That CO2 you emitted last Tuesday: Is it coming back next month, next year, or in March 3011?
Tim Flannery makes it clear that CO2 circulates o-so-slowly, circa “a thousand years”. Remember that CO2’s “greenhouse” effect occurs at speed-of-light timescales, so if the temperature is affected, so must be the CO2 (according, at least, to the World of Flannery).
If we cut emissions today, global temperatures are not likely to drop for about a thousand years… Just let me finish and say this. If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years because the system is overburdened with CO2 that has to be absorbed and that only happens slowly. [Thanks to Andrew Bolt]
There are a few clues that maybe CO2 doesn’t idle the centuries away aloft, and that (I know you’ll be shocked) the Climate Commission (and IPCC) have overstated things: If emissions are absorbed by the global system in a matter of months, it rather blows the idea that we have to act decades ahead to stop the catastrophe. If CO2 levels adjust quickly, our “sins” will be much more quickly forgiven, and we can wait and see.
The thousand-year time frame doesn’t fit very well with NASA’s official carbon cycle and the empirical evidence.
You can see below in the NASA diagram that plants absorb 16% of all the carbon dioxide in the entire atmosphere each and every year (121 Gt of the 750 Gt in the air), and oceans absorb 12%, meaning that 28% of all the CO2 in the global atmosphere is sucked down each year. Let’s call it one quarter.
In any given year, tens of billions of tons of carbon move between the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere. Human activities add about 5.5 billion tons per year of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The illustration above shows total amounts of stored carbon in black, and annual carbon fluxes in purple. (Illustration courtesy NASA Earth Science Enterprise^)
If a quarter of all atmospheric CO2 is being turned over each year, this implies that if humans found the Fountain of Endless Energy and stopped emitting any CO2 tomorrow, within just four years, only about 30% of that CO2 would remain. Indeed 90% of all the emissions that we’d ever put up there since Cheops built a pointy rock house* would be gone by 2020.
Then there’s that point about global CO2 levels shifting twice a year:
Seasonal variation of Global CO2varies by as much as 10ppm each year.
Source: NOAA
Notice the bumpy ride of the CO2 graph? Each year CO2 varies by as much as 10ppm — 5 times the amount that humans are supposedly increasing it by per annum. CO2 levels peak at the start of the Northern Hemisphere summer as resurgent plants start to pull levels down. They’ll keep drawing out the CO2 until about November, when the cold shuts them down, and as they die or go dormant, they release CO2 back into the air. The reason the Northern Hemisphere dominates the plant growth cycle because of the large slabs of land in cold places which are alternatively covered with smothering snowcover or layered with carpets of hungry greenery. Though let’s not forget the Southern Hemisphere’s contribution: At the same time as hungry plants are starting to draw out the CO2 up in the North, the cooling southern oceans are soaking up the CO2 as well (colder water absorbs CO2 and warmer water releases it).
Craig Idso at CO2science.org points out that this seasonal swing has increased by nearly 20% since the 1950’s, probably because there is more CO2 in the air, and this helps plants grow faster.
And the main point about these seasonal details is that the entire planetary atmospheric CO2 level adjusts every month.
The system is responsive: When we add more CO2, it shifts a very big equilibrium ever so slightly.
Here’s another way of looking at those furious carbon flows:
Giga tons of carbon circulate constantly. Fig 11
Source: Columbia University Fig 11
Each week 600 mT of carbon dioxide are drawn out of the atmosphere by plants and oceans.
*King Tut apparently didn’t build much of a pyramid. The small tomb was buried. It’s important to get these things right.
^2017 UPDATE: The original link at NASA has been removed. This post was published on August 24th 2011 with a hot link direct to the NASA image which was published before Feb 8th, 2009, but the wayback machine shows NASA “404’d” the image link within a few weeks of this post being published: by September 19th 2011. Coincidence? Was http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/Images/carbon_cycle_diagram.jpg
Anyone who hasn’t heard Andrew Bolt and Steve Price interviewing Flannery, do have a listen – it’s a doozy.
http://www.mtr1377.com.au/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=8274
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” since King Tut built a pointy-rock-house, ”
Sorry but King Tut’s tomb is not a pyramid. It’s in the Valley of Kings and underground. I’ve been inside it.
Liked the rest of the article though.
______
John is right. Entertaining asides are better if they are true. — JN Thanks John. Fixed. (Sort of). Cheops built one, though he’s correctly called Khufu…
20
Jo
If only you could have presented this on Insight last night! Frustration with the patronising and pontificating Garnaut and the alarmist Milne was palpable and indicative of where the Australian public are at with CO2. I had to switch channels to Some Mothers do ave em to stop myself throwing something at the set every time Milne started up! I’ve been sending her all this information from here and WUWT for almost two years now so it can’t be lack of knowledge that’s her problem.
