A new paper in HEALTH PHYSICS asks this question.
World Atmospheric CO2, Its 14C Specific Activity, Non-fossil Component, Anthropogenic Fossil Component, and Emissions (1750–2018)
Skrable, Kenneth; Chabot, George; French, Clayton1
1University of Massachusetts Lowell, 1 University Avenue, Lowell, MA 01854.
Health Physics: February 2022 – Volume 122 – Issue 2 – p 291-305
doi: 10.1097/HP.0000000000001485
Abstract
After 1750 and the onset of the industrial revolution, the anthropogenic fossil component and the non-fossil component in the total atmospheric CO2 concentration, C(t), began to increase. Despite the lack of knowledge of these two components, claims that all or most of the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been due to the anthropogenic fossil component have continued since they began in 1960 with “Keeling Curve: Increase in CO2 from burning fossil fuel.” Data and plots of annual anthropogenic fossil CO2 emissions and concentrations, C(t), published by the Energy Information Administration, are expanded in this paper. Additions include annual mean values in 1750 through 2018 of the 14C specific activity, concentrations of the two components, and their changes from values in 1750. The specific activity of 14C in the atmosphere gets reduced by a dilution effect when fossil CO2, which is devoid of 14C, enters the atmosphere. We have used the results of this effect to quantify the two components. All results covering the period from 1750 through 2018 are listed in a table and plotted in figures. These results negate claims that the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been dominated by the increase of the anthropogenic fossil component. We determined that in 2018, atmospheric anthropogenic fossil CO2 represented 23% of the total emissions since 1750 with the remaining 77% in the exchange reservoirs. Our results show that the percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming.
INTRODUCTION
At an elapsed time of t years since 1750 (the start of the industrial revolution with the onset of the use of fossil fuels in vehicles and power plants), atmospheric CO2 concentrations, C(t), increased along with increases in temperatures. Atmospheric measurements of C(t) were not available until 1958 at the Mauna Loa, HI, observatory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has provided the longest record of atmospheric measurements of the total CO2 initiated by Charles Keeling in 1958 at the Mauna Loa observatory (Keeling 1960). Based on our knowledge, the anthropogenic fossil component, CF(t), and non-fossil component, CNF(t), in C(t) have never been estimated by NOAA at its observatories or at any other observatory from atmospheric measurements of CO2. Despite the lack of knowledge of the components of C(t), claims have been made in the scientific literature (CSIRO 2014; Rubino et al. 2013, 2019) that all or most of the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been due to the anthropogenic fossil component, CF(t).
Other atmospheric measurements of C(t) began in 2003 at the NOAA observatory in Niwot Ridge, including measurements of the three isotopes of carbon: 12C, 13C, and 14C. Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon having a half-life of 5,730 y. Carbon-14 atoms are produced in the atmosphere by interactions of cosmic rays, and they have reached an essentially constant steady state activity, i.e., disintegration rate, in the total world environment (Eisenbud and Gesell 1997). The age of fossil fuels is much longer than the 5,730 y half-life of the 14C radioactive isotope; consequently, fossil fuels are devoid of the 14C isotope. When the anthropogenic fossil component of CO2 is released to the atmosphere, the specific activity of 14C,S(t) in C(t), decreases. The units of S(t) used in this paper are disintegrations per minute per gram of carbon abbreviated as dpm (gC)−1, the common units used in 14C dating. The ratio RS13 of the (13C/12C) atoms and the ratio RS14 of the (14C/12C) atoms at the Niwot Ridge observatory are used to calculate two statistics designated respectively in this paper as d13C and D14C, both of which are said to decrease when the anthropogenic fossil component, CF(t), increases in the atmosphere. As discussed later in Table 1, values of the annual mean specific activity, S(t), are calculated in this paper from annual mean values of the D14C statistic.
Both the d13C and D14C statistics represent 1,000 times the relative deviations of their respective (13C/12C) and (14C /12C) atom ratios from those of a 1950 standard (Karlen et al. 1964) when expressed in per mil, given by the symbol ‰. This magnification increases their underlying relative deviations and slopes in plots by a factor 1,000. While such amplification techniques often are useful for displaying very small changes in quantities of interest, the interpretation of such magnified changes must be attended with some care. In the cases of concern here, the resultant steep slopes in plots likely have led persons throughout the world to conclude that the anthropogenic component has dominated the increase of CO2 and caused global warming. We believe that both statistics have been misused to validate the anthropogenic fossil component, CF(t), as the major cause of the increase of C(t).
Global carbon cycle and its effect on CO2 quantities
The global carbon cycle for CO2 is described by the Energy Information Administration (EIA 2020). Natural, two-way exchanges of CO2 occur between the atmosphere and its two exchange reservoirs, the oceans and terrestrial biosphere. Two-way exchanges with the atmosphere also occur from changes in land use. The ocean is the largest reservoir of CO2, and it contains 50 times that for the atmosphere and 19 times that for the terrestrial biosphere (Water Encyclopedia 2005). All of the two way exchanges are considered in this paper to be comprised of both the non-fossil component and the anthropogenic fossil component. Annual changes, DCNF(t) in CNF(t), in the atmosphere relative to the 1750 initial value, C(0), can be positive or negative depending on the net flow of CO2 between the atmosphere and its exchange reservoirs as well as on land use changes. A one-way pathway of anthropogenic fossil CO2 into the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion and industrial fuel processes since 1750 is represented by annual emissions, DE(t), of anthropogenic fossil CO2 to the atmosphere, which have been increasing each year since 1750. These emissions over time t result in increasing annual mean anthropogenic fossil concentrations, CF(t), that result in specific activities, S(t), of 14C in C(t) that are increasingly lower than the initial value, S(0). This dilution of S(0) in C(0) in 1750 by the presence of CF(t) in C(t) corresponds to what is described as the Suess effect (Suess et al. 1967).
Read the full unrestricted paper here.
Well, warming does precede CO2 level rises, so unless one imagines some sort of precognition by Gaia of what hadn’t happened yet, CO2 is unlikely to be the cause of the warming.
“…warming does precede CO2 level rises”
Correct, as proved in my January 2008 paper – maligned and ignored.
CARBON DIOXIDE IS NOT THE PRIMARY CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING, THE FUTURE CAN NOT CAUSE THE PAST
By Allan M.R. MacRae, January 2008
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/07/carbon-cycle/#comment-3264363
[excerpt]
Atmospheric CO2 changes lag temperature changes at all measured time scales. (MacRae, 2008). Humlum et al (2013) confirmed this conclusion.
Kuo et al (1990) made similar observations in the journal Nature, but have been studiously ignored.
IF CO2 is a significant driver of global temperature, CO2 changes would lead temperature changes but they do NOT – CO2 changes lag temperature changes.
Think about that:
Kuo was correct in 1990, and for 31 years climate science has ignored that conclusion and has been going backwards!
Climate Sensitivity (CS) to CO2 is a fiction – so small, if it even exists, it is practically irrelevant.
“The future cannot cause the past.” Here is the proof, from my 2008 paper:
https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah6/from:1979/scale:0.18/offset:0.17
In the modern data record, the lag of atmospheric CO2 changes after atmospheric temperature changes is ~9 months. This is an absolute disproof of the CAGW hypothesis, which states that increasing CO2 drives temperature.
“The future cannot cause the past.”
In my 2019 paper below, I explained why the lag is ~9 months – it is basic calculus, the 90 degree (1/4 cycle) lag of the derivative and its integral, which is the ~3 year ENSO period.
My 2008 paper remains very important. My 2008 conclusion was confirmed and expanded by Humlum et al in 2013, for which I am grateful.
All warmists and most skeptics argue about the magnitude of climate sensitivity to increasing CO2, and whether the resulting CO2-driven global warming will be hot and dangerous or warm and beneficial. Both groups are probably wrong.
There is a high probability that the mainstream climate debate about the magnitude of CS is wrong – a waste of decades of vital time, tens of trillions of dollars of green energy nonsense and millions of lives. Vital energy systems have been compromised, damaged with intermittent, unreliable wind and solar generation – a debacle.
It is important to note that Global Cooling is happening now, even as CO2 concentration increases – another disproof of the global warming fraud.
Cheap abundant reliable energy is the lifeblood of humanity – it IS that simple. The green sabotage of our vital energy systems, whether innocent or deliberate, has cost lives and could cost very many more.
I enjoy asking Alarmist idiots why nothing catastrophic ever happened in the 99.5% of Earth’s history when CO2 levels were above that of today.
Because there were no humans to become scared of nothing.
Well there were a few mass extinctions, during past periods of high CO2. But high CO2 did not cause the extinctions, the biosphere flourished for hundreds of millions of years under high CO2. Mass extinctions were caused by additional phenomena. The biggest mass extinction was the end Permian one, warmists instinctively without evidence claim this was from CO2 warming. Although the Siberian flood basalt was happening around that time, precise research has shown the main mass extinction happened during a glaciation – an ice age lasting about 80,000 years (pretty good resolution for 252 Mya). Ice ages are easy to detect from sea level regression:
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep43630
Yes, you said what I was thinking… Plus 1 for you!
The units on the y axis are ppm per month. The 12 month moving mean of the derivative [(y2+…y13)/12 – (y1+…y12)/12] is the same as the difference between the same months of consecutive years, divided by 12. A jump of 0.2 ppm per month in the plot is the same as a difference between the first month and the 13th of 2.4 ppm. OCO –3 supposed to be measuring the global average to one ppm, or a difference to 1.4 ppm.
Its not a perfect fit but I would have been delighted to see such good results from a bench experiment. Forked out on a better waterbath once only to discover that it was the room’s airconditioning that was creating a wave with an amplitude that was 20% of the plot of the derivative. This guy was probably a better scientist than me – and found time to ski and surf?
As I understand it radiation from CO2 cannot penetrade deeper than the ocean surface. So it cannot warm the ocean deeper than that surface. If it cannot warm the oceans it cannot change the climate. Only the Sun can warm the Oceans (from above) so or the sun has gotten ‘stronger’ or/and the magnetic field protecting us from the solar wind has become weaker or/and less ozone makes it easier for UV to reach the surface.
I think you mean “radiation from infrared” – heat radiation comes both from the Sun… let me rephrase, all heat originally comes from the Sun, along with visible and ultraviolet frequencies, which then warm up the atmosphere and land and that thin layer of water where IR can effect. Some scientists like to pretend that the atmosphere is a separate independent source of IR to simplify the math, physics and computer models but imho I think that will result in flawed understanding and models that careen out of control. If CO2 is still a significant ir absorber, after taking into account the greater affect of water vapour, then IR coming in from the Sun will increasingly be absorbed and re-emitted back into space before it warm up air, land, and sea. However the other frequencies get through, are absorbed by air, land and sea at various levels and get converted into heat which air, land and sea emit – but still ultimately dependent on what came in. So that’s why the idea of air or clouds or the sea being treated as a separate source bugs me. Thank you for letting me vent.
This is interesting. At the peak frequency of outgoing radiation, is there more incoming radiation from the sun?
No, there is very little direct solar radiation at wavelengths greater than 4um.
Not according to this
A chart that displays what, exactly?
Looks like the arc representing Earth has Earth as a black body at around 300 Kelvin.
Does the Y axis represent altitude? Or latitude? or what exactly?
The energy will either be absorbed or reflected. Then it gets complicated.
If you’re at the equator, it probably causes more water to evaporate. Since water vapor is lighter than air, that causes more convection, and that does affect the climate.
Jim Steele has done an excellent series of WUWT stories outlining some of the physics behind the climate. Here’s a link to part 3.
We can’t get away with arguing that CO2 doesn’t affect the climate in any way. It probably has some effects. However, most people here believe that any warming that extra CO2 might cause will be small and beneficial. Plus, extra CO2 is causing significant greening and that probably has some effect on the climate. 🙂
CO2 has a huge effect on the climate because without CO2 there would be no plants (and no us) and plants effect the water cycle, which effects the climate. There would be 15% less atmospheric water vapor, so fewer clouds and a reduced greenhouse effect. Plants and plankton also produce cloud nucleating particles, so still fewer clouds. The world would be colder, or maybe hotter, and drier.
Please learn the difference between “effect” and “affect”.
In this case either spelling could be right and the grammar would be correct.
Please explain? Effect is not a verb.
Most certainly is a verb, and used incorrectly here. You can effect change, which is to say cause something to change, or you can affect change which is to say change the way change is occuring in something. Simple right? So you can affect climate change but not effect it because a changing climate is the normal state–it doesn’t start and stop, it just cycles. Same with the water cycle…effecting it is oxymoronic since it is a cycle, you can only affect it.
According Merriam-Webster it can be a verb:
Effect is a verb when it means it causes something to come about or to exist. The sun effects the water cycle. The water cycle might effect climate, I don’t know. But I don’t think plants effect the water cycle.
Effect is a noun, and he used it as a synonym for result, which is also a noun.
Thanks for causing a distraction from what he was trying to get across, nothing like a nitpicker for spoiling a serious discussion.
Edit – this is weird, must be late, but when I originally responded I thought it was my comment in question, but Thomas was the writer.
