CO2 Has Risen By 110 ppm Since 1750
The Human Contribution Is Just 17 ppm
Harde, 2017
Abstract:
Climate scientists presume that the carbon cycle has come out of balance due to the increasing anthropogenic emissions from fossil fuel combustion and land use change. This is made responsible for the rapidly increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations over recent years, and it is estimated that the removal of the additional emissions from the atmosphere will take a few hundred thousand years. Since this goes along with an increasing greenhouse effect and a further global warming, a better understanding of the carbon cycle is of great importance for all future climate change predictions. We have critically scrutinized this cycle and present an alternative concept, for which the uptake of CO2 by natural sinks scales proportional with the CO2 concentration. In addition, we consider temperature dependent natural emission and absorption rates, by which the paleoclimatic CO2 variations and the actual CO2 growth rate can well be explained. The anthropogenic contribution to the actual CO2 concentration is found to be 4.3%, its fraction to the CO2 increase over the Industrial Era is 15% and the average residence time 4 years.
Conclusion:
Climate scientists assume that a disturbed carbon cycle, which has come out of balance by the increasing anthropogenic emissions from fossil fuel combustion and land use change, is responsible for the rapidly increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations over recent years. While over the whole Holocene up to the entrance of the Industrial Era (1750) natural emissions by heterotrophic processes and fire were supposed to be in equilibrium with the uptake by photosynthesis and the net oceanatmosphere gas exchange, with the onset of the Industrial Era the IPCC estimates that about 15 – 40 % of the additional emissions cannot further be absorbed by the natural sinks and are accumulating in the atmosphere.
The IPCC further argues that CO2 emitted until 2100 will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1000 years, and in the same context it is even mentioned that the removal of human-emitted CO2 from the atmosphere by natural processes will take a few hundred thousand years (high confidence) (see AR5-Chap.6-Executive-Summary).
Since the rising CO2 concentrations go along with an increasing greenhouse effect and, thus, a further global warming, a better understanding of the carbon cycle is a necessary prerequisite for all future climate change predictions. In their accounting schemes and models of the carbon cycle the IPCC uses many new and detailed data which are primarily focussing on fossil fuel emission, cement fabrication or net land use change (see AR5-WG1-Chap.6.3.2), but it largely neglects any changes of the natural emissions, which contribute to more than 95 % to the total emissions and by far cannot be assumed to be constant over longer periods (see, e.g.: variations over the last 800,000 years (Jouzel et al., 2007); the last glacial termination (Monnin et al., 2001); or the younger Holocene (Monnin et al., 2004; Wagner et al., 2004)).
Since our own estimates of the average CO2 residence time in the atmosphere differ by several orders of magnitude from the announced IPCC values, and on the other hand actual investigations of Humlum et al. (2013) or Salby (2013, 2016) show a strong relation between the natural CO2 emission rate and the surface temperature, this was motivation enough to scrutinize the IPCC accounting scheme in more detail and to contrast this to our own calculations.
Different to the IPCC we start with a rate equation for the emission and absorption processes, where the uptake is not assumed to be saturated but scales proportional with the actual CO2 concentration in the atmosphere (see also Essenhigh, 2009; Salby, 2016). This is justified by the observation of an exponential decay of 14C. A fractional saturation, as assumed by the IPCC, can directly be expressed by a larger residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere and makes a distinction between a turnover time and adjustment time needless. Based on this approach and as solution of the rate equation we derive a concentration at steady state, which is only determined by the product of the total emission rate and the residence time. Under present conditions the natural emissions contribute 373 ppm and anthropogenic emissions 17 ppm to the total concentration of 390 ppm (2012). For the average residence time we only find 4 years.
The stronger increase of the concentration over the Industrial Era up to present times can be explained by introducing a temperature dependent natural emission rate as well as a temperature affected residence time. With this approach not only the exponential increase with the onset of the Industrial Era but also the concentrations at glacial and cooler interglacial times can well be reproduced in full agreement with all observations. So, different to the IPCC’s interpretation the steep increase of the concentration since 1850 finds its natural explanation in the self accelerating processes on the one hand by stronger degassing of the oceans as well as a faster plant growth and decomposition, on the other hand by an increasing residence time at reduced solubility of CO2 in oceans.
Together this results in a dominating temperature controlled natural gain, which contributes about 85 % to the 110 ppm CO2 increase over the Industrial Era, whereas the actual anthropogenic emissions of 4.3 % only donate 15 %. These results indicate that almost all of the observed change of CO2 during the Industrial Era followed, not from anthropogenic emission, but from changes of natural emission.
The results are consistent with the observed lag of CO2 changes behind temperature changes (Humlum et al., 2013; Salby, 2013), a signature of cause and effect. Our analysis of the carbon cycle, which exclusively uses data for the CO2 concentrations and fluxes as published in AR5, shows that also a completely different interpretation of these data is possible, this in complete conformity with all observations and natural causalities.
“Has the IPCC made a profoundly flawed assumption?”
It is built into its very foundations. !
15% anthropogenic CO2.
At least that means we can still help push the atmospheric concentration up a little bit.
Many more countries need to get on board with coal fired power stations if we are ever going to push the aCO2 concentration up where it needs to be, around the 1000ppm mark.
“…if we are ever going to push the aCO2 concentration up where it needs to be…”
And even more basic flaw in the “science” – more CO2 is good. More warmth is good. If we could control atmospheric CO2, the optimal level would be substantially more than it is today.
It is so damned obvious. The rate of change of CO2 tracks temperature anomaly as perfectly as anyone could expect given inherent observational limitations:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/from:1979/derivative/plot/uah6/scale:0.175/offset:0.142
The temperature anomaly trend explains the trend in the CO2 rate of change. As human inputs also have a trend in their rate of change, adding them in produces too high a trend. Ergo, they are not responsible for it, and human inputs cannot have significant impact. Perhaps as much as 15%, but very probably much less.
I discussed a way in which this relationship might come about in a blog comment here.
No mention of the words “gigaton” or “mass” in that explanation. It’s not surprising that their conclusion violates conservation of mass.
They also present the concluded quantities without any accompanying error, which indicates they did not even check how uncertainties in measurements affect the uncertainty of the conclusion.
Harde cites Humlum for support, but Humlum paper used fallacious reasoning. Humlum does phase space analysis on the CO2 and temperature, finds a circular swirling pattern in phase space with a peak correlation for CO2 lagging temperature by a couple of months, and concluded the CO2 rise is coming mainly from natural ocean outgassing. In fact any model of carbon flow and temperature which includes a temperature-dependent rate for ocean absorption of CO2 and features industry as the only source of rising CO2 will also show the same swirling pattern in phase space and the same CO2 lag period after temperature change. His analysis method is flawed, as the phase and lag signature he believes to be unique to natural causation is not unique to natural cause.
Harde cites Salby for support, but Salby’s presentation was flawed for two reasons.
By using CO2 anomalies rather than absolute amount he erases the evidence of human causality in his first step (the step of representing the problem to be solved).
Then in his solution he uses a rate-based argument with mathematics that had a critical mistake in the integral of temperature where he neglected the unknown constant of integration which would (if it had been inserted correctly in the integral) have shown the change in CO2 cannot be accounted for by temperature change alone. This mistake was in the second line of his equations shown at time code 13:30 of his Hamburg presentation video.
All the above 3 papers make the same mistake, which is they try to infer what is currently happening using calculus applied to rates and ignoring conservation of mass, instead of simply deducing what necessarily happened using arithmetic and conservation of mass applied to observed absolute quantities.
Cute picture in his “graphical abstract”, but I still prefer this older diagram as it matches all the real world observations that were available at the time.
http://imgur.com/iNmSc
Conservation of mass implies the net flow of carbon is currently from atmosphere to ocean.
Blockbuster? More like crock-busted.
So do you believe that natural CO2 sources and sinks have remained remarkably in balance for millennia, and only humans can alter the carbon cycle?
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http://www.atmosfera.unam.mx/jzavala/OceanoAtmosfera/Physics%20of%20the%20Atmosphere%20and%20Climate%20-%20Murry%20Salby.pdf
“Together, emission from ocean and land sources (∼150 GtC/yr) is two orders of magnitude greater than CO2 emission from combustion of fossil fuel. These natural sources are offset by natural sinks, of comparable strength. However, because they are so much stronger, even a minor imbalance between natural sources and sinks can overshadow the anthropogenic component of CO2 emission.” pg. 546
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Why do you think it is that the CO2 concentration did not increase for the 13 years between 1938 and 1950, even as human emissions were rising?
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Why has the airborne fraction trend been flat or decreasing since the 1970s….since anthropogenic emissions have been rising dramatically during this same period, as shown here: http://ej.iop.org/images/1748-9326/8/1/011006/erl459410f3_online.jpg
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http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1260/095830509787689123
The results suggest that El Nino and the Southern Oscillation events produce major changes in the carbon isotope ratio in the atmosphere. This does not favour the continuous increase of CO2 from the use of fossil fuels as the source of isotope ratio changes. The constancy of seasonal variations in CO2 and the lack of time delays between the hemispheres suggest that fossil fuel derived CO2 is almost totally absorbed locally in the year it is emitted. This implies that natural variability of the climate is the prime cause of increasing CO2, not the emissions of CO2 from the use of fossil fuels.
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http://www.researchgate.net/publication/281111296_RESPONSIVENESS_OF_ATMOSPHERIC_CO2_TO_ANTHROPOGENIC_EMISSIONS_A_NOTE
A statistically significant correlation between annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions and the annual rate of accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere over a 53-year sample period from 1959-2011 is likely to be spurious because it vanishes when the two series are detrended. The results do not indicate a measurable year to year effect of annual anthropogenic emissions on the annual rate of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL023027/full
There is clear similarity between Figures 1b and 1c, with the positive CO2 growth rate anomalies corresponding to El Niño events, and the negative growth rate anomalies corresponding to La Niña events. The largest positive CO2 growth rate anomalies are coincident with large Niño3 values in 1973, 1988 and 1998. … It is unlikely that these anomalies can be explained by an abrupt increase in anthropogenic emissions, as the anomalies are much larger than annual increases in fossil fuel emissions. Most interannual variability in the CO2 growth rate is attributable to variations in land-atmosphere CO2 exchange with climate (e.g., associated with ENSO or volcanic perturbations)
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http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef800581r
[T]he analytical results also then support the IPCC analysis and data on the longer “adjustment time” (∼100 years) governing the long-term rising “quasi-equilibrium” concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. For principal verification of the adopted PSR model, the data source used was the outcome of the injection of excess 14CO2 into the atmosphere during the A-bomb tests in the 1950s/1960s, which generated an initial increase of approximately 1000% above the normal value and which then declined substantially exponentially with time, with τ = 16 years, in accordance with the (unsteady-state) prediction from and jointly providing validation for the PSR analysis. With the short (5−15 year) RT [residence time] results shown to be in quasi-equilibrium, this then supports the (independently based) conclusion that the long-term (∼100 year) rising atmospheric CO2 concentration is not from anthropogenic sources but, in accordance with conclusions from other studies, is most likely the outcome of the rising atmospheric temperature, which is due to other natural factors. This further supports the conclusion that global warming is not anthropogenically driven as an outcome of combustion.
>> “So do you believe that natural CO2 sources and sinks have remained remarkably in balance for millennia, and only humans can alter the carbon cycle?”
No, and don’t waste our time by pretending I claimed things I never said.
>> “…can overshadow…”
A “can” is not a “did”. Apply conservation of mass to find out what did happen.
>> “…the CO2 concentration did not increase for the 13 years between 1938 and 1950”
Do you suddenly believe the IPCC’s version of CO2 history when it is convenient for you, but not any other time? The only consistent measurements of CO2 began at MLO in 1959. Some of the early 1900s measurements in Germany that E.G.Beck discovered may be valid due them being taken when the wind was blowing in off the North sea, but most will not be. The IPCC obtained their 1750-present graph by prepending the MLO series with ice core proxies as though they were equally valid, but disagreement on this point remains today. Surely you know that. So how do you know what CO2 was doing before comprehensive measurements began?
>> “Why has the airborne fraction (the fraction of the CO2 concentration attributed to fossil fuels)”
You don’t know what “airborne fraction” means. Since the name is misleading that is forgiveable. The IPCC and the author of that chart (Hansen) defined it differently. It’s actually “the ratio of the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 to the CO2 emissions from annual fossil fuel and cement manufacture combined”, see AR4 WG1 Ch2. This means it does not include land use change which in some years is 40% of the total contribution.
>> airborne fraction trend been flat or decreasing
The very fact that the airborne fraction is less than 100% proves my point. Just apply conservation of mass. There is less annual atmospheric increase than what we emitted to the atmosphere, which implies a net absorption by the rest of the planet. Do you not understand what that means?
The emissions and temperature together look like http://imgur.com/0CgHN .
Total anthropogenic emissions decreased between 1991 and 1993 which might contribute to the dip seen in the middle of the AF chart. The slight downturn at the end could be caused by the surge in aCO2 emissions after 2004 occurring on top of an unusually warm 2010. The actual airborne fraction depends on so many factors (carbonate buffering, temperature, bioactivity, pCO2, land clearing, fossil fuels, cement, etc) that whether it is flat or wiggly over any particular decade is an unnecessary drudge when determining why CO2 has gone up.
In reality the transient behaviour (prior to equilibrium) will be so much more complicated than Henry’s Law would predict that I have to ask how you could possibly know what that chart “should” look like even if your explanation was true?
>> CO2 is almost totally absorbed locally in the year it is emitted. This implies that natural variability of the climate is the prime cause of increasing CO2.
That is a non-sequitur. Apply conservation of mass. Any sink capacity occupied by aCO2 is capacity that cannot be occupied by natural CO2 later, so the natural CO2 will be absorbed elsewhere, and still the industry is the source of the change as the argument is about net quantity not individually barcoded carbon atoms.
>> vanishes when the two series are detrended.
Yes, if you ignore the absolute amount and remove the trend, you are ignoring conservation of mass so will arrive at a false conclusion.
>> It is unlikely that these anomalies can be explained by an abrupt increase in anthropogenic emissions, as the anomalies are much larger than annual increases in fossil fuel emissions. Most interannual variability in the CO2 growth rate is attributable to variations in land-atmosphere CO2 exchange with climate
Yes. This does not contradict anything I said earlier, and there was a rough estimate of the temperature variability of natural CO2 exchange in the diagram I linked, and it also shows the annual natural fluxes being far greater than anthropogenic emissions, but the change net of all fluxes is the important part.
>> With the short (5−15 year) residence time results …
The residence time, or resting place, of an individual molecule is not important, what matters is the shift in mass net of all fluxes, and space occupied by carbon from any source is space that cannot be occupied by carbon from any other source.
But it is funny you mention this because to the extent it says anything at all about what happens to the aCO2 it destroys your case. There should be no gross behavioural difference in 14C versus 12C in where they go, indicating most aCO2 (also 12C) will be absorbed exponentially that same way as any other CO2. But if all CO2 behaved that same way and the ocean and plants are absorbing CO2 not just in some fluxes but as the total net direction of flow then they are not the source of the CO2 level rising in the atmosphere.
Apply conservation of mass to the observations of human activity and atmospheric carbon content and you will get an answer that must be true.
Great. So then what mechanism caused CO2 concentrations to rise from 180 ppm during glacials to 300 ppm during interglacials? What caused CO2 concentrations to reach 470 ppm just a few million years ago? Were those changes heat/temperature dependent or no? If yes, at what point (year or span of years) did CO2 concentration variations divorce from a heat/temperature dependency? Please be specific.
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Regarding the airborne fraction, if the trends in airborne fraction are so non-surprising or expected, as you seem to be suggesting, why is it that scientists seem to be puzzled by the lack of a trend that at least resembles the trend in emission? For example, in the Hansen paper (where the ERL figure comes from) he seems to be puzzled — he finds it “striking” — by the lack of correlation between AF and emissions. In fact, he thinks there should be a “sharp increase” in the airborne fraction. There hasn’t been.
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“However, it is the dependence of the airborne fraction on fossil fuel emission rate that makes the post-2000 downturn of the airborne fraction particularly striking. The change of emission rate in 2000 from 1.5% yr-1 to 3.1% yr-1 (figure 1), other things being equal, would [should] have caused a sharp increase of the airborne fraction”
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Here are more scientists that appear confused as to why the airborne fraction has remained trendless despite the explosive increase in anthropogenic CO2 emissions:
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL040613/full
Abstract: [T]he trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, i.e. close to and not significantly different from zero. …Despite the predictions of coupled climate-carbon cycle models, no trend in the airborne fraction can be found
Conclusion: From what we understand about the underlying processes, uptake of atmospheric CO2 should react not to a change in emissions, but to a change in concentrations. A further analysis of the likely contributing processes is necessary in order to establish the reasons for a near-constant AF [ratio of CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere to the CO2 flux into the atmosphere due to human activity] since the start of industrialization. The hypothesis of a recent or secular trend in the AF cannot be supported on the basis of the available data and its accuracy.
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According to NOAA, CO2 concentrations only changed by 1 ppm between 1938 and 1950, as shown here: https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/law/law2006.txt During this same period, anthropogenic CO2 emissions rose dramatically. To what do you attribute the lack of change in CO2 concentration, or the lack of correlation with emissions? Or will you refuse to answer this question because only the post-1958 Mauna Loa record counts?
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Assuming you believe CO2 concentration variations cause changes in ocean heat content, can you explain why it is that ocean heat changes occur thousands of years prior to surface temperature and CO2 concentration changes?
http://www.clim-past.net/11/647/2015/cp-11-647-2015.pdf
Despite the substantial dispersion of CO2 estimations, a character and a chronology of CO2 concentration changes are much closer to temperature changes rather than to heat flux variations. It may mean no significant contribution of CO2 forcing to climatically caused heat flux and thus to the temperature increase during Pleistocene–Holocene warming. About 10 kyr BP the increase of carbon dioxide concentration was replaced by its fall which ended about 8 kyr BP. This local minimum [in CO2 concentration] is not consistent with either GST [ground surface temperature] or SHF [surface heat flux] histories. It is possible that the CO2 decrease was associated with a sharp increase of vegetation absorbing its excess. … The reconstructed surface heat flux reflects impact of all possible sources of radiative forcing. In addition to solar insolation, greenhouse gases (such as CO2) can be a source of additional forcing. On the other hand the increase of carbon dioxide may be a consequence of temperature increasing. Comparing the chronology of surface flux, temperature and carbon dioxide concentration changes, we can draw some conclusions about the causes of climate change. … The increase of carbon dioxide concentrations occurred 2–3 thousands of years later than the heat flux increase and synchronously with temperature response.
>> at what point (year or span of years) did CO2 concentration variations divorce from a heat/temperature dependency?
Never.
You are being stupid.
Henry’s law did not cease applying to the atmosphere.
Human activity began applying to the atmosphere.
They are superimposed effects.
As you show every sign of being a propagandist, I cease further discussion with you.
Your beliefs about anthropogenic CO2 have a rather large problem with magnitude, Andrew M. The contribution from human activity is minuscule relative to everyday natural sources. For example:
Carey et al., 2017
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170130140004.htm
While scientists and policy experts debate the impacts of global warming, Earth’s soil is releasing roughly nine times more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than all human activities combined.
Even a tiny variation in natural emission is easily enough to alter the overall CO2 concentration.
As expected, when faced with questions they cannot credibly answer (i.e., regarding the flat airborne fraction, why CO2 didn’t increase from 1938 to 1950, why heat changes in oceans occur thousands of years before CO2 emissions changes, why ocean heat plummeted while CO2 concentrations rose, why glacial-interglacial transitions featured 180 to 300 ppm changes…), people like Andrew pivot to name-calling (“stupid” “propagandist”) and run away.
That you can’t manage to answer rather fundamental questions related to your beliefs doesn’t help convince anyone here that your beliefs are “truth”, Andrew.
The classic “it were natural changes in the past, so it must be natural today” argument …
Kenneth, just do the math. Humans emit enough CO2 to increase concentration by more than 4 ppm per year. Yet it only increases by 2-3 ppm each year. How is that possible if the current increase is caused by ocean outgasing as suggested in the paper of the blogpost? It’s also not a problem of magnitude. Another strange argument of yours ignoring superimposed effects. “There can be only one” … Highlander fan?
Relative to what natural sources? The Earth’s soil alone emits 9 times more CO2 than all human activities combined. Termites emit twice as much CO2 as all human activities combined. The oceans emit 9 times more CO2 than all human activities combined.
So you believe it is not possible for ocean outgassing to significantly account for net changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Interesting. So why is it that when ocean waters are cooler, the CO2 concentration increases are far less pronounced than when ocean waters are warmer? For example:
https://www2.meteo.uni-bonn.de/bibliothek/Flohn_Publikationen/K287-K320_1981-1985/K299.pdf
“A crude estimate of these differences is demonstrated by the fact that during the period 1958-1974, the average CO2-increase within five selective years with prevailing cool water only 0.57 ppm/a [per year], while during five years with prevailing warm water it was 1.11 ppm/a. Thus in a a warm water year, more than one Gt (1015 g) carbon is additionally injected into the atmosphere, in comparison to a cold water year.”
“The recent increase of the CO2-content of air varies distinctly from year to year, rather independent from the irregular annual increase of global CO2-production from fossil fuel and cement, which has since 1973 decreased from about 4.5 percent to 2.25 percent per year (Rotty 1981). Comparative investigations (Keeling and Bacastow 1977, Newll et al. 1978, Angell 1981) found a positive correlation between the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 and the fluctuations of sea surface temperature (SST) in the equatorial Pacific, which are caused by rather abrupt changes between upwelling cool water and downwelling warm water (“El Niño”) in the eastern equatorial Pacific.”
Kenneth,
I don’t know if you have a bussiness with a bookkeeper, if you give him all the income, whatever source, but forget to mention all expenses, he will not be happy with you.
It is as simple as bookkeeping: at one side all income:
150 GtC/year from oceans and vegetation (mainly seasonal: temperature dependent)
9 GtC/year from humans (mainly independent of temperature)
All “expenses”:
154.5 GtC/year into oceans and vegetation (150 GtC mainly seasonal: temperature dependent, 4.5 GtC pressure dependent)
Net balance (the “gain” or “loss” of a factory): a gain of 4.5 GtC/year or 2.15 ppmv/year increase as “airborne fraction” of around 50% of human emissions. The difference of 2.15 ppmv/year is what sinks as extra CO2 in the oceans and vegetation.
Thus whatever the natural ins and outs over a year (even if they were 1000 GtC/year in and out) that doesn’t change one gram in total CO2 in the atmosphere. Only some extra CO2 from vclcanoes or humans does increase total CO2 in the atmosphere, as that is largely one-way input. That increases the total pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere above the ocean-atmosphere dynamic equilibrium for the current temperature, pressing more CO2 in the oceans than they emit and in plant alveoles, so that they grow faster…
That is (one of) the problem(s) with the work of Hermann Harde: there is a huge difference between the residence time of any individual CO2 molecule, whatever the origin, and the fate of an extra shot CO2 in the atmosphere (the e-fold decay rate), whatever the origin.
The residence time is total mass / throughput:
800 GtC / 150 GtC/year = 5.3 years
The e-fold decay rate for any disturbance of a linear process is disturbance from the steady state / effect:
110 ppmv / 2.15 ppmv/year = 51.1 years
That the sink process is surprisingly linear is proven by the same disturbance/effect ratio over the full 57 years of accurate measurements, despite a fourfold increase in human emissions, increase rate in the atmosphere and net sink rate…
See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
Which shows all the evidence for the human origin of the increase and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_variability.html#The_real_world
Which shows theory and reality why so many skeptics err on this, because of a nice correlation in the derivatives, which only shows the correlation of the noise around the CO2 increase, not the cause of the increase itself…
So if humans are 100% responsible for changes in atmospheric CO2, and natural sources alone are a net sink, reducing the CO2 concentration, what year or span of years did nature stop having a contributional effect on atmospheric CO2 concentrations? In other words, what year or span of years did humans achieve this 100% take over? Was the takeover gradual (CO2 concentration partly affected by both humans and nature), or was the 100% takeover by humans immediate?
