Anthropogenic Emissions ≠
CO2 Concentration Changes
For the last 3 years, human CO2 emissions rates have not risen. In fact, according to the IEA, we burned slightly more fossil fuels in 2014 than we did in both 2015 and 2016.
Despite the lack of growth – even slight decline – in human emissions rates during 2014 – 2016, the atmospheric CO2 parts per million (ppm) concentration grew rapidly – by more than 8 ppm (397 ppm to 405 ppm).
This lack of compatibility between year-to-year human emissions rate changes and year-to-year atmospheric CO2 ppm changes has existed for quite some time. Dr. Jamal Munshi describes it as a “necessary condition” for there to be a close correlation between annual fluctuations in human emissions and atmospheric CO2 concentrations. And yet when he statistically analyzed the Mauna Loa record (1959-present) of CO2 concentration changes, he concluded that they did not correlate with the variance in annual anthropogenic emissions.
Munshi, 2015
“A necessary condition for the theory of anthropogenic global warming is that there should be a close correlation between annual fluctuations of atmospheric CO2 and the annual rate of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Data on atmospheric CO2 and anthropogenic emissions provided by the Mauna Loa measuring station and the CDIAC in the period 1959-2011 were studied using detrended correlation analysis to determine whether, net of their common long term upward trends, the rate of change in atmospheric CO2 is responsive to the rate of anthropogenic emissions in a shorter time scale from year to year. … [R]esults do not indicate a measurable year to year effect of annual anthropogenic emissions on the annual rate of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere.”
A Strong Lead-Lag Correlation Between Temperature And CO2 Changes
It has long been recognized by atmospheric scientists that temperature changes are drivers of CO2 concentration variability. This is especially due to the physical observation that oceans – which have 50 times more dissolved CO2 than the atmosphere does – release more of their vast stores of CO2 during warm years, and they retain more CO2 during anonymously cool years. For example, Flohn (1982) observed that the oceans contribute almost twice as much to the CO2 concentration change during warm-water years (El Niño) as they do in cool-water years (La Niña), and that the variance in atmospheric CO2 growth is “independent from” anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
Flohn, 1982
“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. Indeed the cool upwelling water is not only rich in (anorganic) CO2 but also in nutrients and organisms. (algae) which consume much atmospheric CO2 in organic form, thus reducing the increase in atmospehreic CO2. Conversely the warm water of tropical oceans, with SST near 27°C, is barren, thus leading to a reduction of CO2 uptake by the ocean and greater increase of the CO2. … 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.”
“Warming of SST (by any mechanism) will increase the outgassing of CO2 while reducing its absorption. Owing to the magnitude of transfers with the ocean, even a minor increase of SST can lead to increased emission of CO2 that rivals other sources.” pg. 546
“The results for the two periods are in broad agreement. Together with the strong dependence of CO2 emission on temperature, they imply that a significant portion of the observed increase in r˙CO2 derives from a gradual increase in surface temperature.” pg. 253
“Surface temperature depends on the atmosphere’s optical depth. The latter, in turn, depends on atmospheric composition through radiatively active species. Water vapor is produced at ocean surfaces through evaporation. Carbon dioxide is produced by decomposition of of organic matter. These and other processes that control radiatively active species are temperature dependent.” pg 249, 250
“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
Visual representations of the strong lead-lag correlation between global temperatures and CO2 ppm changes are provided below. According to observations, Humlum et al. (2013) indicate that the change in CO2 concentration “always” follows changes in temperature by 9 to 12 months.
Link to NOAA graph of Mauna Loa CO2 changes
Humlum et al., 2013
“There exist a clear phase relationship between changes of atmospheric CO2 and the different global temperature records, whetherrepresenting sea surface temperature, surface air temperature, or lower troposphere temperature, with changes in the amount of atmospheric CO2 always lagging behind corresponding changes in temperature.”
(1) The overall global temperature change sequence of events appears to be from 1) the ocean surface to 2) the land surface to 3) the lower troposphere.
(2) Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature.
(3) Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5–10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature.
(4) Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature.
(5) Changes in ocean temperatures appear to explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January 1980.
(6) CO2 released from anthropogenic sources apparently has little influence on the observed changes in atmospheric CO2, and changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.
(7) On the time scale investigated, the overriding effect of large volcanic eruptions appears to be a reduction of atmospheric CO2, presumably due to the dominance of associated cooling effects from clouds associated with volcanic gases/aerosols and volcanic debris.
(8) Since at least 1980 changes in global temperature, and presumably especially southern ocean temperature, appear to represent a major control on changes in atmospheric CO2.
Goldberg, 2008
“[T]he warming and cooling of the ocean waters control how much CO2 is exchanged with atmosphere and thereby controlling the concentration of atmospheric CO2. It is obvious that when the oceans are cooled, in this case due to volcanic eruptions or La Niña events, they release less CO2 and when it was an extremely warm year, due to an El Niño, the oceans release more CO2. [D]uring the measured time 1979 to 2006 there has been a continued natural increase in temperature causing a continued increase of CO2 released into the atmosphere. This implies that temperature variations caused by El Niños, La Niñas, volcanic eruptions, varying cloud formations and ultimately the varying solar irradiation control the amount of CO2 which is leaving or being absorbed by the oceans.”
Essenhigh, 2009
“[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.”
Ahlbeck, 2009
“The increase rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide for the period from 1980 to 2007 can be statistically explained as being a function solely of the global mean temperature. Throughout the period, the temperature differences seem to have caused differences around a base trend of 1.5 ppmv/year. The atmospheric CO2 increase rate was higher when the globe was warmer, and the increase rate was lower when the globe was cooler. This can be explained by wind patterns, biological processes, or most likely by the fact that a warmer ocean can hold less carbon dioxide. This finding indicates that knowledge of the rate of anthropogenic emission is not needed for estimation of the increase rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”
CO2 Change Also Follows Temperature Change On Long-Term Timescales
In addition to following temperature changes on short-term (year-to-year) timescales, it is well-established in the peer-reviewed, scientific literature that, from cold glacials to warm interglacials, large (+ or – 120 ppm) changes in CO2 concentrations occurred several centuries after temperature changes occurred. Of course, if CO2 concentration change follows temperature change rather than leads it, the temperature may be viewed as the cause rather than the effect of CO2 variance.
IPCC AR4 (2007): “Atmospheric CO2 follows temperature changes in Antarctica with a lag of some hundreds of years.”
Caillon et al., 2003 “The sequence of events during Termination III suggests that the CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 ± 200 years and preceded the Northern Hemisphere deglaciation.”
Fischer et al., 1999 “High-resolution records from Antarctic ice cores show that carbon dioxide concentrations increased by 80 to 100 parts per million by volume 600 ± 400 years after the warming of the last three deglaciations.”
Monnin et al., 2001 “The start of the CO2 increase thus lagged the start of the [temperature] increase by 800 ± 600 years.”
Kawamura et al., 2007 “Our chronology also indirectly gives the timing of the CO2 rise at [glacial] terminations, which occurs within 1 kyr of the increase in Antarctic temperature.”
Indermuhle et al., 2000 “The [CO2] lag was calculated for which the correlation coefficient of the CO2 record and the corresponding temperatures values reached a maximum. The simulation yields a [CO2] lag of (1200 ± 700) yr.
Landais et al., 2013 “[F]rom 130.5 to 129,000 years ago, the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations lagged that of Antarctic temperature unequivocally….At mid-slope, there is an unequivocal lead of δ15N [temperature] over CO2 of 900 ± 325 yr”.
Schneider et al., 2013 “Furthermore, a 5,000 yr lag in the CO2 decline relative to EDC [East Antarctica] temperatures is confirmed during the glacial inception at the end of MIS5.5 (120,000 yrs before present).”
Stott et al., 2007 “Deep-sea temperatures warmed by ∼2°C between 19 and 17 thousand years before the present (ky B.P.), leading the rise in atmospheric CO2 and tropical–surface-ocean warming by ∼1000 years.”
Lack Of Correlation Between Fossil Fuel Emissions And CO2 Airborne Fraction
According to models, the fraction of accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere from fossil fuel emissions (the airborne fraction) should understandably correlate with changes in fossil fuel emissions. This correlation has not been observed. In fact, as climate activist and former NASA director Dr. James Hansen indicates, the airborne fraction from fossil fuels (blue line) sharply declined after 2000 just as fossil fuel emissions (red line) growth rates doubled from 1.5% per year to 3.1% per year during 2000-2011. In other words, the trajectories went in opposite directions than expected (models) after 2000, and they didn’t correlate between 1960-2000 either.
“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 [1960-2000] to 3.1% yr-1 [2000-2011], other things being equal, would [should] have caused a sharp increase of the airborne fraction” – Hansen et al., 2013
According to Knorr (2009), the lack of a trend in the airborne fraction extends all the way back to 1850.
Knorr, 2009
“[T]he trend in the airborne fraction [ratio of CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere to the CO2 flux into the atmosphere due to human activity] since 1850 has been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, i.e. close to and not significantly different from zero. The analysis further shows that the statistical model of a constant airborne fraction agrees best with the available data if emissions from land use change are scaled down to 82% or less of their original estimates. Despite the predictions of coupled climate-carbon cycle models, no trend in the airborne fraction can be found.”
The Incompatibility Of Accepted Holocene CO2 Concentrations And Temperature-Induced CO2 Change
One of the most compelling reasons to agree that there is something unusual (and thus anthropogenic) about modern CO2 levels of over 400 parts per million is to compare current CO2 concentrations to the much lower values for the geologic past (that roughly varied between 180 ppm and 300 ppm). Indeed, if temperature changes drive CO2 changes, and generally not the other way around, then the temperature records for the last 10,000 years should at least generally co-vary with accepted CO2 concentration values. They don’t. During the Holocene (the last 10,000-12,000 years), global-scale surface temperatures rose and remained multiple degrees warmer than now during the very same time periods that CO2 concentrations were at their lowest (~255-260 ppm) of the epoch. To reiterate, as the agreed-upon Holocene CO2 values rose, temperatures declined, and as the agreed-upon Holocene CO2 values declined, temperatures rose. This inverted paleoclimate record (as illustrated below and in the link above) is incompatible with the temperature-rise-leading-CO2-rise conceptualization.
Rosenthal et al., 2013
Recognizing this “major inconsistency” in the paleoclimate record, Dr. Salby suggests in his textbook that the CO2 values for the past are likely to be flawed, as they depict “virtually no change” in atmospheric CO2 from warm periods to cool (or cool to warm) periods.
Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate
“The resemblance between observed changes of CO2 and those anticipated from increased surface temperature also points to a major inconsistency between proxy records of previous climate. Proxy CO2 from the ice core record indicates a sharp increase after the nineteenth century. At earlier times, proxy CO2 becomes amorphous: Nearly homogeneous on time scales shorter than millennial, the ice core record implies virtually no change of atmospheric CO2. According to the above sensitivity, it therefore implies a global-mean climate that is “static,” largely devoid of changes in GMT and CO2. Proxy temperature (Fig. 1.45), on the other hand, exhibits centennial changes of GMT during the last millennium, as large as 0.5–1.0◦ K. In counterpart reconstructions, those changes are even greater (Section 1.6.2). It is noteworthy that, unlike proxy CO2 from the ice core record, proxy temperature in Fig. 1.45 rests on a variety of independent properties. In light of the observed sensitivity, those centennial changes of GMT must be attended by significant changes of CO2 during the last millennium. They reflect a global-mean climate that is “dynamic,” wherein GMT and CO2 change on a wide range of time scales. The two proxies of previous climate [global temperatures and CO2 concentration values] are incompatible. They cannot both be correct.” pg. 254
Scientists Challenge The ‘Consensus’ Record Of Pre-1950s CO2 Concentrations
During the 1950s to 1980s, it was common for scientists’ to conclude from ice core measurements that CO2 concentrations varied widely and rapidly during the last 10,000 years, rivaling and even exceeding modern values and rates. Jaworoski (1997) indicates that published scientific records of Holocene CO2 levels “ranged from 160 to about 700 ppmv, and occasionally even up to 2,450 ppmv“. For example, as recently as 1982 (Flohn), it was still acceptable to say that CO2 concentrations reached “350 ppm (perhaps 400 ppm) during the Holocene warm epoch 6-8 [thousand years] ago.”
However, it was during the early- to mid-1980s that the modern version of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory had begun to take shape. More and more scientists embraced the conceptualization of human-caused warming (after having spent the 1970s dabbling in global cooling). A requisite construct for AGW’s viability was that the modern CO2 concentration needed to be unusual and unprecedentedly high relative to the pre-industrial era so that the modern concentrations could be linked to the rise in anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Consequently, after about 1985, all the high CO2 ice core measurements obtained and reported in scientific journals were removed from the record. Only the low CO2 concentration measurements from the Holocene were deemed “correct” and included in canonized reconstructions. In this way, a low and steady CO2 concentration from the past could be directly compared to a hockey-stick-style spike in the modern era, providing visual evidence that humans were dramatically altering atmospheric CO2 levels.
Jaworowski, 1997
“The ice core data from various polar sites are not consistent with each another, and there is a discrepancy between these data and geological climatic evidence. One such example is the discrepancy between the classic Antarctic Byrd and Vostok ice cores, where an important decrease in the CO2 content in the air bubbles occurred at the same depth of about 500 meters, but at which the ice age differed by about 16,000 years. In an approximately 14,000-year-old part of the Byrd core, a drop in the CO2 concentration of 50 ppmv was observed, but in similarly old ice from the Vostok core, an increase of 60 ppmv was found. In about ~6,000-year-old ice from Camp Century, Greenland, the CO2 concentration in air bubbles was 420 ppmv, but it was 270 ppmv in similarly old ice from Byrd, Antarctica. … In the air from firn and ice at Summit, Greenland, deposited during the past ~200 years, the CO2 concentration ranged from 243.3 ppmv to 641.4 ppmv. Such a wide range reflects artifacts caused by sampling, or natural processes in the ice sheet, rather than the variations of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Similar or greater range was observed in other studies of greenhouse gases in polar ice.”
“The failure to resolve the notorious problem of why about 30 percent of man-made CO2 is missing in the global carbon cycle, based on CO2 ice core measurements, suggests a systematic bias in ice core data. It is not possible to explain the ice core CO2 record in terms of a system with time-invariant processes perturbed by a combination of fossil fuel carbon release, CO2-enhanced biotic growth, and deforestation.”
“Until 1985, the published CO2 readings from air bubbles in pre-industrial ice ranged from 160 to about 700 ppmv, and occasionally even up to 2,450 ppmv. After 1985, high readings disappeared from the publications. To fit such a wide range of results to the anthropogenic climatic warming theory, which was based on low pre-industrial CO2 levels, three methods were used: (1) rejection of high readings from sets of preindustrial samples, based on the credo: “The lowest CO2 values best represent the CO2 concentrations in the originally trapped ice”; (2) rejection of low readings from sets of 20th century samples; and (3) interpretation of the high readings from pre-industrial samples as representing the contemporary atmosphere rather than the pre-industrial one.”
“Neftel, et al. reported in 1982 rather high median CO2 concentrations in the preindustrial ice core from Byrd, Antarctica, of about 330 and 415 ppmv, with maximum value reaching 500 ppmv. However, in 1988, in the second publication on the same core, Neftel et al. did not show these high readings; the highest concentration reported was 290 ppmv, in agreement with the global warming theory.”
“Pearman, et al. [1986] “on examination of the data,” rejected 43 percent of the CO2 readings from Law Dome, Antarctica core … because they were higher or lower than the assumed “correct” values. Thus, they concluded a value of 281 ppmv CO2 for the pre-industrial atmosphere.”
Kauffman, 2007
“In few fields considered to be science-based has there been such a high degree of polarization and refusal to consider alternate explanations of natural phenomena as in climate change at present.”
“The scenario seems to be that between 1985 and 1988, a decision was made to present pre-1958 CO2 concentrations with no humps or dips and to proclaim a pre-industrial level of 280 ppm.”
“Compared with the so-called pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm, a level of 410 ppm was found in 1812, rising to 450 ppm in 1825. There were levels of 370 ppm in 1857, and 4 sets of measurements gave 350–415 ppm around 1940 (Figure 10). From 1870–1920 values remained within 295–310 ppm. From 1955–1965 the values were 325 ppm. Beck chose the most carefully done assays for this graph. One was from Poona, India. An effort not described by Beck was one of 350 determinations near Point Barrow, Alaska, from 1947–1949, with a mean result of 420 ppm (Hock et al., 1952).”
“The CO2 levels found at Mauna Loa range from 315 ppm in 1957 to 385 ppm in 2007, a period of 50 years. They are similar on Antarctica, showing good mixing of the atmosphere. Since there was a bigger rise from 312 to 415 ppm from 1927–1944 (27 years), shown by chemical assays as described above (Figure 10), there should be no reason for alarm at present. The start of the infrared data in 1958 showed a CO2 concentration that was 12 ppm lower by NDIR assay than the best chemical data of the period. The chemical data are very consistent with each other. This discrepancy has never been resolved.”
“From 0–60° north, the period from 1905–1940 showed about 1 °C of warming, then steady or dropping temperatures. The 60–70° north record showed about 1.8 °C of warming from 1922–1960, with sinking temperatures thereafter (Kushnir, 1994). This is the reason why the chemical assays registered a large increase in atmospheric CO2, from 295 ppm in 1885 to 440 ppm in 1944 (Figure 10). Ocean cooling of ~0.6 °C from 1940– 1970 (Kushnir, 1994) brought CO2 levels down for a while to 325 ppm from 1955–1965 (Figure 10).”
Every so often, though, measurements of past CO2 levels that challenged the agreed-upon “correct” values were allowed to slip past the gatekeepers. For example, Wagner and colleagues (1999) published a paper in Science indicating that CO2 concentrations naturally rose by 65 ppm in less than a century during the Holocene, which is similar to today’s rates (i.e., CO2 rose by ~70 ppm between 1915 and 2005).
Wagner et al., 1999
Century-Scale Shifts in Early Holocene Atmospheric CO, Concentration
“The initial decrease of the SI in the Friesland phase [~11,400 years ago] suggests that atmospheric CO2 concentrations rose by ∼65 ppmv in less than a century. … Our results falsify the concept of relatively stabilized Holocene CO2 concentrations of 270 to 280 ppmv until the industrial revolution. Si-based C02 reconstructions may even suggest that, during the early Holocene, atmospheric CO2 concentrations that were >300 ppmv could have been the rule rather than the exception.”
Decadal-Scale Non-Correlations Between CO2 Changes And Human Activity, Temperature
The non-correlations between the accepted CO2 concentrations and human activity not only occur on a year-to-year basis, they may also occur for decades at a time.
For example, between 1938 and 1950, yearly human emissions rose from 1.14 GtC (gigatons carbon) per year to 1.63 GtC per year. Total accumulated fossil fuel emissions growth for the period amounted to 17.4 GtC. And despite this volume of emission, the atmospheric CO2 concentration did not change throughout the entire 12-year period, remaining steady at 311 ppm.
According to the IPCC, our radiative influence on the planet began in the year 1750. And yet between 1750 and 1875, the growth in human CO2 emissions was effectively undetectable. During the same period, the accepted values for atmospheric CO2 grew by nearly 12 parts per million, or at “10 times the rate of cumulative anthropogenic emissions”.
Image Source
A glaring lack of correlation between the accepted CO2 concentration and global temperature change spanned 3 decades during the middle of the 20th century. From 1940 to 1970, world temperatures fell. During the same period, both human CO2 emissions and accepted atmospheric CO2 concentration levels grew rapidly, rendering a long-term inverse correlation.
Kauffman, 2007
Non-Correlations Rejected, Apparent Correlations Embraced
There are several inconsistencies and incompatibilities with the currently-rendered link between human CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 concentration.
To summarize:
(a) There is a lack of year-to-year correlation between human CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 concentration changes, whereas there is an observed correlation between year-to-year (and long-term) temperature changes leading changes in CO2 concentrations.
(b) Defying models, there has not been an observed correlation between the airborne fraction and fossil fuel emissions, and the trajectory for both substantially diverged after 2000 (the airborne fraction fell as fossil fuel emissions rose rapidly).
(c) There is an inverse correlation between the accepted CO2 values for the Holocene and temperature changes for the Holocene. For example, CO2 concentration rose as temperatures cooled during the Little Ice Age period (1300 to 1900 CE).
(d) During the last few hundred years, there have been multi-decadal periods in which human CO2 emissions and both the accepted atmospheric CO2 concentration and global temperature have been non-correlated or inversely correlated (i.e., 1938-1950, 1750-1875, 1940-1970).
These inconsistencies and incompatibilities and non-correlations are routinely dismissed by those who attribute all or nearly all of the increase in atmospheric CO2 to human activity. Why? Because there is a correlation between the post-1970s growth in human CO2 emissions and the rise in atmospheric CO2 (and global temperatures).
Correlations that fit the narrative are embraced – and correlation is often facilely assumed to be the equivalent of causation. The non-correlations and incompatibilities are simply dismissed as unimportant or immaterial.
