 to 2017, I’ll reckon you’ll find significant and exponential contribution of CO2 by said species. Then do same for every net emitting lifeform. Lets see what numbers a model spews out
Rud Istvan:
I write to dispute two assertions in your above post; viz. you write
and
Before explaining why I refute those assertions, I point out that one of our 2005 papers made the same conclusions as Salby later asserted
(ref. Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005) )
That paper provides six models of the carbon cycle system. There are three basic models and they each assume a single mechanism dominates the cabon cycle system. In each basic model it is assumed that
1. the rise is purely natural
and
2. there is a significant anthropogenic contribution to the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Thus we provided six models.
Each of the models in that paper matches the available empirical data without use of any ‘fiddle-factor’ such as the ‘5-year smoothing’ the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses to get its model (i.e. the Bern Model) to agree with the empirical data.
The superior performance of each of our models over the IPCC’s Bern Model results from our modelling assumption. The Bern Model uses the assumption of anthropogenic CO2 emissions being in excess of what nature can sequester (which as I explain below is now refuted by the OCO-2 data). Our models assume something has altered the equilibrium state of the carbon cycle system.
Some processes of the carbon cycle system are very slow with rate constants of years and decades. Hence, the system takes decades to fully adjust to a new equilibrium. The observed rise in atmospheric CO2 is easily modeled as being continuing slow adjustment towards an altered equilibrium. And the decades of delay between an alteration to the equilibrium and achievement of the new equilibrium means that e.g. the ‘Pause’ would NOT have induced the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations to have slowed or stopped.
This raises the question as to what may have altered the equilibrium of the carbon cycle.
One possibility is the anthropogenic CO2 emission. In our models the short term sequestration processes can easily adapt to sequester the anthropogenic emission in a year because the dynamics of the seasonal variation strongly suggest this is true (and as explained below is now confirmed by the OCO-2 data). But, according to our models, the total emission of that year affects the equilibrium state of the entire system with resulting rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration as is observed. This possibility is real but unlikely.
Natural factors are more likely to have caused the alteration to the equilibrium of the carbon cycle system. Of these, the most likely cause is the centuries-long rise in global temperature which is recovery from the Little Ice Age. Almost all the CO2 flowing in the carbon cycle is in the deep oceans and adjustment of equilibrium between deep oceans and atmosphere would take several decades.
And the satellite data supports the understanding that the short term sequestration processes can easily adapt to sequester the anthropogenic CO2 emission in a year. It is not relevant whether, as you say, “satellites have NOT generally observed higher CO2 concentrations over uninhabited/ unindustrialized regions in past two decades”. It is important to note that the satellite data show some major industrialised regions (e.g. Western Europe) have LOWER atmospheric CO2 concentrations than some unindustrialised regions (e.g. Central Africa). This would not be observed if the emissions from human industries were overloading the sequestration near to their emission sites. The observation is consistent with emissions from industrial activity being completely sequestered in the regions where they are emitted (at least,they are in Western Europe) so they cannot be overloading the sequestration processes in those regions and,therefore, they are not available to overload the sequestration processes in other regions.
As mentioned above, each of the models in our paper matches the available empirical data without use of any ‘fiddle-factor’. But if one of the six models of our paper is adopted then there is a 5:1 probability that the choice is wrong. And other models are probably also possible. Also our six models each give a different indication of future atmospheric CO2 concentration for the same future anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide.
Data that fits all the possible causes is not evidence for the true cause. Data that only fits the true cause would be evidence of the true cause. But the above findings demonstrate that there is no data that only fits either an anthropogenic or a natural cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Hence, the only factual statements that can be made on the true cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration are
(a) the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have an anthropogenic cause, or a natural cause, or some combination of anthropogenic and natural causes,
but
(b) there is no evidence that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration has a mostly anthropogenic cause or a mostly natural cause.
Hence, using the available data it cannot be known what if any effect altering the anthropogenic emission of CO2 will have on the future atmospheric CO2 concentration. This finding agrees with the statement in Chapter 2 from Working Group 3 in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001) that says; “no systematic analysis has published on the relationship between mitigation and baseline scenarios”.
Richard
Thanks Richard, It’s amazing what you can learn if you don’t start out by thinking that you know what the answer is and inducing it into your method.
Shame the paper is paywalled .
If you have a pre-print, please drop me contact on my about page
https://climategrog.wordpress.com
Greg Goodman:
Thanks for that.
I cannot send you a copy of the actual paper because I am now on the Editorial Board of E&E and the publisher would take a dim view of my giving away copies.
However, my presentation to the first Heartland climate conference (2009) was an explanation of that paper and was accompanied by a ;paper which is almost entirely copy&paste from it. You can see me giving the presentation here and I will try to provide a copy of its accompanying paper at the link you provide.
Richard
Greg Goodman:
I cannot find an email address at your link. Please email me at RichardSCourtneyATaol.com but replace AT with @ur momisugly. I will attach the presentation paper to my reply.
Richard
Richard, I just saw your presentation. I was impressed and quite convinced. (it had only less than 100 views, how odd!)
Thanks
101,,,, 🙂
Richard,
I just took a look at your video. I think that you missed your calling. You should be a ‘man of the cloth!’ 🙂
Clyde
Clyde Spencer:
I am.
Richard
Clyde Spencer:
In retrospect I think my reply to you could be misunderstood as being facetious and, therefore, I write to clarify.
I earned my income throughout my adult life as a practicing scientist. Most of my research was conducted at the UK’s Coal research Establishment. Following closure of the UK’s coal industry I acted as an consultant on effects of energy production and coal use providing advice mostly to governments and politicians.
The reason I could provide the parody of a ‘fire and brimstone’ sermon is because I am an Accredited Methodist Preacher: I am currently Listed on the Plan of the Falmouth and Gwennap Circuit. During the closure of the UK coal industry the Methodist Church appointed me as an Industrial Chaplain.
Please note that I have never – and would never – provide a real sermon of the ‘fire and brimstone’ type.
Richard
Richard
The Autumn and Winter CO2 emissions do not accumulate over Eurasia. No-one has ever seen the peak value if they were to accumulate. The CO2 is transported away constantly by the passing winds and ultimately finds its way to the Arctic or Equator. Look at some of the CO2 charts from the link below. Those sample sites from the mid, and particularly the higher latitude.
You will note that the CO2 curve goes flat and between December and February. That is not accumulation, it is simply what is in the passing wind.
Rud’s conclusion that the land and ocean sinks cannot respond quickly, based on the +- 800 year lag coming out of a glacial cycle is completely irrelevant and misleading, and should not even be used as a comparison. Anyone that is familiar with equilibriums would know this as natural instinct. Those conditions are completely different, from the current state of equilibrium. Currently the interglacial is mature, oceans and land mass warmer and more surface interface area exposed, and ecosystems mature with reduced vegetation mass.
Coming out of an interglacial there is a lower volume of CO2 in the atmosphere as all biospheres are blooming and starving of CO2 is locked up in the sinks. The state of equilibrium could not be more different.
I work with various equiliriums on a near daily basis and they act identically, especially when the surface interchange area is reduced compared to the volume of fluid, there is a reduced concentration in the fluid for a period.
Within the equilibrium dynamics, there is active CO2. That is, CO2 that can move between the sink and tranport fluid readily.This is on a minute / hourly / daily basis.
It should also be remembered that the atmosphere is a not a sink, it is a transport mechanism between the sinks, and that CO2 has a relative saturation / density relationship between the atmosphere and the various sinks controlled by temperature. Given the surface interface area of the ocean and land the volume of active CO2 in the time required is completely feasible.
There is nothing in Ruds conclusion to convince me otherwise. .
Further, the images of CO2 that are used in the head post are not from OCO-2, as this satelite was launched in 2014.
There is still no discussion on the increasing volumes of CO2 at high ALTITUDES of 100km. The carbon cycle must be studied in full, not just the simplistic side.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=HPB&program=ccgg&type=ts
ozonebust:
You say
and
I strongly agree. The following are the basic mechanisms we considered in our paper I described above.
Mechanisms of the carbon cycle
The IPCC reports provide simplified descriptions of the carbon cycle. In our paper, Rörsch et al. (2005), we considered the most important processes in the carbon cycle to be:
Short-term processes
1. Consumption of CO2 by photosynthesis that takes place in green plants on land. CO2 from the air and water from the soil are coupled to form carbohydrates. Oxygen is liberated. This process takes place mostly in spring and summer. A rough distinction can be made:
1a. The formation of leaves that are short lived (less than a year).
1b. The formation of tree branches and trunks, that are long lived (decades).
2. Production of CO2 by the metabolism of animals, and by the decomposition of vegetable matter by micro-organisms including those in the intestines of animals, whereby oxygen is consumed and water and CO2 (and some carbon monoxide and methane that will eventually be oxidised to CO2) are liberated. Again distinctions can be made:
2a. The decomposition of leaves, that takes place in autumn and continues well into the next winter, spring and summer.
2b. The decomposition of branches, trunks, etc. that typically has a delay of some decades after their formation.
2c. The metabolism of animals that goes on throughout the year.
3. Consumption of CO2 by absorption in cold ocean waters. Part of this is consumed by marine vegetation through photosynthesis.
4. Production of CO2 by desorption from warm ocean waters. Part of this may be the result of decomposition of organic debris.
5. Circulation of ocean waters from warm to cold zones, and vice versa, thus promoting processes 3 and 4.
Longer-term process
6. Formation of peat from dead leaves and branches (eventually leading to lignite and coal).
7. Erosion of silicate rocks, whereby carbonates are formed and silica is liberated.
8. Precipitation of calcium carbonate in the ocean, that sinks to the bottom, together with formation of corals and shells.
Natural processes that add CO2 to the system:
9. Production of CO2 from volcanoes (by eruption and gas leakage).
10. Natural forest fires, coal seam fires and peat fires.
Anthropogenic processes that add CO2 to the system:
11. Production of CO2 by burning of vegetation (“biomass”).
12. Production of CO2 by burning of fossil fuels (and by lime kilns).
Several of these processes are rate dependant and several of them interact.
At higher air temperatures, the rates of processes 1, 2, 4 and 5 will increase and the rate of process 3 will decrease. Process 1 is strongly dependent on temperature, so its rate will vary strongly (maybe by a factor of 10) throughout the changing seasons.
