Cam_S writes via email:
Kevin Trenberth has a new “energy imbalance” paper out. CO2 is causing… Droughtfloods (sic), extreme weather, heatwaves, hurricanes, rising ocean temperatures, sea level rise, and wildfires.
Models say so! – – – – – – – – –
Knowing the Earth’s energy imbalance is critical in preventing global warming, study finds Distinguished scholar at the National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and highly cited lead author Kevin Trenberth together with climate scientist and co-author Lijing Cheng have made a new complete inventory of all the various sources of excess heat on Earth.
He studied energy changes from the atmosphere, ocean, land, and ice as climate system components from 2000 to 2019 and compared this to the radiation at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere to find the imbalance.
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/957139
A perspective on climate change from Earth’s energy imbalance (By Trenberth) The Earth is warming from human activities, primarily because of increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere that reduce the outgoing infrared radiation from the planet escaping to space. This creates an energy imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) called Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI).
Here is the news release from EurekAlert
Knowing the Earth’s energy imbalance is critical in preventing global warming, study finds
IOP PUBLISHING
The imbalance of energy on Earth is the most important metric in order to gauge the size and effects of climate change, according to a new study published today in the first issue of Environmental Research: Climate, a new open access journal.
Distinguished scholar at the National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and highly cited lead author Kevin Trenberth together with climate scientist and co-author Lijing Cheng have made a new complete inventory of all the various sources of excess heat on Earth. He studied energy changes from the atmosphere, ocean, land, and ice as climate system components from 2000 to 2019 and compared this to the radiation at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere to find the imbalance.
“The net energy imbalance is calculated by looking at how much heat is absorbed from the Sun and how much is able to radiate back into space,” explains Trenberth, who’s paper was published today, “it is not yet possible to measure the imbalance directly, the only practical way to estimate it is through an inventory of the changes in energy.”
Understanding the net energy gain of the climate system from all origins, how much extra energy there is and where it is redistributed in the Earth system is vital to inform and thus address the climate crisis. Previously, the focus of climate research has been on the rise of the global mean surface temperature on Earth. However, this is just one outcome of the total energy imbalance faced on Earth.
“Modelling the Earth energy imbalance is challenging, and the relevant observations and their synthesis need improvements. Understanding how all forms of energy are distributed across the globe and are sequestered or radiated back to space will give us a better understanding of our future,” adds Lijing Cheng, co-author of the study.
About Environmental Research: Climate
Environmental Research: Climate is a multidisciplinary, open access journal devoted to addressing important challenges concerning the physical science and assessment of climate systems and global change in a way that bridges efforts relating to impact/future risks, resilience, mitigation, adaptation, security and solutions in the broadest sense. All research methodologies are encouraged comprehensively covering qualitative, quantitative, experimental, theoretical and applied approaches.
About IOP Publishing
IOP Publishing is a society-owned scientific publisher, delivering impact, recognition, and value to the scientific community. Its mission is to expand the world of physics, offering a portfolio of journals, eBooks, conference proceedings and science news resources globally. As a wholly owned subsidiary of the Institute of Physics, a not-for-profit society, IOP Publishing supports the Institute’s work to inspire people to develop their knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of physics. Go to http://ioppublishing.org or follow us @IOPPublishing.
JOURNAL
Environmental Research Climate
DOI
ARTICLE TITLE
A perspective on climate change from Earth’s Energy Imbalance
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
4-Jul-2022
Here is the open access paper.
PERSPECTIVE • THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE ISOPEN ACCESS
A perspective on climate change from Earth’s energy imbalance
Kevin E Trenberth4,1,2 and Lijing Cheng3
Published 4 July 2022 • © 2022 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd
Environmental Research: Climate, Volume 1, Number 1Citation Kevin E Trenberth and Lijing Cheng 2022 Environ. Res.: Climate 1 013001
Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
1. The warming Earth
The Earth is warming from human activities, primarily because of increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere that reduce the outgoing infrared radiation from the planet escaping to space. This creates an energy imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) called Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI). It creates heating of the planet, which is manifested in multiple ways, only one of which is the rise in global mean surface temperature (GMST) (figure 1). The latter has been the primary focus for tracking global warming and 2021 was rated as the fifth or sixth highest on record, but the top 8 warmest years have all occurred since 2013 (figure 1).
The EEI is arguably the most important metric related to climate change. It is the net result of all the processes and feedbacks in play in the climate system. However, it is also important to recognize the components of radiation at TOA, the absorbed solar radiation (ASR) and net outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). The ASR is the net incoming after reflected radiation is accounted for and varies with clouds. The net EEI is the ASR-OLR. A key reason for this breakdown relates to proposed geoengineering, in particular, so-called solar radiation management (SRM), a euphemistic name if ever there was one (Trenberth 2022). SRM alters ASR while the problem is trapping of OLR. In between are all the weather systems and hydrological cycle.
The radiative heat is variously transferred into sensible heat (related to temperatures), latent energy (related to changes in phase of water), potential energy (related to gravity and height), and kinetic energy (related to movement), and the richness of the phenomena and transformations among these various forms of energy are what makes this problem both challenging and interesting scientifically.
It is not (yet) possible to measure EEI directly, although changes measured from satellites are believed to be reliable, albeit biased. The only practical way to estimate net EEI is through an inventory of the changes in energy.
2. Assessing EEI
In our assessment of the EEI, the focus is on the well observed period from 2005 to 2019 (see section 3). The EEI is about 460 TW or globally 0.90 ± 0.15 W m−2 (Trenberth 2022). This can be compared with the net ASR and OLR of about 240 W m−2 as an estimate of the flow-through energy. Consequently, the EEI is very small and cannot be directly discerned or measured. Nevertheless, it is very large compared with estimated direct human influences such as the total electricity generated globally (about 5.7 TW in 2018) (Trenberth 2022).
About 93% of the extra heat from the EEI ends up in the ocean as increasing ocean heat content (OHC). In 2022, the global OHC was the highest on record (Cheng et al 2022) and the global warming signal in OHC is large compared with the natural variability, unlike GMST, so that trends in OHC can be detected in four years (Cheng et al 2018), see figure 2 for example. The second-best signal-to-noise ratio is in the related sea level rise (SLR), as about 40% comes from OHC and the associated expansion of the ocean, while the rest mainly comes from melting of land ice: glaciers, Greenland, Antarctica that puts more water into the ocean. For SLR the trend detection occurs in about five years while for GMST the trend detection requires more than two decades (Cheng et al 2018).
On average nearly 3% of the EEI goes into melting ice and another 4% goes into raising temperatures of land and melting permafrost, while less than 1% remains in the atmosphere. The changes in GMST relate to those on land and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the ocean, and the increase in GMST (figure 1) is a consequence. The primary reasons for these distributions of excess heat relate to the heat capacity of these climate system components, the specific heat of water versus land versus air, and the masses involved; see Trenberth (2022) for a comprehensive review.
However, the initial excess energy has profound effects and big impacts along the way to its destination. The radiative energy is mostly absorbed at the surface where it mainly contributes to increased evaporation and moistening of the atmosphere, and is eventually realized as latent heating of the atmosphere during precipitation. This invigorates the hydrological cycle. In regions where it is not raining, it leads to enhanced drying then heating, increasing risk of heat waves and wildfires on land. It increases intensity of droughts. The evaporated moisture, carried by the atmosphere, converges into storms and associated frontal systems, where it increases precipitation rates, increasing risk of flooding on land. The latent heat released may also intensify some weather systems such as hurricanes and convection (thunderstorms). The warmer moister air is more buoyant and, helped by many weather phenomena, it rises and expands in lower pressures and cools adiabatically, then spreads out maybe thousands of km away and warms as it subsides, thus redistributing energy often to higher and drier regions where it can radiate to space.
In general, all components of the climate system react to heating by trying to get rid of excess heat in one way or another. The most effective method overall globally is radiative cooling as higher temperatures increase radiation by the fourth power of absolute temperature. Moreover, unequal heating leads to gradients that drive instabilities in the atmosphere (convective, baroclinic) and mixing is pervasive. In the ocean, warmer waters and those with lower salinity are less dense, and thermohaline circulations may develop, although most ocean currents are driven by winds. In ice and land, energy may be redistributed by water flows or conduction, but the latter is a very inefficient process.
In the ocean, heating occurs from the top down; warm on top of colder water is a stable configuration so that the stability and stratification of the ocean increase (Li et al 2020). Whereas globally, GMST and SSTs have clearly increased since about the 1970s (figure 1), for deeper ocean layers there is a delay that increases with depth. Globally, the top 500 m of the ocean are clearly warming since 1980, for 500–1000 m depth since 1990, 1000–1500 m layer since 1998, and from 1500 to 2000 m since 2005 (Cheng et al 2021). Indeed, it is a major challenge for climate models to get this heat penetration right, since it depends on unresolved sub-grid scale processes like mixing and convection, and how well or whether tidal mixing is included. A preliminary check of CMIP6 models reveals too much heating of the deep ocean (too large diffusion) but too little heating of the layers given above. This ocean heat redistribution is a factor in climate sensitivity of models and the errors contribute to too much surface warming.
The GMST was the fifth or sixth warmest on record in 2021 (depends on the dataset), in part, because of the year-long La Niña conditions, in which cool conditions in the tropical Pacific influence weather patterns around the world. Under those conditions the ocean stores extra heat, and then releases heat during El Niño events, making El Niño years like 1998 and 2016 relatively the warmest on record while OHC declines a small but measurable amount. There is also a signal in SLR because more rain occurs over the ocean in El Niño and droughts are more common over land, while more rains and snows occur on land in La Niña events. In the La Niña event in 2011 the extensive rains and snows, especially over North America, Siberia, and Australia (where it led to revival of Lake Eyre) took 5 mm of water out of the global ocean (Boening et al 2012).
There is a lot more natural variability in surface air temperatures than in ocean temperatures because of El Niño/La Niña and weather events (figure 2). For the oceans, the natural variability on top of warming creates hot spots locally, sometimes called ‘marine heat waves,’ that vary from year to year but are increasing (Tanaka et al 2022). Those hot spots have profound influences on marine life, from tiny plankton to fish, marine mammals, and seabirds. Other hot spots eventually result in more activity in the atmosphere, such as hurricanes (Trenberth et al 2018) which then take heat out of the ocean even as some is also mixed deeper.
All five oceans are warming (Cheng et al 2022), with the largest amounts of warming in the Atlantic Ocean and Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica. That is a concern for Antarctica’s ice as warmer waters can creep under Antarctica’s ice shelves, thinning them and resulting in calving off huge icebergs.
3. EEI observations
So how well is EEI known and does it matter? The discussion above makes the point that it matters a lot. Knowing how much extra energy affects weather systems and rainfall is vital to understand the increasing weather extremes. Moreover, because those weather events move energy around and help the climate system get rid of energy by radiating it to space, these processes also affect the rise in GMST. In other words, they affect the nature and magnitude of climate change, and have major implications for how well the outcomes can be modeled and predicted.
Climate prediction is based upon comprehensive Earth system models that include modules for the atmosphere, oceans, land, and cryosphere. In the atmosphere such models are used for numerical weather prediction (NWP), and these are now quite sophisticated and enable reliable predictions about ten days in advance, following comprehensive analysis of continual atmospheric observations (over 200 million per day; NOAA 2022) using four-dimensional-data assimilation. Beyond that time frame, chaotic elements destroy deterministic forecasts, but the climate may be projected through knowledge of the interactions with the land, oceans, and ice, which are the main energy reservoirs.
There are good estimates of TOA radiation variations from Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) (Loeb et al 2018) since March 2000 (figure 3). The exact calibration is not well known because of questions about sampling, especially clouds, but it is thought that the changes throughout the time series are reasonably reliable. In figure 3 the zero is set based upon OHC estimates (Loeb et al 2018). There is an apparent trend in the CERES EEI (Loeb et al 2021) of 0.4 W m−2 decade−1 for March 2000–December 2021. This trend is mainly due to an increase in ASR associated with decreased reflection by reduced Arctic sea-ice, and changes in clouds, reduced aerosols and increases in GHGs.
The Sun is often invoked as a possible source of climate change but contributions from changes in the Sun (figure 3) are very small. All energy from the oceans, land and ice must go through the atmosphere to reach the TOA, and the standard deviation of annual mean TOA net radiation is about three times that of the atmospheric energy tendency (figure 4), highlighting that it is not atmospheric energy or temperatures so much as clouds that cause the TOA variability (Trenberth (2022) for details).
Many estimates of EEI exist. Trenberth et al (2009) made an estimate based upon atmospheric energy and surface fluxes. Trenberth (2009) estimated contributions from other components of the climate system, something that was done more thoroughly by Hansen et al (2011), and von Schuckmann et al (2016) provided a good review of the outstanding issues.
