CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE AND ENERGY
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., P.Eng., June 2019
ABSTRACT
Global warming alarmism, which falsely assumes that increasing atmospheric CO2 causes catastrophic global warming, is disproved – essentially, it assumes that the future is causing the past. In reality, atmospheric CO2 changes lag global temperature changes at all measured time scales.
Nino34 Area Sea Surface Temperature changes, then tropical humidity changes, then atmospheric temperature changes, then CO2 changes.
The velocity dCO2/dt changes ~contemporaneously with global temperature changes and CO2 changes occur ~9 months later (MacRae 2008).
The process that causes the ~9-month average lag of CO2 changes after temperature changes is hypothesized and supported by observations.
The ~9-month lag, +/- several months, averages 1/4 of the full-period duration of the variable global temperature cycle, which averages ~3 years.
Based on the above observations, global temperatures drive atmospheric CO2 concentrations much more than CO2 drives temperature.
Climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 must be very low, less than ~1C/(2*CO2) and probably much less.
There will be no catastrophic warming and no significant increase in chaotic weather due to increasing CO2 concentrations.
Increasing atmospheric CO2 clearly causes significantly improved crop yields, and may cause minor, beneficial global warming.
Atmospheric CO2 is not alarmingly high, it is too low for optimal plant growth and alarmingly low for the survival of carbon-based terrestrial life.
Other factors such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc may also increase atmospheric CO2. The increase of CO2 is clearly beneficial.
“Green energy” schemes are not green and produce little useful (dispatchable) energy, primarily because of the fatal flaw of intermittency.
There is no widely-available, cost-effective means of solving the flaw of intermittency in grid-connected wind and solar power generation.
Electric grids have been destabilized, electricity costs have soared and Excess Winter Deaths have increased due to green energy schemes.
HYPOTHESIS AND CONCLUSIONS
Earlier conclusions by the author and others are reviewed that disprove global warming alarmism and the justification for CO2 abatement schemes.
Increasing atmospheric CO2 does NOT cause dangerous global warming. Humanmade global warming / climate change is a false crisis.
Atmospheric CO2 changes lag global temperature changes at all measured time scales.
The process that causes the ~9-month average lag of CO2 changes after temperature changes is hypothesized and supported by observations.
This ~9-month lag, +/- several months, averages 1/4 of the full-period duration of the variable global temperature cycle, which averages ~3 years.
OBSERVATIONS
1a. In 2008 I made the following major observations in this paper:
Reference: “Carbon Dioxide Is Not The Primary Cause Of Global Warming”, January 2008
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
a. The velocity of changes of atmospheric CO2 [dCO2/dt] varies ~contemporaneously with changes in global temperature (Fig.1a).
b. Therefore the integral of dCO2/dt, changes in atmospheric CO2, lag changes in global atmospheric temperature by ~9 months (Fig.1b).
Fig.1a – The very close relationship of dCO2/dt (red) vs global temperature (blue) is clearly apparent. Major volcanoes disrupt the relationship.
![clip_image002[10]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/clip_image00210.jpg?resize=628%2C317&quality=83&ssl=1 "clip_image002[10]")
1b. Integrating the dCO2/dt data in Fig 1a gives changes in CO2, which lag changes in temperature by ~9 months (Fig.1b).
Figures 1a and 1b employ Mauna Loa (mlo) CO2 data. Similar results were observed using Global CO2 data, as in MacRae 2008. The impact of major volcanoes is apparent.
The 12-month delta in CO2 is used to allow for the “seasonal sawtooth” in the Keeling Curve.
Fig.1b – The ~9-month lag of atmospheric CO2 changes (red) after global temperature changes (blue) is apparent.
![clip_image004[10]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/clip_image00410.jpg?resize=628%2C304&quality=83&ssl=1 "clip_image004[10]")
2. In 2013, a similar observation was made by Humlum, Stordahl and Solheim – that atmospheric CO2 changes lag global sea surface and air temperature changes by 9-12 months (Fig.2).
Reference: “The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature”
Global and Planetary Change, Volume 100, January 2013
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818112001658
a. Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature.
b. Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5–10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature.
c. Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature.
Fig.2 – “The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature”, Jan. 2013
![clip_image006[10]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/clip_image00610.jpg?resize=628%2C409&quality=83&ssl=1 "clip_image006[10]")
3a. The lag of atmospheric CO2 changes after Equatorial Pacific Ocean Nino34 Area Sea Surface Temperature changes is apparent (Fig.3a).
Fig.3a
![clip_image008[10]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/clip_image00810.jpg?resize=628%2C280&quality=83&ssl=1 "clip_image008[10]")
3b. Like Fig.3a but with 13-month centered averages, the coherence of Nino34 SST changes with CO2 changes and the time lag are more apparent (Fig.3b).
Fig.3b
![clip_image010[10]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/clip_image01010.jpg?resize=628%2C283&quality=83&ssl=1 "clip_image010[10]")
4a. In the following plot, Nino34 SST data is shifted later in time and offset and scaled for comparison with the CO2 mlo 12-month Deltas (Fig.4a).
The close correlation is apparent. Note that the CO2 mlo 12-month Delta is increasing, but the Nino34 SST is flat over the plotted interval.
Fig.4a
![clip_image012[10]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/clip_image01210.jpg?resize=628%2C281&quality=83&ssl=1 "clip_image012[10]")
4b. In this plot, the 13-month averaged Nino34 SST data is shifted later in time and offset and scaled to compare with the CO2 mlo 12-month Deltas (Fig.4b).
Nino34 SST’s have a primary impact on changes in atmospheric CO2, as evidenced by this data. The governing mechanism is described below.
Fig.4b
![clip_image014[10]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/clip_image01410.jpg?resize=628%2C281&quality=83&ssl=1 "clip_image014[10]")
5. UAH LT Global Temperatures can be predicted ~4 months in the future with just two parameters:
UAHLT (+4 months) = 0.2*Nino34Anomaly + 0.15 – 5*SatoGlobalAerosolOpticalDepth (Figs. 5a and 5b)
Note the suppression of air temperatures during and after the 1982-83 El Nino, due to two century-scale volcanoes El Chichon and Mount Pinatubo.
Much of the atmospheric warming from ~1982-1996 (blue trend) was a recovery from the two major volcanoes – Nino34 SST’s (purple trend) cooled slightly.
I discovered this relationship in 2016 and published it, originally without the Sato correction as:
UAHLT = 0.20*Nino34SSTAnomaly + 0.15
I then found that Bill Illis previously had developed a better model, and I added the Sato correction that accounts for major volcanoes. Sato data was only available to 2012.
References:
Fig.5a – All data is plotted in real time.
![clip_image016[10]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/clip_image01610.jpg?resize=628%2C294&quality=83&ssl=1 "clip_image016[10]")
Fig.5b – plotted with UAHLT actual temperatures in real time, and UAHLT temperatures calculated from Nino34 shifted 4 months later to show coherence. ![clip_image018[10]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/clip_image01810.jpg?resize=628%2C293&quality=83&ssl=1 "clip_image018[10]")
6. The sequence is Nino34 Area SST warms, seawater evaporates, Tropical atmospheric humidity increases, Tropical atmospheric temperature warms, Global atmospheric temperature warms, atmospheric CO2 increases (Figs.6a and 6b).
Other factors such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc. may also cause significant increases in atmospheric CO2. However, global temperature drives CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.
Fig.6a – Nino34 Area SST warms, seawater evaporates, Tropical atmospheric humidity (offset) increases, Tropical atmospheric temperature warms…![clip_image020[10]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/clip_image02010.jpg?resize=628%2C280&quality=83&ssl=1 "clip_image020[10]")
Fig.6b …and UAH LT Tropics Atmospheric Temperature leads UAH LT Global Atmospheric Temperature, which leads changes in Atmospheric CO2.
![clip_image022[10]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/clip_image02210.jpg?resize=628%2C280&quality=83&ssl=1 "clip_image022[10]")
7a. Why does the lag of atmospheric CO2 changes after temperature changes equal ~9 months?
In a perfect sine wave, the integral lags its derivative by pi/2, or 1/4 cycle.
There should therefore be approximately a (4 times 9 months = 36 months) 3 year average period in the data.
The Nino34 data shows a 3.1 year average period (Fig.7a in Excel spreadsheet and Table 7a).
Global Lower Troposphere Temperature data shows a 3.1 year average period (Fig.7b and Table 7a).
Mauna Loa Atmospheric CO2 data shows a 3.1 year average period (Fig.7c and Table 7a).
The climate data are not perfect sine waves and the data are natural and chaotic.
Nevertheless, it appears that an approximate 3.1 year average period is present in all three datasets, as hypothesized.
The cycles are in phase with the lag of CO2 after Nino34 SST.