The rates of processes 1, 3 and 4 are dependent on the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The rates of processes 1 and 3 will increase with higher CO2 concentration, but the rate of process 4 will decrease.
The rate of process 1 has a complicated dependence on the atmospheric CO2 concentration. At higher concentrations at first there will be an increase that will probably be less than linear (with an “order” <1). But after some time, when more vegetation (more biomass) has been formed, the capacity for photosynthesis will have increased, resulting in a progressive increase of the consumption rate.
Processes 1 to 5 are obviously coupled by mass balances. Our paper assessed the steady-state situation to be an oversimplification because there are two factors that will never be “steady”:
I. The removal of CO2 from the system, or its addition to the system.
II. External factors that are not constant and may influence the process rates, such as varying solar activity.
Modelling this system is a difficult because so little is known concerning the rate equations. However, some things can be stated from the empirical data.
At present the yearly increase of the anthropogenic emissions is approximately 0.1 GtC/year. The natural fluctuation of the excess consumption (i.e. consumption processes 1 and 3 minus production processes 2 and 4) is at least 6 ppmv (which corresponds to 12 GtC) in 4 months. This is more than 100 times the yearly increase of human production, which strongly suggests that the dynamics of the natural processes here listed 1-5 can cope easily with the human production of CO2. A serious disruption of the system may be expected when the rate of increase of the anthropogenic emissions becomes larger than the natural variations of CO2. But the above data indicates this is not possible.
The accumulation rate of CO2 in the atmosphere (1.5 ppmv/year which corresponds to 3 GtC/year) is equal to almost half the human emission (6.5 GtC/year). However, this does not mean that half the human emission accumulates in the atmosphere, as is often stated. There are several other and much larger CO2 flows in and out of the atmosphere. The total CO2 flow into the atmosphere is at least 156.5 GtC/year with 150 GtC/year of this being from natural origin and 6.5 GtC/year from human origin. So, on the average, 3/156.5 = 2% of all emissions accumulate.
The above qualitative considerations suggest the carbon cycle cannot be very sensitive to relatively small disturbances such as the present anthropogenic emissions of CO2. However, the system could be quite sensitive to temperature. So, our paper considered how the carbon cycle would be disturbed if – for some reason – the temperature of the atmosphere were to rise, as it almost certainly did between 1880 and 1940 (there was an estimated average rise of 0.5 °C in average surface temperature).
It is that temperature effect I mentioned in my above post.
But the effect of temperature on atmospheric CO2 emission would be very different in an Ice Age because all the processes 1 to 7 and processes 8 and 10 would be different. There is no data which indicates seasonal variation in the last Ice Age and, therefore, the relationship of temperature and CO2 cannot be determined for that climate state.
Richard
Richard,
A good qualitative summary of the Carbon Cycle. One small quibble, however. The volcanic CO2 is probably the result of melting of subducted sediments with entrained hydrocarbons and carbonates. Thus, it is a natural mechanism for releasing CO2 that has been sequestered for a very long time. Not unlike slightly acidic rain falling on the White Cliffs of Dover, and other terranes composed of limestone, and releasing CO2 when the chalk is dissolved, the rate of which all increases with increasing temperature.
I think that the role of underground coal fires is vastly underappreciated by the CAGW community.
I had made a remark above that no one seems to have picked up on. At least no one has taken me to task for it. That is, anthropogenic CO2 must have a moderating effect on outgassing from the oceans by increasing the partial-pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere. Therefore, to the extent that anthro-CO2 is suppressing outgassing, in the absence of anthro-CO2, one should expect that an equivalent amount of CO2 would be released anyway. Again, it would seem to be temperature that is the ‘control knob’ on temperature, not CO2.
Clyde Spencer:
You say to me
Yes, as I said in my first post in this thread
Simply, if that is the true cause then atmospheric CO2 concentration would be THE SAME if the anthropogenic emission were absent.
Richard
Odd the cult of CAGW ignores logic in peer reviewed paper that does not support their cult beliefs.
No need to worry. Mother nature will help settle this silly argument. The solar cycle has been interrupted.
Odd the IPCC assumed the CO2 absorption systems are saturated and does not scale in proportion to CO2 emissions to create CAGW where the ‘Bern’ equation was created to push CAGW, fake science.
The Bern equation for CO2 sinks and sources is fake science, ridiculous.
https://www.heartland.org/_template-assets/documents/publications/HardeHermann%20CarbonCycle%20ResidenceTime.pdf
Global and Planetary Change 152 (2017) 19–26
The annual (seasonal) cycle in atmospheric CO2 simply does not balance out. Why would it? There is an annual residual, depending on the global temperature average.
http://oi57.tinypic.com/28whxtx.jpg
Mr Salby (and followers)
I`m sorry that I have been so wrong about climate history. I couldn`t understand how much CO2 there was in the atmosphere during the holocene maximum and during the medieval maximum. Sure it must have been close to 450 ppm and 350 ppm. So I didn`t realize how wrong the proxy CO2 data were.
Or perhaps it was the temperature data I was so wrong about. Sorry that I didn`t understand how cold oceans were, when I thought they were warmer than today. So I didn`t realize how wrong proxy tempeature data were, and I didn`t realize how right the hockeystickers were.
So Mr Salby, can you forgive me my mistakes?
nobodysknowledge: “Sorry that I didn`t understand how cold oceans were, when I thought they were warmer than today.”
Perhaps you meant to use a /sarc there? These ocean waters were warmer according to this paper – http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6158/617
We show that water masses linked to North Pacific and Antarctic intermediate waters were warmer by 2.1 ± 0.4°C and 1.5 ± 0.4°C, respectively, during the middle Holocene Thermal Maximum than over the past century. Both water masses were ~0.9°C warmer during the Medieval Warm period than during the Little Ice Age and ~0.65° warmer than in recent decades.
Temperature drives CO2 up and down … a little.
It’s Dr. Salby.
No.
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
<a href="http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/correlation.html"no &
no etc.
I wish he were right, it would be most convenient, but sadly he isn’t.
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/Vostok_trends.gif
rats, I knew I would get the HTML tags wrong somewhere! ;o)
I have not had time lately to read as many articles here as I have in times past, and so have limited myself to the more interesting ones. (usually the more contentious ones) And this article was a gold mine of contention!
Having read every comment up to the point I write this, I am reminded of the singer-songwriter Paul Simon who observed: “man sees what he want to see and disregards the rest”.
I fear that “science” will lose its respect among the public as they finally see what a load of “wet, hot mess” climatology has become. Especially considering the utter BS we see from the English majors and the Divinity students in the argument. (looking at you Al Gore and others)
Scientists have long benefited from a respect and authority that few of them merit. One of the great gains of climategate is that we see who is behind the curtain.
Good points Greg.
Greg, Scientists of an earlier generation built up the respect you refer to. It has been degraded considerably in recent times.
Rud, Perhaps I was not specific enough. The only part of Dr. Salby’s
statements I agree with, based on my research, is that there is a source
of CO2 which increases with warmth.
The USEPA says that upland topsoil is a 30TG/yr methane sink. This
is based only on finding a flammable hydrocarbon in the topsoil.
This assumption fails a simple thought experiment. CH4 is much lighter
than air, when it hits the air, it rises.
My statement that the hydrocarbons in topsoil upwell from below
is based on experiment, not theories or models.
My challenge still stands. I will drive to your dairy farm and we can do
some actual experiments. with you operating the test meters.
You are soo sure of your opinions, test them!
The richness of topsoil, in the presence of adequate moisture,
depends upon the amount of hydrocarbons upwelling through
them.
I do not directly disagree. My simple point was that your moist topsoils are at best less than 40 percent of land ( the rest is tundra, drylands, and deserts (like Sahara, Rub al Kahli, and Atacama [I did not bother to look up the ratios] and land is only ~29% of earths surface. So please, just do some order of magnitude math. Then get get back on Salby’s global CO2 assertions. You cannot get there from here using any real data. Period. Proven in the guest post. How many times do you want it proven in more geanular detail?
The interesting thing about this whole discussion is that for Skeptics/Climate Realists, it doesn’t really matter what the actual cause of rising CO2 is (my guess is some combination of man and nature), because it doesn’t appear to be having much, if any effect on climate anyway. So for us, the argument is somewhat moot from a policy point of view, and becomes a purely scientific exploration, which is fascinating in itself. But the poor CAGW crowd are left out in the cold since for them, from a policy standpoint it very much does matter, which is why they have to attack it.
Bruce,
The attribution of source is important because there are many who want to ban the use of fossil fuels based on the assumptions that CO2 is having a significant impact on temperatures and that the CO2 increases are do almost entirely to humans. Being able to demonstrate that either hypothesis is wrong knocks the support out from under those clamoring for an energy revolution. That is important because bloodless revolutions are rare.
Like you, I believe that the rising CO2 is a “combination of man and nature.” However, I believe that the relative influence of anthropogenic CO2 is less than generally claimed because Anthro-CO2 is moderating the release of CO2 from outgassing and warming temperatures are increasing both outgassing and the release of biogenic CO2 from soils. We are currently in an adjustment transition seeking a new equilibrium.
Yes, Clyde, if we see an extended cooling spell and the carbon growth rate tanks right along with it, then it should be interesting to see where things go politically…
Atlantic Ocean CO2 uptake reduced by weakening of the meridional overturning circulation
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n2/abs/ngeo1680.html
“If we knew what we were doing, we couldn’t call it ‘research’.” – Albert Einstein
Lordy. Not even a mention yet of the IPCC term “well mixed”, Rud?. Salby doesn’t even matter without addressing that question. Most of what happens below Mauna Loa actually stays below Mauna Loa.
Most of the arguments pretend this is not a problem. Yet if atmospheric CO2 was truly well mixed, then there would be no good justification for the existence of the OCO-II satellite. But if human CO2 emissions were located, say, at a point source in the far South-Atlantic Ocean during winter then they would probably vanish without trace. It s obvious that where and when the emissions take place does make a difference to any overall change in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The arguments about what Salby may have got wrong mostly obscure this.