Changes in atmospheric energy are well known (figure 4) from atmospheric reanalyses. For the land, there are no such time series except right at the surface, where the extreme heterogeneity of the land surface in terms of topography, rocks, soil, vegetation and water distributions provides major challenges. Rough estimates of overall land heating below the surface come from boreholes, made for other purposes. Here a time series for land based on land surface air temperatures for a layer of 10 m is estimated. Highest value is in 2015 of 0.05 W m−2 (figure 4).
The situation is only slightly better for ice. Time series exist for sea ice area, and an estimate exists of Arctic sea ice volume (updated from Schweiger et al (2011)), while appraisals continue to be made of how much ice remains in glaciers. Maximum values for Arctic sea ice melt occur in 2008, 2011 and 2016 of 0.03 W m−2. Estimates of changes in Greenland and Antarctica by different means exist but their uncertainties are large enough that error bars may not overlap (Trenberth 2022).
Modeling of the oceans has progressed, and the ocean observing system made major advances in the early 2000s with the deployment of the Argo array of over 3000 profiling floats that sample the upper 2000 m of the ocean for temperature and salinity. Estimates exist of OHC changes since 1958, the International Geophysical Year, although uncertainties are large prior to 2005. Two ocean OHC datasets have been used in figure 4. ORAS5 is constrained by altimetry observations of sea level and surface fluxes, but values are too high prior to 2008 when Argo reached full depth coverage and are less reliable after 2015 when it went operational. The IAP dataset has spurious variability related to sampling as it lacks the surface flux constraint. A preliminary newer ORAS construction (not shown) more closely matches IAP from 2006 to 2010.
In figure 4, the estimated inventory of the mean values for 2005–2019 are given. The ice time series is too small to be seen and the land values barely emerge in 2015 and 2019. Ideally, it should be possible to add up the contributions from all sources and they should agree with CERES. In figure 4 the agreement is reasonable from 2010 to 2016.
The ability to close the TOA energy budget beyond a long-term average is improving but remains a limitation on how well it is possible to analyze what is going on in the climate system and why. However, using physical constraints, regional energy balances and transports at 1000 km scales can be achieved (Trenberth and Zhang 2019). Desirably, all data should be assimilated into a comprehensive Earth system model and each component initialized, to provide the starting point for predictions, as done in NWP. Such experimental predictions for seasons in advance exist. The failure and indeed inability of models to match observations in the ocean, land and ice domains demonstrates their limitations, but short-term predictions are potentially a way forward to challenge and improve both models and observations.
It is vital to understand the net energy gain, and how much and where heat is redistributed within the Earth system. How much heat might be moved to where it can be purged from the Earth via radiation to limit warming? Utilizing the EEI framework, the relevant observations and their synthesis challenges models and highlights needed improvements, but with prospects for major payoffs from better information about what is going on, and why, and what the outlook is for the future.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to John Fasullo for processing the CERES EBAF data Ed4.1, available from https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/data/. NCAR is sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Data availability statement
All data that support the findings of this study are included within the article (and any supplementary information files).
Sorry to repeat it but, using only officially recognised numbers and straightforward arithmetic……..
That “straightforward arithmetic” has some major arithmetic mistakes.
130 ppm / 171 years = 0.76 ppm/yr and not ppm. That’s ppm per year. Note that ppm is not the same thing as ppm/year. The graphic cannot even get the units right.
Human contribution to the 410 ppm is (410 ppm – 280 ppm) / 410 ppm = 32%. The graphic is off by a factor of 10.
Human emissions are currently at about 37 GtCO2/year. That is 4.75 ppm/yr. The graphic is off by an astonishing 237x. And if nature were not buffering a significant portion of those emissions then it would only take (820 ppm – 410 ppm) / 4.75 ppm/year = 86.3 years for CO2 to double.
So speaketh the professional trendologist…
It wishes.
Who cares?
CO2 is crucial for live and human flourishing.
Being “crucial for live” is not justification for doing arithmetic incorrectly.
IPCC has been doing bad modeling for decades.
IPCC modeling whether good, bad, or otherwise cannot justify doing arithmetic incorrectly.
Same side of the coin my friend.
What is your excuse? You presented gross anthro’ contributions, not net.
Clyde Spencer: “What is your excuse? You presented gross anthro’ contributions, not net.”
Technically I presented the human contribution in the context of the apportioned increase wrt to the current mass (130 / 410). I did not present the human contribution in the context of the gross accumulated emissions wrt to the current mass (310 / 410).
If we are to do the calculation in the context of gross accumulated emissions the percentage of contribution to the current mass it would actually be 310 / 410 = 75%. And the percentage of human contribution to the increase would be 310 / 130 = 238% where the natural contribution to the increase would be -180 / 130 = -138%.
You are assuming the climate models are intended for accurate forecasts. Not so. They are programmed to scare people, by government funded bureaucrats paid to scare people.
If accuracy was a goal, The Russian INM model would get 99% of the attention. It over predicts warming less than any other model. It gets no attention.
They are not actually the IPCC’s models and the IPCC would make scary predictions even if there were no models. That’s what they do.
The models are just props in the climate scaremongering scam. They have been inaccurate for 40+ years and will always be.
Computers predict whatever their programmers want predicted.
Go and take some arithmetic classes then!
Which arithmetic class says the 310 ppm of human CO2 emissions on top of the 280 ppm pre-industrial amount less the 180 ppm buffered by the biosphere and hydrosphere resulting in 410 ppm remaining in the atmosphere results in 3%?
Where did 310ppm CO2 appear from.
Not from factual measurements – 280ppm as confirmed by the Vostock Ice core nor the currently measured 410ppm atmospheric content from Mauna Loa.
I’m using FACTS WE KNOW as close to 100% certainty as we can get.
You’re using concocted numbers that the oceans are somehow hiding. Pathetic.
HotScot said: “Where did 310ppm CO2 appear from.”
That is how much CO2 humans emitted into the atmosphere.
Think about that. Humans emitted more CO2 into the atmosphere than what the atmosphere started with before the industrial revolution.
If the biosphere and hydrosphere had not buffered some of the human emissions then the concentration would have been 280 ppm + 310 ppm = 590 ppm.
Assumption piled on top of assumption. No one knows what actually generates much of the CO2. What humans do is a pure estimate, none of it is measured. How about termites? Do they produce more CO2 than humans? Why are their output considered “natural”? How about all the flora respiration and fauna respiration? The earth has greened you know. That requires flora respiration to grow the green plant material you can see. Are any of these accurately measured? What is the uncertainty estimate of CO2 emissions? Could it be plus or minus 4%?
These are all things you have ignored in your blank assertion that all of the increase is due to humans.
The law of conservation of mass is not an assumption.
Who cares indeed. 400 or 800 or 1200 or 1600. Earth’s been there before many times. Plants actually do care — helps them alot.
Plants feelings on the matter is not justification for doing arithmetic incorrectly.
The IPCC has been doing modeling incorrectly so what is your point?
My point is that what plants think about CO2 or how it benefits them cannot be used to justify doing arithmetic incorrectly.
It’s just like bad models.
The arithmetic supporting climate alarmism has many mistakes. For example, the nominal sensitivity of 0.8C per w/m^2 is simply the average surface temperature divided by its Stefan-Boltzmann emissions, rather than the slope of the SB Law which is only about 0.3C per w/m^2. They then try to obfuscate this misrepresentation by restating the sensitivity as a function of doubling CO2.
Another has to do with feedback where Schlesinger confused the fraction of output fed back to the input with this fraction times the open loop gain. This led to an arithmetic error that assumed the open loop gain was an arbitrary value that non linearly ‘amplified’ w/m^2 into temperature while at the same, assuming it was a dimensionless 1 in order to support the use of feedback analysis on a non linearly related inputs and outputs!
This is, probably, one of the most hilarious comments ever made here!! Not even the most egregious alarmists will support this absolutely hilarious math!!!
It is utterly bogus.
I’m curious…what value do you get?
Thank you. I thought the same.
A Double CO2 world will be a wonderful scintillating green world…with forests of kelp…bamboo…hemp….to be used to replace plastics that are polluting the oceans.
A “scintillating green world” is not justification for doing arithmetic incorrectly.
Go and take some arithmetic classes then!
LOL. That’s pathetic.
The graphic is clear. Whilst ‘past performance is no indicator of future success’, these are official numbers, calculated correctly.
And what’s this drivel?
“That’s every human on the planet and every industrial process adding ~0.02ppm CO2 to the atmosphere per year on average.”
That’s ppm, per year, on average or did that bit confuse you?
WTF is this?
Why would anyone take a straightforward calculation of increased atmospheric CO2 over 171 years, then divide it by ppm again? Were you off sick the day they explained arithmetic?!
And here’s some news, the passage you quote is not expressed as a percentage, it’s clear: “410ppm minus 280ppm = 130ppm ÷ 171 years (2021 minus 1850) = 0.76ppm” That’s what’s known as an average, not a percentage, it’s even pointed out to you!
Straightforward, clear, factual and should be clear to even you, but evidently your arithmetic skills are severely lacking, not to mention your logic.
Everything you need to understand about future CO2 emissions, judging from the factual past, is inherent within that calculation and, unlike your wild guess (or anyone else’s) of 37 GtCO2/year, the actual numbers tell us something completely different so, for your benefit I shall repeat: “410ppm minus 280ppm = 130ppm ÷ 171 years (2021 minus 1850) = 0.76ppm”
Your 37 GtCO2/year is theoretical, calculated by some spotty geek, hiding in his basement with a spreadsheet, guessing at all the emissions he can possibly dream up, using arithmetic skills as wonky as yours.
And the calculation is giving you the benefit of the doubt as the Industrial Revolution began in 1750, which makes the final time scales even larger.
You can’t accept it because your cult won’t allow it.
Typical leftist, just make sh*t up, like your lying cult leader Brandon, and expect people to accept it.
50 years of your nonsense and not a single negative effect of what little warming the world has experienced can be found. Nothing, despite the innumerable claims made of imminent catastrophe by idiotic alarmist ‘scientist’s’ over those 50 years.
Even Greta is wrong – shock, horror!
Begone. Clearly you’re not capable of conducting a grown up debate without dribbling on your bib. Not worth anyone wasting their time with you.
HotScot said: “And what’s this drivel?
“That’s every human on the planet and every industrial process adding ~0.02ppm CO2 to the atmosphere per year on average.””
I’m sorry, but that is not correct either. The 130 ppm is the amount CO2 increased in the atmosphere. It is not the amount humans emitted. More on that later. Furthermore, 130 ppm / 171 years does not equal 0.02 ppm/yr. It actually equals 0.76 ppm/yr.
HotScot said: “WTF is this?
That is amount humans contributed to the 410 ppm that exists in the atmosphere.
HotScot said: “Why would anyone take a straightforward calculation of increased atmospheric CO2 over 171 years, then divide it by ppm again? Were you off sick the day they explained arithmetic?!”
Percentage figures (in this case attribution of the whole) are unitless. To provide a unitless percentage figure you must take the attributable amount in ppm and divide it by the whole amount in ppm.
HotScot said: “And here’s some news, the passage you quote is not expressed as a percentage, it’s clear: “410ppm minus 280ppm = 130ppm ÷ 171 years (2021 minus 1850) = 0.76ppm” That’s what’s known as an average, not a percentage, it’s even pointed out to you!”
I didn’t say that was a percentage. I said the units on that calculation are ppm/yr; not ppm. BTW, percentage calculations are unitless.
HotScot said: “Your 37 GtCO2/year is theoretical, calculated by some spotty geek, hiding in his basement with a spreadsheet, guessing at all the emissions he can possibly dream up, using arithmetic skills as wonky as yours.”
It comes from Friedlingstein et al. 2022.
HotScot said: “And the calculation is giving you the benefit of the doubt as the Industrial Revolution began in 1750, which makes the final time scales even larger.”
That’s not the issue science has with the 3% claim.
HotScot said: “You can’t accept it because your cult won’t allow it.”
I cannot accept 3% because 410 ppm * 0.03 = 12.3 ppm is not consistent with the abundance of evidence for the amount humans contributed to the 410 ppm existing in the atmosphere.
HotScot said: “Typical leftist, just make sh*t up, like your lying cult leader Brandon, and expect people to accept it.”
I think you have me confused with someone else. I’m not a leftist. The figures aren’t mine. And I have no idea who Brandon is what he could possibly have to do with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
HotScot said: “50 years of your nonsense and not a single negative effect of what little warming the world has experienced can be found. Nothing, despite the innumerable claims made of imminent catastrophe by idiotic alarmist ‘scientist’s’ over those 50 years.”