Fig. 7d – Nino34 SST changes, followed by UAH LT temperature changes, followed by atmospheric CO2 changes.
![clip_image024[10]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/clip_image02410.jpg?resize=628%2C295&quality=83&ssl=1 "clip_image024[10]")
Further Support for the Hypothesis:
Based on Fig.3b, CO2 mlo data “peaks”(maxima) lag Nino34 peaks by an average of 0.81 years in an average Period of 3.28 years, and the Lag/Period is 0.25.
This Lag/Period is consistent with my hypothesis that the Lag/Period should equal ~0.25 or 1/4 period, or pi/2 in a full period of 2*pi radians (Table 7a).
Table 7a – Peaks Analysis – Periods and Lags in Years (Fig.3b)
7b. Statistical analyses support the existence of an average ~3.1 year period in the data for NIno34 SST, UAH LT temperature and atmospheric CO2, averaging ~3.6 years before year 2003.5 and ~2.5 years after 2003.5, as depicted in Figs. 7e to 7j (Excel spreadsheet) and Table 7b.
Table 7b – Divide Figure 7a, 7b, 7c data into pre-and post-2003.5 intervals and calculate the periods.
8. In 2015, I published the following paper summarizing my observations and conclusions to date. All these conclusions continue to be supported, based on more recent evidence.
Discussion:
Scientists who support the catastrophic human-made global warming (CAGW) hypothesis say that based on physics at the molecular scale, they KNOW that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and more CO2 will cause warming. Two questions: How much warming, and what are the scale-up effects?
How much global warming?
Christy & McNider (2017) and Lewis & Curry (2018) proved that climate sensitivity to increasing CO2 is too low to cause dangerous warming – see Section #9.
Furthermore, atmospheric CO2 changes LAG temperature changes at all measured time scales, including ~9 months in the modern data record and much longer in the ice core record. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that increasing atmospheric CO2 causes some mild warming, but full-earth-scale data prove that this CO2 warming effect is drowned out by the much larger impact of temperature on CO2.
Conclusion: Temperature drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. Climate is NOT highly sensitive to increasing CO2. Increasing CO2 will NOT cause dangerous global warming.
What are the scale-up effects?
Earth is not molecular-scale, and there are complex CO2 interactions between the oceans, the land, the biosphere and the atmosphere. Some of these important interactions are described in #1 to #7 above.
Warming tropical oceanic temperatures cause evaporation of seawater, tropical water vapour increases (and water vapour is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2), equatorial warming follows, that warming then extends to the rest of the planet, and atmospheric CO2 increases. Tropical sea surface temperatures increase, global temperatures increase, and atmospheric CO2 increases, in that order.
The huge “seasonal sawtooth” Keeling Curve of atmospheric CO2 is dominated by photosynthesis in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) Spring that draws down CO2, and oxidation in the Fall and Winter that releases CO2 back into the atmosphere. The Keeling Curve amplitude ranges from ~16 ppm at Barrow Alaska to ~1 ppm at the South Pole. The seasonal CO2 flux is much greater than the ~2 ppm average annual increase in CO2.
Atmospheric CO2 is increasing, and the conventional view is that this CO2 increase is human-made, caused by fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc. While this is scientifically important, it is not necessary to debate this point in order to disprove global warming alarmism.
Scientists including Salby, Berry and Harde have hypothesized that the increase in atmospheric CO2 to more than 400 ppm is largely natural and not mostly human-made. While my 2008 observations support this hypothesis, I have considered this question for ~11 years, and am still agnostic on the conclusion. Regardless of the cause, the increase in CO2 is strongly beneficial to humanity and the environment.
References:
The Keeling Curve, Scripps Institution of Oceanography https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/
Address to the Sydney Institute, Murry Salby, 2011 http://youtu.be/YrI03ts–9I
“Human CO2 Has Little Effect on Atmospheric CO2”, Edwin Berry, 2019
“What Humans Contribute to Atmospheric CO2: Comparison of Carbon Cycle Models with Observation”, Hermann Harde, International Journal of Earth Sciences Vol. 8, No. 3, 2019
Recent evidence supports my above conclusions, as follows:
9. Even if ALL the observed global warming is ascribed to increasing atmospheric CO2, the calculated maximum climate sensitivity to a hypothetical doubling of atmospheric CO2 is only about 1 degree C, which is too low to cause dangerous global warming.
Christy and McNider (2017) analysed UAH Lower Troposphere data since 1979:
Reference: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/2017_christy_mcnider-1.pdf
Lewis and Curry (2018) analysed HadCRUT4v5 Surface Temperature data since 1859:
Reference: https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0667.1
Climate computer models used by the IPCC and other global warming alarmists employ climate sensitivity values much higher than 1C/doubling, in order to create false fears of dangerous global warming.
10. I wrote in an article published 1Sept2002 in the Calgary Herald:
“If [as we believe] solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
I will stand with this prediction – for moderate, natural cooling, similar to that which occurred from ~1940 to the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1977, despite accelerating fossil fuel combustion and atmospheric CO2. Similar cooling occurred from ~1945 to 1977 as fossil fuel consumption accelerated.
I now think global cooling will start closer to 2020. The following plot explains why (Fig.10).
I hope to be wrong, because humanity and the environment suffer during cold periods.
Fig.10 – Apparent Coherence of Total Solar Irradiance, Sea Surface Temperature and Lower Tropospheric Temperature, interrupted by the 1998 El Nino
![clip_image032[10]](https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/clip_image03210.jpg?resize=628%2C294&quality=83&ssl=1 "clip_image032[10]")
11. An important fact pertaining to Energy Policy:
More than 50,000 Excess Winter Deaths occurred in England and Wales during the winter of 2017-18 – an Excess Winter Death rate about THREE TIMES the per-capita average in the USA and Canada.
Proportionally, that is about 35,000 more deaths in the UK than the average rates of the USA and Canada. British government climate and energy policies are effectively killing off the elderly and the poor.
Excessively high energy costs in the UK due to false global warming hysteria are a major component of the cause of these Excess Winter Deaths – global warming alarmists and corrupted governments and institutions are complicit in these premature deaths.
Reference: “Cold Weather Kills 20 Times as Many People as Hot Weather”
by Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae, September 4, 2015
12. Fossil fuels comprise fully 85% of global primary energy, unchanged in decades, and unlikely to change in future decades.
The remaining 15% of global primary energy is almost all hydro and nuclear.
Eliminate fossil fuels tomorrow and almost everyone in the developed world would be dead in about a month from starvation and exposure.
Despite trillions of dollars in squandered subsidies, global green energy has increased from above 1% to below 2% is recent decades.
Intermittent energy from wind and/or solar generation cannot supply the electric grid with reliable, uninterrupted power.
“Green energy” schemes are not green and produce little useful (dispatchable) energy, because they require almost 100% conventional backup from fossil fuels, nuclear or hydro when the wind does not blow and the Sun does not shine.
There is no widely-available, practical, cost-effective means of solving the fatal flaw of intermittency in grid-connected wind and solar power generation.
Hydro backup and pumped storage are only available in a few locations. Other grid-storage systems are very costly, although costs are decreasing.
To date, vital electric grids have been destabilized, electricity costs have increased greatly, and Excess Winter Deaths have increased due to grid-connected green energy schemes.
Reference: “Statistical Review of World Energy”
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html
Reference: “Wind Report 2005” – note Figs. 6 & 7 re intermittency.
http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/eonwindreport2005.pdf
13. Radical greens have made many scary predictions, but every one of their predictions has failed to happen.
Radical greens have successfully subverted climate science as a means of stampeding the uneducated and the gullible to support their fundraising activities and their political objectives.
Reference: by Allan MacRae, August 26, 2015
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/un_ipcc_has_no_credibility1/
14. The scientific reality is that increasing atmospheric CO2 will cause increased plant and crop yields, and possibly some minor, beneficial global warming.
There will be no catastrophic warming and no significant increase in chaotic weather resulting from increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Reference: “Greening of the Earth and its drivers”
by Zaichun Zhu et al, April 25, 2016
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004
Reference: “Countering The Misinformation Of Al Gore’s Dirty Weather Report”
by Ian Clark, Bob Carter, Madhav Khandekar, Tim Ball, November 14, 2012
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&id=751
15. Atmospheric CO2 is not alarmingly high, it is too low for optimal plant growth and alarmingly low for the survival of carbon-based terrestrial life. The real danger is not too much CO2 – it is CO2 starvation. Over geologic time, CO2 is ~permanently sequestered in carbonate rocks.
Plants evolved at atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 2000 ppm and greater, and many grow best at about 1200 ppm CO2 – about 3 times current levels. That is why greenhouse operators pump 1000-1200 ppm CO2 into their greenhouses.