Since CO2 concentrations naturally vary between 180 ppm and 8,000 ppm, at what point did the natural factors that cause net variations of that magnitude stop working, allowing humans to exclusively dominate the carbon cycle?
And can you explain why, as the paper below illustrates, there is such a strong dependence on water temperature for the change in CO2 concentration, but at the same time temperature changes in water have ZERO effect on the change in CO2 concentration (your position)? If temperature has no effect on emission, why is there an additional 1 Gt CO2 added to the atmosphere during warm water years compared to cold water years?
https://www2.meteo.uni-bonn.de/bibliothek/Flohn_Publikationen/K287-K320_1981-1985/K299.pdf
“A crude estimate of these differences is demonstrated by the fact that during the period 1958-1974, the average CO2-increase within five selective years with prevailing cool water only 0.57 ppm/a [per year], while during five years with prevailing warm water it was 1.11 ppm/a. Thus in a warm water year, more than one Gt (1015 g) carbon is additionally injected into the atmosphere, in comparison to a cold water year”
I would much rather that we had more than just a slight impact on atmospheric CO2.
If we were actually a major contributor, we could push the atmospheric CO2 level up much nearer where it belongs for really good plant growth, in the 700-1200 ppm range.
It is as simple as bookkeeping”
No (facepalm), it isn’t. You are applying algebra to a calculus problem.
The pseudo-mass balance arguments being made above are so dumb. So incredibly benighted. Such fools dabbling in spheres well beyond their competence.
Kenneth,
We are talking about the recent geological era: the past few million years, not the Cretaceous or other periods with much higher CO2 levels than today.
From ice cores we know that over the past at least 800,000 years there is a nice ratio between temperature and CO2 levels in the atmosphere: about 16 ppmv/K (that is what Henry’s law also predicts for CO2 in seawater). That fully explains the CO2 levels over the total period, with the exception of the past 165 years.
The difference between the MWP (around years 1000-1200) and the LIA (around 1600) is ~0.8 K ans shows a drop of ~6 ppmv in the high resolution Law Dome ice core. As we skeptics assume that the MWP was at least as warm as today, the increase should not more than let’s say 10 ppmv since 1600. In rality we see an increase of 110 ppmv above the long term equilibrium. That is 110 ppmv which doesn’t come out of the oceans, it’s reverse: the oceans (and vegetation) are currently proven sinks for CO2…
Uh, no. Between 8,000 years ago and 1850, CO2 levels rose by about 25 ppm. During this same period, ocean temperatures in the 0-700 m layer declined by -2.0 C, as shown here:
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Holocene-Cooling-Pacific-Ocean-Rosenthal-13-CO2.jpg
In the 55 years between 1880 and 1935, NASA GISS now (after adjustments) shows that there was no increase in temperature, as shown here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1880/to:1935/plot/gistemp/from:1880/to:1935/trend
During those 55 years, CO2 concentrations rose from 290 ppm to 309 ppm, or 19 ppm. So why did the 16 ppm/K formula fail to work during this period? What year did it begin to work?
I’ve asked you the question before, and yet you have refused to answer. Since you believe humans are “fully responsible” for the CO2 concentration, at what point (what year or span of years) was this 100% control over the CO2 concentration modulation realized? Was the takeover from natural influences immediate, or was it gradual (were there years when part of the CO2 changes were natural and anthropogenic)? See if you can answer this question.
Kenneth:
“Thus in a warm water year, more than one Gt (1015 g) carbon is additionally injected into the atmosphere, in comparison to a cold water year”
No, it is reverse: in a cold year more CO2 is SINKING in the oceans (but mainly in -tropical- vegetation) than in (too) warm (and dry) years, thus more of the human contribution (as mass, not the original molecules) remains in the atmosphere.
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
Dr. Hermann Flohn (360 scientific publications): “Thus in a warm water year, more than one Gt (1015 g) carbon is additionally injected into the atmosphere, in comparison to a cold water year”
I’m going to assume that Dr. Flohn is correct here, and warmer water years inject more than on Gt into the atmosphere than cold water years do.
Bartemis,
Indeed we have been there many times before. I know, no argument in the world can convince you that you are wrong, even when your theory violates every single observation in the world…
You may have extremely much knowledge about high frequency processes, but you have obviously no idea what a simple linear equilibrium process like the absorption of CO2 in the oceans and vegetation does…
BTW have you already found out how it is possible that the CO2 increase rate in the atmosphere and the net sink rate quadrupled in the past 57 years with a quadrupling of human emissions, without a single observation confirming that the natural CO2 cycles also quadrupled in the same time frame in lockstep with human emissions?
Kenneth,
why do you think it’s 100% humans now? Who wrote that?
We know how much CO2 is emitted per year. We know how much CO2 is in the atmosphere. The increase in concentration is LESS than what you’d expect it to be, which means that nature is able to sink some of the additional CO2 we produce. It might very well be that it sinks all the CO2 we produce and some natural source emits more CO2 now that can’t be absorbed. But that doesn’t change that the increase would be different if we weren’t emitting CO2. Do you understand?`
Analogy time: your paycheck is $1000 and you manage to spend all your money every month. Now someone else is giving you additional $10 to spend, but you only manage to spend $5 of it ending up with $5 surplus every month. That’s the same as saying you manage to spend the extra $10, but could only spend $995 of the initial $1000. The reason your balance is increasing by $5 is that someone who gives you aditional money!
Ferdinand Engelbeen, the person I was replying to, and the direct quote I was replying to: “humans are fully responsible for the increase in the atmosphere and in all these cases, nature is a net sink for CO2 and its contribution is negative”
Actually, since we routinely find new sources and sinks, the idea that we “know” what the values are is quite presumptive. Just in the last few months, for example, cement production was “discovered” to be a net sink for CO2. It used to be thought of as a strong net source of CO2. A few decades ago, it was a “discovery” that termites emit more than 2 times as much CO2 every year as all human activity combined. The more the planet greens (and it is greening), the more termites there are, the more CO2 is emitted, the more the natural net sources of CO2 continue to rise. The values for outgassing and absorption seem to change quite a bit as new information is “discovered.” And since the natural sources for CO2 are about 2,500% greater than human sources, any imbalance at all in the natural sources and sinks is enough to significantly affect a change in the CO2 concentration…enough that the natural sources contribute far more than 0%.
Kenneth,
In response to your question when humans did take over the CO2 levels in the atmosphere:
If we may assume that the natural variability of maximum +/- 1.5 ppmv/year remained the same over the full period since 1850, then we may conclude that natural variability until 1910 was certainly dominant in the year-by-year rate of change, but that the “signal” of ~10 ppmv increase in 1910 is already significant. Between 1910 and 1958 the increase is certainly significant but the yearly rate of change in some years still might have been negative, unfortunately we have no detailed, accurate knowledge of that (the best ice cores have a resolution of ~10 years, proxy’s like stomata are too irregular).
Since 1958, the first measurements at the South Pole, we know for sure that in every year since that year human emissions exceeded the measured increase in the atmosphere, so human emissions did take over every natural cause of probable increase.
I never said or implied that natural factors ceased to work: they simply are still at work on all time scales. The point is that the human factor is additional to the natural variations and the natural sinks can’t cope with the extra CO2 in the same year as it is released. That is what drives CO2 up… Or do you think that the CO2 ice core hockeystick is not real (like some tmeperature HS):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_010kyr.jpg
So, long story short, it would appear that you’re claiming the human takeover occurred during the 1950s or so.
In the 80 years from 1850 to 1930, CO2 levels rose by 20 ppm. And yet the CRU shows there was no temperature increase during those 80 years, despite the rise in CO2.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1930/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/to:1930/trend
Why do you think it is that the rise in human emissions and atmospheric CO2 didn’t cause a change in temperature during those years? 80 years is a long time. Why isn’t there a correlation?
Why the deflection to a different topic?
Do you accept that the increase in ppm can’t be natural if we emit more CO2 into the atmosphere than the change in ppm amounts to if converted in mass units? And it can’t be 85% natural either. It may very well be that 85% of atmospheric CO2 is of natural origin though … do you understand the difference?
Kenneth,
Even the IPCC agrees that human emissions have no discernable influence on temperature/climate up to 1950, simply because the influence was too small.
That is not what is iin discussion is here: in the period 1850-2010 the year by year human emissions still are small in the temperature caused “noise”. Despite that, over the whole period the total human emissions emitted were about twice the increase in the atmosphere (according to ice cores with a ~10 years resolution). That had a measurable effect on the natural abundancy of 14C in the atmosphere: fossil fuels have zero 14C left (too old) and were thinning the “background” 14C levels so much that one needed correction tables to calculate the age of organic objects by radiocarbon dating from 1870 on…
Thus even then, the CO2 increase was certainly caused by humans.
What misleads many is that there is a huge correlation between temperature variability and CO2 level variability with a lag, as goed as between the derivatives of both. Temperature changes cause CO2 changes but quite moderate (16 ppmv/K). Human emissions have very little year by year variability, even undetectable at Mauna Loa. Only a steady increase over time.
Even if there is no or little increase in temperature, that shows a high correlation in the derivatives simply because by taking the derivative one has removed most of the increasing trend and one is looking at the expanded noise. Human emissions have much trend and little variability and therefore are fully responsible for the quadrupling of the CO2 rate of change since 1958, but not for the small variability (+/- 1.5 ppmv) around the trend of 90 ppmv since then…
Kenneth,
It gets a little confusing to follow all the remarks…
Where I wrote:
“in the period 1850-2010” one should of course read
“in the period 1850-1910”
About the longer history: most temperature indications are based on proxies, which have their limits. CO2 levels (CH4 and other gases) are based on ice cores which have a resolution of ~40 years average gas age, that is reasonable. The fact that the Holocene is cooling and CO2 (and CH4) levels are slightly rising over a long period was the basis for the theory that human land use started already earlier than expected. Especially the increase of CH4 in the atmosphere, which is coupled to rice cultivation and cattle herding…
The main increase started in 1850 with the start of coal use for steam engines…
There may be lots of unknown natural sources and sinks, but that is of zero interets, as the total sum of all the natural sources and sinks is negative: more sink that source. That is the case for temites, soil bacteria, etc.: they emit less CO2 than plants absorb CO2 (based on the O2 balance) and so do the oceans (based on over 3 million seawater samples and the trends in DIC (total dissolved inorganic carbon).
Cement production anyway is a CO2 source, cement weathering is a long-time CO2 sink, it takes decennia to centuries to capture the released CO2 back into cement and concrete.
Still you don’t see it:
It is of absolutely zero importance how much the natural sources and sinks varied over time, even if one individual source in some year changed into a sink or reverse, even if it increased a tenfold or decreased a tenfold. That is only of academical interest, as we know the net result at the end of each year: the difference between human emissions and increase in the atmosphere. The increase was always smaller than human emissions, thus in every year since 1958, nature was a net sink for CO2, no matter where that was, no matter any change in any individual sink or source. No matter how huge the natural sources and sinks are or were: the net result is negative, more sink than source…
“I’m going to assume that Dr. Flohn is correct here”
Please, if you cite someone, look at the whole story. Dr. Flohn said a few paragraphs before your citation:
“The warm water of the tropical oceans, with temperatures near 27°C is barren, thus leading to a reduction of CO2 uptake by the ocean and greater increase of CO2.”
That is what I said too…
As the oceans are at least
“You don’t know what “airborne fraction” means. Since the name is misleading that is forgiveable. The IPCC and the author of that chart (Hansen) defined it differently. It’s actually “the ratio of the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 to the CO2 emissions from annual fossil fuel and cement manufacture combined”, see AR4 WG1 Ch2. This means it does not include land use change which in some years is 40% of the total contribution.”
And:
“airborne fraction trend been flat or decreasing The very fact that the airborne fraction is less than 100% proves my point. Just apply conservation of mass. There is less annual atmospheric increase than what we emitted to the atmosphere, which implies a net absorption by the rest of the planet. Do you not understand what that means?”
Knoor shows the AF has been flat: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/knorr2009_co2_sequestration.pdf
LUC contributes nothing to CO2 increase and is in fact arguably negative, a sink.
The human CO2 is LESS than the atmospheric increase: see Ian Hill graph: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14581&page=2
Cohenite,
Even if the “airborne fraction” was 90% of human emissions or 10% of human emissions, as long as it is below 100%, humans are fully responsible for the increase in the atmosphere and in all these cases, nature is a net sink for CO2 and its contribution is negative…
No, Ferdinand. That is tres facile. Not even close to being a valid argument. You are still hooked into that ridiculous pseudo-mass balance argument. You really should not be involved in the conversation.
Hi Ferdinand, I always welcome your contributions to this CRUCIAL issue, no matter how painful they are! Rather than revisit those mammoth debates at Jo’s about this issue I repeat the AF is LESS than the atmospheric increase. Also as stated by Kenneth Richard above the natural conclusion of your position is that nature cannot itself produce increases in CO2 which we know have occurred in the past.
This is a circuit breaker issue. So we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Cohenite,
Temperature certainly is a driver for CO2 in the atmosphere: 16 ppmv/K that is all. 4-5 ppmv/K for the current variability like Pinatubo and El Niño. The current 400 ppmv is 110 ppmv above the current (weighted) average ocean surface temperature, that is NOT natural. Humans induced over 200 ppmv CO2 emissions. Is there any observation that proves that such an extra injection is not the cause of the increase?
Bartemis,
As you reject every observation that your theory violates, you are the last on earth to tell someone that he should shut up.
In normal science, only one observation that is violated is sufficient to render a theory worthless. Your theory violates them all, including Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater (no matter if that is static or dynamic)…
Cohenite:
“I repeat the AF is LESS than the atmospheric increase.”
I will try to explain that in another way:
There is not the slightest reason for a fixed AF as percentage of human emissions in any one year. If human emissions should remain constant during years, the AF would assymptote to zero, as the increase in the atmosphere pushes more and more CO2 into oceans and vegetation until emissions and sinks are equal…
The net sink rate is the result of two factors: the pCO2 difference between the atmosphere and the equilibrium with the ocean surface and the variations in sink capacity of oceans and vegetation (mostly due to temperature variations).
The latter shows variations of +/- 1.5 ppmv from year to year, but zero out over periods of 1-3 years.
The pCO2 difference with the equilibrium was ~25 ppmv in 1959 and increased to ~110 ppmv in 2012. A fourfold increase. So did the average net sink rate. As human emissions also increased a fourfold in the same time frame, the net result was a fourfold increase in CO2 rate of change in the atmosphere and a rather constant AF…
See what happened to the AF in the time frame 1959-2012 at Mauna Loa and the South Pole:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1960_cur.jpg
One can calculate the theoretical sink effect caused by the increased pCO2 in the atmosphere against the equilibrium. That fits nicely within the noise caused by temperature:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em6.jpg
So if nature is responsible for the 2.x ppm increase per year, can you calculate how much additional CO2 in the amtmosphere per year that would be? Is this number greater of smaller than what mankind is emitting?
What would the resulting ppm increase be like if humans stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow?
If you answered those questions for yourself, how can you still think that human CO2 emittance is only responsible for a small percentage of the ppm increase?
Ferdinand Engelbeen 26. February 2017 at
“Your theory violates them all, including Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater (no matter if that is static or dynamic)…”
Saying so over and over does not make it so. My “theory”, as you call it, more an observation with a little math, explicitly depends on Henry’s Law, and the long equilibrium time for the deep oceans.
SebastianH 26. February 2017 at 11:58 PM |
“The increase in concentration is LESS than what you’d expect it to be, which means that nature is able to sink some of the additional CO2 we produce.”
Nature is able to sink virtually ALL of what we produce. This is such a dumb argument.
No, that’s “a little math” for you. If we stopped producing CO2 today, do you think the capacity to sink human CO2 would then be free to sink the natural CO2 that causes the increase in concentration in the atmosphere? If that is the case, then we are responsible for the increase. If it’s not the case, then please explain how that would work. Thank you.
That is not the case. It just doesn’t work that way, Sebastian. The sinks remove a specific proportion of all CO2. If the inputs shrink, the sinks shrink, too. If the inputs expand, the sinks expand, too.
Let me give you an analogy. Suppose you have a sink, a basin, with a faucet and a drain. You partially close the drain, and turn on the faucet. The water level rises to a level until the increased pressure due to the height of the water column above the drain forces output from the drain to equal the input. You have now reached a state of equilibrium.
Now, suppose you start emptying more water into the the basin from a cup, and you dribble it out at 3% of the volumetric flow of the input faucet. For as long as you can keep that up, the water level will rise how much?
The answer is: 3%.
So, if you notice that the level has risen, say, 25%, then you know it isn’t mostly from the cup in your hand. Somebody surreptitiously twisted the faucet when you weren’t looking.
If you stop pouring in the water from the cup, the level isn’t going to fall back to what it was when you started pouring the cup in. It will retreat *relative to what it otherwise would have been* by 3% of the original height. That does not mean it will even fall, because you do not know how much that other person opened up the faucet.
I don’t mean to be calling you dumb, but you are accepting dumb arguments at face value, and you need to become wiser. If a bit of reasoning sounds too obvious and simple, it probably is. This is a dynamic system seeking balance. It does not behave according to common intuition.
Bart,
Missed this one, here a short comment:
Your comparison is apt, except for the fact that you reverted the height changes…
If there was an equilibrium between the cold water faucet supply and the drain, the level would stay put. If we open the warm water faucet with 3% of the flow of the warm water and the increase in the bassin is only 1.5% of the original height, we may be sure that:
1. All increase in height is from the addition of warm water.
2. Someone either increased the drain or decreased the cold water inflow or both. Or increased the cold water inflow but increased the drain to a lesser extent. The latter is your theory.
3. We can control what is really happening by measuring the temperatures of the supplies and of the mix in the bassin. That directly solves the question if the cold water in/out fluxes did increase.
That is quite what is happening in the atmosphere today: we know that the human emissions increased a fourfold 1959-2012 and that CO2 increased a fourfold in the atmosphere, but there is no indication, none at all, that the natural fluxes increased a fourfold in the same time span…
“…we may be sure that:
1. All increase in height is from the addition of warm water.
2. Someone either increased the drain or decreased the cold water inflow or both. Or increased the cold water inflow but increased the drain to a lesser extent. The latter is your theory.”
As an either/or proposition, that is true. But, you have missed something in trying to analogize this to the CO2 question. CO2 has not risen 3%. It has not risen 1.5%. It has risen more than 25%. Its portion of the inflows is probably about 3%, but the rise has been much greater.
You are apparently confusing the ratio of the sum total of anthropogenic input to the output level with the ratio of the former to the sum total of all inputs. It is the latter ratio which determines the proportion of the observed rise attributable to anthropogenic input as balance is sought.
Bart,
If you use an analogy, please use comparable figures.
Al what we know for sure is that since 1959 human emissions were average twice the increase in the atmosphere and that both increased a fourfold since then.
We have rough estimates of the natural fluxes and we have several observations of what happens in the atmosphere and to a lesser extent in the other reservoirs.
In the analogy, the above is comparable to a cold water flow which is slightly variable and thus a water level that is slightly variable around x% of the bassin. The cold water flow is only roughly known – or not known at all.
Then we start to add warm water in increasing amounts and observe that the water level goes up with a certain percentage for a certain inflow of warm water. The height increase in the bassin is measured and is 3% of x. Still with the original variability in height.
If we push the valve further open until a fourfold flow, we see that the height of the water in the bassin also increased a fourfold up to 12% of x, still with the original variability.
Seems enough reason to expect that the increase in height of the bassin is solely from the warm water inflow.
Of course it still can be that some extra pressure on only the cold water line increased the cold water inlet also a fourfold in exact the same ratio and timing as the warm water inflow. Not only that would be a quite remarkable coincidence but that should show up in the residence time: that must decrease a fourfold too. The measured temperature in the bassin in that case would remain the same, while in the case of only warm water increase, the temperature would go up.
In reality, more recent estimates of the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere show a slight increase, not a firm decrease, which points to a steady throughput of the natural CO2 cycles in an increased mass of CO2 within the atmosphere. And the 13C/12C ratio goes down in exact ratio to human emissions, not up as should be if the oceans increased their throughput…
Bart:
“CO2 has not risen 3%. It has not risen 1.5%. It has risen more than 25%. Its portion of the inflows is probably about 3%, but the rise has been much greater.”
You are still – from day one – confusing the processes behind the CO2 cycles, which are all temperature driven, with the processes (the same or different ones) that remove any extra CO2 pressure out of the atmosphere…
If the seasonal temperature differences don’t change, then the CO2 mass going in and out the oceans or vegetation over the seaons will remain the same and no extra CO2 from humans or else will get into the oceans or vegetation.
Only the extra CO2 pressure will push extra CO2 into oceans and vegetation. That has a completely different time constant than temperature, that is the difference between the residence time of ~5 years and the decay rate of ~51 years…
“His analysis method is flawed, as the phase and lag signature he believes to be unique to natural causation is not unique to natural cause.”
It is unique to natural causation because human emission of CO2 is temperature independent and has no lag.
Would certainly be interesting to know how Andrew M thinks “the phase and lag signature he believes to be unique to natural causation” is linked to OTHER than natural causes.
Surely he isn’t suggesting the lag and phase are linked to human produced CO2. !!
“By using CO2 anomalies rather than absolute amount he erases the evidence of human causality in his first step ”
WRONG. When you are looking at trends or changes over time, anomalies work just as well as absolutes.
“Conservation of mass implies the net flow of carbon is currently from atmosphere to ocean.”
WRONG. Henry’s law applies, oceans have been warming from solar energy.
It will however, be from the atmosphere to ocean plant life, as it is from atmosphere to land plant life.
The world’s biosphere is absolutely LOVING this extra available atmospheric CO2 🙂
During Japan’s rapid expansion, no surge in atmospheric CO2
During China’s MASSIVE expansion, no massive surge in atmospheric CO2
Just a steady, unperturbed, natural rise.
Humlum was not comparing lag of temperature and human emission, they compared lag of temperature and change in atmospheric CO2. The title of Humlum’s 2013 paper was “The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature”
The hint is in the title!
I don’t want to give SkS any credit, but they have explained Humlum’s numerous errors in more detail than I have.
https://skepticalscience.com/richardson-2013-man-made-carbon.html
TL;DR : It violates conservation of mass.
Maybe if you say “conservation of mass” enough times, people will start believing that citing the SkepticalScience blog as a go-to source elevates your argument.
Is that where he is getting his nonsense from. 🙂
MONUMENTAL FAIL !!!
Kenneth, why do you call people with valid arguments “believers”? You are the one believing in a rather strange theory of everything being natural and humans having no effect on the climate …
Even wikipedia can be a valid source if it explains something we’ll enough. You keep thinking just because a paper was published it means it’s the absolute truth, while other papers (the majority) seem to be fake if they don’t fit you view of the world.
If you can’t do the math (as shown numerous times), learn how to do it. Conservation of mass is a valid argument.
I have never written or thought that “everything” is natural and that humans “have no effect on the climate.” Instead, I have long emphasized the magnitude problem that your side has such difficulty with when trying to proselytize on forums like these. This paper, for example, points out that only 4.3% of emissions are anthropogenic (a figure derived from the IPCC), and that 15% of the CO2 increase since 1750 is anthropogenic. Neither 4.3% or 15% are ZERO. Neither indicate that humans have NO effect on the CO2 concentration, or that “everything” is natural. When you’re trying to characterize my position, SebastianH, it would be a good idea to actually consider what I have actually written, or even what the title of the article says, before making up your own version. In other words, stop fabricating.
Again, I have not thought or written that papers published in scientific journals are “absolute truth.” You’ve just made up thoughts and attributed them to me again. Please stop fabricating, SebastianH.