I have not been alive for 50 years. Regardless the effects of the CO2 in the atmosphere has little bearing on the percentage of atmospheric CO2 mass attributable to humans.
HotScot said: “Even Greta is wrong – shock, horror!”
She is wrong on a lot of topics. That does not justify claiming that 3% of the atmospheric CO2 got there by human means.
HotScot said: “Begone. Clearly you’re not capable of conducting a grown up debate without dribbling on your bib. Not worth anyone wasting their time with you.”
I think there has been a misunderstanding here. This is not personal. I have no doubt that you are a smart and respectable person. If we met in person I would get along with you just fine. And if I have offended you I am genuinely sorry. It is never my intention to offend anyone on here.
bdgwx
It is decades now, that we have being blasted with supposed consequences of AGW and the fairy tail of human CO2 influence in climate from ppl that ain’t even able anymore to even consider ever so slightly the possibility that all what is happening is only fully natural.
No body could ever contemplate what the consequences could be if the unbeliavable of the climate being solely natural…
as I am saying, no body in the frame of mind to even consider it for a moment.
Why do you think that is, the total lack of inclusivity in science…. of all possible outcomes to weight?
Why the maming of basic procedure and basic approach?
Why so much delusional zealotery and sophistry?
It is not because the sceptics… it is not the sceptics who pinch the zealots to zealotry…it is the reality.
The warmunistas do not cancell out the consideration of a natural condition because of sceptics, but because their science is not withstanding.
And I think you already know that.
cheers
—
HotScot said: “WTF is this?
Human contribution to the 410 ppm is (410 ppm – 280 ppm) / 410 ppm = 32%.”
That is amount humans contributed to the 410 ppm that exists in the atmosphere.
—
No it isn’t. It’s the amount CO2 has increased between those years. Your assertion that humans are the sole cause of said increase is unproven and unfounded.
If the increase is not coming from humans, where is it coming from? The biosphere is greening and the oceans are becoming more acidic. The only alternative source of carbon I can think of is from the geologic reservoir. What process apart from the human extraction and combustion of fossil fuels can remove carbon from the geologic reservoir and inject it into the atmosphere?
As the earth greens it also sees more decay and burning from the additional growth as it dies or is used. That decay/burning puts more CO2 into the atmosphere. You also get more methane from the whole biological chain, another GHG.
I don’t know why this is never mentioned by the CAGW alarmists. It’s like they want the Earth to become a dead planet with no CO2 and no life.
Unless the biosphere has stopped greening and started… browning… it is still acting as a net sink. Any additional decay resulting from enhanced greening is simply a zero sum game unless there is an ongoing trend.
There was once more stable soil organics than all plant and animal life combined. Perhaps 2500 billion tons carbon compounds sequestered in soils, and 560 billion tons in plants and animals. Massive annual soil erosion remains a substantial source of net emission by oxidation of the stable soil organics. The annual carbon cycle is now completely dominated by agricultural practice, from soil tillage to plant growth, senescence, and harvest. We have been so focused on the CO2 rise via emission from burning fuels. We forget half of what Keeling told us with his zig zag graph. It is an imbalance between what is emitted and what is sequestered. The soils are net losing soil organics. 50% of top soils highly eroded. For years we have been oxidizing soils. 5 billion hectares of man-made desert and wasteland. Soils rendered to mineral dust devoid of organics. The greening at the surface is irrelevant if the leaf litter simple falls and oxidizes and burns. It must be decomposed into the soils. Into stable soil organics. The annual deficit in sequestration (drawdown), the down-zigs that Keeling showed us, by lack of decomposition into soils, is in the order of 10 billion tons. This of equal significance to any notion of human emission. And nobody gives a sh*t. The “major emission sources” discussed by NASA in their famous video is precisely the fields being tilled and plowed. Some gas is then drawndown by the growing crops during the growing season, but it is never sequestered back into the soils. The biodigesters, or “decomposers”, i.e. the animalia, do not exist. The crop is pulled off the field and then eaten and schat by us down the sewers. The organics are never returned to the soil in situ like they once did by excreting biodigesters. Does it matter? Who knows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1SgmFa0r04&t=21s
For the rapid fire hater who prefers to consume mainstream propagandism observe CNBC saying the exact same thing and factor this into your conservation of mass paradigm. https://youtu.be/NJhpoYwAqFA?t=210.
I guess you’ve never heard of the no-till advancements in agriculture.
LOL
I’m not sure what you are saying. If it is a net sink then how can you have a zero sum game? You just contradicted yourself.
I am saying you will not get more carbon out of a plant than you put into it. Plants respire carbon they obtained during photosynthesis and so you are not adding CO2 into the atmosphere during respiration that was not already there a very very short time ago. During a time of global greening the biosphere cannot be acting as a CO2 source. In order to increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2 you need to extract carbon from a long-term reservoir and inject it into the atmosphere (e.g. the oceans or geologic reservoir) (or you could kill off biomass en masse, which isn’t happening during a period of global greening).
The point is that flora IS a source. Undoubtedly it is also a sink. However, the respiration CO2 is added back into the atmosphere. You can not ignore this and instead attribute it to growth due to human emissions instead. Additionally, as a lot of flora dies over winter and decays releasing most of the CO2 taken from the atmosphere. Annual averages must take this additional CO2 into account.
The annual carbon cycle is not contributing to a multi-decade long rise in atmospheric co2 concentration, though. Plants die and release carbon in the winter and grow and absorb carbon during the growing season. This is truly a zero-sun game, unless global biomass is shrinking, which I think we both agree it is not.
“This is truly a zero-sun game, unless global biomass is shrinking, which I think we both agree it is not.”
How is it a zero-sum game? The global biomass is growing. That means more CO2 going into the air from the carbon in the soil. The decayed matter is not the total sum of what the plant did with the carbon during the growing season. Besides, what is the ratio between growth and death in a place like the Amazon where the forest will expand if given a chance? It would seem that you get more growth than you get death!
TG said: “How is it a zero-sum game?”
The law of conservation of mass ΔM = Min – Mout. Mass is very nearly constant in the carbon cycle. If ΔMa = +C in reservoir A then it must be ΣΔMx = -C in the other set of reservoirs X. And C – C = 0; a zero-sum game.
TG said: “The global biomass is growing.”
Which means the biosphere is taking mass from the other reservoirs; not giving it away.
TG said: “That means more CO2 going into the air from the carbon in the soil.”
How much carbon (in GtC) do you think has moved from the soil to the atmosphere?
TG said: “It would seem that you get more growth than you get death!”
That’s what greening means. Or in mathematical notation ΔMb > 0 where Mb is the carbon mass of the biosphere. And remember, the law of conservation of mass says the gain in Mb must be countered with an equal loss in the other reservoirs.
Where is time in your equations? Carbon put into the ground 10,000 years ago could appear today. What does that do to you conservation of mass if you don’t know what it is?
Do *YOU* know all the carbon sources and how much they admit? I sincerely doubt it. So how do you work out your conservation equation?
JG, the point is that the law of conservation of mass says that the carbon cycle is zero-sum. What that means is that if the planet is greening then carbon mass has to come from another reservoir to make that happen and if the planet is browning then carbon mass must move to other reservoirs as a response. It is zero-sum because carbon mass is constant (mostly anyway). When carbon mass increases in one reservoir it is at the expense of decreasing in the other reservoirs.
“ In order to increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2 you need to extract carbon from a long-term reservoir and inject it into the atmosphere”
What do you call the soil that plants grow in if it isn’t a long-term carbon reservoir? If the soil doesn’t have carbon in it it probably isn’t very good at growing plants!
Some of the carbon the plant extracts from the soil *is* put into the atmosphere. That chunk of CO2 was *not* there before the plant did its extraction and breathing.
How much carbon mass do you think transferred from the soil to the atmosphere? And just so there is no confusion here by “mass transfer” we are talking about the net movement of mass from one reservoir to another such there is a decrease in mass in one reservoir and a like increase in the other.
I don’t know? Does anyone know? Apparently it has not been studied much – at least I can’t find it anywhere.
It has apparently been an unknown unknown. There are probably lots of others. It’s why what we have is questionable.
Subduction of huge amounts of sedimentary calcium carbonate into Earth’s crust where the high temperatures crack it into CO2 and calcium oxide. Did anyone make an estimation ?
Pariah Dog said: “Your assertion that humans are the sole cause of said increase is unproven and unfounded.”
It is as settled as anything in science can be settled. The law of conservation of mass says so. Remember, humans pumped 660 GtC into the atmosphere. That 660 GtC didn’t just all go poof. 277 GtC stayed in the atmosphere and 383 GtC got taken by the biosphere and hydrosphere. If that 660 GtC had not been emitted by humans then there would be 660 GtC less of it in the atmosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere than there currently is.
It might be helpful to note that 1 ppm of CO2 = 2.13 GtC.
“It is as settled as anything in science can be settled. “
Malarky! It is *NOT* settled. Your lack of science knowledge is showing again.
As the earth greens from additional CO2 that “green stuff” emits more CO2, methane, and other components as it decays, as it is burned, and as it is eaten.
The biosphere is not just a CO2 sink as the CAGW alarmists like to portray it. It is also a CO2 source!
I’ve never seen any studies on how much additional CO2 and other GHG’s the greening earth supplies. My guess is that it is considerable. And the amount will go up as CO2 goes up! Talk about a positive feedback loop!
TG said: “As the earth greens from additional CO2 that “green stuff” emits more CO2, methane, and other components as it decays, as it is burned, and as it is eaten.”
That is absurd and a violation of the law of conservation of mass.
TG said: “The biosphere is not just a CO2 sink as the CAGW alarmists like to portray it. It is also a CO2 source!”
I don’t know who the “CAGW alarmists” are that you speak of here. What I do know is that carbon cycle scientists accept that the biosphere is both a source and sink for atmospheric carbon. In fact, it is believed that the biosphere sources about 130 GtC/yr and sinks about 133 GtC/yr. That is a net of 130 GtC/yr – 133 GtC/yr = -3 GtC/yr with the negative sign meaning out of the atmosphere and into the biosphere. In other words mass accumulated in the biosphere at the expense of suppressing the accumulation in the atmosphere.
TG said: “I’ve never seen any studies on how much additional CO2 and other GHG’s the greening earth supplies. My guess is that it is considerable. And the amount will go up as CO2 goes up! “
Friendlingstein et al. 2022. The greening Earth takes carbon mass from the atmosphere. That’s how it gets greener. It does not supply carbon mass to the atmosphere as you are trying to imply. That would be absurd and a violation of the law of conservation of mass.
This would be you, kemosabe.
“ In fact, it is believed that the biosphere sources about 130 GtC/yr and sinks about 133 GtC/yr. “
At what time was this so-called cnstant derived? Earlier than the past 20 years or after?
“It does not supply carbon mass to the atmosphere as you are trying to imply. “
ROFL!! So plants don’t emit CO2? I suspect a lot of plaint biologists are going to have to relearn their lessons!
TG said: “At what time was this so-called cnstant derived?”
Those are not constants.
TG said: “So plants don’t emit CO2?”
I didn’t say that. What I said is that the biosphere does not supply carbon mass to the atmosphere. It is actually the atmosphere supplying carbon mass to the biosphere.
So all carbon mass in the soil used by plants came from the atmosphere? Over what time period did this happen? And what does it have to do with the conservation of mass TODAY?
I didn’t say that. What I said is that the biosphere does not supply carbon mass to the atmosphere. It is actually the atmosphere supplying carbon mass to the biosphere. That is the net transfer of mass is from the atmosphere to the biosphere. And we know this because of the law of conservation of mass. There was a net transfer of 660 GtC from anthropogenic reservoirs into the atmosphere but only a gain of 277 GtC. That means the remaining (660 GtC – 277 GtC) = 383 GtC transferred into the biosphere and hydrosphere after going through the atmosphere first.
Oh really?
You can’t even get your argument right.
And I shall repeat, once again, for your benefit, science is more often wrong than it is right, that’s why experiments are such an important part of science, and most of them are wrong.
Your study is a theory and like most climate science, a poor one at that.
The Editor of the Lancet declared that up to 50% of [medical] scientific studies are junk. If you imagine climate science can even clean the boots of medical science you are seriously deranged.
The scientific community on both sides of this debate largely agrees that around 1850 atmospheric CO2 content was around 280ppm.
We now know it is around 410/420ppm.
So when there was little no industry during the last ice age, atmospheric CO2 was estimated to have fallen to around 180ppm. How then did it rise to 280ppm without industry?