For those of us who question the correlative and especially the causal link between human emissions and atmospheric CO2 concentrations, these inconsistencies and incompatibilities need to be thoroughly addressed rather than dismissed.
Another excellent post.
It is apparent from all this research that as the planet warms natural emissions of CO2 appear to rise, but even high levels of atmospheric CO2 does not appear to have correlation (certainly not evidence of causation) with atmospheric temperatures.
Or restating —
Rising temperature appears to increase atmospheric CO2 emissions.
CO2 levels do not appear to affect global temperature appreciably, if at all.
Nature, not humans, supply the vast majority of atmospheric CO2 and nature (not humans) controls how it varies.
As this planet comes out of a recent cold spell (LIA) we should naturally expect the CO2 levels to rise, and expect nature to be able to regulate this production. To say otherwise would go against this planet’s history and would demand exception proof to be shown. The UN-IPCC has no exceptional proof to show what is happening is out of the bounds of normal natural variability. It only has sophistry and poor models.
Just a few NATURAL sources of CO2 not completely accounted for by UN-IPCC.
How do these compare to the minute amount that humans produce?
Referencing this paper http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/sites/harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/files/publications/pdfs/Butman_NatureGeoscience_2011.pdf
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1885/4613
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v540/n7631/full/nature20150.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
https://www.livescience.com/40451-volcanic-co2-levels-are-staggering.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Then there are estimates about the oceans and seas…
Contrast and compare with the minuscule amount that humans emit.
There have been a series of strong El Ninos over the last 70 or so years.
These are indicative of warmer ocean cycle coming to the surface.
These currents carry CO2 rich water and that CO2 is gradually released to the atmosphere.
NATURAL rises in surface temperature driven by the surges from those El Ninos also produces more release of CO2 from land surface regions. (clearly shown in the very first and second charts.)
Yes, some amount of the rise in CO2 is from humans, but there has also been a large increase in CO2 coming from the oceans and land in the last 70 or more years as they NATURALLY WARM after the coldest period in the last 10000 years.
I much prefer the SCIENTIFICALLY supported human contribution in the single digit or low teen percentages, to the yapping of a demented AGW cultist who has been shown to be totally ignorant and diametrically wrong on basic every facet of climate science possible.
Mankind’s small contribution to increased atmospheric CO2 has been nothing but a TOTAL PLUS for the whole planet.
The irresponsible actions of the ANTI-CO2 cult, in seeking to STARVE plant-life, are tantamount to a crime against the planet and all creatures that live on it.
OT:
Carl Mears, overseer of the RSS dataset who calls skeptics “denialists”, has just had his “correction” to the satellite data increase temperatures by 140% since 1998…in line with models.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/major-correction-to-satellite-data-shows-140-faster-warming-since-1998
Apparently the only dataset left that doesn’t artificially inflate temperatures is now going to be UAH.
When the facts don’t fit the models, change the facts. So sad that this is what “climate science” has become.
Peer-review is now Peer-pressure.
Poor Carl, he was always a rabid warmist, held onto his integrity as long as he could.
Still, it would be interesting to see emails and bank accounts leading up to the “Adjustments™”
Dr. Carl Mears has mentioned the problems that need correction when using 13 different satellites earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BnkI5vqr_0
Calling satellite less accurate than surface measured temperatures.
Isn’t it interesting that the “problems” that need “correction” are always headed in one direction: cool the past and warm the present. It’s never the other way around. What are the chances that the “errors” only occur that “mask” warming, but not cooling?
HadCRUT 3 showed -0.03 C cooling between 1998-2012. Just in time for the 5th IPCC report in 2013, HadCRUT4 was released that made the -0.03 C cooling turn into +0.05 C warming…by cooling the past and warming the present: https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/HadCRUT-3-vs-4-1998-2012.jpg
NASA/NOAA had +0.5 C of warming between 1880 and 1950 in 1987: https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/NASA-Global-Surface-Temps-1987-0.5C-1880-1950.jpg
Today there is no warming between 1880 and 1950. They just removed a half a degree from the temperature record to fit the models. https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/NOAA-Data-Manipulation-No-Warming-1880-1950.jpg
When the observations don’t fit the models…change the facts. That’s what your side does. It’s happened with sea level rise/acceleration (altimetry vs. guages), sea ice reconstructions, the Mann-ish hockey stick graph, Karl’s pause-buster “correction”, claims about positive feedbacks with water vapor/cloud amplifying the +1.2 C of warming computed (modeled) for doubled CO2…
We don’t trust your side, SebastianH. It has given us good reason to over and over and over again. That’s why we’re skeptics and you’re the believer. You just blindly trust those who tell you what you want to hear/believe.
https://notrickszone.com/2017/02/13/more-data-manipulation-by-noaa-nasa-hadcrut-cooling-the-past-warming-the-present/
Of course, seb, the poor dear was trying desperately to follow the AGW mantra…
.. so it seems he thinks his RSS data wasn’t any good.
Looks like he has just made it MUCH WORSE, and it will now be regarded as totally unreliable by anyone but the AGW cultists.
Integrity.. LOST !!
Oh wait.. you wouldn’t have clue what integrity was. Not something you have ever aimed for.
If one organization gets their records wrong and have to adjust then then that is unfortunate and make s you wonder how reliable is anything else they produce is.
When 2 organizations find a similar error but does not get a good reason for it being in error it seems very suspicious.
When 3 or more organizations say they are in error for different reason then rationally it looks either like a lot of very highly paid people are incompetent, or their is collusion to cover over what is really going on, or both.
there not their (my mistake not theirs)
Well, we don’t trust you either. You display flawed math skills and often missunderstand even basic things.
So everything that you write has to be checked for errors, because it’s never without mistakes (involuntary or not). In other words, your data and your conclusions can’t be trusted.
P.S.: You are making it too easy for yourself if you just claim that all data is manipulated “When the observations don’t fit the models…change the facts. That’s what your side does.” The article you linked to has a good explanation, my video too. Do you think those sources of error (drift) should not be corrected? So you’d rather have drifting temperature records because that’s what has been measured?
OK, that’s fine. We’re not the ones who are the gatekeepers of 5 of the 6 temperature datasets (UAH), the main peer-reviewed journals, the satellite altimetry (models), OHC measurements, the sea ice datasets, the SMB datasets, the IPCC reports. Your side has control of the newspapers, the UN, policymakers, the subsidies purses. Your side can concoct and endorse flawed 97% “consensus” papers with impunity. Your side runs Wikipedia. Your side receives the billion-dollar payouts and government funding. Your side creates websites solely dedicated to smearing and marginalizing skeptics – with impunity. Your side is the one who drives people out of their professorships and standing if they veer away from the alarmist point of view too far.
Your side controls just about everything in climate “science” save the blogs and comment sections on the internet, which we dominate — because that’s those are the only place we can even have a say. WUWT alone gets about 30 times the traffic than RealClimate and SkepticalScience combined. And that’s with Google directing just about any AGW-ish question to the alarmist sites too. Have you ever visited a comment board when an alarmist study is published in a mainstream publication? It’s overrun with skeptics to the point where your side routinely bans commentators who don’t fall in line. I know. It’s happened to me.
So if you can’t trust us because we “display flawed math skills and often missunderstand even basic things”, it really doesn’t have the impact that your side does because, again, your side is in charge of distributing the information that bends to your presuppositions. It’s a wonder that your side hasn’t been more successful than it has considering the dominant control your side has, and the largely unfunded, private, grassroots nature of our side. Despite all the rhetoric and altered data and alarmist prognostications and subsidies, climate change continues to rank dead last across the world as an area of concern.
Our side is facing the giants; all we have are some stones. And yet we’re the ones who are winning.
tom0mason, we seldomly get things right the first time we do them. Someone sends a satellite up there and begins to measure. People will look at the raw data and compile more meaningful data from it. Over time they’ll discover certain flaws the raw data has that needs correction. The normal flow of things. If those pesky satellites would just stay in a perfect orbit and do their measurements from the same height at the same time of day over every point of the Earth, then everything would be good. Or at least if all the satellites used the same equipment, calibrated to the same output (that’s why some satellite data was removed from RSS for version 4, some satellites didn’t measure what the other satellites measured that also were in orbit at same time).
And yes, humans are largely incompetent. It takes us a long time to get things right. I mean, could you believe that there are still discoveries being made these years in the field of sorting values (computer science)? Unstable sorting just got faster last year with an algorithm called “pattern defeating quicksort”. Quicksort was invented in the 1960s and it still gets improved!
Ehm, “your side” perpetually runs smearing campaigns on the trustworthiness of scientists. Spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories seems to be “en vogue” these days, as more people than ever fall for this (see fans of the Infowars guy, NASA just had to publicly deny that they put sex slaves on Mars because of this guy, wth?!). But it’s not in any way the noble cause you imagine it to be here.
All you have is misinformation and basing your chain of arguments on wrongly understood dynamics of the systems involved and lousy math skills. And you are certainly not winning, whatever that is supposed to mean. It’s not a battle or war … “your side” is trying to defeat common sense and science and doesn’t do it with solid arguments, but by gaslighting people. That strategy has never won anything in the long run.
“It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: “– Richard Feynman
OT, good news from Australia.
The climate propaganda unit called the Climate Institute, has shut down
https://australianclimatemadness.com/2017/06/30/climate-institute-shuts-today/
OT again,, (sorry Pierre)
Toxic waste from solar panels is 300 time more than from nuclear
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/29/toxic-waste-from-solar-panels-300-times-that-of-nuclear-power/
from the article
1.Solar = 1/4 the availability of nuclear.
2.Solar = $500,000/MW less valuable than nuclear in emissions reduction.
3.Solar = 300 times the toxic waste per MWh compared to nuclear.
1) is true
2) is debatable, the source this comes from tries to include intermittency into their calculations and have nuclear power at a capacity factor of 90%. Well, unfortunately load is variable, so with 100% nuclear power the plants would not be able to run at 90%. And with smaller percentages of renewables on the grid the intermittency gets less important as a cost.
3) how come the “toxic” waste of solar panels can be recycled (in the EU companies are required to do that since 2015)? And regarding cost of getting rid of the waste: they write that it would cost only $71 billion to permanently dispose of the entire inventory of waste and spent nuclear fuel … I see, so it’s suddenly no problem to find a suitable “Endlager” (final store) and it doesn’t costs tens of billions more just to dismantle a few nuclear power plants?
So you have no quibble with the statement: “Humans May Not Be The Primary Drivers Of CO2 Concentration Changes”?
“to include intermittency into their calculations ”
OMG, are you now DENYING that solar is intermittent !!!!!
And wind is even worse as an UNRELIABLE, INTERMITTENT non-supply. You KNOW that.. so why do you KEEP LYING !