Major food crops (except corn) use the C3 photosynthetic pathway, and die at about 150 ppm from CO2 starvation – that is just 30 ppm below the minimum levels during the last Ice Age, which ended just 10,000 years ago – “the blink of an eye” in geologic time. Earth came that close to a major extinction event.
During one of the next Ice Ages, unless there is massive human intervention, atmospheric CO2 will decline to below 150 ppm and that will be the next major extinction event – not just for a few species but for ~all complex terrestrial carbon-based life forms.
Reference: “(Plant) Food for Thought”
(first posted in January 2009 on wattsupwiththat.com, published on icecap.us in December 2014)
by Allan MacRae, Dec 18, 2014
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/new-and-cool/plant_food_for_thought2/
Reference: “Should We Celebrate Carbon Dioxide?”
by Patrick Moore, October 15, 2015
https://www.thegwpf.org/patrick-moore-should-we-celebrate-carbon-dioxide/
16. Another important observation is the corruption of institutions. The green movement has been taken over by radicals, as described in 1994 by Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace.
That takeover by radical greens has now extended to universities, scientific associations, professional societies, media and governments.
Reference: “Hard Choices for the Environmental Movement”, 1994 – note “The Rise of Eco-Extremism”.
http://ecosense.me/2012/12/30/key-environmental-issues-4/
Reference: “Science’s Untold Scandal: The Lockstep March of Professional Societies to Promote the Climate Change Scare”
by Tom Harris and Jay Lehr, May 24, 2019
17. Commentary concerning global warming and climate change catastrophes are typically political propaganda, not scientific reality.
The leaders of the radical greens typically know they are misleading the public. The Climategate emails provide irrefutable evidence of their misconduct. Their followers typically believe the falsehoods, and apparently do not have the education or the intellectual ability to do otherwise.
Reference: https://wattsupwiththat.com/climategate/
Reference: https://www.thegwpf.com/climategate-a-scandal-that-wont-go-away/
Reference: http://www.theclimategatebook.com/about-the-book/table-of-contents/
18. We have known for decades that global warming alarmism was a false crisis, and that “green energy” schemes were not green and produced little useful (dispatchable) energy.
In 2002 we were confident in the following points, sufficient to publish them and sign our names to them:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
Reference: APEGA’s “Debate on the Kyoto Accord”, published in the PEGG November 2002, reprinted by other professional journals, The Globe and Mail and La Presse
by Sallie Baliunas, Tim Patterson and Allan MacRae, November 2002
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
19. Science, governments, media and institutions have all been corrupted due to false global warming / climate change alarmism.
Enormously costly and destructive government policies have been adopted to “fight global warming / climate change”. Trillions of dollars of scarce global resources have been squandered, tens of millions of lives have been needlessly lost and delicate environments including tropical rainforests severely harmed due to environmental extremism.
Reference: “Hypothesis: Radical Greens are the Great Killers of Our Age”
by Allan MacRae, April 14, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/14/hypothesis-radical-greens-are-the-great-killers-of-our-age/
20. Global warming / climate change mania will eventually cease, but this will probably take time – climate extremism has strong support.
Global warming / climate change alarmism is the most expensive and the most lucrative scientific error in history. There is ample evidence of fraud.
Epilogue
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
Reference: “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”, Charles Mackay, 1841.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Data Sources
University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH) Lower Troposphere (LT) Temperatures
https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt
Nino Area Sea Surface Temperature (SST) Data
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/sstoi.indices
Mauna Loa Atmospheric CO2 data
Sato Aerosol Optical Depth Volcanic Index (to 2012)
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/strataer/
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/strataer/tau.line_2012.12.txt
NOAA Precipitable Water Monolevel +/-20 N, 0-360W
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl
Acknowledgements
Sincere thanks to Jan-Erik Solheim, Matt Briggs, Richard S Courtney, Joseph D’Aleo, Patrick Moore, William Happer, David Devenny, Bill Illis, Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas and Tim Patterson.
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Does this correlation back-test back into the C20?
Hi Peter – if i interpret your question correctly (?), the answer is yes.
I prefer to use UAH LT satellite temperature data, because of its accuracy ,but it is only available back to 1979.
In 2008 I reran the dCO2/dt vs temperature correlation back to 1958 using Hadcrut3 data, and the strong correlation holds. I have the spreadsheet but I did not publish it, as I recall. Quality CO2 data is only available back to 1958.
Here is a plot that may help.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah5/from:1979/scale:0.22/offset:0.14/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1958/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/mean:12/derivative/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1850/scale:0.25/offset:0.1/integral/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/mean:12/derivative/trend/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1958/scale:0.25/offset:0.1/trend
Allan et al, the correlation also holds nicely back to 1850. There is at most a 10 ppm difference between ice cores and co2 as calculated using temperature data. Ferdinand did this using bart’s numbers (which were not accurate) back to 1900 and got at most a 20 ppm difference. He also got the perfect match at the turn of the century. i left the data up to the right of the graph. Just remove the integral feature on the temperature series to see the data used and how it was accurately scaled. In 1850, ice cores tell us that co2 stood at 287 ppm. Add to that the 120+ ppm that you see in the graph and you get the approximate co2 level that we see today. (about 410 ppm)…
Peter Ould,
The correlation does hold for the “noise” around the trend, but gets worse for the trend itself if you go back in time:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_T_dT_em_1900_2011_B.jpg
The calculated increase from emissions is by adding the emissions and subtracting the calculated net sink rate which is the extra CO2 in the atmosphere above equilibrium with an e-fold decay of 51 years.
The calculated increase from temperature is what Bart/Fonz theory says: only integrating the temperature anomaly over time.
Before 1960 CO2 levels are from the Law Dome ice cores with a resolution of less than a decade and an accuracy of 1.2 ppmv (1 sigma).
Even over the past 100 years, the discrepancy gets larger over time and if you go further back over the LIA, there is no way to match the trends. Over glacial – interglacial periods with 100 ppmv change over 5000 years, it would give results completely in the stars…
The simple formula of solubility of CO2 in seawater with temperature for the equilibrium and the 51 years e-fold decay rate for any excess CO2 above that equilibrium (whatever the source) does the job over the past 800,000 years, including the past 60 years…
A nice “take no prisoners” post.
Allan,
I like your quote and I can support it:
“If [as we believe] solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
I will give you my prediction based upon fitting 107 cycles to the raw data.
One thing you may get from this picture is the warming from the early 1900s to 1945-1950 and then the brief cooling, and then warming. There it is in pictures the 67-year cycle broke up the longer period cycle. I think Dr. Lindzen and Dr. Curry have brought this up.
In fitting the raw data the correlation coefficient is 0.971. The ECS is just 0.22. I think Willis justified 0.35 just recently.
I could furnish more but here is how well the models are working. BTW, the NCA has to be a bad joke.
Allan, I may be wrong but I think we once communicated on another comment.
Well done, Allan M.R. MacRae!
For anyone interested in better understanding the physics behind: Why does the lag of atmospheric CO2 change[s] after temperature change[s] equal ~9 months? In a perfect sine wave, the integral lags its derivative by pi/2, or 1/4 cycle.
Here is an excellent lecture by Dr. Murry Salby (Hamburg, 2013)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ROw_cDKwc0
(English begins at about 45 seconds)
For all you non-tech majors (like I), do persevere in watching this. Dr. Salby is not only a brilliant atmospheric physicist, he is a fine teacher. I understood it (with several “pause”-repeats, heh) — so can you! 🙂
:D….insert wavy hand here!
(hours later….. *sigh* — btw: I saw your “Hi” above at 5:40pm)
(((WAVING HAND))) back at you! 🙂 Hope all is well, Latitude, Dude.
Excellent, it has made things much clearer for me.
Glad to hear that, Andy. Thanks for taking the time to say so.
The disconnect between human emission of CO2 and increasing atmospheric CO2 is shown conclusively in Salby’s recent lecture in Hamburg. He shows that, over preceding decades, human emission of CO2 increased steadily – by more than 50%. But increasing atmospheric CO2 doesn’t follow from emission. It follows from *net* emission, which accounts for removal of CO2 through absorption. Salby shows that, over the same decades when human emission steadily increased by more than 50%, net emission (human + natural) evidenced no systematic change.
https://youtu.be/b1cGqL9y548
Accordingly, human emission can’t be a major component of net emission of CO2. Human emission therefore can’t be responsible for increasing atmospheric CO2. The increase of atmospheric CO2 can only follow from changes of natural emission. That’s what the IPCC has conveniently ignored, as underscored by Harde and Berry.