Could it have been the retreat of the ice in the face of a changing earth orbit around the Sun, allowing the planet to once again breath as land was released from under miles of ice, and vegetation was reestablished? Vast areas of Oceans were also exposed and the world began to warm, encouraging the release of CO2 from them.
Because none of this was caused by mankind.
And as the land is still rebounding from that weight of ice, so tectonic activity is likely to have increased, creating undersea volcanoes, fissures and vents we have yet to discover.
Unless you can tell me precisely how many volcanoes, vents and fissures are on the Oceans beds, then nothing you claim of increasing atmospheric CO2 can be determined other than by guesswork.
Like I said, science is more often wrong than it is right. In other words, everything you propose about the origins of atmospheric CO2 is fantasy, no matter how many scientific papers are written on it. We didn’t discover 91 volcanoes under the western Antarctic ice sheet until 2018, how many more lie undiscovered?
There are only a few things we know for as near certain as we can get:
In 1850 atmospheric CO2 was around 280ppm.
In 2022 atmospheric CO2 is around 410ppm.
The difference between those two numbers is 171 years.
Mankind’s CO2 contribution to the atmosphere is around 3% – 4% as best we can calculate, but it’s universally accepted.
One thing I have given the benefit of the doubt on is the IPCC’s contention that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will cause 2ºC temperature rise, despite scant evidence.
It is thereafter a straightforward calculation, from accepted figures, and the IPCC’s claim, the likely trajectory of global temperatures.
Anything else is pure guesswork.
I have been around for much more than 50 years, and I have watched the progress of the climate hysteria, from the claims of a coming ice age in the 1970’s by catastrophists with their hair shirts, until now.
Nothing has changed with these people other than the prospect of vast profits from scamming the Taxpayer with yet another concocted scare.
Covid was the same, the largest wealth transfer from the poor to the rich the world has ever seen.
If you don’t know who Brandon is, then you have no idea what’s going on in the world around you, but you consider yourself qualified to comment on climate change.
“If you thought that science was certain – well, that is just an error on your part.”
― Richard P. Feynman
“Could it have been the retreat of the ice in the face of a changing earth orbit around the Sun, allowing the planet to once again breath as land was released from under miles of ice, and vegetation was reestablished? Vast areas of Oceans were also exposed and the world began to warm, encouraging the release of CO2 from them.”
The CAGW alarmists don’t believe that “green stuff” emits CO2, methane, and other GHG’s as it grows, is used, and dies. Only humans do that!
“not a single negative effect of what little warming the world has experienced can be found.”
The warming trend began in the 1690s and the global average temperature up at least +2 degrees C. since then based on Central England weather stations and climate reconstructions. The warming has been good news because the 1690s were unusually cold during the Maunder Minimum. I’ve been following climate science for 25 years and have yet to identify any actual problems caused by the mild warming, which was mainly warmer nights. mainly during the coldest six months of the year, and mainly in the colder, higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Think of warmer winter nights in Siberia. That’s a climate emergency?
Unfortunately, there has been a HUGE negative effect from the warming since the 1970s (that I personally consider good news, especially here in Michigan where I live):
It seems to have caused climate scaremongering that is leading to spending a huge amount of money to make electric grids less reliable. Amazing how a little warming, that we love in Michigan, has turned just about every leftist into a climate change lunatic.
+100 – I wish I could upvote you more. The whole insanity with global warming.
They keep promising us global warming, and I wait with anticipation like a kid at Christmas here in Ontario – and they keep disappointing me!
I wish global warming were true!
“have yet to identify any actual problems caused by the mild warming, which was mainly warmer nights.”
YES!
Plus 100 also.
Sorry HotScot but:
130 ppm
————– = 0.76 ppm/year
171 years
The average growth in emissions is 0.76ppm per year, you forgot the “per year” in the units, that’s mostly what bgdwx was fussing about, and that’s probably what you really meant and what just about everyone here understood anyway.
The other thing you two disagree with is the proportion of the increased emissions: you assign about 3% of the increased emissions to humanity, I think because human emissions in a given year are roughly that much of the total carbon sources (which I tend to agree with your line of thinking but I thought the portion was a bit higher) and bdgwx takes the climate science tack, where they’ve calculated the amount of human emissions from reports of fossil fuel use, land use changes, etc., compared that to the annual co2 increase (2-3 ppm) and since the former is more than the latter, they assign the whole thing to humans, ignoring the huge carbon cycle that is trying to find an equilibrium eventually between sources and sinks, which are about 10x bigger than our puny contributions.
Anyways, that’s what I understand of the argument you and bdgwx are having.
Sorry, I didn’t see the comments further down – looks like you figured out already – sorry.
PCman999 said: “bdgwx takes the climate science tack, where they’ve calculated the amount of human emissions from reports of fossil fuel use, land use changes, etc., compared that to the annual co2 increase (2-3 ppm) and since the former is more than the latter, they assign the whole thing to humans, ignoring the huge carbon cycle that is trying to find an equilibrium eventually between sources and sinks, which are about 10x bigger than our puny contributions.”
That is part of the reason of assignment of cause. After all if CO2 concentrations are increasing by about 2.5 ppm/yr and you suddenly remove 5.0 ppm/yr of emissions the concentration would instantly start declining by 2.5 ppm/yr; at least initially. That is the law of conservation of mass. It is a law so powerful and influential that this is the only line of evidence needed to definitely prove that the CO2 increase is almost entirely anthropogenic. There are, however, other lines of evidence that are convincing as well.
Yes, but I really think if humanity off’ed itself tomorrow the dolphins would be chagrined to find that emissions still rising by 2-3ppm. To me it is very weird, excuse me, INTERESTING (sorry had to switch to scientist mode) that the annual ppm growth isn’t more reactive to human emissions – they have increased from 2 to 3 over the past few decades but carbon energy consumption has mushroomed in that time. It seems like all that matters is the balance of all the CO2 in the oceans with the air. But that’s probably wrong too, I’ll be the first to admit. There are many factors in the carbon cycle annual saw-tooth growth.
It juts ahead by about 10-20 ppm and then comes back down in northern spring and summer to within 3ppm – imagine a little bit of fertilization in the arctic ocean to move the needle to the left and be able to shut-up the green mob. Not that it would affect the climate but just to shut up the crazies the cheapest way possible.
I get that, but the human emissions are not a smooth curve, but the Keeling curve is way too smooth, even if only natural variations were in the mix.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/07/10/global-man-made-co2-emissions-1965-2021-bp-data/
Even when human world emissions dropped the Keeling curve kept going up, and with a steady slope.
I have no philosophical problems with the idea that co2 levels could be increasing due to human emissions, but it’s too much of a pat answer to assume that natural emissions perfectly balance the natural sinks – oh, including perfectly sucking up half of human emissions.
The Keeling curve shows the co2 level is an equilibrium between the huge amount of co2 stored in the ocean and land and the bit stored in the air, and human emissions are just a footnote.
Oh, and I know it can’t be a simple temperature based equilibrium, the Keeling is way too smooth for that.
“Your 37 GtCO2/year is theoretical, calculated by some spotty geek, hiding in his basement with a spreadsheet, guessing at all the emissions he can possibly dream up, using arithmetic skills as wonky as yours.”
Bravo!
“130 ppm / 171 years = 0.76 ppm/yr and not ppm. That’s ppm per year.”
Oh, you’re just nitpicking. I’m sure you will get a plethora of irrelevant wudabouts soon.
Channels another unitary loser. The one who pimps his functionally citation free paper in these fora, because he has been so thoroughly rebutted outside of alt.world.
Word salad Bob is on the job with his windmills.
Typically I would agree that this is excessive pedantry. But, I’ve learned over the years that units in this particular case is the primary cause of the conflation of the 4% figure in reference to the total emission rate (in ppm/yr) and the mass in the atmosphere (in ppm). Those who conflate these concepts think ppm/yr and ppm might as well be the same thing and so erroneously extrapolate the 4% figure onto the mass as well not realizing that you must integrate the emission function to produce a mass function…the well known area under the curve concept.
I should have sarc’d. I was aping those who deflect from Nick Stokes post busting comments by calling them nitpicking.
I knew you were being sarcastic. I suspect others probably didn’t pick it up and really did think I was being excessively pedantic. I thought it might be beneficial to the lurkers to explain why I thought the level of pedantry was warranted in this case.
blob is a Stokes groupie, what a surprise.
He has it in parentheses. It’s not the standard way to write it but it’s not a mistake of arithmetic.
Human contribution might have risen to 37 Gt/y from 33Gt/Y (including deforestation) but you need to divide by something like 900 Gt/y from all sources.
If you are going to criticise it, the argument is that all the excess CO2 that is not consumed per year is claimed to be that extra 4-5%, so 100% responsible for the rise.
The problem with the claim is that its obvious that this was not measured but assumed to be true.
The 3% – 4% human contribution is almost universally accepted, on both sides of the debate.
The argument is, that unless you can tell me precisely how many volcanoes, fissures and vents are on the Oceans beds spewing out gases, then no one can claim to know what is natural and what isn’t.
The only thing the calculation does is take what we know with as close to 100% certainty as we can get, match that up to the IPCC’s claim of 2ºC temperature rise, and do the calculation.
Even if we said the human contribution is 50%, the timeline is still ludicrous.
HotScot said: “The 3% – 4% human contribution is almost universally accepted, on both sides of the debate.”
That 4% (or 3%) figure is human emissions (in ppm/yr) divided by total emissions (in ppm/yr). It is not the human mass (in ppm) divided by the total mass (in ppm). Those missions growing to about 4% over the last 150+ years have added up to 310 ppm. Of that 310 ppm about 180 ppm got removed from the atmosphere and taken up by the biosphere (greening of the planet) and hydrosphere (decrease in pH).
HotScot said: “Even if we said the human contribution is 50%”
It’s nearly 100%.
Let me see if the epiphany can be achieved by having you ponder questions. Assume the human contribution to the mass (in ppm) is 4%. That is 410 ppm * 0.04 = 12 ppm.
Where did the extra 130 ppm – 12 ppm = 118 ppm of the atmospheric increase come from?
Where did the extra 310 ppm – 12 ppm = 298 ppm of the human mass go if not into the atmosphere?
When pondering these questions remember the law of conservation of mass.
bdgwx -when remembering the law of conservation of mass, please don’t forget basic biology. The 280 ppm baseline you use is a variable, not a constant – as the CO2 concentrations increase, this will increase plant growth and extra greening – both of which will alter natural CO2 emissions and CO2 sinks as well. Also remember that CO2 emissions/sinks are seasonal – net emissions vary with the season, latitude and relative warmth. All of which point to your key underlying assumption being just plain wrong.
Richard Page said: “The 280 ppm baseline you use is a variable, not a constant”
That is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere prior to the industrial revolution. It is an amount that had been nearly constant for the last 9000 years indicating that sources and sinks were nearly balanced the entire time. That is not a statement that CO2 level is constant.
Richard Page said: “as the CO2 concentrations increase, this will increase plant growth and extra greening – both of which will alter natural CO2 emissions and CO2 sinks as well.”
That’s right. And whatever catalyzed that initial CO2 concentration increase is also what caused the biosphere and hydrosphere to take on more carbon mass and whatever subsequent perturbations in the source and sinks as a result of those reservoirs taking on more carbon mass. In other words, if atmospheric CO2 had not increased then the biosphere and hydrosphere would not have taken on more carbon mass. And if the biosphere and hydrosphere had not taken on more carbon mass then any perturbation in the carbon cycle modulated by mass level would not have occurred either.
If A resulted in B and B resulted in C and C resulted in D then we say A caused D despite B and C being intermediate links in the causal chain. Remove cause A and you prevent effect D.
I’m criticising how you presented your argument. According to the measurements from ML about 800 Gt of CO2 has been added to raise global concentrations from 310 ppm to 420 ppm over a little more than 60 years. This is actually less than the estimate that we are given by climate scientists of the, roughly, 900 Gt/year of emissions from natural sources, and there was no increase in natural sinks to take it out of the atmosphere.
“was no increase in natural sinks”
Ummmmmm …. the 13% additional greening of the earth since the 80’s did not increase the natural sink for CO2? This additional “green stuff” did not process CO2 into oxygen?
Sorry HotScot but you are confusing proportions, rates & totals.
You can’t take the proportion of 1 yr and multiply it by the total increase over time.
If humans added 3% of natural per year, in 33 years it would be the same as adding 99% of “1 yr natural”. The assumption is that the natural emissions (including volcanoes & animals) almost equals the natural absorption (including plants converting CO2) over the centuries (only a few ppm change over centuries). Natural is close to Nett 0 change as it was pre-industrial.
So while human contribution is small per year, it accumulates into a much larger Nett amount over time.