Does rain forest burning in Indonesia contribute the same amount of atmospheric CO2, per gram of locally-oxidized carbon, as Leonardo Decaprio’s goldfish? No, it doesn’t. But the EPA social cost of carbon is going to be used to attempt to tax you as if they were physically equivalent.
Salby is right.
After spending a fare amount of time reading the above, I think you are correct, or at least, he seems to be more right than wrong.
It seems that by choosing a season you can get whatever CO2 map you want.
Here is OCO for Oct – Nov, 2014
Just look at all those factories, cars, lorries and megacities in Amazonia, Congo, Indonesia and The Phillipines belching out all that anthropogenic CO2.
Just look at all those pristine unpopulated wildernesses in North America and Europe with low CO2, saving the planet. Especially the UK which seems to have the lowest CO2 on the planet – clearly no emissions happening there.
I think those factories are “plants” as in trees, etc.
Or those damn termites.
Tropical forests, aka jungles, are absorbing as much CO2 as we throw at them, and thanking us for the free food:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2891432/Carbon-dioxide-emissions-help-tropical-rainforests-grow-faster-Study-shows-trees-absorb-greenhouse-gas-expected.html
ptolemy2,
The above CO2 map is the one in the link I suggested that Rud look at. It may not look exactly like Salby’s map, but it does share some common features such as the notable CO2 blooming being in places other that highly industrialized countries.
ptolmy2
When using this chart you need to look at the date, it is Oct 1 to Nov11. It is spring in the SH and late autumn in the NH. The residual CO2 in the SH is the remnants of the volume transported down from June onwards from the NH. The SH CO2 in the Image did not originate there.
Have a look at the annual transport at the link below.
You must look at the full annual cycle with your eyes and mind open
http://www.blozonehole.com/blozone-hole-theory/blozone-hole-theory/carbon-cycle-using-nasa-oco-2-satellite-images
ozonebust,
The only thing wrong with your hypothesis is that the CO2 levels in the NH are quite low from May through October — the ‘growing season.’ So, what’s to move southward? Besides, one sees similar anomalous CO2 highs in the Pacific Ocean at the same latitude, with no land immediately to the North. And, Australia, at about the same latitude, has moderate levels, not the highs seen in the Amazon and South Africa, even though there are highs to the north. That is strong evidence that the CO2 being shown is being produced in place, not transported southward across the prevailing winds.
There is little vertical transport across the tropopause and little horizontal transport across the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) so ozoneburst’s theory has problems.
ozonebust,
I just looked at the images at your link, again. I think that you are confusing migration of temperatures (with the regional impact on photosynthesis and bacterial decomposition) with the seasons, with migration of CO2. The CO2 should be moving with the prevailing winds. However, what we are seeing is CO2 moving with the length of the day.
Clyde Spencer
There is zero evidence that the rapid rise in the SH is locally sourced. Yes there is CO2 being consumed in the NH, but insufficient by a long shot to reduce the values so rapidly. There is a better undestanding of global circulation required.
Clyde
No I not confusing migration of temperatures. Check the seasons later in the year, its warming in the SH.
Stephen Wilde
Then perhaps you can explain how the CO2 values all the way up the vertical column to the 100km and above is in constant seasonal transport equilibrium. And most likely always has been..
There is a near constant flow of CO2 bearing atmosphere into the polar regions. Particularly in the NH winter and summer. These same winds heavily influence sea ice.
ozonebust
Exactly.
If just falling leaves in autumn can overwhelm all the world’s cars, factories and power stations in CO2 emissions, even for only one month of the year, it puts anthro CO2 in perspective as of minor significance.
The hydroxyl radical will ‘crack’ methane rising from forest regions into CO2 and water vapour.
Covered this a while ago:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/evidence-that-oceans-not-man-control-co2-emissions/
So, as per my link, most CO2 seems to be above sun wearmed ocean surfaces beneath rhe subtropical high pressure cells and, as per other comments above, the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere has declined since the beginning of the temperature pause except during El Nino events which themselves involve warmer waters that hold less CO2.
Thus, observations are entirely different from what we should theoretically see at a time of continuing inceases in human CO2 emissions and instead substantially support Salby.
Some rethinking required from Rud, Ferdi and others. 🙂
Rud ==> You say Salby doesn’t explain the Keeling Curve. OK…I can live with that. Plenty of data contrary to Salby.
Question: What does explain the eerily smooth and even Keeling curve? a curve essentially devoid of starts and stops, ups and downs, accelerations and slowdowns? a curve that looks nothing like the worldwide industrialization or power production curves.
KH, two ‘half answers’. First, rising CO2 is reasonably well correlated with economic growth. (My first ebook gives many details). So as world GDP rises, so will CO2. On a global basis, this will get smoothed. On a rgional basis, you can see deltas caused by the 2008 financial crisis.
Second, unlike the saturating Bern model, sinks grow with sources. Simple post example from sattellite NVDI, land greening. So as sources grow, so do sinks. FE has done a magnificent job upthread of discussing this in mass balance, upwelling/downwelling, and other details. Some of the counters ( not about mass balance) are so silly they belong in remedial education.
Rud ==> Thanks for the two 1/2 answers! if only they added up to a whole answer. I posit that we haven’t really any clue as to why and how that graph comes out so even and smooth — despite world wars, economic downturns, etc.
Too many simplistic theories being promoted as the only answer. AGW is one such, but not the only one.
I’ve read this post and almost all the comments, which I don’t often do these days (business is picking up) and I’ve come away with exactly the same opinions as I had before all that reading.
1. Burning all those fossil fuels must have an effect on atmospheric CO2. It would be contrary to common sense to assume otherwise.
2. Henry’s law is a law (perhaps with some modification in the case of the CO2-seawater system, where most of the CO2 in the water is actually in the form of bicarbonate) and a warming ocean will release CO2 into the atmosphere. It would be contrary to the laws of physical chemistry to assume otherwise.
IOW – Ristvan is right and Salby is right.
Two points where Ristvan may be less than 100 percent correct in his critique of Salby
A. It is quite conceivable that the surface layers of oceans will equilibrate quickly with the atmosphere (with all that wind and wave action, how could the air and water not come close to a local equilibrium?), but that the ocean as a whole will only interact slowly because it takes time to circulate and homogenize – hence the 800 year (give or take) lag seen in ice core histories.
B It is also a lot more than conceivable that a warming ocean will absorb anthro-enriched CO2 from the atmosphere, but that it would absorb less than it would if it were colder.
None of the above – indeed nothing in this whole post – does anything to support the AGW hypothesis. This is what really matters. Watching skeptics debate about details probably gives comfort to warmists, whose position is so monolithic that debate is neither possible nor tolerated. Which is unfortunate, because debate is healthy, and helps knowledge to advance.
Trading barbs about who has more or less of a technical education is a waste of time. Inquiring minds and natural skepticism will emerge regardless of education.
Smart Rock,
Your two points are right, but the problem for Dr. Salby’s theory is in the difference in magnitudes:
1. The burning of fossil fuels emits average twice the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere as measured as increase each year.
2. Henry’s law gives a steady state equilibrium between ocean surface and atmosphere of about 290 ppmv for the current average ocean temperature. Any change in temperature gives a change in that equilibrium of about 16 ppmv/°C.
We are currently at 400 ppmv, 110 ppmv above equilibrium, while humans added over 200 ppmv since ~1850.
A. is right.
B. is peanuts: if all ocean surface warms, that will give a pCO2 change in the oceans, but that is fully overruled by a few years CO2 emissions from the moment that the increase in the atmosphere exceeds 16 ppmv increase per °C warming.
“1. The burning of fossil fuels emits average twice the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere as measured as increase each year.”
Has no bearing on the question of attribution.
“2. Henry’s law gives a steady state equilibrium between ocean surface and atmosphere of about 290 ppmv for the current average ocean temperature.”
Beside the point. There are other processes going on.
“…if all ocean surface warms, that will give a pCO2 change in the oceans, but that is fully overruled by a few years CO2 emissions from the moment that the increase in the atmosphere exceeds 16 ppmv increase per °C warming.”
Begging the question. Counter-indicated by the data.
Bart:
Has no bearing on the question of attribution.
Wow… My wife knows better than that: if in May her bank account suddenly doubles, she knows that her pension has its yearly vacation bonus (yes we have that in Belgium…).
Beside the point. There are other processes going on.
Bart, 290 ppmv is the steady state per Henry’s law, nothing to do with other processes. Other processes may give that the measured CO2 levels deviate from the steady state, but 290 ppmv is the “setpoint” where deep ocean and atmosphere CO2 in and out fluxes are in equilibrium.
Begging the question. Counter-indicated by the data.
Nonsense. 16 μatm/K is the change in the ocean surface pCO2 per Henry’s law. At all areas of the ocean surface, including sinks and sources. 16 ppmv extra in the atmosphere completely overrules 1 K of ocean surface warming. Thinking otherwise only shows that you don’t have a clue what a CO2 pressure change over the oceans does.
But of course, your theory forbids any influence of the CO2 pressure in the atmosphere on CO2 exchanges with the oceans and vegetation…
“Other processes may give that the measured CO2 levels deviate from the steady state, but 290 ppmv is the “setpoint” where deep ocean and atmosphere CO2 in and out fluxes are in equilibrium.”
Why? What keeps it from going to zero? What keeps it from going to 100%? What processes established this as the equilibrium, and how do you know it is the equilibrium level today?
If you say, “that is the equilibrium level with the oceans,” then what established the level in the oceans, and how is it maintained?
You have no answer but, “it just is”. That is a “Just So” story. Literally. It is a tale for children who are taught to believe what they are told. It explains nothing.
“But of course, your theory forbids any influence of the CO2 pressure in the atmosphere on CO2 exchanges with the oceans and vegetation…”
CO2 partial pressure in the atmosphere, in the absence of human additions, is established by competing natural processes. We cannot have an impact on that partial pressure proportionately greater than our proportion of input. There is certainly an influence. The question is, how big an influence? The answer is: necessarily small, as our addition to the natural flows is small.
The data indicate that the sensitivity of CO2 concentration to temperature is a rate sensitivity, which has units of ppmv/degC/unit-of-time. The only way you can counter that is by insisting that the phenomenal match between the trend in temperature and that in the rate of change of CO2 is just an amazing coincidence. Then, you filter it out and add in the anthropogenic inputs in a manner that amplifies the impact of anthropogenic flows relative to natural flows, so that they have greater proportional impact.
