But there is evidence indicating that most of the increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide could be from natural sources.
So, asks Alan Siddons from Holden, Massachusetts, why do most climate skeptics tacitly and even explicitly accept that man is the culprit?
Let’s consider some of the available evidence.
1. Carbon dioxide concentrations have been measured at Mauna Loa in the Pacific Ocean since 1957 and over this period have shown a general increase.
2. Over this period there has been a general increase in global temperatures.
3. The change in carbon dioxide concentration with time correlates better with temperature change than with change in human carbon dioxide emissions (see Figures 2 and 3 @ Roy Spencer on how Oceans are Driving Carbon Dioxide, Watts Up with That, January 25, 2008).
4. Large interannual fluctuations in Mauna Loa-derived carbon dioxide “emissions” roughly coincide with El Nino and La Nina events (see Figure 3, ibid)
5. There is a clear and strong relationship between levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and long-term average sea-surface temperatures as would be expected from the solubility curves for carbon dioxide in water at various temperatures and pressures (see Figure 1 @ Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels Follow Sea Surface Temperatures, Jennifer Marohasy.com/blog, September 16, 2007)
6. Current carbon cycle flux estimates indicate that the annual carbon dioxide exchange between the surface and the atmosphere amounts to 20% to 30% of the total amount in the atmosphere.
7. Natural processes remove an order of magnitude more than the annual increase in carbon dioxide each year, then put it back again.
8. Human generated carbon dioxide is around 3% of the total carbon dioxide flux.
9. The isotope ratio difference between ‘natural’ carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels is small and not a reliable indication of the source of an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (see Spencer Part2: More CO2 Peculiarities – The C13/C12 Isotope Ratio, Watts Up With That? January 28, 2008)
***********************
The above nine points are drawn in part from posts by Roy Spencer at blog site ‘Watt’s Up with That?’ on January 25 and 28, 2008 and also a post by Lance Endersbee at JenniferMarohasy.com/blog on September 16, 2007.
Thanks to Alan Siddons for the discussion and the slide, which is from a Lord Monckton lecture.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Why? Because the ‘evidence’ for the other explanations is extremely weak.
We are adding about 8 billion tons Carbon to the atmosphere each year right now and the concentration in the atmopshere is increasing at about 3 to billion tons.
Natural processes are absorbing about half of our emissions.
The Oceans and Vegetation are absorbing about 154 billion tons per year and emitting about 150 billion tons per year.
So, the natural processes completely dwarf the human contribution but we are adding Carbon to a system which was more-or-less balanced to start with.
I think its that we have been so beaten about by almost Soviet levels of propaganda that we are keen to compromise on any part of the stupid sides argument that isn’t outright ridiculous or proven wrong absolutely.
Its a bit like also clapping finally when the handicapped swimmer makes it to the end of the pool. When they are not being entirely idiotic we want to lavish them with all the willingness to agree on something that we can muster.
I assumed it was both us and nature. But am wondering just how much difference we make. It looks like not enough to prevent CO2 levels from falling when the temperature turns down. One wants to be hopeful about it. One wants to give the credit to industrial-civilisation if at all one can since of course high CO2-levels are a very good thing. So that could be a bit of an inbuilt bias there.
Bill – these are just educated guesses – in fact just guesses.
No one understands the carbon cycle – it is all modelling and guesswork.
http://www.nocarbontaxes.org/Carbon%20Cycle.html
Bill Illis: “Natural processes are absorbing about half of our emissions.”
That is what I have a problem with. It follows that, before we started burning fossil fuels and so adding 8 billion tons of CO2 pa to the atmosphere, CO2 levels must have been falling by about 4 billion tons pa.
This begs a few questions:
1) What stopped atmospheric CO2 levels from falling, over as little as 200 years, to levels too low to sustain plant life?
2) If the level of CO2 did drop substantially over the pre-industrial centuries, what put so much CO2 in the atmosphere in the first place?
3) Or, if CO2 levels were stable in pre-industrial times, what kept them so? What kept the system balanced to within a percentage point or so over thousands of years? Magic?
My work on this subject indicates that the atmosphere is exchanging very rapidly with the top 100 metres of the oceans. The atmosphere is in effective partial pressure equilibrium with that top 100 metres. As the oceans cool with Solar Cycle 24, I expect that the annual CO2 increase in the atmosphere will be in the range of 0 to 1 ppm per annum. It will be a permanent Pinatubo effect. Over hundreds of years of exchange with the deep ocean, 97% of mankind’s CO2 will be taken down to the vasty deep where we will never see it again. By the way, I can’t find the 16th September CO2 piece you refer to.
Not that I accept we are the principal source of additional CO2, but I would accept that we are the principal non-“natural” liberators of CO2 (in the sense that the scale of our burning of fossil fuels during the past century hasn’t been done before).
That is an important distinction to make, even amongst AGWing skeptics. We can still be the principal additional contributors to the system (beyond what would usually occur) and that contribution still not be significant in the overall scheme of things.
At the end of the day, the position of all AGWing skeptics is that our additional contribution doesn’t matter, because it’s not now, nor has it been shown to, lead to catastrophic temperature increases.
So, I think: some accept a meaningful CO2 increase caused by man; some think it’s not meaningful as a total percentage; however all believe it’s a red herring by the AGWers, which it is best to set aside and get to the real arguments.
In that regard, perhaps there is a third category who say, “Look, let’s accept for a moment your case that most of the CO2 rise is due to mankind…it doesn’t matter, anyway.”
David, Sorry about the links, they are now hopefully fixed and the one you were after is here http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002303.html
But you need to SCROLL DOWN as it is at the old blog format. cheers,
One can only conclude that the whole anthropogenic source of CO2 argument is riddled with holes; noone has rebutted Beck, and Keeling and Callendar have been shown to have been selective in their data utilisation. The idea that pre-IR levels of CO2 were 280 ppm is an act of faith and convenience; Sage’s work, which contradicts Ruddiman’s thesis, shows that between 12000-15000 years ago CO2 levels went from less than 200 to over 270 ppm; the paper by Luthi shows that recent geological records of CO2 are either a lottery or that enormous fluctuations, ie between 172-300 ppm over 100’s of years, were commonplace; the whole ice-core data is overdue for reexamination; Drake has done a reanalysis of ice CO2 concentrations based on an adjustment of the ice/gas age differences; he shows much less fluctuation over the period 40000 mya to present but at a much higher CO2 level than the orthodoxy shows;
http:homepage.ntlworld.com/jdrake/Questioning_Climate/userfiles/Ice-core_corrections_report_1.pdf (// excluded)
Fig 4 is his summary graph. Who to believe? Certainly the certainty espoused by the AGW proponents that the pre-AGW base was a normal, settled base is disingenuous and rubbish; just as is the accusation that the approximately 103 ppm increase since that utopic base was perturbed by evil CO2 polluting energy sources has been due to humans; it is beyond dispute that 97% of that increase of 103ppm has been due to natural production; and that’s straight from DOE and IPCC; so whatever is happening, if anything at all, humanity’s imput is miniscule, and, since CO2 appears to be completely non-correlative with temp, something else, other than CO2 increase must be responsible for temp increases; if they have happened. AGW is a schmozzle.
Natural fluctuations go up, and then down again. In other words, they fluctuate. Human emitted CO2 is steadily increasing. Over time, the latter will outweigh the former.
C13/C12 ratios vary on annual timescales because of plant preferences for C12 over C13. This causes the ratio to reflect the annual growth/decay cycle. Since fossil fuels are derived from plants, they have the same effect on the atmosphere as tons of rotting vegetation do, but there’s no growth of fossil fuels to take it up again.
The relative contribution of the ocean can be estimated independly from oxygen isotope ratios, as is done in the linked article from the International Journal of Mass Spectrometry.
The rest of your points are either well known, or red herrings (or both), and are discussed here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm
btw Spencer’s second set of graphs are called (in the narrative) graphs of dC12/dt but are labelled dCO2/dt, and in his last two sentences he confuses one with the other, which makes his argument rather muddled.
James, Ah. I am continually amazed at how you see things so simply. Assuming it is all so simple, and that we can separate out the oceans contribution to the current elevated atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, can you tell us what it is?
And of course in this blog post I have not mentioned the issue of phytoplankon blooms and the contributions including to this blog by Steve Short.
I believe that the current estimate of net oceanic emission/absorbtion is that they absorb about 10 ppm more than they emit. But I don’t have time today to do your homework for you, since you haven’t paid me for last time.
James; read the Drake paper; consider also that plankton, which switch from a C3 to C4 metabolism, can have an enormous effect on the C13 ratio which is supposedly a foolproof way of isolating the athropogenic imput; as can Steve Short’s cynaobacteria; methanophage activity at the peat deposits in the Arctic circle (supposedly the next big boost to warming via methane release) also contributes to the isotopic ratio imbalance; in short there are major, dominant, biological/natural contributors to the decline of C13. Given that the obstensible marker of human CO2 production is so problematic how can you say that human caused CO2 is steadily increasing in the atmosphere; and even if you can, how can you say it is the dominant cause of CO2 increase; and even if you can, how can you say it is having the deleterious effect promulgated by AGW?
forbidden to post again, what a suprise.
Hi David Archibald,
Can you flesh your remarks out a bit maybe Jennifer can then post it up. I for one am interested in reading more.
James, you are not “forbidden” to post, you can post as often as you like, and there is no reason why your links should not display.
I think that’s an excellent point, cohenite. In 1750, the amount of atmospheric carbon is estimated to have been about 590 gigatons. Today it is 820. That’s a 40% increase.
As Dr Marohasy points out, this increase is habitually attributed to man-made combustion. But the atmosphere’s pre-industrial delta 13C value is held to be -7. Biogenic fuels have a -26 value. If the 40% increase were due to burning, then, the atmosphere should presently be at -14.6. But it’s around -8.2 instead. That’s only a 6% change, meaning that 94% of the atmosphere is still in what we assume is its “natural” state and CO2 is constantly turning over, not stagnating in the air.
Here’s the snag, though. The current percentage of human CO2 emissions to the atmosphere is supposedly around 3%. Human emissions long ago were far less, of course. So how can even a 6% change be attributed to mankind alone? Some other factor has to be adding 12C to the mix. Putting this aside, however, it remains that if we say 6% of the increase is due to burning, then where did the other 34% come from?
This ties into Point 5, naturally.
Jennifer he might have tried posting too quickly after an earlier one :- it’s protection against [ro]bots posting automated responses.
James
Jennifer does not have the same posting regulations Bravenewclimate and RC have – so your lost post is probably GIAIA’s way of demurring that you might need to consider, no matter how remote, that you could be mistaken.
This is where the CO2 business becomes a shambles; both Watts and lucia have noted 2 atypical declines in the CO2 upward trend this year, in April and July; since 1958 Mauna Loa has shown an increase from 314.69 to 385.82 in 2008; close enough to a mean Aav of 1.42ppm; at CDIAC, Takahashi has model averaged anthropogenic increase of “about 1.5ppm” pa; that is to say he asserts that more than the annual increase from Mauna Loa is all attributable to humans! CDIAC also asserts that the annual uptake of ACO2 by the oceans has been estimated to be about 2 Pg-C yr-1 for the last decade; however in Sabine’s paper, they estimate for the period from 1800-1994 that the ocean uptake of ACO2 has been 118 +- 19 Pg-C, or about 0.61 Pg PA; Sabine estimate that the terrestrial biosphere was a net source of CO2 to the atmosphere of about 39 +- 28 Pg over the same period, or about 0.33 Pg PA; some consistency.
Louis, you mention “Bravenewclimate”.
Can anyone tell us how climate can actually be “Brave”? Also, wouldn’t climate always be “new” because it is never frozen in place?
Alan Siddons appears not to recognize that CO2 cycles rapidly (5-20 years) between three upper reservoirs of approximately equal size, atmosphere, upper ocean and soils/biosphere. If CO2 is added by burning to the atmosphere, and diluted into the other two reservoirs you would expect that if you added 330 gt C of isotopically labled CO2 about 110 would remain in the atmosphere. Of course this neglects the slower cycling into the lower ocean which, over 300 years or so would move some percentage out of the upper reservoirs replacing it with carbon from the depths.
Thus the numbers that Alan S provides are not surprising
So, how about taking the other reservoirs into account using even a simple carbon model. A number are available on the Internet that you could use
Fourth time. Trying cohenite’s trick of taking out the //
Cohenite, if you want a rebuttal of Beck, see Eli: http:rabett.blogspot.com/2008/03/beckies-as-tonstant-weader-knows-eli.html
If you still want to believe Beck, explain: where that 233 billion tons of Carbon came from and went to in 25 years; why the dramatic fluctuations suddenly stopped when Mauna Loa started operating; or, if you don’t believe Mauna Loa, tell Spencer so since he uses Mauna Loa measurements in his article above.
I don’t see the relevance of Drake’s argument to the C12/C13 discussion. I also suspect his argument of being tautological: by removing the delta-age /CO2 correlation I think he is removing the temperature correlation. Why? Because more snow falls in antarctica when average world temperature is warmer, due to increasing evaporation (this is predicted by GCMs and confirmed in a general way by recent rainfall measurements: http:environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19926745.000-clearer-skies-have-brought-more-rain.htm). More snow means thicker snow which means a smaller delta-age. So as both delta-age and CO2 are correlated with temperature, removing the delta-age CO2 correlation would also remove the CO2 temperature correlation.
In any case there are lots of different ways to get temperature and gas information from ice cores, and they correlate pretty well. See the article here, from the proceedings of the national academy of sciences:
http:www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=34297
Keiran
Welcome to the bizarre labelling the AGW priests use to identifiy their shrines to Great God CO2.
I think it is Barry Brook’s word play on Aldous Huxley’s book 1984, Brave New World.
Whoops, Orwell 1984 and Huxley for Brave New World.
Alright, I will try again.
Cohenite, if you want a rebuttal of Beck, see Eli:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/03/beckies-as-tonstant-weader-knows-eli.html
If you still want to believe Beck, explain: where that 233 billion tons of Carbon came from and went to in 25 years; why the dramatic fluctuations suddenly stopped when Mauna Loa started operating; or, if you don’t believe Mauna Loa, tell Spencer so since he uses Mauna Loa measurements in his article above.
(posted by Jennifer Marohasy for James)
I don’t see the relevance of Drake’s argument to the C12/C13 discussion. I also suspect his argument of being tautological: by removing the delta-age /CO2 correlation I think he is removing the temperature correlation. Why? Because more snow falls in antarctica when average world temperature is warmer, due to increasing evaporation (this is predicted by GCMs and confirmed in a general way by recent rainfall measurements:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19926745.000-clearer-skies-have-brought-more-rain.htm).
More snow means thicker snow which means a smaller delta-age. So as both delta-age and CO2 are correlated with temperature, removing the delta-age CO2 correlation would also remove the CO2 temperature correlation.
In any case there are lots of different ways to get temperature and gas information from ice cores, and they correlate pretty well. See the article here, from the proceedings of the national academy of sciences:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=34297
(posted by Jennifer Marohasy for James)
I guess WordPress doesn’t like posts with too many web addresses in them.
James; Drake doesn’t remove the delta age/CO2 correlation; what he does is use “the correlation between the ice/gas age (IGD) difference and measured carbon dioxide concentrations to predict the concentrations at zero ice/gas difference.” It is your critique which is circular based on AGW presumptions about correlation between CO2 and temp; Drake notes; ” for every year increase in IGD the carbon dioxide concentration drops by 0.02362ppm.” It is your assumption that the drop is temp correlated; and if you hadn’t noticed that is what this debate is about; the paucity of evidence to support the temp/CO2 correlation.
As to eli and his ‘critique’ of Beck; I quote Steve Short’s reply;
“Where are the published calibrations and quantitative tests of interlaboratory sealed flask samples etc which ended up putting the lie to all the previous 1000s of Pettenkoffer method chemical measurements of absorbed CO2? That chemical method was based on the careful weighing of things like roasted barium carbonate (giving barium oxide). Dissolved in water and then titrated after absorption of CO2 from a fixed volume of air. Why should we (have) to accept RA and pretentious prof. rabbet’s word that all those weighings and all those titrations were dead wrong without damned good, published quantitative evidence they were? Isn’t that the standard that they always demand… of the sceptical camp?
So what about the early IR measurements by Keeling? Where are the proofs that the calibrations of those instruments were spot on from day one? Even Keeling himself in his own words relied heavily on a naive belief that commercial insruments, just because they were produced in the good old US of A, were accurately calibrated from the day the first unit of the first model rolled out of the factory.
I note that Eli Rabbett’s assertion that almost all the chemical measurements were made in Europe is also a gross inaccuracy. Many thousands of such measurements were particularly made in the US itself by chemists whose good work has also been sleight-of-hand consigned to the dustbin of Eli’s history….Many measurements were also made in strange places like… Eastern Greenland by good, well trained Danish Chemists.”