I could have a 3000L tank, if 101L of water goes in per day but only 100L is used per day, then the tank will eventually be full & overflowing. Even thou 1L is small compared to 100L, it becomes significant over time & cannot be ignored.
While natural emissions could have added a few ppm CO2, natural absorption has reduced the ppm seen of human emissions (mostly the CO2 from burning the known amount of fossil fuels per year). So the increases of natural absorption has more than made up for it’s own natural increased emissions if they occurred.
BTW: I neither support the climate emergency claims nor wild models. The effect of CO2 is probably <1.2C/2xCO2. There's a lot of issues off-topic from the above. Debates need to be less dogmatic, more pragmatic & more relliant on facts than wild speculation.
Here is the deal and why units are important in this conversation. The 4% (or 3% in this case) figure is not in reference to the human contribution to the mass (in units of ppm), but is in reference to the emission rate (in units of ppm/yr). Human emissions (in ppm/yr) is only 4% of the total emissions. But those emissions (in ppm/yr) have accumulated over the years to increase the mass (in ppm) in the atmosphere. People frequently conflate the emission rate with the mass because they aren’t paying attention to the units. For details read Friedlingstein et al. 2022 which I linked to above.
Since we are talking about the same number of years, you made no point.
Let me see if I clear things up some.
Total emissions are currently about 104 ppm/yr. Of that humans are responsible for about 5 ppm/yr. That is 5 ppm/yr / 104 ppm/yr = 4.8%. 5 ppm/yr adds up rather quickly. In 10 years that would be 5 ppm/yr * 10 yr = 50 ppm of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere.
Fortunately nature buffers some of the atmospheric CO2 overpressure quickly into the biosphere and hydrosphere. The current imbalance between sources and sinks is about +2.4 ppm/yr toward the atmosphere. If humans instantly stopped all emissions the imbalance would instantly reverse to 2.4 ppm/yr – 5 ppm/yr = -2.6 ppm/yr with atmospheric CO2 concentrations declining rapidly; at least initially.
See Friedlingstein et al. 2022 for details.
In your second point, you assume without any proof that human contribution has caused all the increase in CO2 in the recent past. CO2 levels have been as high during the previous interglacial and we weren’t burning fossil fuels. CO2 has been much higher for most of the earth’s history, again without us. We produce perhaps 5% of the CO2 produced by the entire biosphere. Our rate of production is within the uncertainty of some of the major CO2 producers on this planet. How is it not probable that some of the increase in CO2 over the last 70 years is from increases in other, much larger sources?
No, other sources, such as the published Carbon Cycle graphs
[ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/07/carbon-cycle/ ] provide estimates in the range of 4% or less.
I standby what I said. The human contribution to the mass of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 32%. Do not conflate the mass of CO2 (in ppm or GtCO2) with the emission rate (in ppm/yr or GtCO2/yr). It is well known that the human contribution to the total emissions (in ppm/yr) is on the order of 4%. But that 4% perturbation on the emissions is very nearly the sole cause of the imbalance between sources and sinks and adds up rather quickly over the years. It is a fact that humans emitted about 310 ppm of CO2 into the atmosphere or more than what the atmosphere originally started with. If it were not for the other fact that the biosphere and hydrosphere took 180 ppm of it the atmospheric concentration would have been 280 ppm + 310 ppm = 590 ppm instead of the 280 ppm + (310 ppm – 180 ppm) = 410 ppm that it is today. See Friedlingstein et al. 2022 for details.
“But that 4% perturbation on the emissions is very nearly the sole cause of the imbalance between sources and sinks and adds up rather quickly over the years.”
Again, MALARKY! The 13% greening of the earth since the 80’s has both increased natural CO2 emissions as well as increased sinking.
Your lack of science knowledge is showing again!
You are looking at a true positive feedback loop (the more CO2 emitted the more greening you get and the more greening you get the more CO2 you get) and not recognizing it. Neither do the CAGW alarmists.
TG said: “Again, MALARKY! The 13% greening of the earth since the 80’s has both increased natural CO2 emissions as well as increased sinking.”
The greening of the planet means that biomass increased and that biosphere carbon increased. That means the biosphere has been a net sink. In fact, it has taken on an additional 195 GtC that transferred from the atmosphere to the biosphere to make the planet greener.
TG said: “You are looking at a true positive feedback loop (the more CO2 emitted the more greening you get and the more greening you get the more CO2 you get) and not recognizing it.”
That is absurd and a violation of the law of conservation of mass. The more the planet greens the more carbon that is taken from the atmosphere to make that happen. Carbon cannot be taken from the atmosphere resulting in more CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s not how mass conservation works.
If you’re going to respond with challenges to the law of conservation of mass like you’ve done with other physical laws I’ll save you the time and effort by saying I’m not going to engage in yet another one of your misguided challenges of well established physical principles at least in this particular subthread.
You are overlooking what is happening in the tundra.
“That is absurd and a violation of the law of conservation of mass.”
Nope. Did you not know that plants emit CO2 at night? Guess what happens to that CO2 during the day? It enables more growth of the green stuff. The more green growth you get the more CO2 emission you get. That’s a positive feedback loop.
Let me make sure I’m understanding what you are saying. Are you seriously trying to tell us that the greening of the planet occurred because plants emitted more carbon than they fixated?
No! What I am saying is that the source/sink stuff has so much uncertainty that it is as unreliable as the global average temperature!
Your “conservation of mass” is totally misleading. We don’t know how much carbon mass is being released from all kinds of different sources, such as the greening of the earth or from vents on the bottom of the ocean. If you don’t know the sources accurately then you probably don’t know the sinks accurately either. It makes it all a crapshoot on what is happening.
TG said: “Your “conservation of mass” is totally misleading.”
Patently False. The law of conservation of mass is neither misleading itself nor produces misleading results.
TG said: “We don’t know how much carbon mass is being released from all kinds of different sources”
You don’t have to know every variable. That’s the power of conservation laws. You take the knowns to calculate the unknowns. We know 383 GtC (180 ppm) transferred into the biosphere and hydrosphere because we know the atmosphere contains 277 GtC (130 ppm) more carbon than it did and because humans put 660 GtC (310 ppm) into it.
If you are dealing with an annual rate (flux), which is relatively constant, to get the total anthro’ contribution, just multiply by the number of years. However, that doesn’t change the net percentage whether dealing with one year or 100 years.
That is the claim, but the evidence supporting it is weak.
CO2 concentration averaged about 270 ppm with a range of only 20 ppm over the previous 9000 years prior to the industrial revolution. That’s about as close as a balance between sources and sinks as you can get. Then suddenly atmospheric CO2 increases rapidly in near perfect correlation with the human emissions trajectory. This is coincident with O2 decline, the 14C depletion prior to the bomb spike, the 14C depletion profile after the bomb spike, and 13C/12C depletion. If that isn’t strong evidence then perhaps you can tell us what kind of evidence you would consider to be strong.
I have already described why that is neither good evidence of causation, or even correlation. However, you apparently haven’t gone to the trouble to read what I have written and published here at WUWT. Basically, you will always have at least a spurious correlation between any two time-series that have a trend. To reduce the possibility of a spurious correlation, one has to take the first-derivative or de-trend both time-series. I have done that and showed the results with graphs.
It is interesting how you make assertions without any justification for them.
Clyde Spencer said: “ However, you apparently haven’t gone to the trouble to read what I have written and published here at WUWT.”
If you post a link I’ll be happy to read it.
Clyde Spencer said: “Basically, you will always have at least a spurious correlation between any two time-series that have a trend.”
A 660 GtC injection over 170 years vs only a 43 GtC change over the previous 9000 years is significant to say the least. That’s nearly 3 orders of magnitude different in the rate and it occurred in near perfect unison and with the same magnitude as the 660 GtC dump by humans. You think that can be chalked up as spurious?
Clyde Spencer said: “It is interesting how you make assertions without any justification for them.”
The law of conservation of mass is a damn good assertion.
Human contribution to the 410 ppm is (410 ppm – 280 ppm) / 410 ppm = 32%. The graphic is off by a factor of 10.
Someone help me out here. Are you saying humans are responsible for all CO2 increase since 1850?
.
Yup, climate scientists are pushing that simplistic idea, assuming a magic, instant equilibrium between natural sources and sinks.
I just can’t believe anyone would say such a thing.
Bob said: “Someone help me out here. Are you saying humans are responsible for all CO2 increase since 1850?”
Yes. Or at least very nearly so.
What about the 13% greening of the earth since 1980? That didn’t affect the CO2 increase at all?
What happens when green stuff decays or is burned?
TG said: “What about the 13% greening of the earth since 1980? That didn’t affect the CO2 increase at all?”
Yes it did. I don’t know where you got the 13% figure or what it means exactly, but the according to Friedlingstein et al. 2022 the biosphere took 195 GtC from the atmosphere. If the biosphere at not taken that carbon then the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would have been 415 ppm + (195 GtC / 2.13 GtC/ppm) = 507 ppm. The greening of the planet had a huge effect on the atmospheric CO2.
TG said: “What happens when green stuff decays or is burned?”
The carbon is transferred from the biosphere reservoir to the land and air reservoirs.
“Yes it did. I don’t know where you got the 13% figure or what it means exactly”
How about from NASA in 2016? And it means exactly what it says. I’m not surprised you don’t know about it. You have to actually look for studies that show the beneficial side of CO2 growth in the atmosphere – they don’t get publicized.
What is the numerator and denominator in the calculation that results in 13%?
go here: https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004
I don’t have access through the paywall.
here is part of the abstract:
—————————————-
Here we use three long-term satellite leaf area index (LAI) records and ten global ecosystem models to investigate four key drivers of LAI trends during 1982–2009. We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning). Factorial simulations with multiple global ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (LCC) (4%). CO2 fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau. LCC contributed most to the regional greening observed in southeast China and the eastern United States. The regional effects of unexplained factors suggest that the next generation of ecosystem models will need to explore the impacts of forest demography, differences in regional management intensities for cropland and pastures, and other emerging productivity constraints such as phosphorus availability.
——————————————
If you have a problem with their methodology then take it up with them!
here is another link: https://phys.org/news/2016-04-co2-fertilization-greening-earth.html
Estimates I’ve seen range from 10% to 20%, e.g. 5% from 1980 to 2000 and 5% more from 2000 to 2016.
Dispute that if you want. But’s its everywhere. You’ll have a hard time telling everyone at places like NASA and NOAA that they need to take down their articles on this.
I have no interest in spontaneously “nuh-uh”ing research and figures like you do. I’m not challenging the 13% figure. I’m just trying to figure out where it comes from and what it means. Nor am I suggesting this publication needs to be taken down. I didn’t even know about it until you posted it.
Anyway, the publication quantifies leaf area index or the amount of leaf area relative to ground area. The trend is reported as 0.068 ± 0.045 m2/m2.yr. I don’t see a 13% figure anywhere in this publication.
Oh…and don’t think it went unnoticed that the publication you selected here supporting your 13% figure did not follow Taylor’s significant figure rules. It’s pedantry I have no problem with. I’m just pointing out the hypocrisy of being told I’m supposed to throw the baby out with the bath water anytime I encountered a significant figure rule violation, but you apparently get a free pass.
Yes, this is exactly what he is pounding the table with.
I believe HotScot is apportioning the increase in CO2 in the same proportion as the existing emissions in the carbon cycle are split between humans and the rest of the biosphere – humans at only about 10% of the total – behind termites at about 15%.
“Climate Science” seems to be unable to accept that the natural carbon flows do not have to balance, in spite of volcanoes, forest fires and even a 20% greening over the past 50 years. Yes, there are many kinds of carbon sinks and sources but none of them respond instantly and there is nothing to impose a magic balance.
If there was, then why was CO2 at 280ppm 200 years ago but 2000ppm 100 million years ago?
In fact, as most of us here at WUWT already know, the CO2 level was at about 1000-2000ppm for almost all the time since life crawled out of the sea.
One can easily say that 280ppm of CO2 is unnatural and needs to be fixed, because it’s too low and too close to plants’ cutoff at about 180ppm. Even with the current 420ppm, plants can temporarily starve when at the height of growing season a plant like corn can suck up all the CO2 in its local area, only saved when a gust of wind mixes things better.
+100!
Your figures assume that the 280 ppm at the end of the LIA was a constant not a variable, dependant on total greening (which has been increasing since that time) and temperatures (which has a knock-on effect with plant growth and CO2 production). Unless you can completely justify using 280 as a constant, I call bullshit on your assumptions.
Richard Page said: “Your figures assume that the 280 ppm at the end of the LIA was a constant not a variable”
First…those aren’t my figures. Second…it only assumes that the law of conservations of mass is true.