You really are in CLOUD CUCKOO land !!
Once Thorium reactors come into vogue, all that stored nuclear waste become fuel..
Again.. your ignorance come to the fore. !
There are nuclear plants that have been running close to 100% capacity for many years, apart from refuelling.
So yes, 90% is REAL and PROVEN.
Just like the 90% reliability factor of wind is 5%
and solar a big fat ZERO.
Yes, because nuclear is only providing 2.5% of the primary energy consumption. It can’t provide 100% of that and run at 90-100% capacity at the same time. Just like wind and solar can easily work with their lower capacity factors when below a certain percentage of primary energy consumption, but obviously need storage or backup solutions when nearing 100% primary energy consumption.
Wind and solar provide basically ZERO for large amounts of the time.
They are ERRATIC and UNRELIABLE.
France has shown that
FACTS, seb.. try them, just once in your Parisitic life.
“It can’t provide 100% of that and run at 90-100% capacity at the same time.”
What a load of moronic nonsense.
Nuclear, over 90% of nameplate, SOLID, RELIABLE, CONSISTENT, ON CALL
Wind and solar are at the very other end of the scale in EVERY respect.
UNRELIABLE, ERRATIC, CANNOT be depended on
… only work at 90% of nameplate … basically NEVER. !!! Your own calculations show that.
Ignoring FACTS is all you have left, isn’t it seb, you poor little brain-washed trollette.
France has shown that nuclear can carry a whole country as well as helping to sustain supply in other countries, WHEN NEEDED.
(don’t know why that sentence got chopped)
Oh thank you for mentioning France, a country which runs on nuclear power. Do you think their nuclear power plants run at 90+% capacity? 🙂
From one of your greenie sites.
That’s 87%, 24/7, seb, with spare for load follow.
How often did wind run at 87% of its nameplate in Germany the last couple of years, seb ?
You did the calculation…
… do you DARE answer? 😉
heck, it below 50% for 95% of the time in 2015, 2016.
That’s pretty PATHETIC.. wouldn’t you agree, seb 😉
France is currently running at 33.3 GW nuclear power output from its 63 GW capacity (https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=country&countryCode=FR). That’s a capacity factor of 53%. Those powerplants barely reached 40 GW during the day.
So no, they aren’t running at 87% 24/7 …. not even close.
So you deny the data from your own cultists.
Oh dear… FACTS are really an enema to you, aren’t they.
Its obviously idling at the moment.. middle of the night.
Wow, wind is running at 26% capacity, nuclear twice the capacity factor.
Do you see any solar in that mix… ZERO capacity… OOPS
Nuclear providing 75% of required electricity, just coasting along with heaps to spare AND ON CALL.( !!
France is also exporting to several other countries.. because they can.
You could look at nuclear in other countries
UK 89% of capacity.
Germany 82% of capacity
Belgium 91% of capacity
I wonder what winter data looks like, hey seb 😉
The FACT is, that when it comes to operating at high capacity, 24/7 and on call…
NUCLEAR CAN, and DOES..
COAL CAN, and DOES..
GAS CAN, and DOES..
Wind CAN’T…and doesn’t !
Solar CAN’T.. and doesn’t !
There you go. That’s exactly the point I was making. If nuclear is used for baseload and consumption never decreases below capacity, then those high capacity factors are no problem at all. But when you use nuclear to power 100% of your load, you will see a way smaller capacity factor (see France).
So if you use the intermittency of wind/solar as an argument you have to acknowledge that this is not a problem as long as you can pair it with something like natural gas and no overproduction occurs. And you also have to acknowledge that using nuclear to power everything at a assumed capacity factor of 90% is not possible. Thus point 2) of your original comment isn’t correctly presenting the value of different emission reductions.
Your reasoning is that of a brain-washed amoeba
Nuclear can and very often does work at 90% nameplate capacity
FACT.
Wind feed in mandates force fossil fule plants to greatly increase their CO2 output
FACT
FACTS are an enema to you seb.
Now answer the question you gutless worm
Name any PROVABLE drawbacks to any level of atmospheric CO2 that we are ever likely to reach….
Going in circles here …
Only if they aren’t used for all the power generation. Load isn’t constant and no power plant in the world can run at 90% capacity when following the load curve. Is that so hard to understand?
How would that work? Let’s say you have natural gas covering 100 TWh of electricity consumption. Now someone builds some wind turbines that produce 5 TWh of electricity. Natural gas power plants now produce just 95 TWh. What is the mechanism that causes them to produce more CO2 than when they were producing 100 TWh?
I wonder how much it will cost to dismantle and remove all the wind turbines in 15-20 years time, when they become defunct and not worth replacing.
That includes removing all the massive reinforced concrete pads.
Its one heck of a mess someone is going to have to tidy up.. almost certainly the taxpayer, because the subsidy swillers will be long gone.
And, at least in Australia, the most subsidized of all.
https://stopthesethings.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/subsidies-per-unit-of-electricity.png
I’ve just reread your comment at http://joannenova.com.au/2017/06/weekend-unthreaded-167/#comment-1921436 where you state
“I found this Engineering Toolbox that covers CO2 levels,
The effects of CO2 on adults at good health can be summarized to:
-normal outdoor level: 350 – 450 ppm
-acceptable levels: < 600 ppm
-complaints of stiffness and odors: 600 – 1000 ppm
-ASHRAE and OSHA standards: 1000 ppm
-general drowsiness: 1000 – 2500 ppm
-adverse health effects may be expected: 2500 – 5000 ppm
-maximum allowed concentration within a 8 hour working period: 5000 – 10000 ppm
-maximum allowed concentration within a 15 minute working period: 30000 ppm
Extreme and Dangerous CO2 Levels
-slightly intoxicating, breathing and pulse rate increase, nausea: 30000 – 40000 ppm
-above plus headaches and sight impairment: 50000 ppm
-unconscious, further exposure death: 100000 ppm"
That helps to puts the ideas of CO2 as a pollutant in perspective.
Looks like eng., toolbox has been corrupted, as well.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/17/claim-co2-makes-you-stupid-as-a-submariner-that-question/
At least at the low to intermediate concentrations.
Yes I had to stop at that ’cause I’ve known some subbies in my time and they assured me that 5,000ppm was normal after the first week to 10 days at sea, no ill effect except that after that everything just smelled wrong!
He also said that the Soviets (now that dates me) would run their subs at much higher levels.
Oh, that’s not me. I post as “yonason” there, as well. Here’s one e.g…
http://joannenova.com.au/2016/07/85-clinical-medical-research-is-false-not-useful-not-worth-the-money-government-funded-waste/#comment-1818026
In researching a book on climate change I’ve come to the conclusion that mainstream science is severely underestimating the role of intact, healthy ecosystems in maintaining climate stability. Much of the CO2 released by human activity is indirect, via ecosystem degradation. Degraded ecosystems are also less able to uptake carbon, regulate albedo, and (more importantly in my opinion) regulate the water cycle. The emphasis on emissions among mainstream environmentalists, to the point where “green” is equated to “low carbon,” sucks the air out of the room for other environmental issues that, ironically, might be more important than emissions in terms of climate impact. Anyway, I think the data in this article on the anthropogenic fraction of CO2 might support my thesis.
Most critiques of the standard AGW narrative come from people who are hostile to environmentalism in general, and who profess right-wing political views. However, I think that the standard AGW narrative is a disaster for environmentalism, and merits critique from the left as well as from the right. The current rush to centralized solutions inevitably gives more power to the same centralized institutions the preside over ecocide and economic oppression. When we are told to “trust science” what we are really being told is to trust what authority says the science says. OK, I won’t try to lay out the whole thesis here, but thank you for collating this information. Very useful in my deep dive into both sides of the issue.
I read a Scientific American article when I was young, that stated that the Earth would still be the same temperature without any life. Inorganic processes would keep the temperature stable, plus or minus a few degrees.
It was a long time ago and they still published real science in those days.
Here’s my curve-fit on the Mauna Loa CO2 graph.
Human emissions don’t come in to it.
https://tinyurl.com/the-mauna-loa-CO2-curvefit
@Jan Braam
Nicely done.
Your comments at the end chime here “Why not switch axioms…”, makes infinitely more sense.
The apparent incompatibility of temperature and CO2 over the Holocene vs that found in the modern era is no more. Harde (2017) showed that not only do changes of temperature explain increases of CO2 in the modern times but, when the nonlinearity of temperature dependence is accounted for, they also explain the long time increases of CO2 over the Holocene.
https://notrickszone.com/2017/02/25/blockbuster-paper-finds-just-15-of-co2-growth-since-industrialization-is-due-to-human-emissions/
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.
I can live with 15%.
Keeps giving plant life and the carbon cycle, that supports ALL life on this wonderful planet of ours…
… that little bit of a nudge forward. 🙂
Dream on Kenneth, Harde is wrong with his findings about human contribution and everyone except some skeptics who can’t properly use math know it.
Why do you – and apparently some scientists too – try to correlate almost linear trends (temperature and CO2 concentration) with each other (the easy part) and conclude that the current increase is resulting from the change in temperature, because the rather small variations in yearly CO2 concentration increase math warm/cold years? While completely ignoring human emissions which are twice as big as those variations.
It doesn’t make sense.
You are having a problem understanding magnitudes (again), SebastianH. Human emissions are but a tiny percentage of the emissions from nature, which are “two orders of magnitude [100X]” greater than anthropogenic emission. Any imbalance in natural emissions vs. sinks will easily overshadow the tiny fluctuation in human emissions per year.
“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.” Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate, pg. 546
“Harde is wrong with his findings ”
Evidence free, fantasy from seb
Harde is pretty much CORRECT with his findings.
Not that it matters, just so long as the atmospheric CO2 keeps climbing.
And guess what, seb… if humans are contributing as large a percentage as you fantasise, that atmospheric CO2 level will just keep on climbing and climbing, and there is nothing your manic propaganda yapping can do about it 🙂
MASSIVE BENEFITS to all life on Earth,
Wouldn’t you agree, seb! 🙂
Name any PROVABLE drawbacks to any level of atmospheric CO2 that we are ever likely to reach.
Totally and absolutely beneficial.
Flat human emissions would be the first step. This would cause the CO2 concentration to level out at a certain ppm count, e.g. if we’d stay at our current 35 GtCO2 emissions per year CO2 concentration would level out at approximately 470-480 ppm.
If we began reducing emissions by 3% each year from now on, CO2 concentration would peak at the start of the 2030s and reach below 350 ppm in 2100.
That’s the results from known formulas describing the connections between human emissions and CO2 concentration.