As to your comment about no more dramatic fluctuations since Mauna Loa; that misunderstands that Beck took regional samples, and there is still large divergence in CO2 samplings; possibly because of drastic and massive partial cessations in deep-water upwelling as McPhaden and Zhang’s work and Gulderson and Schrag have shown; this must have had a pronounced effect on partial pressure CO2 flux; the question is why hasn’t Mauna Loa not shown that?
That should be, why hasn’t Mauna Loa shown that?
Cohenite, you can rant all you like, you still have to find 233 billion tons of carbon for Beck to be right. ENSO-like variability in the pacific is not going to supply anything like the kind of interannual variation that would be needed to produce Beck-like results. That would be on the order of 1 ppm, not >100 ppm.
Short has badly misread Eli and so have you. Eli doesn’t say the measurements were wrong (except inasmuch as they had much wider error bars than the Keeling method), he says the samples were wrong, because they were taken too close to urban areas and other sources of CO2. In this post:
rabett.blogspot.com/2007/04/found-in-margins-recently-eli-has-been.html
he also specifically mentions (in a quote from Keeling) some scandinavian measurements which have been found in retrospect to be accurate.
I have not “assumed” that the drop is correlated with temperature – I’ve offered a hypothesis as to why it might be. There are lots of other, peer-reviewed papers on the IGD and… how to put this… Drake’s paper is not replicated by anyone else.
You remind me of Setterfield.
“(posted by Jennifer Marohasy for James)”
Jeez Jennifer, I’m sure he was only kidding about the homework. Still, I guess he’s going to owe you a day’s homework now…
I don’t rant James; nor do I do the ad hom, which you have lapsed into; goes with the perspective I suppose; the upwelling you dismiss as ENSO-like may in fact cause ENSO, partially or otherwise, or may be a product of it, but for it not to show up in the official CO2 record is strange. BTW, where are some of those peer-reviewed (ah, the irony) papers on IGD?
You remind me of noone.
Is Chilingar wrong about climate scientists not being aware of the role of convection. They have known about it for 40 years now.
btw, cohenite, if you want to argue that there are huge regional variations in CO2 concentration, you’d better be able to explain why CO2 measurements at 10 different measurement stations from the south pole to the north tip of Greenland are very, very similar.
cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-keel.html
cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-keel.html
This is a good one – Keeling’s data and somewhat dated. Of course they are very very similar – it’s the poacher in charge of the fish pens.
“very very similar” Let’s quid pro quo James; you seem to have something between your ears unlike the Chilingar echo; CO2 intercepts IR, eh? Every time I hear that mantra I look at this map;
http:www.exploratorium.edu/climate/atmosphere/data1.html (// excluded)
What do you conclude from this; saturation or uneven mix?
Now, with Gore having knocked TRIANA on the head, thank heavens for AIRS;
http:airs.jpl.nasa.gov/Products/CarbonDioxide/ (// excluded)
A range of 20 ppm doesn’t seem that great, but over the area the Gt equivalents must be vast.
Re that last comment from James; I have never accepted those old CO2 measurements as representing anything but the scientist’s own breath.
CO2 from out and about does not jump up and down however reading it via the titrated sample was particularly difficult . That’s why we switched over to measuring residual O2 in flue gas from about the late 1950’s
Jennifer: Alan Siddons notes that “Large interannual fluctuations in Mauna Loa-derived carbon dioxide “emissions” roughly coincide with El Nino and La Nina events…”
He must not have had North Pacific SST anomaly data available to him. Monthly variations in CO2 as measured at Mauna Loa coincide very nicely with monthly North Pacific SST data.
http://i37.tinypic.com/30mo4ev.jpg
Discussed here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/09/atmospheric-co2-concentration-versus.html
Regards.
“My work on this subject indicates that the atmosphere is exchanging very rapidly with the top 100 metres of the oceans. The atmosphere is in effective partial pressure equilibrium with that top 100 metres. As the oceans cool with Solar Cycle 24, I expect that the annual CO2 increase in the atmosphere will be in the range of 0 to 1 ppm per annum.”
Well thats sort of half-good-news isn’t it. So in effect you are saying that our efforts will stop the CO2-falling during cycle 24 than David?
That sounds like staving off the worst of the disaster.
But how about cycle 25 and the aftermath. If what you are saying is approximately right, surely that would imply the CO2 going into decline during 25 and likely for some time after?
The answer would seem to be to clear up aerosol emissions and go hell-for-leather to expand our hydrocarbon industries to try and maintain reasonable CO2-levels to mid-century.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
One thing about this clean coal business, is if they’ve already made the investments, and we can stop the lunatics from putting it in the ground it might mean that horticulturalists can get cheap CO2 to use directly.
“Re that last comment from James; I have never accepted those old CO2 measurements as representing anything but the scientist’s own breath.”
Right. They were all stupid in the old days and now you post-modernist kids are just so very very smart……… (blockhead).
“Cohenite, you can rant all you like, you still have to find 233 billion tons of carbon for Beck to be right.”
Why would that be? Crikey. We know there is all those methane-clathrates at the bottom of the ocean. What exactly are you talking about here Haughton?
You are baffling me on this one. I cannot even figure out what you mean.
blockhead: “You are baffling me on this one. I cannot even figure out what you mean”
It is the data which is supposed to be right, or correct, not Ernst Beck.
The scientists would look at the data, the pseudos here at the author via either subtle or not so subtle ad homs.
The term blockheads would seem quite appropriate – pseudo-blocks seems such a euphonious appellation to describe the climate alarmists here.
Of course the 233 billion tons of Carbon has to be derived from some sort of model of the carbon cycle. Such a large quantity in the absence of any global warming strongly suggests that the models need another close look.
This is a bit like me modelling an ore body and working out that there is 800 million tons of contained nickel, only to be told by the mining engineers afterwards that there seems to be 233 million tons missing. It was not missing because it was never there in the first place because the model was wrong.
It us mining type a bit of time to work out how we erred so badly in the modelling and we now have a very good grasp of the methodology and statistics.
I can categorically state that the Carbon modelling would suffer from the same errors the early miners made.
“This is a good one – Keeling’s data and somewhat dated. Of course they are very very similar – it’s the poacher in charge of the fish pens.”
Yeah, it’s all just a big conspiracy. How did you work that out?
“Cohenite, if you want a rebuttal of Beck, see Eli…”
Haughton if it was any good we would expect you to lay it out in your own words.
I’m afraid that none of you came up with anything. Hence Becks efforts stand as the default position. Since the study appears fine, good and vigilante and nothing has been found against it.
What you are doing is putting your prejudices and the dumb left consensus in as the default position. But Becks study is the default position since none of you alarmists were able to rightly gainsay it.
Now there is no particular reason why CO2 couldn’t drop that fast. And you missed the tip that David Archibald gave us as to why this could be.
YOU ALL MISSED THE NEW ARCHIBALD SCOOP.
Always watch Archibald. He is the scoop-master. He always comes through with the good scoops. He has a nose for it.
Lets see what he says again:
“My work on this subject indicates that the atmosphere is exchanging very rapidly with the top 100 metres of the oceans. The atmosphere is in effective partial pressure equilibrium with that top 100 metres…”
This 100 metres. This is not the photic zone. The photic zone is about 200 metres. This must be some sort of defined strata.
What David seems to be saying is that the exchange is going on in the top 100 metres and not further down.
Which means if the sea homogenises in some way and that strata is cut out then the CO2 will be able to interact with a greater depth of ocean.
We see this in lakes. In the Winter the ice forms over this lake I was reading about. And there is not much overturning. The ice actually can allow the warmth to be held in somewhat. There is not much in the way of stratification.
But in the summer the lake begins to stratefy. The warm upper strata stops the bottom of the lake from warming too much but still the bottom gets warmer than it was in the Winter or Autumn. But its what happens in Autumn that is strange. The lake loses its upper warm strata and then precedes to overturn entirely. The entire lake overturns in a full cycle. The lake overturns and homogenises in the autumn. When it had had several of these strata by mid-summer.
Thats what I remember about some study of a lake that I cannot now find. I don’t even know what lake it was it might have been Eire.
But if David Archibald says that there is this 100 metre strata that is doing most of the CO2 exchange, and there is enough cooling to cause overturning and homogenisation in mimicry of this here lake I was talking about, that first strata gets eliminated, and that leaves the CO2 exchange to continue on with the deeper water.
The deeper water will now find that the prior 80(?) years has left the atmosphere with a CO2-level above the deeper waters implied-equilibrium and will swallow it up with a sort of continued down-gradient that doesn’t stop to so much as acknowledge January in the south and July in the north.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well thats an explanation and a very plausible one. But thats not the point. The default position is the Beck study and has nothing to do with your prejudices.
And being as Archibald tends to find the scoops we ought to all be very concerned at what could happen towards the end of cycle 25.
Autumn for us maybe.
Louis; I seem to remember a nickel explorer called Poseidon from the good old days that did very well on the stock market for a while; everyone thought they had about 233 billion tons of ore; turned out they had none; maybe they’ve renamed themselves AGW mining, and they’re looking for that missing CO2.
Consider if there was some sort of massive increase in upwelling/downwelling so as to amount to some sort of facsimile as to what I was saying about this lake.
Well a lot of the deeper water, relatively CO2-deprived, might come into direct or near-direct contact with the air and scrub all this CO2 out of it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The point is Haugton that its always Wednesday in science. Wednesday is “anything can happen day” on the mouseketeers. You don’t know WHY Becks data is saying the CO2 free-fell from 420 right down to low 300’s in the early 40’s. You just know THAT this is what his data says.
You have to go where the evidence leads you. You cannot be snarky about the scientific evidence, or choose to ignore it, if indeed you are a scientist, and not a research-grant-whore.
If you were genuinely interested in this you would look in the literature.
“If you still want to believe Beck, explain: where that 233 billion tons of Carbon came from and went to in 25 years; why the dramatic fluctuations suddenly stopped when Mauna Loa started operating; or, if you don’t believe Mauna Loa, tell Spencer so since he uses Mauna Loa measurements in his article above.”
They project so much onto their opponents don’t they?
We really have to get to the bottom of this stupidity.
Taking it from Becks point of view, he doesn’t have to do any such thing. He just has to interpret his data in good faith.
And explanations can potentially come from anywhere. But we carry out science to find the reason why. We cannot tell you why the data says this. And the alarmists haven’t come up with anything to say that Becks data is wrong.
We are seeing a whole generation of people who don’t seem to know the horse from the cart of the tail from the dog.
No-one needs to explain where 233 tonnes of carbon comes from and goes to. The fact is we don’t know or we’d tell you.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Beck is so far the best data we have, it seems well thought out and all that. No alarmist has found anything against it. It invites further proxy studies to try and verify/falsify it and so forth.
There is at least 100 potential explanations for the data out there and one of them might be true.
But the data is what it is. The data says what it says. And if you think that the data says maybe something different you would have to go to the data to see if you can get it to speak otherwise.
“But the data is what it is. The data says what it says. And if you think that the data says maybe something different you would have to go to the data to see if you can get it to speak otherwise.”
As gavin said, the data is telling the amount of CO2 coming from someones breath in the lab. The data can’t speak, it’s up to the researcher to make sure he’s making a measurement that means something.
Cohenite,
Why, whatever prompted you to make that deduction 🙂 . I notice that the usual suspects keep telling us to read the litany and if we did so, truth will be revealed.
I don’t think they actually understand criticism of flawed ideas from first principles, none having the slightest idea what is in the papers you insist are revealed truth.
Whoops, ..papers they insist are revealed truth.
I like SJT’s novel explanation for the wide variation of CO2 from the chemical tests – the scientist’s breath! These same scientists who gave us the foundations of biology, chemistry, physics,…….
They have to be some of the most mean spirited individuals one could come across.
But then, being lefties that is par for the course.
Isn’t it time for Gavin and James and Eli, et al, to stop dawdling and ANSWER the question? Of the 100 ppm CO2 increase since 1850, how much is anthropogenic, how much came from people burning fuel?
Gas mixing and measurement had advanced far enough by 1955 that you could buy accurately calibrated samples at the ppm level.
“So, the natural processes completely dwarf the human contribution but we are adding Carbon to a system which was more-or-less balanced to start with.”
Bill, you have been disabused of this notion before. Spencer in Jan. 08 showed there is no evidence that the increase is anthropogenic, the 13C/12C variance is not consistent with your talking point.
Alan Siddons – if you took your fingers out of your ears, you might hear the answers you seek. How much of the 100ppm increase in CO2 since ~1850 is anthropogenic? Basically all of it.
Comment from gavin
Time September 24, 2008 at 5:35 pm “CO2 from out and about does not jump up and down however reading it via the titrated sample was particularly difficult . That’s why we switched over to measuring residual O2 in flue gas from about the late 1950’s”
Perhaps a bit of light should be shed on this statement. If gavin is talking about flue gas, O2 is easier due to the difference in concentration. O2 goes from 20.5% to typically 4% to 8% depending on several factors. Because of unburnt fuel, CO, CO2, and excess air ratios, O2 is better. Accuracy was verified for the methods used at that time. Though difficult, and compared to today, CO2 was less accurate, it was accurate enough for the standards of that time. I find it humorous that we AGW alarmists who claim we can tell temperatures accurately to 0.1F 1000 years ago based on information taken as early as 1880, where the standards, the equipment, and the methods were much less accurate than the wet chemistry of the first part of the 20th century. The people who launched jets, airplanes, rockets, nuclear weapons, early computers, all done with analog and wet chemistry technology. No problem with swallowing the theory of large numbers when it comes to drinking global alarmist kool-aid, but not elsewhere. All, I might note with little, if any justification for throwing the data out. Note about the data, as far as conclusions from the data, that depends on the quality of the paper. The paper may be bad, without the data being bad. Bad analysis by the reader(s).
‘Alan Siddons – if you took your fingers out of your ears, you might hear the answers you seek. How much of the 100ppm increase in CO2 since ~1850 is anthropogenic? Basically all of it.’ The evidence for this statement being…? None.
Oh I’m sorry RW. I’ve followed your link now and find the evidence comes from ‘tree ring experts’…
OK RW; you not only link to RC but to a 2004 article, which is like linking to an article about the Edsel if you want to prove the worth of American cars; if, as you assert, all of the increase in CO2 is due to anthropogenic sources, how can you reconcile that idea with these facts;
AR4, p515, FIG 7.3, shows all the sources and fluxes of CO2 in Gts; the red fossil fuel arrow shows that 6.4 Gt comes from burning fossil fuel; 218.2 Gt comes from natural sources; the % from man is therefore 6.4/218.2 = 2.93%. There are 380 molecules (give or take) of CO2 ppm; or 38 molecules per 100000 molecules of air; of those 38 molecules 2.93% comes from man; that is one.
Now how long does that 1 molecule of human CO2 stay in the atmosphere? Another official source tells us that as well; this is the US Department of Energy, DOE; the information is at 2 sources;
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/environment/057304.pdf
The relevant data is from Table 3.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/glob_c2.pdf
The relevant data is from Exhibit 2-1
Both of these data compilations are global not just US. Combining the 2 sources we see that since the beginning of the Industrial revolution the increase in atmospheric CO2 has been 103 ppm (and this measurement itself is controversial due to the sterling work of Beck and others discussed above); 97% of this 103 ppm has been due to NATURAL causes as shown by the AR4 FIG 7.3, and 3% due to anthropogenic factors. Furthermore, the reabsorption by nature of the annual increase in CO2 is 98.5% of ALL CO2 (sinks cannot distinguish between types of CO2 unless they are biological, see above; and these biological sinks are arguably responsible for the C13 depletion which is another complication); this means that 1.5% stays in the atmosphere for a year; since anthropogenic CO2 is 2.93% of the total CO2 (from AR4), the amount of ACO2 residual in the atmosphere is 0.04% (1.5/100×2.93); in 2004 this was about 346MT; or about what Gore emits.
Now RW, how about repying to that without linking to an antiquated RC bit of nonsense.
Cohenite, this is dodgy acounting again. How many times are we going to discuss this?
We add more CO2 every year than is accumulating in the air. What is the big mystery?
It’s the bank account remember?
You have x dollars in your account.
You get a pay rise
Your bank account goes up
Do you blame
A: your pay rise
B: Some mysterious benefactor
Why are you attempting to label the source of each CO2 molecule? If the biosphere preferentially absorbed anthropogenic CO2 would we say that nature was to blame for the CO2 increase?
As with all ‘skeptics’ it’s not actually about being skeptical (note the acceptance of Beck, despite there being no quality control) it’s about attempting to spread doubt when there is none. It’s trying to spread doubt amongst non-scientists. If you were keen to find out what our contribution was you’d either ask the people studying it or do the study yourself.
I don’t think you are actually capable of being objective – you weren’t able to understand Mann, 2008 and yet you still made it the 5th worst climate paper of all time.
And why are you bothering with this anyway? Your theory states that it doesn’t matter how much CO2 we have – it doesn’t affect climate remember? This is simply a post about spreading doubt.