Richard Page said: “Unless you can completely justify using 280 as a constant, I call bullshit on your assumptions.”
First…I’m not using 280 ppm as a constant. Second…even the most rudimentary research effort is going to tell you that CO2 levels over the last 9000 years have been around 270 ± 10 ppm. And because of the law of conservation of mass that immediately tells you that sources and sinks have been close to balanced for the last 9000 years.
“Human contribution to the 410 ppm is (410 ppm – 280 ppm) / 410 ppm = 32%. “
Why do you assign the entire CO2 increase to human emissions? You do realize that emission sources are a simple guess, right?
Your assumption is that the sinks are totally in sync with natural emissions and that any human emissions are excess that sinks can not absorb. This is an extreme assumption and requires extreme evidence.
JG said: “Why do you assign the entire CO2 increase to human emissions?”
Because that is what the abundance of evidence says.
JG said: “You do realize that emission sources are a simple guess, right?”
No. I do not realize that at all because it is not true.
JG said: “Your assumption is that the sinks are totally in sync with natural emissions and that any human emissions are excess that sinks can not absorb.”
Nope. Quite the contrary actually. The abundance of evidence says that sinks increased to buffer a significant portion of the atmospheric CO2 overpressure. Natural sinks are greater than natural sources right now.
How do you separate the buffering of natural CO2 from anthropogenic CO2? If you can’t then you can’t reliably assign a proportion to one or the other!
This has little if anything to do with your original statement or my response. Are you wanting to shift the conversation into the minutia of how the hydrosphere and biosphere select molecules for uptake?
You’re being an ignorant fool, AGAIN, BadWaxJob.
Models of the carbon cycle aren’t linear, no matter how much you would like them to be.
Think of a tall tank of water that has a hole near the bottom. At some time=t, there is a hose squirting water in and water coming out the hole. The water has a height H(t). You come back in an hour and the water height gained a foot. You apply the only math you know, simple grade school arithmetic, and predict that the water will be 4 feet higher in 4 hours time. You come back in 4 hours, but the tank didn’t gain nearly 4 feet. Why? It’s because as the water level in the tank rises the rate that water comes out the hole increases. At some point (if the tank is tall enough) the water will reach a steady height, it won’t continue to increase indefinitely. Your simplistic prediction was wrong because you should have used a differential equation, not simple arithmetic.
C02 concentration in the atmosphere is the same – mankind is pumping CO2 in, Nature is taking it out. Right now, Nature is removing about half of all CO2 put in. Will the rate that Nature removes CO2 increase over time like water coming out the tank’s hole? There are arguments that say it will – the rate of a process is dependent on how far you are from equilibrium. The ocean is huge, as compared with the atmosphere so the rate of removal should get larger the farther the atmosphere is from the natural equilibrium concentration. That’s one reason why most of the models that the IPCC uses show CO2 to reach a steady state in less than 100 years time. Other modelers think the the rate of removal will slow down as the ocean gets saturated. That’s why other models show CO2 growth accelerating. However, to date, acceleration is at most extremely small to none. Can’t tell yet, and probably won’t be able to for at least 20 years as the difference between the model predictions only grows to be significant after that time.
The bottom line is that the science is NOT settled but most models have the CO2 concentration peaking somewhere between 600 and 700 ppm.
In any case, we will run out of fossil fuels at some point in the distant future and the CO2 concentration must start decreasing. If we START to run out of fossil fuels in less than 100 years, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll EVER reach 820 ppm.
I like the water and tank analogies. I use them all the time to communicate fundamental concepts of reservoir flows and transfers and for things like residence time and adjustment time. They are also effective in breaking the conflation people have between the 4% human contribution to input flow (in ppm/yr) with the 32% human contribution to the mass (in ppm).
Anyway, is it correct to assume that me being “an ignorant fool, AGAIN” means you too want to challenge the law of conservation of mass and claim that the 310 ppm of CO2 that humans pumped into the atmosphere just went poof? If not maybe you can clarify exactly what it is you think I’m being foolish about?
You are being an ignorant fool for using the only math you understand, grade-school arithmetic. DUH.
You falsely claim that your “analyses” give valid insights into the future of the climate, but they rarely do. DUH.
You’re like the guy with a hammer spending his whole life looking for nails. He uses his hammer to pound in screws and light bulbs, open beer bottles, and brush his teeth.
The law of conservation of mass doesn’t require anything more than grade-school arithmetic. Actually it doesn’t require anything more than 4th grade arithmetic. And the analysis here using the law of conservation of mass is not concerning the future. It is concerning the past and how much CO2 mass humans added to the atmosphere. Nothing more.
It says it in parentheses next to the 0.76ppm. E.g. 0.76ppm (average annual increase) is exactly the same as saying 0.76ppm/year average.
That chart is complete nonsense.
Humans have added nearly all of the CO2 increase since the rough estimate of 280ppm. If you think otherwise, please explain why the estimated +200ppm of man made CO2 emissions did NOT cause an increase of the average
CO2 level from 280ppm to 420ppm, and where did it go?
You will not be able to answer that question because the answer is obvious: Burning fossil fuels caused about one third if the current CO2 level.
Stop spouting alt-science nonsense.
We climate realists are losing the battle against climate scaremongering and the Nut Zero project. We can’t fight back with obviously wrong science.
Humans added a lot of CO2 to the atmosphere
More CO2 probably impeded Earth’s ability to cool itself
by an unknown amount.
The small amount of “warming” was harmless,
mainly higher TMIN
The greening of the planet from more CO2 is beneficial.
The current climate may be the best climate for humans, animals, and especially plants, since the Holocene Climate Optimum ended about 5,000 years ago. We should be celebrating the current climate.
Whatever effect the last +100ppm increase of CO2 had on the climate, which was harmless at worst, we know the next +100ppm increase will have less of an effect, so must be harmless too.
Climate scaremongering is mainly politics, rather than science.
But we will not change hearts and minds by attacking the small
portion of their science that is reasonable.
We have to attack the scaremongering
— the always wrong predictions of climate doom.
The wild unproven water vapor positive feedback theory.
Blaming all bad weather on climate change.
Ignoring all good weather.
Weather dependent electric power.
We have plenty of targets to aim at.
Stop spouting alt-science nonsense.
We climate realists are losing the battle against climate scaremongering and the Nut Zero project. We can’t fight back with obviously wrong science.
______________________________________________________
BINGO! Jesus of Nazareth said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”
If climate science gets something right, agree that they are right. If they are wrong vigorously oppose what they claim.
Says the guy spouting nonsense that blames mankind for all CO₂ increase without evidence.
Now that is ironic.
Where did the CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels go if not into the atmosphere?
I, for one, would first look to the oceans around the globe.
CO2 is known to be soluble in ocean water.
Oceans cover 71% of Earth’s surface.
The ocean pH level would have significantly changed with all that added CO2 in that ocean — but, in fact, it has barely changed.
And once again I ask, and never get an answer:
What caused the +50% estimated increase of atmospheric CO2 since the 1700s if not the CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels?
“The ocean pH level would have significantly changed with all that added CO2 in that ocean”
130ppm = 0.013% or 13 thousandths of 1% of the atmosphere going into a medium, sea water, that is around 100 times denser than air. I really don’t think that would change the pH at all.
At this point the change in pH is so small it is probably within the margin of error of the measurements. Insignificant.
By significant I mean you should be able to measure such a pH change.
There is also the change in the C12 to C13 Ratio that indicated man made CO2 emissions.
The CO2 molecules in the atmosphere not only increased from about 280 ppm to over 400 ppm today, but the ratio of C12 to C13 changed dramatically. The carbon isotope C12 began to increase.
As I have commented previously, I don’t put a lot of stock in the carbon isotope analyses because they don’t do a rigorous analysis taking into account isotopic fractionation.
Assuming the planet has warmed sufficiently, the answer to that is obvious, from the warming oceans releasing CO2 and the 14% increase in vegetation, and associated decomposition, over 35 years of satellite observations.
The oceans are still absorbing CO2.
They are not releasing CO2.
The increase of vegetation
would absorb more CO2
Do you just invent your own climate science ?
They are doing both. What rarely gets any scrutiny is the contribution of CO2 from the melting permafrost.
It isn’t only warming oceans emitting more CO2. Plants respire in order to grow. Photosynthesis only provides the sugars (energy) that can fuel respiration made cellular material, i.e., green leafs, stems, flowers, seeds. You can pretty much say that if the earth has greened 30% then CO2 from flora has also increased 30%. Additional flora also feeds increased numbers of termites. Guess what they emit? Additional greening that falls to the ground during the annual seasonal process ultimately results in even more CO2 being put into the atmosphere.
Lots of things to consider other than human emissions. One must wonder just exactly how close the estimates are. 3 -4 percent error would just cover human emissions.
“The ocean pH level would have significantly changed with all that added CO2 in that ocean.”
No, not true. The ocean is a highly buffered solution . . . look up what that means in terms of changing pH levels.
Also, CO2 does not remain as dissolved gas in solution, such as is the case with acidic soda pop, but instead is fairly rapidly converted to carbonate and bicarbonate ions, which in turn are eventually transformed into the calcium carbonate shells of marine animals (predominately corals), finally becoming limestone on the bottom of oceans . . . look up Bjerrum plot.
As to you again asking the same question, look to the oceans but I will now add, thanks to comments from others, that significant amounts of CO2 are added to the atmosphere from:
— the calcium carbonate used around the world as a fundamental ingredient in making cement and concrete,
— the calcium carbonate used around the world to make glass for windows in residential and commercial building and for automobiles other transportation vehicles, and for other objects such as containers for drinks and food,
— natural gas content expelled from volcanoes and undersea magma/gas vents,
— natural biological fermentation (note: CO2 is produced in “alcoholic fermentation”, but not in “lactic acid fermentation”)
— at night when photosynthesis is NOT occurring, plants uptake oxygen and release CO2 in the process called respiration.
Your repeated posts seem to imply you think all these sources of CO2 were displaced by “the burning of fossil fuels” starting in the 1700’s.
I, on the other hand, don’t think so.
“I, on the other hand, don’t think so.”
That makes you wrong
Then where is the CO2 increase in the atmosphere coming from if the oceans are acting as a sink?
Excuse me . . . where ever did I say that the oceans were acting as a sink that prevents ALL increases in atmospheric CO2 content, both natural and human-originated?
You didn’t. You suggested that the oceans could be absorbing the entirety of anthropogenic emissions, and that a natural source might be the cause of the observed increase in atmospheric concentration.
So I’m asking, if the oceans are acting as a sink and absorbing all of our emissions, what do you propose is the natural CO2 source causing the observed increase?
Read my post above, dated July 5, 2022 4:12 pm.
If I am reading your comment correctly, you’re proposing that substantial amounts of CO2 are released through concrete production and other industrial processes… would this not in fact be anthropogenic emissions? You note that respiration by plants at night produces CO2, but neglect to mention that the carbon they are releasing is the very same carbon they took up during photosynthesis in the daylight hours. This is a zero-sum game. In fact the biosphere is currently a net sink due to the greening of the world from the enhanced concentration of atmospheric CO2. This may eventually not be the case as respiration begins to balance uptake, but even then the plants would not be providing a net source of CO2.
So, again, what do you propose might be the natural source of all this CO2 if indeed it is not coming from human activities?
“… would this not in fact be anthropogenic emissions?”
The first two processes that I delineated are indeed anthropogenic emissions.
However, where you’ve run off the rails in your comment to me is in failing to see that I was responding to Richard Greene’s comment of July 5, 2022 10:39 am, near the OP in this thread, where he specifically stated:
“Where did the CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels go if not into the atmosphere?”
Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels does NOT encompass all anthropogenic emissions.
Ah, so is it your belief that the rise in atmospheric CO2 since the start of the industrial revolution was caused by human activities?
AlanJ,
BTW, you posted:
“You note that respiration by plants at night produces CO2, but neglect to mention that the carbon they are releasing is the very same carbon they took up during photosynthesis in the daylight hours. This is a zero-sum game.”
Absolutely not true.
First, if it were a “zero-sum game” plants would simply not grow in size, since growth of vegetation involves the temporary sequestering of atmospheric CO2 in the carbohydrates comprising the physical structure of plants.
Second, the fact that the Earth has been “greening” for a long time (5% more foliage in just the last 20 years, per https://www.warpnews.org/human-progress/nasa-the-earth-is-greener-now-than-it-was-20-years-ago/ ) says that there is an ever-increasing amount of temporary sequestering of CO2 in land based foliage . . . this being fundamentally attributed to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration over time.