Radiation from CO2 is longwave. As is radiation from water vapor. It’s not allowed to penetrate the oceans according to you. CO2 can make the atmosphere warmer than it otherwise would be. Can the atmosphere make the oceans warmer or cooler? Can it impact their temperature based on it own temperature?
No, the atmosphere cannot make the oceans warmer because the specific heat content of air is much, much lower than that of water, and the total heat capacity of the atmosphere is about 1/1000th that of the oceans. If perchance there was a long-term average temp rise of 1 deg in the air, the oceans would rise by 0.001 deg at the very most, assuming 100% efficiency in energy transfer.
The continents and the oceans absorb sunlight, heat up, and then pass this heat onto the atmosphere via conduction and then convection. The great myth is that it is the other way around, something that simply cannot happen because the atmosphere has such a tiny heat content by comparison.
“If perchance there was a long-term average temp rise of 1 deg in the air, the oceans would rise by 0.001 deg at the very most…”
When the temperature in Anchorage drops 15 C, that can cause the ice to form. Nearby bodies of water can form ice. Meaning the surface temperature of them has dropped about 2 C. This does not follow your 1000 to 1 ratio above. We measure sea surface temperatures. See: GMST.
I agree, the oceans will take a very long time to warm. But to get surface water to warm 1 C doesn’t seem that big of a deal. Once a week I take surface temperature readings on my lake. Went from 2 C to about 28 C and back.
A vacuum can keep things warm. Really. I don’t see that specific heat content is relevant. Explain goose down. If I put that on a warm pool, what happens? What if I put in on your warm body?
The ocean surfaces are where it all happens. Massive energy move through them into the atmosphere. If you don’t understand how that works at the cartoon level, it’s going to be rough.
Cartoons are not reality.
Sea surface water can and does irradiate away warmth. Evaporation into cold Arctic air rapidly lowers temperatures.
Lake currents and winds cause water movement that easily affect water surface temperatures.
How does a blanket keep you warmer?
Answer: by slowing the loss of heat your body makes.
The atmosphere can act in this manner, keeping both oceans and land warmer than they would be without an atmosphere, by slowing the escape of heat from Earth’s surface out to space.
It discredits the anti-CAGW stance when well-meaning writers here claim the air cannot affect the warmth of the water and land below and cannot therefore effect a greenhouse-like warming.
The important science here is to separate out the effects of CO2 and secondary feedbacks to assess whether rising CO2 is a threat of any likely climate catastrophe (which I think it is not.).
However, the IR that doesn’t penetrate deeply is absorbed at the surface. Once absorbed, it causes a rise in temperature, which can then be communicated downward by conduction. Thus, it does “warm the ocean deeper than that surface.”
It can be communicated? As in “Yoohoo, Yeh, you down there”, passing on Covid or giving out a communal wafer?
This part is important. How is the heat energy transferred so efficiently so that 90% of downwelling radiation goes into the deep oceans. You can’t substitute that explanation with a phrase that has no physical meaning.
I haven’t done the experiment myself, but I’m told that trying to warm up pool of water with an IR source is futile unless evaporation is hindered. Wave action can cause some of the warmer extra heat to be churned (?) into the bulk water below the surface but 90% seems to be a value used to fit the theory.
I think that is backwards. Evaporation will create a thin layer of air that is saturated with water vapor, which will want to rise slowly, but still impede the surface evaporation rate. On the other hand, if there is a breeze, then the saturated layer will be removed and transported upwards with turbulent flow, encouraging more evaporation as the WV partial pressure is reduced. However, we aren’t dealing with a binary situation of evaporation or no evaporation. It is the relative rates of evaporation and water vapor removal that are important.
@Clyde Spencer “Evaporation will create a thin layer of air that is saturated with water vapor”
Unfortunate for your hypothesis, water vapor makes the air lighter since a mole of H2O weighs less than a mole of dry air. This makes that thin layer want to go up and not stay near the surface. That is why storms normally develop where the ocean SST is warm. The upwelling of wet air powers the storm.
You might want to work on expanding your vocabulary.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/communicate
You can use poetic license, if you like, but its bad for communication of ideas.
It wasn’t poetic license. “Conduct” was the very first synonym (equivalent word) provided. I find it difficult to write in only common, monosyllabic words. One has to write so many more words to convey complex ideas when restricted to simple words.
“…I’m told that trying to warm up pool of water with an IR source is futile unless evaporation is hindered.”
What is a non-IR source? Direct contact I suppose. How does the lake out my back door warm during the Spring and Summer? What causes it to ice over around December and stay that way through April usually? It is the atmosphere and that temperature varies. Sunlight has a substantial effect. But it’s not the only thing. If the atmosphere never dropped below 0.0 C it would never freeze. But it does. If I moved the lake to Cuba, it would never freeze. My lake reacts to the temperature of the atmosphere. Its temperature is effected without out a doubt by the temperature of the atmosphere. If the atmosphere warms and all other things remain constant, oceans will take up more joules from the atmosphere. The net flow will still be out of the oceans, but it will decrease because of a warmed atmosphere.
Wrong. Look at the heat content of the air versus that of the lake. It is tiny. Heating is due to the direct sunlight being absorbed by water. Virtually nothing with the atmosphere.
The air pressure at the surface of the lake keeps my body from exploding as it might in low earth orbit. That’s a lot of air. The water pressure at the bottom of the lake isn’t too much. It’s 8 feet deep on average. I don’t think the heat content is that different.
There’s no difference for one week of minus 15.0 C atmospheric temperatures and one week of 30.0 C temperatures to the temperature of the lake you are suggesting. Direst sunlight is important. So is the output of the lake. Insulation isn’t that difficult. Saying that it’s only direct sunlight seem similar to flat earther rathole B.S.
I don’t think that you have to worry about your body exploding, unless your name is Arnold. Now, if you found yourself in low Earth orbit without a space suit you might have to be concerned about getting the bends and surficial veins bleeding, but I don’t think you would actually “explode.” You might feel some distress in your large intestine if you ate beans before your being teleported to LEO.
“What is a non-IR source?”
Sunlight? The shorter wavelengths, that is.
At 4 C, fresh water will get less dense as it cools, so you don’t get convection and the water becomes warmer with depth. Conduction of heat and warming from thermal radiation coming from the lower depths is poor, so without convection, that surface cools very rapidly at night and melts with the sunrise, unless thick and white enough to reflect most of the little sunlight getting through. This is why it hangs around til April. Even very warm air only slowly warms the ice, but air still above 0 C can keep the ice from forming.
And the air being just slightly below 0 C is not enough for anything more than a puddle. Its usually well below zero with a wind blowing because it requires about the same amount of heat loss to freeze a gram 0 C water as it takes to cool 1 g by 80 C, to get thick enough ice to not melt away during the day.
Your Cuba example is poor. While conduction of heat from the depths of a lake is poor, its still occurs and Cuban lakes are much warmer than the lakes in northern US. Florida gets very big cold snaps but barely a pond gets a covering of ice. Even Texas only got some ice forming on lakes after 10 days of temperatures getting down to as much as -20 C.
“At 4 C, fresh water will get less dense as it cools…”
It cools to what? The bottom of the lake? No. To the atmosphere. It cools faster to a colder atmosphere. You can’t have things cooling to the atmosphere without regard to the atmosphere’s temperature. Whether it’s minus 15 C or 30 C matters. CO2 contributes to the atmosphere’s temperature. It’s pretty simple. There isn’t a however, or magic or some superpower to change that.
“How is the heat energy transferred so efficiently so that 90% of downwelling radiation goes into the deep oceans.”
90% of the global increase goes into the oceans according to the SkS heroes. Water is the perfect medium for absorbing, storing and transfering joules. We use it to cool and heat all the time. It is the reason we are here and arguing while living an easy life. Water has protected us for hundreds of millions of years as we evolved to right now. That it all goes into the deep ocean isn’t even the claim. Most of it is within the top 500 meters I suppose. The deep oceans are poorly measured. Water hanging onto joules and stealing from them from the atmosphere against your wishes is a good thing for now. While that shows up to some extent in the SSTs, oceans moderate a gain in the GMST. CO2 so slams joules into the ocean, the GMST just wanders around, barely gaining and ruining the alarmists claims of larger GMST rises. The 90% you bring up, is the SkS excuse as to why we aren’t burning up. And CO2, made that happen, by stuffing joules into the oceans.
I don’t personally subscribe to the idea that the ‘missing’ heat is hiding in the deep oceans.
No one with knowledge and common sense ascribes to such a preposterous claim; e.g., Lindzen.
That concept was floated when alarmists were desperate for an explanation for where their global warming was hiding.
Remember that ocean thermoclines persists even though there t is a quite significant temperature difference between the layers.
While I don’t “know” and the subject has not been discussed or argued in depth in anything I’ve read in the past several years or so, when it was a hot topic, a number of controlled experiments were described, and the results reported, that no temperature change occurred below the water’s skin surface over an extended time exposure. Increased evaporation was reported as the only result. Of course all controlled experiments used artificial IR sources, e.e. heat lamps, and, one presumes, thought I don’t recall what was written, excludes sun light to avoid that confounding factor.
Then the activists’ Skeptical Science blog reported doing an experiment that produced a very tiny temperature increase right below the surface. Like many of their ilk, they declined to share either their data or their experimental procedure so that no one would be able to replicate or falsify their claim.
Others postulate that wave mixing must move some of the surface heat downward. That might be logical but I’ve seen nothing that offers real evidence that IR upon the water results in anything other than an increase in evaporation commensurate with the amount of IR energy directed at the surface.
AndyHce
Nearly ten years ago now I had a paper published by Witpress that discussed this issue.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/11/a-comparison-of-the-efficacy-of-greenhouse-gas-forcing-and-solar-forcing/
The paper included an experiment that showed IR warming of water was extremely limited when the water body is free to evaporate.
My hypothesis was that this must mean that CO2 forcing efficacy would be significantly lower than solar forcing efficacy.
The experiment;
6.1 Konrad: Empirical test of ocean cooling and back radiation theoryWhat follows is an edited version of the Konrad experiment design, results, comment and interpretation. I would encourage others to conduct similar experiments to check these results. The results appear to show the measurable difference between reflecting Long Wave Infrared Radiation (LWIR) back to warm water when it is free to evaporatively cool and when it can only cool through conduction and radiation.
6.1.1 Equipment
· Two identical probe type digital thermometers with 0.1 degree resolution
· Two identical insulated water containers. I used rectangular 200ml Tupperware style containers, insulated on their base and sides with foil and Styrofoam. I cut away the clip on rim from each lid to create a frame to clip down cling film for Test B of the experiment.
· One IR reflector. I used an A4 sheet of 10mm Styrofoam with aluminum foil attached with spray adhesive.
· One IR window. I built an A4 size “picture frame” of 10mm square balsa wood strips and stretched cling film over it.
· One 1 litre measuring jug
· Two small identical computer fans. I used Suron 50mm centrifugal blowers powered by a 6v gel cell battery
6.1.2 Method
· Position probe thermometers in identical positions in both water containers. I placed the tips 10mm below the water line by drilling force fit holes in the sides of the containers.
· Position IR reflector and IR window 50mm above either water container. You may need to build two Styrofoam side walls, but air must be free to
· Move over the surface of the water. (The use of the IR window is to ensure that air flow is similar over each water container.)
· Position the computer fans to blow across the water surface of each container, but do not turn on.
· Fill jug with warm water, stir, then fill each water container from the bucket. I used water around 40C as the ceiling was around 18C not a 3k sky.
· When an equal amount of water is in each container, turn on the computer fans.
· Observe the temperature change over time for each tank. Less than half an hour both tanks cool at the same rate (TEST A).
· Now the important bit – Repeat the experiment, but this time lay a small sheet of cling wrap on the surface of the water in each water tank. This allows cooling through radiation and conduction but prevents evaporation. You do not need the computer fans on in this test. You should be able to observe that while both containers cool slower than before, water under the IR reflector cools slowest (TEST B).
6.1.3 InterpretationIn TEST A the water cools more quickly, however the two water containers temperatures remain very close to each other over time. This indicates that backscattered LWIR has a very limited effect on the rate of cooling for water when it is free to evaporatively cool.
In TEST B both water containers cool more slowly than Test A, but a divergence in temperature between the two water containers is readily detectable. The container under the foil sky cools more slowly than that under the cling wrap sky. This indicates that backscattered LWIR from a warm material can slow the rate at which that material cools, if radiation and conduction are the only methods for cooling.
Test A represents the evaporative cooling conditions in the real oceans. . From what I have observed, backscattered LWIR can slow the rate at which substances cool. However in the case of liquid water that is free to cool evaporatively this effect is dramatically reduced. It would appear that including the oceans in the percentage of Earth’s surface that could be affected by backscattered LWIR may be a serious error. Earth’s oceans cover 71% of the planet’s surface. If backscattered LWIR cannot measurably affect liquid water temperature, then E(GHG) is likely to be considerably lower than E(Solar).
There you go! Incontrovertible proof that it is impossible for natural pools of water to warm.