I really find it amusing that you have decided to avoid using the word “models”, and have instead decided to substitute the phrase “known formulas”. It’s not as if we didn’t know that your beliefs are based on models, SebastianH. Claiming your beliefs are based on “known formulas” doesn’t persuade us they’re based on something more.
—————————————————————–
McKinley et al., 2017
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-marine-010816-060529
The current inability to accurately quantify the mean CO2 sink regionally or locally also suggests that present-day observational constraints are inadequate to support a detailed, quantitative, and mechanistic understanding of how the ocean carbon sink works and how it is responding to intensifying climate change. This lack of mechanistic understanding implies that our ability to model (Roy et al. 2011, Ciais et al. 2013, Frolicher et al. 2015, Randerson et al. ¨ 2015), and thus to project the future ocean carbon sink, including feedbacks caused by warming and other climate change, is seriously limited.
The sum of the available evidence indicates that variability in the ocean carbon sink is significant and is driven primarily by physical processes of upwelling, convection, and advection. Despite evidence for a growing sink when globally integrated (Khatiwala et al. 2009, 2013; Ciais et al. 2013; DeVries 2014), this variability, combined with sparse sampling, means that it is not yet possible to directly confirm from surface observations that long-term growth in the oceanic sink is occurring.
[T]his CESM-LE analysis further illustrates that variability in CO2 flux is large and sufficient to prevent detection of anthropogenic trends in ocean carbon uptake on decadal timescales.
This paper describes a simple model to calculate CO2 concentration increase from human emissions: http://www.journalrepository.org/media/journals/JGEESI_42/2017/Jan/Ludecke842016JGEESI30532_1_1.pdf
It uses “known formulas” (physics).
I’d strongly suggest you read chapter 3 (basics of the ocean carbon sink) of your linked paper (McKinley 2017). Maybe you’ll understand those basics.
And while you are at it, re-read the rest of the paper.
From the paper:
Yes, as the authors state, the entire conceptualization of partial pressure is built upon…a model.
“That the growth of the partial pressure of CO2 gas in the atmosphere ( pCO2 atm) drives a growing oceanic sink is consistent with our basic understanding that, as the globally averaged atmosphere-to-ocean pCO2 gradient increases, carbon accumulation in the ocean will occur at an increasing rate (Section 3). This behavior has been illustrated clearly with models forced with only historically observed increases in pCO2 atm and no climate variability or change (Graven et al. 2012, Ciais et al. 2013). Nonetheless, critical mysteries remain and weigh heavily on our ability to quantify relationships between the perturbed global carbon cycle and climate change.
In other words, all we have are models of what we think is happening.
And then you cite these quotes…that help (?) your case:
“The globally integrated ocean CO2 sink appears to have grown over the past several decades”
Appears to have grown? We don’t know if it has or not, of course…because the only means by which we have to affirm this is…modeling. We have no observations that affirm this. We don’t even know whether humans have an influence, and if so, to what extent we could detect an anthropogenic signal amidst the large natural variability context:
From the paper: “It is not yet possible to directly confirm from surface observations that long-term growth in the oceanic sink is occurring. … [V]ariability in CO2 flux is large and sufficient to prevent detection of anthropogenic trends in ocean carbon uptake on decadal timescales.”
Another quote you cited that helps (?) you:
“The mechanisms of extratropical variability, whether associated with climate modes or not, are incompletely elucidated.”
I understand that as a believer you are predisposed to assuming that whatever the models tell you is true…is true. As skeptics, we are quite a bit more interested in observations than presuppositions.
“This lack of mechanistic understanding implies that our ability to model, and thus to project the future ocean carbon sink, including feedbacks caused by warming and other climate change, is seriously limited.”
I hate it when I fall for one of your “quotation traps”. Suddenly the discussion shits to being about that paper and not the original topic. Meh.
The entire field of physics is based on models. We can not possibly observe everything to confirm that the models/formulas are really universal.
The alternative to the ocean sink growing is the ocean source shrinking. Cause we know the result – half of human CO2 gets absorbed – so it has to be one of those possibilities.
The omitted part from your quote from the paper is actually important.
From the paper “Because the approaches used to infer the growing sink are forced to assume a steady-state ocean circulation, it is critical to confirm that increases in oceanic uptake are actually occurring in the context of the variable ocean circulation”
You conveniently ignored the first part of the quote.
That may very well be, but it would be nice if you could at least try to understand the “basics of the ocean carbon sink” (chapter 3 of that paper) and enough math to be able to figure out when you compare amounts with different units and that this practice makes no sense 😉
Physical science is based upon observations, replication, and controlled experiments. It is not based upon modeling and projections and hypothetical conceptualizations that we think could might maybe possibly be true because we can find a correlation between two variables if we search hard enough. That’s the difference between where you are and where we skeptics are. You declare that hypothetical models that are not rooted in observation are nonetheless.”the laws of physics”. And therefore you assume that you are entitled to shame and name-call those who don’t agree with you that, say, atmospheric CO2 molecules that are spaced together 1/20,000ths more closely now than they were in 1990 are the cause of net heat changes in the ocean, sea ice changes in the Arctic (and Antarctic?), hurricane wind speed changes, more or less rainfall in California, etc. Think about that. Do you realize how small a change 1/20,000ths is?
Sorry, this statement also isn’t based upon observation, but assumption. To begin to think like a skeptic instead of the believer that you are, you’ll need to stop using the affirmative words when they don’t apply: “We know…”…”100% cause”…”laws of physics”…”certainty”…. Grow some humility, SebastianH. Assume you don’t know as much as you think you do. Assume that the science isn’t settled, and that those who don’t agree deserve to be ridiculed. Open your mind to the possibility that CO2 may not be the determinant of weather and climate and heat changes. You are so ensconced in presupposition that you don’t even realize that it’s presupposition. You think it’s fact. Humility, SebastianH. You don’t know as much as you think you do.
You declare that hypothetical models that are not rooted in observation are nonetheless.”the laws of physics”.
They are and the models are rooted in obversations. Do you think someone just came up with this in his/her sleep or a supercomputer combines possible formulas until some matched the outcome?
We know the physics of gas (CO2) exchange between water and air. We know how many other processes involved work. Yet you think that because an experiment confirming the exact circumstances is extremely difficult to do and therefor has never been done, this somehow invalides how physics are suppose to work. You think that some undiscovered magic effect could cause the energy from backradiation not to accumulate in the surface layer. By constantly linking to that Irvine textbook passage you also seem to think that this energy is almost completely and immediately sent back towards the atmosphere. I wonder where it went from there … any suggestions?
That’s true, I haven’t followed every CO2 molecule of human origin and I just assume that this (half of human emissions get absorbed) is true. Why? Because we emit ~10 GtC of CO2 and the atmospheric CO2 content increases by just half of that.
On the other hand you are assuming that a CO2 content increase of ~5 GtC is in large parts caused by natural emissions. So where do human emissions get absorbed and why do the same sinks not absorb non-human emissions? E.g. what would happen if we would suddenly stop emitting? Would those sinks not work anymore?
That would still not change that we are the cause of the CO2 increase. Don’t gaslight others.
At least I think I have a pretty good understanding of the processes involved and can detect when someone doesn’t understand them. There is a difference of being skeptical about something and not understanding something and basing your chain of arguments on that missunderstanding.
SebastianH 2. July 2017 at 2:28 AM
This model fails basic continuity requirements. Implicitly, it assumes that the carbon regulatory system processes anthropogenic emissions differently from natural emissions. The value of the time constant that would be needed to put them on an equal footing is on the order of 2 or so years, not upwards of 80 years, and that would destroy any superficial resemblance between the model output and the observations.
“While completely ignoring human emissions which are twice as big as those variations.”
seb presents ZERO PROOF, yet again.
Human emissions are dwarfed by natural emissions and variations in those emissions.
You can clearly see this in the acceleration of aCO2 since 2013 while human emissions have stayed flat.
“It doesn’t make sense”
FACTS never do make sense to you, seb.
Your problem… which you refuse to fix.
This article is based on a gross misunderstanding of the dynamics. Only about a third of annual fossil fuel CO2 emissions wind up in the atmosphere, but the pathway for that is complicated. So I’m not going to explain it all here. Just a couple of quick observations to steer any open-minded folks in the right direction:
1) Look at the Mauna Loa curve on a monthly basis. It goes up every year, usually peaking in May, and down every year, usually bottoming in October or November. If you convert atmospheric PPM to gigatons, you will be able to follow this better.
2) This rise and fall was around tens of millions of years ago, when atmospheric CO2 was much higher. It is a function of the differential rates of plant growth and plant decay in the Northern versus Southern hemispheres. The Northern hemisphere has a lot more landmass, and May is when rotting peaks and begins to be overwhelmed by spring growth.
The natural rise, before fossil fuel use, was caused by ocean outgassing of CO2. In the water, it isn’t CO2, but it converts to CO2. The ocean and the atmosphere are constantly responding to eachother – raise levels of carbon in one, the other absorbs it. When we add fossil fuels, the ocean outgassing is limited by the higher level of CO2 already in the atmosphere, effectively pushing more carbon into the ocean. About a third of fossil emissions goes into the ocean this way, and does not remain in the atmosphere.
Another 15% or so is absorbed by being put into contact with minerals, mostly calcium, and mostly in rivers and soils wetted by rain. This washes into the ocean in a chemically inert form and does not contribute to the rise and fall of atmospheric CO2.
3) So what is measured by the Mauna Loa curve and the dozens of similar measurement services around the world which replicate that work, is the accumulation of CO2. It’s a process that involves enough steps, all steps which are affected by weather, rainfall, and a few other things, that it has never been precisely regular, and it never will. But it measures the fact that fossil fuel CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere. When some has entered the ocean, and the system has reached its chemical equilibrium, the CO2 stays in the atmosphere. If we stop emitting, it will decline extremely slowly. There is scientific disagreement about how fast or slow it will decline.
But what matters is that the warming which results is going to happen in a century or so. The natural cycle was the end of the last ice age. It took 40,000 years from the coldest part to the warmest part. We’re going to see the same amount of warming which took 8,000 years occur in a century or so. And if we ignore the threat, we’ll be locked into two or three times as much warming in a couple of decades – because of the rate of growth of fossil fuels.
Now, a word about solutions. Wind and solar generation are undercutting coal, natural gas and nuclear. This is a new development, caused by gradual advances in technology and reductions in price, which are now far past the point of market equity. “Baseload” doesn’t matter until we have enough wind and solar to exceed the current ability of natural gas generation to track load. Storage and other solutions are already here, but you don’t know about them because you don’t study energy industry issues. It really doesn’t matter what you, or I, or any elected official thinks about this. The marketplace is speaking, and we will have a clean energy future.