This is physically impossible. The natural flows and the anthropogenic flows must have proportionately equivalent impact. If the natural flows establish an equilibrium level of 290 ppmv, and anthropogenic inputs are 4% of natural inputs, then anthropogenic inputs can at most have an impact of 0.04*290 = 12 ppmv.
Steven Mosher and combatants on this thread: A lot of what many agonize over is SMs incomplete list of important questions to be answered. The real surprise is not far off.. a) The greening of the planet is at present, the baby elephant in the room. I hadn’t realized it had been so well quantified as in Bill Illis’s comment above. Sequestration is growing and I believe it to be exponential. It is also an endothermic process so it is a cooling process.
b) Oil and gas are expected to peak in a few decades and before the century is out, we will have substituted the atom for a goodly proportion of itand emissions will be falling.
c) All signs to date are that high CO2 and moderate warming is beneficial for plants and even drought proofs them. It seems to also be good for humans and the animal kingdom (freeing up land for habitat, and main warming is in polar regions ) This of course includes expanded crop yields. With these factors and co2 log reduction in warming effect. Do nothing is the preferred policy so far. We will never see the ‘dreaded’ 2C (the consensus knows this and that is why they have shaved it to 1.5C).
d) Build dams for power and water and aquifer recharge and sealevel will be moderated (+1.5C multiplied by 3won’t do much to – 50C in Antarctica).
e) The population of the world will peak by mid century or so and the last bolt from Malthusian misanthropes will have been shot. A well fed, educated and prosperous world will be a more peaceful, creative one.
I’m sorry there seems not an outside chance I’ll be here to see it. This is the more realistic future that people not crippled by propagandized education and ugly ideology of despair would be predicting from the evidence.
Gary,
As a geologist, I would expect you to know (There is no gentle way to say that because if I didn’t acknowledge your background you might accuse me of talking down to you.) that almost all of the best sites for hydroelectric power have already been developed in the industrialized countries. Many remaining potential sites have been locked up by Wilderness Area designations and National Monuments in the US. And, there is pressure from environmental groups to prematurely decommission some dams. As an aside, there have been more deaths from dam failures than from nuclear accidents. See my comments here: https://theconversation.com/does-green-energy-have-hidden-health-and-environmental-costs-52484
Decommissioning of dams has been going on for some time. Also, during the hysteria of the “endless drought” in CA, I suggested increased storage with development of recharge areas for depleted aquifers, possibly also making use of some of storm drain water’s. I’m also an engineer, Clyde, my first job involving monitoring of groundwater flows associated with the excavation and subsequent operation of the Greater Winnipeg Floodway which was, IIRC, the second largest excavation in the world after the Panama Canal at the time.
The Ogallala aquifer stretching from, I think, Iowa to Texas would be an excellent candidate to take up a huge volume of water and some channel work would feed water to Lake Chad an area that is one of the major regions of rapid greening.
I’m in my 80th year this fall so you can see I’m an optimist indeed to be talking about even a slim chance of seeing the world I’m predicting. I’m still working, too, with a mining development project in Quebec and an exploration project in Katanga, DRC. Eat your broccoli!!
Gary,
You said, “I’m sorry there seems not an outside chance I’ll be here to see it.”
If I’m lucky, I’ll live about another 20 years; if I’m unlucky, I’ll live another 30.
There appear to be rather a lot of statements round here that “CO2 is a GHG”. Maybe I missed something over the last few years but I thought this was still just a theory. The only experiments I could find when researching this test of the theory were ones related to the frequency dependent response to some specific wavelengths of I.R. but all they did was show CO2 reacted to certain IR frequencies, they didn’t in fact verify a warming effect in bulk gas in an atmosphere.
I expect it is just my stupidity in not looking in the right place so I invite those who know where this is to please enlighten me. Please provide your links to the actual experiments which do confirm that CO2 (and/or any other atmospheric gas) which has I.R. absorption bands do in fact result in real and measurable warming of a planets surface. I am hoping to also find the correct equations which have been derived from these experiments so that some quantitative results can be obtained.
Many thanks in advance.
The Reverend Badger.
If you have an open mind and want to learn about the basics, I would recommend Science of Doom. Here at wuwt it is called pro ghg blog, but I don`t think that is right, as it is open minded to how large effects ghgs have. Just if you want to understand these things better.
The Reverend Badgern May 14, 2017 at 3:18 pm
See also Joseph Chamberlain’s work (around 1978):
Elementary, Analytic Models of Climate
hdl.handle.net/2060/19790010343
Theory of Planetary Atmospheres
http://tinyurl.com/m2ad2r3
I honestly thought that no one would bother with such post again.
Salby may have a point. The German Ernst Georg Beck has also shown that most of the CO2 increase is natural, the warming in the 1930-1940 made an increase of CO2 in 1942 to about 420 ppm. There was also in increase of CO2 in 1820 to almost 500 ppm. He found a time lag of about 5-6 years. This has been studiet by over 100 scientist the last 200 years. More than 90000 measurements. The time lag of 800 years from the ice core data from Antarctica may be because of CO2 is not well preserved in the ice. It takes a lot of layers of snow and ice to preserve/encapsulate it.
Yes, I think the ice core data analyses enjoy an undeserved reputation for reliability that comes mainly from agreeing with preconceptions. There are no actual independent data that corroborate them.
Bart,
That is the problem with all the most reliable methods: there are no actual independent data that have the same accuracy to compare with,,,
Bart, Middleton did a piece a while back where he deduced what the current co2 hockey stick would look like in ice cores of differing resolutions. i thought it fascinating. And, i must say, that for just that one time, i was disappointed that ferdinand did not show up, even quipping to david, “are you supposed to call him or something?”. He replied with a picture of the spotlight with the batman logo over gotham city, adding that his carbon posts seem to have a similar effect on ferdinand! Quite funny, it made me think of yet another nick name: “Ferdinan’ and Gavin, the Static Duo”…
The big QUE with ice cores is, do they corroborate each other? Or more precisely, if they do corroborate each other, is that as good as an independent verification? If all the ice cores of the holocene, for example, with there differing locations and differing resolutions are telling us pretty much the same thing, then does that verify that ice cores are legit? These are the types of questions that are going to have to be asked if and when ferdinand’s version of events completely collapses with the possible upcoming cooling. There still will linger the questions of whether or not present co2 levels are unusually high and why…
” If all the ice cores of the holocene, for example, with there differing locations and differing resolutions are telling us pretty much the same thing, then does that verify that ice cores are legit?”
I think it just says that ice core dynamics, whatever they are, are consistent. But, it does not tell us what they are.
Bart and Fonzie,
Ice core ranges:
Average temperature (except at the bottom – earth warmth): -20°C to -40°C.
Snow accumulation/year (ice equivalents): 2 cm to 1.2 meter
Bubble closing depth: 70 to 100 meter
Ice layers (years) at closing depth: 40 to 5000
Average gas age at closing depth: 7 to 2500 years older than in the current atmmosphere
Resolution: 10 years to 600 years
Time span to rock bottom (or last reliable ice): 150 to 800,000 years
The ice cores with the longest record have the lowest resolution and don’t span the whole Holocene as the most recent ice bubbles stil have to close, but there are shorter ones enough and one can measure top down in firn until closing depth. Here the combined graph for the Holocene:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_010kyr.jpg
The ice core data are consistent with each other, despite extreme differences in temperature, accumulation, resolution,…
Seems that I have missed Middleton’s essay, was travelling then…
If the current peak would be measurable in the low-resolution ice cores is a matter of shape: A sinusoid change with a frequency up to the resolution would be invisible, but a one-way increase as the current one would be measurable, be it with a lower peak…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/28/breaking-hockey-sticks-antarctic-ice-core-edition/
Here you go, Ferdinand… i figured that if one can calculate the co2 ppm values for different resolution cores using the real value (as did david), then one should be able to calculate the real value using the co2 ppm values for different resolution cores (say during the holocene)…
Having trouble opening you’re link. (so here goes)…
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_010kyr.jpg
http://i.stack.imgur.com/Am13D.png
DM 3/28/2017 6:34pm
My ice core/ stomata posts have this sort of effect on Ferdinand…
Fonzie,
Nice comparison..
If I have some spare time, I will look at what a 10-600 years running average does with an increase of CO2 like over the past 167 years…
Klaus,
Please…
The data the late Ernst Beck used for his 1942 “peak” were so contaminated that the changes are not reflected in any other proxy. 420 ppmv at that time was the equivalent of burning half of all land vegetation on earth in a few years and regrow it in a few years.
I had years of discussion with him until his untimely death. The problem is not with the accuracy (+/- 10 ppmv) at that time, but where was measured: midst of towns, forests, under, inbetween and over growing crops,… Ernst lumped everything together: the good, the bad and the ugly, without any quality check…
See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html
“420 ppmv at that time was the equivalent of burning half of all land vegetation on earth in a few years and regrow it in a few years.”
I do not offer any defense vis a vis the accuracy of Beck’s measurements. I have not reviewed the data, and do not consider it worthy of time anyway. Since 1958, when reliable CO2 measurements began, the model of the rate of change being proportional to appropriately baselined temperature anomaly holds with striking precision. That is all that is needed to discount the proposition that humans are having a significant impact on CO2 concentration.
However, the ice core data present serious problems for those who claim we are. The proposition that CO2 was tightly regulated for centuries, and then suddenly became supersensitive to our tiny inputs, is thoroughly inconsistent with everything science knows about system responses.
The ice core analyses cannot be corroborated over the pre-instrumental record, and are thereby uncertain. There is no getting past it. Without corroboration, the most that can be said of them is “maybe”.
Bart,
Of all historical data, some were taken on “background” places like on board of ships or coastal with wind from the seaside. These (sparse) data are all around the ice core data.
The proposition that CO2 was tightly regulated for centuries, and then suddenly became supersensitive to our tiny inputs, is thoroughly inconsistent with everything science knows about system responses.