The latest batch of abuse from Bird (now, I acknowledge, partially deleted, thank you Jennifer) has reminded me of something important: that I am not debating rational people, but unqualified conspiracy theorists who can’t do basic arithmetic (as demonstrated just above by Cohenite, also regularly by Curtin and Bird) or elementary logic (Bird, Robertson), don’t understand the laws of physics (Cohenite, Siddons, Hissink, Robertson, Bird) and on available evidence haven’t set foot in a science lab since high school, if then, and don’t understand a thing about the scientific method (the lot of you), but who think they are smarter than Einstein, Planck, Carnot, Clausius and the entire IPCC’s consultant scientists put together (and Keynes on the side). There is no rational justification for wasting my time commenting on this blog and being abused by deranged sufferers of what appears to be Tourettes and/or tertiary syphilis (Bird).
But I have one request: Don’t change. You lot have done more to trash Marohasy’s public scientific reputation (hence all her coy comments and “socratic irony”s on restarting) than a battalion of debunkers could. I regularly direct people to this blog when they ask if “skeptics” are really as ignorant (not to mention foul-mouthed) as I claim they are (I’d particularly like to “praise” guest posts by Siddons and Robertson at this point), and it works. You are such toxic assets to Marohasy that I’m surprised the US treasury hasn’t offered to buy you. I dread the thought of any of you becoming convinced of AGW – the fact that you believed it would cause anyone to reevaluate their work.
So please, stay here, maintaining one of the web’s finest monuments to scientific illiteracy. You’re performing a valuable public service. I’d like to always remember you all like this.
NT
“We add more CO2 every year than is accumulating in the air.”
You have not thought this through have you.
Ourt CO2 emissions are greater than what is accumulating in the atmosphere is what you are explicitly stating.
Try again.
James, I agree whole heartedly, now lets watch them claim the ‘Galileo’ defence or the ‘Emperors new clothes’ defence.
This blog is a laugh. I love it!
BE SKEPTICAL!
Yes Louis, our yearly emissions EXCEED the yearly increase. Thankfully nature, Blessed be Gaia and all that constitute her (genuflects), is able to absorb some of what we contribute.
Oh Gawd, I’m being psychoanlysed; it’s NT’s fables; and he’s still dining out on the error I made about Mann2; unlike some other posters here I can admit to error; but of course my error with Mann was mistaking he used PCA again for his second farrago; but he went even more exotic then that, didn’t he NT? Any measurement proxy that scores an R2 of less than 0.9 against an overlapping instrument record is just white noise; the best Jesus Christ result Mann got was 0.49, and for the 19thC, 0.5; never fear Mann has a foolproof method; you don’t have to match a “proxy” with instrument data in the same proximity, just find one anywhere in the world which matches! Why the ” around “proxy”; well because the “proxies” are determined by cps and eiv methodology; cps stands for central politbureau science and eiv for every idiot votes; using these wonderful methods Mann is once again at the forefront of objective science.
Gawd love you NT, things would be a lot more boring without you.
NT says our yearly emissions EXCEED the yearly increase; says it all really; I’m amused by your bank analogy as well; granted ‘my’ account may be increasing (not due to a benfactor either, but my own hard slog), but the total in all accounts is increasing as well, as implied in my post above, which is referenced to AR4 and DOE; did you post a counter to those facts; no you went Aesop on us; which is slightly better than Jame’s insufferable arrogance; I occasionally look at Deltoid, which has had a couple of posts about this site and others it disapproves of; the puerility is manifest, plus a real schoolboy delight in pulling wings off a fly type of viciousness; the thread on Lomborg was horrendous in its spite and venom with smug Jeff Harvey, who led the official charge of complaint against Lomborg, don’t you know, featuring; if that is your template of reasonable, objective commentary on this issue, or any other for that matter, James, then I think you had better get on your bike and go back to Lord of the Flies island, where such a sensibility is more appropriate.
That yearly human emissions exceed yearly atmospheric growth is true. Presently the atmosphere climbs by roughly half the amount humans emit every year. But this is just a pinhole view. From 1850 to 1880 the yearly atmospheric increase averaged 3.5 times the yearly human tally. From 1880 to 1910, 1.65. From 1910 to 1940, 0.8. From 1940 to 1970, 0.4. Then from 1970 to 2000, 0.55.
In terms of the ratio of atmospheric growth to human emissions growth, again
1850-1880: 69.85
1880-1910: 33.23
1910-1940: 46.00
1940-1970: 11.34
1970-2000: 30.04
All in all, then, since 1850 the atmospheric rate has been climbing 34 times faster than the rate of human output. Yet humans have been blamed for the climb every step of the way. Add to this that the delta 13C biogenic signature points to a mere 6% addition since 1750, and the case for anthropogenic accumulation collapses. The haughty Haughton is hoisted on his own petard: AGW is an irrationalist’s game.
NT,
Oh really, natural CO2 variations dominate, our contribution is estimated to bve 3% of the yearly total, but according to you it exceeds the yearly observed increase.
I’ll put that again, our percentage of the yearly CO2 output is about 3% so for every 1ppm increase in atmospheric CO2, out bit is 0.03ppm.
But your position is that 3% > 100% except we don’t know where it is going to.
It is this approach of looking for a carbon sink to explain the divergence of the CO2 model with reality that is the problem.
It’s the model that is wrong, not reality, and this is what Tom Segaldstad pointed as well. I allude to the same issue with my mining ore-reserve error.
But deductionists are so convinced their models are right, that the missing CO2 HAS to be somewhere.
This is pure pseudoscience.
It’s the model that is wrong, not physical reality.
James,
What a supercilious tosser you are! So, what you’re telling us is that you are right and everyone who disagrees with you here is ignorant and syphilitic?
And you actually point people you know to this website, so they can read your puerile character attacks? They must think so much more highly of you!
What’s more Alan; those periods where the ratio is greatest against the human imput dovetail very nicely with +ve PDO periods, and the 2 periods when human imput was proportionally greater (1880-1910, 1940-1970) were in the -ve PDO periods; this of course dovetails with what Bob Tisdale has been saying about SST and CO2; some El Nino pattern raises SST and CO2 outgassing and plankton deplenishment of C13 follows; and vice-versa for the La Nina years; surely this is a worthwhile idea to explore? But no, the egos can’t be hung on this because it is nature dominating; and nature is only of use to AGW if it can be presented as a victim which the AGW supporters, by virtue of their massive intellects and moral sensibilities, can rescue.
James Haughton said…”…or elementary logic (Bird, Robertson), don’t understand the laws of physics (Cohenite, Siddons, Hissink, Robertson, Bird)….”
James, I have been onto you since our HIV/AIDS disagreement. You admitted you didn’t know the first thing about the HIV/AIDS debate, yet you looked up one paper and used that to justify your belief that the paradigm must be correct.
I gave you Peter Duesberg’s excellent resume. He was one of the top viral researchers in the world and it did not interest you in the least that such a man was claiming HIV could not cause AIDS. You did not want to know why, you only wanted to fall in line with the majority consensus.
I don’t think any of the people you mentioned in your post, including myself, claim to be experts on anything. We are asking questions and making inferences based on experts, hopefully trying to understand the global warming problem.
Meanwhile, over at RC, you have a load of amateurs snickering at the theories of scientists who know infinitely more about the atmosphere than they ever will know. That’s what you call science, and that reveals how little you actually know about it.
Malcolm,
The fact that Lindzen even has to write a paper asking this question at all is the biggest indictment.
How the recent IPCC process (where the policy paper was released first and the scientific conclusions later on, so that they could be matched [or “massaged”] to the policy) didn’t meet with universal outrage, I will never know.
It is really astonishing, cohenite: Everything in the paleoclimate record tells us that a warming ocean HAS TO BE a net carbon source. And no matter which approach is used — isotopic change or emission/absorption estimates — one is forced to conclude that mankind cannot be held accountable for the reported increase of carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial era (which coincides with the end of the Little Ice Age). Yet these big brains cannot get it into their heads that something other than anthropogenic accumulation is occurring. It is really astonishing.
James Haughton said…”Cohenite, if you want a rebuttal of Beck, see Eli:”
How about trying a scientist who is an expert on ice cores:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/zjmar07.pdf
I know you don’t often read these links James, and when you do, you skim them. Try reading this one and see what a load of rubbish the IPCC has made of the CO2 density over the centuries.
The 270 ppmv pre-Industrial density is as much a scam as Mann’s hockey stick. Furthermore, as Jaworowski points out, the IPCC is run by pseudo-scientists who filter through the work of the majority of scientists on it’s assessments, looking for the data it wants. That 270 ppmv was cherry-picked, and that’s what Beck’s work is about, revealing that scam.
Ziggy? Winner of the Golden Horseshoe Award? and many other prizes? The guy of whose understanding of ice cores was laughed at by Hans Oeschger.
You gotta be kidding, but yes, sadly no, Eli knows that you are merely credulous
Well eli, there’s an old legal saying that the dead make the best witnesses; they can’t be cross-examined and they can’t change their minds; some of the living have a similar affliction; now Oeschanger said that trapped CO2, sealed under high pressure, maintained a contemporaneous atmospheric correlation; Jaworoski said it didn’t; Oeschger said his view had been verified experimentally; so did Jaworoski. Sounds like a typical academic dispute similar to the one that afflicted my geomorphological studies (who to tailor your essay to; the usual student conundrum); of course this academic dispute has vast financial and social implications; let’s look at it another way; CO2 is the doer in AGW terms; if we assume Oeschger, Ruddiman and IPCC are right, and pre-IR CO2 levels were stable before pesky man come along with his hummers and Gore-jets, what has been the consequence of the abrupt CO2 increase over the 20thC? HadCrut over the 20thC shows an increase in temp of about 0.7C; from 2001 onwards lucia’s ENSO removed temp trend shows about a 0.05 decrease; Christy and Douglass’s new paper shows an ENSO removed temp trend over the 20thC of about 0.62C; so the ENSO removed temp trend from 1900 to 2008 is 0.62 – 0.05 =0.57C; at a time when, according to Oeschger, CO2 levels have been rising sharply from an ice-core derived millenium stability; what has been the effect? There has been no unambiguous ocean warming so the AGW warmth isn’t being stored there; so the CO2 effect is negligible; but wait, there’s more; neither lucia and Christy considered insolation; even IPCC gives a 20thC effect of about 0.3-5C for solar; so, if we take 0.3 from 0.57, we are left with a CO2 effect of about 0.27 since 1900; 0.27 is about 1/2 the size of one of Schmidt’s error bars.
NT: I agree the comment from James “I am not debating rational people” etc about sums it up.
Going further back to John F. Pittman “If gavin is talking about flue gas, O2 is easier due to the difference in concentration. O2 goes from 20.5% to typically 4% to 8% depending on several factors. Because of unburnt fuel, CO, CO2, and excess air ratios, O2 is better. Accuracy was verified for the methods used at that time. Though difficult, and compared to today, CO2 was less accurate, it was accurate enough for the standards of that time”.
My point was about the uncertainty of CO2 measurement via titration even at high concentration but there was another much more important uncertainty that lead to O2 instruments for flue gas analasys and that was simply the presence or otherwise of CO. A carbonmonoxide emitter was a rather unhealthy place to be around. Efficient combustion and furnace control is discussed briefly here see p147. Rusty had to look it up too.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=QWY4SXNe4DIC&pg=PA147&lpg=PA147&dq=co2+furnace+control&source=web&ots=XaWwvDr1kj&sig=6J2_RLdAqmquuWBbYByeuC2Us5o&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA147,M1
Figs 10.4 – 10.6 on fuel efficiency in other process are interesting too as they may also apply to furnaces.
Moving on, I found the latest analysers at Furnace Doctor IR hey
Furnace Doctor specifications
CO2 CO CH4
Ranges: (0-1%) (0-30%) (0-10% or 30%)
Resolution: (10ppm) (0.02%) (0-02%)
Accuracy: 2% of gas Range
Stability: <+/-2% over 12 months
Repeatability: Zero +/-0.3%, Span +/-1.5%
Features
Accurate, affordable infrared measurement of CO, CO2, and CH4
Computation of % Carbon, Dew-point and expected O2 probe millivolts.
Easy to read back-lit LCD display shows all measured, and computed values simultaneously.
Easy-to-use key board with quick calibration feature included for user.
Self-contained pump.
http://www.furnacecontrol.com/FurnaceDoc.htm
Let’s say it this way: the old CO2 scientific data is about as accurate as rings on a tree stump.
“the old CO2 scientific data is about as accurate as rings on a tree stump.” And you’re a declared Mann supporter; bit contradictory; and I suppose your disdain for the “old CO2 scientific data” only includes the Beck data; not the Oeschger ice-core data.
“It is really astonishing, cohenite: Everything in the paleoclimate record tells us that a warming ocean HAS TO BE a net carbon source. And no matter which approach is used — isotopic change or emission/absorption estimates — one is forced to conclude that mankind cannot be held accountable for the reported increase of carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial era …”
Alan you have a stark way of wording things. Could it not be the case that we are maintaining an interim level above natural of (lets say) 20 or 30 ppm that would have a rapid rate of degradation?
That would strike me as the default position. That we could maintain a sort of interim premium. Since the carbon rain and extra biospheric robustness might take some time to drain away the extra pump we are probably giving it.
The fact is I’ve probably forgotten more about doing measurements and creating standards than some on here are likely to learn in two lifetimes.
When calibrating a wide range of instruments for industry and their consultants you must know when and where to find references or standards. For the UK based technology I could work back through the KENT group to Greenwich. For research in the US, Foxboro, Taylor and the petro chemical groups including Union Carbide.
Did we use the Weather Bureaus? No but I often referred to CSIRO, CIG and the Physics Dept at Melbourne Uni up the road as there were no portable or quality CO2 standards anywhere. Although we knew it was quite stable in air no quick test could prove it.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf
This still remains a very valuable piece of input into the credibility and ethics of the IPCC and climate science fraternity.
It is around these shonky systems and processes that we will make our damaged economies even worse.
Haughton I’m still not seeing your problem with the data. I say THE DATA because thats what Becks data is at this point given his emotional detractors inability to find a problem with it.
So what is your problem with the data?
What do you know about the oceans that is so decisive as to make you doubt the data.
My speculations relating the behaviour of a lake to the problem are what is known as armchair inductive thinking. And it is in the way of things that the real cause of the sudden drop of CO2-levels might be from any number of causes that no-one heralded, credentialed and approved has thought of.
My armchair thinking on this matter has more chance of being wrong than right. But its not falsified as yet. This puts it way ahead of alarmist climate science that is falsified utterly. But be that as it may this is the way of things in science.
The scientist looks at unexpected occurences and they are like the clues in a murder mystery. Or any mystery. It is chasing down unaccounted for occurences that is at the heart of methodology.
If scientists were to ape your behaviour and simply assume that an unexpected occurrence cannot be right on account of its unexpected nature, than science would grind to a screaming bloody halt.
So in gravity if the scientists are going to make feeble excuses like “dark matter” or “dark energy” than thats pretty much the end of progress on this subject.
If scientists are just going to ignore the unexpected heat of the suns Corona and sort out whats causing it the progression from less-good to better paradigms cannot continue.
And if you see that CO2-levels can drop many tens of ppm in a short time and you decide to ignore this intelligence than you are turning away from the very thing that can lead to the discovery of new knowledge.
Now Haughton. You committed irrationalist you. What was your problem with the data AGAIN??!!!
Focus.
You guys are claiming the earlier generation of scientists were too pathetic for your liking. The problem with this thesis is it brings the eraser to too much.
No longer can we trust anything they measured presumably. We can just choose to ignore any measurement made prior to post-modern times.
But supposing this fantasy that enables you to ignore the data is true.
Its not true but supposing it is.
Which way do you think the old fuddy-duddy measuring equipment biased the data?
For your angle to stick you would have to be able to make the case that the data was biased one way or the other.
These stupid old people hey?
We know so much more now than they knew then hey?
Stupid old people hadn’t even so much as flown in an aeroplane.
It would have been normal even then in the fuddy-duddy times to estimate some error bounds of potential inaccuracy. Why don’t you imagine these obviously undedicated yokels wouldn’t have given an indication of this.
You know what I think. I think you guys are idiots in fantasy-land. These olden-times folks are your superiors. And you ought to show a little bit more respect. And you would do if you had any real affinity for science.
“Comment from gavin
Time September 25, 2008 at 6:13 pm”
What was your point? I read it all and I want to know what your point was.
You are good at measuring things……. AND?
Its like a joke without a punchline so far.
You are good at measuring things and the old blokes were BAD at measuring things?
When I gave you a typical quote for a quality modern instrument ; Accuracy= 2% of gas Range. Ignore it if you wish but a least consider what it may have been for a a lab based titration between the great wars.
gavin; it’s clear you haven’t read either Beck’s original paper, or his response to the slightly more detailed criticisms from Keeling and Meijer (compared to the ‘critiques from professional egos like Haughton and eli); Beck’s response is here;
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/author_reply9-2.pdf
Beck comes across as a measured and rational person; about the claim that his paper does not explain that if the fluctuations in CO2 levels he finds are correct, then an extra 233 billion metric tons of CO2 would be required;
“The criticism that my paper presents no evidence for loss of gains of carbon makes sense, but this was not the subject of the paper; it is restricted to quality assessments of the selection of the old data.