It only matters if you care about the economy, because clean energy used to be expensive, and now it is fossil and nuclear power which are expensive – too expensive to survive. If you try to prop these failing industries up, you are hurting people, including yourself.
No. The ~5 degrees C of Northern Hemisphere warming from the Pleistocene to Holocene that occurred ~14,700 and ~11,700 years ago (Younger Dryas) took place within a matter of a few decades, not millennia. It occurred without any CO2 fluctuation. The CO2 fluctuation occurred centuries after the warming occurred. It was an effect of the temperature change, not a cause.
During this time, sea levels rose at rates of about 5 meters per century, which is 30 times the modern rate. Again, this occurred without CO2 fluctuation.
https://notrickszone.com/2017/04/13/new-paper-northern-hemisphere-temperatures-rose-4-5c-within-a-few-decades-14700-years-ago/
New Paper: Northern Hemisphere Temperatures Rose 4–5°C Within ‘A Few Decades’ 14,700 Years Ago
https://notrickszone.com/2016/11/11/8-new-papers-reveal-natural-global-warming-reaches-amplitudes-of-10c-in-just-50-years-with-no-co2-influence/
8 New Papers Reveal ‘Natural’ Global Warming Reaches Amplitudes Of 10°C In Just 50 Years With No CO2 Influence
So why do you think it is that even the IPCC acknowledges that doubling preindustrial CO2 to 560 ppm will only cause a temperature increase of 1.2°C on its own…if we’re going to get “two or three times as much warming in a couple of decades” with just, say, 450 ppm CO2?
With no word you mentioned his description of the dynamics. Instead you pick something rather irrelevant and try to counter it with some quotes about reconstructions. Reconstructions you don’t even trust (mentioned many times in the comments).
If he were to reply to your comment this thread would go on forever about your point instead of the real dynamics of atmospheric CO2 concentration changes … you know, the topic of this blog post. Fascinating strategy.
Hmmm. So you believe that the climate’s sensitivity to CO2 is “rather irrelevant”, and is therefore unrelated to a discussion about the non-correlation of anthropogenic emissions with CO2 changes as well as the incompatibility with current CO2 reconstructions. I suspect that the reason you find climate sensitivity to CO2 “rather irrelevant” here is because you know that a climate that changes 30-40 times more rapidly in the absence of CO2 changes undermines your beliefs about CO2 as a highly influential climate parameter. I also suspect that you don’t like the fact that the IPCC has determined that it would take another 150 ppm of CO2 buildup for the temperature increase from CO2 to reach 1 degree.
No, that’s not what I wrote. Nice straw man argument from you causing further distraction from you not understanding the dynamics of the CO2 exchange between oceans and the atmosphere. The mentioned paper in https://notrickszone.com/2017/04/25/study-finds-burning-all-fossil-fuels-would-lead-to-only-max-500-800-ppm-co2-atmospheric-concentration/ does a good job in describing the dynamics.
So you believe that the climate’s sensitivity to CO2 is “rather irrelevant”
Uh, SebastianH, I was very specifically and obviously writing about CO2 climate sensitivity as it relates to both reconstructions that show temperature increases of 30 times the modern rate (0.05 C per decade since 1850) occurred without ANY CO2 flux or forcing (the temperature changes occurred before the CO2 changes), as well as the IPCC analysis that doubling CO2 to 560 ppm will only lead to a temperature increase of 1.2 C, as that’s the extent of CO2 climate sensitivity. In response, you wrote that what I wrote was “rather irrelevant” to the discussion.
So do you indeed find climate sensitivity to CO2 to be relevant? If so, why do you believe that 1.2 C of warming from doubling CO2 is concerning? And why do you believe that water vapor and cloud feedbacks will amplify the CO2-derived temperature to 3 degrees, 4 degrees, 5 degrees and up if you simultaneously don’t believe that clouds or water vapor have increased temperatures since 1850? When do you think these positive feedbacks amplifying CO2 warming might finally start happening, and why haven’t they been working as modeled up to now?
In sum, climate sensitivity is very relevant. Perhaps you shouldn’t have written otherwise if you don’t agree that it’s irrelevant…because that’s exactly what I was writing about.
The lack of correlation?
Just look at this image from the first paper mentioned here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jamal_Munshi/publication/281111296/figure/fig6/AS:391507698831372@1470354117734/Figure-7-Comparison-of-short-term-fluctuations-in-the-original-time-series.jpg
Human emissions are far greater in value that the variations caused by temperature changes. If the blue line would be zero the read one obviously would be negative. That’s why human emissions account for 100% of the increase. The temperature variation cause less or more absorption of that surplus CO2 per year. So both result in CO2 concentration rising the way it does, not one or the other.
“The airborne fraction is a scaling factor defined as the ratio of the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 to the CO2 emissions from anthropogenic sources. It represents the proportion of human emitted CO2 that remains in the atmosphere.” (from Wikipedia)
So in a) you ignore human CO2 staying in the atmosphere causing the increase and in b) you acknowledge that about half the emitted CO2 (by humans) remains in the atmosphere each year increasing the atmospheric CO2 content? Weird.
Airborne fraction staying roughly the same is an amazing thing. So far nature managed to absorb around half of our emissions every year since we have reliable records. (Note: of course not half the CO2 molecules we emit as if they were special, just numberwise half of what we emit)
That’s an illusion when you don’t understand math (you are refering to this CO2 graph, right?).
Together with the partial pressure difference of CO2 in the atmosphere and in the oceans, temperature controls CO2 concentration in the absense of artifical CO2 sources. So there must be a temperature (and concentration) at which – without anything changing – the CO2 concentration would stay the same. Now to the graph … CO2 concentration first is on a downward slope from colder temperatures, then it warms up above that equilibrium temperature and the CO2 concentration drop begins to slow down and turn around (almost like a car rolling backwards and getting slower with forward acceleration applied until it changes direction and drives forward). Then 5000-4000 years ago the temperature must have started declining again and the slope of the upward CO2 curve begins to decrease until a brief flat part). And surprise, that’s what all temperature reconstructions look like: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=temperature+reconstruction+holocene
All explainable by what I wrote in c). But I am a bit surprised here. Wasn’t one of the points of this posts to show that temperature variations cause the CO2 increases/decreases?
Have you ever considered that you could be wrong and that there are no inconsistencies? And/or some of the graphs could be wrong?
Emphasized part: exactly this! And of course what I wrote at the beginning … without human emissions the redline would be in the negative part of the chart. That should be enough to convince anyone that humans are the cause for the overall increase. Temperature contributes as the variation of the increase and together with the differential pressure change to how much of the anthropogenic surplus remains in the atmosphere (airborne fraction).
Correlations of data from reliable data sources are embraced. That’s all. Some of the data presented in the post contradicts other data in this post (CO2 concentration in the 1940s in multiple graphs).
What gets dismissed is the notion that temperature variations alone can explain the increase in CO2 concentration in modern times. They merely modulate the overall increase caused by human emissions. Whenever someone compares a detrended graph and completely dismisses the subtracted trend a kitten dies. Seriously, that’s just bad analysis.
P.S.: Also please don’t compare amounts with different unit, e.g. don’t try to compare the change of human emissions (GtC/year²) with the yearly increase of atmospheric CO2 content (GtC/year).
No they’re not. Natural emissions are 100 times greater in magnitude than human emissions, and natural emissions correspond to temperature changes (among other factors such as changes in primary production/land area): during a warm-water year, more CO2 is released than during a cold-water year. That’s why the year-to-year changes in emissions (humans) haven’t correlated with the year-to-year changes in CO2 ppm throughout the entire Mauna Loa record (since 1959), but temperatures correlate quite well That’s what Munshi found. That’s what his paper was about.
That’s your opinion/belief. The increase is primarily caused by temperature changes/primary production changes that produce more/less natural emission. Human emissions play a minor role.
No, with regard to the airborne fraction, models say the AF should increase along with human emissions (obviously). They haven’t. In fact, after 2000, the AF decreased as emission rates increased (doubled).
Considering our emissions are 1/100ths of natural emissions, the idea that there is anything “special” about our tiny contribution to be able to claim what you did above is rather presumptive.
Trying to insult me by implying I am unintelligent is not helping you here, SebastianH. It’s not a matter of not understanding math that there is an inverse correlation between rising CO2 levels and falling temperatures during the Holocene. During the HTM, the highest temperatures coincided with the lowest CO2 values of the Holocene. During the Little Ice Age, CO2 rose as temperature plummeted. This all assumes our CO2 reconstructions are accurate. It’s likely they’re not. They were cherry-picked from values that far exceeded the modern values.
How amusing. Your “explanation” is entirely ineffectual. That you think you have “explained away” the Holocene temperature cooling and CO2 rising incompatibility is nothing more than hubris.
Correct. Which is precisely why it was likewise emphasized in the article that our CO2 reconstructions are likely erroneous. As Dr. Salby writes, the temperature record and the CO2 record “cannot both be correct”. Considering we have a great deal of evidence to suggest we are still in a very cool part of the Holocene (i.e., sea level highstands ~2 meters higher than now during the HTM, a sea ice free Arctic during the HTM, glaciers that exist now didn’t during the HTM, etc.), it’s very likely that the CO2 reconstructions are more incorrect than the temperature reconstructions are.
I don’t think that temperature variations alone explain the increase. Those are your words. Natural sinks that can’t keep up with natural emissions — and we have little to no info about the variations in either — are responsible for CO2 changes predominantly. The Earth has been greening substantially since the 1980s. The land area above sea level has grown since the 1980s. More greenery and more land area (soils) means more natural emissions. And we really don’t know to what extent sinks have kept up. Greening and land area expansion isn’t “temperature variations alone”. So no, your characterization is wrong once again.
That’s only your presupposition (that the increase in CO2 concentration is 100% caused by humans, and 0% is caused by natural variability). But we already knew that presupposition is all you have left when you dismiss data that doesn’t fit with your beliefs.
“More greenery and more land area (soils) means more natural emissions. ”
Yep, the CO2 enhances the NATURAL Carbon Cycle, that feeds the world.
More CO2.. more growth, more to decay etc etc, increased life cycles…. more CO2 emissions.
That applies on land and in the seas.
The bulk transfers just increase. Basic biology.
The world certainly dodged a bullet when CO2 started rising from the very low, barely sustainable, atmospheric levels seen in some of the ice cores.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/30/life-on-earth-was-nearly-doomed-by-too-little-co2/
The world certainly dodged a bullet when CO2 started rising …..
and if humans had even a small hand in that, then the use of accidentally buried carbon, putting carbon back into the Carbon Cycle where it belongs…
… then we humans deserve a BIG PAT ON THE BACK.