Thank you, Philip, for sharing that! Alas, WUWT has become such a lukewarm swamp (I had to push hard in 2016 just to get WUWT to feature Dr. Pat Frank’s powerful refutation of AGW, “Systematic Error in Climate Measurements: the Surface Air Temperature Record” (here on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THg6vGGRpvAv ) — those with money interests in promoting a “just in case” approach to CO2, e.g., the commenter, R.I., who dabbles in “carbon storage” (batteries, I guess) snarled especially loudly)
that it is unlikely Dr. Salby’s October, 2018 lecture will be featured, here. Here it is, 8 months out and no sign of it — did I miss it?
Anyway.
Just FYI for anyone else interested in TRUTH in science, to encourage you to
WATCH THE ABOVE VIDEO (Salby, Hamburg, 2018),
here are some key excerpts:
Excellent introduction, then, Dr. Salby begins at ~ 8:54
31:11 “Total [natural and human] net [CO2] emission … underwent … little if any systematic* change.”
31:28 “The observed evolution [of net CO2 emission] tracks surface conditions, mostly temperature which regulates natural emission and absorption.”
32:06 “Anthropogenic [CO2] emission … is independent of temperature.”
32:16 “The observed record shows that total net [CO2] emission is function of only temperature.”
Thus, we know that,
32:36 “Net anthropogenic emission was much smaller than net natural emission.”
Further,
33:11 “… the Conservation Law … reveals a strong cancellation [of] anthropogenic emission … and reduces to a form [showing that net CO2 is] largely independent of anthropogenic emission.
CO2 is, thus, controlled by net natural emission.”
*See Salby lecture at ~ 17:51 – 23:22 for explanation with equations of the technical term,“systematic” trend versus random change (i.e., a systematic trend cannot be significantly altered by removing minor perturbations. He removes those two ~4-year perturbations and finds that they DO alter the “trend.” Thus, there is no systematic upward temperature trend.)
Do you know of anywhere to go to find estimates of the total amount of atmospheric CO2, compared with estimates of mankind’s “carbon footprint?”
Global CO2 Emissions from Fossil-Fuel Burning, Cement Manufacture, and Gas Flaring: 1751-2014
https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2014.ems
Thank you!
Philip,
I was in London a few years ago, where Dr. Salby did give a similar lecture in the buildings of the Parliament. Unfortunately, there was no time for an in-depth discussion…
Dr. Salby goes wrong is on several items, but the main problem is that he is comparing noise with noise and then concludes that the trend has the same cause as the noise.
In fact you have a mix of two variables which influence the fate of CO2 in the atmosphere:
– human emissions: one-way, slightly quadratic going up year by year with little variability.
– temperature: highly variable, with a small overall trend, with decades of ups and downs.
If you look at the growth of CO2 over time, there is a linear trend in growth at about half the human CO2 emissions and about all the year-by-year variability of temperature.
Indeed, near all the variability is caused by temperature variability, but that doesn’t say anything about the cause of the trend, which is pretty sure from the double input of human emissions:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
The huge temperature variability only translates to +/- 1.5 ppmv around the 90+ ppmv trend for the temperature extremes (Pinatubo, El Niño), but it is quite obvious that human emissions drive the CO2 increase in the atmosphere…
Two thumbs up!
Does anyone actually think that this makes any sense?
absolutely….no matter how high CO2 levels got….the planet crashed back into an ice age
At thousands ppm…no run away nothing…CO2 can’t drive squat
But…But..thet CO2 wasn’t anthropogenic in sourcing. It’s only human produced CO2 that is bad. Nature knows the difference. 😉
and we ‘crash back’ into re-glaciating when CO2 is at its highest level.
Yes
It makes good sense to this engineer!
What’s your problem Fancois?
Looks like Frank, along with most of his co-religionists, can’t handle a little math.
Personally I would have thought that it was obviously nonsense. The Nino34 index essentially
oscillates about zero while both CO2 and global temperatures are rising relatively steadily especially
if you take long term averages. And so any correlations are likely coincidence.
Plus there is the fact that his supposed prediction of temperature from the Nino34 index has the
wrong slope. Fig. 5a and fig. 5b have the actual temperatures increasing while slope of his predicted
temperature is negative. Which suggests that his theory is wrong.
Isaac wrote:
“Which suggests that his theory is wrong.”
No – it suggests you did not read the paper.
See Section 6:
“Other factors such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc. may also cause significant increases in atmospheric CO2.”
You are conflating my position with that of others like Salby, Berry and Harde – Sect.8.
Allan,
You make the claim that temperatures obey the equation:
UAHLT = 0.20*Nino34SSTAnomaly + 0.15
And when you plot this is Fig 5a this prediction according to you have a least
squares fit of
y=-0.003*x +6.11
while the actual temperatures given in Fig 5.a has a least squares fit of
y=0.0125*x-24.933
according to your figure. Which means that according to your equation
temperatures are decreasing by 0.003 degrees per year while according to you
temperatures are actually increasing by 0.0125 degrees per year. Hence if you
can’t even get the sign of the temperature change right your theory fails at the first
hurdle.
Also if as you state “ther factors such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc. may also
cause significant increases in atmospheric CO2.” then ocean temperatures are not the major
cause of CO2 increases.
Isaak
In the same Section 5 that your quoted, you missed these important statements:
“Note the suppression of air temperatures during and after the 1982-83 El Nino, due to two century-scale volcanoes El Chichon and Mount Pinatubo.
Much of the atmospheric warming from ~1982-1996 (blue trend) was a recovery from the two major volcanoes – Nino34 SST’s (purple trend) cooled slightly.”
Good people, if you want to comment, please read the entire paper and try to understand it – and if you have questions, also look at the spreadsheet. It is apparent that most of the negative comments here result from failing to do either.
Allan,
A comprehensive and impressive post.
One issue that continues to nag me is the claim by Nick Stokes ( WUWT passim) that for aeons past the greenhouse gas balance of the Earth has been in equilibrium and that since 1950 humankind’s mining and burning of fossil fuels has introduced a new element . The claimed result is that CO2 is building dangerously in the atmosphere, with a long residence of 100+ years.Water vapour is said to have a residence time of 10 days.
I hope I am not doing him a disservice in this summary.
I appreciate the dispute over the 100+ years and résidence time with a number of scientists claiming that the residence time for CO2 is much shorter.
For example Freeman Dyson is on record stating the residence time is some 12 years.( Dreams of Earth and Sky,Ch. 6, “ The question of global warming”).
What puzzles me is why a burst of fossil fuel usage since 1950 should introduce a “ new element” into the issue, with CO2 suddenly being dangerously in excess of past experience in terms of accumulation .
Am I correct in thinking that, as Richard Lindzen maintains, the carbon cycle has never been in ‘balance’ but iterates towards that state?
Tim Ball has claimed that when one looks at the IPCC 2005 estimates of CO2 emissions the range of estimates of natural and human carbon production ( as CO2) displays a large uncertainty factor and the estimated human contribution lies well within the uncertainty range of the three natural sources,respiration, Ocean outgassing and soil bacteria.
The total uncertainty at some 15% of the combined list is said to be 5 times the human production.
Any thoughts?
yep…I have one…and it hurt
Fossil fuel consumption has increased exponentially …emissions by country…especially China, India, SE Asia, etc…has increased exponentially
….yet, CO2 measured in the atmosphere has continued to increase linearly
…that is not possible
Unless the difference is going somewhere. like plants ?
Good point Lat, that should be especially apparent during the past decade if the human contributed CO2 is a civilization-endangering daemon it’s touted to be.
In math, a dependency on a variable is rarely a linear dependency. X=f(x) where f(x) =log(x) is a simple example. In atmospheric terms this is true between the relationship between dewpoint and absolute humidity.
“For example Freeman Dyson is on record stating the residence time is some 12 years.”
A fuller quote is here:
“Lord May and I have several differences of opinion which remain friendly. But one of our disagreements is a matter of arithmetic and not a matter of opinion. He says that the residence time of a molecule of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about a century, and I say it is about twelve years.
This discrepancy is easy to resolve. We are talking about different meanings of residence time. I am talking about residence without replacement. My residence time is the time that an average carbon dioxide molecule stays in the atmosphere before being absorbed by a plant. He is talking about residence with replacement. His residence time is the average time that a carbon dioxide molecule and its replacements stay in the atmosphere when, as usually happens, a molecule that is absorbed is replaced by another molecule emitted from another plant.”
I think his logic here is contorted, but the facts are right. As it stands, the path is two-way, and the residence time is about a century. If there were some hypothetical plants that could absorb CO2 without replacement, it would be twelve years. But there aren’t.
But the CO2 released by the plant isn’t anthropogenic in Origin and as such is a Good and Beneficial CO2 whereas the CO2 released by human actions or for human benefit is Bad CO2
Nick,
Thanks for your response.
One further question on residence time.
Steve Goreham’s book on Climatism contains the following passage, addressing the claim of the IPCC that carbon dioxide is ‘ accumulating in the atmosphere’ and that CO2 stays in the atmosphere a long time,
“ …Second, prior to the advent of IPCC dogma, some 30 peer reviewed scientific papers estimated CO2 atmospheric lifetimes to be an average of about five to six years.”