Left unmentioned: the undoubtable “greening” in ocean phytoplankton, algae and seaweeds that benefit from additional amounts of CO2 entering ocean surface layers as the atmospheric CO2 level increases.
“The biological carbon pump (BCP) contributes to the role of the ocean in taking up and storing carbon dioxide (CO2) by removing the gas from the atmosphere, changing it into living matter, and distributing it to the deeper ocean layers. Without the BCP, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would be much higher.”
— https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/the-ocean-captures-twice-as-much-carbon-dioxide-as-previously-thought/
What I mean by “zero sum game” is that at the very best plants can yield as much CO2 as they initially took up during photosynthesis. Currently the biosphere is acting as a net sink, as you note, but at best it can act as a… not sink. It will not act as a net source unless vegetation starts dying off en masse.
“ neglect to mention that the carbon they are releasing is the very same carbon they took up during photosynthesis in the daylight hours”
What do they do with the carbon they gather from the soil during growth? Does some of that get combined into CO2 and emtted? I’m pretty sure I remember that from somewhere!
Do plants uptake carbon from the soil? Certainly they put carbon *into* the soil.
I’m not a plant expert by any means but it is my understanding that the carbon uptake is primarily by fixating atmospheric CO2. I have seen some evidence of minor carbon uptake from soil, but in most cases it is so inconsequential that it is usually ignored. If someone knows more about this please chime in.
Plants *do* take up carbon from the soil and at least part of it gets emitted as CO2.
Where did all the CO2 from decaying green stuff (+13% to 20%) go if at least part of it didn’t go into the atmosphere?
“Humans have added nearly all of the CO2 increase since the rough estimate of 280ppm.”
Really?
So who, pray tell, added the roughly 250 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 between start and middle of the Miocene, some 23 to 16 million years ago?
The subject is the period since the 1700s.
Much CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels
Atmospheric CO2 went up a lot, of course.
Please explain why the CO2 emissions
did NOT increase atmospheric CO2,
and where the added CO2 went, if not
into the atmosphere (roughly half was
absorbed by the biosphere).
You are talking about natural causes
of climate change long ago.
I am talking about human causes
of climate change in recent centuries.
They are two different subjects.
Both happen at the same time.
,
We know changes in ocean temperatures,
from natural causes, change the atmospheric
CO2 level with a long delay. That is not
the subject of modern climate alarmism
or my prior comment.
“The subject is the period since the 1700s.”
Actually not. The subject staring you in the face is how much of the CO2 atmospheric concentration change since, say, 1700 to present is due to mankind versus being due to natural variation.
The answer is simple:
Himans have burned enough fossil fuels to add an approximate +200ppm to the atmosphere.
Volcanoes might have added 1% or 2%.
So who else are you going to blame?
That’s the volcanoes we know about. 91 discovered under the West Antarctic ice sheet in 2018. How many more don’t we know about?
Not to mention undersea hot water/dissolve gas vents along rifts that are NOT classified as volcanoes.
Volcanoes and gas vents had little effect on the cO2 levels in the Vostok ice core estimates. There is no logical reason their output suddenly changed in the past 50 years.
Where did the +200ppm CO2 from burning fossil fuels go if not into the atmosphere?
You continue ignoring that question, and I’m sorry to say ignoring the question ends your credibility.
Volcanic activity is episodic, and can’t be ruled out based on hand waving alone, or appeal to “logic.”
“Volcanoes and gas vents had little effect on the cO2 levels in the Vostok ice core estimates.”
Please provide the exact scientific process/equipment that is able to distinguish the CO2 produced from volcanoes and undersea gas vents from the CO2 that is produced from other natural or human sources.
There’s likely to be a Noble prize in Physics or Chemistry in their for you.
Yes, the general argument put forward is that because the atmospheric increase of CO2 is about 1/2 of total anthro’ emissions, it has to come from humans. However, it might just be coincidence.
Without adequate measures of ALL sources and sinks we are operating in the world of estimates. It is not unreasonable to assume an uncertainty of 4 – 10 percent for each of the various categories. This could dwarf any human emissions.
I have already made the point in my articles that the uncertainty in the major sources is of the same magnitude as the anthro’ emissions.
Humans added far more CO2 than the estimated +50% CO2 concentration increase since the 1700s, mainly added in the past 100 years.
Apparently you deny the Principle of Uniformitarianism. That is, “the present is the key to the past.” Whatever you propose for a general agent of change should be equally applicable to both the present and the past. If it isn’t, then you have a contradiction that needs explanation.
Yes! In Earth’s warming immediately following the Younger-Dryas cold period anomaly of climate change, CO2 concentration levels in the Earth’s atmosphere rose from about 190 to about 260 ppm.
Oh, did I forget to mention: Younger-Dryas ended some 12,300 years ago (exact time not established, but this average value is generally accepted) . . . at which time there were no mankind-originated emissions of CO2.
Natural variations don’t care squat about the presence of humans.
Gordon Dressler said: “Really?”
Yes. Really. Humans transferred about 308 ppm into the atmosphere. Of that 128 ppm stayed in the atmosphere. See Friedlingstein et al. 2022 for details.
Gordon Dressler said: “So who, pray tell, added the roughly 250 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 between start and middle of the Miocene, some 23 to 16 million years ago?”
Nature.
Scientists are more often wrong than they are right, that’s why they conduct experiments, and that’s why conclusions are called theories.
The ‘CO2 is hiding in the ocean’ is as bad as ‘the extra heat’s hiding in the ocean’ and equally as bad as ‘I don’t understand why the tropospheric hot spot didn’t show up’.
They are scientific theories, some bordering on fantasy, and exist to be falsified.
Why was the covid downturn in human CO2 emissions undetectable at Mauna Loa? Even seasonal variations in rising CO2 are recordable.
Absolute nonsense.
Tell me, precisely, how many active undersea volcanoes, fissures and vents there are on the ocean floor.
Until you can do that then you haven’t a clue how much CO2 is naturally emitted. Best estimate, largely accepted by the scientific community, of mankind’s emissions are 3% – 4%.
If burning fossil fuels added an estimated +200ppm, there is no need to find other minor sources.
A +50% CO2 increase of CO2 since the 1700s is not natural.
The slight warming of the oceans would change the atmospheric CO2 slightly with a long delay. Not important.
If you want to go through life claiming the increase of CO2 was not manmade, then you become ineffective in the fight against climate scaremongering … and we climate realists need all the help we can get because we are losing the climate propaganda battle.
Absolute (lousy) guesswork without considering the CO2 sources we don’t know about.
How do you know that?
If you’re dim enough to believe that all atmospheric CO2 increase is down to mankind, then you lose credibility on both sides of the debate.
The alarmist’s are doing a pretty fine job of destroying their own case as we speak.
The green blob is getting a sound political and financial kicking right now. Even Blackrock is rowing back on its ESG policies.
Brandon is just mana from heaven for sceptics. He’s done more to damage the cause of the greens in 18 months than sceptics have in the last 50 years. Germany has already but back it’s phasing out of coal from 2030 to 2035, and the spat with Russia over gas is far from over.
I would be shocked if the UK doesn’t get the green light for fracking over the next week or two, and Boris only has a few months, if not days before he’s kicked out of Downing Street. His NetZero fanaticism will follow him.
We haven’t won, but we are winning by increments.
You oppose at least 99.9% of all scientists in the world and are hurting our battle against climate scaremongering.
The climate alarmists are not 100% wrong on climate science. Even “skeptic” scientists admit humans have increased the CO2 level by a large amount. Dream on with your alt-science.
99% …there it is . Settled science 😉
Science is not determined by a vote. At best, votes support a current paradigm, but do not assure truth.
“You oppose at least 99.9% of all scientists in the world and are hurting our battle against climate scaremongering.”
An appeal to authority is an argumentative fallacy. Consensus is not science. Just ask Galileo.
Your proof for that bold statement is? The other side of the coin is how or why did natural variations stop with the advent of the Industrial Revolution?
Natural variation didn’t stop with the industrial revolution.
You forgot to quote that paper for the 40th time.
HTH
The oceans are still warming – as clearly indicated by constant measurable sea level rise. Therefore the NET dissolved CO2 content of the oceans will continue to fall. (Refer to Henry’s law). This process results in a NET gain of atmospheric CO2.The human proportion of the atmospheric CO2 gain is probably so small as to be insignificant.
The amount of CO2 contained in the oceans swamps, by many orders of magnitude, the trifling contribution of CO2 due to human emissions.
I predict that when sea level eventually ceases to rise due to NET ocean temperature loss caused by changes in solar activity and orbital mechanics – then (after a delay of possibly +/- 800 years) – atmospheric CO2 will again begin to fall due to NET absorption of CO2 by the oceans.
Hotscot _ I loved the bib – dribble word picture. Made my day!
“Therefore the NET dissolved CO2 content of the oceans will continue to fall.”
Did you just make that up? Yes you did.
KAT said: “Therefore the NET dissolved CO2 content of the oceans will continue to fall. (Refer to Henry’s law).”
That is true only if the head pressure remains unchanged. The partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing faster than the positive outgassing perturbation caused by the temperature increase. BTW…Henry’s Law, while important and relevant, is not the only thing modulating CO2 flows to/from the hydrosphere. A lot of the CO2 gets taken up as dissolved inorganic compounds as well. In addition the percolation of carbon into the depths is a slow process. This bottlenecks the carbon uptake at the surface.
So, in the absence of mankind and his activities, CO2 NEVER changes? It holds steady at 280ppm?
Show your work! Apparently you never heard that in elementary school. Sad.
(You also apparently skipped out on many of your science classes.)
when the 2020 anthro’ monthly emissions declined as much as 18% there was no perceptible difference in the slope of the Winter-Spring ramp-up phase, or the peak in May, or overall shape of the curve, compared to 2019.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/11/contribution-of-anthropogenic-co2-emissions-to-changes-in-atmospheric-concentrations/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/22/anthropogenic-co2-and-the-expected-results-from-eliminating-it/
The reason for that is the low signal to noise ratio. The signal to be detected is the perturbation on the mass (in ppm) caused by the pandemic. The noise is the variability on the mass (in ppm) that exists both with and without the pandemic. The 2020 pandemic signal is only about 0.25 ppm (0.55 GtC reduction in emissions). The noise, however, on a 12 month average is 2.1 ppm. The signal we are trying to detect is only about 1/9 of the noise. To be able to reject the null hypothesis (there is no difference between human and nature emissions contribution to the mass in the atmosphere) at p < 0.05 we would need to have had the pandemic reduction be at least 4.2 ppm for a trivial analysis. We were no where close to that. More advanced signal processing techniques using filters (like for ENSO) might be able to detect that 0.25 ppm signal. I wouldn’t be surprised to see studies claiming to have detected the signal in the future if they aren’t already available.
Then wouldn’t an 18% increase in anthro emissions also be hidden in the noise? Hoist on your own petard maybe?
A transient increase of 18% relative to 2020 would represent a 0.9 ppm perturbation on the concentration. That is still a pretty weak signal as compared to the noise.
“A transient increase of 18% relative to 2020 would represent a 0.9 ppm perturbation on the concentration. That is still a pretty weak signal as compared to the noise.”
If you can’t separate the signal from the noise then why are we getting so many studies assuming we can?
TG said: “If you can’t separate the signal from the noise then why are we getting so many studies assuming we can?”
Can you post a link to say 3 of these many studies that are able to detect the pandemic emission reduction? I’m very interested in reading them and seeing how they are doing it.
I’m not talking about the pandemic emission reduction. I’m talking about the ability to separate out the anthropogenic emissions from the natural emissions in general. If you can’t do it during the pandemic because of noise how can you do it an *any* time. The noise doesn’t go away does it?
Who said anything about not being able to separate out anthropogenic emissions from natural emissions? That is not what is being discussed. What is being discussed is the ability to detect the perturbation on the mass level in the atmosphere given a small reduction in the amount of mass that went in.
If you can’t do it with a reduction of what is going in then how do you do with an increase of what is going in. Noise is noise. It would cover up both the reduction *and* the increase!
My analyses looked at monthly data, not annual data. With high temporal resolution, an 18% variation in one month shouldn’t be hard to spot. Did you even bother to read my links, or just recite what you have read elsewhere?
The month-to-month analysis is more problematic. An 18% reduction in human emissions in one month is only 0.07 ppm (0.15 GtC). This compares with the month-over-month change noise of about 1.3 ppm. The signal is only 1/20 of the noise on this time scale. Even worse to reject the null hypothesis at p < 0.05 we would need to have had the pandemic reduction be at least 2.6 ppm (5.5 GtC) for a trivial analysis which is more than human emissions. In other words, even if the human emission reduction were 100% as opposed to 18% you still would not be able to achieve p < 0.05 given the noise level.