Yes, even you seb, because you, in your inner-city ghetto…
… have probably done more than many of us to help the cause of increasing atmospheric CO2. 🙂
The keyword in what Munchi does is “detrending”. The trend that gets subtracted is the human influence. The year to year changes in human emissions are small and are overshadowed by the variations caused by temperature changes, that’s true. But the yearly human emissions are way larger than those variations in CO2 concentration, they are the reason that CO2 accumulates in the first place. And this happens despite a higher CO2 concentration resulting in more CO2 absorption by the oceans (partial pressure difference).
Nope, you mention the airborne fraction. It is literally the amount of human generated CO2 that is not absorbed by nature. Yet you chose to completely ignore this and write that human emissions play a minor role. It’s fascinating how your mind works.
It doesn’t matter how tiny human emissions are compared to natural emissions. What matters is that the amount of human emissions is bigger than the CO2 concentration increase! That’s a really simple connection and you can’t seem to find a way for your mind to accept that and make up invalid comparisons. You even mention the airborne fraction and ignore it. Why!?
It is a matter of not understanding math. The Munshi paper at least didn’t confuse units, you do. If you had read it carefully you’d understand that variations in temperature are reflected in variations of CO2 concentration if the human trend is removed. So what you have to do to find out if the CO2 concentration in your graph correlate with temperature the same way as it does in modern times, you need to get the first derivative of that curve. And surprise, it looks just like the reconstructed temperature record. It correlates and shows the usual CO2 lags temperature connection.
You are still stuck with comparing speed to distance and that I call “not understanding math”. It will be interesting how your believes will change when you finally understand your mistake.
Well, then let’s stick to actual measurements in modern times and understanding the dynamics of the CO2 ocean/atmosphere interface first, instead of calling up the distant past to explain away human influence of today.
I’ll correct that for you: “Natural sinks that can’t keep up with human emissions are responsible for CO2 changes predominantly”. Please try to understand the dynamics first (higher CO2 concentration in the atmosphere causes more absorption by the oceans), then the math involved (human emissions are greater than the increase in CO2 concentration, as is also indicated by the airborne fraction).
I haven’t said that 0% is caused by natural variability, I am saying that temperature increase merely causes the yearly variations in CO2 concentration increases, not the overall increase. It looks like that because temperature is also increasing (global warming), but without the human emissions there would be no positive trend in CO2 concentration at all.
The only one actually dismissing data and information about how processes work is you Kenneth, … because it doesn’t fit with your belief.
At this juncture in time we have only probable causes for CO2 increases, there is no ‘absolute’ cause, nothing but a series of correlations.
Among these correlations human made CO2 contribution appears very low on the list. That is to say by comparison to NATURE human contributions are astonishingly small. This planet is still warming after the cold of the LIA and thus such effects as a rise in CO2 is what should be expected.
However we do know that the IPCC and their adherent, like you seb, choose to ignore many NATURAL sources of atmospheric CO2 and other (natural) GHGs. I suggest you read the Butman paper (http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/sites/harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/files/publications/pdfs/Butman_NatureGeoscience_2011.pdf ) and find a sense of perspective about atmospheric CO2 levels, and stop you hubristic ranting.
There is no ‘absolute’ cause or list of effect that tells us how, when and why atmospheric CO2 levels decline, there just are no ‘absolutes’, these things are not that well known. Reducing man-made CO2 offers NO guarantee that global CO2 levels will decline anytime soon, as humans are NOT in control of these things.
From the overview of past climate, seb, CO2 levels do NOT indicate a strong correlation to global temperature. Other NATURAL systems appear to control that. Do you disagree?
seb your absolutist ideas go against the general practice of science, indeed against what we know of climatic history, and only enforces the idea that you are acting with profound hubris and personal beliefs in your omniscience in knowing about these things.
Given all this, people like you seb, believe (for that is all you have) Western life should be absolutely overturned, much to the determent of so many million citizens, just because of some unproven theory.
Oops typo,
“Western life should be absolutely overturned, much to the determent of so many million citizens, just because of some unproven theory.”
Should be –
Western life should be absolutely overturned, much to the detriment of so many million citizens, just because of some unproven theory.
Ok, new theory. Human emissions get immediately absorbed by nature surrounding human facilities and the increase in atmospheric CO2 content is caused completely by nature itself. Does that sound plausible?
Are those natural sinks near our points of emission smart enough to distinguish human CO2 from natural CO2 and don’t absorb the latter one when the first is not present? Probably not.
If you fill a pool with a garden hose and the water level rises half as fast as the amount of water from the hose would suggest, would you need to correlate that rise to the garden hose or would you use common sense and accept that maybe it’s the garden hose that is filling the pool and not someone pouring water into it with a cup, despite that action perfectly correlating with the detrended water level rise.
No. At least some portion of atmospheric CO2 content changes are anthropogenic. It’s not a 100% vs. 0% thing — in either direction. But considering the magnitudes of difference between the two sources, nature very likely contributes much more to CO2 changes than humans do. Even Dr. Salby has the human contribution at somewhere between 10-30%. That’s not 0%.
Human emissions are present. So this hypothetical doesn’t work. But no, the sinks don’t distinguish between either, of course.
@SebastianH 2. July 2017 at 2:52 PM |
Your proof that says the minute human component make a difference? No the human component is lost in the statistical noise of any measurement. Nature’s ability to move many orders of magnitude of matter around this planet makes man’s efforts appear just so puny.
As stated above (my first link) by Igor v. Polyakov about Butman’s work “showing that rivers and streams in the United States are “supersaturated” with carbon dioxide (CO2) compared to the atmosphere, releasing an amount of CO2 equivalent to a car burning 40 million gallons of gasoline (enough to fuel 3.4 million car trips to the moon).”
And that is just the USA! Add in all wet forest area around the globe and it is plainly obvious humans do not control CO2 production — EVER!
And still there is —
“Western life should be absolutely overturned, much to the detriment of so many million citizens, just because of some unproven theory.”
Kenneth,
at just 30% human contribution, where is the rest of our emissions (8.5 GtC or 85%) absorbed and why do these sinks not absorb other CO2? Would they stop absorbing CO2 if we’d stop emitting tomorrow? How does that work?
tom0mason,
it doesn’t matter how much nature is releasing compared to human emissions. We know how much more nature absorbs and that it’s not enough to absorb all human co2 emissions, just half of it.
“We know how much more nature absorbs ”
MORE BULLS**T !!
Isn’t the increase in atmospheric CO2 content the difference between all emissions and absorption?
REALLY?
YOU ARE A LIAR, seb.
You seem to lack some very basic maths skills.
You have been yapping on continually, like a demented parrot, saying humans have cause 100% of the CO2 increase.
What percentage does that leave for “natural”
You don’t even realise how DUMB and IGNORANT you come across.
Your posts are great in convincing people that the CO2 religion is NOTHING BUT A SCAM.
They can see the moronic perverted illogic, and the absolute denial of all facts and reality.
You can’t even provide one bit of proof that CO2 causes warming of a convective atmosphere, or of water.
You are the one with the TOTALLY BASELESS BELIEF in an anti-human, anti-science, socialist cult AGW religion.
I’ve asked before, but still you are unable to reply… your silence will imply that THERE ARE NONE
Name any PROVABLE drawbacks to any level of atmospheric CO2 that we are ever likely to reach….
AndyG55,
Ok, maybe I haven’t made myself clear enough. When some value (water level or CO2 concentration) increases only because there is one big source (garden hose, human emissions), then 100% of the increase is caused by that source. Because without the source there would be no increase.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other contributers (someone pouring water into the pool with a cup or natural variability). It means that those contributers alone don’t cause any increase.
Got it?
You are WRONG..
your logic is , as always FLAWED.
Your moronic analogies are a load of meaningless distraction, but its all you have, because the FACTS are against you.. always.
“Because without the source there would be no increase.”
Then why have CO2 level changed in the past, seb
You are, yet again, proven to be nothing but a NIL-educated brain-washed TROLL.
You need mental help, to get over your addiction, seb..
Then you need to go back and get a decent education , and PAY ATTENTION this time around.
“Because without the source there would be no increase.”
He’ll answer: because of temperature changes. Temperature changes drove CO2 concentration changes in the past… Never mind that there was an inverse correlation during most of the Holocene. The temperatures-drive-CO2 changes stopped happening, though, in about 1850, when humans began burning fossil fuels. At that point, humans took over.
Speaking of temperatures changing CO2…isn’t this interesting?
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/CO2-Concentrations-1800-to-1960-Kauffman-2007.jpg
Kauffman, 2007
“The scenario seems to be that between 1985 and 1988, a decision was made to present pre-1958 CO2 concentrations with no humps or dips and to proclaim a pre-industrial level of 280 ppm.”
“Compared with the so-called pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm, a level of 410 ppm was found in 1812, rising to 450 ppm in 1825. There were levels of 370 ppm in 1857, and 4 sets of measurements gave 350–415 ppm around 1940 (Figure 10). From 1870–1920 values remained within 295–310 ppm. From 1955–1965 the values were 325 ppm. Beck chose the most carefully done assays for this graph. One was from Poona, India. An effort not described by Beck was one of 350 determinations near Point Barrow, Alaska, from 1947–1949, with a mean result of 420 ppm (Hock et al., 1952).”
“The CO2 levels found at Mauna Loa range from 315 ppm in 1957 to 385 ppm in 2007, a period of 50 years. They are similar on Antarctica, showing good mixing of the atmosphere. Since there was a bigger rise from 312 to 415 ppm from 1927–1944 (27 years), shown by chemical assays as described above (Figure 10), there should be no reason for alarm at present. The start of the infrared data in 1958 showed a CO2 concentration that was 12 ppm lower by NDIR assay than the best chemical data of the period. The chemical data are very consistent with each other. This discrepancy has never been resolved.”
“From 0–60° north, the period from 1905–1940 showed about 1 °C of warming, then steady or dropping temperatures. The 60–70° north record showed about 1.8 °C of warming from 1922–1960, with sinking temperatures thereafter (Kushnir, 1994). This is the reason why the chemical assays registered a large increase in atmospheric CO2, from 295 ppm in 1885 to 440 ppm in 1944 (Figure 10). Ocean cooling of ~0.6 °C from 1940– 1970 (Kushnir, 1994) brought CO2 levels down for a while to 325 ppm from 1955–1965 (Figure 10).”
Mostly because of temperature changes. There could have been “events” that released more CO2 or absorbed more CO2, but mostly because of temperature changes.