It is surprising, that the old data suggest a variability of the sizes mentioned. If, however, the base line over the period 1800 to 1950 was at a higher level than the generally assumed pre-industrial level of 280 ppm, then the swings reduce.. There seem to be many aspects of the carbon cycle which are insufficiently resolved (e.g. the up welling from the deep sea inequatorial waters, a major source in natural cycle). Another aspect that seems to be neglected to date is that ice core data may indicate a too low CO2 value because of the presence of CO2 fixing bacteria (see Table 1 in Christener et al).
It should be noted that the fundamentals of my assessment of the quality of the old measurements has not been challenged by Keeling or by Meijer. It concerns the assessment of the quality of the chemical analysis; e.g. the questionable use of H2SO4 as a drying agent which also absorbs CO2. This was also not recognised by Keeling and only too low readings using H2SO4 were reported and subsequently made to fit ice core records.”
GB: “You are good at measuring things……. AND?”
Perhaps I should ask first who else here has done the hard yards with any instrument, measurement systems or standards. Say John F P above could be a world expert on grape vines re temps and CO2 in the past.
Graeme; you should read up on obtaining gas standards, instrument calibrations etc before jumping into scientific arguments and practices you know nothing about. Also as I’m well and truly retired now It’s hardly likely I’m going into battle with upstarts and know-alls all over again but there was a time when I got paid to be into all and sundry on the leading edge of technology just to keep everyone’s rear end out of the fire.
So you are good at measuring stuff. Supposing I believe you. You being here anonymously and all. Supposing I believe you.
What’s your point? When you make a post there is supposed to be a point to it.
Does your argument go like this:
I’m good at measuring stuff. I was born on a set of scales with a tape-measure in my hand and I am the measuring King…..
….Ergo….
Scientists in prior generations didn’t know how to measure or gauge the accuracy of the slap-happy measurements they did make.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Is THAT the reasoning?
If so your measuring ability is not complemented by any level of sanity.
Is this an idiot-savante thing? Like are you some sort of measuring-Rainman character who can measure all things to the nth degree but are totally useless when it comes to any human reasoning or balanced judgement?
Still we get back to it. What is your point?
And what is this problem you have with the data?
Cohenite: I’ll let you into a long held secret;
its also a fact that I mostly used air on site as a key reference for many furnace CO2 measurements and nobody ever found out what discovery I so relied on to prove titration as a method was next to useless.
btw I read up on Beck stuff via the www months ago when it first came up here.
The first GRL paper 2004 ” Radiative forcing – measured at Earth’s surface – corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect” was a first step to try to explain what we measured. In the second paper GRL 2005 “Anthropogenic greenhouse forcing…” we had understood better and this analysis is easier to understand.
Question 1 A discrepancy in the DLR amount of +1.8(0.8)Wm2 in the 2004 paper, and +0.35(0.4)Wm2 in the 2005 paper; how does he reach these widely different conclusions?
There is no discrepancy if one is reading the papers correctly. In the first GRL 2004 paper we made corrections to LDRcf. First we corrected for 2/3 of the temperature increase and then for 2/3 of the humidity increase. This is clearly said in the paper. The reason is because we thought that 2/3 of the temperature and humidity increase was due to circulation changes and it was our aim to correct for that only.
In the second paper we corrected for the full temperature and full humidity increase because now I did not any more believe that circulation was the cause of the temperature and humidity increase. Actually we prove this in the second paper primarily with Fig. 2. Therefore in the second paper we were able to isolate the increase of LDR only due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases.
If one takes the corrections made in GRL 2004 for 2/3 of the temperature and the humidity you find 2.4 Wm-2. 3/3 of that is 3.6 Wm-2. If you subtract the 3.6 from LDRcf = 3.9 of GRL2005 you find 0.3 Wm-2 which is close to the given 0.35. The numbers in GRL 2005 are slightly different from the numbers in GRL 2004 because we recalculated the trends.
Q2 Why does he restrict his measurements to the period 1995-2002? An extension of his temp trends, from HadCrut, to 2005, shows a markedly lower trend.
At that time we had the measurements from 1995 to 2002. It is true that the increase in temperature is larger during this period than over the period 1995 to 2005. If we take the period 1995 to 2005 the temperature and humidity correction are smaller.
Q3 Why in fact did he use HadCrut temp records when he is measuring an atmospheric effect/ Why didn’t he use MSU satellite data, which is 38% less over the period?
The temperature and the humidity increase (change) are used to correct LDR under cloud free skies. Since I measure LDRcf 2 meters above ground I have to use the temperature and humidty 2 m above ground. Remember that LDRcf is strongly influenced from its surrounding. 68% of LDRcf comes from the first 100 meter of the atmosphere and 94% from the first 1000 meters. Several papers have shown that the temperature increase in the lower troposphere is very similar to the temperature increase on the ground. For altitudes above 5 km it would be good to use aerological sounding measurements. However, the part of the signal that we measure from that altitude is very small. Therefore the surface temperature change can be used for the analysis without making a large error.
Q4 How does he reconcile his claim that his measurement of DLR has isolated a clear-sky anthropogenic component, after removing Stefan-Boltzman and humidity, when insolation, according to PMOD, was not declining during the test period?
I do not really understand this question. PMOD claims that solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere has no significant change since 1978. Solar radiation at the surface is a different issue.
Q5 His estimate of the water vapor effect is based on a modelled estimate of vertically declining vapor. How does he reconcile that with layer inversions which are common over Europe, and which trap excess vapor at height?
The analysis shows an average of six stations over the Alps going from 370 meters to 3580 meters above see level. The average corresponds to an altitude were inversions are not very significant. Also, we have no knowledge that the amount of inversions changed. If they would have changed they would have changed the temperature , humidity and the radiation fluxes also.
Q6 Even if his use of the 1st derivative of Stefan-Boltzman to ascertain the temp based upward radiation is acceptable, how can you extrapolate from this pronounced regional effect to a wider area?
Our aim is to explain the physical phenomena. In the Alps we had large changes of temperature, humidity and radiation fluxes over this time period. If temperature and humidity changed similarly in larger parts of Europe we can assume that at least part of the warming is due to increased greenhouse gases.
Q7 According to a 2008 paper, with Ruckstuhl, Philipona’s measurements of DLR is done during the day. Can you confirm that his measurements of DLR are in fact diurnal?
I do not understand how one comes to the conclusion that our measurement are during daytime? All our measurements are continues day and night and monthly and annual means are averages of all measurements taken every 2 minutes.
Q8 How much longwave came from the Sun itself and what magnitude longwave fluxes do upward and downward pyrgeometers measure at night
We define longwave radiation or thermal radiation to go from 4 to about 100 microns. We now that the peak of thermal ambient temperature radiation is at about 10 microns. Direct solar radiation has some irradiance above 4 microns. However, by definition we account this part to the shortwave radiation. In our longwave measurements we correct the pyrgeometer reading for direct solar radiation. This is however a very small part.
The magnitude of longwave radiation at night is similar to the longwave radiation during daytime. The longwave upward radiation LUR depends on the surface temperature and is for 0°C about 315 Wm-2 and for 20°C about 418 Wm-2 and this is the same day and night. The longwave downward radiation LDR depends on the atmospheric state, cloud amount, water vapor and other greenhouse gases. On annual average about 82% of the upward radiation is coming back in the Alps. Under cloud free skies about 70% is coming back. Again the downward percentage rather depends on temperature and atmospheric state than day or night.
Gavin
Using Air on site as a key reference for CO2 measurements?
You had, of course, a set of AIR standard by which QAQC was established?
Did you make sure you collected equal volume samples and measures P and T at the time of the CO2 measurements?
It’s called establishing sample support in the mining business and the tragedy is that its the newly graduated who are assigned these menial data collection duties, as experienced professionals consider themselves above such dirty work.
This is where all the major errors occur – in the initial data collection process.
Anthony Watts has a good analysis of it concerning a weather station in the Catskills.
And Titration was next to useless?
Heavens – sampling air which is constantly changing in physical characteristics, and thus chemical composition, (as opposed to physical composition as air is one physical phase and therefore cannot have a physical composition) implies a sampling nightmare.
Looking at your previous posts here I might be excused for thinking that, as like SJT, you have overreached your competence.
So now your thesis is the following:
All the old blokes used titration to make their CO2 measurements and none of them found out that it didn’t work?
Interesting thesis fella.
Keep working on it.
If it didn’t work why would they use it? If the scales didn’t work I’d try something else. If a tape measure couldn’t do the job I’d find something else.
Why didn’t THEY conclude that titration is useless?
Why didn’t they figure it out that they were just fooling themselves?
“and nobody ever found out what discovery I so relied on to prove titration as a method was next to useless.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Tee hee hee, Gavin! Oh, you are a clever sausage! And soooo sneaky, as well.
Nobody knew about it? They didn’t even suspect it? What a rogue you are!
I shall have to start calling you, The King of Secret CO2 Measurements.
So, did you never really tell anyone else about it? Is today the first anyone has ever known about these cheeky little secrets?
I’m sooo jealous. Had I managed to be that clever, I just couldn’t have contained myself. I’d have needed to tell somebody (perhaps my pet budgie), even if I didn’t feel the need to widely disseminate my ground-breaking findings.
Very good luke; I find his no 3 interesting; this confirms the optical depth of CO2 wavelengths which are at the bottom of the atmosphere; noone is disputing this and this really is a severe limit to AGW; his answer to no 8 addresses his, or my, misunderstanding of q 4; but really the answers to q’s 1&2 restrict this effect to being a very small one; unless, of course, he can replicate the larger of the 2 results; but the 0.35Wm2 is a slight effect over a very limited time; none-the-less, thanks for the feedback.
Cohenite – I’m still digesting the import of all this. However two initial points (1) he has claimed I believe to has measured an increment in backradiation commensurate with what radiative models of greenhouse would suggest. (2) I think the incoming solar longwave issue is dismissed and the fact that we have measured backradiation day and night perhaps allows us to pass some of the sillier levels of discussion here of late
In view of all this I’m most disappointed with your positioning of his paper among your “10 worst”. Indeed if you have further comments and you have any conscience at all you’ll be putting your points directly to him.
luke; you’ve always had a soft spot for the Philipona papers, and the guy seems a decent fellow; but his test period was misleading; and his results, as my comment about optical depth indicates, rather lend weight to an anti-AGW position; to really ratify a pro-AGW position from his work you would need to isolate a THS, and some TOA imbalance to counter a Miskolczian Kirchhoff radiative equlibrium.
You’d have to explain your position in detail. Which I have been saying for sometime.
Your positioning of his paper is still scurrilous.
TW: The main reason I did not shoot my mouth off then was quite a few engineers and other technical types rather depended on their old Fireite kits and were a bit restrained by the initial cost of O2 instruments. I recall transition to better gear all round was slow.
Some industrial/commercial boiler plants only had draft and pressure gauges plus their steam drum water level tubes to work with. Anything more sophisticated regarding emissions only came with later EPA concerns.
You guys seem to be too young to remember that older scientific instruments were largely mechanical or had radio valve like signal amplifiers. Error margins were more like 5% than 2%
Luckily my first employers had an expert on electronics, instrument techniques, and O2 measurement in charge of all process automation. He likewise consulted for the Australian import agents of US developed space age gear.
Perhaps it’s worth noting that only a handful of instrument/technical types moved about both here and overseas because of an acute post war shortage of suitably qualified or experienced people. Some were dragged out of the trades or the armed forces. Courses at institutions came later and most of us did that on the run. Data logging as we know it today also came later. Exploiting all of what we know is a very modern luxury.
BTW who watched Catalyst tonight on ABC and saw their big item on methane lurking around the frosty crust. There was a big instrument too so I guess we go on again in aw of it all.
Oh, don’t go sanctimonious with me luke; go and immerse yourself in Amman and Mann if you want scurrilous; I’ll say it again, DLR is a potential fingerprint, and Philipona muffed it.
cohenite: you said AR4, p515, FIG 7.3, shows all the sources and fluxes of CO2 in Gts; the red fossil fuel arrow shows that 6.4 Gt comes from burning fossil fuel; 218.2 Gt comes from natural sources; the % from man is therefore 6.4/218.2 = 2.93%. There are 380 molecules (give or take) of CO2 ppm; or 38 molecules per 100000 molecules of air; of those 38 molecules 2.93% comes from man; that is one.
Getting confused between rates and absolute numbers is a very very basic mistake to make. Perhaps with a little analogy you might understand what an error of thinking you’ve made. Imagine you have a bank account with 280 pounds in it. Your annual salary is 220 pounds. Your annual outgoings are also 220 pounds. A generous benefactor is putting 6 pounds a year into your account. After ten years, you’ll be 60 pounds richer. I am sure you can see that this would be entirely due to your benefactor. And yet, your logic above would suggest that you think only 3% of it could be attributed to them.
It is always amazing to see someone make such a basic and obvious mistake, and yet be overflowing with certainty that they are right.
RW; have you looked at the DOE links I gave? There are 2 things wrong with your, NT’s, bank analogy; firstly, it’s not just my bank account which is expanding; everyone else’s is as well, which corresponds to the natural increase; as well the amount being reinvested, the reabsorption by expanding natural sinks, is increasing as well; how do we distinguish between my, or anthropogenic, increases and natural, or the rest of the bank, increases? We compare my increase with the total increase to get the net increase for both and by extrapolation the reabsorption/reinvestment amount; the difference between the total reabsorbed and my/anthropogenic % of the unabsorbed amount is 2.93% of 1.5 = 0.04% which is the real % increase in my bank account; now do a compounding interest calculation of a $280 base and a compounding factor of 0.04% and see what you get; and after 10 years it won’t be 60. And what’s with these pounds? Be amazed.
Haven’t a clue what you’re on about Cohenite and don’t change the subject. As usual you avoid any opportunity to explain your position. Back to disingenuous quipping?
What are you talking about? You’re the one with the bank manager mates.
cohenite – your analogy makes no sense. No sense at all. Basically you just need to understand the difference between the increase in a quantity, and the value of a quantity. Then you’ll be on the right track to understand some basic science.
The consensus model attributes a 40% increase of atmospheric carbon since 1750 to humans, a proposition that collapses under delta 13C analysis, realistic considerations of turnover rate, and official emission-absorption estimates. Only one consensus advocate offered to quantify the anthropogenic component of the increase, claiming about 100% without addressing the issues Dr Marohasy outlined. The others were content to keep the discussion on tangential matters and never answer the obvious question that was confronting them. Their evasiveness speaks volumes.
Alan Siddons – isotopic analysis demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is anthropogenic, so your statement that somehow it shows the opposite is risible. Given that the amount of CO2 emitted by human activities since 1750 is considerably greater than the increase in amount of CO2 in the atmosphere since that time, the question is not even ‘how much of the increase is anthropogenic’ but ‘how come the increase has not been much larger than observed’. If you believe there is another source of CO2, you need to explain a) where all the human CO2 is going, b) what that source is, c) why that source only began operating in 1750, d) why that source is apparently becoming stronger, e) why that source is changing the isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2, and f) why anthropogenic CO2, which has a different isotopic composition to atmospheric CO2, has not in fact affected the isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2, but the other source (whatever it is) has.
“Alan Siddons – isotopic analysis demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is anthropogenic,….”
All of it? You are making it up. Lets see the evidence for that one.
“cohenite – your analogy makes no sense. No sense at all. Basically you just need to understand the difference between the increase in a quantity, and the value of a quantity.”
But thats nonsense. Thats rubbish. The CO2 follows the warmth. And up until fairly recently it was warming. How can you say this stuff. Its utter nonsense.
The idea is to seperate what the CO2 would have been and what it is. And in doing so we have to find the effect of warming on CO2. Warming increases the CO2 levels. So the idea that all of the increase has to be human-induced is just people lying.
Your banking analogy is moronic. Where is the evidence for this?
“Alan Siddons – isotopic analysis demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is anthropogenic..”
And what is the evidence for the above.
This is flat out lying on RW’s part. You are busted.
The assumption that the planet is swallowing half of our contribution is merely presumptuous. But RW’s story is a clear, flat out, lie.
RW; we are playing with a bunch of amateurs here when it comes to physics and pre conceived ideas. Bank balances indeed!
In the greater scheme of all things natural with time and change, there are many ways to perceive our current impact. About 50 years ago I started to consider the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere as a very handy reference. I could only use it the face of engineers and scientists by knowing it was very stable compared to their other gas calculations.