I remember as a teenager going camping with my parents at Lake Shasta (CA) in July. It was about 100 deg F every day. I went swimming off the dock in very comfortable water, perhaps 80 deg F. For some unknown reason I decided to dive down into the deep water. That was a mistake. When I got down about six feet, I passed through a thermocline into water that was about 55 degrees, and suffered the dreaded ‘cojones constriction syndrome.’ Clearly the surface water had been warmed, probably by a mixture of conduction and absorption of sunlight, which included IR and visible light. I do remember that the air was very dry; leaving a slice of bread out of the wrapper would quickly turn it into something resembling white toast. So, I don’t think that the evaporation rate was anything like in Mississippi.
sks conducting a valid legitimate science experiment?
That is a classic example of an oxymoron.
Without defining mostly, probably, significant or any other squishy adjective that one could come up with, it looks like the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the preindustrial era is probably due to human activity. You can do a search of world production of coal, petroleum, natural gas and manufacture of cement and add it all up. Then do a calculation of atmospheric pressure, area of the globe and chemistry of the components to come up with pretty close to the mostly accepted increase.
But then you come across the above post from Tom Halla (Why is he often first to post?) where he says right off the bat:
______________________________________
“Well, warming does precede CO2 level rises,…”
______________________________________
Yes, it has often been pointed out that Al Gore’s famous graph from his famous movie where he lifts his famous self on a hydraulic “contraption” to point out that the shape of the temperature and carbon dioxide concentration time line on his said famous graph almost perfectly match except that he famously fails to note that warming precedes CO2 by about 800 years.
And what happened 800 years ago in 1222? Even the somewhat unreliable Wikipedia says the Medieval Warm Period “lasted from 950 to 1250.” Soooo, it just could be that 800 year lag that we are looking at.
It could be that the ocean currents locally absorb the CO2 as they cool, followed hundreds of years later by the release of that CO2 as the old waters resurface due to the natural overturning of the bulk ocean basins….This would likely mean relatively large planetary CO2 changes as continental drift changes global ocean current patterns….I just came up with this hypothesis just now, over my morning coffee…take it for what it’s worth…thanks to Steve Case for causing mental stimulation….
Almost certainly true. And, it explains the 800 year lag in CO2 as CO2-rich bottom water comes to the surface and outgases in an environment that is warmer than existed when the CO2 was dissolved at the poles.
First check on hypothesis….yes, it does seem, say, the Gulf Stream, as it heads North and cools down from Gulf of Mexico to Arctic Ocean temperature, could absorb a lot of CO2 as it cools. It would take a while to asses how other currents behave….but as long as the Earth rotates at current ocean density gradient, the colder deep water is generally forced towards the equator, where it finally has no choice but to rise and get warmed by the Sun, before its next trip back to its polar origin.
2nd check on hypothesis….from graph, say 1.5 gms/Kg. CO2 absorbed into Gulf Stream flow of 40 million Cu.M/sec as it cools, assuming it has sufficient contact with the air…works out to possibly up to 1.9 Gigatons of CO2 per year absorbed by Gulf Stream…compared to 35 Gigatons annual human emissions and 3200 Gigatons in the atmosphere…..maybe 4 times that for all planet’s cooling currents, but also maybe only 25% “efficient”…so 7.5 Gigatons total max possible for the oceans to absorb….very lunchbag calcs…missing much carbonate chemistry…
Even far less, as the graph is for CO2 at 1 atm. In reality it is only 0.0004 bar in the atmosphere…
Thus not much by the Gulf stream…
But a lot is absorbed by the cold waters at the sink places, as wind and waves do a lot of mixing before the waters sink into the deep.
See Feely ea. at:
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
and following interesting pages…
The huge natural CO2 flux causes roughly 25% of the atmospheric molecules to be replaced every year, including our emitted molecules. Thus the percentage and mass of our molecules is indeed small compared to that of the total CO2 increase since 1750.
However it does not follow that our emissions have not caused that increase, especially since the annual increase is considerably smaller than our annual emissions. It could just be that our molecules first cause the increase then are replaced by natural molecules in the great flux.
I am not saying we have caused the increase, just that it is possible and this study does not change that. My view is that we have no idea why the increase is happening, because we are neither measuring the myriad natural emissions or the natural absorptions, nor tracking our molecules in the atmosphere. There is even evidence that most of our molecules never get out of the boundary layer into the general atmosphere.
In short there are several hypotheses as to what the mechanism of the CO2 increase is and we do not know which, if any, is true.
David, there is this.
Termites produce more CO2 each year than all living things combined – Ice Age Now
bit.ly/2MOUPRm
Also, this.
Long Invisible, Research Shows Volcanic CO2 Levels Are Staggering
bit.ly/2B6Bs1I
And, this.
We have no idea of what all of Earth’s natural CO2 emitters are and how much CO2 they emit. We discover new ones often. Here is one. SMOKERS …These and hydrothermal vents may explain why changes in atmos co2 don’t line up with fossil fuel emissions https://ssrn.com/abstract=29974
Termites? Aren’t you forgetting phytoplankton? Vastly more important, I would have thought.
While of academic interest of how the natural carbon cycle works, it is not of the slightest interest for the total carbon balance:
We know with reasonable accuracy how much humans emit.
We know with reasonable accuracy how much CO2 increase in the atmosphere.
The difference between these two is what nature net added to or net subtracted from the atmosphere.
In the past 60+ years in near every year nature as a whole was a net, increasing sink for CO2. Not a source.
No matter if termites meanwhile doubled their effort in CO2 emissions (which BTW is only CO2 captured by plants out of the same atmosphere…). No matter how much CO2 was emitted by volcanic vents.
BTW, temperature variability drives CO2 variability, but that is not more than +/- 1.5 ppmv around a trend of 90 ppmv, completely caused by over 200 ppmv human emissions in the same period.
Tom Halla, warming did precede CO2 level rises, on all time periods from seasons to glacial-interglacial transitions, except in the past 170 years where CO2 levels exceed the “normal” CO2/T ratio of about 16 ppmv/K by about 120 ppmv.
If that does have much influence on temperature is debatable, but you can’t say that temperature preceded CO2 levels over the past 170 years, because it is reverse…
Well, warming does precede CO2 level rises
No it does not!
It does so in the ice cores, which logically explains that the source of all that co2 is ocean outgassing, and the icecores immediately also prove that outgassing can never be the dominant cause of the present co2 rise.
Good argument.
Well presented.
Must’ve struck a nerve.
Evidence ?
As usual, no evidence 😀
Another drive-by gem from griff. Keep them coming. They’re fun. (I especially enjoyed the exclamation mark)
Griff mate you have to say it in capitals adds much more authority … ready
YES IT DOES
See total authority I win the argument.
🤣
The impressive amount of “supporting evidence” you’ve included means that your forceful use of the “declarative / imperative” conjugation is entirely justified …
More seriously, if CO2 really is “the main driver of the Earth’s climate system” (as is frequently claimed), then it isn’t just the rises in GMST that should be preceded by CO2 rises, the equivalent falls should track in a similar manner (though possibly with different time delays).
After the Eemian interglacial (to pick an example completely at random …), around 113kya the delay from the onset of CO2 levels falling should clearly precede temperatures doing the same.
Let’s look at the empirical (ice-core) data and see what actually happened, shall we ?
.
.
.
Oh deary deary me …
Furthermore, natural (non-fossil fuel) sources of 13C exist, so the 13/14C ratio overstates the anthropogenic contribution.
Yes , all of the Volcano / natural forest fires , will go down in their calculations as anthropogenic contribution so will appear to show that the human contribution .is higher .
Even the UNIPCC agrees that the human contribution is only 3% of the total .https://www.academia.edu/49537285/Climate_Change_A_fresh_Perspective.
But if the public was told the truth about only 3% of the total CO2 , which is only 0.04% of the atmosphere , then more people would start to realise how it is all a massive scam .
So the real figures will always be hidden or made difficult to understand .
The scam keeps going because of the low thinking Simon’s, Griff’s, Ghalfrunt’s, Lloydo’ of the world.
And because of academics, bureaucrats and subsidy farmers with vested interests in the CACA crock.
I could say, have a nice cup of tea, hug your Trump doll and just chill out. But instead I just want you to know you have made my day by letting me know I have ruined yours.
Lol…we laugh at you. Just letting new people know you are a dim bulb when you came on here with Russia colluuuusion.
I suppose you are going to tell us Benghazi was started by an internet videO.
You are a human 💩
Haha I’m not other one who comes on here day after day bringing up the Russia thing.
Haha but you were stupid enough to fall for it and still do today…so I do this site a service to remind new people of your stupidity.
You seem to be losing your cool, eh Simon? Is the ridicule getting under your skin?
If you think that is losing my cool laughing at Derg…. then you are a snow flake sweet heart.
Snowflake 😉
Russia colluuuusion indeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYH48VnesMQ
See if you can spot Donnie…
Lol Russia colluuuusion…you are so stupid.
Don’t be like that… I’ll help you. He is the one beside Putin, on his knees, making slurping noises.
But you are so stupid to believe colluuuusion 😉
And Benghazi was started by an internet video.
Give up stupid.
“Give up stupid.”
Mmm well you don’t to have.
Russia colluuuusion is your stupid indeed.
“Give up stupid.”
Mmm well you don’t seem to have.
Because you are that dumb
Thanks for proving my point.
Simon comes along to downvote. One wonders if Simon is butt hurt 🤔
Repeatedly!
How is that whacko communist PM working out for you out there in Kiwi-land? Giving lots of warm fuzzy feelings? Got all three of your masks securely attached?
First she is not a communist and never has been. Message to Carlo, “ignorance is not a virtue.”
Message to Simon, you are still an idiot. You fell for Russia colluuuusion 😉
Message to Derg…. oh wait, what’s the point… you are a child.
Lol…Russia colluuuusion clown with its stupidity
Don’t forget that ex President Trump lives in it’s head causing a whale of a TDS case.
Furthermore, this Warming Period is the 9th Warming Period Planet Earth has experienced in the last 10,000 years. There were 9 cooling periods in between as well. throughout these Periods of Warming and Cooling CO2 was relatively stable around 280 PPM. So why now is Warming Suddenly caused by CO2.It is NOT. Cooling is caused by the cycles of Massive Volcanoes that appear at the end of Warming Periods . . . Warming comes as a completely Natural return to what I call ‘The Norm of Warm’ when the skies clear from what is called ‘Volcanic Winter’.
(PDF) CO2 Cradle of Life on Planet Earth | Jim Le Maistre – Academia.edu
For a more in-depth review of why our western governments have been seduced by the propaganda and the Scientific mistakes that have led to ‘Man-Made Climate Change’ propaganda I suggest . . .
(PDF) The Environmentalist & The Neanderthal | Jim Le Maistre – Academia.edu
It is a long read but full of data you will Not find from many other sources . . .
Thanks for your interest . . .
Why do skeptics always look at a balance as only income and zero expenses?
The human contribution is currently about 5% of the inputs, but 0% of the outputs.
Natural inputs are 95%, but natural outputs are 97.5% of all inputs.
The difference of 2.5% is what (temporarily) remains in the atmosphere, (near) completely caused by human emissions, not by nature, as that is more sink than source…
That is what one calls the carbon mass balance. with BOTH sides of the balance!
Once again, Ferdinand classifies Humans and their behavior as non-natural.
This bias is never going to go away as he keeps repeating it over and over without explanation.
If humans are indeed non natural, then they must be the result of divine intervention and not evolution. If that is the case, then the divine can intervene in earthly human events at anytime for any reason anyway, making his entire argument moot.
How much is the natural mined coal oil and gas?
No. The anthro’ inputs are enriched in 12C isotope, which dissolves in water preferentially over 13C, and similarly, the new vegetation documented by NASA has a slight preference for the 12C isotope from fossil fuels. To the extent that anthro’ emission are promoting new vegetation and causing enhanced growth of existing vegetation, humans are responsible for increasing the terrestrial vegetation and ocean phytoplankton sinks. The ‘output’ may be small, but it is growing. By the same token, as the anthro’ emissions increase the atmospheric partial pressure, the existing sinks become more efficient, which needs to be considered in the accounting.
Clyde if you want the exact figures, the original fossil fuel CO2 is indeed already 10% of all CO2 in the atmosphere, based on the drop in 13C/12C ratio. Thus 10% of the CO2 output is from fossil fuels.
That gives 5% input caused by humans and 0,25% output originally from what humans added. Still near twice the observed increase and thus still responsible for almost all of the increase…
Look at my comment here
I’m curious as to how one distinguishes natural sources from fossil fuels when d13C of both sources overlaps significantly.
Quite simple: with the oxygen balance.
Take the human use of fossil fuels and its oxygen use per type of fuel which gives you the expected (small) decline in oxygen in the atmosphere. Compare that to the real oxygen decline and of the oxygen use is higher, then the biosphere as a whole has more decay than growth and reverse if the oxygen use is less than calculated.
See: https://tildesites.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
Last page Fig. 7
Ferdinand,
Thank you for the article. The O2/N2 measurements and ratios are well established between ocean and land. The article does not address how oil/coal oxygen fits into the equation. An additional curve for petroleum isotopes would fit nicely onto Figure 7.
Renee, they didn’t need the isotope ratio’s for the oxygen calculations, but others did use both and did came to the same conclusion, but unfortunately they changed the URL and didn’t find it back.