So I was playing around with more advanced signal processing. By applying a few filters I can reduce the month-over-month change noise to only 0.3 ppm. The month closest to hitting the p < 0.05 threshold is April 2020. To hit the p < 0.05 threshold for April 2020 we needed to have had about a 60% drop in emissions for that month. And that was the closest month to p < 0.05. I should point out that p < 0.05 is the minimum criteria for rejecting the null hypothesis and in this case it is not very effective since 18 months since 1980 hit that threshold by random chance. Using a more robust p < 0.01 criteria which eliminates most (though not all) false positives we needed to have had about a 107% reduction which is obviously impossible, but at least with the more advanced analysis we are closer to p < 0.05. I think there could be a limit to the noise floor driven by the uncertainty of CO2 measurements which for Mauna Loa is about ±0.2.ppm. With a far more advanced model that is beyond my expertise I think someone might be able to raise the signal to noise ratio enough to reject the null hypothesis at an 18% reduction assuming human emissions do not contribute to the atmospheric CO2 level.
Let’s keep it simple. Note the following graph:
Notice particularly month 6 (April). This is the month with an 18+% anthro’ decline in the 2019-20 ramp-up. It is higher than every year before and immediately following, except the 2015-16 El Nino year. Clearly, warming from El Nino resulted in a discernible, indeed significant, increase compared to typical recent years. The message really is, significant declines in anthro’ emissions are lost in the ‘noise’ from the natural variations. A 50% forced decline in fossil fuel emissions would also probably be undetectable, yet play havoc with the world’s economy.
It looks like your graph is consistent with what I’m saying as well. There is a lot of variation. From your graph the range for the month of April is about 2 ppm. But the pandemic reduction for April was only 0.07 ppm which is undetectable in the graph. The pandemic reduction is lost in the noise like you say. One thing I have not tried yet is an ENSO filter to help remove some of that noise. But I still think the measurement uncertainty is going to put a floor on the noise level.
My calculations show that a 50% reduction sustained for 2 years would be detectable even with a trivial analysis. A more advanced analysis would likely be able to detect a 50% reduction if sustained for only 1 year.
Exactly what “signal” are you looking for? What are you classifying as “noise”? The information you are looking at is CO2 concentration. It is measured directly with no interfering signal from some other phenomena that looks like CO2, i.e., noise.
I suspect the “signal” you are looking for is better described as a smoothed distribution of the data. In other words you are searching for something that “hides” the variance of the data by making it look smaller. Why do you want to do that? Why don’t you just use a linear regression and call it good?
Remember you only have a sample of a continuous phenomena. The data points you have are not the entire description of the “signal”. The main purpose of “signal processing” is recreating the original continuous function, not removing noise. It is why Nyquist requirements exists. It tells you the sample rate needed to recreate the original signal.
You are dealing with a very complicated subject, for which you have no training. I and others have spent hours of class time over years at University to learn about signal creation and manipulation. Fourier and Laplace became good friends. I suspect the filters you have applied have eliminated some of the high frequencies in the signal thereby “smoothing” the output. So in essence you are arriving at a new signal that is not the original. It is a spurious representation of the true “signal”.
I believe you should read the following wiki page about signal to noise and it’s references. Be sure and read about the alternate definition.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal-to-noise_ratio
Read this page to get a smattering of what you need to know about dealing with sampled continuous phenomena.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/continuous-signal
Well, straight forward arithmetic except that mankind’s contribution is not 3% but likely over 50% of the 130 ppm increase. You are just making skeptics look like quacks using such numbers.
OK, do the calculation with 50%. The numbers are still ludicrous.
Doug, this is a very moot point about how much human CO2 concentrations are compared to natural increases. I suspect that human input may be up to 20% especially since 1950, but have no solid data to support this assumption and understand that C isotopes are not reliable due to volcanic input.
However, whatever the influence level is, recent science has clearly shown that CO2 is not and has not driven climate change from the Cambrian to the present. Moreover CO2 dominantly responds to changing temperature not the obverse as touted by the failed AGW IPCC models, and given CO2’s increasing IR saturation mode runaway global warming is impossible, it’s just another greenie myth..
Bob, we know approximately how much fossil fuel mankind has used, and calculating how many gigatons of it are in the atmosphere at 280 and 400 ppm can be calculated by a high school science student. It appears that about 1/2 of what mankind has emitted must be absorbed into the oceans. Further along in the comments, I give some numbers for CO2 warming according to Modtran, which are significantly lower than those in the lead article.
Here’s how much is emitted
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region
“Bob, we know approximately how much fossil fuel mankind has used, and calculating how many gigatons of it are in the atmosphere at 280 and 400 ppm can be calculated by a high school science student.”
Interesting . . . and can you, DMacKenzie, and/or your hypothetical high school science student, define:
— the uncertainty range associated with your use of the word “approximately”?
— what percentage of annual worldwide CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels is dissolved into the world’s oceans? “About 1/2” leaves a lot of room for error and is not considered a scientific term.
— what percentage of annual world wide CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels is taken up by vegetation, especially considering the scientifically-acknowledged fact that Earth has been greening (5% increase in foliage over just the last 20 years; see https://www.warpnews.org/human-progress/nasa-the-earth-is-greener-now-than-it-was-20-years-ago/ )?
There is absolutely no basis to assume that all CO2 produced by humans burning fossil fuels ends up being an incremental increase in measured atmospheric CO2 concentration . . . in fact, known science refutes that.
I even suspect that many high school science students appreciate this reasoning and the associated limitations on calculations.
Gordon Dressler said: “There is absolutely no basis to assume that all CO2 produced by humans burning fossil fuels ends up being an incremental increase in measured atmospheric CO2 concentration . . . in fact, known science refutes that.”
The law of conservation mass is not only known to science but unchallenged as well. It says in no uncertain terms that the 460 GtC decrease in the fossil reservoir must be matched with a 460 GtC increase in the biosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere reservoirs. Saying there is no basis for concluding that nearly all CO2 produced by humans burning fossil fuels ends up being dispatched to the atmosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere is as absurd a claim as it gets. Not only is there extensive basis above and beyond mass conservation, it is as settled as anything in science can be settled.
1850 was the end of the Industrial Revolution – it actually started in the mid 1700’s.
Agreed, but as far as I can ascertain, assessments of atmospheric CO2 content can only really be accurately assessed from ice cores back to around 1850.
Just let him keep digging a deeper hole.
The Earth system readily eliminates radiative imbalances via adjustments in convective overturning.
“In our assessment of the EEI, the focus is on the well observed period from 2005 to 2019”
There is no imbalance in real time, only in a time span.
So it is true that net solar increased (reduced clouds) and an “imbalance” occured. And it is true that it also got dispersed by convection.
“It is the net result of all the processes and feedbacks in play in the climate system.”
You would think that someone like Trenberth would have a better understanding of Conservation of Energy. But then again, if he did, climate alarmism would be a distant memory.
And of course, no mention of any measurement uncertainties associated with the deadly EEI.
The assumption is that if you have enough data, you average it out and get very precise results. Of course, that is based on a well behaved Gaussian error distribution. If the errors have a different distribution, like red noise, for example, averaging totally does not produce more accurate results.
When they calculate their energy imbalance, the results are within the error bars (even if they think otherwise). People assume that nature gives us nice Gaussian random errors. She does not.
Believing that averaging eliminates all sins is a common theme in climastrology, in fact, I daresay it relies upon it with religious fervor.
It is their common theme, but they do not believe it eliminates all sins. They do it, because it suits their purpose to post utter twaddle while claiming ‘It’s science’.
It is climastrology, total bollocks!
It is not proper science, as every thermometer and location is unique and TMin/TMax temperatures are unique to that location/equipment.
The common theme is starting with a conclusion:
Warming is man made and dangerous.
Because we say so.
Complete with a nice new hockey stick!
Did they also invoke the “zetajoules” bugaboo?
Take a look at previous known “hot” decades. e.g., 1880s and the 1930s.
Where 1930’s temperature records still stand, Trenberth’s chart shows 1930s and 1940s temperatures as quite mild. The 1880s are shown as cold as the LIA.
It is also noticed that Trenberth does not include the LIA temperatures.
The past is cooled and modern temperatures are elevated to match CO₂ rise. Neither pause in temperatures are shown.
“Hide the decline…”
The temperature data is NOAA up to 2013 taken from a previous paper the author wrote in 2013 and couldn’t be bothered to update the graphic for this paper. To the extent you think it has been adjusted, it was by NOAA not Trenberth.
Here’s a graph of temps back to 1850, courtesy of Phil Jones. It shows three warming trends
since 1850.
The small blip in Trenberth’s chart circa 1940 looks like one The Team™ discussed as one
that could be made with a few “adjustments” here & there. Coinkydink?
2009 ClimateGate email:
Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”. [Tom Wigley, to Phil Jones and Ben Santer]
1850 to 1900 is not even close to being a global average.
1900 to 1950 has sparse coverage of the Southern Hemisphere. There is still too much infilling today for the surface compilations. UAH satellite since 1979 is decent.
“Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know).”
I guess that means the 1940’s warming “blip” was global.
And then these criminals made it disappear in the official temperature record. As you can see, they knew what they were doing. It’s deliberate bastardization of the historic temperature record done to promote the human-caused climate change narrative.
And now we live in the world they have created out of whole cloth for us. Do you like this false reality they created? They ought to go to jail for what they have done to humanity with their lies and distortions.
Suppose we find an energy imbalance for a given year or decade. Do we conclude that the Earth is warming/cooling because of the imbalance? I think not, because it takes time, probably hundreds of years, for the Earth to react fully, mainly because the ocean has to have time to overturn.
Plus, if the Earth is warming, that would imply such an energy imbalance. That doesn’t mean it has anything to do with atmospheric CO2 levels, it just means the temperature is going up.
Their ASSUMPTION that CO2 is the “driver” (which it has never been empirically shown to be) doesn’t make that a fact.
Yes, assumptions are not evidence of anything.
I think this is a good point. Given the presumption that you *can* calculate a credible EEI, an undue focus on an EEI presumes that there should be static energy balance for the earth. We know that thermal equilibrium exists nowhere on the earth, and the atmosphere, and the TOA, is just one part of a dynamic system.
What was the EEI that produced all of Earth’s fossil fuels. It certainly was not zero or there could not have been anything to store for current use.
Could maybe some kind of EEI have been involved in the numerous glacial-interglacial cycles of the past 2.6 million years? This might suggest that any EEI has to be averaged over 10s and 100s of thousands of years to be meaningful.
Then we are talking 800-1,000 years.
Kevin Trenberth is unbalanced.
Thanks, Richard. That made me laugh.
Trenberth should have retired more than a decade ago.
Regards,
Bob
I’ll agree with that – his bank balance just keeps going up, and up, and up…
I believe it rises in accordance with RCP 8.5 🙂
“The net energy imbalance is calculated by looking at how much heat is absorbed from the Sun and how much is able to radiate back into space,” explains Trenberth, who’s paper was published today, “it is not yet possible to measure the imbalance directly, the only practical way to estimate it is through an inventory of the changes in energy.”
At least they admit that EEI is not directly measurable. Maybe someday they’ll admit that their indirect method of measurement involves using data whose error bars far exceed the level of the effect (EEI) they deign to ‘measure’.
Or worse, that have already been adjusted to comport with the theory. The whole exercise then becomes a self-licking ice cream cone.
Imagine your doctor told you in 1982 that he concluded your liver had lesions and if you didn’t stop drinking now, it would fail by 1990.
You felt fine, no indications, and so you didn’t stop drinking, or even reduce your intake.
In fact you drank more.
Doc kept telling you the same diagnosis every 6 months thereafter.
When your liver failure didn’t happen in 1990, the Doc extended your demise until 2000. This time with more certainty.
You still felt fine, and upped your alcohol intake by gallons every week.
In 2000, your liver seemed to be relishing its daily soaking in alcohol.
Nevertheless, Doc reiterated his diagnosis, this time giving you until 2020 before your demise. Definitely this time.
You were now enjoying the best wines, whiskeys, beers and liquers you could afford. Every single day.
2020 came, no change. Same diagnosis. Pushed out now to 2022.
2022 came around, and you went to see Doc again.
You were in glorious health.
He started to deliver the same spiel you had heard for the past 40 years.
What did you do?
This time you stopped him –
“Doc, forget the liver. Clearly, it’s ok.
But can you do something about this whine I’ve been hearing for the last 40 years or so?”
Doesn’t Figure 1 immediately shoot the CO2 theory in the foot?
Why is CO2 plotted on a linear scale when being compared to temperature?
Because he had to make it line up exactly with the GAT red-blue bars.