You DO NOT have valid arguments
You have been totally unable to support the very basis of your child-minded AGW religion.
Your mathematics ability has been shown to be very limited, and you are so naïve that you understand that,
You have been making a monumental fool of yourself, little troll.
Come on boys, let it remain civil. There are lots of valid arguments at both sides of the fence. Even sometimes on SkS and Wiki even if most is nonsense… You need only to look at the arguments and check if they are (or can be) valid or not.
The same here. There are lots of arguments to throw all climate models in the dust bin, but that humans are not responsible for the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is completely wrong: human emissions fits all known observations and is as rock solid as could be:
– mass balance
– 13C/12C ratio
– 14C/12C ratio
– oxygen use
– the pH and pCO2 of the ocean surface
– the process characteristics
All “natural” alternatives I have heard of violate one or more observations, including Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater…
If skeptics insist on this, they shoot in their own foot and make themselves questionable for any real good arguments they have where the “consensus” is on shaky grounds…
“where he neglected the unknown constant of integration ”
Its a definite integral.
Going from line 1 to line 2 is correct..
…it is defining the change between time = 0 and time = t then writing it in integral form.
Andrew M –
I do take on board that there are problems with both Salby’s and Humlum’s arguments (though not necessarily fatal ones) and I have been generally convinced by people who are on the whole sceptics of AGW that human responsibility for the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere is established. For example, the excellent Ferdinand Engelbeen, who often gets involved in these blog discussions whenever the subject comes up.
But I may just have been accepting an argument from authority!
However, it is entirely wrong to regard the ‘mass balance’ argument to which you defer as being good evidence. When you have natural fluxes of such vast size – they are extremely difficult to estimate, but are generally taken to be two orders of magnitude larger than human outputs – you must surely see that you cannot just take some numbers, subtract one from the other and go ‘QED’. Anyone who has any concept of dynamic biological systems will know that this is not logic at all.
You have to appeal to much more subtle evidence to support that case. It is certainly possible to hold that the isotopic trend of atmospheric carbon gives support to the thesis, though again natural explanations can be set against it. Then you can refer to the relative stability of CO2 concentrations over the last few thousand years revealed from ice cores which, if properly representative (and there are questions there too), are certainly on your side.
But mass balance …. never.
Interesting that this paper comes up with a residence time for CO2 far closer to that calculated prior to the AGW hysteria. If this paper is correct crisis averted…again…
There is no crisis… there has NEVER BEEN any crisis,
The CO2 warming scare is a an unsubstantiated myth, as seb keeps on proving.
No CO2 warming signal in the WHOLE satellite data.
There is NO CO2 warming signal in the sea level trends
There is NO CO2 WARMING SIGNATURE ANYWHERE. !!
Shoshin,
Except that Hermann Harde used the residence time, which has nothing to do with how an extra shot of CO2 into the atmosphere is removed over time.
The residence time indeed is ~5.3 years, but that doesn’t change the total amount of CO2, it only exchanges CO2 between the atmosphere and oceans/vegetation.
The e-fold decay rate for any extra shot CO2 is over 50 years…
That is the difference between the turnover of a capital and goods in a factory (residence time) and the gain or loss of the same factory (that is the e-fpld decay rate for a disturbance).
I have long maintained that the majority of so-called climate scientists have no qualifications and no understanding of the engineering subjects of thermodynamics, heat & mass transfer, fluid dynamics and reaction kinetics. They certainly have no idea about diffusion between phases and the reactions which can occur in liquid and gas phases. I hope I can download the paper to examine it in detail but there is enough evidence that the minute amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has no effect on weather or climate except is necessary for plant growth.
Here is an old essay written by Alan Siddons and Joe D Aleo,that is worth reading as they also say there are very little Human caused CO2 emitted over time,as it has a short resident time in the atmosphere:
Carbon Dioxide: The Houdini of Gases
By Alan Siddons and Joe D’Aleo
September 05, 2007
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Carbon_Dioxide_The_Houdini_of_Gases.pdf
Sunsettommy,
A few basic errors in that work: total human emissions are ~400 GtC, total increase in the atmosphere is ~200 GtC. Year by year (or even decadal) variability is of no interest, even if for some periods negative (due e.g. to cooling of the oceans and little human contribution in the early years)…
You completely missed the main point of the essay I posted.
Sunsettommy,
The authors are plotting yearly human emissions together with total increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. That is comparing apples to citrons… Either plot total emissions together with the increase in the atmosphere:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
or plot the yearly emissions with the yearly increase in the atmosphere:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
In both cases it is clear that humans emit about twice the increase in the atmosphere both in average per year and as total accumulation, at least since the measurements at Mauna Loa and the South Pole started.
Further, they completely fail to account for the natural (temperature caused) level and variability in the early years, as the accumulation of human emissions is on top of the matural level, not below the natural level.
They make a lot of:
“A long-term accumulation profile for total carbon content leads to below-zero outcomes”
So what? There is no reason at all that human emissions should give always an increase in the atmosphere. If in the early years a strong La Niña or a Pinatubo-like eruption did take more CO2 out of the atmosphere than humans emitted that year, then there is a net CO2 level sink in that year…
You still miss it. That is why so many think your main mass balance idea is wrong as you keep making assumptions about what is known.
The essay simply used what was known human emissions were against total emissions. It is a simple thing to understand,but you add in a lot of unnecessary argument that fogs it up.
Sunsettommy,
I’ve read the essay and it comes to incorrect conclusions.
Human emissions are demonstrably higher then the rise of CO2 in the air.
Of course they do. Obviously some CO2 produced by humans gets sinked by nature. Reason: see point 1)
They seem to grow, yes. Nature is no net source of CO2 currently. If humans could stop emitting CO2 tomorrow then CO2 concentration would decrease until it’s on a level where sinks and sources are in balance again.
Yes, and why not?
No it doesn’t.
We accurately track CO2 levels since the 50s. Since then – as Ferdinand Engelbeen wrote – we always emitted more CO2 into the atmosphere then the concentration increased. Even if zero gramms of the excess CO2 in the air were of human origin, it still wouldn’t be there if humans hadn’t produced the amount they actually did.
Sunsettommy,
“The essay simply used what was known human emissions were against total emissions.”
That is the main problem of many skeptics: they only look at the ratio human vs. natural emissions, but forget that there were and are natural sinks. Even if humans influence the latter (almost all extra sink is caused by humans), total sinks were at least in the past 57 years always larger than natural emissions.
Basic quantities (roughly):
9 GtC human emissions input.
150 +/- 3 GtC in/out within a year as natural cycle.
Net sink rate: 4.5 GtC
Remains in the atmosphere: 4.5 GtC
Even if you attribute all the extra sink to humans, the remaining 4.5 GtC extra is also all human and the 800 GtC in the atmosphere gets 804.5 GtC of which only 0.5% in the atmosphere is human, but 100% of the increase is caused by the human injection.
The next year the story repeats itself and then we have 809 GtC in the atmosphere of which 1.1% from human emissions. Still 100% of the 9 GtC increase is from human emissions.
That goes on every year, but of course not all what sinks is human caused (it is always a mix of what is momentary in the atmosphere) and the exchanges remove a lot of human CO2 into other reservoirs, but currently we are at about 9% of all CO2 in the atmosphere as from fossil fuel burning, but still (near) 100% of the increase is caused by burning fossil fuels (and a small part by warming oceans)…
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
Your 150 GtC is off by almost 50 GtC according to the IPCC:
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/figures/WGI_AR5_Fig6-1.jpg
Natural emissions total: 198.2 GtC (primarily 78.4 GtC from ocean outgassing, and 118.7 GtC from total respiration and fire)
Anthropogenic emissions total: 8.9 GtC (7.8 GtC is fossil fuels, 1.1 is land use changes)
Ratio in terms of 100% total 207.1 = 95.7 to 4.3
So why did the CO2 concentration rise from 280 ppm in the 1790s to 290 ppm in the 1880s (the “natural steady state”) without the 100% human injection? Or was that increase 100% anthropogenic too? If not, what caused it?
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Anthropogenic-Emissions-vs-CO2-Rise-Non-Correlation-300×204.jpg
Kenneth,
The 50 GtC I did “miss” is from nightly respiration from soils and leaves, which is fully compensated by photosynthesis during the day. That doesn’t even reach the bulk of the atmosphere and is only locally measurable.
That doesn’t change the fact that humans are responsible for near the full increase in the atmosphere, as the difference between natural emissions and total sinks is what is measured, no matter the absolute amounts cycling in nature.
What is known with reasonable accuracy:
Average 9 GtC/year human emissions, 4.5 GtC/year increase in the atmosphere.
Estimates for the natural inputs and total outputs per year:
150 GtC in, 154.5 GtC out, 6% of human origin
200 GtC in, 204.5 GtC out, 4.5% of human origin
1000 GtC in, 1004.5 GtC out, 0.9% of human origin
It is of zero interest how large the natural inputs and total outputs are, only the measured (!) difference between total inputs and total outputs is what changes the amounts in the atmosphere…
In all cases, the human contribution is fully responsible for almost all the increase in the atmosphere with a little help from a temperature increase.
10 ppmv increase in the atmosphere in the first 100 years? As also CH4 increased in that period, some insist that human activity like rice culture and cattle herding is already responsible for that, but I don’t see any reason to quibble over the earliest part of the graph, as both temperature measurements and human contributions are far from certain…
Sorry, Ferdinand. We’re not taking your word for it that this is a “fact”. It’s a presumption. The 16 ppmv/K formula that your beliefs lie on doesn’t fit the evidence.
These are not “known” data. They are intelligent guesses that have been repeated enough times that people begin believing them to be “truth.” Just adding 4.5 GtC to the outputs is a made-up number. We really have no idea what that number is with any “reasonable accuracy.” Sorry, Ferdinand, but I’m the skeptic here. You are free to go on believing you have the “facts.”
4.5 GtC is not made up it is derived from the increase in concentration. While the total amount of atmospheric CO2 is also just an estimate, it is a very good one. And we know how much CO2 is emitted by mankind (also a very good estimation).
It’s accurate enough to tell that humans output twice as much as is added to the atmosphere.
Kenneth:
“These are not “known” data”
How accurate do you need the data before you accept them?
The global CO2 increase is based on the average measurements of several basic “background” stations at sealevel (thus excluding Mauna Loa and the South Pole stations). These are accurate to +/- 0.2 ppmv, or +/- 0.4 GtC, regardless of what is already in the atmosphere.
The recent average measured increase in the atmosphere is 4.5 +/- 0.4 GtC/year (2.15 +/- 0.2 ppmv/year), no matter what the natural fluxes were…
Human emissions are currently 9 GtC/year, officially accurate to +/- 0.5 GtC/year. Based on official sales of fossil fuels (taxes), probably more underestimated than overestimated (due to the national sports to avoid taxes…). That makes that the net sink rate is:
4.5 GtC/year measured increase – 9 GtC/year calculated emissions = 4.5 GtC net sink rate.
Maximum error +/- 0.9 GtC/year.
That is what I used in the above equations. Thus whatever the absolute height of the natural fluxes, the total of all sinks was 4.5 +/- 0.9 GtC/year larger than the total of all natural inputs.
Hmmm. You claim that temperatures change by 1 K for every 16 ppm change in CO2 concentration. And yet, for most of the ice core record, including much of the instrumental record, this isn’t even close to being accurate. Temperatures dropped by about -0.3 C from the late 1870s to 1910 while CO2 levels rose by 10 ppm. Temperatures dropped by -0.3 C between the early 1940s and early 1970s while CO2 levels rose by 15 ppm. HadCRUT has no temperature change in the 80 years between 1850 and 1930 despite a 20 ppm change in CO2. In the 19 years since 1998, CO2 has risen by about 40 ppm. And yet satellites have the temperature change at about 0.1 C or less. The ice core record is even worse. Temperature plummeted by almost 1 degree C between the late 18th century and the first few decades of the 19th century…while CO2 levels rose by at least 5 ppm. No CO2 change during the 8.2 K event, when temperatures dropped and rose again by multiple degrees C within less than 150 years. No CO2 change during the 25 D-O events during the last glacial. Temperatures dropped by 2 or 3 C from the Early Holocene to the Late Holocene while CO2 levels increased by 20 ppm. In sum, the 16 ppmv/K “law” is bunk. It’s not even close to being accurate. And yet you believe it’s a “law” anyway because, well, it is. You say so, so therefore it is truth.
Kenneth,
You seem to be one of these persons that never want to be convinced by any fact that contradicts your concreted opinion…
As I said now multiple times: the 16 ppmv/K is the equilibrium setpoint that is as factual as any other law of physics: established over 200 years ago by Henry and confirmed by over three million seawater samples.
That is a fact. That doesn’t imply that the measured levels in the atmosphere at any moment in time are exactly in equilibrium with the ocean surface at these established 16 ppmv/K, as a lot of natural changes move CO2 in and out the atmosphere over seasons, years, centuries and millennia. It takes months to move CO2 back to equilibrium (and never reaches it) over the seasons, where CO2 levels follow temperature levels with months. It takes 1-3 years to remove the effect of a Pinatubo or El Niño and it takes ~800 years to equilibrate the deep oceans with the temperature increase in the ocean surface.
Thus while the setpoint is accurately known, the real value in the atmosphere is the sum of natural variations caused by the temperature effect on vegetation, volcanic emissions and the emissions by humans at one side and the time needed to add or remove CO2 from the oceans to reach that setpoint again.
That is elementary knowledge of process dynamics. If you don’t have that knowledge, please contact any (chemical) engineer to explain that to you.
Why does that matter? It does matter if the removal rate of any distubance is slower that the change introduced by natural or human disturbances. That is the case for the MWP-LIA change: a drop of ~6 ppmv with a lag of maybe 100 years. That is the case for human emissions from agriculture and cattle herding since ~1700 and that is certainly the case for human emissions from the use of fossil fuels since ~1850.
If ice cores CO2 don’t follow known events, that is either because these events were hardly global (as is the case for the Younger Dryas and the 8.2 kyear event, which is mostly North Atlantic) or too short to be noticed within the resolution of the ice record. The D-O events anyway are noticed, see the temperature – ice sheets formation – CO2 graph of the Vostok ice core for the period 140-60 kyear ago:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/eemian2.gif
which shows the temperature proxy (mainly for most of the SH oceans), CO2 and CH4 levels and the reverse 18O/16O ratio in N2O, as that seems to be a proxy for ice sheet formation. As you can see, CH4 follows temperature quite fast, but CO2 needs a lot of time, especially when the temperature drops.
Like it or not, human emissions are probably the main cause of the increase even centuries ago, highly certain since 1850 and absolutely certain since 1958, where we have very accurate measurements.
Ferdinand, the drop of 6 ppmv occurred abruptly during the early 17th century. And then it returned to its pre-drop levels. And then temperature dropped again (to lower levels than the 1600s) and rose again, without any change in CO2 concentration. Indeed, CO2 rose by 6 ppm during the late 18th century to early 19th century (Dalton) as the temperature plummeted. In other words, your MWP-LIA drop of ~6 ppmv doesn’t work. I agree with you, though, that it and all other temperature-CO2 changes should indeed work if we are to successfully link the 16 ppmv/K formula to the ice core record. The link has not been successful, however.
Oh, I’d just love to see you support this contention that neither the Younger Dryas or 8.2 K events were global in scope. I had a feeling you were quite uninformed in this area, as it also appeared to be brand new information for you when you were presented with the information that Pacific Ocean 0-1000 m temperatures rose and fell by 2 C within 200 years routinely during the Holocene.
—
http://icebubbles.ucsd.edu/Publications/Kobashi_8k_QSR.pdf
A large number of paleoclimatic records over a hemispheric area show a large and abrupt climate change around 8200 years BP. However, the duration and general character of the event have been ambiguous. Here, we provide a precise characterization and timing of the event using methane and nitrogen isotopes in trapped air in an ice core. Climate change in Greenland and at a hemispheric scale was simultaneous (within ~4 years) as supported by climate model results (LeGrande et al., 2006). The event started around ~8175 years BP, and it took less than 20 years to reach the coldest period, with a magnitude of cooling of ~3.3 C in central Greenland. After 60 years of maximum cold, climate gradually recovered for 70 years to a similar state as before the event [+3.3 C within 70 years]. The total duration of the event was roughly 150 years.
The fall in temperatures that accompanied the 8.2 ka event also corresponded with abrupt migrations of human populations and abandonment of sites ranging from Spain to Greece and in the Middle East (Gonzalez-Samperiz et al., 2009) …. Ice cores from Greenland (Alley et al., 1997) and Africa (Thompson et al., 2002) suggest that the 8.2 ka event was global in extent.
—
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377839815000456
Between 8.5 and 8.1 kyr, contemporaneous to the globally documented 8.2 kyr Event
—
Let me know if you’d like to learn about the global scope of the Younger Dryas. (I doubt you do, as you’d prefer to immerse yourself in your confirmation biases.) That you think the Pliestocene/Holocene transition was regional rather than global is quite telling as to how little you know about the paleoclimate record.
Kenneth,
I didn’t know about the rapid temperature changes in the deep oceans, but I did know about the Younger Dryas and the 8.2 year event. Used these in discussions with warmistas to show abrupt climate changes caused by nature, not humans.
The Younger Dryas is not visible in the oxygen proxy of Antarctic ice cores, which reflect the average temperature of most of the SH oceans:
http://isolab.ess.washington.edu/isolab/papers/SteigAlley.pdf
and sometimes RC has usefull information:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/revisiting-the-younger-dryas/
Neither is the 8.2 kyear event, but in both cases, the CH4 levels both in Greenland and Antarctica show a huge change. The reaction of CO2 on temperature is obviously much slower (especially when the deep oceans are involved). See:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013GL058177/full
That doesn’t imply that there is any doubt about the effect of temperature on CO2 levels: that is 16 ppmv/K.
For the last time: the 16 ppmv/K is what it should be. In German: “Soll Wert”, not what it really is “Ist Wert”. What it really is, is a matter of all factors that momentary influence CO2 levels: deep ocean exchanges, volcanoes, forest fires, humans…
Total Human emissions ~400GtC. No, I don’t think that’s right. Just a wild guess I think. No effect at any rate. What are we arguing about? Remember when Al Gore said, “The oceans will boil!!” Now that’s what the alarm is all about, not how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
William,
In the early days more guesses than real I suppose, anuway based on coal use for boilers, trains and steel making, thus wit some base in reality.
In recent times based on fossil fuel sales, you know, taxes, probably more underestimated than overestimated…
So within +/- 0.5 ppmv that will be realistic and indirectly confirmed by the (small) oxygen decline in the atmosphere…
What contribution to atmospheric CO2 would melting glaciers and ice sheets make? That thought just popped up as I have never heard that ever mentioned in regards to increasing levels of CO2. Is it too small, and so of little consequence? There is no doubt that natural global warming melts glaciers worldwide, and that there is some fraction of CO2 held within the glaciers.
This might serve to lower atmospheric concentrations.
Assuming integrity of the ice, the ice captures the atmosphere at the time of freezing. Thus if the ice formed when CO2 concentrations were say 270 ppm, when the ice melts it will release air which air will consist of 270 ppm of CO2 and the rest Nitrogen, Oxygen etc.
Thus in effect one is adding air at 270 ppm of CO2 to air currently at 400 ppm of CO2, which ought to reduce the 400 ppm balance a little bit.
Only a guess of course since no one understands or knows the Carbon Cycle.
Chlorophyll: – C₅₅H₇₂O₅N₄Mg
and that C has to come from somewhere. !!
Yes AndyG55,
The problem is that the same carbon is largely recycled every year when the leaves are falling down and over the years when the plants die and rot…
The balance is known, as plants produce oxygen when taking in CO2 and bacteria, fungi, insects, animals,… use oxygen when they digest plant food.
The oxygen balance shows a small surplus: plants produce more oxygen than palnt decay/feed/food uses oxygen. Thus the whole biosphere is a small source of oxygen, thus a small sink for CO2 and preferably of 12CO2, thus not the cause of the firm 13C/12C ratio decline in the atmosphere. The earth is greening:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
The REAL problem is that there is always carbon being leached from the carbon cycle by ocean life.
That carbon ABSOLUTELY MUST be replenished if Earth is to continue to sustain life.
Thank goodness for human use of fossil fuels !!!
De-sequestering that precious carbon, right when the planet needs it so much.
Dr Lindzen’s petition to Donald Trump
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/25/richard-lindzen-petition-to-president-trump-withdraw-from-the-un-convention-on-climate-change/
Okay, layman query. Cold sea water is a good absorber of CO2, warm sea water not so good or even emits CO2.
Why no data on sea water CO2 content with regard to temperature?
Good to see 14CO2 is used to define atmospheric residence time.
Seawater CO2 content is quite variable between the equator and poles. While measured, more important is the pCO2 (the equilibrium CO2 pressure of the atmosphere above a seawater sample at the measured seawater temperature). That is what gives the pressure difference and thus the CO2 flux between ocean surface and atmosphere.
The average flux is from the atmosphere into the oceans, based on over 2 million samples in places:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
There is a problem with 14C as tracer for any excess 12CO2: its excess decay rate is much faster than for 12CO2, as what is going into the deep oceans is the current 14C/12C ratio, but what comes out is the much lower 14C/12C ratio of ~1000 years ago… That makes that the decay rate of the 14CO2 excess from the atomic bomb tests is ~14 years and for any excess 12CO2 it is ~51 years…
See the ratio’s and quantities around 1960 at the height of the 14C excess:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/14co2_distri_1960.jpg
Climatologists count (anthropogenic) carbon dioxide emissions in annual quanta, such as 9GTC per annum. But in the real world it does not work that way. CO2, whether it’s natural or man-made, is emitted and sequestered continuously and not in annual quanta.
A few months back I had made a simple Excel spreadsheet based on data readily available on the ‘net by googling for a few minutes, and then translated the 9GTC per annum of man-made emissions into a daily amount and compared it to the actual carbon in the atmosphere and hydrosphere. The anthropogenic Carbon emissions on a daily basis figures out at 0.0247 GTC per day while the net mass of carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere and hydrosphere according to IPCC is 39,000 GTC.
If my workings are correct then the result means that the daily emissions in percentage terms compared to the total mass of carbon in both atmosphere and oceans works out at 0.000064%. I stand to conclude that mother Earth would not even be conscious of this miniscule, insignificant irrelevancy of anthropogenic CO2 emissions and there’s o way how this can increase the net CO2 by any significant amount.
What is the FTC value for just the atmosphere? Why did you stop at a daily value? Why not CO2 emitted per second?
Well, why don’t the IPCC say that we emit 9000GTC per millennium? Now that would make the whole human population commit suicide through scientific ignorance induced hysteria.
The truth is that you have been shocked and knocked down off your chair by my simple but scientific revelation. There’s another truth:
If, hypothetically the oceans outgas just 2% of their dissolved CO2 in one single instant the atmospheric CO2 will increase by 100%, more or less.
Nope, not shocked.
Yes, if the oceans outgas what they contain the CO2 content will increase dramatically. I guess temperatures need to increase a little bit more in order for the oceans to become a net source instead of a net sink.
Pete,
What is in the deep oceans is largely isolated from the atmosphere. Only some 5% of the ocean surface is in direct contact with the deep oceans. That is mostly coastal with wind blowing off-land, which pulls deep ocean water to the surface. Near the poles you have sink places near the ice where low temperatures and freezing water give increased salt content and higher density waters which sink to the bottom.
The only waters in direct contact with the oceans is the “mixed” layer: the upper ~100 meters of the oceans where most life is positioned, light is penetrating and warming the waters and wind and waves give a lot of exchanges with the atmosphere. That layer contains ~1000 GtC, The atmosphere ~800 GtC. Any CO2 change in the atmosphere is quite fast (half life exchange rate less than a year) redistributed with the ocean surface, but only at 10% of the atmospheric change in the ocean surface, due to ocean (buffer) chemistry. That is about 0.45 GtC/year, or about 5% of human emissions.