The other stable quantity of interest for human engineering and industry was average global sea level. Apart from tides all our sea ports and infrastructure growth depended on SL being maintained. Some of my tech school mates were literally up to their necks in creating more infrastructures at the margins. Physical models were employed there too. I recall being interested in hydro electric engineering about the same time
During the mid 90’s I became briefly involved in coastal terrain models for other regions and infrastructure. For many weeks I had the Mt Warning region at 1/ 250000 hanging above my desk at work. Now there was an interruption to the status quo some time ago. My job then was to restructure the 900mhz band radio frequencies & networks from about the South Coast in NSW to way up the Sunshine Coast in QLD. Let’s say the abruptness of terrain surrounding Mt Warning is quite useful in considering isolation of folks along the Tweed. Without reference to the internet I had about 4000 ft straight up before Springbrook. What is more important here for our perspective today is the rate of erosion on the seaside of that giant crater.
We can be certain the recent SL is round about max on all time scales but CO2 also CH4 are suddenly racing upwards. It’s their rate of change today that is most important to humans and their infrastructure, not what happened millions of years back.
Cohenite: Go look at Catalyst and absorb the first story.
Folks: Graeme is unfortunately off the planet and floundering on his way back. Sorry.
“Getting confused between rates and absolute numbers is a very very basic mistake to make. Perhaps with a little analogy you might understand what an error of thinking you’ve made. Imagine you have a bank account with 280 pounds in it. Your annual salary is 220 pounds. Your annual outgoings are also 220 pounds. A generous benefactor is putting 6 pounds a year into your account. After ten years, you’ll be 60 pounds richer. I am sure you can see that this would be entirely due to your benefactor. And yet, your logic above would suggest that you think only 3% of it could be attributed to them.
It is always amazing to see someone make such a basic and obvious mistake, and yet be overflowing with certainty that they are right.”
It seems obvious and not that hard to comprehend, but apparently it is beyond the ability of some people to understand.
“Beck comes across as a measured and rational person; about the claim that his paper does not explain that if the fluctuations in CO2 levels he finds are correct, then an extra 233 billion metric tons of CO2 would be required;”
He comes across as self delusional. The IPCC does not do research. Mauna Loa is not the only CO2 monitoring station in the world. Cape Grim in Tasmania is also monitoring background CO2 levels, and coming up with the same results. Becks assertion that CO2 levels can gyrate so wildly is anything but rational. There is simply no evidence for it beyond a series of measurements with a fundamental systemic error, that systemic error being the failure to realise that local measurements that are not well mixed, while reasonably accurate in measuring local conditions in a particular space, do not reflect the background, well mixed levels of CO2.
McIntyre himself has said he wants no part of Beck. Beck is effectively banned from CA.
SJT
ou mispresent McIntyre – his site is about auditing proxies etc from tree rings and other similar data.
Beck’s data is entirely different but I see you confuse them as being the same.
Go and study this http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/25/nas-reports-50-million-year-cooling-trend/#more-3272 and explain the gyrating CO2 levels over time.
Now who is delusional?
RW, NT and the other initials; the bank analogy is not mine; it has been doing the rounds for some time and has been thrown up twice on this thread by NT and RW; verballing again; you guys have conveniently overlooked the DOE stats; there is no doubt there is an increase in ACO2 as Alan notes; but you guys have ignored that there has also been an increase in natural CO2; and who says it began in 1750; part of this debate is the reliability of CO2 measurements; and unless gavin was treking around back in 1750 with his foolproof methods of measurement then some doubt remains on the accuracy of that 280PPM figure; I mean that is the choice; you either accept the accuracy of ice-core measurements in spite of the pressure effect that Jaworowski has posited, and the potential effect of bacterial depletion of the ice-core record, and you ignore gas and ice age differential as noted in the analysis that Drake has done (and in response to Haughton was going to give me some peer-reviewed rebuttals), or you question it; and as for C13 evidence that all the increase is anthropogenic; there is considerable doubt on that methodology as described in many entries on this thread and eleswhere and ignored by the AGW supporters; also ignored, as usual, is my analysis of the temp ‘movement’ over the last century; what do the initials have to say about that? Because even if the initials are right that all the increase in CO2 is anthropogenic, it’s having bugga-all effect.
gavin; I did see catalyst; as usual they declared the usual mantra; rising CO2 leads to rising temps which will impact on the new bully on the block, methane; here is a paper about methane levels and saturation stemming from those levels;
http:ecen.com/eee55/eee55e/growth_of%20methane_concentration_in_atmosphere.htm. (// excluded)
Finally, someone pushed the usual button about Beck’s wild fluctuations, huge CO2 swings in a short time; impossible; well I have given the Luthi et al paper before which looks at historical fluctuations of CO2 from the vantage point of very low levels (remember Arrhenius?); Luthi found periods where CO2 levels had fluctuated from 172 to 300 PPM over a short geological period, hundreds of years; as indicated by ice-core records; now you guys, the initials, either believe in the ice-core data in which case the evidence is there for large and rapid fluctuations in CO2 level, without discernible climate effect; or you don’t. Here is Luthi;
http:www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n/7193/full/nature06949.html (// excluded)
I’ll try the paper links without my speech;
http://ecen.com.eee55/eee55e/growth_of%20methane_concentration_in_atmosphere.htm
And the Luthi paper;
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7193/full/nature06949.html
SJT: I reckon it’s very probable Beck has not done his own CO2 measurements anytime.
Your statement “that systemic error being the failure to realise that local measurements that are not well mixed” follows my opinion those early chemists practicing way back then got their breath mixed up in air samples of the day. In their favor I ask all of you; have you ever tried to catch and hold pure air in a container beyond your reach?
One thing I had to learn during my mechanical apprenticeship days was we approach perfection only by faking it as the last resort and the development of modern standards was all about understanding this old craft. Building a cloud chamber and ataching vaccum tube amplifers during retraining to capture partical streams from the cosmos was another such art. The big question for students was; how do you callibrate this instrument and for some others here; can you bank on that?
SJT said:-“There is simply no evidence for it beyond a series of measurements with a fundamental systemic error, that systemic error being the failure to realise that local measurements that are not well mixed, while reasonably accurate in measuring local conditions in a particular space, do not reflect the background, well mixed levels of CO2.”
Is that right?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/29/co2-well-mixed-or-mixed-signals/
TheWord; and combine the AIRS map with a TOA map showing IR leaving the earth after being reemitted from the surface; at this site you can also link to an albedo map showing incoming SW being reflected through cloud action; if luke is still around maybe he should check the albedo and TOA levels around Philipona’s study sites;
http://www.exploratorium.edu/climate/atmosphere/data1.html
Watt crap!
TW Your’s and others constant return to particular blogs indicates a weakness on this subject. In fact it’s quite hollow as a routine argument. Atmospheric CO2 level just about anywhere is constant in the short term. I can say from direct experience it hardly varies house to house or industry to industry. As far as we are concerned you can’t measure the difference by older manual methods.
Cohenite the key statement on your link is “Researchers often look for areas where different kinds of data support each other”
“; but you guys have ignored that there has also been an increase in natural CO2; ”
Because there is an increase in ACO2. If the CO2 we are introducing is being absorbed into the capacity existing carbon cycle, there is going to be more natural CO2 left in the atmosphere.
“Hmm, “no obvious nearby source of pollution” I suppose the volcanic outgassing nearby doesn’t count as “pollution” since it is natural in origin.”
Look at Cape Grim. No volcanoes there, and readings that match Mauna Loa very closely.
“Luthi found periods where CO2 levels had fluctuated from 172 to 300 PPM over a short geological period, hundreds of years; as indicated by ice-core records”
Beck is claiming two orders of magnitude shorter time scales for larger jumps in CO2 levels. ApplesOranges.
“Is that right?”
You didn’t address the systemic error in the measurements Beck is using, did you?
SJT; you’re such a fraud; you tried this Cape Grim is similar to Mauna Loa garbage before and Steve Short took you to task; by noting that since NOAA started the global mean increase in CO2 measurement in 1982 Mauna Loa has tracked +0.18ppm above that mean, while Cape Grim has tracked -0.55ppm below the mean; that is a differential of 0.73 ppm between the 2 stations, when the ave increase is 1.5ppm PA.
gavin; I’m not sure what you mean, but being an old hands on sort of guy you should look at Watt’s expose of GISS’s manipulation of temp;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/23/adjusting-pristine-data/#more-3208
That’d bring tears to your eyes.
Lets do some maths so simple, even I can manage it.
We are up to a ppm of 385. There is a difference of 0.73ppm between Mauna Loa and Cape Grim. That’s
0.73/385*100 ~ 0.2.
That’s a 0.2% difference between them. Not bad for a match. Steve Short’s rebutal is simple sophistry.
“Watt’s expose of GISS’s manipulation of temp;”
All data has to be “manipulated” as you call it. Even Douglass et all used the RAOBCORE “manipulated” data. The satellite data is “Manipulated”. That’s just the nature of raw data. I have done some anaylsis and reporting with data, and gave up the idea long ago that you could get pristine data without contamination, errors, gaps, etc.
Gee Cohenite – is that a big difference compared to Beck ! How many ppm?
Just think the network of all SIO stations has the same basic pattern of incremental increase yet we are lead to believe before that on Beck’s “evidence” that CO2 globally (not locally) was all the place!.
WOW !
Gavin said:-“Watt crap!
TW Your’s and others constant return to particular blogs indicates a weakness on this subject. ”
Errr, Gavin…the graph is NASA’s construction, not Anthony Watt’s. It’s just reproduced at his blog.
“Atmospheric CO2 level just about anywhere is constant in the short term…”
Constant, at what level? How long is “short-term”? If you believe the AGWers, it only goes in one direction – up – and does so continuously and predictably all around the world.
Not true, is it?
RW said to cohenite…”And yet, your logic above would suggest that you think only 3% of it could be attributed to them”.
That’s not cohenite’s logic, it’s the logic of the IPCC. They admit on the page before cohenit’es reference that the anthropogenic CO2 contribution is a small fraction of the natural contribution. The 3% anthropogenic contribution comes from IPCC numbers.
Spencer gives a better one on this page:
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm#satellite-temps
He claims that only one molecule of anthropogenic CO2 is contributed to 100,000 molecules of air every 5 years. You can work that out from IPCC numbers as well. 380 ppmv = 38 molecules of CO2 per 100,000 of air. Anthropogenic CO2 increases at about 0.6% per year. Multiply 38 x 0.006 = .228 molecules per year of anthropogenic CO2 per 100,000 of air. Multiply that by 5 years to get 1 whole molecule and you get 1 molecule of anthropogenic CO2 added to 100,000 molecules of air every 5 years.
You can talk in gigatons all you want, anthropogenic CO2 is incredibly rare in the atmosphere.
“If you believe the AGWers, it only goes in one direction – up – and does so continuously and predictably all around the world.” If you want to believe the scientists, first of all you had better make sure you understand what they are claiming, because at present you clearly don’t.
One of the hallmarks of pathological science is the assertion that a trace quantity of something can causes enormous effects.
The problem really goes back to Carl Sagan when he proposed that the reason Venus was so hot was because of a runaway greenhouse effect due to CO2. James Hansen did his Phd on this and so one can understand why there is so much concern about CO2.
But Sagan was wrong.
SJT; nong 1; luke; apprentice nong; 0.73/385 x 100 = 0.2; a miniscule difference! It’s the rate of increase! You guys are in a flurry about the 1.5ppm annual increase; you say it’s all ACO2; that’s impossible as IPCC, on p 514 (sorry Gordon), shows, as does the DOE information; the ACO2 residual, that is the rate of ACO2 increase, is 2.93% of 1.5 which = 0.04%, which is smaller than the discrepancy between Cape Grim and Mauna Loa! Geez, I’d really like to do my banking at youse guys’ bank.
You are jumping around like a rabbit Cohenite. I thought we were talking about the agreement between Cape Grim and Mauna Loa on the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. They agree very closely. Beck is a goose.
That should be 0.04ppm. But getting back to the divergence between Cape Grim and Mauna Loa, do a compounding calculation based on 1.5 and an annual compounding rate of 0.2; pretty soon the divergence will be greater than the annual increase; CO2 is not evenly mixed.
One more question for non believers: When do you reckon we first got to know that CO2 at any point fluctuates in distinct cycles?
Something to ponder
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=kqBez54dz-gC&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=gas+chromatograph+co2&source=web&ots=RF7Zk7f9yS&sig=DH0xY6jkqoBu_txCrAuMxbDWbHA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPA118,M1
“That should be 0.04ppm. But getting back to the divergence between Cape Grim and Mauna Loa, do a compounding calculation based on 1.5 and an annual compounding rate of 0.2; pretty soon the divergence will be greater than the annual increase; CO2 is not evenly mixed.”
Amazing.
Keeping our perspective in the modern time frame for all scientific instruments is essential for these discussions. Today real science downunder is based on the work of some very bright people. Working in collaberation is essential too. Try this for an extension of high vacuum post war lab craft at CSIRO.
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/australia_innovates/?behaviour=view_article&Section_id=1070&article_id=10062
Cohenite said, “you guys have ignored that there has also been an increase in natural CO2.”
That’s a key sentence. It means that it doesn’t MATTER whether Beck is correct — what matters is that the consensus model certainly isn’t. Most of the (alleged) 40% increase since 1750 has to be natural, or the present delta C13 value would be far different. There’s nothing special about fossil fuel’s isotopic signature; it’s got a similar delta C13 value as, say, honey: -26 as versus -25. Amazonian leaves display -31.4 to -26.7. Whether wood, dung, coal or whatever biogenic source is being burned, then, 13C-depleted carbon dioxide goes into the air. So the problem breaks down to a dilution formula. If a 40% atmospheric increase were due to anthropogenic combustion of biogenic sources, air would show the difference.
0.6 × -7 (previous delta C13) = -4.2
0.4 × -26 (new biogenic) = -10.4
Total: -14.6
By contrast, if the 40% increase were entirely consistent with what’s assumed to be the natural background value, then
0.6 × -7 (previous delta C13) = -4.2
0.4 × -7 (same value) = -2.8
Total: -7
But no, a slight change, to -8.2, is reported. Thus
0.937 × -7 (previous delta C13) = -6.56
0.063 × -26 (new biogenic) = -1.64
Total: -8.2
Or, to be more rigorous
0.6 × -7 (previous delta C13) = -4.2
0.337 × -7 (same value) = -2.36
0.063 × -26 (new biogenic) = -1.64
Total: -8.2
So about 84% of the 40% increase is consistent with the natural background and 16% artificial. As pointed out earlier, though, even that percentage seems inflated, because our CURRENT addition to the earth’s total annual CO2 flux is only about 3%, and the earth has been handling lesser human emissions for hundreds of years.
To repeat, it doesn’t matter if Beck is right. The consensus model is clearly wrong.
See state of the art in 1974 here
http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an13031276
Amazing; in an earlier post I note that the true temp increase over the 20thC to 2008, which is arguably due to anthropogenic causes, is about 0.27C. So, regardless of whether the entire increase in CO2 is due to humans or not, it’s having a temp effect which is equivalent to the substance of the AGW arguments being sprouted here; bugga all.
You are playing with statistics again by cherry picking, but the whole point of the exercise is to put of the rest of the warming that is coming.
“the rest of the warming that is coming.”
Seriously; Alan, I get a 74/26 split; could you please clarify where you get the 84% natural, 16% anthropogenic ratio? SJT has exhausted me; I keep trying to make sense of what he is trying to say and I end up feeling like the robot from Lost In Space.
Cohenite – graph the SIO stations and add on Beck’s data points – what do you see – two data sets you can’t reconcile.
SJT – I’m sure the blog knows better than http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbontrends/index.htm
2007 report just out.
It’s simple, really. You just determine what the background delta 13C value is “supposed” to be and calculate the difference by what it is today. It’s a before-and-after comparison. All I’m doing is an update of Segalstad’s technique and using 1750 as the baseline.
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm
Section 10:
“CO2 from combustion of fossil fuel and from biospheric materials have delta-13-C values near -26 permil. ‘Natural’ CO2 has delta-13-C values of -7 permil in equilibrium with CO2 dissolved in the hydrosphere and in marine calcium carbonate. Mixing these two atmospheric CO2 components: IPCC’s 21% CO2 from fossil fuel burning + 79% ‘natural’ CO2 should give a delta-13-C of the present atmospheric CO2 of approximately -11 permil, calculated by isotopic mass balance (Segalstad, 1992; 1996).”
Thus
0.79 × -7 (previous delta C13) = -5.53
0.21 × -26 (new biogenic) = -5.56
Total: -10.99
At the time of his analysis, the atmosphere was at -7.807 instead. So that yielded about a 4% addition of 13C depleted carbon. Updated to a value of -8.2, it’s 6% of all the carbon in the atmosphere, or 16% of a 40% increase.
Sorry, that should have read
0.79 × -7 (previous delta C13) = -5.53
0.21 × -26 (new biogenic) = -5.46
Total: -10.99
The assumption that oil is fossil fuel is questioned at the recent Internation Geologiucal Congress – abstracts http://www.cprm.gov.br/33IGC/Sess_182.html
This fact will seriously affect the assumtpions about C12 and C13 ratios – making alot of the AGW arguments here nonsense.