Source:Tom Segelstad, “Carbon Cycle Modelling and the Residence Time of Natural and Anthropogenic Atmospheric CO2: On The Construction of the ‘Greenhouse Effect Global Warming Dogma”, http://www.geocraft.com/WV-Fossils/Référence_Docs/Carbon_cycle_update_Segastad.pdf
Segalstad has been publishing papers to this effect since 1998.
Your views.
Again, as Dyson says, they are talking about two different things. Yes, there is a well characterised half-life of individual CO2 molecules in the air of about five years. There are exchange processes that ensure that. But it is not the time that matters. That time is the time it takes for a pulse of CO2 to disappear from the atmosphere. And that is much longer.
On average, the atoms in our body stay there about six weeks. That is not to be confused with life expectancy.
Nick,
Thanks again to you for taking the time to address my queries.
Thanks also to Allan for his response.
I think that Dyson is optimistic enough to assume that CO2 is helpful in promoting plant growth, with the resulting growth being essentially a permanent gain on any time scale meaningful for decision making. See for instance,
https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/world-added-an-amazon-s-worth-of-greenery-in-2-decades-nasa-1.4321918
I am agnostic on this issue, as per S.8 of my paper, but Hermann Harde’s paper is now available online at http://article.esjournal.org/pdf/10.11648.j.earth.20190803.13.pdf
Some very intelligent people believe Harde is correct. His conclusion:
6. Conclusion
The increase of CO2 over recent years can well be explained
by a single balance equation, the Conservation Law (23),
which considers the total atmospheric CO2 cycle, consisting of
temperature and thus time dependent natural emissions, the
human activities and a temperature dependent uptake process,
which scales proportional with the actual concentration. This
uptake is characterized by a single time scale, the residence
time of about 3 yr, which over the Industrial Era slightly
increases with temperature. Only this concept is in complete
conformity with all observations and natural causalities. It
confirms previous investigations (Salby [7, 10]; Harde [6])
and shows the key deficits of some widespread but largely ad
hoc carbon cycle models used to describe atmospheric CO2,
failures which are responsible for the fatal conclusion that the
increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past 270 years is
principally anthropogenic.
For a conservative assessment we find from Figure 8 that
the anthropogenic contribution to the observed CO2 increase
over the Industrial Era is significantly less than the natural
influence. At equilibrium this contribution is given by the
fraction of human to native impacts. As an average over the
period 2007-2016 the anthropogenic emissions (FFE&LUC
together) donated not more than 4.3% to the total
concentration of 393 ppm, and their fraction to the
atmospheric increase since 1750 of 113 ppm is not more than
17 ppm or 15%. With other evaluations of absorption, the
contribution from anthropogenic emission is even smaller.
Thus, not really anthropogenic emissions but mainly natural
processes, in particular the temperature, have to be considered
as the dominating impacts for the observed CO2 increase over
the last 270 yr and also over paleoclimate periods.
You qualitatively assert the existence of a three year period in your data. However, a stronger argument would be to show its existence quantitatively using a simple Fourier analysis. It would also be nice to report the correlation coefficients in your other figures/datasets.
Paul – see Sect. 7 in the Excel spreadsheet for stats analysis. It is there.
“Some very intelligent people believe Harde is correct. ” Not sure of whom you speak.
Some other very intelligent people assert that Harde is incorrect.
Abstract
Harde (2017) proposes an alternative accounting scheme for the modern carbon cycle and concludes that only 4.3% of today’s atmospheric CO2 is a result of anthropogenic emissions. As we will show, this alternative scheme is too simple, is based on invalid assumptions, and does not address many of the key processes involved in the global carbon cycle that are important on the timescale of interest. Harde (2017) therefore reaches an incorrect conclusion about the role of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Harde (2017) tries to explain changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration with a single equation, while the most simple model of the carbon cycle must at minimum contain equations of at least two reservoirs (the atmosphere and the surface ocean), which are solved simultaneously. A single equation is fundamentally at odds with basic theory and observations. In the following we will (i) clarify the difference between CO2 atmospheric residence time and adjustment time, (ii) present recently published information about anthropogenic carbon, (iii) present details about the processes that are missing in Harde (2017), (iv) briefly discuss shortcoming in Harde’s generalization to paleo timescales, (v) and comment on deficiencies in some of the literature cited in Harde (2017).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818117301364?via%3Dihub
Allan,
I have written an extensive reaction on Hermann Harde’s work:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/Harde.pdf
He is wrong on three important items:
1. Using the residence time, or even the decay rate of the 14C bomb tests excess, doesn’t say anything about the time needed to reduce an extra bulk CO2 injection – whatever the source – above the temperature controlled steady state of the oceans with the atmosphere.
2. Using the total concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere as base implies a steady state of zero CO2 in the atmosphere, which is not realistic.
3. Using only natural emissions without taking into account the natural sinks violates the mass balance.
The strange point is 1. where he clearly knows the difference between residence time and relaxation time, but nevertheless uses the residence time in his final formula…
Hi Ferdinand, I can also attest that:
“Some very intelligent people believe Harde is INcorrect.”
Repeating ad infinitum, I am officially agnostic – I just don’t want to spend time on this point – it is scientifically important, but not critical to my hypo. It is a distraction.
The strong conclusion is that increasing atm. CO2, from whatever source, will NOT cause dangerous global warming or wilder weather, and is hugely beneficial to humanity and the environment.
Best, Allan
We want to transform the CO2 into good paying full time jobs and money. https://youtu.be/RQRQ7S92_lo
I want to be able to fly by thought control.
R Sherer
I thought that when the autopilot is turned off, that is how it is done. 🙂
We don’t need no education
We don’t need not thought control
Sid Amba Grudem and Asmus find: “If a country wants to move up the scale from “low-income” to “middle-income” to “high-income” .. .It must increase the total amount of goods and services that it produces, which means that there will be more to go around.” To develop “good paying full time jobs and money from CO2”, we must make fuel from sustainable energy CO2 and H2O cheaper than fossil fuels. See “The Poverty of Nations: A Sustainable Solution” https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Poverty_of_Nations.html?id=if0Oe0_7xGUC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false
Fission nuclear power is a sustainable energy source which can last for millions of years.
How are you going to create good paying jobs via a process that needs government subsidies in order to break even?
They get all the unemployed down to the nearest beach to work on similar subsidised jobs and split them into 2 shifts – a morning shift and an afternoon shift! The morning shift digs a massive hole, and the afternoon shift fills it in day after day – etc. etc. etc. Taxes and other overhead costs escalate but have to be paid, but “So what?” such things are possible in La La land.
yep and give them spoons to do the digging
Sid’s still trolling for investors.
What creates the increase in ocean temperature that starts this process? Is it direct sunlight modulated by cloud cover? If so are there reliable measurements of cloud cover to explain ocean warming and cooling?
Probably yes Casey – I recall Willis E has done some interesting work on this.
Thank you Allan. And thanks for the article.
Well, the plot didn’t explain it to me and I fail to see the apparent coherence between TSI and temp.
And why is 2020 special in that plot?
I expect a two-year Niña starting in 2020 that should reduce surface temperature because ENSO responds to solar activity so I kind of agree with the prediction, but I don’t see how you arrive to it.
Hi Javier,
I restricted the article to 12 pages of 8.5×14″, so S.10 on global cooling is quite short. Another full paper would be required to deal with all the evidence of imminent cooling, and that evidence is not entirely conclusive – I could be wrong, and I hope I am. I would cite the work of Nir Shaviv, Willie Soon, Dan Pangburn and others.
As I see it, there are two primary drivers of global temperature at the century-millennial scale:
1. Solar intensity and cycles
and
2 Pacific Ocean cycles.
It seems to me that solar intensity in the dominant factor, but that dominance is occasionally over-ridden by a major ENSO cycle, and further impacted by major longer-term shifts in the Pacific from cold-mode to warm-mode, as happened in 1977.
Best, Allan
What could really put a dent in the whole CO2 climate argument is that if we have a substantial 10-20 year cooling event, and CO2 levels globally stabilize or actually fall off. Since we know fairly accurately how much CO2 mankind is producing, a cooling event should tell us how much CO2 is
re-absorbed in the natural sinks. The difference should tell us the flow rate of CO2 through the atmosphere and oceans in a natural secular cooling.
Earthling wrote:
“What could really put a dent in the whole CO2 climate argument is that if we have a substantial 10-20 year cooling event…”
Global cooling already happened, from ~1945 to 1977, even as atm. CO2 reportedly increased.