But found another one that shows the change in isotopes of CO2 in ice cores, firn and air for the Law Dome ice core:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrd.50668
It would be near a miracle that CO2 goes up and δ13C down by some natural influx in ratio to human emissions…
John, natural sources of low-13C exist only as recent organics and fossil organics. All inorganic carbon has higher 13C/12C ratio’s than in the atmosphere. That includes carbonate rocks, the oceans, volcanoes,…
Thus only the biosphere can be a source of low-13C, but as the biosphere as a whole is more sink than source (the earth is greening…) there is more CO2 uptake than release and preferably more 12CO2 than 13CO2, thus leaving more 13CO2 behind, thus not the cause of the huge 13CO2 decline in the atmosphere.
You have forgotten about isotopic fractionation that occurs with outgassing, favoring the lighter 12C isotope. We have discussed this before. In addition, even the dissolved organic carbon of deep waters is enriched with 12C because of the constant ‘rain’ of dead photosynthetic phytoplankton during the ~800-year transit of deep currents from the poles to the equator. “Only” is a pretty restrictive word.
As you can see in the above graph from Renee, the deep oceans are around zero per mil δ13C, which is lower than the ocean surface. That difference is caused by bio-life in the ocean surface layer.
The average fractionation between ocean waters and atmosphere is -8 per mil, which results in an average of -6.4 +/- 0.2 per mil over the last 10,000 years in the atmosphere. Even over huge events like glacial – interglacial transitions, the change is only a few tenths of per mil.
In the past 170 years, the drop in δ13C is from -6.4 per mil to -8.2 per mil… A real HS caused by fossil fuels at -28 per mil.
Or by vegetation decay (both in oceans and on land). Only possible if about half of all land plants burned down and didn’t regrow…
But we know that plants grow faster with more CO2, thus pushing the δ13C level up, not down…
Good paper presented by what appear to be actual Scientists. Their finding corroborates the data showing no slow-down in the steady rise of atmospheric CO2 due to the Covid Pandemia economic slow-down. Good catch, ctm.
Yeah, good paper. I’d like to see their critic of the Bern model.
It might be interesting to look at carbonyl sulfide, which also has a Niwot Ridge data set available, perhaps not going back far enough.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/jgrg.20068
Arapaho Chief “Left Hand” Niwot would be proud.
CO2 molecules are only in the atmosphere for 2-5 years residence time and natural seasonal fluxes pump about 24x more CO2 in and out of the atmosphere than human emissions put in each year. So it should be mathematically obvious that the % of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere at any given time is going to be overwhelmingly from sources other than human activity.
This is an irrelevant fact. The question twisting our civilization into knots is whether an overall increase in CO2 concentration of the atmosphere could have a catastrophic warming effect. The overall concentration has increased from 280ppm to about 420ppm since 1850, with most of the rise coming in the past 50 years. This is the effect of small annual increments where nature has only managed to absorb about half of what we emit. To the extent that the slowly rising concentration has any impact at all, the effect of a CO2 molecule that originally came from burning fossil fuel is precisely the same as the effect of a CO2 molecule that originally out-gassed from the ocean or from a volcano. It is only the effective overall concentration that hypothetically matters.
The question first needs to be answered whether the increase from 0.028% to 0.042% has had any harmful effects, regardless of the origin of any particular CO2 molecules that happen to still be in the atmosphere.
It seems by all empirical evidence that at most the gradual rise in CO2 concentration has caused a greening of the earth which has improved agricultural output dramatically. It may be on track to result in about 1.7 degrees C warming once we achieve a doubling of CO2 concentration from 280ppm to 560ppm. Such a warming is mild and beneficial. It has mostly already occurred and is mostly the result of warmer nights during winter. So, no. The gradual accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is not harmful. But the rise has been mostly due to human activity. We emit at twice the rate that concentration is rising. It is absurd to argue otherwise.
Please quantify “mostly”.
The mid-19th century level of CO2 came at the end of the LIA Cool Period, with colder than usual interglacial oceans, so didn’t represent the Holocene norm. CO2 has gone from ~285 ppmv c. AD 1850 to ~415 ppmv now, for 130 ppmv in 172 years. But there have been ups and downs during cycles of the Modern Warm Period.
Kindly state how you determined that 70 or more of those 130 ppmv derive from fossil fuels. Thanks!
John, your disingenuous question has been answered multiple times by Ferdinand Engelbeen long before I was aware of WUWT, and also by my comments on earlier blog posts where you well know you have participated.
It is the mass balance which is a corollary of the law of conservation of matter.
In -Out = Accumulation
When we know accurately the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere and the quantity emitted by fossil fuel and lime production for cement, we can easily show that the amount emitted exceeds the rate of accumulation by about double.
Not disingenous. With all due respect to Ferdinand and you, this issue remains unsettled on this blog and in the literature.
Given quantities which you regard as known, it should be possible to cite a single figure or range, showing its derivation and assumptions.
Dear John,
This is the truth . . . Why are we not told?
M. Ragheb in Global Climate Variation, Change and Energy Use, 2019 on pages 16 and 17, he spells out clearly the natural sources of CO2 and man’s contribution. Of the 186 billion tones of CO2 entering the atmosphere annually, 180 billion tones come from nature and 6 billion tones are man’s contribution. My simple math says 6 divided by 186 is 3%. He did not do this calculation in his text.
Furthermore, The IPCC in its own research produces a similar finding in a published graph “Global Natural and Anthropogenic Sources and Absorption of Greenhouse Gasses in the 1990’s”, finding, CO2 from natural causes is 793 billion tones, Man-Made sources is 23 billion tones. 23 divided by 793 is 2.9%. Again, no calculations are presented for summary or review.
Meanwhile all the things we could do, to actually clean up the environment and the air we breathe with Scrubbers and Electrolytic Precipitators and Nitrous Oxide Burners . . . scientific solutions to remove over 90% of particulates from smoke stacks. . . do not get built because of our fetish with CO2. The Kyoto and Paris protocols call for a 20% reduction of Man-Made CO2 output. That’s 20% of 3%, that is 0.6% . . . Pure, Scientific Madness! Billions of dollars are being spent to reduce one of the most essential building blocks for life on planet earth by 0.6%. For more Data . . .
(PDF) Climate Change For the 21 st Century | Jim Le Maistre – Academia.edu
You want to clean up Planet Earth . . . Shut Up about CO2 and spend the money like they did at Belldune New Brunswick on the Coal Fired Electric power generating station . . . They even recycle the water used to clean the smoke stacks into gypsum board (Drywall). It cost $800 million Better that than smog I would say . . . But environmentalists are so focused on CO2 . . . Smart solutions do NOT get built . . . NOT even suggested . . . See Page 7 &8 . .
(PDF) The Environmentalist & The Neanderthal | Jim Le Maistre – Academia.edu
This is what gets removed at that plant . . .
5. Fly ash and bottom ash, that are residues created when power
plants burn Coal.
You still wanna go on about CO2 . . . ?
NOT ME . . .
Jim, I think you misinterpret this discussion. It’s an argument between confirmed climate skeptics about whether the observed rise in CO2 has been caused by human emissions or mostly by nature. Nobody who has commented believes that increased CO2 causes any problem or should be “mitigated” in any way.
The reason why I stick to my guns about it is because it’s the truth and the skeptical argument is weakened if we justify it with errors.
Thank you Mr. Davis. I see your point about ‘quantifying’ the case or non-case for CO2 and it’s effect in our Global Environment.
Sadly, however, the debate feeds into the environmentalist dogma. If ‘Climate Skeptics’ can be agitated into debating the ‘Net Effect’ of CO2 in and or around the whole Man-Made Climate Change question . . . The Environmentalists have dragged us down into their Elitist Propaganda hole with them.
First, I do not have the scientific credentials that you or Mr. Tillman obviously possess. I take an historical overview of life on Planet Earth. I ask, if 9 Warming Periods and 8 Cooling Periods have occurred absent any real fluctuations in CO2 measurements, how can our current Warming Period, suddenly now, be caused by Man-Made CO2 ? This is way outside the clinical discussion. Intentionally, I ask this question, because it establishes the ‘Irrelevance’ of ANY debate founded by ‘False Assumptions’ initiated by Michael Mann and his ‘MBH 99 proxy Calibrations’ dating back almost 30 years and long ago disproven.
Historical Climate fluctuations in the Holocene can all be linked back to COLD Climate Change. These without exception were brought about by Massive Volcanoes above VEI 6. Their Global effect on life, prosperity, food production, hygiene and wide spread disease are well known and well documented from Europe North America and Asia.
(PDF) CO2 Cradle of Life on Planet Earth | Jim Le Maistre – Academia.edu
To defeat the CO2 debate is to render the debate Null. Absent any relevance in the last 10,000 years CO2 has NO place in the discussion regarding current Climate Change whatsoever.
Environmentalists are ‘Hell Bent’ on destroying the Fossil Fuel industry. Burning Fossil Fuels pollutes the Earth. The One and only thing we Can Not remove is CO2 . . . therefore blame CO2 and . . . the industry will die. Entering this debate feeds the Environmentalist Propaganda Machine. ‘Climate Skeptics’ need to Prove that CO2 is irrelevant in Climate Change from the historical record and move to Clean Up what is attached to CO2 as the real REMEDY for the deplorable effluent produced by our incessant pollution from Industrial Infrastructure Globally.
REAL pollution . . .
95 % or more can be removed with Electrostatic Precipitators special burners to remove Nitrogen Oxide and scrubbers that remove 99% of solid particles from the flue gases. Common sense solutions.
Skeptics (I prefer the term Naturalists) Must Stop feeding the Elitist Environmentalist Fetish that CO2 has any effect on Climate Change. Instead PROVE that it has never had ANY effect, look at history, then move to clean up the REAL Noxious effluent from industrial infrastructure Globally . . . With Public Money.
Furthermore, today in what is described as ‘An Inter Glacial Period’, The Holocene, we are having a reprieve from the incessant Violence brought upon the World by Volcanoes. Planet Earth is Warm for only the second time in 250 thousand years. This Warming Period permits Food Production in the Prairies, Europe and China. Places where 10 kilometers of Ice usually would stand. For little more than 10 thousand years Humanity has had it good. Life for 7 billion people is possible. A mere 25 million souls occupied Equatorial regions of the Earth when Volcanoes and Ice Ruled the World. Let us learn to give thanks to Global Warming and learn to respect Nature as the Supreme Ruler of Climate and of true Climate Change on our Little Blue Planet.
My Thoughts . . .
Trying to divine non-human from human sources and sinks from this graph of CO2 since AD 1800 would be subject to questionable assumptions, but 80 ppmv human might be justifiable:
https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/atmospheric-concentration-of-carbon-dioxide-5#tab-chart_5_filters=%7B%22rowFilters%22%3A%7B%7D%3B%22columnFilters%22%3A%7B%22pre_config_polutant%22%3A%5B%22CO2%20(ppm)%22%5D%7D%7D
Bearing in mind the cooler and warmer cycles within the secular warming trend since the mid-19th century, plus such major human events as depressions and world wars.
Humans produce CO2 from more than just fossil fuels and making cement, of course, to include burning forests and other wood, and breathing.
The authors state 12% of 415 ppm, or 50 ppm is attributable to mankind’s total emissions, including fossil burning.
But, the changes made by man, other flora and fauna, and nature to the world’s landscape, such as urban sprawls, melting glaciers, volcanic activity, forest fires, etc., also contributed to the 415 ppm.
Actually, my very first contribution as a blog author was looking at anthropogenic sources and I concluded that a lot of things get overlooked so that the official estimate of fossil fuels and calcination is a lower-bound. Therefore, even complete elimination of fossil fuels would not completely eliminate anthro’ emissions.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/05/anthropogenic-global-warming-and-its-causes/
John,
I do not know his methodology but Ferdinand Engelbeen has estimated that the equilibrium CO2 concentration would be 295ppm with today’s conditions. That implies I suppose that about 125ppm was due to small annual accumulations of our emissions that were not fully absorbed by dynamic natural sinks and 15ppm due to warming. Alarmists would likely then argue that ~50% of the warming was due to the CO2 enhanced greenhouse effect, so about 8ppm natural and 132ppm anthropogenic. I personally don’t offer an answer and I don’t see the relevance. To me, logically any increases observed in years when our emissions exceeded the quantity that increased in the atmosphere must be attributed to man’s effect.
If you want to say 80ppm, then you are indirectly arguing that the equilibrium concentration is actually 340ppm rather than 295ppm. I imagine that FE can defend his 295 against your 340 and that would be an interesting discussion to watch.
Eemian CO2, based on stomata, was 330 ppmv, but that might not have been at its peak warmth.
John, stomata (index) CO2 data are proxy’s, while CO2 in ice cores are direct measurements of CO2 in ancient air, be it that the resolution of stomata data in general is better than for ice cores.
As stomata data are from land plants, there is always a local (positive) bias of CO2 levels in direct measurements, depending of (type of) plant growth and decay in the main wind direction.
Therefore plants stomata data are calibrated over the past century against… ice cores, firn and direct measurements.