While the exchange between atmosphere and ocean surface is fast, the exchange with the deep oceans is much slower: there is a ~40 GtC/year circulation from the equatorial upwelling towards the polar sinking waters, but that is only partially influenced by the increased pressure in the atmosphere: the current imbalance between upwelling and sinks is ~3 GtC/year or about 30% of human emissions sinking in the deep oceans the same year as emitted.
The e-fold decay rate of any overshoot in the atmosphere is ~51 years for all sinks together. Or a half life time of ~35 years. How much CO2 is already in the deep oceans plays zero role in this net sink rate, but it plays a role after a few centuries: ultimately most of human emissions will end in the deep oceans. What humans have emitted since 1850 would increase the deep ocean carbon content with ~1%. That would be the new equilibrium if we ceased all emissions today: 1% residual increase in the atmosphere, or ~3 ppmv extra…
There, in a nutshell, is the magnitude problem that those who believe we humans have a dominating effect on the climate system, or carbon cycle, would rather dismiss than consider.
When things are looked at in their right and proper perspective, then one will realise if there is a real or a perceived problem. In this case of anthropogenic CO2 emissions there’s nothing to write home about, absolutely nothing, excpt to say ‘there’s nothing here,move on’, and if warmist climate ‘scientists’ were honest with themselves they would just go look for another job, maybe frying potato chips at McDonalds. That’s quite a real warmist job.
Pete and Kenneth,
No matter how much CO2 is in a reservoir, that doesn’t change as long as there are no exchanges with other reservoirs.
No matter how much CO2 is exchanged between reservoirs, that doesn’t change as long as inputs equal outputs.
Only the difference between inputs and outputs does change the quantities in reservoirs.
Even if you cycle water with 1000 l/min between a reservoir and a fountain, if somebody opens the supply with 1 l/min and forget to close it again, the reservoir will overflow after some time…
The measured (temperature controlled) variability in the natural cycles is -2.15 +/- 1.5 ppmv (for the extremes: Pinatubo, El Niño). Human emissions are one-way +4.3 ppmv/year…
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
“Even if you cycle water with 1000 l/min between a reservoir and a fountain, if somebody opens the supply with 1 l/min and forget to close it again, the reservoir will overflow after some time”
No, cycling systems like you describe always have to be topped up regularly.
A good system will have a float value to add water as necessary.
Bad analogy, Ferd.
You are irrationally assuming that the 9.5GT of anthropogenic carbon emitted ANNUALLY to the atmosphere remains completely not sequestered by the biosphere or undissolved in the oceans and sequestered by the oceanic bio-system. As I explained in a previous comment in this blog post, the daily anthropogenic Carbon contribution to the hydro- and atmospheres (which interact endlessly, that’s why you believe in catastrophic ocean acidification) is just 0.000064% per day, an insignificant amount added to the atmospheric 886GTC and hydrosphere’s 38,000GTC. Think about it, just consider that the planet’s biosphere is a dynamic system which reacts to changing conditions, such as the greening of vast Sahel region as a result of increased CO2 levels and other factors too. Where I live, wild grasses today grow in height to double the size of what these same type of wild grasses grew 50 years ago.
Think about it.
And it’s just 741 kg per second, right?
It doesn’t matter how short the timeframe ist. You are comparing rates with total amounts.
If you bank balance is 1,000,000 Dollars and you receive and spend 100,000 Dollars per year, then the balance stays at the amount. If you start receiving 1,000 Dollars more per year and don’t spend the additional amount, then your balance increases. It does increase per year, per day and per second! Doesn’t matter!
Understood?
Ah sorry, got confused with your percentage number … 301 tonnes per second is the right number.
Pete,
I don’t believe in “catastrophic” acidification of the oceans, as most carbonate species like coccoliths and corals evolved in much higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Nevertheless, that the ocean surfaces are getting less basic is measured at a few places on earth, here for Bermuda (Fig. 5):
http://www.biogeosciences.net/9/2509/2012/bg-9-2509-2012.pdf
and here for Hawaii (Fig. 1):
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/30/12235.full.pdf
As I said before, quantities don’t matter: if you shake a 0.5 or 1.0 or 1.5 l bottle of Coke from the same batch, you will find (near) the same CO2 pressure under the screwcap at the same temperature…
Fluxes don’t matter either, only the difference in fluxes does matter.
Take the NH in spring: the oceans are warming and land is warming (faster than the oceans). Warming oceans emit more CO2, warming land starts to absorb lots of CO2 the moment the first leaves start to grow. The net result: plant growth wins over ocean warming. The same, in reverse flux for oceans and plants in fall.
In all cases, the human contribution is (very) small, but so is the extra uptake by plants and oceans. There is very little impact from the extra CO2 on plant growth or ocean uptake. A difference of 10 ppmv wouldn’t even be measurable in the oceans or plant uptake. You need 25 ppmv and more increase in the atmosphere to have a measurable difference…
Currently we are at 110 ppmv above the long term equilibrium. That gives ~0.5 ppmv extra uptake in plants and ~1.6 ppmv extra uptake in the oceans. Per day that is:
0.0014 ppmv/day extra uptake by plants.
0.0043 ppmv/day extra uptake by the oceans.
Humans meanwhile emit 0.011 ppmv/day or still about twice the net sink rate, no matter how small or long the period of interest is…
GTC
Dear Seb
You asked earlier “Humans emit enough CO2 to increase concentration by more than 4 ppm per year. Yet it only increases by 2-3 ppm each year. How is that possible if the current increase is caused by ocean outgasing as suggested in the paper of the blogpost? ”
Quite frankly, I dont pretend to be an expert in this, but it seems plausible to me.
Consider an earlier world without human CO2 emissions. And for simplicity, consider the world to made of just oceans and air. The amount of CO2 in the air must be in equilibrium with the amount in the oceans. And we know it is temperature dependent. i.e. for a given temperature there will be an equilibrium value of the ratio, R, of CO2-in-air to CO2-in-water. Let us suppose it is 2% (as it is by mass, according to wikipedia) at some temperature. Then suppose some humans come along and dump a lump of CO2 into the atmosphere at a certain point in time. The ocean-air CO2 ratio will no longer be in equilibrium, and over time the system must re-equilibrate with the ocean absorbing the excess atmospheric CO2. 98% of the lump must end up in the water to maintain R=2%. So in the long run, we could expect that most of that 4ppm will end up in the water.
To get an idea how fast re-equilibration takes place we can do an experiment by detonating atomic bombs in the atmosphere and producing a 14C pulse.
In fact this experiment has already been inadvertently tried with 14C produced in atomic bomb tests. Check wikipedia, you can see that after 3 decades, most of the 14C was removed from the air. This would imply that most of the CO2 emitted by humans prior to ~1990 has by now also been removed from the atmosphere.
Now suppose that the temperature increases. This could be due to natural causes, such as the overturning of ocean currents bringing warmer or colder water to the surface, in contact with the air. Now, since the amount of CO2 stored by water is a function of temperature, we can expect R to change. Suppose at a higher temperature, the oceans can hold only 97% of the CO2 and 3% must be in air. It is a small change in percentage of CO2 in the oceans (98 to 97 %), but a huge change in air. i.e. going from 2% to 3% is like going from 200ppm to 300ppm. But nothing at all to do with human emissions.
Well, I have over simplified by assuming all the CO2 goes into water etc. This is intended to be a “plausiblity” argument for you. Of course, one needs to plug in the numbers, account for continuing human emissions etc, to see if it is right or not. Thats beyond my time an energy but it is presumably what the author has done.
Cheers
You have it right, Rob. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is the result of a dynamic balance between inflows and outflows. Since natural inflows are so much larger than anthropogenic inflows, the latter cannot appreciably affect that balance.
Most of the observed rise is from changing temperature, which has a dramatic impact on the balance because it affects the entire distribution from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the oceans over a lengthy timeline (millennia). In the short term (centuries), this begets an integral relationship between atmospheric CO2 and temperature anomaly. This is what the data show:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/derivative/mean:24/plot/hadsst3sh/scale:0.23/offset:0.103/from:1960
Rob,
One essential error:
The equilibrium between oceans and atmosphere doesn’t depend on the quantity in the oceans, it depends of the concentration and temperature at the ocean surface only and the concentration in the atmosphere.
Concentration and temperature gives the equilibrium pCO2 of the ocean surface with the atmosphere. If that is higher than in the atmosphere, the CO2 flux is from the ocean surface into the atmosphere (like at the equatorial upwelling zones) and reverse at the sink places near the poles.
The current (area weighted) pCO2 difference between ocean surface and atmosphere is 7 μatm higher in the atmosphere than in the ocean surface, the current net CO2 flux (~3.5 GtC/year) is in average (~40 GtC/year in and out) more from the atmosphere into the ocean surface / deep oceans than reverse…
See: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/mean.shtml
The 2.2 GtC/year net sink rate mentioned is for the reference year 1995.
Rob,
you’ve gone to great lengths to explain ocean outgasing, but that’s not what the quote is about.
If the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increases by 2 ppm per year and my additional emissions – if not sinked – would increase the concentration by 4 ppm per year. Then obviously natural CO2 sources are NOT producing more CO2 to cause the increase. Instead natural sinks are binding more CO2 (it’s not increasing by 4 ppm, but by 2 ppm instead).
That’s what the mass balance thing is all about. It doesn’t matter that natural sources/sinks are magnitudes bigger than our contribution. Those two cancel each other out. It’s the additional stuff that matters and obviously nature can’t sink all our additional CO2…
Ferdinand Engelbeen 26. February 2017 at 10:08 PM |
“…it depends of the concentration and temperature at the ocean surface only and the concentration in the atmosphere.”
So, so wrong. The concentration at the surface depends fundamentally on the flows to the deep oceans.
SebastianH 27. February 2017 at 12:20 AM |
“Then obviously natural CO2 sources are NOT producing more CO2 to cause the increase.”
So, so dumb. Such a stupid argument to make when the system is dynamic, and responds proportionally to forcing. See this comment, when it gets out of moderation.
Bart,
Maybe they do, but only if there are huge changes in either concentration or total volume of upwelling, for which I haven’t seen any indication.
Until now, there are no signs of increased CO2 emissions near the equator or decreased CO2 sinks in the deep oceans near the poles, just the opposite: average there is going 3 GtC more into the deep oceans than emitted.
If the oceans were the cause of the increase, that should show up as an increase in the 13C/12C ratio, but all what is observed is a firm decrease in direct ratio with human emissions…
“If the oceans were the cause of the increase, that should show up as an increase in the 13C/12C ratio”
You think. But, you do not know. It is merely an assertion.
Bart,
There we go again… If you add an acid to a base, it is a law of physics that the base gets less basic and even may get acidic.
If you add CO2 from the oceans with a higher 13C/12C to the atmosphere, it is a law of physics that the 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere must go up.
Here the effect of an increased ocean – air – ocean CO2 exchange in quantitities enough to suppress the influence of humans if that was the main cause of the CO2 increase:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_increase_290.jpg
Where the orange line after 1960 is the effect of an extra amount of CO2 circulating between deep oceans, the atmosphere and back.
BTW, neither is the decline caused bymthe biosphere, as that is a net sink for CO2 and preferably 12CO2, based on the oxygen balance, thus leaving relative more 13CO2 in the atmosphere…
“If you add CO2 from the oceans with a higher 13C/12C to the atmosphere, it is a law of physics that the 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere must go up.”
It isn’t any such thing. This is not a controlled experiment under laboratory conditions. This is a system subject to many complex interactions.
Bart,
There are only two known source of low 13C on earth: fossil organics and recent organics. All other sources: oceans, carbonate deposits, volcanic vents,… all have a higher 13C/12C ratio that what is measured in the atmosphere as 13C/12C ratio.
Thus either burning fossil fuels or vegetation decay / forest fires are the cause of the firm decay of 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere.
Vegetation decay can’t be the cause, as the oxygen balance shows that the biosphere as a whole is a net sink for CO2…
This paper is totally insane.
Please stop quoting such obvious fake science from a guy who did the same wrong stuff also in the past.
Poor sob, basically everything is beyond you, isn’t it.
The only insane thing here is YOU. !!
We know how CO2 changed in the past. The idea that the gigantic change we are seeing now is natural is utterly insane. as is the idea, that it is a coincidence that the spike is happening while we are burning all that coal and oil. It is insane.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9tkDK2mZlOo/maxresdefault.jpg
“We know how CO2 changed in the past.”
Yes we do, atmospheric CO2 has been MUCH higher in the past.
Love those zig zag graphs , they show how close the Earth has come to running out of CO2. Man has literally SAVED THE PLANET.
They also show that at the local peaks on CO2, the temperature dropped.
I’m actually very glad that we have been able to desequester a small amount of carbon, and bring the atmosphere just a tad above the “dangerously low” value of the last half million of so years.
Just because the paper does maths which is way, way beyond you ability to comprehend, and gives an answer that you don’t like, doesn’t make it wrong.
15% seems about reasonable to me and does follow from the mathematics…
…. although I wish we could do more.
No, it doesn’t follow from the mathematics.
Yes it does.
Andy,
That paper starts with a completely wrong assumption that the residence time (~4 years according to the abstract) has anything to do with the rate at which any extra shot CO2 above the temperature controlled equilibrium (whatever the one-way source: volcanoes, burning forests – without regrowth, humans,…) is removed out of the atmosphere back to equilibrium.
Whatever the residence time, even it was seconds, that doesn’t change one gram of CO2 in the atmosphere as that is only about how much CO2 is exchanged between different reservoirs, not how much is removed or added from one reservoir to the other.
The e-fold decay rate of any extra CO2 in the atmosphere is ~51 years (or a half life of ~35 years), not 4 years. That is measured and quite linear over the past 57 years of accurate CO2 data, despite a fourfold increase in yearly and total emissions, yearly and total increase in the atmosphere and yearly and total net sink…
That renders the whole article worthless and it is just good for the dust bin, in good company with all the climate models, which all fail reality…
Based on the abstract, the paper cannot be right. The bombspike C14 ‘experiment’ shows the residence time of CO2 to be about 11 years, not 4. This is an easy thing to verify.
Wrong Mr Istvan. The bomb curve shows only the net removal of CO2,
the actual removal minus the portion which is cancelled by re-emission into the atmosphere. The residence time, on the other hand, pertains to the actual removal, which can only be faster.
https://notrickszone.com/2016/08/07/astrophysicist-murray-salby-compares-co2-pseudo-science-to-the-medical-quackery-of-blood-letting/#sthash.9rUBkRXI.dpbs [49:00]
Wrong. The bomb spike is not net because almost none of the sequestered CO2 would be re-released in the time frame. This paper is as bad as Salby’s stuff. FE upthread does a proper accounting including the efold time. Learn from it. Similar calculations in dozens of other papers.
More speculation, Mr Istvan.
Tell it to the decaying biomass after each growing season. Likewise to soil respiration. What is indisputable is that the residence time of CO2 can be only shorter than the decrease of C14 after the bomb spike.
CatB,
The seasonal CO2 cycle in the biosphere is huge and a large part of the short residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere. Seasonal some 60 GtC is going into vegetation in spring-summer (and continuous in tropical areas), some 60 GtC is released mainly in fall-winter, but also more continuously by bacteria, molds, insects, animals,… which all use vegetation as feed/food.
Anyways, the 60 GtC/year is the throughput of CO2 through the atmosphere which contains ~800 GtC as caused by the biosphere. That gives a residence time of 800/60 or about 13 years for the biosphere part of all CO2 cycles.
Now some external source (humans in this case) add some 9 GtC/year to the atmosphere in the first year. That means that the total amount in the atmosphere gets from the original 580 GtC (in 1959) to 588 GtC. That means that there is ~4 ppmv more CO2 pressure in the atmosphere. Does that make a difference in the seasonal cycle? Hardly, as the biosphere CO2 cycle is mainly a matter of temperature, humidity, availability of minerals and fertilisers, hardly of CO2 pressure (except where all other necessities are abundantly present like in greenhouses). Thus the 4 ppmv extra has a negligible effect on the seasonal cycle and remains in the atmosphere. That repeats itself until the extra CO2 pressure is high enough to have an influence on plant growth. That happened around 1990, when CO2 levels reached 350 ppmv, or 60 ppmv extra above equilibrium. Between 290 and 350 ppmv zero CO2 was removed out of the atmosphere by the whole biosphere, despite a 60 GtC seasonal cycle and only 13 years residence time. The residence time thus shows you nothing about how fast some extra CO2 is removed out of the atmosphere…
Since then the biosphere removes about 1 GtC/year or 0.5 ppmv/year out of the atmosphere. That is what really matters. That is with a current extra pressure of 110 ppmv in the atmosphere. That gives an e-fold decay rate of 110 ppmv / 0.5 ppmv/year = 220 years if you have vegetation as only sink for any extra CO2 in the atmosphere.
In conclusion: the residence time is of zero interest to know how fast some extra CO2 is removed out of the atmosphere. You need to know the e-fold decay rate…
In theory that could be given by the fate of 14C form the bomb spike in the atmsophere, in reality that is far too short, due to the fact that the 14C bomb spike excess is removed much faster than any 12CO2 spike, as from the latter some 97% (in 1960) returned from the deep oceans, while for 14C that was only 44%…, see:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/14co2_distri_1960.jpg
What I understand, the C14 matter of the paper is not yet explained fully.
CO2 is exhausted by biomass (including us) and through combustion of fossil fuel on a daily base.
CO2 is also collected by photosynthesis of plants.
So there are living plants especially trees, which store the C up to some hundreds of years – or as timber even longer.
A certain amount of C is there as dead biomass, like humus and dead trees. after 0 to some hundreds of years it decays or burns and releases CO2.
A large part of biomass is eaten by animals and stored some years, (in some cases as ham or in the deep freezer….) and finally released…
Some of the animals sink down to the ocean ground (mostly as carbon hydrate) or in a bog for good.
The ocean water collects CO2 in the cold regions and gasses it out in the warmer ones.
As this is dependent on the temperature, this will have no longtime effect. Because the Oceans are heating up veeeeery slowly.
So what counts with natural carbon Sequestration is:
1.How quick and how much can be converted to carbon hydrate on the ocean ground?
2.How quick and how much can be converted to living and dead plant matter, and ist that amount rising?. Means moldering and decomposition is less than conversion.
Out-gassing of CO2 off the ocean and decomposition of biomass depends on temperature. As the temperature is not rising considerably,the oceans are not out-gassing much more. But they can sequester more through Phytoplankton, as there is more CO2 in the air.
Also more CO2 can be converted to biomass, as there is more CO2 in the air. And this is happening already, as can be seen though satellite observations.
So it seems to me that the that nature does a lot of sequestration of CO2, but doesn’t contribute as much than that, because the main factor of decomposition and ocean out-gassing is temperature, which is not rising considerably.
There was a strong incline of temperature before 1998, now there is nearly no incline for almost 20 years, but you see no relation to CO2.
So much of human-made CO2 is sequesteres by nature, the rest is added in the air.
Where else should the the additional CO2 com from?
“There was a strong incline of temperature before 1998”
No there wasn’t.
The period 1980 to just before the 1998 El Nino was basically zero trend.
https://s19.postimg.org/iwoqwlg1f/UAH_before_El_nino.png
I think that is a bit of a cherry pick. The major data sets all agree reasonably well, except for GISS, which is a bit of an outlier.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1975/plot/gistemp/from:1975/offset:-0.1/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/plot/rss/offset:0.2/plot/uah6/offset:0.3
GISS has been altered to the extent that it gives a distorted view of things when plotted on its own, but little enough to still claim it legitimate without being obviously wrong. It is very artfully done, and fundamentally misleading.
To Johannes’ question, the dynamic is such that the rate of change of CO2 tracks temperature. When temperature is steady, CO2 reverts to a steady trend.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/from:1979/derivative/plot/uah6/scale:0.175/offset:0.142
I explain a way that this dynamic can come about here.
Bartemis,
yes, I made this exercise
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/from:1979/derivative/plot/uah6/scale:0.175/offset:0.142
as well, but you have to fiddle a lot until you get such a nice corelation. Sometimes CO2 is earlier, sometimes temp, but mostly parallel.
I am no Mathematician, but I understand that’s about Rate of Change. But simply: Higher temperatures doesn’t mean higher CO2, and there is no blunt correlation of CO2 content and Temperature, as stated by the IPCC.
But what does this Rate of change mean regarding this paper? The claim is that only 4.3% of the increasing CO2 is human.
But where comes the rest from, as the Carbon cycle seems to be fairly stable?. We are putting a certain amount of CO2 in the atmosphere each year, which amounts to a certain increase in concentration. Say (just an example) we add each year 4 ppm, but the measured rise is 2 ppm only. 4ppm is human, nature is about 20fold, so the total yearly rise is 84 ppm. And then living matter and ocean have to sequester 82 ppm to get these 2ppm annual rise.
Strange thing.
Wait…
Please forgive me layman, as I make an example as an explanation to my simple Math:
– Humans add 4 ppm each year. Nature adds 80 ppm through outgassing of the warm ocean and decomposition. Cold Ocean and biomass sequesters 82 ppm each year. So 2 ppm is left. So 2 ppm net is is sequestered for good.
Nothing new, this we know for a long time.
And the C14 is dissapeared somewhere during its long travel through the ocean ???
Johannes Herbst 27. February 2017 at 12:21 AM |
“But simply: Higher temperatures doesn’t mean higher CO2, and there is no blunt correlation of CO2 content and Temperature, as stated by the IPCC.”
If you increase the rate of change of something, then you are going to have more of it than you would otherwise. But, you are correct that the IPCC is wrong – since it is a rate of change relationship, the arrow of causality is in the direction of temperature driving CO2, and not CO2 driving temperature.
“Cold Ocean and biomass sequesters 82 ppm each year.”
To be precise, cold ocean and biomass do not remove CO2 in a fixed amount, but in proportion to the amount incoming. This is where the “mass balance” argument runs aground.
Proportional removal in this manner is what is called a feedback – the sink activity increases in response to an increase in pressure induced by an increase in input. So, if Nature were putting in 80 ppm, and humans put in an additional 4 ppm, and there is 2 ppm left, then the sinks are taking out 82/84 = 97.6%. Nature is responsible for 80*(1-0.976) = 1.92 ppm of what is left, and humans are responsible for 4*(1-0.976) = 0.096 ppm.
Johannes,
Bart makes a fundamental mistake where he writes:
“To be precise, cold ocean and biomass do not remove CO2 in a fixed amount, but in proportion to the amount incoming. This is where the “mass balance” argument runs aground.”
The amount of CO2 removed by oceans and vegetation does not depend of the income of one year, it depends of the total CO2 pressure above the temperature dependent setpoint.
As described above, most of the in and out fluxes are caused by temperature changes: seasonal (the largest part), permanent (between equator and poles) and year by year (El Niño, Pinatubo). The huge temperature changes in the extra-tropics give a huge exchange of CO2, hardly influenced by some extra CO2 in the atmosphere: temperature dominates how much CO2 is absorbed or released by the oceans (and vegetation) between winter and summer. There is hardly any difference in absorbed – released quantities between earlier decades and later decades and most of the difference is from enhanced plant growth…
What is observed is that the amount of CO2 which is removed in a certain year is directly proportional to the difference in CO2 pressure (pCO2) in the atmosphere and the equilibrium CO2 pressure in the ocean surface for the average temperature of the surface. That is surprisingly linear over the full Muana Loa period. Currently (2012) that is a sink rate of ~2.15 ppmv/year for the extra 110 ppmv pressure in the atmosphere above equilibrium.
With that ratio one can calculate the theoretical net sink rate in all years since Mauna Loa and calculate how much CO2 (as mass) will be left in the atmosphere:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em6.jpg
That is the red line of the graph midst the noise in the monthly CO2 growth rate, which is from the influence of temperature on (tropical) vegetation. That variability levels off to near zero in 1-3 years and is not the cause of the CO2 rate of change slope: vegetation is a small, but growing sink for CO2, not a source…
“There is hardly any difference in absorbed – released quantities between earlier decades and later decades and most of the difference is from enhanced plant growth…”
Another nonphysical, faith-based assertion.