To repeat for the nth time: this is complete nonsense. The response time of the sinks to any extra CO2 in the atmosphere above steady state is ~51 years, more than fast enough to remove one-time volcanic explosions and to follow glacial-interglacial transitions at 0.02 ppmv/year. Not fast enough to remove all human CO2 in the same year as released…
Ferdinand Engelbeen May 16, 2017 at 5:46 am
The proposition that CO2 was tightly regulated for centuries, and then suddenly became supersensitive to our tiny inputs, is thoroughly inconsistent with everything science knows about system responses.
To repeat for the nth time: this is complete nonsense. The response time of the sinks to any extra CO2 in the atmosphere above steady state is ~51 years, more than fast enough to remove one-time volcanic explosions and to follow glacial-interglacial transitions at 0.02 ppmv/year. Not fast enough to remove all human CO2 in the same year as released…
Yes Ferdinand, as long as Bart keeps his wrong equation he’s stuck with that.
The real equation is:
d[CO2]/dt = SourceFF + Natural Source( [CO2], T) – Natural Sink ( [CO2], T)
Prior to major exploitation of Fossil fuels the first term would be zero, subsequently it supplied a positive offset which became large enough that it overcame the net result of the natural terms. The net effect of the natural terms is to modulate the rate of change of CO2 which is what fools Bart. But as you know over the years he refuses to accept that.
Ferdinand –
“To repeat for the nth time: this is complete nonsense.”
To you, it may appear that way. But, it is pretty standard systems theory. I think you are in over your head.
Phil –
No, it does not work that way. You must have a state for each reservoir, and a difeq that describes the dynamics of each reservoir, as well as a mechanism for exchange between the reservoirs.
I made such a model here, looking just at atmospheric and oceanic reservoirs, showing how the observed
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
approximate relationship can arise.
I refuse to accept your assertions, because that is all they are. They do not indicate to me that modeling of dynamic systems is one of your areas of expertise, either.
Bart,
All what you demonstrate is that you know a lot of high frequency processes etc. but are out of your normal domain if it is about simple linear processes in the real world…
Bartemis May 16, 2017 at 10:17 am
Phil –
No, it does not work that way. You must have a state for each reservoir, and a difeq that describes the dynamics of each reservoir, as well as a mechanism for exchange between the reservoirs.
Itdoes work that way, the flux between sources and sinks will depend on [CO2] gradients and T, if you want to build a detailed model then you do need that data.
I made such a model here, looking just at atmospheric and oceanic reservoirs, showing how the observed
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
approximate relationship can arise.
Unfortunately you assumed values for the parameters you used which did not resemble the known, measured values.
I refuse to accept your assertions, because that is all they are. They do not indicate to me that modeling of dynamic systems is one of your areas of expertise, either.
Which part of the differential equation do you take issue with?
Modelling of dynamic systems was an area of my PhD thesis by the way.
Your modeling approach is too simple, Phil. It is like trying to model the dynamics of a spring with a first order differential equation. It cannot be done. There are multiple reservoirs here. You must model at least two.
The data irrefutably show a relationship of the type
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
I demonstrated a physically viable 2nd order toy model that can reproduce that kind of behavior. Higher order models, with more reservoirs accounted for, can thereby reproduce this kind of behavior. But, even a very high order model, with countably many resevoirs, must ultimately resolve into partial differential equations which model the continuum dyanmics, and lead to long-tailed responses.
Whatever parameters which you think have been nailed down would play only bit parts in such a more complicated model. In the end, they would distill down into the equation above. As they must, because that is the observation, and the model must always be subservient to the observational data.
So, in final summation, Rud has failed to prove his point. He has only disproved a straw man of his own construction. Salby says that CO2 concentration tracks integrated temperature anomaly. Rud compared CO2 concentration to just temperature anomaly, with no integration. FAIL.
Dr. Salby literally wrote the book on climate science that was the most widely used text for undergraduate programs in the US before he ran afoul of the Thought Police. He is a genius. The dilettantes sniping at his heels… not so much.
Bart,
Rud made a mistake, but that doesn’t prove that Dr. Salby and you are right. There is no physical ground to integrate the temperature anomaly, as CO2 doesn’t depend on the integral of CO2, it depends on the integral of dT/dt and any temperature increase gives about 16 ppmv extra CO2 per °C. That is all. Not 110 ppmv extra…
I have given the physical grounds repeatedly. You can say you don’t believe me, but it is dishonest to suggest that none has been offered.
Your assertions to not make an impression on me. All I have to do is look at the data, and see that you are wrong.
Bart,
I have repeatedly shown that your solution is impossible, as any continuous influx of CO2 into the atmosphere gives an increase in total CO2 pressure, which increases the outfluxes in oceans and vegetation. The response of the sinks to the increased CO2 pressure totally lacks in your formula, thus is non-physical.
In the real world, any temperature increase will be met with a pressure increase of ~16 ppmv/K, then it stops…
edimbukvarevic,
Of course you can integrate anything you want, the point is if that has any physical meaning.
In the case of T and CO2: CO2 variability follows T variability with a lag and relative huge changes in temperature give small CO2 variations of +/- 1.5 ppmv around a trend of 90 ppmv nowadays.
In the case of dT/dt and dCO2/dt: dCO2/dt variability follows dT/dt variability with a lag and by taking the derivatives, there is no trend in dT/dt, only a small offset.
By taking the derivative from CO2, the 1.5 ppmv noise around the trend is enhanced en most of the original trend is removed. Only a small residual trend remains, due to the fact that the original CO2 trend is slightly quadratic (as human emissions were).
Salby and Bart then compare T with dCO2/dt and say: look they match, so we can integrate T and then we have the full increase of CO2.
That is comparing apples with citrons: the direct temperature with little trend and much variability with the derivative of CO2 where thus almost all of the huge trend is removed and the variability blown up. That is completely unphysical in many ways.
In reality, one can integrate dT/dt with a factor: that will give all the variability of CO2 around the trend and a small increase in ppmv due to the small trend in temperature per Henry’s law…
The “match” between T and dCO2/dt is completely spurious as can be seen here:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_variability.html#The_real_world
Ferdinand –
“I have repeatedly shown that your solution is impossible.”
No, you have not. You are doing static analysis, and treating the vastness of the oceans as though it were a shallow pond.
Claiming over and over again that you have settled the science has no value. You haven’t. And, you are blind to the fundamental contradictions in your own hypothesis.
“Of course you can integrate anything you want, the point is if that has any physical meaning.”
You know perfectly well that the differential equation
dx/dt = -x/tau + u
is approximately the same as
dx/dt := u
when the timeline is short compared to tau and x at time zero is “small”. That’s all we’re dealing with here. Our variables are anomalies, which are small deviations from larger values, and our time constants are long.
These are mathematical approximations to describe real physical processes so yes, not precise physical descriptions. But, the solutions to the equations are approximately the same.
Ferdinand,
dCO2/dt has a very important physical meaning – it is the (annual for example) change in atmospheric CO2. It represents the sum of all CO2 added to, and removed from the atmosphere over a time period by human activities and by natural (non-human) processes. It’s the net CO2 emission.
This net emission looks very similar to the global temperature anomaly (to the human emission not nearly as much) and that is very remarkable. You only need the temperature anomaly to calculate the net emission! Human emissions seem to be irrelevant. Again, very remarkable! The sum of human and natural emissions depends on only one variable – the temperature anomaly.
According to the consensus, without human emissions, the natural emission would be basically zero. With human emissions, the natural emissions are obviously not zero anymore, but negative and in average about half of the human emissions. So, natural emissions depend on the human emissions.
I think the assumption that without human emissions, natural emissions are zero, is wrong. The seasonal CO2 cycle does not balance out (why would it?) and there is an annual residual. The residual is not random but depends on the temperature anomaly. It’s not the temperature anomaly as such causing the residual, but something related to it. Annual temperature cycle, sea ice cycle…
Gotta go..
Actually, there is firm physical ground, if PERSISTENTLY warmer than average temperatures produce increasingly higher CO2 concentrations, which they do. The devil lurks not in that basic concept of natural relationship, but in the tacit exclusion of all other sources of CO2. From all indications, they can overwhelm the natural temperature-driven CO2 variations, while being incoherent with temperature.
edimbukvarevic,
The problem is in the attribution of what part of dCO2/dt is emissions caused and what is temperature dependent.
You have two variables influencing CO2 and thus dCO2/dt: one is temperature with a small trend and a lot of variability, the other are human emissions with a huge trend and very little variability.
If you take the derivative of CO2, then you remove almost all of the trend and what remains is a small trend with a lot of noise. Everybody in this world, skeptics and warmistas alike, agrees that the CO2 rate of change variability is caused by the temperature variability (BTW the variability in dT/dt is exactly the same). Where the discussion is, is if the trend over time in dCO2/dt is mainly caused by temperature (Bart, Dr. Salby), or mainly by human emissions (many others: all warmistas but also many skeptics).
If you integrate T over time, you implicitely assume that all CO2 increase is temperature induced. If you integrate dT/dt over time, you have a few ppmv extra CO2 (16 ppmv/K as per Henry’s law), the rest is from the twice as high emissions.
Opposite, if you compare the observed dCO2/dt with the temperature variability at one side and the combination of temperature variability (4 ppmv/K) and human emissions effect (emissions – net sink rate per Henry’s law) on the other side, you see exactly the same result, down
to the deepest detail:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/rss_co2_emiss_2000-2015.jpg
Where:
dCO2/dt(obs) is the observed dCO2/dt
RSS_CO2 is the CO2 rate of change based on the RSS temperature * factor + offset
emiss-deriv is the derivative of human emissions
emiss-CO2-deriv is the calculated derivative of the emissions minus the calculated net sink rate
emiss-nat-CO2-deriv is the previous plus the variability caused by the temperature variability
The three trends match exactly: the RSS trend due to the factor and offset, the emiss-nat-CO2-deriv trend with no further factor or offset.
Problem: which one is right?
Human emissions as cause is consistent with all observations:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
Temperature as main/sole cause with none…
1sky1,
See my previous reaction to edimbukvarevic.
In general:
If you have a process which is fed with a constant flow of some material and which is temperature dependent (like a cement oven), you will have a constant outflow of CO2 as there is no feedback. More (or faster) with higher temperatures.
Take the ocean upwelling: a constant input of cold, CO2 laden waters upwelling from the deep, warmed to ~30°C, which increases the internal CO2 pressure (pCO2) to ~750 μatm. As the atmosphere is at ~400 μatm, the ~350 μatm pCO2 difference pushes some 40 GtC/year as CO2 into the atmosphere.