There is even a 20-year overlap (1960-1980) between the Law Dome ice cores and direct measurements at the South Pole…
The problem is that nobody knows how the local bias for stomata changed over the centuries from land use changes or even changing main wind direction between MWP and LIA…
If the average CO2 level according to stomata data over the same period as the ice core resolution differs from the ice cores, the stomata data needs re-calibration, not reverse…
——————————————-
The formula to calculate a change in equilibrium pCO2 is based on many thousands of seawater samples.
For automatic pCO2 equipment on board of commercial sea ships they use following formula to compensate for the temperature difference between the ship’s motor inlet (Tin-situ) and the temperature at the automatic equilibrator (Teq):
(pCO2)sw @ Tin situ = (pCO2)sw @ Teq x EXP[0.0423 x (Tin-situ – Teq)]
If we may assume that the pre-industrial level was around 285 ppmv and the warming of the global ocean surfaces was average 0.8 K, the current level would be around 295 ppmv.
More theoretical background can be found at:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967064502000036
As I have pointed out previously, the alarmist ‘uncertainty free’ analysis overlooks the fact that when the uncertainty in estimated sources and sinks is taken into account rigorously, the uncertainties are greater than the human contributions. Just because the “Accumulation” is about 40% of the estimated anthro’ emissions doesn’t prove that humans are the source. With such a poor correlation, it may well just be coincidence.
It seems that those who are of the alarmist bent have little use for actual measurements or the implications of the inherent uncertainties in all measurements.
Clyde, it’s very unreasonable for you to refer to my arguments as alarmist. The only thing that alarms me in the realm of climate is the irrational policy prescriptions threatening to destroy western civilization.
I stand for the truth here even though it would be more convenient to our cause if we could credibly claim that the increase in atmospheric CO2 has been naturally caused. I’m sorry that my refusal to endorse myths causes you to consider me an alarmist.
I’ve addressed your correlation comment below.
Accumulation is a calculation dependent only on the accuracy of the concentration measurement and the estimate of the total mass of the atmosphere.
Our emissions are estimated based on production records made for tax purposes.
No other numbers enter into the mass balance calculation.
We can do this mass balance over a longer period of 10-20 years in order to minimize the effects of measurement error.
There is no doubt that our emissions are greater than the accumulation.
I just re-did the calculations last night. It turns out that that “accumulation” is essentially the same as the uncertainty associated with the measurements and subtraction, using simple rules of significant figures and propagation of error. Basically the one-sigma range for annual CO2 accumulation is from 0.0 to 4.0 PPM out of a total anthropogenic annual flux rate of approximately 4 PPM. That is such a wide range that I don’t have a lot of confidence in what it is telling us other than it is probably positive and of the same order of magnitude as the anthro’ emissions. It really doesn’t establish causation.
I may work that up into a full article.
As to whether you are an alarmist, I would say that if you had data where the uncertainty in the measurements was a small fraction of the nominal value (say 1% or less), then relying on it would be reasonable. However, your mass balance equation gives me an uncertainty of +/- 100% in the accumulation. I would say that it takes an act of faith to conclude that the approach is trustworthy.
Clyde the uncertainty of individual natural sources and sinks is not of the slightest interest, as we are quite certain of human emissions due to taxes on sales and burning efficiency and quite certain of the increase in the atmosphere.
The first is 9 +/- 0.5 PgC/year, the second in average is 4.5 +/- 0.5 PgC/year. The combined uncertainty of the difference then is +/- 1 PgC/year. That is all.
Even if you take into account the year by year variability in natural variability of +/- 3 PgC (Pinatubo, El Niño,…) human emissions outpace natural variability in near every year of the past 60+ years, with only a few borderline El Niño years.
If that is the case why is the yearly increase in CO2 2-3ppm for the past several decades but the CO2 emitted has grown by leaps and bounds, especially since 2000 when Asian economies started massively growing.
The basic algebra leads to the conclusion. Nature is a net sink. I don’t pretend to have any certainty about how nature is doing it. But it seems to imply that the natural sinks are dynamic, increasing as CO2 concentration increases. One obvious example being global greening.
So it should be mathematically obvious that the % of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere at any given time is going to be overwhelmingly from sources other than human activity.
This is an irrelevant fact.
Thank you for reminding us that the total concentration of CO2 has an effect on warming regardless of the source, but I don’t think it is irrelevant that human emissions are a fraction of total emissions. As pointed out by others, we know from the paleoclimate record that warming precedes CO2 increase. If Mother Nature is just doing her thing, then our adding about 4% annually to that amount is a very small deal; an important fact that should be illuminated loudly and repeatedly until it sinks in that any human effort to reduce our emissions, even if we reduce it to nothing, will have no measurable effect on warming because nature is producing the vast majority of emissions. We’re just along for the ride—adapting as best we can, which is what humans do best—to the benign and glacially slow increase in warming and sea level rise.
stinkerp, a balance has two sides…
In: 5% human, 95% natural. Out: 0% human, 97.5% natural. remainder: 2.5%, near completely caused by the 5% human emissions…
If human emissions stopped at once, the CO2 levels would drop with 2.5% the first year and then less and less until the “old” equilibrium of 295 ppmv for current ocean surface temperatures is reached again…
Do you really think so? With a different temperature, a greener world, a totally different looking surface (cities/agricultrure/roads, etc.) and a possible other trend in warming or cooling? Ceteris Paribus needs the same conditions as before, which clearly is not possible on earth. Never was, never is, never will be, in my opinion. But this is the kind of trap the AGW-believers are setting: “we cause the rise of CO2 and so we must be punished.” In my opinion nature will always find a way to get rid of any surplus CO2 not suitable for the temperature of the oceans. There are enough natural sinks, which have more capacity then we can ever imagine. There is only one thing AGW-believers do want to deflect from: CO2 follows warming. Don’t give them an inch away from that.
FE has already made an estimated adjustment for the warmer conditions when referring to 295ppm as the approximate equilibrium concentration rather than the 280ppm that was appropriate to cooler ocean conditions.
Nobody disputes that CO2 concentration changes follow temperature changes. That does not enter into the mass balance argument however.
To claim that ocean outgassing due to temperature increase is the cause of the observed rise of about 140ppm, it is necessary to claim that nature is a net source. The mass balance shows that on the contrary, nature is a net sink.
Absolutely ! Over the last 10,000 years we have had 9 periods of warming a 9 periods of cooling NONE have been caused by CO2 before the current hysteria brought to us by Environmentalists. This is a chart by Dansgaard et al modified to show CO2 levels over the last 10,000 years and the changing cycles of climate. CO2 has never caused Global Warming before Why suddenly now ?
(PDF) CO2 Cradle of Life on Planet Earth | Jim Le Maistre – Academia.edu
I can’t improve on Ferdinand’s response.
Correlation does not establish causation! It is pointed out that as CO2 increases, the long-term global temperature increases. If there was a true causative relationship, then one would expect that there would be at least a decrease in the rate of temperature increase as the rate of increase of CO2 declined. There is no empirical evidence for that. The best that alarmists can come up with is that the CO2 ‘decline’ is lost in the noise. Yet, when the temperature does decrease, it isn’t when economic conditions reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. Any linkage that exists is weak. We are told that we have to wait decades to see any impact from fossil fuel consumption decreases — long after the economies of the world have been wrecked!
Clyde, my friend, I do not argue any alarmist effects are a true concern, nor do I support any kind of mitigation proposals that alarmists are making which indeed I agree are a risk to our civilization. But the mass balance is not a correlation, it is algebra.
Let me gently point out that if the actual anthropogenic CO2 sources are underestimated as you think, then my argument is strengthened.
As it is, we’re talking about the situation where the annual human-caused source is about double the actual annual increase accumulating in the atmosphere with the balance of our emissions being absorbed by nature. If our contribution is actually being underestimated, then our contribution is more than double rather than about double. Nature would then need to be absorbing even more than the half that has been estimated.
To argue that uncertainty in the estimates prevents us from making a certain conclusion that nature is a net sink, you would want to be arguing that our emissions are grossly overestimated.
While I mentioned the empirical Lewis & Curry estimate of 1.7K per doubling of CO2, it plays no role in the mass balance argument. I simply included that to illustrate my view that whatever effect of CO2 concentration increasing may be, by whatever causation, it is mild and beneficial.
On the contrary. If the anthro’ contribution is, say, 8% rather than 4%, then impact on temperature is cut in half. That is, the implied correlation between atmospheric accumulation and anthro’ emissions is weakened because of the wider spread in the two numbers.
Clyde, you still don’t get it: if human emissions are 10% i.s.o. 5% today, nature is a larger sink: removing 7.5% rather than 2.5%.
You can’t change the carbon mass balance: 2.5% increase is what is measured, while humans add far more CO2, thus nature is only a larger sink than calculated, not a source…
I was amazed to see:
“University of Massachusetts Lowell, 1 University Avenue, Lowell, MA 01854.”
Of all places, here in the most AGW fanatic place on planet Earth. Very few people in Massachusetts are not climate lunatics. But, unfortunately, the word hasn’t gotten out of Lowell- except for here and very, very few people in Mass. read this blog. I know of only 1 other than myself and I discuss these issues with lots of people in government, academia, the enviro groups, natural resource people of all sorts- I often mention WUWT but none listen to me.
Exactly right. I have a sister with 2 daughters who live in MA – she on the Cape as is one daughter, the other out in Springfield. I was in an email exchange with my sister asking her to show me in detail how GA voting law was remotely like Jim Crow 2.0 – a claim she repeated many times – which she was unable to answer so resorted to responding – “it does not matter if climate change causes the planet to become uninhabitable”. I sent her the link to Willis E’s post re: Where is the Climate Emergency and asked her to respond, which she has yet to do. As Thomas Sowell states “It’s usually futile to argue facts and analysis with people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance”. True believers are impervious to facts and analysis.
I have precisely the same trouble with my circle. “The globe is heating up isn’t it – look at all those forest fires!”. Impossible to counter the brainwashed and the Telly pix.
You could remind them that CO2 is used in fire extinguishers. So more CO2 really results in less fire.
As Mark Twain observed, “It is easier to fool someone than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Such is the nature of humans.
Skrable is emeritus, so safer from cancellation. Dunno about his co-authors.
He’s a physicist, UML radiology prof, hence his choice of journal.
“An article on Glacial-Interglacial Cycles (NOAA) suggests that recent increases in CO2 and temperatures are due primarily to cyclic changes of solar radiation associated with Earth’s orbit about the sun. The annual change, DCNF(t), in the non-fossil component has positive increasing values in Table 2 (http://links.lww.com/HP/A210) after 1764. It will eventually become negative in the next glacial pe- riod when average temperatures decrease again as they have done over all of the previous glacial-interglacial cycles.”
I don’t think so for CO2.
Anthropogenic CO2 just enters the natural cycle and is relatively quickly diluted. A good part of it has been absorbed by plants and oceans. However, there it was absorbed INSTEAD of non-anthropogenic CO2. Just looking at isotopes in the current atmosphere is not going to tell you how much CO2 increased due to mankind.
Currently on the base of the 13C/12C ratio decline, there is about 10% of the original fossil fuel derived CO2 in the atmosphere. It would have been 35% if all human CO2 remained in the atmosphere, but much is redistributed over ocean surface and vegetation and more important: much entered the deep oceans with the sinking waters near the poles to return over some 1,000 years. That is replaced by deep ocean CO2 from some 1,000 years ago, long before humans used fossil fuels or tested atomic bombs…
The dilution with deep ocean CO2 can be used to calculate the atmosphere – deep ocean direct exchanges which is around 40 GtC/year. Independently confirmed by the rapid decline of bomb-14C in the atmosphere…
Ed Berry’s similar conclusion was published in December 2021.
Preprint #3: A new carbon cycle model shows human emissions cause 25% and nature 75% of the CO2 increase – edberry.com
HUMAN CARBON EMISSIONS CAUSE ONLY 25% OF THE CO2 INCREASE
Edwin X Berry
Climate Physics, LLC, Bigfork, Montana59911, USA
Edwin X Berry, ed@edberry.com
August 12, 2021
I don’t think that IPCC claims humans have caused all the CO2 increase since 1850, but over half of it. How much exactly isn’t clear (correct me if wrong), but a lot more than Ed’s 25%. Possibly the reverse of his anthropogenic share estimate, ie 75%.
Which was equally wrong…
I think I have discussed that with a lot of arguments…
“much too low to be the cause of global warming”
Such heresy will be cancelled by the church of CAGW.
I can’t believe there are still people (e.g. these authors) who don’t realize that humans can theoretically be responsible for 100% of the CO2 rise, while the fraction of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere remains quite small. It’s because of the huge surface reservoir combined with very large natural fluxes in and out of the surface. The residence time of a single CO2 molecule can be very short, yet all of the rise of total atmospheric CO2 be due to anthropogenic emissions.If you have a very large tub of water with water flowing and and flowing out at exactly the same rate, the water level remains the same. But if then you add anouter, much weaker source of inflow, the water level will rise, even though over the long term most of the actual molecules of water you added went down the drain. It’s not rocket science.
Naturally warming oceans and additional non-fossil fuel sources of CO2 constitute additional in-flows.