“What is observed is that the amount of CO2 which is removed in a certain year is directly proportional to the difference in CO2 pressure (pCO2) in the atmosphere and the equilibrium CO2 pressure in the ocean surface for the average temperature of the surface.”
Once again, invalid decoupling of the natural balance from the anthropogenic input.
Bart:
Another nonphysical, faith-based assertion.
If you don’t understand what the graph I sent does imply, it is easy to reject it as “nonphysical”…
Once again, invalid decoupling of the natural balance from the anthropogenic input.
There is zero reason for any preference of the sinks for human CO2, thus zero reason for a specific removal of 50% of human CO2 in any specific year. The sinks remove the momentary mix in the atmosphere (with a slight preference for 12CO2), no matter the origin.
That is the case as good for the temperature influence (4-16 ppmv/K, seasonal to multi-millennia) as for an extra pressure above the long term steady state (2.15 ppmv/year for 110 ppmv extra), whatever the cause. The latter ratio is remarkably constant over the past 57 years, despite a fourfold increase in human emissions, net sink rate and increase in the atmosphere…
NO, it is NOT a cherry pick. It is the section of temperatures unaffected by major El Nino events.
Are we looking for a CO2 signature or not?
El Ninos events are nothing to do with CO2 and should be avoided when looking for effects of CO2.
You have to look what is happening between Major El Nino events.
And that is NOTHING !!!
” It is the section of temperatures unaffected by major El Nino events.”
you understand absolutely nothing., You can not ignore el nino events while keeping la nina in the data.
Your approach is WRONG. it is also plain out stupid.
Poor silly sob.. the only way you can get any warming is by using the El Ninos.
You know that, everybody knows that. And it hurts you deeply, I can see that.
Its no use calling other people names when you can’t get around facts, is it now.
But its all you have, isn’t it, little trollette and denier of climate change.
El Nino warming… apart from that… NOTHING
No CO2 warming signature anywhere.. and the reason for that, as seb has very incapably shown, is that CO2 does not cause warming in a convective atmosphere.
The origin of all CO2 in the oceans, atmosphere and sequestered as limestone, biomass etc is past and current volcanic activity. Without volcanoes life on Earth would be non existent. If all volcanoes were to shut down abruptly life on Earth would die out at 150ppm CO2, which would be just after a year or two. It was 290ppm a century ago, now it’s 390ppm, so we are now in a safer situation than a century ago. Let the volcanoes roar.
80% of all volcanoes are located deep in the oceans and that were 80% of CO2 comes from, being dissolved straight away into ocean waters before being outgassed to the atmosphere. This geologically originated CO2 dwarfs the tiny anthropogenic component by orders of magnitude, making our burning of HCs pale into insignificance. The global warming scare is over. The climate scaremongerers need another narrative. G.O.D. would be quite funny. Global Oxygen Depletion. Don’t laugh, it’s already been touted. Google it.
“Global Oxygen Depletion.”
I went body surfing the other day, medium surf.. but I tell you what, there is one heck of a lot less oxygen out the back of those waves than there was when I was younger. 🙂
Volcanoes today emit just 1 percent of the CO2 humans emit.
” Volcanoes today emit just 1 percent of the CO2 humans emit”
Well they better get their act together and start doing more for the planet.
Frankly, I don’t care where the aCO2 comes from, so long as the levels keep climbing.
If by chance humans are making a biggish contribution, all the better, because it means that as underdeveloped countries start to develop, CO2 levels will continue to climb.
This is ALL GOOD !!
How would you know,Sebastian?
Do you have a full count of ALL of the Volcanoes,with CO2 monitoring devices for every one of them?
I think you are waaaay tooo suuure!
You mean there are thousands of volcanoes hiding out there? Undicovered by mankind? Yeah, sure 😉
Did you see those islands that just appeared out of nowhere.
http://www.express.co.uk/travel/beach/563524/New-island-appears-off-coast-of-Tonga
Sebastian, you didn’t answer my reasonable questions.
Do I need to? Google is your friend. Volcanoes aren’t emitting that much CO2 … the resulting air pollution when a volcano errupts has a far greater influence on climate.
Pathetic…..,
After Sebastian,TWICE fails to answer my questions about many Volcano there are and what we know about how much they emit,he writes this absurdity:
“Do I need to? Google is your friend. Volcanoes aren’t emitting that much CO2 … the resulting air pollution when a volcano errupts has a far greater influence on climate.”
This after he NEVER backed up what he wrote earlier that I challenged him on,the sole reason for asking him the much feared questions in the first place:
“Volcanoes today emit just 1 percent of the CO2 humans emit.”
Now his latest unsubstantiated claim,once again without support. But this man has the GALL to complain that I don’t do Google search on this,while he never backs up his OWN bullcrap claims.
You are flubbing badly,Seb.
Oh boy … you are like those kids who refuse to search stuff themselves and want everything to be handed for them on a silver platter. If you were sure of your claim you’d have found some sources to support it. Instead you rant and insult (again) like a small child.
Do you really question the influence of aerosols of vulcanic origin? Anyway, here are some sources for you:
British Geological Survey: http://www.bgs.ac.uk/downloads/start.cfm?id=432 (a few megatonnes of carbon per year from volcanoes)
Mörner/Etiope 2002:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092181810200070X
U.S. Geological Survey:
https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/gas.html
Satisfied? Or is this all fake news and you have better sources? I called, so show your cards!
Sunsettommy,
Sebastian is right in this case and you should have known better. This is one of the (too many) points which regulary pop up and give skeptics a bad name…
The Piantubo eruption was the largest eruption of the past century, larger than all other volcanic eruptions of that century together. The net result of that eruption was a drop (!) in CO2 increase in the next year(s) as the effect of a lower temperature (oceans) and more light scattering (on enhanced photosynthesis) increased the CO2 sink rates more than the Pinatubo emitted…
Another one that pops up every now and then: underwater volcanoes emit more than land volcanoes. Maybe, but that CO2 doesn’t reach the atmosphere directly (I hope!) and most is simply dissolved in the huge amounts already in the deep oceans under a few hundred bars of seawater pressure. That “may” increase the CO2 content of the deep oceans a little, if that is not mostly recycled carbonates from the seafloor…
https://pubs.usgs.gov/pinatubo/self/fig15.gif
That’s completely absurd. The early 20th century and 1960s to mid-’80s eruptions together were about 3 times larger in total AOD than Pinatubo. If extended back 20 years into the late 19th century, Pinatubo was about 1/5th of the magnitude of the other eruptions combined.
We have scant information about underwater volcanoes. There have only been about 500 active volcano eruptions in recorded history (on land). Underwater, geologists have identified about 5,000 active volcanoes. The statement above is no more than a guess. As is your claim that the “steady state” or “natural” CO2 concentration is 290 ppm. Exactly how long did this “natural” balanced CO2 concentration last? About a year or so?
Are you really that stupid,Sebastian?
You write this bullcrap,avoiding answering my reasonable questions:
“Oh boy … you are like those kids who refuse to search stuff themselves and want everything to be handed for them on a silver platter. If you were sure of your claim you’d have found some sources to support it. Instead you rant and insult (again) like a small child.
Do you really question the influence of aerosols of vulcanic origin? Anyway, here are some sources for you:”
Here are the two questions you have amazing difficulty understanding:
“How would you know,Sebastian?
Do you have a full count of ALL of the Volcanoes,with CO2 monitoring devices for every one of them?
I think you are waaaay tooo suuure!”
You have not shown that EVERY Volcano has CO2 monitoring devices on them,that you do not how many Volcanoes exist on the planet,how many are active and how much CO2 are being emitted from each of the active volcanoes.
NONE of the three links answers my questions either,here is a partial quote from the second link abstract:
“Our survey shows that it is still very hard to arrive at a meaningful estimate of the lithospheric non-volcanic degassing into the atmosphere. Orders of 102–103 Mt CO2/year can be provisionally considered. Assuming as lower limit for a global subaerial volcanic degassing 300 Mt/year, the lithosphere may emit directly into the atmosphere at least 600 Mt CO2/year (about 10% of the C source due to deforestation and land-use exchange), an estimate we still consider conservative.”
A lot of uncertainty language on NON-volcanic estimates.No answer about how many Volcanoes there are,How many are active and how many have CO2 monitoring devices on them.
When you reply the way you do,it becomes clear to me that you can’t answer the questions,instead give me the stupid run around with baseless replies,indicating to me that you are an idiot.
I have known about the lack of coverage on Volcano emissions for more than 25 years now,that is why I knew you are full of crap on this Sebastian. You can’t answer the questions,because it is unknown.
Mr. Engelbeen,
you did’t answer the questions I posed to Sebastian either:
“How would you know,Sebastian?
Do you have a full count of ALL of the Volcanoes,with CO2 monitoring devices for every one of them?
I think you are waaaay tooo suuure!”
Thus your first paragraph is absurd and way off base:
“Sebastian is right in this case and you should have known better. This is one of the (too many) points which regulary pop up and give skeptics a bad name… ”
Here it is AGAIN my questions I asked Sebastian,notice how it has nothing to do with what you babbled about,in the rest of your comment?
“How would you know,Sebastian?
Do you have a full count of ALL of the Volcanoes,with CO2 monitoring devices for every one of them?
I think you are waaaay tooo suuure!”
What do you expect as an answer? It doesn’t matter … it’s called estimation for a reason. And even if volcanoes were emitting a trillion times more CO2 than humans it wouldn’t matter. The increase in CO2 concentration is LOWER than what humans emit.
I asked you some question too … answer them please 😉
And yet you are absolutely sure that it is orders of magnitude higher than human emissions.
Kenneth,
Indeed there was another one even more explosive than Pinatubo in the early 1900’s:
http://geology.com/stories/13/volcanic-explosivity-index/
No matter that, as we have very accurate CO2 measurements since 1959, the 1991 Pinatubo eruption, the second largest of the past century didn’t show up in the CO2 increase rate, just the opposite. That means that the cooling/scathering of light had more effect on CO2 absorption by oceans and plants than the Pinatubo did emit…
Neither does any volcano or the sum of all active volcanoes together pop up as a peak of a few years or longer in any ice core or proxy, except negative: tree rings show less/defective growth in some years and these are used to identify volcanic eruptions…
About underwater volcanoes: how much CO2 do you think will escape to the surface under 200+ bar pressure from 2,000 meters of seawater? Some near surface (“new islands”) volcanoes may emit likewise as areal volcanoes, but that is not the case for deep oceans (or you may have found the origin of the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle)…
I have no idea. And nor do you. I recognize that I don’t know much about underwater volcanoes and their effect on the Earth system. Apparently you think you know enough to draw definitive conclusions.
Sunsettommy,
Please, have a look at the monitoring around mount Etna, Sicily, Italy, the most active volcano of Europe and one of the most active volcanoes of the world:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v351/n6325/abs/351387a0.html
If you calculate the yearly emissions during eruptions and what is emitted at the flanks in all periods, then you need about 1,000 volcanoes all as active as the Etna each year again to have the same emissions as humans do today.
The same point for continuous emissions of Yellowstone: 1/500 of human emissions. As far as I know there are not so many Yellowstones on earth.
Moreover, the Etna is a subduction volcano (recycling carbonate sediments from the ocean bottom), which emits about ten times more CO2 than deep magma volcanoes like these of Hawaii and of the mid-Atlantic rift (under water or not).
Thus it is simply a waste of time and money to monitor every single more or less active volcanoe if not for the people living around it, as emissions (and earthquakes) often start long before an eruption.
Last but not least: why would you insist on volcanoes as huge source? CO2 levels in the atmosphere follow human emissions at least since the past century in exact ratio. It would be an incredible coincidence that all volcanoes on earth just start with extra emissions around 1850 and emit increasing amounts of CO2 (a quadrupling between 1960 and 2012) in exact ratio to the observed increase in the atmosphere (and human emissions)…
Sebastian claims that I implied or stated something like this:
“And yet you are absolutely sure that it is orders of magnitude higher than human emissions.”
How would you know,since I never said anything about it. You are being dishonest here, since all I have done was ask you questions about how much we know about Volcanoes and how many of them being actively monitored.
You also wrote this absurdity since you just admitted that you can’t address the same reasonable two questions I keep asking you:
“What do you expect as an answer? It doesn’t matter … it’s called estimation for a reason. And even if volcanoes were emitting a trillion times more CO2 than humans it wouldn’t matter. The increase in CO2 concentration is LOWER than what humans emit.
I asked you some question too … answer them please.”
Oh please you are making it clear you are dumb as hell,since you don’t know how much Volcanoes actually emit,the estimate is a wild guess since you and other warmist morons have no clue how much Volcanoes really emit,since most of them are NOT being monitored at all.
I have ignored your “questions” since they has nothing to do with what I said, never made a statement on the the blogs veracity of its claims. Simply wanted to expose the obvious that NOBODY really knows how much Volcanoes emit.
Estimates without a KNOWN minimum baseline, are worthless!
Your question implied that you don’t believe the 1% of human emissions number and it to be much higher or much more influential than human emissions.
It’s not.
Ha ha ha….
Sebastian,has a severe problem understanding what I am pointing out,it certainly isn’t this as he writes:
“Your question implied that you don’t believe the 1% of human emissions number and it to be much higher or much more influential than human emissions.
It’s not.”
Sigh, are you [snip]?
Never did I make the statement about your 1% being right or wrong,what I have been trying to point out AGAIN and AGAIN,that you lack sufficient emission data, for your unsupported statement,that is why I bring up the questions:
You wrote,
“SebastianH 27. February 2017 at 12:26 AM | Permalink | Reply
Volcanoes today emit just 1 percent of the CO2 humans emit.”
My reply was this,
“Sunsettommy 27. February 2017 at 5:34 AM | Permalink | Reply
How would you know,Sebastian?
Do you have a full count of ALL of the Volcanoes,with CO2 monitoring devices for every one of them?
I think you are waaaay tooo suuure!”
To this time and day,you have yet to support your original 1% claim,thus you have failed to make your case. I don’t have to even try to debunk you,since you debunked yourself from the start, by NEVER supporting your 1% argument.
You need to stop digging a deeper hole.
If you look at the variation in CO2 content over a year, you would realise that the sinks must be very powerfull and also the emittance of the nature.
The fact that only half our produced CO2 is remaining in the air needs some explanations.
The variations in northern parts are even larger (by a factor 2) than what is measured at Mauna Loa, and consequently much less in southern parts.
Svend,
The main CO2 cycles are (reasonable estimates, based on CO2, O2 and δ13C measurements):
seasonal:
– oceans: + and – 50 GtC
– biosphere: + and – 60 GtC
As both are countercurrent, the global result is + and – 10 GtC (~5 ppmv) over the seasons for a global temperature change of ~1 K.
Main dominance: NH extratropical forests taking lots of CO2 out of the atmosphere in spring/summer and releasing that in fall/winter.
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/seasonal_CO2_d13C_MLO_BRW.jpg
That vegetation is dominant can be seen in the opposite CO2 and δ13C fluxes. If the oceans were dominant, CO2 and a small δ13C change would parallel each other.
continuous:
– equatorial upwelling by the oceans: ~40 GtC
– polar sinks in the oceans: ~40 GtC
Based on the “thinning” of the δ13C sink rate from fossil fuels by the deep oceans – atmosphere CO2 cycle. Independently confirmed by the 14C sink rate.
Together that is 150 GtC going in and out the atmosphere within a year in exchange with other reservoirs. That is (near) fully explained by the huge temperature swings in extra-tropical seasons and the permanent temperature difference between equatorial upwelling and polar sinks.
Natural variability of these huge fluxes is small: +/- 3 GtC (+/- 1.5 ppmv) from year to year and again mainly caused by (this time tropical) vegetation:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
Thus on short periods of seasonal to 3 years, temperature has a huge, but temporal influence, which zeroes out after 1-3 years. Moreover, as most of the variability is caused by vegetation, that is not the cause of the CO2 increase, as vegetation is a small, but growing sink for CO2, at least since 1990: the earth is greening…
Over longer periods (decades to multi-milennia) the oceans are dominant as ice cores show very little δ13C change for huge CO2 changes, again with temperature.
Thus while temperature has an enormous influence on seasonal fluxes (and between warm and cold oceans), that is already a lot less for year to year variability and on (very) long term, that is not more than 16 ppmv/K, mainly form the oceans.
The problem for removing human CO2 out of the atmosphere is that the main carbon cycles are almost completely temperature dependent and relative insensitive for CO2 pressure changes. One K higher temperature will give some more plant growth (in average) and some 16 ppmv more CO2 increase in the atmosphere from the oceans, while 110 ppmv extra CO2 only gives ~0.5 ppmv/year extra sink in vegetation and ~1.6 ppmv/year in the oceans but humans add ~4.3 ppmv/year into the same atmosphere…
“The problem for removing human CO2 out of the atmosphere”
Now why the heck would any sane person want to do that..???
We are struggling to push it much past 400ppm, and LOTS more is needed if we are going to continue to feed the world’s increasing population.
I can see a time when Thorium nuclear is used to break down limestone to release CO2 into the atmosphere.
Fortunately we have LOTS of fossil fuels in the interim, all we have to do is get over this moronic anti-CO2, anti-life agenda.
Andy,
I don’t want to do that either… As long time biological gardner in my own (small) garden, I know that mulching (putting organic rests like cut grass) around growing plants enhances local CO2 emissions (and gives a better water household) and thus enhances growth of the new plants, just like greenhouse owners putting 1000 ppmv CO2 – and more – in their greenhouses… And I am pretty sure that more CO2 in general is more beneficial than harmfull (if at all).
But that doesn’t mean that skeptics should attack solid evidence from the other side with such bad science as the above article. That only undermines the skeptics case…
Andy G55,
Possibly you know what I mean:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/plot/uah6/to:1997/trend/plot/uah6/from:1997/to:2015/trend/plot/none
or that:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/plot/uah6/to:2002/trend/plot/uah6/from:2002/to:2015/trend/plot/uah6/mean:61/mean:37
If you set a point before or after the 1998-2001 ENSO, you will see a dramatic swing in temperature. Temps not correlating with CO2.
Note: I never start or end a trend within an ENSO, so I stopped 2015, as the 2016 ENSO seems not yet to be over.
If you are looking for a CO2 signature, you have to stay away from El Nino effects. El Ninos are nothing to do with CO2.
That effective splits the satellite temperature data into two basically zero trend section.
https://s19.postimg.org/iwoqwlg1f/UAH_before_El_nino.png
(this has a small calculated positive trend, but ONLY because of where it starts and finishes on the cyclic pattern)
and
https://s19.postimg.org/b9yx58cxf/UAH_after_El_nino.png
Andy G55, do we agree that it needs a full ENSO cycle (El Nino plus following La nina) to exclude or include? If you just exclude El Nino, the you tamper the data.
To my opinon, ENSO cyyles are just another weather exercise on top of the normal trend or swing, similar to volcanoes.
Another strange point:
“Under present conditions the natural emissions contribute 373 ppm and anthropogenic emissions 17 ppm to the total concentration of 390 ppm (2012).”.
It looks like that the author started his calculations from zero CO2 at steady state? Not sure what he really means and has done here.
The current steady state level between ocean surface and atmosphere is 290 ppmv for the current (area weighted) ocean surface temperature.
At 290 ppmv, natural emissions and sinks are equal and the oceans do not “contribute” anything to the atmosphere. Only the extra CO2 pressure above this 290 ppmv has any effect on the balance between natural (oceanic) emissions and sinks.
A few million years ago, CO2 levels reached 470 ppm. Were the natural emissions and sinks equal at that point, since they were 180 ppm above the 290 ppm level that you think is the steady state? How did CO2 levels reach 470 ppm?
If those 470 ppm were caused by ocean outgasing (higher temperatures), then yes. If they were caused by something else, probably not.
Higher CO2 concentrations are usually an effect of higher temperatures and then contribute to temperature increase. You posted lots of papers about this. When you artificially increase CO2 concentrations temperature increases. This is currently the case, as the oceans are still a net sink and not a net source of CO2 in the atmosphere.
“When you artificially increase CO2 concentrations temperature increases.”
Unproven BS.. and you know it.
Stop trolling with LIES.
Sebastian,
Only the theoretical value is known: about 1 K for a CO2 doubling (Modtran, based on line by line spectral measurements). The rest is based on climate models which all fail the current temperature: they are all (much) to high in their “projection”.
In the real world, the projected endpoint is ~1.5 K increase for 2xCO2, but even that is a mix of natural increase (by ocean oscillations and/or clouds?) and any effect of CO2.
The oceans did warm with ~0.5 W/m2 over the past decade, while theoretically it should have been warming with near 2 W/m2 due to the near 40% extra CO2 in the atmosphere. It seems that the natural feedback (clouds?) is negative, reducing the effect of CO2, not positive as assumed in most climate models…
Kenneth,
The CO2 levels of the past are known with a lot of uncertainty, the longest record in ice cores is 800,000 years (Dome C, Antarctica) repeatability +/- 1.2 ppmv, but a resolution of only 560 years. Despite that, it would detect the current increase of 110 ppmv in 165 years, be it with a lower amplitude of ~15 ppmv. Any peak of 280 ppmv above equilibrium as you suggest would be detected if sustained over a period of at least 50 years.
Proxies like stomata data or foramins (sediments) have their own problems, but the latter did go back in time over 2 million years and roughly confirm the ice core data, be it with a worse resolution.
Stomata data reflect the local CO2 levels over land as an average of the previous growing season. That is positively biased compared to the “background” CO2 levels in 95% of the atmosphere. There is compensated for by calibrating the stomata data against ice cores over the past century. The problem is that nobody knows how the local CO2 levels changed over the centuries due to land (use) changes in the main wind direction or even by changes in the main wind direction itself, like between MWP and LIA…
What is your reference for the 470 ppmv at 2 million years ago?
“At 290 ppmv, natural emissions and sinks are equal and the oceans do not “contribute” anything to the atmosphere”
ahhh…. plant are subsistence level.
Great, just what is needed to feed the world. 🙁
“It looks like that the author started his calculations from zero CO2 at steady state?”
That is the problem with your entire outlook, Ferdinand. You take the steady state as a given, and build your model on top of that.
But, the steady state is dictated by equations of balance, and the mechanisms of balance do not just fade away after an apparent balance is established. They are still active, and they will work to balance the flows from human inputs just as assiduously as they work to balance the flows from natural inputs.
As this is an active balance, human inputs can only affect it in proportion. Estimates are that human inputs are on the order of 3% or less of natural inputs. As a result, they cannot be responsible for more than about 3% of the overall balance.
“Only the extra CO2 pressure above this 290 ppmv has any effect on the balance between natural (oceanic) emissions and sinks.”
This is a faith-based assertion, for which no evidence exists.
The natural steady state is not 290 ppm. It is an ever-changing value. Right now, it is close to 400 ppm.
Precisely. A few hundred years ago, the “natural steady state” was 270 ppm. And then it changed. For about 90,000 years of the late Pliestocene, the “natural steady state” for CO2 was 180 ppm. During the last interglacial, it was about 300 ppm for ~5,000 years. The 290 ppm value is just made up.
You have hit the nail on the head. Ferdinand’s logical problem is that he assumes there is such a thing as a non-moving steady state in CO2 concentration. There isn’t.
The zig-zags between 180ppm and 270ppm over the last n-hundred thousand years is indicative of a system right on the edge of collapse.
If human release of sequestered carbon has broken that cycle, then the world and every living thing on it needs to thanks us.
Kenneth,
I never said or implied that the steady state doesn’t change over time. What we see in ice cores (and foramins and other proxies) is that temperature is the main driver for the equilibrium setpoint: 16 ppmv/K over the full past 800,000 years. Not by coincidence that is the dynamic equilibrium (steady state) between ocean surface and atmosphere after thousands of years of mixing with the deep oceans.