As long as the same in reverse order happens near the poles, everything is in steady state.
Now the oceans at the upwelling area is heating up with 1°C. That increases the pCO2 of the upwelling waters with ~16 μatm. Thus pCO2(aq) increased from ~750 μatm to ~766 μatm. As the exchange flux is directly proportional to the the pCO2 difference with the atmosphere now pushes 41.8 GtC/year into the atmosphere. As the temperature at the sinks didn’t change, there is a disequilibrium: 1.8 GtC/year (~0.9 ppmv/year) CO2 increase in the atmosphere.
According to Dr. Salby and Bart, that extra inflow remains the same, as long as the temperature offset remains the same.
In the real world there is a negative feedback: the extra CO2 entering the atmosphere increases the pCO2 of the atmosphere, thus reduces the pCO2 difference between waters and atmosphere and increases the pCO2 difference at the sink areas. When the increase in the atmosphere is ~8 ppmv, the pCO2 difference at the upwelling then gets ~758 μatm, reducing the CO2 influx to ~40.9 GtC/year, while at the sink side the extra 8 μatm pushes ~40.9 GtC/year back into the deep oceans.
The negative feedback by the increased CO2 pressure makes that the initial extra CO2 input is reduced to a value where inputs and outputs are again the same as before the temperature increase. In this case ~8 ppmv extra in the atmosphere for an average ocean surface temperature increase of ~0.5°C
Bart’s formula then gets:
dCO2/dt = k(T-T0) – k2*[pCO2(t) – pCO2(0)]
At the moment that the new steady state is reached, dCO2/dt = 0 and
pCO2(t) – pCO2(0) = k/k2*(T-T0)
where k/k2 ~ 16 ppmv/°C
The same 16 ppmv/°C for the full dynamics of the world wide oceans as for a single static lab sample per Henry’s law…
Bart doesn’t (want to?) understand that this is a fully dynamic process, including inputs, outputs and feedbacks, where the processes act differently to temperature than to pressure changes…
A pressure change feedback which is completely absent, both in Bart’s and Dr. Salby’s temperature-only formulas…
Ferdinand,
Most of it seem to be temperature dependent since we started measuring:
dCO2/dt = k*Ta
Your reply does not make much sense. Small trend, huge trend?
edimbukvarevic,
The trend of temperature since 1958 until now is 0.8°C with a variability of +/- 0.4°C or about 50% of the trend.
The CO2 trend is 90 ppmv with a year to year variability of +/- 1.5 ppmv around the trend or max. 2% of the trend.
The CO2 emissions trend over the same time span were ~155 ppmv with a year to year variability of only +/- 0.2 ppmv or about 0.1% of the trend.
If we may assume that Henry’s law still is at work, then an increase of 0.8°C is good for maximum ~13 ppmv increase in the atmosphere, no matter if you shake a small sample of seawater or the whole oceans. The short term variability then is good for maximum +/- 3.5 ppmv. As the variability fades out within 1-3 years, the extremes (Pinatubo, El Niño) only reach +/- 1.5 ppmv before the temperature goes back in the other direction. That is visible in the lagged response of CO2 to the extremes in temperature around the trend:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/wft_trends_rss_1985-2000.jpg
A variability of half the temperature trend has 1.5 ppmv effect, the full temperature trend would give 90 ppmv? Not only is that very unlikely as the CO2 response to temperature is very fast (less than a year) but it violates Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater…
Moreover, most of the variability is the result of temperature variability on (tropical) vegetation, but vegetation is a net, growing sink for CO2, thus not the cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere…
That vegetation is the cause of the variability can be seen in the opposite changes in CO2 and δ13C. If the oceans were the main reactant, then CO2 and δ13C changes would parallel each other.
Here for the derivatives:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
If you look at the temperature derivative, you can see that it has the same variability as in T and dCO2/dt, but zero trend, only a small offset from zero. If you integrate dT/dt, then you will find back the small CO2 increase as per Henry’s law.
Integrating T gives you a non-physical answer as that is partly based on a real correlation (the variability), but a spurious trend, which in dCO2/dt is not caused by temperature…
What Ferdinand does not understand is that every layer of the ocean is just like the atmospheric/oceanic interface. Once you equilibrate the pCO2 between the atmosphere and the surface layer of the ocean, you now have to equilibrate the pCO2 between the surface layer of the ocean and the next one down. And, then the next one, and the next one, and so on down in an ocean that runs deeper in some places than the tallest mountains are high.
That equilibrium does not happen overnight. It takes a long time. And, that is what gives rise to an apparent proportionality of the rate of change of CO2 to temperature anomaly. Ferdinand is treating the vast oceans as though they were a shallow pond. It is ridiculous.
Ferdinand has nothing to prove me wrong, just a misplaced faith in a particular interpretation of unverifiable and poorly resolved ice core proxies that he insists must be better than the far more accurate, direct measurements taken since 1958. Without that, he has no case at all. It is an edifice whose foundation rests on quicksand, as will become apparent with the next extended cooling (or at least non-warming) cycle.
“dCO2/dt = k(T-T0) – k2*[pCO2(t) – pCO2(0)]”
Were this true, the same process would apply to anthropogenic inputs, and they also would have no significant impact. Ferdinand only gets a vague resemblance between the data and his model by A) illegitimately decoupling the anthropogenic dynamics from the natural ones, B) assuming that the phenomenal match between the long term trend in dCO2/dt and T is just a staggering coincidence, which he can arbitrarily filter away.
“A pressure change feedback which is completely absent, both in Bart’s and Dr. Salby’s temperature-only formulas…”
It isn’t. It is readily apparent in my formula before simplifying it. It has negligible impact – we actually both agree on that – and that is why it does not appear in the final approximation. Ferdinand is ignoring the long term equilibrium dynamics that do have a significant impact.
Ferdinand,
While I concur that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are not incorporated into Salby’s model, the matter of “feedback” of CO2 upon ocean temperatures, in particular, is quite dubious. It’s recognized by the most sophisticated analysts that the dependence of global temperatures upon CO2 is very difficult to quantify empirically in terms of a power transfer function (see, e.g., http://www.pnas.org/content/94/16/8370.full.pdf), because of the high uncertainty in spectral estimation from short records. (Unfortunately, despite his analytic sophistication, Thompson fails to recognize the high bias of the global temperature record he employs.)Nonetheless, your implicit belief that predominantly anthropogenic CO2 variations exert a STRONG feedback effect upon T is simply inconsistent with the results of cross-spectrum analysis of vetted modern records.
P.S. This is not a acceptable venue for displaying the research underlying my cautionary remarks.
Bart:
every layer of the ocean is just like the atmospheric/oceanic interface.
Bart, you are completely mistaken on this. The uper ocean layer, the “mixed layer” is very responsive to changes in the atmosphere and reverse, as the exchange between them is very intensive by wind and waves, which mixing rates bypassing the extremely slow diffusion rate of CO2 in seawater.
Except for the intensive biological pump, there is hardly any migration of CO2 between the surface layer and the next layer(s), as good as there is hardly any temperature exchange between the top layer and the next layer(s).
The main direct exchanges of water, temperature, CO2 and other elements from surface to deep oceans are via the sink and upwelling zones (each about 5% of the ocean surface area). That water cycle needs ~800 years to return to the surface.
That means that short term variability (seasons to centuries) are hardly influenced by the deep ocean exchanges and if they change (temperature, CO2 concentration,…) then these changes are rapidly met by the fast response in the atmosphere.
E.g. if there would be a sudden extreme increase of 10% CO2 (and derivatives) in the upwelling waters, that will give a sudden increase of 20% in the CO2 influx at the upwelling for the same temperature. That gives an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, which reduces the input and enhances the output. The initial increase in input of 20% ultimately gets 12.5% while the output is enhanced with 12.5%, thus back to steady state. The CO2 increase in the atmosphere thereby gets ~30 ppmv higher:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_incr.jpg
A 10% increase in concentration is a practical impossibility, as the enormous reservoir dampens such variability…
Thus indeed the main exchanges are mainly between the “shallow” ocean surface and the atmosphere, which doesn’t imply that the exchanges are static, they still are very dynamic (seasonal) and with the deep oceans for CO2 still (slower) dynamic…
Were this true, the same process would apply to anthropogenic inputs, and they also would have no significant impact.
The same process applies to anthro inputs as to volcanic inputs. In the formula:
dCO2/dt = k(T-T0) – k2*[pCO2(t) – pCO2(0)]
k2 = ~0.02, thus for T = T0 and pCO2(t) = 400 ppmv and pCO2(0) the steady state at ~290 ppmv, dCO2/dt = 2.2 ppmv/year, the current average net sink rate.
For all pre-industrial volcanic inputs at 0.1 ppmv/year, the equilibrium would be at 0.1 / 0.02 = 5 ppmv extra in the atmosphere…
At steady state the natural inputs at one side with a local ΔpCO2 of 350 μatm are fully compensated with the outputs at a local ΔpCO2 of 250 μatm at the sink side.
Before responding: k2 is the observed overall global coefficient for the influence of pressure changes in the atmosphere above steady state, highly linear over the past near 60 years. That is not the same constant that governs the flux as result of the local ΔpCO2 between atmosphere and oceans at the source and sink areas. The latter are governed by temperature and Henry’s law. k2 is for the influence of a change of CO2 in the atmosphere on the local ΔpCO2 at sources and sinks.
Thus:
A) illegitimately decoupling the anthropogenic dynamics from the natural ones
Is completely legimate for the decoupling of upwelling and sinks with direct injections into the atmosphere, as the former are driven by temperature differences and hardly influenced by pressure changes, while the removal of any extra CO2 in the atmosphere is only possible by the influence of pressure changes on sources and sinks… Different responses of the same processes to temperature and pressure changes.
B) assuming that the phenomenal match between the long term trend in dCO2/dt and T is just a staggering coincidence
Pure nonsense: the match in trend is not fenomenal and in 35 of the 57 years even negative. You can match the amplitudes or the slopes, not both.
Moreover, as variability and trend are (proven!) caused by different processes, there is no reason at all that the same factor applies to both neither that temperature has any influence on the trend.