Despite global economic downturn during the pandemic, CO2 continued accumulating at the same rate:
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/
There was a tiny dip in the Great Recession of 2007-09.
All sources and sinks aren’t known.
You hit the nail on the head. Yes, humans are pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. But the estimates for natural and human generated CO2 could be completely wrong. We know atmospheric CO2 rose and fell ever since there was an atmosphere. So why do we assume that all of a sudden natural sources are in equalibrium and any rise is due to humans?
“We know atmospheric CO2 rose and fell ever since there was an atmosphere.”
Yes, and CO2 concentrations have been much higher in the past, when humans had no input, such as 7,000ppm of CO2 in the past compared to 420ppm of CO2 today.
More CO2, increase of photosythesis with more absorption by plants, algae etc.
Yes, change in out-flow rate, ie sinks, also must factor in.
yes, but that is only half human emissions over the past 60+ years…
Exactly Roy:
It beggars belief that they cannot understand that it is entirely physically logical for …..
” … in 2018, atmospheric anthropogenic fossil CO2 represented 23% of the total emissions since 1750 with the remaining 77% in the exchange reservoirs.”
That much of the individual CO2 molecules have exited (average molecular residence time) is NOT the same as the pulse of anthro CO2 not being caused anthroprogenically.
My analogy is a shopping Mall:
The crowd is stable as as many shoppers enter as leave.
The crowd density increases as a “pulse” shoppers enter the Mall (in excess of leavers).
Things return to as many leave as enter.
However the crowd size is stable at a higher density than before the “pulse” of shoppers
Yet some of the first shoppers have left and been replaced by “natural” shoppers.
Such that after a period of time many of the “pulse” shoppers have left but the “pulse” remains in terms of total shoppers in the Mall.
The crowd is not stable before the pulse.
More CO2 molecules were entering the atmosphere naturally at the same time that the fossil fuel component took off, thanks to end of the LIA. This fact should be obvious.
Very little of the warming from 1850 to 1940 was due to human activity. In fact, our net contribution in that period might have been cooling, due to pollution.
The real takeoff wasn’t until after WWII, not in the late 19th century.
Yet from 1945 to the PDO shift of 1977, Earth cooled dramatically.
“The crowd is not stable before the pulse.”
Eh?
In the analogy, numbers are of course stable “before the pulse”.
via assuming that when one shopper leaves he/she is replaced by exactly one other.
Any pulse obviously includes “natural” molecules.
If you don’t like my analogy there is always Roy’s.
The point is that there was an increase in atmospheric CO2 not of natural origin.
A pulse on top of the natural CC.
The analogy is that the anthro (C13 depleted) CO2 molecules will be absorbed into sinks consistent with a residence time.
That is not the same as the residence of a pulse as further CO2 molecules take their place.
“Very little of the warming from 1850 to 1940 was due to human activity. In fact, our net contribution in that period might have been cooling, due to pollution.”
indeed … and science knows why.
The offset of aerosol -ve RF until post 1970 ….
Total anthro RF has tripled since that period.
This is simple.
The crowd wasn’t stable. It was increasing before the pulse because of natural warming. We don’t know enough to separate non-human from human-caused CO2 increase.
Thus, warming since 1850 could be 15% human, 25%, 50% or 75%. Nobody knows.
Nor can we know what portion of any human effect be due to fossil fuels, vs other anthro activities. Nor even the net sign of human effects.
Nor even the actual amount of global warming since 1850. Hence, all far too poorly constrained and attributed for policy decisions involving trillions of treasure and billions of lives.
We have no idea what aerosol forcing was before about the 1950’s when enough airports reported visibility for landing approach. There could have been more aerosol due to forest fires and dust storms in the past. Or less due to the more nucleation points of dust and smoke causing rain instead of aerosol. You can pretty much make up any aerosol forcing you want and justify it…especially pre-IPCC report publication, which have become gospel.
The steady-state CO2 “reservoir” or “bathtub” model is a useful way to look at the issue. Although, of course, natural processes are not in steady-state but rather are in equilibrium at any given point in time. Evolution of the equilibrium state depends in changes in rates of inflow and outflow and appearances/disappearances of inflows and outflows. In turn, our understanding of natural processes depends on how well we recognize all significant inflows and outflows and how they change, and how well we can quantify those things. IMO we likely have a good understanding of the CO2 cycle but very likely do not have a good understanding of climate.
Take a look at the uncertainties in the various published Carbon Cycle diagrams.
That’s why I said good, not great.
I would not say that the quantitative understanding is even “good” when the uncertainties are taken into account. The uncertainties in the total annual flux are about the same as the estimated anthro’ fluxes.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/07/carbon-cycle/
Dr Spencer
Please review the three new papers by Salby and Harde, the new paper by Berry and the one this article is about to see several analyses that show your “not rocket science” is also not good science. Then do a sound science review of them to show how they are wrong and the assumption of long term exact balance of CO2 emissions and absorption that your statement sits on is factual. This request is made in deep respect for your work.
The problem with your analogy is that the inflow and outflow of your tub aren’t constant. With increased partial pressure, the rate of sequestration increases, and vice versa. That is, the height of the outflow hole makes a difference in the rate of outflow; it dribbles at the top, and squirts near the bottom.
The alternative view, in light of the fact that the short-term removal of atmospheric CO2 is only about 60% of the annual anthro’ emissions, is that in the absence of anthro’ emissions, the sinks will be less efficient and there will still be an increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration, at about 96% of the current rate.
Sounds like you are wedded to the idea that the increase in CO2 levels has to be from manmade sources. Biosphere CO2 sinks and sources of CO2 are about 2 orders of magnitude greater than human sources – anthropogenic co2 level is just a rounding error. Termites, on their own, generate about 30% more CO2 than humans!
PCman999, that the biosphere and ocean sources and sinks are one order of magnitude larger than the human contribution is not of the slightest interest.
Only the difference between all the natural inflows and outflows is of interest and that is about half the human contribution more sink than source…
It is like a fountain with a pump that delivers 1000 liter per minute to the fountain from a basin in the bottom. All water flows back in the basin.
Real change in the basin; zero besides some vapor losses and spills.
Then someone opens the supply valve to fill up the basin with 1 liter per minute and forget to close it again. Of course you will have an overflow sooner or later, even if the extra one-way supply is only 0.1% of the main circulation…
This will get no coverage in the mainstream press.
Well at least it does show contrary ideas can still be published. I expect this will grow with all the stress on the dark forces: resumption of a new “Pause” now at ~7yrs, a possible solar Maunder minimum in the making, extension of la Niña cooling in the Pacific and a cooling N Atlantic Oscillation, plus now into a 30yr cooling swing in the 70yr natural variation wave in temperatures that gave us the warm swing in the last two decades of 20th century that peaked about 2005.
Even Gavin Schmidt of NASA’S GISS admitted before the Glasgow climate fest that models were running away too hot. There will be retirement of those who can’t be rehabilitated and a change of mind by younger climate scientists seguing away from doom science. I think it possible to make a list of the players. e.g Mikey M is in too deep to remake himself.
Earth has been in a cooling trend since February 2016 Super El Nino peak.
How long before such a trend achieves statistical significance?
The 1998-2015 Pause was between two Super Los Ninos. Another pause or cooling trend of similar duration should signal the end of the man-made global warming scare.
Increasing urbanization might however skew ground station “data”. Cleaner air over China and India could also yield warmer temperatures, as previously over Europe and North America.
Ya know, anymore when I read a headline about human caused blahblah a video I saw of a woman with both eyes blacked, nose broken and teeth knocked out explaining to cop and doctor that it really was all her fault comes to mind.
People have got to stop enabling these anti-science a$$holes. Climate changes constantly. Humans are not causing it and cannot stop it.
IPCC AR5 Figure and table 6.1 shows the atmos holding about 1.5% of the total terrestrial carbon balance w about half due to mankind.
BTW giga tonne and peta gram are the same.
The caption noted that 1 Gt of carbon = 3.67 Gt of CO2, 44/12.
Nick, knowing how much CO2 has been added either man made or natural there are two things that we need to know: 1. What is the update specific heat of air? 2. What is the updated air pressure?
They have done a good job in their analysis. However, the initial assumption that the observed year-to-year rise in measured CO2 concentration is accumulation is not valid. The observed year-to-year change is a measure of the rate of change in natural emission rates. There is no year-to-year accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. Increased emissions of the index standard cause C14/C12 values to be more negative. I think if they just used the observed modern data and no year-to-year accumulation, the fraction of atmospheric concentration of anthropogenic CO2 will be the same as the fraction of all emissions. Which is about 5%. Nature has a very effective year-to-year “net zero” which works just as well on anthropogenic emissions.
Fred, wrong reasoning. Based on the 13C/12C ratio, there is already 10% fossil CO2 in the atmosphere, that invalidates your no accumulation.
If you add 5% CO2 per year to a system that is more or less in equilibrium and only 2.5% per year is absorbed, of course that accumulates in the atmosphere, at least as mass, even if all human CO2 was absorbed by the next available tree (but at the cost of a natural CO2 that was not absorbed)…
Your mistake is in assuming “more or less equilibrium” that absorbs all the natural emissions but only half of burning fossil fuel burning emissions. All the natural sinks that are controlling the atmospheric concentration affect anthropogenic emissions as there is no physical difference. All the natural sinks that balance out natural emissions are equally effective in balancing out anthropogenic emissions. The observed year-to-year increase in atmospheric concentration is measure of the year-to-year increase in the natural emission rate, not the accumulation of a fraction of anthropogenic emissions.
There is a lot more C13 emitted naturally than enters the atmosphere from burning fossil,
Fred,
Humans add about 9 +/- 1 PgC/year as CO2.
Nature absorbs about 4.5 +/- 3 PgC/year as CO2.
That means that the natural sinks plus their variability are smaller than human emissions over the past 60+ years. That is the reason that CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere: natural sinks are smaller than human emissions.
I don’t make any assumptions, I am only looking at the carbon mass balance and that shows that all the increase in CO2 mass is caused by extra mass input from human emissions, regardless of isotopic composition or (non) preference.
The second point is that many use the (wrong) one-way container example where all inputs go straight in and the height (level/pressure) is what causes the one-way CO2 out the atmosphere.
Most natural CO2 fluxes are bidirectional and temperature driven, not pressure driven and human emissions are one-way…
In the case of the container, it is impossible to find more than 5% human CO2 (based on the 13C/12C ratio) in the atmosphere, as that is only 5% of all inputs.
The measurements show that there is already 10% human emissions in the atmosphere, thus the container (or lake) with unidirectional inflows and outflows is proven wrong…
BTW, as near all inorganic sources of CO2 (oceans, carbonate rock, volcanoes) have a higher 13C/12C ratio than the atmosphere, they are not responsible for the ratio decline.
Neither is the biosphere, as that is more sink than source, preferring 12C, thus enriching the atmosphere in 13C…
The only real source of low-13C CO2 is from the burning of fossil fuels.
The atmospheric CO2 inflow rate is tightly coupled to surface temperature with about 85% co relation. It follows that human contribution by direct emission has an upper limit of 15%.
That is right for the year by year noise, but completely wrong for the slope of the increase which is twice as high for human emissions than for the increase in the atmosphere.
In this discussion we are disputing the assumptions in the common hypotheses so it is not useful to invoke these very assumptions as counter arguments. One assumption includes changes to sink rate where human emission is 1/2 absorbed. Human emission figures are then calculated from observed CO2 concentration and assumed sink rate. Realistically, we know very little of the partitioning of sources and sinks. To fill the void some creative accounting is used. What we know is that net atmospheric inflow (observed CO2 derivative) has increased and that surface temperature has increased. The 85% figure is a simple regression which necessarily includes noise and slope.
Figure 1
my apologies. The chart is not labelled precisely. The temperature plot is HADCRUT4 tropics from some digging I was doing this past spring. The specific dataset makes little difference to the core observation.
JCM,
You are comparing variables of different order: either compare temperature variability with CO2 variability or the derivatives of both.
In that graph you compare temperature variability with the derivative of CO2 variability…
If you compare all derivatives, then you will see that the derivative of temperature still has the same variability, but pi/2 shifted back in time and no slope, while human emissions have twice the slope and no variability.
Thus all slope is from human emissions and all variability is from temperature variability.
BTW, I used a factor 3.5 to give temperature about the same amplitude as the CO2 variability, That means an effect of about 3.5 ppmv/K/year in variability but still near zero in slope…
JCM, human emissions are calculated from fossil fuel sales (taxes!) and burning efficiency, not from other calculations or assumptions…
CO2 in the atmosphere is simply measured and the difference is what nature has done in the past year: sink or source.
Because in the past 60+ years the increase in the atmosphere was near always smaller than human emissions, nature must have been a net sink, not a source.
If fossil CO2 emissions are not the cause, then what is it? The only other possible explanations are all imaginary. But, please post your evidence.
That warmer oceans release more CO2 isn’t imaginary. You can demonstrate this yourself with beer, champagne or soda pop.
The oceans have warmed since AD 1850, at the end of the LIA. Other non-human sources vary over time, but have also increased.