Minimum 180 ppmv, 90% of the time during glacial periods. Maximum 310 ppmv during the warmer (~2°C) Eemian, 110,000 years ago.
If the oceans were the driver for 400 ppmv, you need a temperature increase of 110/16 = 7°C above the current area weighted observed ocean surface temperature…
That simply means that the current 110 ppmv above the current average ocean surface temperature is not natural…
Your 110/16 formula is entirely made up, Ferdinand. CO2 concentrations have not been neatly rising or falling in concert with surface temperatures…or ocean temperatures. It’s chaotic and stochastic. During the 8.2 K event, most of the Earth’s temperature fell by about 2.0 C within a matter of decades, then increased again by 2.0 C within a matter of about a century. These rapid fluctuations occurred during the Early Holocene, when ocean temperatures were about 2.0 warmer than they are now. During this rapid cooling-warming event, there was no change in the CO2 concentration. The temperatures neither caused a change, nor was it caused by a change in CO2. That you believe there are formulas that can be used to document how much warming is required to elicit a ___ increase in CO2 concentration is presumptuous on steroids. In fact, nearly your entire case rests on a set of presumptions that you apparently seem to think are not presumptions (i.e., the “natural steady state” for CO2 concentrations is 290 ppm).
The massive increase in greening across the planet during interglacials (it’s not very green during glacials, or when North America, UK, Scandinavia, Russia… are all covered in a kilometer of ice) contribute to natural CO2 source increases too. In fact, the IPCC has 119 GtC of the 198 GtC natural emissions coming from biomass/respiration.
Kenneth:
“Your 110/16 formula is entirely made up”
Please Kenneth, Henry established his law of the solubility of gases a few hundred years ago. Since then confirmed for the solubility of CO2 in seawater with over 3 million seawater samples from near the North Pole to near the South Pole: 16 ppmv/K it is.
Of course there are not only oceans, there is also vegetation, which indeed gets more abundant in warmer periods. All we can say is that on short periods (seasonal to a few years) vegetation wins the contest, but on longer periods (decades to multi-milennia), the (deep) oceans win the contest. Over milennia the same 16 ppmv/K is seen in ice cores. Over centuries (MWP-LIA) it is less, about 8 ppmv/K…
Still you are confused by the huge carbon cycles (like the seasonal in/outs), which don’t tell you anything about how much CO2 is actually removed or added after a full cycle/year.
Take e.g. the change of CO2 in the atmosphere from the depth of an ice age to an interglacial: 100 ppmv CO2 increase lags temperature increase with about 800 years (as that is probably the result of the deep ocean turnover), but it takes 5,000 years to reach the 100 ppmv more in the atmosphere, or 0.02 ppmv/year… Humans currently emit 4 ppmv/year, 200 times more, no wonder that the natural sinks can’t follow that…
It is entirely possible that the CO2 levels in the atmosphere didn’t follow ocean temperatures fast enough to get detectable in medium resolution ice cores. That depends of how local/global the temperature drop was and the duration of the drop in relation to the deep ocean exchanges.
Within a 40 year resolution ice core (Siple Dome), indeed there is no drop in CO2, which indicates that the temperature drop was mainly restricted to the North Atlantic region (mostly impacting Western Europe):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013GL058177/full
Ferdinand, the formula doesn’t fit the law dome evidence. The temperature dropped by about 1 K between the MWP and 1400-1900 period (LIA). The CO2 concentration didn’t fall by 16 ppm. Instead, it rose during that time. The CO2 didn’t budge during the ~150-year cooling-warming event 8,200 years ago, when global temperatures fell and then rose by multiple degrees C. The HadCRUT dataset has depicted no net temperature change between 1850 and 1930, when CO2 levels rose by more than 20 ppm. I know you want to believe that 16 ppmv/K is a “law” because, well, it just is. But we’re not going to believe in a formula that doesn’t fit the other evidence. From the available evidence, CO2 concentration changes appear to be far more stochastic than formulaic.
Kenneth;
As explained elsewhere, the 16 ppmv/K is the established equilibrium between temperature and the solubility of CO2 in seawater, rock solid physics. What you measure in the atmosphere is the result of natural and human disturbances and the time needed to remove these disturbances towards the equilibrium. That is the difference…
Nope, 400 ppm is not a natural steady state of nature with human industry. Reason: the concentration is still climbing and it will climb until either natural sinks catch up or natural sources stop emitting or humans reduce their output. If nothing of the sort happens, it will climb forever. Not a steady state at all.
Kenneth in his number twisting way is correct in his first paragraph. The value changes depending on the situation. Looking at the past few hundreds of years, the steady state for that period was around 290 ppm and then came the industrial revolution. Kenneth most likely will reply something like “but concentration naturally changed in the past, what did cause the increase back then?” … the answer being: not humans obviously. “But if it was natural, why can’t it be natural this time?” … because: human emissions exist and the amount emitted per period of time is higher than the increase in concentration.
Sebastian, what is the “natural steady state”?
Um, no. According to law dome data, the 290 ppm “natural steady state” that you and Ferdinand Engelbeen believe in was in its “natural steady state” condition for exactly 4 years: between 1882 and 1885 (290.1 to 290.9). It was at 280 ppm for a few years in the early 1790s. Apparently you believe the industrial revolution happened sometime after 1885.
Here’s an illustration of how the CO2 concentration rose independently of human emissions:
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Anthropogenic-Emissions-vs-CO2-Rise-Non-Correlation.jpg
Bart,
You may know a lot about high frequency processes, but here you are out of your depth.
There is a very long term equilibrium between the oceans and the atmosphere over 800,000 years completely in accord to Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater: 16 ppmv/K. That didn’t change in the whole period and only gets smaller if the time frame is too short to establish a full dynamic equilibrium between the deep oceans and the atmosphere which needs milennia.
SO why in heaven would the established equilibrium, confirmed by over 3 million recent and current seawater samples, suddenly change the moment that humans start to emit interesting amounts of CO2?
As discussed many times before: the 3% human emissions are one-way, the 97% two-way, where 98.5% sinks in the oceans and vegetation. 1.5% remains in the atmosphere. No matter if what sinks is all natural or all human, the 1.5% in any case is caused by the human emissions.
You still see the sinks as one process, while most sinks are highly temperature dependent (seasonal to 1-3 years), but human emissions increase the pressure in the atmosphere, without much influence on temperature. The removal of any extra CO2 above equilibrium is of a complete different order (factor 10 slower) than the removal of CO2 by the growth of new leaves in spring…
That the net sink rate over the past 57 years is in direct ratio to the extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere over the established setpoint per Henry’s law is full proof for a linear process that is disturbed by an external force…
“You may know a lot about high frequency processes…”
You seem to have latched onto that rationalization. It is silly.
“There is a very long term equilibrium between the oceans and the atmosphere over 800,000 years completely in accord to Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater: 16 ppmv/K.”
This is a circular argument.
I have provided a mathematically rigorous description of how the integral relationship between CO2 and temperature can come about. You are just flailing.
Then of course there is the merged data from 6 peer review papers using stomata data for CO2 levels for the Holocene
https://i0.wp.com/i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/IceCoresCO2.png
The plant stomata data pretty well prove that Holocene CO2 levels have frequently been in the 300-350 ppm range and occasionally above 400 ppm over the last 10,000 years.
The merged data from 6 peer-reviewed papers showing that CO2 concentrations fluctuated naturally between levels that are similar to today in the last few thousand years just cannot be correct. After all, Ferdinand Engelbeen and SebastianH believe that the “natural steady state” for CO2 is 290 ppm. Never mind that the “natural steady state” for CO2 only remained in that “natural steady state” for 4 years: 1882-1885. And then, after 1885, SebastianH believes the industrial revolution began.
Bart,
Your mathematical solution fails every single observation. Not one, which is enough to kill any theory, but it fails every observation. Not enough to convince you that your theory is good for the dust bin…
Andy and Kenneth,
Stomata data are a proxy of the average CO2 levels in the growing season at the place where the plants grow. That shows the local/regional CO2 levels over land, not in the bulk of the atmosphere. To compensate for the local bias, the stomata data are calibrated against ice core CO2 data over the past century. The problem is that nobody knows how the local bias changed due to land (use) changes in the main wind direction or even changes in the main wind direction itself.
Bluntly said: if the stomata show an average CO2 level different from the ice cores over the time span of the ice core resolution, then the stomata data are wrong and must be recalibrated for that time span…
The accuracy of ice cores is +/- 1.2 ppmv for multiple samples of the same core, +/- 2.5 ppmv between different ice cores for the same gas age. Best resolution over the Holocene: ~40 years and less, e.g.:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013GL058177/full
The steady state depends of the temperature + other natural variabilities. +/- 10 ppmv is peanuts compared to the 110 ppmv today…
Exactly what one would expect to read from someone who is convinced that we know all there is to know, and that he has access to the “facts” here. Never mind that the “laws” and formulas that you use to state your claims (16 ppmv/K) bear no relation to much of the Holocene temperature record. You believe it’s true; therefore, it is true. You believe that the “natural steady state” for CO2 concentration is 290 ppm. Never mind that it was 280 ppm in the 1790s, that it rose by 10 ppm in ~90 years (while temperatures dropped), or that the “natural steady state” only remained steady at that state for 4 years at most (1882-1885). What does it matter that the ice core record that you believe to be true on the one hand doesn’t even match up with your claims about 16 ppmv/K or 290 ppm steady state. You believe that what you believe is true is true. Therefore, for you, it is true. We’re not the believers that you are, Ferdinand.
Kenneth,
I may appear too sure of what I say, but that is simply the result of years of discussions and a lot of knowledge that can’t be said in a few words (most of my replies are already much too long).
About stomata data and ice cores CO2:
Ice core CO2 is proven reliable to within a few ppmv, even taken from ice cores with extreme differences in snow accumulation, average temperature, etc. Even with a ~20 year overlap (1960-1980) with direct measurements at the South Pole. They reflect the CO2, CH4, N2O, CFC’s, bomb test 14C, isotopic ratios of C, O, H/D,… over the past 800,000 years with high accuracy.
The only drawback is the resolution, which depends of the snow accumulation rate. Thus what you measure in the gas fase is a mixture of years: from less than a decade for the past 150 years to 560 years for the past 800,000 years.
About stomata data, I have had lots of discussion with Tom van Hoof, stomata specialist. Stomata (index) data of one year reflect the local average CO2 levels in the previous growing season. Still a proxy, as leaf growth not only is influenced by CO2, but also by water, nutrients,…
The local CO2 is a problem, as CO2 in the lower atmosphere over land is badly mixed and in general has a positive bias compared to “background” CO2. To give you an idea of the problem, here the monthly data for Giessen/Linden, mid-west Germany, based on half hour CO2 samples:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/giessen_mlo_monthly.jpg
where one of the monthly averages was off-chart at over 500 ppmv.
Thus one uses ice core CO2 + Mauna Loa as calibration for the local stomata data offset over the past century. Even so, the calibration curve gives for the same stomata index of 7% a CO2 level between 320 and 360 ppmv, not really accurate.
My main objection is that any changes of the local CO2 bias over the centuries is totally unknown. That can have changed by (enormous) changes in land and land use, like in The Netherlands: from sea and marshes to agriculture (polders) and forests and industrialisation all in the current main wind direction. There are even indications that the main wind direction may have changed from SW to East during the LIA…
Thus while the stomata CO2 proxy data have a better resolution than ice core CO2 data, the variability seen in the CO2 data is the variability of CO2 over land (which may be of interest), not (only) in the bulk of the atmosphere. If there is an offset between the average of the stomata data and the ice core CO2 data over the time span of the ice core resolution, then the local bias at the stomata growth base has changed and one need to recalibrate them with the ice core data.
Not reverse: higher average stomata index data are not an indication that the ice core data are too low…
Temperature gives the setpoint of the steady state between oceans and atmosphere, not the instantanious value. That implies that other natural influences (volcanoes, vegetation), can disturb that equilibrium and humans with the early settlements with agriculture and cattle herding.
Even the end of the last glaciation shows CO2 levels dropping 40 ppmv only thousands of years after the drop in temperature. That is the time that the deep oceans need to get into equilibrium with the atmosphere…
I am not at all interested in a quible over 10 ppmv more or less in periods where emissions and temperature are hardly known to any accuracy…
Let’s focus on the past near 60 years of more accurate knowledge…
Ferdinand, on the one hand you insist the ice core evidence that shows 16 ppmv/K is a “law” …even though that “law” doesn’t even work not only for the Holocene, but for the 25 Dansgaard-Oeschger events during the previous 80,000 years that had CO2 remaining steady at 180 ppm while temperatures rose and fell by 5 to 10 degrees C in a few decades. It’s not a law. It’s a made-up presumption that you believe is a law due to the argument from authority.
You also insist that 290 ppm is the “natural steady state” for CO2, even though that “natural steady state” only lasted for 4 years in the early 1880s. How do we “know” that? Because of the law dome evidence that you cite when it agrees with your beliefs and pan as “unreliable” when it doesn’t. You want to have it both ways. How do you “know” that 290 ppm is the “natural steady state.” Because, well, it is. That’s why.
Your entire case rests upon presumptions. Sorry that you haven’t been able to convince us otherwise with your knowledge.
Kenneth,
290 ppmv IS the steady state for the current average seawater temperature. That indeed is a law as rock solid as many other physical laws. What you don’t seems to get is that the steady state is what it should be if everything was in (dynamic) equilibrium, not what is actually measured, simply because a lot of influences besides temperature can (and do) change the inputs and/or outputs beyond the temperature controlled setpoint.
All what happens then is that the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are changing above (or below) the steady state and that the processes involved react to establish the steady state again. That is called Le Châtelier’s principle.
Any extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere coming from volcanoes, forests fires or humans will decrease the CO2 input from upwelling deep ocean waters and increase the CO2 output into the deep ocean sinks (and in vegetation). That is in ratio to the extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere above the steady state.
For a linear process (as the global CO2 cycle seems to be) one can easily calculate the decay rate: in this case that gives an e-fold decay rate of ~51 years or a half life time of ~35 years, ten times higher than the residence time, which has nothing to do with the decay rate of any extra CO2 mass in the atmosphere…
Perhaps you believe that if you restate your position over and over again, at some point I’ll decide that you have this all figured out. I don’t view your opinions as authoritative on this topic, Ferdinand. I don’t buy into your argument from authority reasoning. There is no such ppm number that is the “natural steady state” for CO2. The ice core record has the “natural steady state” (290 ppm) lasting exactly 4 years: 1882 to 1885. The 180 ppm value lasted for about 80,000 years after the Eemian. That you believe 4 years = a “natural steady state”, but 80,000 years at the same value is not the “natural steady state” is rather odd. The 290 ppm value was arbitrarily selected. It is not a “law” any more than the 470 ppm values reached a few million years ago were a “law”.
Furthermore, the 16 ppmv/K is not a “law” either. It’s a made-up value that doesn’t even work for nearly all of the last 100,000 years. When I point this out to you, your comeback is: “Yes it is. The temperature dropped by 0.8 K during the 1600s when CO2 dropped by 6 ppm.”
I point out to you that the temperature dropped by almost 1 K from the late 1700s to the 1820s and 1830s as CO2 levels rose by 6 ppm (278 to 284 ppm). Your response: Silence. Ignore it. Claim the ice core evidence isn’t reliable in this case.
I point out that the Holocene temperature dropped by 2 or 3 degrees C while CO2 rose from 260 ppm to 280 ppm — the opposite of the 16 ppmv/K “law”. Your response: Silence. Ignore it. Claim the ice core evidence isn’t reliable in this case.
I point out that the 8.2 K event had temperatures rise and fall by multiple degrees C within a matter of decades…while CO2 concentrations remained steady at 260 ppm throughout. Your response: Silence. Ignore it. Claim the ice core evidence isn’t reliable in this case.
I point out that the last glacial had 25 instances in which temperatures rose by 5 to 10 degrees C within less than 50 years…while CO2 concentrations remained steady at 180 ppm throughout. Your response: Silence. Ignore it. Claim the ice core evidence isn’t reliable in this case.
It’s like I’m debating with someone who insists reindeer can fly. I point out that they don’t have the physical capacity to do so, and then you turn around and say, “Well, but did you get a Christmas present from Santa?”
No matter how much evidence I present that contradicts your arbitrarily-derived “laws” that you’ve conceptualized due to your reliance on authority, you will just turn around and say, “No, I’m still right. I have the facts. I know the truth. 290 ppm IS a law. 16 ppmv/K IS a law.”
Sorry you’ve wasted your time, Ferdinand. I am a true skeptic. I need more evidence than you do to believe that what you say are “laws” are actually “laws.” Especially since they don’t work.
Kenneth,
Many who know me from discussions on WUWT and elsewhere do appreciate my patience in trying to explain the background of what is known and what not, even if they don’t agree with me.
I have tried it here for you again and again, but as I explains that there is a difference between hard scientific evidence of a fixed CO2 solubility of CO2 in seawater for a fixed temperature, which changes with 16 ppmv/K and what is really measured in the atmosphere, and you only repeat your own non-relevant arguments, then I can’t help you any further.
It only shows that you aren’t open to other opinions and that you have no idea how a simple linear process works.
You are not a true skeptic if you don’t accept any evidence if you don’t like the outcome…
This is so amusing to read coming from you, as you have no idea the irony considering your own close-mindedness.
I correctly write that the ice core evidence doesn’t remotely support the 16 ppmv/K formula you believe in. In response, you say: “Yes it does. Look at the 1600s, when CO2 dropped by 6 ppm and temperature dropped by 0.8 K.” So you do accept the premise that the ice core CO2 record should match changes in temperature to support the 16 ppmv/K formula, and then you provide one data point in which it appears to do so. Fine.
But then when I correctly point out that the plummeting temperature from the late 18th to the early 19th century does not support the formula, as temperatures dropped by nearly 1 K as CO2 rose by 6 ppm, and what do you say in response to this data point that contradicts your formula? It doesn’t matter. It’s not relevant. So a matching data point for the 1600s matters to the 16 ppmv/K when it works, but it conveniently doesn’t matter for the many other data points (Early to Late Holocene 2-3 C cooling while CO2 rises by 20 ppm, OHC changes at rates of 2 C per 200 years in the 0-1000 m layer without CO2 changes, the 8.2 K event, D-O cycles, and on and on) when the formula does not work.
You agree the 16 ppmv/K should match the ice core record when you find evidence that supports this viewpoint, but when presented with evidence that contradicts it, you pivot, insist its a law, retreat to the argument from authority (logical fallacy), and claim those counter points don’t matter. It’s the height of confirmation bias, and you’re so blinded with it you can’t even recognize it when you so routinely employ it.
You claim the “natural steady state” for CO2 is 290 ppm. The ice core evidence has this “natural steady state” lasting for all of 4 years in the early 1880s. You cannot explain why CO2 rose from 280 ppm to 290 ppm from the 1790s to the 1880s without a change in anthropogenic emissions. So what do you do? You insist that the 280 ppm to 290 ppm change doesn’t matter, that the ice core record isn’t reliable enough in this case. So on the one hand you claim the ice core record is reliable (when it supports your confirmation bias), and then when you can’t explain why CO2 rose from 280 ppm to its “natural steady state” for four years in the 1880s with anthropogenic emissions, you once again pivot, retreat to the argument from authority, and compare me to a “housewive.”
In sum, this has been an epic fail, Ferdinand. You are no more open-minded than anyone else in the pro-CAGW crowd. You think you are, but you’re not. You think you know the “truth,” but you don’t. The 290 ppm “natural steady state” is an entirely arbitrarily-derived figure. You think it’s hard science. It’s not. But you go right on ahead and believe it is anyway. It’s not as if you were ever going to think otherwise.
“You claim the “natural steady state” for CO2 is 290 ppm.”
I stopped reading his posts at that stage.
It just so monumentally stupid !!
Kenneth,
This gets ugly. If you don’t accept Henry’s law and the result of 3 million seawater samples, which confirm the solubility of CO2 in seawater, then it ends here and now.
16 ppmv/K is what is established as what the CO2 levels SHOULD be. That is NOT what is instantly measured. That is where the CO2 levels will go, giving enough time to reach that value. As there are lots influences at work, that may give a time delay and the equilibrium never may be reached if the temperature changes more rapidly that the reaction of the CO2 levels.
And I never said that the “natural steady state” is invariable at 290 ppmv. It is 290 ppmv for the current average ocean surface temperature. Not for the surface temperature of 100 or 1000 years ago. And certainly it is far below 400 ppmv as is measured today in the atmosphere.
If you have any evidence that 400 ppmv is a normal value for today’s ocean surface temperature then I like to see that.
Thank you for writing this, Ferdinand, as this is entirely my point! The Titanic SHOULD be unsinkable too, as that is the established position.
In other words is not a fact that there is a 16 ppmv CO2 change for every 1 K change in temperature, as you so non-skeptically believe. The 16 ppmv/K conceptualization is NOT supported by the ice core record, and the ice core record SHOULD substantiate it. It does not. Not in the slightest.
Sure, if you cherry-pick one period when CO2 dropped by 6 ppm in the 1600s and say that that corresponded to a change of 0.8 K, that may seem to support the 16 ppmv/K conceptualization you believe in. But that’s one data point. There are thousands of years when this formula does not show up in the ice core record. In fact, nearly all of the last 10,000 doesn’t match up with the 16 ppmv/K conceptualization you believe is the truth. When the ice core record doesn’t explain what it’s supposed to, and one has to stretch the bounds of credibility (“well, in the 1600s CO2 dropped for a while”) to make it work, then we’re left with arguing whether or not the Titanic was unsinkable.
This is nothing more than a rather weak attempt to explain away the lack of substantiation in the ice core record for the 16 ppmv/K conceptualization you believe in. From ~8000 years ago to 150 years ago, CO2 levels rose by about 30 ppm. During this same time, temperatures dropped by 3 degrees C. This is the opposite of what the formula said SHOULD happen. For those who are not shackled by confirmation bias, that would be enough to at least reconsider whether 16 ppmv/K is a “fact” of nature. Because apparently 7,850 years is NOT “enough time to reach that value”. And yet, simultaneously, you claim that the 6 ppm drop in CO2 during the early 1600s, which took place over the course of a few decades, was indeed “enough time to reach that value”, allowing you to feel justified in citing this as an example of how the 16 ppmv/K conceptualization has been substantiated. You wildly contradict yourself, and then you chide me for my skepticism that you have all your “facts” straight. That’s why I’m the skeptic here, and you continue to operate as the believer whose entire case rests upon unsubstantiated presuppositions.
I would love to see the explanation as to how CO2 levels started climbing in the 1700’s
http://www.john-daly.com/zjfig1a.gif
Notice yet again, another unsupportable fudge, so ignore the graph on the right and look at the left graph..
This shows a climb from 279ppm starting in 1661 (might be 1681) climbing to 320ppm by 1851
This is all obviously due to human CO2 from SUVs etc… 😉
Actually, the law dome data say CO2 concentrations were 280 ppm as of the 1790s…and increased to 290 ppm by the early 1880s. This happened without any increases in anthropogenic emissions (as the graph below shows).
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Anthropogenic-Emissions-vs-CO2-Rise-Non-Correlation.jpg
Please Andy,
That graph is from the late Dr. Jaworowski, a well known specialist of radionuclides in ice cores as result of the fallout of Chernobyl. He did never any experiment on CO2 in ice cores, but had a lot of comments on possible artifacts in 1992. These were point by point refuted by the drilling of three ice cores at Law Dome, published in 1996 by Etheridge e.a.
What happened with that graph is that Jaworowski used the wrong column in the results of the Siple Dome ice core: he looked at the column of the ice age, not the average gas age. The pores in firn remain open during decennia, which makes that the average gas age is much younger than the surrounding ice. Either Jaworowski made a mistake or he was deliberately making a point of a non-event.
See my comments on other blunders of Jaworowski here:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html
And stomata data need to be calibrated to ice core data, as they show a local bias…
sorry Ferb, I do not follow link to the linkers own web site.