“Graph the SIO stations and add on Beck’s data points.” Well, where is it? You’ve obviously got time for this; I’m trying to run a business here.
Thanks Alan.
“SJT – I’m sure the blog knows better than http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbontrends/index.htm”
Arrgghhh. The science, it burns.
“Well, where is it? You’ve obviously got time for this; I’m trying to run a business here.”
Fortunately, someone has already done it.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/03/remember_eg_becks_dodgy.php
SJT; your new nickname is now officially Will Robinson.
“Updated to a value of -8.2, it’s 6% of all the carbon in the atmosphere, or 16% of a 40% increase.”
16% of a 40% increase?
Now its very easy to be ambiguous about the wording.
If its now 380ppm are we saying then that our blessed hydrocarbons are responsible for:
16/100 * 40/100 * 380ppm?
Or in other words about 24ppm?
Well I’m glad that our blessed hydrocarbons can take some credit for the higher CO2. Because 24 ppm might not seem all that much. But its surely a helpful thing.
“The problem really goes back to Carl Sagan when he proposed that the reason Venus was so hot was because of a runaway greenhouse effect due to CO2. ”
So that was SAGAN’S doing?
Goodness me. Here he is with his telescope. And his ability to analyse light. He’s got no ground truth. And so he comes up with this all on the basis of the only information he has access to. That is to say LIGHT.
All that fear for nothing. Its not so much that I’d blame him for posing the hypothesis. But how did it suddenly get accepted down to primary school level within a few short years of him proposing it on such slim information?
Thats a rhetorical question. What I’m saying is this is just extraordinary.
Is there anyone who doesn’t agree that RW was caught redhanded lying.
Sometimes these socialists do this you know. They figure that the conversation is going to end so they’ll just show up to tell blatant lies to keep their side of it in play. Its as though they believe that the argument isn’t over as long as someone on their side is still talking. Hence RW, amongst his peers, is likely to be a hero right now. He was the one with the courage to come on and keep it going with outrageous, blatant, flat out lies that no-one, even on his side could believe. But that everyone on his side appreciated.
Lying in public. This is heroism on the leftist side of things unless or until you own up.
Thats why that Wilson-Plame fellow became a great hero. Not every leftist would have the courage to come right out on the TV and lie relentlessly month after month like that.
I thought that Clinton had special Jedi-Knight-Powers. He was a real phenomenon. But he was eclipsed by Wilson who made donkey of the year 2003 a one jack-ass race and he is still much beloved by leftists who would can his ass entirely if he ever came clean.
RW you are a piker. You are a man without courage. You are not like your great heros Clinton and Wilson. You showed up here to lie flat out and its true that you haven’t weakened and owned up to it.
But by God you will never be like Wilson. You are a gutless pig because you came here to lie anonymously.
“So that was SAGAN’S doing?”
Oh yeah, he’s one of ours.
“But by God you will never be like Wilson. You are a gutless pig because you came here to lie anonymously.”
LOL
Cohenite:”Cape Grim is similar to Mauna Loa…by noting that since NOAA started the global mean increase in CO2 measurement in 1982 Mauna Loa has tracked +0.18ppm above that mean, while Cape Grim has tracked -0.55ppm below the mean; that is a differential of 0.73 ppm between the 2 stations, when the ave increase is 1.5ppm PA.”
So, what’s your point? It has been known since Keeling Sr first started measuring in the late 50s that SH CO2 concentrations are slightl lower than those in the NH. After all, most of the emissions (manmade or by terrestrial biomass) are in the NH, while most of the uptake is in the SH. (To remind ourselves of this, we just need look at a globe and contemplate the relative ocean and land contributions of NH and SH.) Therefore, and because the CO2 does not equilibrate instantaneously on a global level, there must be a concentration gradient from NH to SH. So, Cape Grim cannot be exactly the same as Mauna Loa. But it’s pretty close.
I notice renewed interest in Dip. Ing. Beck’s paper from Energy and Environ. (2007) at this blogsite. As it happens, I have been looking closely at some of the early papers on CO2, including a good few of those cited by Beck, and I‘d like to offer some comments (perhaps against my better judgment).
Perhaps those who believe that this offers an accurate and fair summary of the temporal behaviour of global atmospheric CO2 concentrations, from chemical measurements, would like to explain the following. On p.274 of that article, Beck shows a graph of CO2 concentration vs year, values for CO2 having been drawn from the works of various authors. In 1936-1937, the values are indicated as being ~430 ppm, from the [German] work of Duerst. On the other side of the Atlantic, Thorne Carpenter, at the Carnegie Institution in Washington D.C., reported a value for 1936 of 0.031%, i.e., 310 ppmv. Essentially the same value was reported by Carpenter for the previous several years, beginning in 1930, for three N.E. US locations, along with rock-steady values for oxygen concentration. This work was reported in the pre-eminent American chemistry journal of the day (and of this day). (T.M. Carpenter, The Constancy of the Atmosphere with Respect to Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen Content, J. Amer. Chem. Soc., v.59, pp378-381 (1937)). By contrast, Duerst’s results were published in the Schweizer Archiv fiir Tierheilkunde, a title I translate (with the aid of my postgraduate science-reading German course) as “animal welfare science” (or, perhaps, “news”). How can the “background” CO2 be 430 ppm, or even higher (>470 ppm), on one side of the Atlantic, but only 310 on the other, at the same time?
Here is something else for the Beck-ites to ponder. If the early chemical measurements were so good, then why did they fail to establish the seasonal variation, especially pronounced in the Northern Hemisphere, of CO2? This was clearly discerned by Keeling from the measurements he made beginning in 1957, and is described in his 1960 paper in Tellus.
Beck, PART II (I’m on a roll…)
Beck purports to have made a summary of 180 years of chemical measurements of CO2, and to have critically anlysed the data and literature. (Curiously, this “180-year” period begins around 1812 and ends in the 1960s.) Beck claimed in his Reply that “My paper assesses >90,000 chemical measurements of atmospheric CO2 carried out between 1812 and 1961…[i]t shows many of those measurements were of high quality and indicated levels much higher than 280 ppmv.” But Beck does not do this at all. There was no critical assessment to determine which of the data was more reliable than others. Instead, Beck decided that measurements made with the Pettenkofer apparatus were reliable, while those deriving from other types (e.g., Reiset) were not. Moreover, he gave
a favoured status to the high results of certain workers (Duerst & Kreutz in Germany; Misra in India) which appear to show much higher values (>400 ppm) than those reported by the majority of other studies (which indicate values much closer to 300 ppm).
Compare Beck’s approach with that by Bray (1959), an author Beck cites, but apparently did not read. (J.R. Bray, An Analysis of the Possible Recent Change in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Tellus, XI (1959), 220-230.) Bray went through much of the pre-1950s literature, right back to the 1850s, and this is what he had to write, under Chemical Analysis, and of the Pettenkofer method.
“Early estimates show a decrease from the 1750’s to 1850’s which is generally recognized as due to improving chemical technique. Blochman (in Letts & Blake, 1900) notes that the figures of de Saussure steadily decreased as his work progressed. Callendar (1940) considers the first accurate values may have been obtained by Thorpe (1867). [I have not seen the Thorpe paper, but according to Armstrong (PRS, 1880), which I have seen, Thorpe reported values over the Irish Sea and Atlantic Ocean, and these showed no diurnal variation.] Criticisms of various 19th century workers and techniques have been made by Spring & Roland (1885), Van Nuys & Adams (1887), Letts & Blake (1900), Caldwell (in Letts & Blake), and Brown & Escombe (1905a). The most often noted criticism was that CO2 is absorbed during transfer to weighing or titrating (including possible contamination from the breath), Caldwell performed five series of tests comparing the Pettenkofer method with known values of CO2 and with the Letts and Blake modification of the Pettenkofer, which was itself of a high accuracy when compared with known CO2 volumes. His summaries show actual CO2 concentration to vary from 0.66 to 0.89 of the amount measured by the Pettenkofer method.”
In other words, the Pettenkofer values- and, by implication, many of those reported by Beck as supporting his >400 ppm values in the 1930s-1940s- may have been over-estimated by 50%!
Bray’s Table 3 is a summary of data measured between 1868 and 1956 (ie.., just at the point where Keeling Sr comes on the scene). The MAJORITY of these values indicate CO2 around 310 ppm. The high (>400 ppm) values emphasized by Beck belong to a rather small minority of workers. It is as if, out of 100 people doing the same measurement (though maybe by different methods), 99 of them agreed quite well, but the 100th, who nevertheless produced a data set vastly greater than the other 99, was given preferred status, simply because he produced more numbers. Does this sound reasonable? Does this sound scientific? Yet this is precisely what Beck has done, in according preferred status to the high values. Nowhere doe he offer any explanation as to why these high values should be believed.
Bray also writes: “It is very interesting to note that with the exception of the very high Duerst, Kreutz and Misra values, all of the daytime CO2 studies since 1935
(including Buch, Haldane, Pozzi-Escot, Spector and Dodge (1947), Huber and Fonselius et al) have grouped within the 315-325 interval and that no trend is present during the period.”
Have a look at Bray’s article and Table 3 yourself. If you can’t access the journal, give me an email address and I’ll scan and send it to you. I invite you to read Bray’s paper (which took no sides on the dispute as to whether CO2 was increasing) and see whether you still believe Beck.
Beck cont’d (some nit-picking)
Beck also claims that scientists of “Nobel Prize level distinction” made contributions; the names mentioned in an early English-language draft of this paper were those of Krogh, Warburg and Benedict. The first-named won the Prize in 1920 (not 1923, as Beck claimed), while Warburg won in 1931 (not in 1933, as Beck claimed). Both Prizes were awarded in medicine, not in physical science. These errors perhaps are an indication as to the reliability of Beck’s work in general.
Beck’s “90,000+ measurements”?
Beck asserted that “90,000+” measurements of CO2 by chemical methods supported his notion of a highly variable background. I have it, privately from a well-known researcher in the field, that about 15 MILLION measurements of CO2, from Keeling Sr on, support the notion of a stable CO2 background. So much for the tyranny of numbers, a la Herr Beck.
Very good peterd; Beck is an interesting digression best summed by Alan’s comment in his post above to the effect that the increase in CO2 is primarily natural; that really is the issue and Beck’s work goes, along with the Jaworowski/Oeschger dispute, to the reliability of the so-called base amount of 280ppm; you may have some equally erudite commentary about whether the increase in atmospheric CO2 is entirely anthropogenic, or whether only a small % is. For me, at the risk of being repetitive, the issue is that, whatever the source of the increase in CO2, the AGW predicted temp forcing simply hasn’t occured; the latest Douglass and Christy paper shows a temp increase over the 20thC, free of volcanic cooling and ENSO heating, of 0.62C equivalent; they attribute that to ACO2; however, lucia has shown in the 21stC that there has been an ENSO free cooling of 0.05C; both Douglass and Christy and lucia have not factored in insolation, which is generally considered to have increased at least to the latter part of the 20thC and declined into the 21stC; IPCC figure a solar forcing of 0.3-0.5C for the century; combining these divergent sources we obtain a possible ACO2 warming figure of 0.27C for the period 1900-2008; during this period AGW predicted temps based on an increase in CO2 of about 40%, should have been 1.2-1.8C; some of your fellow travellers think the heat is being stored in the ocean; but there are 2 factors against that; firstly, there has been no effective heating from CO2, so how can nothing be stored; secondly this graph shows no lag between SST and land and atmsopheric temp;
http://i37.tinypic.com/30mo4ev.jpg
Oops, while interesting that graph does not show the lack of a lag between tha ocean, land and atmosphere, this graph does;
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/response-to-el-nino3.jpg
Graeme
Before the space probes, science thought Venus was another earth with a balmy climate.
The Velikovsky discovered from his unravelling of ancient Jewish history, and other coeval histories of other peoples and cultures, that around the time of Exodus the earth had a near encounter with, described by our ancestors, as a comet.
Cutting to the chase, Velikovsky deduced that if Venus was that young, then it must still be extremely hot.
When the space probes arrived at Venus, indeed they showed it was hot and thus Velikovsky correct.
The scientific mafia did not like this and in order to undermine Velikovsky’s empirical test invented the runaway CO2 greenhouse effect as the real reason Venus is hot.
The scientific mafia remains in charge and are now ramming AGW down our throat – and of course Wil Robinson is right – Sagan is one of theirs.
That’s odd; anyway, the graph is the woodfortrees graph featured in Barry Moore’s post on Spencer Weart, 2 posts below this one.
“How can the “background” CO2 be 430 ppm, or even higher (>470 ppm), on one side of the Atlantic, but only 310 on the other, at the same time?”
Because he has the values turning down pretty suddenly and by your own testimony these values ARE NOT AT THE SAME TIME.
Try again.
Yeah I used to like Sagan when I was a kid. We had his books at our school and I’d read them every word. But every so often I’d see this sort of leftist deal coming out in him.
Despite these leftist tendencies it seems a shame that he died so young.
He had a couple of very bad yet seemingly plausible one-liners that people are using or misusing today. I’m not sure that they are original to him and probably are not.
But he said that “Absence Of Evidence Is Not Evidence Of Absence”
But after 50 billion dollars spent this saying can be misused.
Another thing that I think may have been original to him was something like “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
Or something similiar. And I think this is wrong. You follow the evidence WITHOUT prejudice and you rank paradigms as to inherent plausibility against the incoming data. The idea that you can label a claim arbitrarily as “extraordinary” is neither here nor there and if the saying is taken seriously its an invitation for leftists to game the system.
“Very good peterd; Beck is an interesting digression best summed by Alan’s comment in his post above to the effect that the increase in CO2 is primarily natural; that really is the issue and Beck’s work goes, along with the Jaworowski/Oeschger dispute, to the reliability of the so-called base amount of 280ppm; you may have some equally erudite commentary about whether the increase in atmospheric CO2 is entirely anthropogenic, or whether only a small % is. For me, at the risk of being repetitive, the issue is that, whatever the source of the increase in CO2, the AGW predicted temp forcing simply hasn’t occured;”
Excellent. Will you also conceded that climate scientists became aware of the importance of convection back in the 60’s, despite what Chilingar claimed.
“Beck asserted that “90,000+” measurements of CO2 by chemical methods supported his notion of a highly variable background. I have it, privately from a well-known researcher in the field, that about 15 MILLION measurements of CO2, from Keeling Sr on, support the notion of a stable CO2 background. So much for the tyranny of numbers, a la Herr Beck.”
Evidence needs to be convergent. Switching on the light 15 million times in support of a bad theory is neither here nor there.
“Excellent. Will you also conceded that climate scientists became aware of the importance of convection back in the 60’s….”
Look at this evil dishonest bastard. He’s trying to conflate 1960’s science with the monolithic campaign against warmer winters for the Laplanders.
SJT you prick. The movement that would be dirty on little-Yukos seeing his first butterfly wasn’t even around in the 1960’s.
The 1960’s scientists. These are our guys and not your guys.
You try and pull this switcheroo again I’ll come around and slit your puppies throat.
Just kidding about the puppy of course. But thats really off SJT. Thats not on thats off. That is not good.
Since when was the campaign against little Hamisi getting a four-wheel drive and a dingo digger in the back. Since when was this a 60’s movement?
Don’t try it on again. Your puppy is safe but this sort of lying is just bad form.
Re Gordon Robertson: That’s not cohenite’s logic, it’s the logic of the IPCC. They admit on the page before cohenit’es reference that the anthropogenic CO2 contribution is a small fraction of the natural contribution. The 3% anthropogenic contribution comes from IPCC numbers.
Once again, you are confused by the difference between annual fluxes and annual increases. Revisit the bank analogy. 3 per cent of the annual income is from the benefactor; 100 per cent of the annual increase in balance is due to the benefactor. This is not advanced stuff.
He claims that only one molecule of anthropogenic CO2 is contributed to 100,000 molecules of air every 5 years. You can work that out from IPCC numbers as well. 380 ppmv = 38 molecules of CO2 per 100,000 of air. Anthropogenic CO2 increases at about 0.6% per year. Multiply 38 x 0.006 = .228 molecules per year of anthropogenic CO2 per 100,000 of air. Multiply that by 5 years to get 1 whole molecule and you get 1 molecule of anthropogenic CO2 added to 100,000 molecules of air every 5 years. – yes, you’re absolutely right. On the more conventional scale, this means that CO2 concentrations increase by ~2ppm per year. This is observed. The crucial point is that 0 molecules of non-anthropogenic CO2 are added to every 100,000 molecules of air every five years.
You can talk in gigatons all you want, anthropogenic CO2 is incredibly rare in the atmosphere. – you seem to have been confused by all your talk of ‘one molecule’. Roughly a quarter of the CO2 in the atmosphere is there due to anthropogenic activities.
“Once again, you are confused by the difference between annual fluxes and annual increases. Revisit the bank analogy.”
No. Its a stupid analogy. You are lying. Where is carbon raind and an increase in the biosphere’s robustness in this stupid analogy?