Four VEI 6 volcanic eruptions have occurred since 1883. There have been two VEI 5s in this century, one in Chile in 2011, which I witnessed, and the other recently, submarine near Tonga. How many deeper high VEI submarine volcanoes have erupted during the Modern Warm Period is unknown.
In 220 years before Krakatoa, there were VEI 7 Tambora, and two simultaneous 6s in Iceland.
There was also a mystery eruption in 1808, rated a VEI 6, known only from Greenland and Antarctic ice cores.
The CO2 content of carbonated drinks is much, much higher than the ocean because it is under pressure artificially. When the cap is removed, the CO2 is then released from the liquid. This has nothing to do with the normal equilibrium of CO2 in sea water which is controlled by the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere according to Henry’s Law. It’s possible that non anthropogenic sources of CO2 have increased, but what is the evidence for it?
After opening, carbonated beverages go flatter as they warm.
The fact is that the oceans have been warming since the end of the LIA, before fossil fuel burning was anything like as common as now.
Volcanic activity has also increased, as has carbonate weathering.
Eight billion on average larger people exhale on the order of ten times as much CO2 as one billion. That’s human-related, as are more termites, but not due to fossil fuel, except indirectly, as energy abundance has allowed more of us to exist.
Our livestock might also be more massive than the wild animals they’ve replaced. Just to mention a few non-fossil fuel sources of CO2.
The solubility of CO2 in water is also controlled by the temperature of the water: the higher the temperature, the lower the solubility. This is why warm beer goes flat.
The hypothesis that atmospheric CO2 levels are controlled by temperature, not vice versa explains all the observations (lag, correlation etc) parsimoniously.
The CO2 levels were controlled by temperature over the past 800,000 years, except in the past 170 years, where the CO2 levels are increasing way faster and higher than what temperature dictates.
For the current average seawater surface temperature, the equilibrium with the atmosphere would be around 295 ppmv, not 415 ppmv…
The pre-industrial ratio between temperature and CO2 was about 8 ppmv/K in the Vostok ice core, but that is for Antarctic temperatures. For global temperatures that should be around 16 ppmv/K. Thus some 13 ppmv from the 0.8 K warming since the LIA, not 120 ppmv…
You overlook the fact that deep ocean waters are under a lot more pressure than a carbonated soda. When it upwells, the pressure is removed.
Clyde, but the deep oceans are largely under saturated in CO2, as that are mainly sink waters from near the poles where the pCO2 of the sinking waters is around 150 μatm.
As these waters are upwelling some 1000 years later near the equator, it is the warmer ocean temperatures that drive the pCO2 up to 750 μatm. That gives a near continuous CO2 flux of around 40 PgC/year between the equatorial upwelling and the polar sinks…
John, the effect of ocean surface temperature on CO2 levels is maximum 16 ppmv/K or 13 ppmv since the LIA. There is an increase of 120 ppmv. That has nothing to do with warmer oceans and everything to do with over 200 ppmv human emissions…
How can you possibly know that, without knowing every single last change in non-human CO2 producing parameters since 1850?
I don’t think you can know those.
John,
You don’t need to know anything what happened in the natural CO2 fluxes. Even if these doubled or halved, reversed from sink to source, that is not of the slightest interest, as we know the exact result of all these natural fluxes with reasonable accuracy:
Increase in the atmosphere = human emissions + natural emissions – natural sinks.
4.5 PgC/year = 9 PgC/year + X – Y
X – Y = -4.5 PgC/year or about -2.25 ppmv/year.
Nature is more sink than source for the past 60+ years. The absolute height of X or Y or of any individual flux within X or Y is of not the slightest interest, as we know the overall result and that is all we need.
My friend,
there are known knowns,
there are known unknowns,
and
there are unknown unknowns…
Careful! I got several down votes for saying just that about ECS the other day.. Scientism strikes again.. 🙂
Those are the “good” down votes…
Just because the cause of some effect isn’t obvious doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The effect is evidence of an existing cause, whether it can be identified or not.
That sounds like a purely scientific statement. Libtard political science, that is.
Typical modern dead science = an adventure in vaguely interesting but instantly forgettable trivia, mountains of minutiae and utter irrelevance conducted by folks wearing blinkers.
Yes I know they’re trying to be on ‘our side’ but we need this sort ‘science’ like we need a hole in the head. They’ve put in far too many easy targets (minutiae) making it easy for warmists to shred it. iow: They’ve tried to be ‘too clever’
I didn’t read much but especially their ‘two way’ chatter concerning oceans. Do they offer any coherent explanation of how an alkaline ‘thing’ (the ocean)spontaneously releases an acidic ‘thing’ (CO2 dissolved in water)?
IOW: The ocean is a one-way sink for CO2. Just like everything – once it falls into the water it never returns – except via volcanism some millions of years later
You know my angle and to calculate what they want simply answer this one question:
How much (farm) land was under cultivation growing annual crops (wheat, corn, rice also potatoes) over their selected timespan?
We want that on a year by year basis and we’re gonna do an integration over the selected timespan.
That integration will taking 10 Tonnes per acre of CO2 per year coming from that land.
Once you’ve got an answer, then add in the numbers for/from fossil burning
The CO2 is coming very simply and basically from bare soil being exposed to sunlight. It is THAT simple. The use of nitrogen fertiliser will increase that number considerably.
All their fancy isotope analysis is utterly irrelevant because the CO2 from the farmland is coming from (organic) plant originated/derived sources = *exactly* as is the CO2 from fossils. That what the fossil fuels are – fossilised plant material and so will have the exact same C14/13/12 analysis as CO2 coming out of ploughed/cultivated/tilled soil.
Remember that number, 10 Tonnes CO2 per acre per year – *until* the soil becomes desert sand.
False Flag?
Except that the earth is greening, thus absorbs more CO2 than it releases and thus NOT the cause of the CO2 increase nor the 13C/12C ratio decline…
See Fig 7, last page of
https://tildesites.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
This paper is so far off the stratagem list….their careers in academia are kaput….
The lead author is emeritus.
Possibly – but for the reason that they fail (bizarrely) to understand the difference between the residence time of single CO2 molecules in the atmosphere to that of a “Pulse” of CO2.
Try thinking about it.
The Pulse has been absorbed by the photosynthetic biosphere, thus greening the Earth, especially in dry areas, like the Sahel.
Sinks, like sources, aren’t fixed. Or even stable.
Except that the absorption is only half of the yearly human addition. Already for the past 60+ years. The sinks aren’t able to absorb all human emissions in the same year as emitted…
What is the percentage of greater plant coverage and diatom density as a result of the greater CO2?
In 18 april 2008 Science mag article the increase of CO2 effect on coccoliths was studied. I reported a large increase in mass over the past 220 years
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1154122
According to NASA satellites measuring chlorophyll al over the globe, the earth was greening some 10% for a 20% increase of CO2 2000-2020.
That was enough to absorb about a quarter of human emissions over the same period.
Another quarter was absorbed by the oceans, thus about half human emissions (as quantity in mass, not the original molecules) -temporarily- remained in the atmosphere…
Here the oxygen/CO2 partition in atmosphere, biosphere and oceans, based on the O2 and d13C balances for the period 1990-2000.
There is a more recent one, but I couldn’t locate it yet…
Authors of Article:
“The age of fossil fuels is much longer than the 5,730 y half-life of the 14C radioactive isotope; consequently, fossil fuels are devoid of the 14C isotope”.
The age of fossil fuels is much SHORTER than the 5,730-y half-life
They mean how long the fossil fuels used today have existed, not the industrial age in history in which they’ve been widely used.
John,
I think it should be clarified
The authors talk about fossil FUELS.
The fossil material STARTED to become fuels about 1750
The fossil material has been around for several hundred million years
It is the C13/C12 ratio that best traces the build-up of fossil generated CO2 in the atmosphere.
The C14 record was contaminated by nuclear bomb tests.
https://gml.noaa.gov/outreach/isotopes/c13tellsus.html
“The relative proportion of 13C in our atmosphere is steadily decreasing over time. Before the industrial revolution, δ13C of our atmosphere was approximately -6.5‰; now the value is around -8‰. Recall that plants have less 13C relative to the atmosphere (and therefore have a more negative δ13C value of around -25‰). Most fossil fuels, like oil and coal, which are ancient plant and animal material, have the same δ13C isotopic fingerprint as other plants. The annual trend–the overall decrease in atmospheric δ13C–is explained by the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere that must come from the terrestrial biosphere and/or fossil fuels. In fact, we know from Δ14C measurements, inventories, and other sources, that this decrease is from fossil fuel emissions, and is an example of the Suess Effect.
All this shows is that our emissions have increased, which few deny.
No, because nobody is taking into account the isotopic fractionation that confounds the ‘delta’ ratio.
Come on Clyde, even including the fractionation, the decline in atmosphere, ocean surface and biosphere is enormous: near 2 per mil over only 170 years time, while there was not more than a few tenths of a per mil even between glacial and interglacial periods…
Fossil fuels such as coal are millions of years old, so they are completely depleted of 14C.
The huge natural CO2 flux causes roughly 25% of the atmospheric molecules to be replaced every year, including our emitted molecules. Thus the percentage and mass of our molecules is indeed small compared to that of the total CO2 increase since 1750.
However it does not follow that our emissions have not caused that increase, especially since the annual increase is considerably smaller than our annual emissions. It could just be that our molecules first cause the increase then are replaced by natural molecules in the great flux.
I am not saying we have caused the increase, just that it is possible and this study does not change that. My view is that we have no idea why the increase is happening, because we are neither measuring the myriad natural emissions or the natural absorptions, nor tracking our molecules in the atmosphere. There is even evidence that most of our molecules never get out of the boundary layer into the general atmosphere.
In short there are several hypotheses as to what the mechanism of the CO2 increase is and we do not know which, if any, is true.
Yes, and I think this is what Dr Spencer is saying further down the page, earlier.
Dr Spencer compares to a bathtub with a leak and then adds another input pipe.
A better and clearer comparison may be to a bathtub with an inflow and an outflow to another reservoir of some sort. But imagine its a closed system, with all the outflow from the tub going into the reservoir, and the only source of any input being from the reservoir.
The earth and ocean store of carbon would be the reservoir, and the tub would be the atmosphere. There would be flows from tub to reservoir and back all the time, and this would lead to some fluctuations in the tub level.
The conventional argument is that we have increased the flow from the reservoir by burning fossil fuels. Or if you like we have installed another pipe connecting tub and reservoir, and used it to flow water/carbon into the tub.
This means that despite the other continuing flows between them, we are taking net water/carbon out of the reservoir and flowing it into the tub, thus raising the level in the tub.
As long as this doesn’t affect anything else, it will obviously raise the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. What proportion of the atmosphere consists of human emitted CO2 seems to be irrelevant to this issue.
Well, if I have understood the logic of it all… Trying….
I have made a better figure especially for you (just joking, was for an article):
Brilliant! And with numbers in it, too! Excellent.
If the oceans are warming as warmists insist, then the oceans are obviously outgassing increased amounts of CO2. If 25% is turned over annually, then it would take at least 4 years if not longer to absorb the increase. The studies I see deal only with constant CO2 in the sources and sinks. There are other variables that must be addressed in the CO2 cycle. Ocean outgassing and biosphere absorption for another.
Interesting!
It was what I expected. The increase in CO2 is mostly due to the decrease in the sinc area at the arctic.
I don’t think so, as the average sink rate over the past 60+ years still is the same as at the start: about 50 years e-fold decay rate or 37 years half life time and still in linear ratio with the extra CO2 pressure above equilibrium…
It would be more convincing if you would do the same for the oceans and land biosphere as well to validate the outcome.
Of course for science’s sake it is important to analyse the causes of past and recent climate change and CO2 increases but for policy purposes it is irrelevant. The questions relevant to public policy are: can humans influence future climate? Is itst\ desirable to influence future climate / climate change? How do we intend to influence climate change? The current UN COP consensus is: yes we believe humans can influence climate and climate change, Yes it is desirable to influence climate change / future climate and we want to influence future climate / climate change by reducing fossil fuel CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. These are valid answers / choices under uncertainty. The mian issue is we are not yet very good at replacing fossil fuels so that needs to change. It would be rational not to invest excessively in pretty poor solutions and invest more in innovation like Bill Gates suggested.
“The mian issue is we are not yet very good at replacing fossil fuels so that needs to change.”
There is no evidence that we need to replace fossil fuels. There is no evidence that human-derived CO2 is causing the Earth’s climate to change.
The total mass of the earth’s atmosphere is 5E+18 Kg.
The change in the CO2 content of the earth’s atmosphere from 1750 to present (300ppmv to 400 ppmv) is roughtly 8E+14 Kg.
The estimated total cumulative anthropogenic (fossil) CO2 emissions is 5E+15 Kg.
The increase in the CO2 content of the atmosphere therefore represents (8E+14/5E+15) or 16%.
Clearly, a lot of anthropogenic CO2 is not staying in the atmosphere. It seems very plausible that the observed increase is largely from anthropogenic CO2.
“Largely” is possible, but it makes a big policy difference if that means 51%, 60%, 70% or 80%.
This is a very important article
Here is the article in a much easier-to-read format
I have broken down the long paragraphs into short paragraphs
This article was written by:Skrable, Kenneth; Chabot, George; French, Clayton1
1University of Massachusetts Lowell, 1 University Avenue, Lowell, MA 01854.