So stomata are wrong.. because they don’t agree ??
Whatever !!!
Andy,
I don’t have cookies on my web site ot any other sneaky spyware (may be reverse…) but here is the table from the Siple Dome ice core for which Jaworowski accused Neftel of “arbitrary shifting the data 83 years to match the Mauna Loa data”:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/siple_02.jpg
He used the column “ice from (year AD)” for the left plot of CO2 levels, but there is no CO2 measured in the ice phase, that is measured in the gas phase, which is the column “Air enclosed (year AD)”, because that is much younger and has a time span. As a few measurements overlap direct measurements (don’t remember at Mauna Loa or South Pole for that core), his accusation is very strange, to say the least…
About stomata data, I made a lot of comment but I don’t see it anymore, maybe in the spam box…
In short: stomata data are a proxy for local CO2 data over land (highly variable), ice core CO2 are direct measurements of ancient air, but smoothed. Stomata data must be calibrated with ice core data, for any local bias, but if they show a different average in the past, the local bias has changed and the stomata data must be recalibrated against the ice cores, not reverse…
Self-aggrandising web sites never have any interest to me.
Not interested in that sort of interpretation and plea to authority.
As you say, stomata data is about where things were actually growing.
I know which I think is more important.
Andy,
I could make a lot of the same comments again and again, that is why I composed my web site, not because I like to be in the spotlights…
But as you fear to be contaminated by my writings, here some third party comment on stomata data and the original table of CO2 measurements in the Siple Dome ice core by Neftel:
About the (un)reliability of stomata data for CO2 levels:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-1051.2004.tb00848.x
Here the table of Neftel in his original work:
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/neftel82-85.pdf
Also bare in mind that the 290ppm value from around 1900 is also due to what could be called a monumental cherry pick.
http://www.john-daly.com/zjfig2.gif
http://www.john-daly.com/zjiceco2.htm
From that last link
“A study of stomatal frequency in fossil leaves from Holocene lake deposits in Denmark, showing that 9400 years ago CO2 atmospheric level was 333 ppmv, and 9600 years ago 348 ppmv, falsify the concept of stabilized and low CO2 air concentration until the advent of industrial revolution “
Ferdinand, the overriding problem with why you are having such a difficult time persuading people here (well, you’ve convinced one person — SebastianH) is that you believe the 97%, 98.5%, and 1.5% values are all something close to, if not outright facts. You assume that if we don’t accept them as facts, we are wrong. Why? Because they are, well, facts. The truth is you, and we, really have no idea about what these percentages are. We understand and acknowledge this uncertainty/inscrutability. You don’t. You think it’s all been figured out, and settled.
Sorry, we just don’t accept at face value that you have access to the facts here. They are no more than presumptions and presuppositions.
Kenneth, Mr. Engelbeen has a lot of trouble convincing people in many blogs, on what he posits.
Me and Derek went over it with him back in 2009,at my old climate forum too.
He simply doesn’t do a good job adding up the emissions that is estimated. I posted this link where he the other day thinks it is garbage,despite that it was clear in showing how little mankind actually adds to the total since the 1700’s:
Carbon Dioxide: The Houdini of Gases
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Carbon_Dioxide_The_Houdini_of_Gases.pdf
“Ferdinand, the overriding problem with why you are having such a difficult time persuading people here (well, you’ve convinced one person — SebastianH) is that you believe the 97%, 98.5%, and 1.5% values are all something close to, if not outright facts. ”
these are facts. The natural cycle now has some serious amount of CO2 added by humans. Which part of it is NOT a fact?
Kenneth,
Indeed, it wonders me every time again, after years of discussion, that so many people refuse what (near) every housewive with a small budget seems to know: if you spend more than your budget, you are in trouble. No matter how high that budget is.
As already explained upwards, what we know of the natural fluxes are rough estimates, based on CO2, O2 and δ13C changes. The largest fluxes are diurnal to seasonal.
Again, the height of these in and out fluxes is of not the slightest importance as that doesn’t change the amount of CO2 within the atmosphere with one gram, as long as inputs and outputs are equal.
What is known are the global human emissions with a reasonable accuracy (+/- 0.5 ppmv). We also measure the global CO2 increase in the atmosphere with high accuracy (+/- 0.2 ppmv). The difference between the global natural income and global total sinks is the difference between human emissions and what is measured as increase in the atmosphere. It is that simple…
No reasoning can change that fact: nature, in every year since 1959, was a net sink for CO2, whatever the height of the natural fluxes. No matter if the human contribution was 1%, 0.1% or 0.01% of the natural inputs: total outputs were larger than natural inputs and as long as the increase in the atmosphere was smaller than the human contribution, humans were the sole/main cause of the increase.
On can invent 101 theories why humans are not the cause of the increase, but any theory that refutes the contribution from human emissions must come with very good arguments and show that none of the observations is violated. Bartemis’ pure mathematical theory violates even every observation…
I am still waiting for such a theory that doesn’t violate any observation from the skeptic side, the above “blockbuster” paper is no exception on that rule.
On the other side, humans as cause of the increase in the atmosphere fits all observations:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
That is one of the few points where the “consensus” is damn right on very solid grounds. If you like it or not (I don’t like it, but they are right on this point, even if they fail on almost every other point).
What I see is that many skeptics are -deservedly- quite critical for anything that the warmists say or the data if they don’t like the results, but cease to be critical the moment that what is said is what they like to hear, like the use of e.g. stomata data, no matter how wrong these are. Segalstad, Jaworowski, Beck, Salby,… all made huge mistakes and/or misinterpretations of the data, but still are used as “proof” that real good data must be wrong…
Ferdinand, the 16 ppmv/K formula much of your case rests upon doesn’t fit the law dome evidence. The temperature dropped by about 1 K between the MWP and 1400-1900 period (LIA). The CO2 concentration didn’t fall by 16 ppm. Instead, it rose during that time. The CO2 didn’t budge during the ~150-year cooling-warming event 8,200 years ago, when global temperatures fell and then rose by multiple degrees C. The HadCRUT dataset has depicted no net temperature change between 1850 and 1930, when CO2 levels rose by more than 20 ppm. I know you want to believe that 16 ppmv/K is a “law” because, well, it just is. But we’re not going to believe in a formula that doesn’t fit the other evidence. From the available evidence, CO2 concentration changes appear to be far more stochastic than formulaic.
Furthermore, your “natural steady state” value of 290 ppm (above which you believe any increase is 100% anthropogenic) is itself a made-up conceptualization/presumption that you have somehow managed to convince yourself is a “fact”.
The law dome data say CO2 concentrations were 280 ppm as of the 1790s…and increased to 290 ppm by the early 1880s. This happened without any increases in anthropogenic emissions (as the graph below shows).
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Anthropogenic-Emissions-vs-CO2-Rise-Non-Correlation.jpg
You are obviously unable to explain this using your 290 ppm “natural steady state” and 16 ppmv/K presuppositions (that you’ve convinced yourself are “facts”).
You can proceed to further attempt to intimidate with your argument from authority or by insinuating that I am dumber than a “housewive” because I don’t accept your belief that you’ve got this all figured out at face value.
I am agnostic on this issue. I presume the human contribution is somewhere between about 1% and 50%. You believe it’s essentially 100%. But I really don’t know. Nor do you. I acknowledge that we don’t have enough information. You think we’ve got it all figured out. And yet we’re now approaching 200 comments and I am even less convinced of your version of “truth” than before you entered this arena again. You were here the last time we discussed it, and you were no more convincing then for effectively the very same reasons: your entire case rests on a series of presumptions and presuppositions, not “facts”.
You may be able to convince a “housewive” you have all the facts already, but considering the paleoclimatic evidence, the rate change evidence after El Nino and volcanic events, the long-term AF flat-lining relative to dramatically rising emissions, and considering what I have learned about the agenda of the believers and their tendencies to twist the data to their liking…I will continue to be skeptical that your beliefs are “facts.” You have fallen far short of convincing me otherwise.
I’m perfectly willing to accept that human contribution to rising atmospheric CO2 level is somewhere in the range of 15 – 50%.
I would be a bit upset if it were lower, because it would mean that we would have difficulty pushing the aCO2 concentration up higher, to where nature would prefer it.
Unfortunately, I doubt we will ever consume enough sequestered carbon to push it up to optimum growth levels of 1000+ppm…
…but something around 700ppm should be within the realm of possibility
…once we start to take our responsibility as planetary custodian seriously
… and stop demonising one of the two main gases that allow all life on earth to exist.
It can’t be any less than 100% because we are emitting more CO2 than the amount the CO2 level is increasing.
roflmao
Your moronic unproven conjectures are becoming increasingly hilarious.
Found that paper yet, seb..
Or do you just want to “BELIEVE” despite all evidence to contrary.
That make AGW a religion….
…. and you a religious zealot.
…. an AGW “fundamentalist”
And a particularly nasty and destructive religion it is, too.
“The natural cycle now has some serious amount of CO2 added by humans.”
Isn’t it wonderful that we humans were able to save the biosphere from its barely sustainable levels over the last hundred thousand years.
WELL DONE HUMANS 🙂 🙂
Keep up the good work..
the biosphere NEEDS increased atmospheric CO2
Kenneth:
“the 16 ppmv/K formula much of your case rests upon doesn’t fit the law dome evidence.”
It does if you look at the detailed graph:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
There is a drop of ~6 ppmv around 1600 for a temperature drop of ~0.8 K (Moberg, Esper and other reconstructions). or ~8 ppmv/K on relative short periods like decades to centuries.
The 16 ppmv/K is the setpoint for the equilibrium between oceans and atmpshere, that isn’t the instantaneous value in the atmosphere, which needs time to get that equilibrium, especially for the deep oceans with ~800 years cycles…
As we may assume that the MWP was at least as warm as the current temperature, then the increase since the LIA should be not more than 6 ppmv…
Kenneth, you are quibbling over peanuts. Temperature data from the past may be quite uncertain, as good as which and how much other natural and human sources were at work over what time span.
About the non-fossil human sources in the early period:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/004565359390413Y
“reaching about 1 Gt of carbon (GtC) as CO2/yr and 10 Tg of carbon CH4/yr by 1800”
Average 1 GtC/year non-fossil contribution by humans is 120 GtC extra between 1750 and 1870, or 60 ppmv human emissions over that period. Seems to me more than enough to increase CO2 in the atmosphere with 20 ppmv…
What we know for sure is that CO2 changed from 180 to 310 ppmv with a lag after a less sure temperature proxy(!) change of about 8 degrees.
The lags: 800 +/- 600 during a deglaciation
Up to 8,000 years during a glaciation.
Anyway 310 was the maximum during the Eemian with a temperature about 2 K above current and trees growing up to the Arctic Ocean.
While the 16 ppmv/K fits Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater, it is only the lead value over very long time spans where the deep oceans are involved, not the immediate value over very short time spans (seasonal: ~5 ppmv/K, year by year: 4-5 ppmv/K).
I don’t need to convince housewives, as they understand what I am talking about. But is hard to convince people who want nothing from the “warmist” side, even if it is (for once) real…
See you next time…
This has become pathetic now.
Ferdinand, during the entire 1400-1900 period that is included in the “Little Ice Age,” temperatures rose and fell multiple times by several tenths of a degree C. The 1600s Maunder wasn’t the only solar minimum, or decadal-scale period with low temperatures. From the late 1700s to the first few decades of the 19th century (Dalton), temperatures plummeted by about a full degree C…and yet there was not only not a decrease in CO2 concentration during that time, CO2 actually rose by about 5 ppm (278 to 284 ppm). That doesn’t fit with the formula. So, of course, you must dismiss it. You dismiss any evidence that contradicts your beliefs.
For that matter, consider this graph of ocean heat content (Pacific) for the Holocene: https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Holocene-Cooling-Pacific-Heat-Content-Rosenthal13-copy.jpg
Notice how temperatures would routinely rise and fall by a full degree (or even 2 degrees!) within a matter of a few hundred years. These warming and cooling events took place without any ppmv change in CO2 — according to the ice core evidence that you think is reliable when it suits your purposes. Late last year, another paper was published documenting the commonality of these abrupt heat changes (0-1000 m layer heating by 2 degrees C within 200 years).
—
Bova et al., 2016
Rapid variations in deep ocean temperature detected in the Holocene
The observational record of deep-ocean variability is short, which makes it difficult to attribute the recent rise in deep ocean temperatures to anthropogenic forcing. Here, we test a new proxy – the oxygen isotopic signature of individual benthic foraminifera – to detect rapid (i.e. monthly to decadal) variations in deep ocean temperature and salinity in the sedimentary record. We apply this technique at 1000 m water depth in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific during seven 200-year Holocene intervals. Variability in foraminifer δ18O over the past 200 years is below the detection limit [a change in ocean heat cannot be detected in the past 200 years due to its insignificance], but δ18O signatures from two mid-Holocene intervals indicate temperature swings >2 °C within 200 years.
—
The Early Holocene was about 2 or 3 degrees warmer than the Late Holocene. And yet the Early Holocene had CO2 values in the 260 ppm range. The Late Holocene values averaged in the 280 ppm range. So we’ve had an increase of 20 ppm from the Early to Late Holocene, and yet, during this same period, surface temperatures declined by 2 to 3 degrees.
During the last glacial, temperatures rose and fell by 5 to 10 degrees C within a matter of decades to centuries…while CO2 concentrations remained steady at 180 ppm.
I could go on and on with another dozen or so examples that show your 16 ppmv/K “law” is no more a “law” than I am a “housewive”. And yet no matter how many examples from the ice core record (that you believe is accurate when it is convenient) that I reference undermining your 16 ppmv/K “law”, you will insist it is the “truth” anyway.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You are completely close-minded when it comes to this topic. Any contrary evidence is dismissed. Any supporting evidence is warmly accepted. You want it both ways. I see through this, but you are so blinded by your allegiance to the conceptualization that 100% of CO2 changes are human caused that you don’t even recognize what’s happening here. You think you know, but you don’t. You think you have the facts, but you don’t. These are presumptions and presuppositions, Ferdinand.
It’s called math, AndyG55. I know … hilarious how you can calculate (and/or just measure) stuff to find out what is what. No need for scientific papers to tell your that 1 + 1 is 2 🙂
If your employer pays you $2000 a month and you win one million dollar in the lottery, and you spend nearly everything on strippers and CO2 parties managing to keep just $1000 on your bank account at the end of the month. Is your employer then less than 100% responsible that your balance is +1000 dollars instead of -1000 dollars?
The ice core evidence says that CO2 concentrations were 290 ppm for about 4 years in the early 1880s. So assuming that your claim that the “natural steady state” for CO2 is 290 ppm is indeed the truth, and that the industrial revolution happened after that (most people wouldn’t agree that the industrial revolution began in 1885, but that’s your claim), explain why it is that CO2 rose from 280 ppm in the 1790s to 290 ppm in the 1880s without any changes in anthropogenic emissions. What caused CO2 to rise, SebastianH?
That’s a really strange question after that particular quote. Why are you (again) changing the subject?
Hmm, let’s see … what could possible change the CO2 level? Literally anything that emits or sinks CO2.
To get back to the quote: sometimes your bank balance may increase because of additional income or less CO2 parties. You are now saying that addition $100 income would change the bank balance to $1100 and therefor the normal income is not fully responsible for the increasing balance? Correct?
That’s actually a valid thing to say, but it misses the point everyone mentioning “mass balance” here was making. If you take away the regular income, the bank balance would have decreased. Got it?
Um, the reason it may seem strange to you is that I was purposely illustrating how unrelated your “bank balance” example was to the topic at hand. You missed the irony.
You have made the assumption that the “natural steady state” for CO2, like a bank balance, is 290 ppm. The CO2 concentration was 290 ppm during the 1882-1885 period. And then you claimed that the industrial revolution happened after that. My question to you was what caused the CO2 concentration to rise from 280 ppm in the 1790s to 290 ppm in the 1880s, since it is your claim that 290 ppm is the “natural steady state.” It is an entirely relevant question, as it pertains to the subject at hand far better than your bank balance analogy.
“It’s called math.”
No its basic arithmetic.
maths is far beyond you..
… as is anything to do with real provable science…
…as you keep proving with your abject inability to produce one single paper to back the very basis of the AGW cult scam.
STILL WAITING !!!!
Gotta remember, Kenneth, ..
all seb has is his mindless analogies.
its not that he has forgotten about science..
its that he NEVER had any in the first place.
But to keep his mindless analogy going.. so he can maybe comprehend.. (lol…as if !)..
Nature is like a bank, the more you have in your account the more it takes in interest.
“No need for scientific papers to tell your that 1 + 1 is 2”
Scientific papers helping your religious scam you are sadly lacking.. as you have proven.
Good thing you aren’t ready to proceed to the next step, then, isn’t it, seb
Do let us know when you feel you are able to actually start learning past junior high level.
Kenneth,
Indeed it is getting pathetic. As said repeatedly, the 16 ppmv/K is hard science, backed by over 3 million seawater samples. If you have any scientific paper which disputes that, I am all ear.
Again that is the temperature controlled setpoint. To reach that dynamic equilibrium you need at least 5000 years (ice age to interglacial) until the deep oceans are in full equilibrium with the atmosphere.
At shorter time frames, the full 16 ppmv/K will not be reached and gets up to 8 ppmv/K over centuries (MWP-LIA). That is for the oceans.
Over shorter time spans, vegetation is the main respondent and dominates the temperature – CO2 ratio. That is 4-5 ppmv/K where seasonal and year by year changes are opposite to each other.
I never said or even implied that the temperature controlled setpoint is what should be measured at every moment in time, only that this is the target for the CO2-T equilibrium process and any disturbance by volcanoes, forest fires, human emissions, is removed towards that target with a current half life speed of about 35 years.
Indeed it is interesting to see that even the deep oceans are cooling and warming more rapidly that I expected, but that seems not to have much effect on CO2 levels, which needs clarification.
Anyway, your stance on small CO2 changes opposite to the temperature drop is proven wrong: even from 1700 onwards there were measurable human emissions from agriculture and cattle herding reaching 1 GtC/year in 1800, by far more than enough to explain the CO2 increase even with a cooling earth. Why do you ignore that research?
The ice cores show around 260-280 ppmv CO2 over the past 10,000 years. Even if they were wrong with tens of ppmv, that doesn’t explain the 110 ppmv rise in the past 165 years, or the more accurate direct measurements of 90 ppmv increase since 1959 where human emissions are twice that amount…
Even if the ice cores have a huge offset (for which is no indication), the change over the base in the past 10,000 years is unexplained without human emissions.
Here for CO2:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_010kyr.jpg
Here for CH4 over the past 1000 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_ch4.jpg
where you can see that CH4 starts to increase already around 1700.
Here for the 13C/12C ratio, both in the atmosphere and in the ocean surface (coralline sponges) over the past 600 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.jpg
Human emissions fit these “hockeysticks” quite well. As I said before, I am still waiting for any alternative explanation that 1. fits all observations, 2. explains away the human contribution.
Kenneth, no matter all this evidence for the human factor, the discussed “block buster” paper is completely bogus, as it uses the residence time, which says next to nothing about how long it takes to remove an extra shot CO2 into the atmosphere, whatever the source…
Kenneth and Andy,
Please, as long as CO2 doesn’t escape to space, the mass balance must be respected at any moment in time.
As long as the measured increase in the atmosphere is smaller than the human emissions, nature is a net sink and its contribution to the atmospheric increase is negative. No amounts of CO2 cycling in and out can change that.
Here a challenge:
Show us skeptics of the non-human cause the detailed calculation for:
1. Any natural input or cycle that may cause the increase.
2. That such natural input or cycle doesn’t violate any observation.
3. That it explains the disappearance of the human emissions without affecting the increase in the atmosphere to a large extent.
Sebastian and I are waiting (I am already waiting near 10 years for such work)…
You can contact the author directly: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818116304787
Ferd, when will you GET IT !
I don’t give a stuff want percentage of atmospheric CO2 is coming from humans..
… SO LONG AS ATMOSPHERIC CO2 KEEPS CLIMBING.
If its nearer 100% than 15%.. all the better !! 🙂
… because China, India, Japan, Germany, USA, Turkey, Poland etc etc… and slowly but surely, third world countries, are going to continue to pump it into the atmosphere. 🙂
I have no worries about a biosphere deficit (like the last hundreds or thousand of years) at any time in the near or distant future. 🙂
Its the economic waste of renewables, and the totalitarian socialist one-world bureaucratic government aspects of the anti-science anti-CO2 agenda that worry me.
Perhaps you believe that if you restate your position over and over again, at some point I’ll decide that you have this all figured out. I don’t view your opinions as authoritative on this topic, Ferdinand. I don’t buy into your argument from authority reasoning.
There is no such ppm number that is the “natural steady state” for CO2. The ice core record has the “natural steady state” (290 ppm) lasting exactly 4 years: 1882 to 1885. The 180 ppm value lasted for about 80,000 years after the Eemian. That you believe 4 years = a “natural steady state”, but 80,000 years at the same value is not the “natural steady state” is rather odd. The 290 ppm value was arbitrarily selected. It is not a “law” any more than the 470 ppm values reached a few million years ago were a “law”.
Furthermore, the 16 ppmv/K is not a “law” either. It’s a made-up value that doesn’t even work for nearly all of the last 100,000 years. When I point this out to you, your comeback is: “Yes it is. The temperature dropped by 0.8 K during the 1600s when CO2 dropped by 6 ppm.”
I point out to you that the temperature dropped by almost 1 K from the late 1700s to the 1820s and 1830s as CO2 levels rose by 6 ppm (278 to 284 ppm). Your response: Silence. Ignore it. Claim the ice core evidence isn’t reliable in this case.
I point out that the Holocene temperature dropped by 2 or 3 degrees C while CO2 rose from 260 ppm to 280 ppm — the opposite of the 16 ppmv/K “law”. Your response: Silence. Ignore it. Claim the ice core evidence isn’t reliable in this case.
I point out that the 8.2 K event had temperatures rise and fall by multiple degrees C within a matter of decades…while CO2 concentrations remained steady at 260 ppm throughout. Your response: Silence. Ignore it. Claim the ice core evidence isn’t reliable in this case.
I point out that the last glacial had 25 instances in which temperatures rose by 5 to 10 degrees C within less than 50 years…while CO2 concentrations remained steady at 180 ppm throughout. Your response: Silence. Ignore it. Claim the ice core evidence isn’t reliable in this case.
It’s like I’m debating with someone who insists reindeer can fly. I point out that they don’t have the physical capacity to do so, and then you turn around and say, “Well, but did you get a Christmas present from Santa?”
No matter how much evidence I present that contradicts your arbitrarily-derived “laws” that you’ve conceptualized due to your reliance on authority, you will just turn around and say, “No, I’m still right. I have the facts. I know the truth. 290 ppm IS a law. 16 ppmv/K IS a law.”
Sorry you’ve wasted your time, Ferdinand. I am a true skeptic. I need more evidence than you do to believe that what you say are “laws” are actually “laws.” Especially since they don’t work.
Sorry, but anyone who thinks a value marginally above the plant no-grow state, is a good value for atmospheric CO2, has got rocks in their head.
The ice cores dropping down to 180ppm or so shows just how perilously close the planet came to ceasing to grow altogether.
I’m sure we would find massive plant die-back in those periods.
(It should also be noted from those ice cores that at no time of peak CO2, was this CO2 able to maintain the peak temperature, in fact, at peak CO2, the temperature invariably started to drop. So much for CO2 warming.)
Although humans have help the biosphere out of that dangerous biosphere life-or-death cycle, Earth is still not out of danger in that respect, especially with the loonie anti-CO2 scam going on.
It really is STUPIDITY TO THE MAX. !!!
Thankfully there are many developing countries ignoring these fools, and going ahead with coal fired power anyway, so I’m not worried about the CO2 levels dropping back down anytime in my or my children’s or grandchildren’s time
Hopefully by then, enough rational people will have figured out that higher levels of atmospheric CO2 are totally and absolutely beneficial to all life on Earth.