We only have good-quality CO2 data from Mauna Loa since 1958, but there is ample evidence from this cooling period to demonstrate that climate sensitivity to increasing atm. CO2 is very low – less than 1C/doubling and probably much less.
There is a wonderful CBC radio show called ‘Under the Influence’ which is about advertising. The latest episode is about advertisements that got banned. Among the stories is the British grocery chain, Iceland, which used advertising content developed by Greenpeace. The British advertising watchdog banned the ad because it was developed by Greenpeace and Greenpeace is considered to be a political organization.
I also noted stories that Greenpeace is/was campaigning against Brexit. According to Pournelle’s Iron Law, any group will eventually be snatched from those who started it and who were working for its stated purpose. It will be taken over by bureaucrats who will run it for their own benefit. So, it’s no surprise that Greenpeace got taken over … but it’s sad anyway.
“Global warming alarmism, which falsely assumes that increasing atmospheric CO2 causes catastrophic global warming, is disproved…”
By inserting the subjective “alarmism” and “catastrophic” you’ve made this about your opinion and not evidence. Are you going to define exactly what they mean to you? If you remove them you’re left with:
“Global warming, which falsely assumes that increasing atmospheric CO2 causes global warming, is disproved…”
doesn’t make sense.
He makes perfect sense Mr Loydo.
It is the alarmism and assumption of catastrophe that are proved false.
To say that some people are alarmed by global warming is an objective statement not an opinion.
How about responding to the science rather than erroneously deconstructing the language.
If people were not worried that anthropogenic carbon dioxide would cause enough warming to have catastrophic results, this blog would not exist and governments around the world would not have spent billions of dollars promoting renewable energy.
The use of the word ‘catastrophic’ describes the whole message of the IPCC.
As for ‘alarmism’, there’s more than ample evidence justify its use.
What you’re saying is akin to insisting that the law of gravity is just my opinion.
Who amongst the leading lights of the AGW movement criticized AOC when she claimed that there was only 12 years left to save the planet?
Exactly. Loydo practices sophistry, however collectivist mind tricks only work on the weak minded
As you well know oh troll, is that nobody denies that CO2 will cause a small amount of warming.
Without the alarmist claims of catastrophic warming, nobody would care.
MacRae says “The velocity of changes of atmospheric CO2 [dCO2/dt] varies ~contemporaneously with changes in global temperature (Fig.1a).”
…
This statement is utterly FALSE.
..
The y-axis is the graphic is a temperature anomaly not a change in global temperature.
..
Global temperatures can be rising when the anomaly is negative. Global temperatures rise in July and fall in Feb:
Exactly. Loydo practices sophistry, however collectivist mind tricks only work on the weak minded
Christopher – anger management issues?
No anger MacRae, but seems you have no response to my observation. Does that make me correct?
No Christopher – it just makes you angry, and I do not respond to anger.
I may write another paper in 4-5 years – you can try again then.
Your observation of “anger” is incorrect. You mistake someone that points out your gross error as “anger.” Can you explain why you claim the y-axis of your Fig 1a is a “change” in global temperature when in fact it is an anomaly ?
Allan, can you please provide me a link to a peer-reviewed “paper” that you have had published? Not something that was published on a blog like here or “icecap.us”???
Christopher
“Global temperatures rise in July and fall in Feb:”
Have you ever looked at the CO2 concentrations recorded at Mauna Loa?
Allan Thanks for insightful explorations. Recommend also citing:
McKitrick & Christy 2018 Test of the Tropical 200‐to 300‐hPa Warming Rate
Varotsos & Efstathiou 2019 Has global warming already arrived?
http://bit.ly/2CQBAT8 https://bit.ly/2wFXtRN
David R.B. Stockwell modeled the Pi/2 temperature lag from solar cycles. e.g.,
David R.B. Stockwell, Key evidence for the accumulative model of high solar influence on1global temperature
August 23, 2011 http://www.rxiv.org/pdf/1108.0032v1.pdf
Stockwell David R.B., 2011 On the Dynamics of Global Temperature, August 2011a. URL. 2011;186:55.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.397.4553&rep=rep1&type=pdf
It seems then, that it is possible to predict what the CO2 increase will be 9 months ahead of time. This may be elementary, but it sure would be a great demonstration. I recommend taking the past 9months temperature record (UAH, HadCrut? etc.) and drawing a forecast dCO2/dt for the next 9 months and giving some commentary here say each couple of months. Watching it play out would be a devastating experience for the CO2ophobes and giving it good publicity would pretty well seal the the deal for sanity going forward. Create an App for free and distribute broadly for cell phones. It could have a little notification bell to attract the phone owner to read the message each month. Maybe make a contest and have people participate for a coffee mug or tee shirt.
Hi Gary – about 2008 Ferdinand and I did monthly CO2 predictions for a while online, probably on wattsup. We had to allow for the seasonal Keeling Curve, and as I recall we did pretty well.
Good read, content-wise Alan.
Criticism are presentation related the over-use of bold, italics and underlining degrades readability fast, try using as little format ornamentation as possible. And rather than having an everything plus the kitchen sink post, it would be far better to separate it into two more focused posts.
2c
WX – this paper is my “swan song” – so it does contain a lot of content, some very briefly discussed.
I think the science is becoming more clear, and there is a lot of work to be done by others to follow this “new” paradigm – which is now 11 years old – since MacRae2008.
One of the major questions is “how much of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is natural, and how much is human-made”? A number of very intelligent people believe that Hermann Harde (2019) is correct – that it is mostly natural – I am still agnostic (withholding judgment) on this question.
Whilst this and other articles plus the comments are very interesting,
I consider that its a case if just “Preaching to the converted”..
So what do we do about the large number of people who have been taken in
by the Green Propaganda, and thus are of the opinion that CC is indeed
real, which of course it is, but that its a major problem, and something that
has to be addressed.
So of course the Politicians respond and we are therm faced with a very
expensive fix over a none existence problem.
So lacking the generous support of a billionaire sceptic, and faced with a
hostile Media, how do we get our message through to that group of people ?
MJE VK5ELL.
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
– Charles Mackay
Articles like these are very useful, at least to myself, in providing the arguments to get people afflicted by this CAGW madness to break the spell.
I recently had an “animated discussion” over lunch with four French Aerospace Engineering interns at work. All were aghast that I wasn’t on board with the “consensus”, but none of them seemed to have ever though about the details and they made some very strange arguments to support their view, including that increasing CO2 levels were bad for your health.
Hopefully, they will think about what we discussed and over time begin to question what they were taught. A life time of indoctrination does not dissolve overnight, but there is still hope.
“I recently had an “animated discussion” over lunch with four French Aerospace Engineering interns at work. All were aghast that I wasn’t on board with the “consensus”, but none of them seemed to have ever thought about the details…”
Hi Mark – what airplanes are these guys designing – the 737 Max, perchance?
Please advise, so we can find OTHER airplanes to fly on.
Hi Allan,
Excellent work!
The only thing I would add is to point out the increase in global average water vapor. The rate substantially increased in about 1960 and then substantially leveled off in 2002-2005. It has been measured by satellite and reported monthly by NASA/RSS since Jan 1988. Until 2002-2005 the WV increase has been about twice that calculated from average global temperature increase. My analysis is predicting that the higher WV will prevent the cooling otherwise expected due to quiet sun and declining average ocean cycle. But the WV level is self-limiting so the planet will stop warming and might have stopped already.
As to the lack of influence of CO2 on temperature, apparently the increased emission at high altitude (above 15 km where CO2 molecules outnumber WV molecules by about 13 to 1) effectively counters the slightly increased absorption near the surface where on average WV molecules outnumber CO2 molecules by about 24 to 1.
Hi Dan and thank you for your comments.
Hope you are correct about “no cooling” – I can live with that.
Trust you and your family are doing well. Times are bad here in Alberta, because the brain trust in Ottawa believes we can live without fossil fuels, and is doing everything to sabotage our economy and our energy systems.
As you may know, Alberta carries the entire country economically/financially, and we are being destroyed by green zealots. We are not Canada anymore, we are Canazuela.
Best personal regards, Allan
The other way to see the current warming trend is as part of the violent swings between warming and cooling seen in the history of the Holocene that precedes it.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/06/11/chaoticholocene/
Allan –
You are using El Mini temps from a narrow latitude band, average global temperatures, and CO2 readings from Mauna Loa in the Pacific.
They slight delay in global temps is atmospheric transport delay.
Your three month CO2 delay is an atmospheric mixing and circulation delay, caused by an atmospheric pump action.
Regards
Martin
Apologies for poor spelling, cell ph and old glasses don’t mix.
Regards
Martin wrote:
“You are using El Mini temps from a narrow latitude band, average global temperatures, and CO2 readings from Mauna Loa in the Pacific. Your three month CO2 delay is an atmospheric mixing and circulation delay.”
Your comments are rather misleading, Martin.