Where is the deal that the water will, at any given temperature, absorb a bit more CO2 the higher is the CO2 level of the atmosphere?
Now you are just getting off on the idea that other leftists admire your relentless and unbending dishonesty. Its like you are getting off on them thinking that you are a rock.
All together boys; Will Robinson, that does not compute. Gawd I loved that show; it’s level of science reminds me of AGW.
I’m not personally a fan of Beck’s CO2 study.
CO2 is, however, the last remaining illusion for the AGWers.
Given that temperatures haven’t risen for a decade, if CO2 measurements were to start wobbling about, even the dunderhead “science” journalists might start to scratch their bright green heads.
http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbontrends/index.htm
Here you go Cohenite
Have you worked out how to do accounting yet?
Have you at least made up a carbon budget?
You know Total CO2 = sum of all sources – sum of all sinks?
RW,
Support your argument with measurements please, not rhetoric.
NT,
You reference is dismissed because your sources labour under the illusion of fossil fuels.
TheWord
All Beck did was point to the accepted refereed literature publishing atmospheric CO2 analyses.
Dimissing historical data because it does not square with modern techniques is problematical – this interpretation is based on the dogma of uniformism, first ennunciated by Charles Lyell.
It is essentially historical revisionism of scientific data, that because today we do not see such fluctuations, then past measurements must therefore be wrong.
Wrong.
This is again the Socratic mindset at work – the foundation of all historical revisionism.
Data is data and history is history, but what must prevail is experical fact – not what we think might have happened, but trusting that our ancestors were diligent enough to record facts.
As Aristotle and Plato were arguing about this 2000 years ago suggests that our ancestors knew exactly what the issues were.
Seems we are continuing the debate here.
So, what is this globalcarbonproject.org thing that NT refers to?
“The Global Carbon Project was formed to assist the international science community to establish a common, mutually agreed knowledge base supporting policy debate and action to slow the rate of increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The growing realization that anthropogenic climate change is a reality has focused the attention of the scientific community, policymakers and the general public on the rising concentration of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, and on the carbon cycle in general. Initial attempts, through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, are underway to slow the rate of increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These societal actions require a scientific understanding of the carbon cycle, and are placing increasing demands on the international science community to establish a common, mutually agreed knowledge base to support policy debate and action. ”
****
Hmmm…advocacy/religious group, in other words.
“CO2 = sum of all sources – sum of all sinks?”
So there is no holism there? There is no interaction? Like you will treat it like a dumb alarmist adding together hypothetical alleged forcings straight?
And in you crap-headed view its only addition subtraction that matters. The maths just doesn’t go further than that?
Look.
RW was busted lying OUTRIGHT.
So no need for you to back his lying ass up. Unless you want to be horsewhipped in broad daylight in the streets.
Are we done with the flat out lying yet?
I mean we had one bloke claiming that the planet was absorbing half our CO2 output. Which seems reasonable if you know nothing about it. But this lie that the air is going to just absorb all that CO2 and none of the extra escape to the oceans, the biotam or the bottom of the sea, is something that you just need a bunch in the guts over because you and RW both know you are lying and only to keep the talk going after your side was proved wrong.
Is there anyone here who doesn’t realise that RW was busted lying outright, he knew he was lying, and that he did it purposefully and with malice afforethought since his side had lost the debate and was running out of things to say?
Get used to it.
Thats what this sort of scum gets up to all the time. And NT caught the signal and jumped all over it after he was already down and out for the count.
Graeme
“CO2 = sum of all sources – sum of all sinks?”
is a simple mass balance equation but, and a BIG but, is not based on measureable quantities but what we THINK are the outputs and inputs.
That is, ut is a model, to use the argot of my Maori Muscle drillers.
I’ll spend some time tonight looking at NT’s url on carbon to see precisely the basis of their mass balance equation.
Graeme,
Simpler than I anticipated.
NT’s Global Carbon Budget incorporates 2 CO2 emission factors, fossil fuels and cement, and balances it with some “natural” CO2 sinks.
Nopw CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement production would fall into the 3% of yearly CO2 fluxes but as I have not looked at the IPCC numbers on this, I assume that my numbers are ballpark.
Stupid is as stupid does I suppose.
Louis; it’s the same one that luke posted earlier, confirming my suspicions that if NT and luke aren’t the same person then at the very least they share the same brain; the thing with the link is that this mob, as TheWord notes, interpret the data through some problematic assumptions; they assume that all the increase is due to ACO2 and no natural; and they suppose a decline in sink capacity because they do not accept that there has been an increase in natural CO2; which is to say, for at least some of the time the oceans have been a net emitter. Still, the link has some nice pictures.
Will; where does Chilingar say that he is the first to appreciate the dominance of heat TRANSFER by convection?
Cohenite
Luke = NT ? but >>>> SJT !!!
One of our strengths is arguing from fact.
Luke and his looks argue from imaginals.
Victory comes to those with the most stamina.
As for Luke and NT sharing the same brain, reminds me of the Starwars scence when Luke Skywalker won the pod race – the race announcer was bi-cranial – much like our meeja.
“SJT you prick. The movement that would be dirty on little-Yukos seeing his first butterfly wasn’t even around in the 1960’s.”
LOL
James Haughton: hang in there mate, I appreciate your comments. There may well be people who plough through the distracting stuff on this site looking for more reliable info. I don’t bother reading the comments of nutters on this cite but occasionally find (if only indirectly) helpful info. for instance I really enjoyed the exchanges between Roy Spencer (although misguided at least he seems a gentleman) and Ferdinand Engelbeen (the patience of a saint that guy).
That’s funny – I was wondering if Louis and GB were the same person? .
Spencer misguided; well that’s patronising; the discussion about isotopes led by Ferdinand was informative, but whether the C13 isotope is a definitive measure of ACO2 remains unresolved; unlike the lack of correlation between CO2, temp and ice extent, as Ferdinand shows;
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html
If I ever find the person who claimed CO2 is the only climate forcing, I’ll be sure to show them that graph.
“this means that CO2 concentrations increase by ~2ppm per year. This is observed. The crucial point is that 0 molecules of non-anthropogenic CO2 are added to every 100,000 molecules of air every five years.”
The daily variation in AIRS measurement and that at Mauna Loa, in CO2 is on the order of 10^1 ppm.
As Spencer showed the 13C/12C variance at Mauna Loa in the seasonal signal and the long-term trends are identical.
There is no evidence whatever that the increase in CO2 is anthropogenic. Seuss was wrong that 13C increases were non-natural, Keeling was wrong that the seasonal signal was biogenic.
The atmospheric abundance of CO2 is controlled wholly by the oceanic partial-pressure, as was taught in Earth Science 50 years ago.
Graeme is on the money, you are not ignorant but prevaricators.
RW: “The crucial point is that 0 molecules of non-anthropogenic CO2 are added to every 100,000 molecules of air every five years.”
You’re implying that, over all the millennia before man started burning fossil fuels, worldwide CO2 sinks matched CO2 sources closely enough to maintain a stable level.
Do you have any explanation for this quite incredible assumption?
I wish I had the knowledge and ability to write this:
======================
Here is an answer I gave to an email from a thermista in the Canadian Civil Service.
by Lord Monckton
Dear Sir Humphrey – The “Abundance of scientific statements” that you mention is no sound or logical basis for deciding or believing anything. The question is whether the scientific statements have any rational justification, and whether those making them are in effect making statements that are political rather than scientific, rent-seeking rather than objective. After all, this is the age of reason (or it was).
Therefore, one should not accord to “scientists” the status of infallible high priests merely because they mumble a hieratic language with which one is unfamiliar. There is clear, compelling evidence that many of the major conclusions of the IPCC, your new religion’s constantly-changing Holy Book, are based on evidence that has been fabricated. The “hockey stick” graph that purported to abolish the mediaeval warm period is just one example. So let me try to lure you away from feeble-minded, religious belief in the Church of “Global Warming” and back towards the use of the faculty of reason.
Let us begin with the “devastation of New Orleans” that you mention. Even the High Priests of your Church are entirely clear that individual extreme-weather events such as Hurricane Katrina cannot, repeat cannot, be attributed to “global warming”. Even the Holy Book makes this entirely plain. There was one priest – Emanuel (a good, religious name) – who had suggested there might be a link between “global warming” and hurricanes; but he has recently recanted, at least to some extent. Very nearly all others in the hierarchy of your Church are clear that ascribing individual extreme-weather events to “global warming” is impossible. Why? Well, let’s take the question of landfalling Atlantic hurricanes such as Katrina. The implication of your attribution of Hurricane Katrina to “global warming” is twofold: that “global warming” is happening, and that in consequence either the frequency or the intensity of tropical weather systems such as hurricanes is increasing. Neither of these propositions is true. Yes, there has been “global warming” for 300 years, since the end of the 60-year period of unusually low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum (after the celebrated Astronomer Royal who studied it). But there has been no net warming since 1995, and Keenlyside et al, in the theological journal Nature a few months ago, say they do not expect a new record year for global temperatures until 2015 at the earliest. If these theologians are correct, there will have been a 20-year period of no net “global warming” even though the presence of the devil Siotu in the ether grows inexorably stronger. And, secondly, the number of Atlantic hurricanes making landfall has actually fallen throughout the 20th century, even as temperatures have risen. Indeed, some theologians have argued that warmer weather actually reduces the temperature differential between sea and sky that generates hurricanes, reducing their frequency, and that the extra heat in the coupled ocean-atmosphere system increases wind-shear in tropical storms, tending to reduce their intensity. Certainly the frequency of intense tropical cyclones has fallen throughout the 30-year satellite record, even though temperatures have increased compared with 30 years ago. Also, the damage done by Hurricane Katrina was chiefly caused by the failure of the Democrat-led city administration to heed repeated warnings from the Corps of Engineers that the levees needed to be strengthened.
Next, you mention the recent earthquake damage at Galveston, and you imply that this is something new and terrible. Perhaps you would like to do some research of your own to verify whether the High Priests of your Church, some of whom have blamed the Galveston incident on the wrath of the devil Siotu, are likely to be telling the truth. And how, you may ask, may a non-theologian such as yourself argue theology with your High Priests? Well, the Galveston incident will give you just one indication of the many ways in which a lay member of the Church of “Global Warming” may verify for himself whether or not the Great Druids of his religion are speaking the truth from their pulpits in the media. Cast your eye back just over a century, to 1906, and look up what happened to Galveston then. Which was worse – Galveston 2008 or Galveston 1906? Next, check the global mean surface temperature in 1906: many theology faculties compile surface temperature data and make it publicly available to the faithful and to infidels alike. Was the global mean surface temperature significantly lower or significantly higher in 2008 than in 1906? What implications do your two answers have for your proposition that Galveston 2008 can be attributed to “global warming”?
Next, you mention fires in California. Once again, you can either sit slumped in your pew, gazing in adoration at the Archdruids as their pious faces flicker across your television screen, or you can do a little research for yourself. It may, for instance, occur to you to ask whether droughts were worse in the United States in the second half of the 20th century than they were in the first half. Once again, you may want to check with your local theological faculty to obtain the answer to this question. Or you may like to pick up a copy of The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. And you may want to verify whether temperatures in the second half of the 20th century were warmer than in the first half. Once again, what are the implications of your two answers for your proposition that “global warming” is causing forest fires? You could also talk to the Fire Department in California and obtain its data on the causes of forest fires. You might be mightily surprised by the answers you get.
Next, you talk of beetles in your forests destroying natural resources. Here, you could ask the Druids just a couple of simple questions. What evidence do they have, if any, that whichever species of beetle you have in mind has not wrought havoc in the forests before? And, even if your clergy think that they have evidence that the beetle-damage is new, what evidence do they have, if any, that the beetle-damage is greater because of “global warming” than it would otherwise have been? Of course, you could ask them the wider question what evidence there is that anthropogenic “global warming”, as opposed to solar warming, is the reason for the temperature increases that have occurred over the past 300 years. The more honest parish priests will admit that for 250 of the past 300 years none of the inferred warming can be attributed to human industry. They will also be compelled to concede, if you press them, that the warming of the most recent 50 years has not occurred at a rate any greater than that which was observed before, so that it is in fact very difficult to discern any anthropogenic signal at all in the temperature record.
Next, you talk of people migrating from one place to another because in some places water has become scarce. Once again, it is easy for a layman, whether a true believer such as yourself or not, to verify whether such migrations are as a result of “global warming”. For instance, you could ask whether there have been changing patterns of drought and flood before in human history. Once you have collected some historical data – most theological faculties have quite a lot of this available, though you may have to dig a little to get it – you could compare previous migrations with those of which you now speak. And you could also ask your local parish priest whether a theological phenomenon known as the Clausius-Clapeyron relation mandates that, as the atmosphere warms, the carrying-capacity of the space occupied by the atmosphere for water vapor decreases, remains static, or increases near-exponentially. Once you have found the answers to these not particularly difficult questions, you may like to spend some of your devotional time meditating on the question whether, or to what extent, the changes in patterns of flood and drought that have occurred in the past give you any confidence that such changes occurring today are either worse than those in the past or attributable to “global warming”, whether caused by the increasing presence of the devil Siotu in the atmosphere or by the natural evolution of the climate. During your meditation, you may like to refer to the passage from the 2001 edition of the Holy Book of the IPCC that describes the climate as “a complex, non-linear, chaotic object” whose long-term future evolution cannot reliably be predicted.
If you are willing to reflect a little on the questions I have raised – and, with the exception of the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, I have done my best to avoid anything that might be too technical for a layman to find out for himself – you will perhaps come to realize that there is very little basis in scientific fact for the alarmist, hellfire preaching in which your clergy love to indulge. And you may even find your faith in your new religion beginning to weaken a little in the face of the truths that you will have unearthed by the not particularly difficult process of simply checking those statements of your clergy that you can easily and independently verify. There are, of course, many environmental problems posed by the astonishing recent success of humankind. If you were concerned, for instance, about deforestation, or the loss of species whose habitats have been displaced by humans, then your concerns would have a good grounding in fact. But, given the abject failure of global temperatures to rise as the Druids had forecast, it must surely be clear to you that the influence of the devil Siotu on global temperatures – your theologians call this “climate sensitivity” – must be a great deal smaller than your Holy Book asks you to believe.
Finally, you may wonder why I have so scathingly described your pious belief in your new religion as founded upon blind faith rather than upon the light of reason. I have drafted this email in this way so that you can perhaps come to see for yourself just how baffling it is to the likes of me, who were educated in the light of TH Huxley’s dictum that the first duty of the scientist is skepticism, to see how easily your hierarchy is able to prey upon your naive credulity. I do not target this comment at you alone: there are far too many others who, like you, are in positions of some authority and whose duty to think these things through logically is great, and yet who simply fail to ask even the most elementary and blindingly obvious questions before sappily, happily, clappily believing in, and parroting by rote, whatever the current Establishment proposes. I do not know whether you merely believe all that you are told by the Druids because otherwise you will find yourself in conflict with other true believers among your colleagues or, worse, among your superiors. If you are under pressures of this kind, I do sympathize. But if you are free to think for yourself without penalty, may I beg you – in the name of humanity – to give the use of reason a try?
Why “in the name of humanity”? Because, although the noisy preachers from the media pulpits have found it expedient not to say so, there have been food riots all round the world as the biofuel scam whipped up by the High Priests of your religion takes vast tracts of agricultural land out of food production. Millions are now starving because the price of food has doubled in little more than a year. A leaked report by the World Bank says that fully three-quarters of that doubling has occurred as a direct result of the biofuel scam. So your religion is causing mass starvation in faraway countries, and is even causing hardship to the poorest in your own country. Can you, in conscience, look away from the sufferings that your beliefs are inflicting upon the poorest and most helpless people in the world?
Cohenite wrote, “and they suppose a decline in sink capacity…”
That’s strike three against the anthropogenic accumulation model, by the way. Not only do delta 13C counts and official carbon budget figures dispute the model, but also a simple comparison between gigatons of atmospheric growth and gigatons of human emissions.
It is said that the earth is presently absorbing about half of human CO2 emissions on an annual basis. Thus the atmosphere’s carbon content goes up by about half the yearly human output. Joe D’Aleo and I commented on the ramifications of this idea in an essay last year
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Carbon_Dioxide_The_Houdini_of_Gases.pdf
and pointed out that carbon sinks must logically be increasing as time passes since human emissions are increasing. That is, the more gas we pump out, the more the earth supposedly absorbs. To accept this pinhole view, of course, one must ignore the total flux the earth is processing every year and presumptively exclude anything but human emissions as the cause of atmospheric change.
But let’s quantify this growth of alleged “carbon sinks.” All one must do is subtract human emissions from the atmospheric increase. For instance, if the atmosphere went up 3 gigatons yet people emitted 7 gigatons that year, then 3 minus 7 gives you -4, so 4 gigatons out of 7 presumably went to carbon sinks. Applying this rule across the record, here’s the weight result in 10-year samples (I don’t wanna hog up space).