Kenneth,
Indeed this is a waste of time.
As shown again and again, you simply don’t understand anything about process dynamics. According to you, if you turn the thermostat in a room to 22°C which is at that moment at 15°C and one second later the room is not at 22°C, then your central heating is not working…
Yet you make it even worse: 290 ppmv is NOT the “natural steady state” for every period in time, the natural steady state was 180 ppmv during 80,000 years of glacials, it was 310 ppmv at the height of the warmer Eemian and it is 290 ppmv today, it may be 300 or 280 ppmv tomorrow, just not 400 ppmv, except if we had an enormous meteor impact and subsequent Yellowstone-like eruption… That is what Henry’s law says about the natural equilibrium over the past few million years. That we are at 400 ppmv today is simply not natural.
Kenneth, I have repeatedly responded to all your objections, now you accuse me of neglecting your objections?
Anyway here it ends, except if there are questions left from more reasonable persons…
Pierre Gosselin,
I am preparing a longer comment for Hermann Harde, where I will explain -again- that the residence time is not a measurement for the removal of any excess CO2 injected into the atmosphere. No matter what caused the extra CO2.
The same basic error that too many skeptics made in the past…
Ferdinand, the drop of 6 ppmv occurred abruptly during the early 17th century. And then it returned to its pre-drop levels. And then temperature dropped again (to lower levels than the 1600s) and rose again, without any change in CO2 concentration. Indeed, CO2 rose by 6 ppm during the late 18th century to early 19th century (Dalton) as the temperature plummeted. In other words, your MWP-LIA drop of ~6 ppmv doesn’t work. I agree with you, though, that it and all other temperature-CO2 changes should indeed work if we are to successfully link the 16 ppmv/K formula to the ice core record. The link has not been successful, however.
Oh, I’d just love to see you support this contention that neither the Younger Dryas or 8.2 K events were global in scope. I had a feeling you were quite uninformed in this area, as it also appeared to be brand new information for you when you were presented with the information that Pacific Ocean 0-1000 m temperatures rose and fell by 2 C within 200 years routinely during the Holocene.
—
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.462.9271&rep=rep1&type=pdf
A large number of paleoclimatic records over a hemispheric area show a large and abrupt climate change around 8200 years BP. However, the duration and general character of the event have been ambiguous. Here, we provide a precise characterization and timing of the event using methane and nitrogen isotopes in trapped air in an ice core. Climate change in Greenland and at a hemispheric scale was simultaneous (within ~4 years) as supported by climate model results (LeGrande et al., 2006). The event started around ~8175 years BP, and it took less than 20 years to reach the coldest period, with a magnitude of cooling of ~3.3 C in central Greenland. After 60 years of maximum cold, climate gradually recovered for 70 years to a similar state as before the event [+3.3 C within 70 years]. The total duration of the event was roughly 150 years. The fall in temperatures that accompanied the 8.2 ka event also corresponded with abrupt migrations of human populations and abandonment of sites ranging from Spain to Greece and in the Middle East (Gonzalez-Samperiz et al., 2009) …. Ice cores from Greenland (Alley et al., 1997) and Africa (Thompson et al., 2002) suggest that the 8.2 ka event was global in extent.
—
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377839815000456
Between 8.5 and 8.1 kyr, contemporaneous to the globally documented 8.2 kyr Event
—
Let me know if you’d like to learn about the global scope of the Younger Dryas. (I doubt you do, as you’d prefer to immerse yourself in your confirmation biases.) That you think the Pliestocene/Holocene transition was regional rather than global is quite telling as to how little you know about the paleoclimate record.
This is so amusing to read coming from you, as you have no idea the irony considering your own close-mindedness.
I correctly write that the ice core evidence doesn’t remotely support the 16 ppmv/K formula you believe in. In response, you say: “Yes it does. Look at the 1600s, when CO2 dropped by 6 ppm and temperature dropped by 0.8 K.” So you do accept the premise that the ice core CO2 record should match changes in temperature to support the 16 ppmv/K formula, and then you provide one data point in which it appears to do so. Fine.
But then when I correctly point out that the plummeting temperature from the late 18th to the early 19th century does not support the formula, as temperatures dropped by nearly 1 K as CO2 rose by 6 ppm, and what do you say in response to this data point that contradicts your formula? It doesn’t matter. It’s not relevant. So a matching data point for the 1600s matters to the 16 ppmv/K when it works, but it conveniently doesn’t matter for the many other data points (Early to Late Holocene 2-3 C cooling while CO2 rises by 20 ppm, OHC changes at rates of 2 C per 200 years in the 0-1000 m layer without CO2 changes, the 8.2 K event, D-O cycles, and on and on) when the formula does not work.
You agree the 16 ppmv/K should match the ice core record when you find evidence that supports this viewpoint, but when presented with evidence that contradicts it, you pivot, insist its a law, retreat to the argument from authority (logical fallacy), and claim those counter points don’t matter. It’s the height of confirmation bias, and you’re so blinded with it you can’t even recognize it when you so routinely employ it.
You claim the “natural steady state” for CO2 is 290 ppm. The ice core evidence has this “natural steady state” lasting for all of 4 years in the early 1880s. You cannot explain why CO2 rose from 280 ppm to 290 ppm from the 1790s to the 1880s without a change in anthropogenic emissions. So what do you do? You insist that the 280 ppm to 290 ppm change doesn’t matter, that the ice core record isn’t reliable enough in this case. So on the one hand you claim the ice core record is reliable (when it supports your confirmation bias), and then when you can’t explain why CO2 rose from 280 ppm to its “natural steady state” for four years in the 1880s with anthropogenic emissions, you once again pivot, retreat to the argument from authority, and compare me to a “housewive.”
In sum, this has been an epic fail, Ferdinand. You are no more open-minded than anyone else in the pro-CAGW crowd. You think you are, but you’re not. You think you know the “truth,” but you don’t. The 290 ppm “natural steady state” is an entirely arbitrarily-derived figure. You think it’s hard science. It’s not. But you go right on ahead and believe it is anyway. It’s not as if you were ever going to believe otherwise.
[…] Also this link […]
[…] paper è a questo link, benché ovviamente a pagamento, ma su questa pagina ce n’è un estratto abbastanza […]
‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.’
Mr Micawber
Cosmic rays create carbon-14 at roughly 8 kg/year in the upper atmosphere. Together with the half-life of carbon-14 and the mass of carbon-14 we observe in the atmosphere, this creation rate allows us to calculate with confidence the rate at which CO2 is exchanged with the deep ocean, and how temperature and human emissions will disturb the system. If you want to see how this is done, check link below, but you are all welcome to do the math yourself.
http://homeclimateanalysis.blogspot.com/2016/10/falsification-of-anthropogenic-global_39.html
[…] Mehr: https://notrickszone.com/2017/02/25/blockbuster-paper-finds-just-15-of-co2-growth-since-industrializa… […]
Well the more CO2 there is, the more downwelling infrared radiation at a Planck temperature of -80 deg C will…
…”warm” us….
Well, that’s 193 more degrees than with no downwelling IR radiation. Just kidding, of course you know how radiative transfers work and made a joke too, right?
poor seb.. still doesn’t comprehend basic science
He KNOWS that CO2 doesn’t cause any warming in a convective atmosphere, don’t you seb.
Or are you staying in your fantasy world where proof is never required?
Says the one with zero proof. The claim that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and its effect can be measured and has been measured. Doesn’t matter if there is convection or not. However it is likely impossible to sustain convection without ir-active gases …
Only person with ZERO PROOF is you, poor little brain-washed bozo.
STILL WAITING !!.
Nada, Zippo … EMPTY, you are.
At least you are now admitting there is convention.
I wonder what controls that convection.. any ideas, seb ?????
Tiny step by tiny step you are putting reality together. !!!
“Only person with ZERO PROOF is you, poor little brain-washed bozo.”
nothing but insults again, the direct CO2 effect can be measured. The global effect must be calculated. This is science.
Irksome, anti-human AGW scammers are now attacking staple foods.
DISGUSTING
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-7.29.09-PM.gif
“This is so amusing to read coming from you, as you have no idea the irony considering your own close-mindedness.”
sorry, but you are wrong and Ferdinand Engelbeen is right.
This whole topic is absurd!
the paper is not a blockbuster (it is a minor paper, written by a known sceptic, who has positions that have been contradicted before).
The main finding of the paper (humans not being the main source of the sudden CO2 increase) is obviously false.
Any discussion about this subject is a support of fake news!
And just like that, sod has just settled the debate. Who needs 250 comments when all we needed was to have sod weigh in?
Thanks again, sod, for clearing this up. Now we know what truth we should believe in. The “natural steady state” of CO2 concentration for the planet is 290 ppm. So says Ferdinand Engelbeen. And sod. So it must be right.
Kenneth,
Just out of curiosity, do you have any scientific evidence that the natural steady state for the current average ocean temperature is 400 ppmv (and climbing with 2 ppmv/year)?
I have never once made the claim that any ppmv value is the “natural steady state” for any period. The “natural steady state” is an entirely made-up conceptualization that you have elevated to a “fact” in your own mind. The 290 ppmv value was oddly plucked from the ice core record even though the ice core record has the concentration in this “natural steady state” for all of 4 years in the 1880s.
Have you ever considered the possibility that our understanding of CO2 concentration changes over time is incomplete and flawed? I doubt you have. You have even described your “certainty” that you have this all figured out, and that you know the truth on these matters. That’s not how true skeptics think or write. True skeptics are much more willing to admit their agnosticism than you have shown here. Humble yourself, Ferdinand. You really don’t know as much as you think you do about these processes. Admit that there is a lot you still don’t really know instead of bombastically insisting that those who question your “authority” on these matters are questioning an absolute Truth.
Saying that 290 ppm is the steady state is a bit like saying that 2 slices of old bread and a glass of water a day, is steady state for human existence.
Kenneth,
Never heard of observations? If over 3 million seawater measurements confirm that the equilibrium between the ocean surface and the atmosphere can’t convince you that the current steady state for the current average ocean surface temperature is 290 ppmv, then we can’t have any discussion at all. Neither does it help that you repeat the same arguments that only show that you don’t know the difference between what the CO2 levels should be (the “steady state”) and what they really are…
See here how they measure the equilibrium pCO2 in the oceans for any sample:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/CO2/carbondioxide/text/LMG06_8_data_report.doc
And how they calculate the effect of a temperature change between the seawater inlet (Tin-situ) and the pCO2 equilibrium apparatus (Teq):
(pCO2)sw @ Tin situ = (pCO2)sw @ Teq x EXP[0.0423 x (Tin-situ – Teq)].
I am very aware of my own shortcomings, but the difference between you and me is that I only discuss things after thorough comparison of the arguments from both sides, and decide for myself what can be right and what is wrong, no matter from what side the arguments come. In this case the “warmistas” are right and too many skeptics are wrong…
Ferdinand, your “3 million seawater measurements” explanation does not in any way alleviate your problem. It is YOUR claim that the 16 ppmv/K conceptualization fits, or at least correlates with the ice core record. I agree with you that it SHOULD fit or correlate with the ice core record if it is to be affirmed as accurate. However, as you know, the 16 ppmv/K conceptualization you believe in does not correlate with the ice core record. Instead of acknowledging this, you choose to cherry-pick a short term period in the 1600s when CO2 dropped by 6 ppm and temperature dropped by 0.8 K. And then, like a true believer, you ignore all the other data points that do not fit or correlate with 16 ppmv/K. It’s naked confirmation bias, and yet, once again, you have refused to acknowledge that the 16 ppmv/K conceptualization does not work. You just ignore the contrary evidence, or you just pretend it doesn’t exist. That’s not what true skeptics do.
You have a problem, Ferdinand. Your beliefs don’t match up with the ice core evidence. Instead of pretending this isn’t a problem, or instead of trying to convince others that your beliefs are the correct ones, you’ll need to figure out how to explain why 16 ppmv/K does not work for the ice core record, even though, as you acknowledge, it SHOULD work.
No, the difference between you and me is that I am perfectly willing to admit that I don’t know all there is to know about why CO2 concentrations vary. Contrary to your wrong characterization, I have not taken a position. I’m open to the interpretation that most CO2 changes are caused by humans, but I think this is less likely to be accurate than the explanation that most CO2 concentration changes are caused by natural variability. I’m a proud agnostic on this issue. You, on the other hand, are wholly convinced, and claim that it is certain that all or nearly all CO2 changes are human-caused. That’s not how true skeptics talk. Especially since you have such a glaring evidence problem that you refuse to address. Again, skeptics don’t run away from problems with their conceptualizations or hypotheses. They embrace them. And you certainly do not like it when someone calls attention to the arbitrariness of 290 ppm as a “natural steady state” (and the argument from authority logical fallacy upon which it rests) or the lack of substantiation for the 16 ppmv/K conceptualization from the ice core record.
Kenneth,
Have a look at the T-CO2 record of the Vostok ice core over the past 420,000 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/Vostok_trends.gif
Which shows a quite linear ratio between CO2 and temperature of ~8 ppmv/K. As that is mainly for the temperature effect near the poles, that translates to ~16 ppmv/K for the whole southern hemisphere oceans, where most of the 18O/16O derived temperature change originates.
That is the natural steady state over the past 800,000 years, as it was confirmed by the longer time period of the Dome C ice core.
Does that mean that CO2 follows the steady state momentary at every moment? Not at all: during warming periods, CO2 lags T changes with ~800 years. During cooling periods, CO2 lags T with several thousands of years.
That has as result that on shorter periods, not the full 16 ppmv/K is reached, as can be seen in the above graph, where more points are longer above the 8 ppmv/K line (during cooling) than below (during warming), as that is a matter of difference in lag.
That is the only reason that the Law Dome ice core does show a smaller change in a shorter time period that the 16 ppmv/K.
For a view over the full 800,000 year period:
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Faculty/Matthew_Turner/ec1340/readings/BAS_sep10.pdf
Still the 16 ppmv/K for seawater did work then and now, as measured in ice cores and today’s seawater.
“I’m open to the interpretation that most CO2 changes are caused by humans”
Oh, yes? I have heard that of other “skeptics” too, who embrace every hint of a non-human source, even if all evidence shows that it can’t be right. Including the above “blockbuster paper”.
Can you explain to me how a 4 year residence time has anything to do with removing some extra CO2 shot (whatever the source) out of the atmosphere as the paper in discussion claims?
Can you explain to me, if humans are not the cause of the increase, why the 13C/12C ratio in atmosphere and ocean surface are dropping in exact ratio to human emissions?
Can you explain to me, if the oceans were the main source, why the 13C/12C ratio is not going up instead of down?
Can you explain to me, if the biosphere was the main source, why the earth is greening (thus removing more CO2 out of the atmosphere)?
The fact is that human emissions fit every single observation while every alternative explanation I have heard of fails one or more observations… See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
Even if you don’t like it that humans may be responsible for the recent CO2 increase, you can see it as a working hypothesis, as there is no compelling reason (like a violation of an observation) to reject it.
Ferdinand, it is your claim that a resolution of a 100 years or so demonstrates that the 16 ppmv/K works for the Holocene. That’s why you claimed that a brief 6 ppm decline during the 1600s (which you claimed was connected to a -0.8 K temperature decline) was a data point in support of the conceptualization that for every 16 ppmv change in CO2, there is a 1 K change in temperature. The problem is, this doesn’t remotely work for the Holocene unless you do some very, very tendentious cherry-picking (which you have done, of course). Between 8,000 years ago and ~1910, CO2 rose by 50 ppm. During this same period, temperature declined by about 3.0 C. This is the exact opposite of what the 16 ppmv/K conceptualization you espouse says SHOULD have happened, as temperatures should have risen by 3.0 C (16 ppmv X 3), not declined by 3.0 C. That’s a total temperature error or incompatibility of 6.0 C.
Do you address this glaring contradiction in your reply? Of course you don’t. Once again, you have ignored/dismissed it and instead you have provided links to selected/cherry-picked visuals that you hope will convince me that I should just overlook it too.
I point to the 8.2 K event as contradicting the 16 ppmv/K conceptualization, as temperatures rose and then fell by about 3.0 C within 150 years while CO2 remained flat, and you attempt to dismiss this by unknowingly claiming the 8.2 K event wasn’t global. Every time I point out that 16 ppmv/K doesn’t work, you ignore it and pretend that what I wrote doesn’t matter…because you think you have all the facts and know all there is to know about this subject. It’s nothing but hubris to insist that presuppositions have morphed into “facts”. I am completely comfortable with agnosticism on this issue. Proceed with your certainty.
Kenneth,
OK, this is a complete waste of time. If you don’t understand the difference between what the CO2 “setpoint” is for the current and past CO2/T ratio and how much time it costs in the real wprld to reach that setpoint, then any real discussion is impossible. It only shows, again and again, that you have not the slightest knowledge of process dynamics.
Bye…
BTW, the 50 ppmv increase during the Holocene is largely caused by humans too…
I agree it’s a waste of time to continue to expect you to acknowledge or address the ice core record’s incompatibility with the 16 ppmv/K conceptualization you believe in. Keep on dismissing evidence that contradicts your position, Ferdinand. You’re sure to persuade others that you know all there is to know about this subject, and thus your presuppositions have crystallized into “facts.”
Of course. Starting 8,000 years ago, humans raised CO2 concentrations by 50 ppm, and then we simultaneously caused ocean heat content to decline by multiple degrees C during that same period. Here’s what that looks like:
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Holocene-Cooling-Pacific-Ocean-Rosenthal-13-CO2.jpg
It’s a match!
Kenneth,
Here a graph that shows the difference between the effect of a temperature change of the ocean surface and its result on CO2 levels, here for the deep ocean – atmosphere exchanges:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
It takes decennia to level off the 16 ppmv/K for the ocean surface – CO2 equilibrium, but it takes millennia to fully equilibrate a deep oceans temperature change to the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. The same for the biosphere: months to years for the fast growth/decay of leaves, decades to centuries for stems and wood…
Back already? 🙂
Why stop there? Of course you believe that humans were largely the cause of the 180 ppm to 300 ppm rise in CO2 during the Eemian, ~125,000 years ago.
No doubt you believe that humans were responsible for making CO2 rise to 470 ppm during the Pliocene too. All that fossil fuel burning and stuff 4 million years ago.
By the way, you claim that humans caused the CO2 concentration to drop by 6 ppm during the 1600s. What activity were humans engaging in at that time to cause CO2 to decline like that? What activity did they begin to engage in after that to make it rise by another 30 ppm through 1910, when temperatures cooled overall?
Kenneth,
Not only humans, natural feedbacks too, according to the latest research. Maximum 30% human due to land use changes, 70% due to natural feedbacks. You see, if the knowledge changes, I change my opinion…
http://shadow.eas.gatech.edu/~jean/paleo/Lectures/Lecture_15.pdf
From that paper:
New data reveal:
1) d13C change during Holocene smaller than previously thought
2) CO2 in past interglacials didn’t necessarily go down; so CO2 in Holocene shouldn’t necessarily go down either.
Consensus:
Perhaps some room for human-induced CO2 changes during Holocene, but Ruddiman’s own estimates are <15ppm
More likely that CO2 changes reflect response of ocean carbonate system to changing terrestrial biomass; mechanisms and amounts still unclear.
…
About point 2): CO2 levels during the Eemian, the previous warm(er) interval remained high for over 5,000 years after the temperature started to drop(*). All natural. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/eemian.gif
(*) There is still a lot of discussion about when the temperatures in the Eemian started to drop. The D/H or 18O/16O changes which are used as proxy for the (mainly SH oceans) temperature do change with temperature at the ocean surface at evaporation but also where water vapor freezes to form snow. The dark blue line in the above graph is the temperature based on the direct D/H proxy, the light blue the "corrected" temperature, according to Jouzel.
"you claim that humans caused the CO2 concentration to drop by 6 ppm during the 1600s."
What? I never said that. I said that the CO2 drop was caused by the temperature drop. In my own country, around that period grapes growing (and wine making) ceased completely and moved 300 km southwards. Now it is back again. Difference in CO2: +6 ppmv from temperature, +104 ppmv from humans…
“you claim that humans caused the CO2 concentration to drop by 6 ppm during the 1600s.”
That’s odd. You claimed the 50 ppm rise in CO2 between 8 kaBP and 1910 was “largely” caused/modulated by human activity — even though temperatures dropped by 3 C during that same period, completely contradicting the 16 ppm/K narrative you espouse that says CO2 should rise by ~3 K with a 50 ppm increase in CO2. The conceptualization fails miserably. Of course, this latter point has, once again, gone completely unaddressed. Contradictory evidence must be dismissed and ignored to keep the narrative afloat.
But now you’ve added yet another reasoning gaffe with your response above. You here claim that the brief drop in CO2 during the 1600s was caused by a temperature drop, not by human emissions/activity changes. So you have affixed attribution to whichever “explanation” fits the pre-determined narrative.
When CO2 rises as the temperature declines, the CO2 change is “largely” due to human activity. When CO2 declines as the temperatures decline, the CO2 change suddenly is no longer “largely” caused by humans, but by temperature. Nearly 100% human attribution appears when CO2 rises. Human attribution disappears to almost 0% when CO2 declines by 6 ppm. My, this narrative has become even less consistent than I could have imagined it. It would have been better for you to have truly ended it after you wrote “Bye…”
To summarize your beliefs, then, temperature changes modulate CO2 concentration when CO2 concentration declines. When CO2 concentration rises, then humans did it, and temperatures didn’t. On the other hand, when CO2 rises by 50 ppm while temperatures decline by 3 C, that temperature decline doesn’t modulate the CO2 concentration. Temperature decline modulates the CO2 concentration only when the CO2 concentration declines. It’s all clear now, Ferdinand.
Can you explain why this graph does not remotely fit the 16 ppmv/K conceptualization?
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Holocene-Cooling-Pacific-Ocean-Rosenthal-13-CO2.jpg
Pierre:
“Back already?”
As many who know me can testify, I have a lot of patience in trying to show what I think is right or wrong in climate science, including all possible arguments, supporting what I think.
In this case Kenneth seems to be as close minded as possible, now even reverses everything I said as “argument” that I am wrong…
Just hopeless…
Going to work further on my essay why Hermann Harde is wrong…
Not sure what “reversing” you are claiming I have done with your words. Please specify.
I am sorry that I do not accept your presuppositions as “fact”, Ferdinand. I assume you are used to having others do that.
“that the natural steady state for the current average ocean temperature is 400 ppmv”
I certainly hope it will climb much higher.
It obviously is NOT the steady state, no more than 290ppm was.
290 was dangerously low.. 400 is a slight bonus… 700+ would be a good first aiming point.
” The “natural steady state” of CO2 concentration for the planet is 290 ppm. So says Ferdinand Engelbeen. And sod. So it must be right.”
add in a couple of thousand scientists who really have some knowledge on the subject. But hey, that is just facts!
“add in a couple of paid anti-CO2 climate pseudo-scientists” .. this is what you meant to say, isn’t it.
Anyone who is NOT a denier of climate history or is NOT ignorant of the requirements of world plant life, would know that in better times for plant life, CO2 was much higher.
But what do twerps like sob care about plant life.
Plants, after all, are only responsible for feeding all life on Earth.
Andy please,
The 290 ppmv is what is measured, not an opinion from anyone paid by the governement.
180 ppmv during glacial periods indeed was at the edge of the survival of C3 plants, I agree, and 1000 ppmv as used in greenhouses is much better, but that doesn’t change the fact that at the current average ocean surface temperature the steady state is at 290 ppmv…
You still think the die or survive point is steady state.
Is 2 pieces of bread and a glass of water, “steady state ” for you?
Man’s release of sequestered carbon has almost certainly saved the world from the continued CO2 poverty cycle it was trapped in..
[…] new study infers that anthropogenic contribution to carbon dioxide concentration is only 4.3 percent and the surge […]