In MacRae2008 I used global average CO2 and got similar results.
Read Section 6. The lag of atmospheric CO2 after Nino 34 temperatures is not 3 months, it is 9-12 months.
6. The sequence is Nino34 Area SST warms, seawater evaporates, Tropical atmospheric humidity increases, Tropical atmospheric temperature warms, Global atmospheric temperature warms, atmospheric CO2 increases (Figs.6a and 6b).
Other factors such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc. may also cause significant increases in atmospheric CO2. However, global temperature drives CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.
Fig.6a – Nino34 Area SST warms, seawater evaporates, Tropical atmospheric humidity (offset) increases, Tropical atmospheric temperature warms…
Fig.6b …and UAH LT Tropics Atmospheric Temperature leads UAH LT Global Atmospheric Temperature, which leads changes in Atmospheric CO2.
There are certainly delays in the described mechanism – that’s what it’s all about.
Please good people, read the paper and look at the data in the Excel spreadsheet before you “shoot from the hip”.
Thanks for your reply
This is all very interesting. One question though: if CO2 follows temperature, can a corresponding reduction in atmospheric CO2 contents during the period 1940-80 be observed?
As stated in the article, CO2 behaves as an integral of the past temperatures. For the CO2 concentrations to decrease, the CO2 concentration derivative must be negative.
[CO2 (t)] = [CO2(t0)] + integral from time t0 to t of F(T, t)
where :
[CO2(t)] is the CO2 concentration at time t,
F(T,t) is a function of the temperature T and the time t (a quasi-linear function with respect to T anomalies seems to matches pretty well for the last 40 years of UAH global temperatures anomalies measurements).
t0 is an arbitrary initial time (for example the begining of the Mauna Loa [CO2] measurements).
For the [CO2(t)] to be smaller than [CO2(t0)], the integral from time t0 to t of F(T, t) must be negative and thus F(T,t) must be negative for a sufficient lasp of time between t0 and t, otherwise, [CO2(t)] will continue to increase even if the global T are decreasing (at least, untill a certain time laps is reached).
Isaac wrote:
“Which suggests that his theory is wrong.”
No – it suggests you did not read the paper.
See Section 6:
“Other factors such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc. may also cause significant increases in atmospheric CO2.”
You are conflating my position with that of others like Salby, Berry and Harde – Sect.8.
S. Anderson – a very good question, and one reason why I am agnostic on a related question.
Moderate global cooling occurred from ~1945 to 1977, when the Great Pacific Climate Shift occurred.
Mauna Loa atm. CO2 data exists starting in 1958, and during the time 1958-1977 atm. CO2 did not decline, but it only increased about 20ppm, from ~315 to ~335ppm (~1.0ppm/year) – the CO2 data is in the 3rd page of the Excel file.
From 1977 to 2019 atm. CO2 increased from ~335 ppm to ~410 ppm (~1.8ppm/year), much greater than the rate during the previous cooling period.
There are a few occasions during the cooling period when the 12-month CO2 delta declined – see the red negative numbers in column M of the CO2 data – but these are rare. This led me to write in Sect. 6:
“Other factors such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc. may also cause significant increases in atmospheric CO2.”
The causes of the increase in atm. CO2 do not have to be all natural or all human-made – it is most likely a combination of both factors, and trying to estimate the magnitudes is a great task – for others – see Harde 2019.
🙂
Thanks for your reply. Have I understood it correctly then that if no additional, man-made CO2 had been added to the atmosphere, a reduction in atmospheric levels would have been observed? The anthropogenic CO2 “masks” that reduction but does not contribute to climate change. Very interesting thoughts indeed.
S Anderson:
A minor change in your sentence – I think this would be “more or less” correct – it’s complicated:
“… if no additional, man-made CO2 had been added to the atmosphere, AND GLOBAL TEMPERATURES COOLED, a reduction in atmospheric levels would have been observed. The anthropogenic CO2 “masks” that reduction but does not contribute SIGNIFICANTLY to climate change.”
Further comment for S. Anderson:
“… if no additional, man-made CO2 had been added to the atmosphere, AND SUFFICIENT TIME PASSED, a reduction in atmospheric levels would have been observed. The anthropogenic CO2 “masks” that reduction but does not contribute SIGNIFICANTLY to climate change.”
Yes, you are absolutely correct. Thanks again for your kind replies and your efforts in this. I am humbled by the amount of work that has gone into your analyses.
The 1940-1970’s cooling is associated with increased industrial aerosols from war and post war boom. The Clean Air Acts of 1970’s which were enacted to eliminate smog reduced the industrial aerosols and warming resumed.
BTW – using carbon isotope analysis, the nearly 50% increase in atmospheric CO2 since the start of the Industrial revolution can be attributed to the burning of fossil fuels.
““Other factors such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc. may also cause significant increases in atmospheric CO2.”” There is no may, they did.
Jack – for the record, I disagree with you.
I don’t have the time to go into all the evidence – but there is more than sufficient data to disprove your first paragraph. See the Sato data in the Excel spreadsheet.
Your second paragraph is a matter of debate. See Harde 2019, referenced herein. I am agnostic on this point – that is why I wrote the subject sentence the way I did.
Have you read
Aerosol-driven droplet concentrations dominate coverage and water of oceanic low-level clouds
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6427/eaav0566
Structured Abstract
INTRODUCTION
Human-made emissions of particulate air pollution can offset part of the warming induced by emissions of greenhouse gases, by enhancing low-level clouds that reflect more solar radiation back to space. The aerosol particles have this effect because cloud droplets must condense on preexisting tiny particles in the same way as dew forms on cold objects; more aerosol particles from human-made emissions lead to larger numbers of smaller cloud droplets. One major pathway for low-level cloud enhancement is through the suppression of rain by reducing cloud droplet sizes. This leaves more water in the cloud for a longer time, thus increasing the cloud cover and water content and thereby reflecting more solar heat to space. This effect is strongest over the oceans, where moisture for sustaining low-level clouds over vast areas is abundant. Predicting global warming requires a quantitative understanding of how cloud cover and water content are affected by human-made aerosols.
Your Sato data is for for stratospheric aerosols, which are associated with volcanic eruptions, not industrial aerosols, which reside in the troposphere.
FYI Jack.
Aerosol data was fabricated “from thin air” to force the climate models to hindcast the cooling period from ~1945-1977.
This was model-cooking – one thing that the IPCC and its modeling minions were good at.
Here is a note from 2006 from Douglas Hoyt on the subject.
https://climateaudit.org/2006/07/19/whitfield-subcommittee-witnesses-to-be-questioned/
Douglas Hoyt
Posted Jul 22, 2006 at 5:37 AM | Permalink
Measurements of aerosols did not begin in the 1970s. There were measurements before then, but not so well organized. However, there were a number of pyrheliometric measurements made and it is possible to extract aerosol information from them by the method described in: Hoyt, D. V., 1979. The apparent atmospheric transmission using the pyrheliometric ratioing techniques. Appl. Optics, 18, 2530-2531.
The pyrheliometric ratioing technique is very insensitive to any changes in calibration of the instruments and very sensitive to aerosol changes.
Here are three papers using the technique:
Hoyt, D. V. and C. Frohlich, 1983. Atmospheric transmission at Davos, Switzerland, 1909-1979. Climatic Change, 5, 61-72.
Hoyt, D. V., C. P. Turner, and R. D. Evans, 1980. Trends in atmospheric transmission at three locations in the United States from 1940 to 1977. Mon. Wea. Rev., 108, 1430-1439.
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. Pyrheliometric and circumsolar sky radiation measurements by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1923 to 1954. Tellus, 31, 217-229.
In none of these studies were any long-term trends found in aerosols, although volcanic events show up quite clearly. There are other studies from Belgium, Ireland, and Hawaii that reach the same conclusions. It is significant that Davos shows no trend whereas the IPCC models show it in the area where the greatest changes in aerosols were occuring.
There are earlier aerosol studies by Hand and in other in Monthly Weather Review going back to the 1880s and these studies also show no trends.
So when McRae (#321) says: “I suspect that both the climate computer models and the input assumptions are not only inadequate, but in some cases key data is completely fabricated – for example, the alleged aerosol data that forces models to show cooling from ~1940 to ~1975. Isn’t it true that there was little or no quality aerosol data collected during 1940-1975, and the modelers simply invented data to force their models to history-match; then they claimed that their models actually reproduced past climate change quite well; and then they claimed they could therefore understand climate systems well enough to confidently predict future catastrophic warming?”, he close to the truth.