Further, while near all of the variability is caused by temperature variability, almost all of the trend is caused by the twice as high trend in human emissions. The integral is not between T and dCO2/dt, the integral is between dT/dt and dCO2/dt, where dT/dt has no trend and all variability.
You have zero evidence that the trend in dCO2/dt is caused by temperature.
It is readily apparent in my formula before simplifying it. It has negligible impact – we actually both agree on that –
What? I never “agreed” on a lack of impact of an increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere. We agreed on a lack of short time impact of the deep oceans, as far as I remember, but that has nothing to do with the impact of the increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere on the CO2 in/out exchanges with the deep oceans.
And please, don’t put words in my mouth that I never spoke or implied: CO2 levels in ice cores are quite accurate, but show a long (10 to 600) years average of the historical levels. Since 1958 we have very accurate and even hourly data…
1sky1,
I think that you misunderstand my position:
While I am a firm defender of the human cause of increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere, I am an equal firm defender of the lack of (catastrophic) impact of the extra CO2 on climate…
In my opinion, more CO2 has a modest impact on temperature (1-1.5 K for 2xCO2), which is beneficial in many ways, including the impact of more CO2 itself on plant growth, with very few negative impacts.
And I don’t think that current climate models have any value beyond scaring people with results that have nothing to do with what happens or will happen in the real world…
Ferdinand:
Alas, even the “modest” impact of increased CO2 upon GAST that you cite is based upon little more than simplistic, back-of-the-envelope calculations of “climate sensitivity,” incorporating misguided notions of what constitutes feedback in physically realizable systems. Requisite understanding of ADAPTIVE nonlinear system behavior is virtually nonexistent in “climate science.”
You’re just spinning a yarn, Ferdinand.
“Is completely legimate for the decoupling of upwelling and sinks with direct injections into the atmosphere.”
It is not. When a balance is struck between competing forces, you cannot change that balance by proportionately more than your proportionate influence. You quite simply cannot. It is not up for negotiation.
“Pure nonsense: the match in trend is not fenomenal and in 35 of the 57 years even negative.”
Nonsense. Cherry picking short intervals is just looking at noise. You must know this is misdirection, and you should be ashamed of it.
“Further, while near all of the variability is caused by temperature variability, almost all of the trend is caused by the twice as high trend in human emissions.”
Mere assertion.
“The integral is not between T and dCO2/dt, the integral is between dT/dt and dCO2/dt, where dT/dt has no trend and all variability.”
You would have made a great monk, conjuring up epicycles to prove Galileo wrong.
“I never “agreed” on a lack of impact of an increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere. “
You have repeatedly claimed that the short term effect via temperature related changes in Henry’s Law coefficient produces negligible increase. I agree. But, this is not the only temperature related change in the transport of CO2 within the ocean currents.
I think we’ve said all that can be said for now. Watch and see what happens.
“dCO2/dt = k(T-T0) – k2*[pCO2(t) – pCO2(0)]
k2 = ~0.02, thus for T = T0 and pCO2(t) = 400 ppmv and pCO2(0) the steady state at ~290 ppmv, dCO2/dt = 2.2 ppmv/year, the current average net sink rate.”
One last thing. What this says is that the current rate of natural emissions is k2*pCO2(0) = 5.8 ppmv/year equivalent. But, we know that human emissions are, at most, 5% of natural emissions, so that requires H be less than 0.29 ppmv/year equivalent. Yet, for 1/2 of all emissions to be the cause of the observed rise, they would have to be more than an order of magnitude greater than that.
This is why your model is illegitimate. The numbers do not line up because you have stacked the deck against the natural emissions.
@ur momisugly Bartemis
May 15, 2017 at 1:32 pm; Thank you Bart. This ‘refutation’ has a strangeness to it, which is not new to me. Just saddening. But we are bigger than this….
Bartemis May 17, 2017 at 6:19 pm
“dCO2/dt = k(T-T0) – k2*[pCO2(t) – pCO2(0)]
k2 = ~0.02, thus for T = T0 and pCO2(t) = 400 ppmv and pCO2(0) the steady state at ~290 ppmv, dCO2/dt = 2.2 ppmv/year, the current average net sink rate.”
One last thing. What this says is that the current rate of natural emissions is k2*pCO2(0) = 5.8 ppmv/year equivalent. But, we know that human emissions are, at most, 5% of natural emissions, so that requires H be less than 0.29 ppmv/year equivalent. Yet, for 1/2 of all emissions to be the cause of the observed rise, they would have to be more than an order of magnitude greater than that.
Which of course they are! Current CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use are ~36 Gtonne CO2/yr which is ~4.7ppmv/yr.
Which shows Ferdinand’s model is wrong. Thank you.
Bartemis May 18, 2017 at 7:11 am
Which shows Ferdinand’s model is wrong. Thank you.
No it just shows that you don’t understand the difference between the net rate between sources and sinks and the source rate! Ferdinand shows that at today’s pCO2 the natural flux is a net -2.2ppmv/yr, which is consistent with the ff flux being 4.7ppmv/yr, therefore a net increase of ~2.5ppmv/yr.
No, it shows you don’t understand the model. If the FF flux is 4.7 ppmv/yr, then the natural flux has to be at least 20X that.
I.e., You must have k2*pCO2(0) greater than 4.7*20 = 94. If pCO2(0) = 280, then you must have k2 greater than 94/280 = 0.34, which indicates a time constant of less than 3 years. There is no way one can make the budget close with a time constant of 3 years.
Bartemis May 18, 2017 at 8:10 am
No, it shows you don’t understand the model. If the FF flux is 4.7 ppmv/yr, then the natural flux has to be at least 20X that.
Which the flux from natural sources is, but it’s slightly less than the flux into the sinks giving the -2.2ppmv/yr referred to above.
It isn’t in Ferdinand’s model. It is only 5.8 ppmv/year equivalent, a factor of 1.2X, not something north of 20X, as it should be if the model were even to be a contender.
Bartemis May 18, 2017 at 9:00 am
It isn’t in Ferdinand’s model. It is only 5.8 ppmv/year equivalent, a factor of 1.2X, not something north of 20X, as it should be if the model were even to be a contender.
As I told you before that is the net flux (source-sink).
This diagram of the fast carbon cycle shows the movement of carbon between land, atmosphere, and oceans. Yellow numbers are natural fluxes, and red are human contributions in gigatons of carbon per year. White numbers indicate stored carbon. (Diagram adapted from U.S. DOE, Biological and Environmental Research Information System.)
Sorry, no. That is an illegitimate decoupling of the natural and anthropogenic flows. The natural flows must add at least 20X (more likely 30X or more) of the anthropogenic flows in order for it to be a physically viable model.
You can make any assertions you like until you are blue in the face. I am under no obligation to accept them, especially when they are physically untenable.
Bartemis May 18, 2017 at 12:44 pm
Sorry, no. That is an illegitimate decoupling of the natural and anthropogenic flows. The natural flows must add at least 20X (more likely 30X or more) of the anthropogenic flows in order for it to be a physically viable model.
Only if you ignore the sinks!
You can make any assertions you like until you are blue in the face. I am under no obligation to accept them, especially when they are physically untenable.
No, but by taking that point of view you reveal your total lack of understanding of the system.
Phil. you’d have more luck arguing with a brick wall. At least a brick wall understands what a sledgehammer is.
Sorry, no. The lack of understanding is totally on your part.
In the model equation, the term k2*pCO2(0) represents the natural sources, the k2*pCO2(t) term the sinks. Combined together, they represent the net. But, each term must individually fulfill its role.
The term k2*pCO2(0) must be at least 20X, more likely 30X or more, of the human contribution, to be physically tenable. There is no way around that. Anthropogenic sources are a small percentage of natural sources.
If Ferdinand adjusts his k2 to fulfill this requirement, he will blow his model to smithereens. It will no longer even superficially reproduce what is seen in the observations.
Bartemis May 18, 2017 at 1:50 pm
Sorry, no. The lack of understanding is totally on your part.
In the model equation, the term k2*pCO2(0) represents the natural sources, the k2*pCO2(t) term the sinks. Combined together, they represent the net. But, each term must individually fulfill its role.
You’re mistaken, as Ferdinand clearly states k2*pCO2(t) is the net flux in state t (in this case at T=T0 and [CO2]=400ppmv) and k2*pCO2(0) is the net flux in the reference state ( T=T0 and [CO2]=290ppmv)
The term k2*pCO2(0) must be at least 20X, more likely 30X or more, of the human contribution, to be physically tenable. There is no way around that. Anthropogenic sources are a small percentage of natural sources.
This is not true, due to your misunderstanding of what the terms mean.
If Ferdinand adjusts his k2 to fulfill this requirement, he will blow his model to smithereens. It will no longer even superficially reproduce what is seen in the observations.
No such adjustment is necessary as indicated above.
You are confused. It is as I have explained it to you. These terms represent natural additions and subtractions from the rate of change.
Bart:
The term k2*pCO2(0) must be at least 20X, more likely 30X or more, of the human contribution, to be physically tenable.
Which only shows that you have no idea how the natural cycles work.
You treat all CO2 cycles as one (temperature controlled) process. That is where it gets wrong even before you start:
1. Sinks don’t depend of the sources of one year, they mainly depend on local temperature and somewhat on global CO2 pressure in the atmosphere.
2. Temperature changes/differences are the main drivers of almost all natural in/out fluxes:
A) ~50 GtC out/in per season oceans.
B) ~60 GtC in/out per season biosphere.
C) ~40 GtC/year continuous out and continuous in between warm upwelling and cold sinks
Total fluxes ~150 GtC/year flowing between different reservoirs.
Current balance of all these fluxes in the atmosphere: ~800 GtC reservoir + 4.5 GtC/year +/- 3 GtC natural variability.
Global seasonal variability over a year: +/- 10 GtC
Global residual variability over a year: +/- 3 GtC
Total natural variability over a year: +/- 13 GtC
Observed residual increase/year: +4.5 GtC
At no moment in time there is 150 GtC extra in the atmosphere, the net effect of A) and B) is not more than +/- 10 GtC amplitude as these are countercurrent, which near zeroes out after a full cycle.
The net effect of C is zero, as long as ins and outs are equal.