1850 -0.16
1860 -0.12
1870 -0.07
1880 -0.83
1890 -0.07
1900 -0.11
1910 -0.03
1920 0.29
1930 0.20
1940 1.09
1950 1.20
1960 0.64
1970 1.84
1980 1.56
1990 3.53
2000 4.49
As you see, “carbon sinks” have been climbing. Yet if a fixed reservoir were available for catching an “excess,” that reservoir’s capacity should be shrinking as time passes, not expanding. But it also turns out that “negative sinks” — in other words, non-anthropogenic sources — must have been in effect until around 1930 (thus contradicting the accumulation premise), after which “positive sinks” took over and started compensating for the human output…
Three strikes. That anyone takes the anthropogenic accumulation model seriously is astounding.
An argument from ignorance, Alan. Your inability to understand the science does not mean you have disproved it.
Now why do you say that SJT?
In fact you are only saying that because you are a liar and an idiot right? Thats what is going on here.
Oceans as a CO2 sink.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0715_040715_oceancarbon.html
From http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbontrends/index.htm “The growth rate of emissions was 3.5% per year for the period of 2000-2007, an almost four fold increase from 0.9% per year in 1990-1999. The actual emissions growth rate for 2000-2007 exceeded the highest forecast growth rates for the decade 2000-2010 in the emissions scenarios of the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (IPCC-SRES). This makes current trends in emissions higher than the worst case IPCC-SRES scenario. Fossil fuel and cement emissions released approximately 348 PgC to the atmosphere from 1850 to 2007.” I think all those who claim we are not adding CO2 at the rate indicated need to do a better analysis. All those who claim that the measured diffence from the assumed historical level need to rethink what the mass accumulation equation is, versus the assumptions made on its behalf.
“CO2 removal by natural sinks
Natural land and ocean CO2 sinks have removed 54% (or 4.8 PgC per year) of all CO2 emitted from human activities during the period 2000-2007. The size of the natural sinks has grown in proportion to increasing atmospheric CO2. However, the efficiency of these sinks in removing CO2 has decreased by 5% over the last 50 years, and will continue to do so in the future. That is, 50 years ago, for every ton of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere, natural sinks removed 600 kg. Currently, the sinks are removing only 550 kg for every ton of CO2 emitted, and this amount is falling. ” “From this leaf-level saturation response,
we can infer that in the absence of any other limiting
factor (e.g., light, nutrients, water) net primary productivity
will not increase with increasing CO2 beyond
800–1 000 ppm (Fig. 6.1b) from Saturation of the Terrestrial Carbon Sink
Josep G. Canadell · Diane E. Pataki · Roger Gifford · Richard A. Houghton · Yiqi Luo · Michael R. Raupach
Pete Smith · Will Steffen Eleven Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiments
encompassing bogs, grasslands, desert, and young temperate
tree stands report an average increased NPP of
12% at 550 ppm when compared to ambient CO2 (Nowak
et al. 2004). Four FACE studies on forest stands showed
a 23% median increased NPP, an expectedly high response
for stands made up of young trees and saplings
(Norby et al. 2005). A meta-analysis of over a hundred
studies shows about À of the experiments responding
positively to increased CO2 (Luo et al. 2006). This analysis
also shows that ecosystems under elevated CO2 can
accumulate N, supporting the hypothesis that terrestrial
ecosystems have certain capacity to gradually acquire
additional N required to continue accumulating C under
increasing CO2 concentrations (Gifford 1992, 1994; but
see Reich et al. 2006; Groenigen et al. 2006).” The above has become one of my favorites.
Just what is wrong? I agree, Beck is to say politely, a weak paper, as is this one. First, it depends on the models being correct on a regional basis, that have been shown repeatedly now, that cannot do regional well at all. The “Beck’s” of the model world. Next there are two fundamental problems with the analysis. One is the nature of NPP in a tropical rain forest situation, and claiming a static carbon sink while admitting to the possibility of increased NPP. The problem is the ecological niche foundation of tropical rainforests where conservation of nutrients enables the very existance of these large canopy biomes. This is highlighted by their use of tundra and alpine consditions, while ignoring several relevant facts. These alpine-tundra ecological biomes are known for their temperature limitations. This is not mentioned rather the converse. They talk about the limitations including temperature, while not recognizing their model calls for increased temperature. The inherent discepancies are not addressed in the paper. Nor the fact that the increased NPP was determined for the biomes that cover about 95% of the earth, while their incorrect postulation covers only 5% and is contra-indicated to at least a small extent by their own paper.
“If I ever find the person who claimed CO2 is the only climate forcing, I’ll be sure to show them that graph.”
Well Will Robinson, you can give a copy to Gore for starters, and Flannery and Jimmy Hansen, whose public utterances have shamefully focused on CO2; but a further point of contradiction; if CO2’s heating (of 0.27C for the 108 years from 1900-2008) is assisted by the enhanced greenhouse, where is its effect? Whether you call it CO2 greenhouse or enhanced greenhouse, the effect has been a dud.
Alan; actually Will above does stumble onto the last man standing for the AGW thesis; he has referred to the Sabine paper on oceanic sink activity partially removing the ACO2; if AGW is right and ACO2 is entirely responsible for the atmospheric increase then the oceans, as the largest sink, must be taking in more CO2 with a measureable effect, as in acidity and heat; there is no warming but is there acidification? In your decadal chart above, the +ve trend beginning at 1920 would mean that the oceans became a net emitter at that time, would it not?
What is the source of the carbon dioxide that is accumulating in our atmosphere?
“the +ve trend beginning at 1920 would mean that the oceans became a net emitter at that time, would it not?”
Yes, exactly Cohenite. I think this is your Eureka moment! Crack open the champers, sing and dance. You have finally discovered the flaw in AGW.
It took you long enough, crikey. And all that research you had to do, when it was just sitting there all the time waiting for you to finally see the truth.
“Well Will Robinson, you can give a copy to Gore for starters, and Flannery and Jimmy Hansen, whose public utterances have shamefully focused on CO2;”
I said it’s not the only forcing, and you were looking at graphs going back a long way. At present, CO2 is the principal forcing. This conclusion has been made after all the other forcings are taken into account. Some forcings are understood better than others, but none of the others are undergoing such a rapid change, so they can be ruled out as the major drivers of change.
“there is no warming ”
There is warming, and it took me a long time to find that update for the paper. Didn’t you read it?
“In fact you are only saying that because you are a liar and an idiot right? ”
LOL
“the” flaw? Don’t be condescending; anyway, how about a comment on the 0.27C increase since 1900.
But you’re right about one thing; it’s a lovely day and I’m about to crack a chilled bottle of Peterson House 2003 Pinot Noir Chardonnay Muenier!
what 0.27c increase?
And convection has been known about since the 1960’s.
I am continually amused at the worry over a scant atmospheric molecule.That has a tiny absorption band in the IR window.
A single CO2 molecule that is
added based on guesswork every 5 years.That can be pegged on mankind.
This is hilarious stuff!
The CO2 RE-RADIATING idea that is a built in error.Is where most of the supposed AGW warming is created.
Any emission will be cooler that what it absorbed.Therefore it can not add any new warming.The main emission is of a lower energy level and thus no longer in the IR range of the spectral window.
Keep in mind that IR radiation from the earths surface is only about 1.5% of the total heat going outward from the earths surface.
Meaning that NO ADDITIONAL warmth can be added!
Should be: Negligible additional warmth can be added!
Will Robinson; here are 2 graphs showing anomalous temp trends over the 20thC, one from HadCrut, the other from GISS; tell us all what the temp movement has been from 1900-2000;
http://i32.tinypic.com/2s01m5y.jpg
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/smooth.jpg
Cohenite, CO2 started accumulating from the late 19th century. So it could have been partly to do with that. You’re telling me not be condescending? why do you pick on me Cohers? You pretend to be ‘fair’ and balanced and whatever. But you’re not. You don’t tell Graeme to stop being condescending. So stop pretending you’re this fair-minded, balanced debater. You’re as much working from a political angle as everyone else here. Hell you still haven’t figured out what is wrong with Mann et al 2008, but it’s still on your worst papers list. That’s not being fair or balanced.
Sunsettomy, well I guess everyone else is wrong and you few here are right….
“I am continually amused at the worry over a scant atmospheric molecule.That has a tiny absorption band in the IR window.”
Another argument from ignorance. It’s not my fault you can’t understand how it works.
I’d love to see a graph of the sources of atmospheric CO2 to see how the 3% Anthropogenic contribution stacks up against the others.
NT; stop being unreasonable; I have posted on Mann2 already; what Mann2 has done with the eiv process is very similar to what he did with PCA in Mann1; he has reused discredited proxies, but revitalised them via a number of dubious ‘callibration’ methods; one he describes thus;
“To pass screening, a series was required to exhibit a statistically significant (P>0.10 correlation with either one of the two closest instrumental surface temperature grid points.”
The measure of ‘skill’ is lower again, and the double dipping with the instruments is unreasonable; none of his proxies has an R2 > 0.5, and therefore they have no skill against the instruments; historically, his proxies are terrible with only 17 beginning before 1000, and he effectively relies on 3 proxies to account for temps over 2 millenium.
Now what about the temp increase from 1900-2008 of 0.27C?
This should cause some interest:
EVIDENCE THAT STABLE CARBON ISOTOPES ARE NOT A RELIABLE CRITERION FOR DISTINGUISHING BIOGENIC FROM NON-BIOGENIC PETROLEUM
A. A. Giardini* Charles E. Melton**
*Departments of Geology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA **Departments of Chemistry, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA
Copyright 1982 SCIENTIFIC PRESS LTD
ABSTRACT
The isotopic abundance of presumably-pristine primordial carbon has been determined by analyzing carbon dioxide entrapped in a 8.65 carat natural diamond of African origin. The results were 12C = 98.9275% and13C = 1.0725%, which giveδ13C = -35.2‰/00. This value is well within the range used to assign a biogenic origin to carbon-containing compounds, i.e., more negative than -18.0‰/00. Similar negative values have been reported for some natural diamonds and carbon-bearing meteorites. It is concluded, therefore, that stable carbon isotopes can be an unreliable criterion for assigning a biogenic origin to petroleum.
Source :http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120045321/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
So you can’t rely on Carbon isotopes to distinguish “biogenic” carbon from “abiogenic”.
Dyson says that the amount of CO2 released from land and absorbed by land dwarfs the amount from fossil fuels. But there are only a couple of folks even trying to measure how land use causes CO2 to be absorbed or released.
“Dyson says that the amount of CO2 released from land and absorbed by land dwarfs the amount from fossil fuels. But there are only a couple of folks even trying to measure how land use causes CO2 to be absorbed or released.”
The amount released and absorbed is much larger, but if you increase the amount by two percent each year, (as an example) it’s not too long till you have doubled the total amount in the atmosphere.
That’s just ignorance, it is a topic of active research by many scientists, including our own CSIRO.
http://www.csiro.au/resources/GlobalCarbonProjectFigures.html#2
“James, I have been onto you since our HIV/AIDS disagreement. You admitted you didn’t know the first thing about the HIV/AIDS debate, yet you looked up one paper and used that to justify your belief that the paradigm must be correct.”
Gordon Robertson
(25 September, 2008 at 12:24 pm)
Gordon Robertson, you have admitted yourself that you have no training in immunology, and yet you still see fit to deny the HIV/AIDS link in the basis of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and the mistaken rantings of discredited scientists. As I informed you a number of weeks ago I worked as a diagnostic and research scientist in immunology for a decade and a half, and I can tell you with certainty that the link is established beyond doubt.
I see though that you have not yet attended to obtaining an immunological education for yourself yet, and that you yourself are relying on a thin tissue of fruitcake writings with which to make your HIV denialist case. It’s more than a bit rich to see you try to talk to James Haughton about the truth of HIV and AIDS.
Once more, your promulgation of the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS, and that the virus does not even exist, is irresponsible beyond words. Your promotion of this meme potentially risks people’s health and even their lives, and you should be held accountable for putting this nonsense out into the public domain. I would recommend to Jennifer that she place disclaimers at the end of any and every such post on her blog to the effect that she does not endorse this idea, and that the science indicates beyond doubt that HIV is the underlying cause for the syndrome referred to as AIDS.
My questions still stand. Why will you not speak with immunologists about the working of the immune system, and how the virus works. Why will you not consider being injected with a virus that you don’t even believe exists, if you believe that you cannot acquire AIDS from it? Why will you not speak with the diversity of AIDS patients to be found at any HIV clinic in any major hospital, and ask them about the disease?
I am on to YOU, and I will warn any unsuspecting third party reading this thread that your understanding of HIV and of immunology is absent, and indeed grossly in error.
If your grasp of other disciplines of science is similarly informed then you really have no place to be discussing scientific matters in the first place.
Luke asked:
“That’s funny – I was wondering if Louis and GB were the same person?”
(26 September, 2008 at 11:20 pm)
No Luke, Louis and Bird are separate identities. However Bird and Ra are one and the same. The self-directed dialog can be very amusing!
I wonder… can the HIV denialists on this blog explain how, if the virus does not cause AIDS (let alone whether it exists at all), the Nobel committee saw fit to award a prize for the discovery of the virus?
The conspiracy must be profound indeed.
Or they could just be “wrong, exclamation mark”, as our treasury secretary likes to say.
A late comment, as I just saw this discussion.
I have had a lot of discussions with skeptics about these points. Here is my point of view:
– there is little doubt that humans are responsible for the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. I have made a comprehensive web page explaining that in detail. All observational evidence point to that. Any alternative theory does conflict with one or more observations.
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
What I have seen, again and again, is that it seems very difficult to understand the difference between a turnover (like the seasonal exchanges of CO2 between the reservoirs) and a one-way addition.
You can compare that to a sea level gauge: there are enormous differences in sea level over a halve day, bi-weekly, etc… due to the tides, meters away. There is a very tiny expansion signal of rising sea level (whatever the cause) of less than a fraction of a mm per day, a few mm per year,…
Despite the enormous differences in tidal height, we are able to detect these small changes, be it that we need some 25 years of measurements to know them with reasonable accuracy.
For CO2 measurements it is the same story: whatever the amounts residing in the carbon deposits (sea/land carbonates and organic carbon), no matter how much is circulating through the atmosphere during the seasons, that doesn’t add or substract one molecule, gram, ton or ppmv to the total amount in the atmosphere, as long as the amounts entering the atmosphere are as high as what is leaving the atmosphere. If what circulates is 1 GtC/yr, or 150 GtC/yr or 1,000 GtC/yr, that doesn’t matter at all.
That is the difference with the emissions: humans add CO2 one-way. And for the full past century (at least for the past 50 years with more accuracy), the natural circulation has absorbed more CO2 than it added, simply because less CO2 is left in the atmosphere than humans have added. So there was NO net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, at least in the past 50 years.
For several skeptics, that we are responsible for the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is a bridge too far, and it is fightet with fury. Sorry, but if you don’t have good, rigorous scientific arguments for the opposite, then it makes that you are not believed for points that are far more defendable, and far more important.
Further, if you are a real skeptic, please look at what skeptics say with the same glasses as to what warmers say. You may like the data of Beck, but besides the measurement errors, as already nicely described by PeterD (btw, I like to receive the Bray paper), most of the measurements done in the peak period around 1942 were on land, near ground level, which is known to give much too high average results, due to local sources. See e.g. the Cabauw tower measurements taken at 20 m and 200 m:
http://www.chiotto.org/cabauw.html
Even 200 m is not high enough to be over the local disturbances, one need 1,000 m and higher over land…
Thus Beck’s data are simply worthless for global CO2 data of that time.
Next Jaworowski:
Take his comments with a lot of salt: completely outdated data, false assumptions, which are taken into account long ago, and physically impossible remarks.
Only one example: cracks in the ice core lead to erronous measurements, therefore the values are too low.
Well can anybody explain me how they can measure 180-280 ppmv CO2 in the ice core bubbles, when the outside air contains 380 ppmv, if that was true?
Small correction:
“So there was NO net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, at least in the past 50 years.”
must be read:
“So there was NO net addition of natural CO2 to the atmosphere, at least in the past 50 years.”
Some addition:
I just added a page on the historical CO2 data by Ernst Beck. Some parts still to be added (a comparison with other CO2 proxy methods), but the most important problem with his data is covered: the places where was measured: completely unsuitable for background CO2 measurements…
Of course one need to include a link to the announcement of a new page:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html
comments on Ernst Beck’s historical data…
Again I added a new page to my web site. Unfortunately, it seems that nowadays we need more time to correct incorrect allegations by skeptics than by warmers…
The page is about the accusations of Jaworowski against the CO2 levels measured in ice cores.
Many of his claims are completely outdated, some are physically impossible and some, in my opnion, smell like deliberate untruths…
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html
“RW you are a piker. You are a man without courage. You are not like your great heros Clinton and Wilson. You showed up here to lie flat out and its true that you haven’t weakened and owned up to it.
But by God you will never be like Wilson. You are a gutless pig because you came here to lie anonymously.”
Ain’t deniers a lovely bunch.
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