“Sulfur trapped in the Greenland Ice Sheet records the presence of reflective sulfate aerosols downwind of the United States and Canada. Emissions of the pollutants that form sulfate aerosols rose sharply in the United States and Europe during and after World War II. This rise may be responsible for the Northern Hemisphere cooling from 1940–1970. By the 1980s, oil embargos and environmental controls had reduced sulfate pollution in North America, but carbon dioxide continued to build up in the atmosphere. ”
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GISSTemperature/giss_temperature4.php
Jack Dale,
I agree with Allan on this topic: while some human induced aerosols have a cooling effect (SO2), others have a warming effect (brown/black soot), so even the sign of the aerosol effect is unsure. What is sure is that the modellers used cooling aerosols to explain the 1945-1975 slight cooling with increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
The problem is that there was a tremendous reduction in SO2 emissions in the western world, (but a tremendous increase in S.E. Asia), that had no measurable effect on the areas with the highest influence of the SO2 reduction, as implied by climate models: near the Finnish – Russian border for the West European industry. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/aerosols.html
That one can (ab)use aerosols to fit the past is one of the (too) many control knobs in climate models which can be used to fit the past, but that doesn’t imply that the future will follow the same path. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/oxford.html
1. How come the Arctic cooled far faster than any other region?
2. Aerosols are short-lived in the atmosphere . They are not well mixed in the atmosphere. The climate effect of Aerosols, therefore, is “regionally specific”. There is no obvious cooling signal in the industrial mid-latitude regions.
I predict ‘no cooling’ as the keepers of temperature records will ensure that these records continue to move towards the computer model outputs. UAH will probably be the sole exception. Not enough is being done to verify that the global warming ‘observed’ is possibly caused by higher Tmin due to the urban heat island effect and homogenization (reducing past temperatures). All the arguments about the human emissions of CO2 effect are in vain until we have a reliable temperature record with proper uncertainty ranges.
Hi John,
I use UAH LT temperatures ~exclusively after 1979 – kudos to John Christy and Roy Spencer – great guys.
Thank you. If I hadn’t already resigned from APEGA, I would now, because they caved to the green blob.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for reminding me – I resigned from APEGA this morning.
Best, Allan
_______________________________________
From: Allan MacRae
Sent: June-16-19 4:42 AM
To: APEGA Membership
Subject: I have chosen to resign my professional membership in APEGA
To: APEGA Membership Team.
I have chosen to resign my professional membership in the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA), Member Number 24355, after more than four decades.
I am resigning from APEGA because, in my opinion, it is no longer professional or credible. I suggest that APEGA Management and Council have become corrupted by extremist elements, such that APEGA is no longer worthy of its status as a self-governing professional organization.
Specifically, APEGA Executive and Council have taken sides in the fractious debate in favour of global warming and climate change extremism, when they should, at a minimum, have remained carefully neutral.
I wrote to APEGA President George Eynon, P.Geo., on 14June2019 to try to resolve this matter, but APEGA has formally declined to respond. Accordingly, I will no longer be associated with APEGA.
Yours truly, Allan MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng.
Calgary
Sadly, this post does not tell anything new or proves anything. It has been well known for all climate scientists for decades that CO2 lags temperatures in the historical records.
This means that temperature increase causes higher CO2 level. The logical fault in this post is that it takes this fact as proof that CO2 cannot be a cause of temperature rise.
In fact, both are true. Rise in atmospheric level of CO2 causes temperature rise; and rise in temperatures causes rise in atmospheric CO2 content. This is called positive feedback.
Rise in atmospheric water vapor with temperatures is another source of positive feedback
Without positive feedback a doubling of CO2 level would cause about 1-degree Celsius rise in the average global temperature. With the feedback the temperature is estimated to rise between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees.
/Jan
Jan wrote:
“Sadly, this post does not tell anything new or proves anything. It has been well known for all climate scientists for decades that CO2 lags temperatures in the historical records.”
False and misleading – the observations in Sections 1a and 1b, Figures 1a and 1b were new in Jan2008.
The ~~800-year lag of CO2 lag after temperature was known from the ice core record – a much longer time scale..
“Without positive feedback a doubling of CO2 level would cause about 1-degree Celsius rise in the average global temperature. With the feedback the temperature is estimated to rise between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees.”
This is the IPCC mantra – it is false. There is NO credible evidence that climate sensitivity is as high as 4.5C – NONE – and ample evidence it is ~1C and less – see my Section 11 – for example, Christy & McNider (2017) and Lewis & Curry (2018).
CO2 rise that follow temperature rise is known bout from ice core records, and from newer data as well. It is also well-known from Henry’s law.
The data from 2008 only confirm well known facts.
Concerning the strength of feedback, there have been produced tons of reports on this issue, and some of them claim as much as 6-degree Celsius sensibility, but most confirm a level between 1.5 and 4.5 C.
To blatantly claim that there is no evidence at all for sensitivity as high as 4.5 C, is to dismiss many scientific reports from reputed scientists. Why should we take your word for that?
/Jan
Jan wrote:
“Why should we take your word for that?”
Now you are being disingenuous – I quoted above:
“Section 11 – for example, Christy & McNider (2017) and Lewis & Curry (2018)”
Note that both these climate sensitivity estimates of ~1C/(2*CO2) are the UPPER BOUND estimates, made by assuming that ALL the observed warming is caused by increasing CO2. Actual values of climate sensitivity are lower than 1C/doubling and probably much lower.
Sorry for missing your quote Allan. That was not intentional.
Yes, you have one source supporting your claim, but in AR5 and other places you find many going in the other direction.
I still think that we cannot just dismiss a lot of reports from reputed scientists because we have one source for the opposite.
Jan – AR5 etc are based on computer models that greatly over-predict warming. Their models simply do not work.
Every scary prediction by the global warming alarmists has failed to materialize – they have a perfectly negative predictive track record. Their conclusions are alarmist nonsense.
The warmists, including the IPCC, have negative credibility – nobody should believe them.
Can you please explain how the Ice ages occur when CO2 has increased more than 10 fold above todays values?
“I still think that we cannot just dismiss a lot of reports from reputed scientists because we have one source for the opposite.”
Should we perhaps then reevaluate this work because we cannot dismiss so many objections from reputed (sic) scientists?
“If I were wrong, it would only take one.”
– Albert Einstein
I was surprised to find that Henry’s Law, the diffusion of a gas in a liquid, was never mentioned in the article. Warm a can of Coke up and watch what happens. CO2 flys out of it. Same for the oceans.
CO2: Please see my conversation with Ferdinand below.
“There is no question that vegetation is a dominant factor – that the observed phenomenon is not just Henry’s Law.”
Rest assured that I am familiar with Henry’s Law – that is why we like our beer cold – it tastes better, and it does not go flat. We have much to thank Henry for.
With all those positive feedbacks, I presume we have been all boiling since the period when the CO2 concentration was 2000 ppm … oh wait, we are now in a glaciation period, aren’t we ?
You have to go about 200 million years years back to find 2000 ppm. The Sun was weaker then, and the Earth was warmer.
Be aware that positive feedback is not the same as runaway effect. We think that the positive feedback is between 0 and 1, runaway occur if the feedback is above 1.
/Jan
What about 6000ppm?
What is your excuse for that?
And you know the Sun was weaker because the Earth was cooler with higher CO2…. nice circular reasoning
Jan:
You say: “Rise in atmospheric water vapor with temperature is another source of positive feedback “.
I think you are wrong here. If you look at the thermodynamic behaviour of water as a whole you will find that the net feedback is negative.
It is true that without phase change the feedback is positive; but where phase change takes place the feedback is strongly negative.
For every kilogram of water evaporated some 680 WattHrs of energy are pumped up into the atmosphere and beyond due to the molecular buoyancy of the vapor which is created by the absorption of radiation at CONSTANT temperature which negates the warming effect.
It is also interesting to note that the temperature at which this phase change takes place is determined by the prevailing pressure which in turn is the result of gravity. Thus it is a very stable situation with little chance of the earth overheating to levels beyond which life can cope.
In trite terms: IMO the Earth sweats to keep cool, just like you and I. With water providing the thermostatic process.
Thank you Alasdair, you correctly points to one factor which contribute in the other direction.
How all the factors add up in the end is very complicated. That is the reason why the climate sensitivity is so uncertain.
/Jan
Brilliant Alan. My great appreciation. It comprehensively sums up the enormity of the problem. Never mind the niggles.
However; translating this into a form which meets the attention span of the average internet surfer boggles the mind.
Yes Alasdair,
The great American philosopher and statistician George Carlin explained it thus:
“Think of how stupid the average person is; and then realize half of them are stupider than that!” 🙂
This lack of knowledge in the vast majority of people is indeed a serious problem, so we rely on engineers to honour their oath and advise on crucial decisions within the energy sector. Yet, it seems we have an ethical crisis with engineers on this highly politicized and financialized subject.
If people within the judicial system lack the ability to understand the complexities of this subject matter and our government agents are clueless, how then will this situation be resolved?