Health Physics: February 2022 – Volume 122 – Issue 2 – p 291-305
doi: 10.1097/HP.0000000000001485
ABSTRACT
After 1750 and the onset of the industrial revolution, the anthropogenic fossil component and the non-fossil component in the total atmospheric CO2 concentration, C(t), began to increase.
Despite the lack of knowledge of these two components, claims that all or most of the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been due to the anthropogenic fossil component have continued since they began in 1960 with “Keeling Curve: Increase in CO2 from burning fossil fuel.”
Data and plots of annual anthropogenic fossil CO2 emissions and concentrations, C(t), published by the Energy Information Administration, are expanded in this paper.
Additions include annual mean values in 1750 through 2018 of the 14C specific activity, concentrations of the two components, and their changes from values in 1750.
The specific activity of 14C in the atmosphere gets reduced by a dilution effect when fossil CO2, which is devoid of 14C, enters the atmosphere.
We have used the results of this effect to quantify the two components. All results covering the period from 1750 through 2018 are listed in a table and plotted in figures. These results negate claims that the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been dominated by the increase of the anthropogenic fossil component.
We determined that in 2018, atmospheric anthropogenic fossil CO2 represented 23% of the total emissions since 1750 with the remaining 77% in the exchange reservoirs.
Our results show that the percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming.
INTRODUCTION
At an elapsed time of t years since 1750 (the start of the industrial revolution with the onset of the use of fossil fuels in vehicles and power plants), atmospheric CO2 concentrations, C(t), increased along with increases in temperatures.
Atmospheric measurements of C(t) were not available until 1958 at the Mauna Loa, HI, observatory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has provided the longest record of atmospheric measurements of the total CO2 initiated by Charles Keeling in 1958 at the Mauna Loa observatory (Keeling 1960).
Based on our knowledge, the anthropogenic fossil component, CF(t), and non-fossil component, CNF(t), in C(t) have never been estimated by NOAA at its observatories or at any other observatory from atmospheric measurements of CO2.
Despite the lack of knowledge of the components of C(t), claims have been made in the scientific literature (CSIRO 2014; Rubino et al. 2013, 2019) that all or most of the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been due to the anthropogenic fossil component, CF(t).
Other atmospheric measurements of C(t) began in 2003 at the NOAA observatory in Niwot Ridge, including measurements of the three isotopes of carbon: 12C, 13C, and 14C. Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon having a half-life of 5,730 y.
Carbon-14 atoms are produced in the atmosphere by interactions of cosmic rays, and they have reached an essentially constant steady state activity, i.e., disintegration rate, in the total world environment (Eisenbud and Gesell 1997).
The age of fossil fuels is much shorter than the 5,730 y half-life of the 14C radioactive isotope; consequently, fossil fuels are devoid of the 14C isotope.
When the anthropogenic fossil component of CO2 is released to the atmosphere, the specific activity of 14C,S(t) in C(t), decreases.
The units of S(t) used in this paper are disintegrations per minute per gram of carbon abbreviated as dpm (gC)−1, the common units used in 14C dating.
The ratio RS13 of the (13C/12C) atoms and the ratio RS14 of the (14C/12C) atoms at the Niwot Ridge observatory are used to calculate two statistics designated respectively in this paper as d13C and D14C, both of which are said to decrease when the anthropogenic fossil component, CF(t), increases in the atmosphere.
As discussed later in Table 1, values of the annual mean specific activity, S(t), are calculated in this paper from annual mean values of the D14C statistic.
Both the d13C and D14C statistics represent 1,000 times the relative deviations of their respective (13C/12C) and (14C /12C) atom ratios from those of a 1950 standard (Karlen et al. 1964) when expressed in per mil, given by the symbol ‰.
This magnification increases their underlying relative deviations and slopes in plots by a factor 1,000. While such amplification techniques often are useful for displaying very small changes in quantities of interest, the interpretation of such magnified changes must be attended with some care.
In the cases of concern here, the resultant steep slopes in plots likely have led persons throughout the world to conclude that the anthropogenic component has dominated the increase of CO2 and caused global warming.
We believe that both statistics have been misused to validate the anthropogenic fossil component, CF(t), as the major cause of the increase of C(t).
Global carbon cycle and its effect on CO2 quantities
The global carbon cycle for CO2 is described by the Energy Information Administration (EIA 2020). Natural, two-way exchanges of CO2 occur between the atmosphere and its two exchange reservoirs, the oceans and terrestrial biosphere.
Two-way exchanges with the atmosphere also occur from changes in land use. The ocean is the largest reservoir of CO2, and it contains 50 times that for the atmosphere and 19 times that for the terrestrial biosphere (Water Encyclopedia 2005).
All of the two way exchanges are considered in this paper to be comprised of both the non-fossil component and the anthropogenic fossil component.
Annual changes, DCNF(t) in CNF(t), in the atmosphere relative to the 1750 initial value, C(0), can be positive or negative depending on the net flow of CO2 between the atmosphere and its exchange reservoirs as well as on land use changes.
A one-way pathway of anthropogenic fossil CO2 into the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion and industrial fuel processes since 1750 is represented by annual emissions, DE(t), of anthropogenic fossil CO2 to the atmosphere, which have been increasing each year since 1750.
These emissions over time t result in increasing annual mean anthropogenic fossil concentrations, CF(t), that result in specific activities, S(t), of 14C in C(t) that are increasingly lower than the initial value, S(0).
This dilution of S(0) in C(0) in 1750 by the presence of CF(t) in C(t) corresponds to what is described as the Suess effect (Suess et al. 1967).
Click to see the entire article, including tables, equations, graphs, and references
Read the full unrestricted paper here.
“Our results show that the percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming.”
The alarmists are not going to like that conclusion.
They already don’t and are screaming ‘heretic!’.
I don’t get the point of the paper? We emit CO2. As a result of that, there’s more CO2 in the atmosphere. That is pretty well understood. We can black box it and have done that. This level emissions increases atmospheric CO2 this much. Arguing over where it came from doesn’t change the black box results.
All of it is mixed into the annual variations. But so what? If you do this, this other thing happens. Turn on the tap of a half full sink. At the same time, open the drain. What caused the sink level to do whatever? Jesus. One of the two things you did, hardly did a thing. Is that the point?
What if the you didn’t open the drain, and let the faucet drip? So after 12 hours the level only went up an inch. But most of the water was all ready there. So, what caused the level to rise? What if the drain leaked at half the rate the faucet drips? So it rose a 1/2 inch. What caused it to rise? Was it the leak? No. But the water hardly turned over.
Let’s say you place a bowling ball in the sink and then take it out every hour. What does that change? Nothing. That’s a cancelling variation. Does the bowling ball change your attribution? If it does, give up.
There is an apparent relationship between annual change in CO2 concentration and annual change in the global temperature.
There are other charts at climate4you showing annual CO2 change in relation to other natural events.
They had me until the last sentence of the Abstract.
“Our results show that the percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming.”
They produce a paper which nicely attempts to show burning fossil fuel’s contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere. But then they assume that CO2=Global warming is a given fact and then use the paper to make a claim about global warming. The paper gets downgraded by 2 letter grades based on that very last sentence.
It makes sense. If you have multiple fairly stable sources and sinks in a dynamic system that tends towards equilibrium (i.e. every real physical system), over time the concentration will tend towards reflect their relative net magnitude.
So in the long run, if the “23% of the total emissions since 1750” figure is correct, then you would expect the stable point to be around 23%. I happen to think 23% is quite high, since human emissions only account for ~4% of of the emissions in the carbon cycle, but given the slop in the system 12% is certainly not unreasonable.
What is often forgotten in this whole exchange is that natural sources and sinks are not static quantities to begin with. It’s not like increasing the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has no effect on air-sea gas exchange.
The alternative is that would have to prove that some other equilibrium exists, and the long term geological record just doesn’t support such a claim.
Cloud reduction and consequent increase in insolation will raise the CO2 emitted from the oceans. How long it takes to restore equilibrium will confound the balance calculations.
Jim, the ocean surface is a net absorber for CO2, not a source.
DIC (CO2 + (bi)carbonates) increased with 1.5% in the ocean surface layer over the past 30 years, while CO2 increased 15% in the atmosphere.
See Figure 3 in:
https://tos.org/oceanography/assets/docs/27-1_bates.pdf
Beeze, the authors make the same error as many before them: a balance is not only emissions, it also contains sinks…
While 5% of the emissions is from fossil fuel burning and 95% is natural, 0% of the sinks is by humans and 97.5% is natural, leaving 2.5% -temporarily- in the atmosphere. All from the 5% human emissions, as the natural balance is 2.5% more sink than source.
Not the same molecules, but that is not of the slightest interest: it is the one-way addition in CO2 mass by humans that increases the total CO2 mass in the atmosphere and nothing else, besides a very small extra from the warming ocean surface.
The geological record over the past 800,000 years shows a change of maximum 16 ppmv/K, that is 13 ppmv since the LIA for a warming ocean surface. The real increase is over 120 ppmv…
14C cannot be used to accurately measure the fraction of fossil fuel 14C in the atmosphere, and past attempts have varied around several percent. The analysis in this paper, like that of some others, ignores a very important geochemical process, namely continual exchange of CO2 among the major reservoirs: atmosphere, oceans and plants/soil. The quantity of such CO2 exchange exceeds the rate of fossil fuel addition of CO2.
When those fossil fuel CO2 molecules enter the atmosphere (without 14C) they then exchange with CO2 molecules in oceans & plants/soil that contain varying amounts of 14C, depending on how long that CO2 has been isolated from the atmosphere. (Most plants not long; soil longer, ocean varying times, depending on depth.) Such CO2 exchange totally negates any effort to calculate how much total fossil fuel CO2 has been added to atmosphere because most of that FF CO2 added has gone elsewhere and been replaced with CO2 from other reservoirs and containing different fractions of 14C.
I have often wondered about whether all the 120ppm can be from human activity.
3,000Gt x 120/400 = 900Gt.
So can humans have out this there if in fact Henry’s Law takes a few j hundred years to equalise concentrations between atmosphere and oceans?
Possibly, witb 100 years if gradual increase to 34Gt pa current rate. Will now read the paper and see if it addresses this basic maths.
Of course the key point, in addition to the lag between Temperature change, and CO2 change, is that natural change in terms of range, rate and period, 2 deg, 1deg pc, 1Ka, is no different in this current warming phase to the prior cycles of the geological record, cycles that are well reported od hundreds og geological papers and classic text books, that the IPCC deny to justify their attribution of this natural effect to AGW to as the basis of their demonstrably false claims..
So there is no anomaly for the IPCC CMIP models to be forced to account for. Any actual small effect is probably cancelled by natural oceanic controls of evaporation and albedo as it always has been. Nothing to account for/attribute to CO2, or any other of yer anthropogenic effects. BUT, these are only the observed facts that we have measured. We must prefer belief in models and the words of politicians and money men, and the “science” of their retained “experts” to old fashioned deterministic science yoiu can test by observation of nature. CPhys, CEng.
I’m an engineer. It is shocking to me that the bulk of dialogue on here (and everywhere else) is on temperature when it is net energy flow that is the core concern.
Are we in radiative balance? That is the boundary condition that matters. All of the back and forth about the innards of our system is like the three blind mice describing an elephant.
Wouldn’t it be useful to measure the flux in enough precision to answer this question? Nothing else matters!
I mostly agree with the sentiment, but we can’t measure the global energy balance to such accuracy, it is estimated to be 1 W per sq m. But we can measure a temperature rise, which implies an energy imbalance.
Why? We are twisting science into pretzels to guesstimate a global temperature with a thousand assumptions as to data validity. It seems to me that a satellite network could easily measure outbound IR to at least enough repeatability to demonstrate a trend. We’ve been pissing around with thermometers for a hundred years and know nothing.
The paper is one of the worst written papers I’ve ever seen. It’s almost hopeless to follow their logic or derivations. Here was my answer to the Lord MoB showing how the 14C Bomb Spike data can be described mathematically. We get a 5 year half-life for atm CO2.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/21/on-co2-residence-times-the-chicken-or-the-egg/#comment-1142053
Of course, I like the result of the paper, but almost nobody is going to follow that chaos. And the figures are nearly worthless. My analysis back then, reported to WUWT, was given the natural loss of anthopogenic CO2, the human emissions from 1750 could not explain the rise in atm CO2. The growth of human emissions less losses to other reservoirs could not explain the observed rise in atm CO2 using data from Mauna Loa.
You’d think that isotope tracer data was clear but evidently it’s not.
That would be too simple, too testable, too Popperian, too old-fashioned.
Climate science now seems to be “look what you’ve made me do” science.
That trace of CO2 in the atmosphere just makes all that water vapour warm the whole earth.
That added CO2 – labelled by isotope – disappears but makes a whole lot more – unlabelled – CO2 just jump into the atmosphere in response – “look what you made me do”.
It’s almost like the miracle of the 5 loaves and two fishes feeding the multitude of 5000 people.
It really is the miracle gas. Except its bad, of course.