Was there? The complete EPICA ice core data has CO2 levels correlating with a proxy for local temperature: https://www.bas.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/003.jpg
When you write something like this you most likely think of this graph, do you? https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Holocene-CO2-10500-0-R.jpg
Of course it correlates with temperature. To see that you’d have to understand the dynamics. If you think increasing temperatures mean increasing CO2 concentration, then you didn’t understand. The increase of the CO2 concentration also depends on the CO2 concentration itself.
Kauffman, 2007
I’d be very skeptic of what was measured back then. It kind of contradicts ice core records, doesn’t it?
Between the Medieval Warm Period (900-1200 CE, 275-280 ppm) and Little Ice Age (1300-1900 CE, 295 ppm), CO2 concentrations rose by about 15-20 ppm (according to the “accepted” reconstruction canon). During this same period, surface and ocean temperatures plummeted by between 1 and 3 degrees. This is what has been referred to as an inverse correlation.
The lowest CO2 concentrations of the Holocene (~260 ppm) recorded from the “accepted” reconstructions at about 8,000 to 6,000 kaBP. These millennia correspond to the warmest millennia of the Holocene, the Holocene Thermal Maximum. It was as much as 4 to 6 degrees C warmer than now at the surface, and 2 to 3 degrees warmer than now in the ocean. So again, the warmer years had lower CO2 concentrations than the cooler years did. This is why Dr. Salby has said that there is likely something very wrong with our proxy reconstructions of CO2. There was an agreement in the mid-’80s to only accept the low values and to toss out the CO2 values that showed CO2 levels reached 500 ppm, 600 ppm, 700 ppm during the Holocene…values that DID align with temperatures.
Can you point me to an actual temperature reconstruction of the Holocene that has temperatures 4-6 °C higher than today? Most have it barely at 1°C warmer.
Secondly, please try to find out how CO2 concentration is connected to (sea surface) temperature in an undisturbed system. You might find out why there was a (slight) CO2 concentration increase while temperatures decreased (slightly). I don’t want to spoil it for you.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150522174522.htm
The Holocene Climate Optimum was a period of global climate warming that occurred between six to nine thousand years ago. At that time, the global average temperatures were somewhere between four to six degrees Celsius higher than they are today.
Mangerud and Svendsen, 2017
Shallow marine molluscs that are today extinct close to Svalbard, because of the cold climate, are found in deposits there dating to the early Holocene. The most warmth-demanding species found, Zirfaea crispata, currently has a northern limit 1000 km farther south, indicating that August temperatures on Svalbard were 6°C warmer at around 10.2–9.2 cal. ka BP, when this species lived there. … After 8.2 cal. ka, the climate around Svalbard warmed again, and although it did not reach the same peak in temperatures as prior to 9 ka, it was nevertheless some 4°C warmer than present between 8.2 and 6 cal. ka BP. Thereafter, a gradual cooling brought temperatures to the present level at about 4.5 cal. ka BP. The warm early-Holocene climate around Svalbard was driven primarily by higher insolation and greater influx of warm Atlantic Water, but feedback processes further influenced the regional climate. https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Holocene-Cooling-Svalbard-Arctic-Mangerud-Svendsen-2017.jpg
—–
Alberta, Canada, 8°C above present, Demezhko et al., 2017
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Holocene-Cooling-Canada-Alberta-Demezhko-2017.jpg
—–
East China, 3-4°C above present, Li et al., 2017
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Holocene-Cooling-China-East-Chaohu-Li-2017.jpg
—
Antarctic Peninsula, 5°C above present (1,000 years ago), Browne et al., 2017
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Holocene-Cooling-Western-Antarctic-Peninsula-Browne-17-1.jpg
—–
Northern Japan, 3-4°C above present, Kawahat et al., 2017
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Holocene-Cooling-Japan-Kawahata-17.jpg
—–
Tibetan Plateau, 5-6°C above present, Saini et al., 2017
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Holocene-Cooling-Tibetan-Plateau-Saini-17.jpg
—–
Mediterranean Sea, 4°C above present, Jalali et al., 2016
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Holocene-Cooling-Mediterranean-Ionian-Sea-2-Jalali-16.jpg
—–
North Atlantic SST, 6°C above present, Mark, 2016
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Holocene-Cooling-North-Atlantic-SSTs-Mark-16.jpg
—–
Fan Lake, Antarctica, 8°C above present, Foster et al., 2016
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Holocene-Cooling-Fan-Lake-Antarctic-Region-Foster-16.jpg
—–
NW Pacific SSTs, 4°C above present, Yamamoto et al., 2016
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Holocene-Cooling-Pacific-NW-Yamamoto-16.jpg
—–
Thank you Kenneth, but why do averages look like this? https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/holocene_temperature_variations_rev1.png
Barely 1°C difference between the little ice age and highest temperatures?
Because you’ve chosen to ignore this:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150522174522.htm
The Holocene Climate Optimum was a period of global climate warming that occurred between six to nine thousand years ago. At that time, the global average temperatures were somewhere between four to six degrees Celsius higher than they are today.
To follow yet another yapping rant from seb, where he again produces not one iota of evidence, and continues to show his very confused low-end mathematical comprehension, and continues to ignore real data and information ..
… and also continues to LIE
about statements he has made.
…. I’ll ask a simple question, yet again…
Name any PROVABLE drawbacks to any level of atmospheric CO2 that we are ever likely to reach….
More CO2 forcing equals higher temperatures. Feedbacks most likely amplify this. The drawback is a change in climate that could mean high costs for adaptation. Better plant growth does in no way compensate for this.
There was a paper about the economic damage from climate change in the US a few days ago: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6345/1362.full
Before you rant something about this not being “provable”, is there any way to prove that more CO2 will be mostly beneficial, like you constantly claim?
According to tne IPCC and your side in general (and agreed upon by a large percentage of skeptics too), doubling CO2 concentrations to 560 ppm only causes 1.2 C of warming. Considering the Little Ice Age was about 2 or 3 degrees cooler than the Medieval Warm Period, and that cooler temperatures lead to shorter growing seasons, more weather instability (hurricanes, droughts, floods), reduced crop yields, browning, higher extinction rates, higher death rates (humans and animals), impassable seas, more energy use (heating consumes a lot more energy than cooling does)…why would 1.2 C of warming be such a bad thing?
Yes, and it starts off this way:
“Episodes of severe weather in the United States, such as the present abundance of rainfall in California, are brandished as tangible evidence of the future costs of current climate trends.”
You do realize that it was just one year ago, that the lack of abundance of rainfall in California was attributed to human forcing. One year later, humans are now claimed (modeling) to be causing too much rain. Weather events are just assumed to be human caused in these models of economic costs. Of course, you necessarily believe that humans cause weather too. If it rains too much, humans did it. If it rains too little, humans did it. It’s an unfalsifiable hypothesis. Pathetic.
”
UNPROVEN GARBAGE.
You have been totally unable to find a single piece of real science that proves CO2 causes warming of a convective atmosphere or of oceans.
”
UNPROVABLE GARBAGE.. you even use the work “could”..
And the cultist rant in your link is based on that UNPROVEN GARBAGE.
That is a VERY WEAK, PATHETIC, ANTI-SCIENCE response …showing you have zero comprehension of the word “provable”…
… I expected a less PATHETIC attempt than you have put forward.
And your dismissal of the benefits of enhanced CO2 is equally as feeble.
Would you like to try again ????
… noting the third word.
Name any PROVABLE drawbacks to any level of atmospheric CO2 that we are ever likely to reach……..
What a load of zero-proof, anti-science and total BS.
You are FACT FREE .. as always, seb.
Another non-science yapping rant from seb, showing yet again is low-end comprehension of mathematics.
Most of what he says is fabricated and baseless opinion driven by brain-washed AGW cultism.
Variability in non-human emissions FAR OUTWEIGHS the tiny fraction of human emissions. FACT.
Even if humans are a significant contributor to rising CO2 levels, this is TOTALLY BENFICIAL to all life on Earth. FACT
As seb has continuously shown.. the is ZERO proof that CO2 causes warming of a convective atmosphere or of oceans. FACT.
Let’s ask that simple question again , see if he answers..
Name any PROVABLE drawbacks to any level of atmospheric CO2 that we are ever likely to reach….
Awaiting for yet another comedic reply.
“That’s why human emissions account for 100% of the increase.”
OK, seb… I accept you believe your child-minded FALLACY..
But you do know what that means, don’t you seb..
It means that the HIGHLY BENEFICIAL increase in atmospheric CO2 will continue for MANY, MANY years, decades, possibly even centuries, to come.
This a WONDERFUL for the planet..
Wouldn’t you agree ! 🙂
I was able to calculate a “Sensitivity Constant”. I found a good fit with modern data using a figure of 1.6 K/doubling of CO2 and given the error bands that may seem to be in good agreement with “Consensus Scientists”.
However I have good reason to believe there is no science here, because the “Sensitivity Constant” varies over a wide range if you change the time interval. Such a constant is an absurdity. We should call it the “Sensitivity Variable”.
Over most of the last one million years the “Sensitivity Constant” has been 16 K/doubling, so pray tell me why (or how) it magically changed to 1.6 K/doubling in 1850:
https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-dog-that-did-not-bark/
Good point, well said Camel.
Thank you for the link to my work. Here is an update.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2997420
Well, I was a bit late to this party. Kudos to Kenneth Richard for his clearly written presentations. SebastianH ultimately relies repeatedly on the thoroughly discredited pseudo-mass balance argument, that says that if CO2 levels increase by less than the sum total of what we have put in over the years, then the increase is due to us. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of dynamic processes, in which outflow is proportional to all inflow. I.e., sink activity is stimulated by source activity.
The pseudo-mass balance argument declares all sink activity to be wholly natural, and therefore is moved entirely to the “natural” side of the ledger. But, as sink activity is stimulated by all inputs, there is a portion of it that is brought into being by the anthropogenic input. That portion of the sink activity is, for all intents and purposes, artificial sink activity, and must be moved to the other side of the ledger.
SebastianH betrays his fundamental misunderstanding in his comment at 2. July 2017 at 2:52 PM, likening the system in question to a static pool of water. If he added in a drain, and a separate “natural” inflow, he would have a better analogy that actually represents the situation. In such a case, the inflow from his garden hose could never affect the steady state level of the water in greater proportion than the proportion of his inflow to the “natural” inflow. If the rise is greater than this, then the cause is a necessarily a change in the natural flow.
SebastianH continues to make this “error” over and over again. He repeats it in almost nearly every thread and declares we are math “illiterates” if we don’t agree with him.
Poor seb-troll,
Its so-called “maths” is not representative of REALITY, because it has zero comprehension of the physics behind any of it.
”
Good analogy , Bartemis.
(seb-troll enjoys an analogy, but has yet to find a good one)
But you also need to add a massive, variable circulation pump as well as making the outlet variable.