Thus of all natural fluxes, the net effect in the atmosphere at any moment is maximum +13 GtC (in winter) and minimum -13 GtC (in summer), incuding the natural year by year variability of all these fluxes together.
Human emissions are +9 GtC/year. That is of the same order as what the natural fluxes have at their peak moment in the atmosphere, but a lot higher than the natural fluxes at their lowest values. In average the natural fluxes are -4.5 +/- 3 GtC/year.
Your problem is that you compare human emissions with the sum of all inputs together, which is never present in the atmosphere and thus can’t influence the sinks, while you should compare human emissions with the net balance of all cycles at every moment.
Human emissions disturb the balance between inputs and outputs of the natural cycles into more sink that source and the net result is an increase in the atmosphere.
Ferdinand – I have given you a hard mathematical requirement. You have given me your usual plate of assertions.
I’m sorry. Your model is physically invalid. You have illegitimately elevated anthropogenic emissions over natural ones.
There is no defense, and you are just waving your hands and blustering.
Bartemis May 18, 2017 at 2:26 pm
You are confused. It is as I have explained it to you. These terms represent natural additions and subtractions from the rate of change.
The confusion is all yours, read it again.
No, Phil. You are digging in your heels, but you haven’t got a leg to stand on. You are absolutely wrong on a very elementary level.
You do not know either of us, and you have no idea what you are talking about. Run along.
Your viewpoint is that of a child. You have no means of discerning scientific truth.
This is not a close call. Phil has made an elementary mistake. Almost as bad as the pseudo-mass balance argument.
No, I take that back. It’s a pretty basic mistake. They are on a par.
“You are digging in your heels, but you haven’t got a leg to stand on.”
???
[The mods note that use of the pejorative “digging in heels” implies, even demands, the presence of both legs and both heels; but it also indicates that both the “diggee” and “digger” have opposing ideas that must be equal and balanced, or the heel-digger would immediately fall backwards onto his or her own fleshy invectives. .mod]
You guys are a riot. I’d love to stay and chat some more, but there are things to do…
“since since” should just read “since”…
Fonzie – further response here.
The pseudo-mass balance argument only tells us what the flux is in the presence of anthropogenic inputs. It does not tell us what nature is doing on its own. It fails because outputs are a function of inputs, and change if anthropogenic inputs are removed.
EG – hate to be the one to inform you, as your parents really should have told you at some point. But, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are not real, and have no substance. Ergo, the comparison with the pseudo-mass balance argument is apt. Anyone who believes in any of the above should voluntarily commit themselves to a home where they take care of people like that.
” The logical result is that the yearly rise in CO2 is not from natural sources, because the natural sinks cannot keep up with human emissions.”
That is an intuitive result, not a logical one. Intuition told us the Sun revolved around the Earth. Intuition told us that drought meant the gods were angry. Intuition told us time was absolutely uniform throughout the universe.
Intuition is a poor substitute for science.
This is all about sink rates, EG. If the sinks are powerful enough, then all but a small fraction of CO2 additions are removed, from natural or anthropogenic sources. But, the natural sources are much more powerful than anthropogenic sources, on the order of 30X or more. Hence, the residual that remains is at least 97% natural, and 3% anthropogenic.
It all works out in the math, EG, though you do not understand the math. You are in way over your head, and you should just bow out.
Sure… By using the word “could”, i wasn’t trying to be definitive. Ferdinand got into trouble with the very same word (“could”) in the comment section of his 2010 piece on the mass balance argument. (in an almost identical situation, he used ice core data as opposed to your use of isotope data here) Much jocularity among the commentors that english was not his native tongue. So after reading that fiasco, i always deliberately use the non definitive “could” as opposed to the definitive “would”. Other arguments may well prove that the rise is anthropogenic (though the mass balance argument does not)…
Not even close, young one. 14C has been all out of whack since the atomic era began. As a result, it is completely useless for attribution studies to the present time. That’s why your link is talking about the future.
Some advice: read your links before passing them around.
“which is in the table at the bottom of the link I provided”
Look again. Those are tables of results of computer simulations.
That’s three strikes in a row, kid. Do you ever get tired of being wrong?
And a lot of other local things like rainfall, wind etc.. That’s why the correlation is damning.
Nope. It is local in time.
So in reflection we have had a lot of defenses of the undefendable…
Humans emit ~9 GtC/year as CO2, only from fossile fuel burning + land use changes, not included.
The increase in the atmosphere is ~4.5 GtC/year, the rest is absorbed mainly by oceans and vegetation.
That humans are responsible for the increase in the atmosphere is consistent with all known observations.
Logic and observations says that we are fully responsible for most of the recent increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Then all hell breaks loose and a lot of people calling themselves “skeptics” refute logic and come with 1001 “alternatives” or simply believe unskeptical anyone or any article that shows that maybe there are non-human alternative explanations for the CO2 increase in the atmosphere. As that is one of the main fundaments of the AGW hypothese, it MUST be wrong…
Problem with all these alternatives is that they all, from the first to the last, fail one or more observations.
Bart’s hypothesis has the record: it fails every observation (except some arbitrary curve “fitting” of two straight lines)). Congratulations!
New defence line: the observations must be wrong.
Sorry boys (and girls) a little more critical thinking about your own pet theory and/or what fellow “skeptics” say would be good for the skeptics case. That humans are NOT responsible for most of the CO2 increase in the atmosphere is just shooting in your own foot and divert the attention from where the real battle is: the real effect of more CO2 on temperature and climate with a lot of benefits and few drawbacks…
“Logic and observations says that we are fully responsible for most of the recent increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.”
You are not using logic. You are using intuition. And, intuition is a notoriously poor means of discerning scientific truth.
My hypothesis fits every observation, just not necessarily your interpretation of a given observation. Yours fails fundamental physical constraints.
There really is no doubt about it. You will see.
Bart:
My hypothesis fits every observation
Name one (curve fitting with an arbitrary offset and factor is not an observation)…
Ferdinand:
The offset and scaling factor merely compensate for the arbitrary temperature anomaly baseline, and the units conversion between the quantities. They do not impact the fundamental fingerprint that establishes the temperature dependence of the rate of change of CO2. That fingerprint consists of: A) the match between the variability of each time series, B) the match between the long term trend in each time series.
The data irrefutably show that the only physically viable dynamic is approximately
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
The only way you can claim otherwise is to dismiss the extraordinary match between the long term trends, and arbitrarily filter it out, producing a model which treats natural inputs and anthropogenic inputs on separate playing fields, which is physically verboten.
Your interpretations of other observations are not unique explanations. There is room for alternative explanations. You need to seek out those alternatives. Because there is no alternative to the above.
Bart,
Do you have any single observation in the real world, besides the match of two slopes, that supports your theory?
That’s all that’s needed, Ferdinand. It is a unique explanation. There is no physically viable alternative.
All your other “evidences” are just a mishmash of biased inference with alternative interpretations. Meaningless. This one cannot be gainsaid.
“…curve fitting with an arbitrary offset and factor…”
Ferdinand, it’s not as though we’re fitting the keeling curve to gisstemp here. The MLO data only goes back to 1958, so a proper offset is not available to us. And scaling the two curves to one another (unlike keeling and giss) provides a near perfect fit; the two curves actually look alike… What more can be expected of the “derivative plot”?
Bart and Fonzie,
There is simply no connection between most of the variability and most of the trend.
Most of the variability is caused by the reaction of (tropical) vegetation on temperature variability.
The trend is NOT caused vegetation.
Although I know that you don’t accept any observation that rejects your theory, that the variability is mostly caused by vegetation is based on the opposite CO2 and δ13C changes. On the other side, vegetation is a proven sink for CO2, thus not the cause of the trend.
As proof of the disconnection between the variability and trend, that is as solid as adding an acid to a solution and expecting that the pH gets lower.
Thus all the “fit” you have is between variabilities. You have zero evidence that the trend in CO2 rate of change has anything to do with the trend in temperature…
You have zero evidence that it does not. And, a tortured alternative explanation worthy of the epicycles of the monks of the 16th century.
Bart,
You have zero evidence that it does not.
Bart, the opposite CO2 and δ13C changes are full proof that the CO2 changes are mainly in vegetation
The oxygen balance and observations of growing biomass are full proof that vegetation is not the cause of the trend.
That doesn’t exclude temperature as cause of the trend, as oceans may be the source (they aren’t), but it proves that variability and trend are caused by different processes. Thus your “one temperature process fits all” is on shaky grounds (epicycles where?)…
” Thus all the “fit” you have is between variabilities. ”
Ah! But the “fit” is also between the trends, as both the variabilty features AND the trend features fit. (one can just as easily lay claim to the fit between trends as the fit between variabilities)…
“… the opposite CO2 and δ13C changes are full proof that the CO2 changes are mainly in vegetation”
No, they aren’t. There is much we do not know about isotopic compositions from the various sources. Furthermore, there is a dilution effect. If you have our usual kitchen sink with the faucet on, and you supplement the flow with a small percentage of blue dye, the water is going to take on a blue tinge, even though the dye input is barely budging the level.
“The oxygen balance and observations of growing biomass are full proof that vegetation is not the cause of the trend.”
This, again, is an expression of certainty regarding flows that is just not valid.
These are rationalizations, not evidences.
Bart,
There is much we do not know about isotopic compositions from the various sources.
What we do know about isotopic compositions of the different sources is more than sufficient to know that (tropical) vegetation is the main reactant on temperature changes.
And there is a double check that vegetation is not the cause of the CO2 trend, it is a growing sink for CO2.
It is not because you don’t like the result, that it isn’t rock solid proven…
“What we do know about isotopic compositions of the different sources is more than sufficient to know that (tropical) vegetation is the main reactant on temperature changes.”
Nope. The data fit
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
and you do not have a physically viable alternative.
Fonzie,
The effect of the variabilities in dCO2/dt gets +/- 1.5 ppmv around the 90 ppmv trend.
The variabilities in T are up to half the total trend in T over the past near 60 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_1960_cur.jpg
The transient response of CO2 to T changes is less than a year and 4-5 ppmv/K
The equilibrium response of CO2 to a sustained T change would take some 4-5 years and maximum 16 ppmv/K (there we have the good old Henry again…).