I sense that the whole AGW movement is on the cusp of self destructing and the longer the likes of Milne, Garnaut and Gillard stick to the script, the worse off they will be when it really hits the fan. Now that’s something to look forward to and I won’t ever have to watch Frank Spencer again!
10
I see their is a Galaxy Poll out today that claims two thirds of Australians support a Carbon Tax.
http://www.news.com.au/national/carbon-tax-winning-voters-but-conditions-attached/story-e6frfkvr-1226034392509
I find that almost impossible to believe! Milne is all over it like a maggot on whale flesh.
10
This might be of interest.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/ozone-layer-drops-record-40pc-over-arctic/story-fn3dxity-1226034411513
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Echos from their alternate universe fantasy:
Yes but the CO2 molecules actually emitted by human activity don’t go away. After all, they have a special capability to cause a catastrophic anthropomorphic global warming by many multiples that of naturally occurring CO2. As the number of man emitted CO2 molecules reduce in number, they each have a greater and greater effect on global warming. THAT is why it will take a thousand years to see any reduction of global warming caused by man stopping the emission of CO2.
End of echo but, unfortunately, not the end of their fantasy.
One huge problem with their fantasy is this universe doesn’t work that way. Except for the incidental energy state and physical location of any given molecule, it is totally and completely indistinguishable from any other molecule of the same specie. There is NO attribute of a molecule that differentiates between one produced by so called natural processes and one produced by human chosen processes.
Interestingly, it is the process of a human actually choosing to act in a particular way based upon reason that is their objection. It is the human ability to choose they wish to eliminate. Meaning, they wish to eliminate humans BECAUSE they are humans who act to continue to exist as humans.
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Scaper, well spotted! From your link:
“TWO-THIRDS of voters say they support a carbon tax if all the revenue is spent on compensation for households and business, according to a new Galaxy Poll.”
Now I’m totally confused – does that mean that people agree with being taxed for carbon dioxide emissions (for breathing!) as long as all the tax paid by everyone is given back?! Or does the ‘compensation’ consist of a free all-expenses paid trip to Ayers Rock on an annual basis?
Who else is there besides ‘households and businesses’? Hmmmm, if you’re single are you classed as a household? Don’t think so, so, tough titty all you singles, no free trip to Ayers Rock for you!
It is so stupid, I can’t continue.
There is truly the feeling that I am behind the bars at Bedlam looking out at the lunatics in some really bad dream. I hope I wake up soon to find that this nonsense is really not happening. Fat chance.
10
Yes Jo the co2 must circulate at least as quick as the seasonal variation shows.
But isn’t this similar to another change that happens daily? Why does the desert nighttime temperature drop so quickly at night? Isn’t the co2 still “well mixed” in the night air? The really sharp observers will know that it is different if it is a cloudy night too.
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Treeman@ 6
Did you clock the fact that the reference to the Petition Project Website was shut down, but Ross Garnaut got a free plug for HIS brand of propaganda?
I loved the references to Green energy in Germany ( no ref to the feed in tarrif) & the emission trading in the EU & the US ( no reference to the CCX shut down or the European Exchange trading halts for gross fraud)
Notwithstanding the lack of valid scientific references & verifiable figures on the economics of Green Energy & cost of living, I get the impression that there was a bit of “prozac” enhanced self belief going on.
The final contributor summed it up:- words but no substance & no debate.
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Recall that about a half of all man-made industrially emitted CO2, since pre-industrial times, is missing, sic! And the CO2 produced by anthropogenic animal breathing (that is, humans plus all their animals) is about the same as CO2 produced industrially, which only implies that natural CO2 absorption mechanisms are even more powerful than Jo has pointed at. The lifetime of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere is nowhere near as long as the Alarmists claim. Now, because Australia is a huge country, surrounded by cold (they absorb CO2 more readily) and warm ocean waters, but with a small population, the country absorbs a lot of CO2. It is likely that it absorbs all domestic industrially released CO2, if not more! Consequently, Australia’s net CO2 output may very well be zero or even negative. The point is that it is not just CO2 emissions that should be taken into account, but the net production, that is, CO2 emissions MINUS CO2 absorption. Why then doesn’t the government and CSIRO tell us, how much the country absorbs naturally? The truth is complicated, but primarily because (1) they don’t know (this is what the failed Orbiting Carbon Observatory mission was supposed to find out), and (2) because it would be bad for the morale. All of a sudden Australians would become absolved of any guilt, because they happen to live in a large and mostly empty country! So, they’d be free to emit more than others, because their country would clean up the mess all by itself.
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scaper –
your Galaxy poll was commissioned by the Greens; the following survey was conducted by the Australian Chamber of Commerce:
6 April: Australian: Survey reveals carbon tax fears
by Sid Maher & John Ferguson
NEW polling shows 59 per cent of people do not support a carbon tax and more than half believe it would not help the environment.
The polling, conducted for the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the last weekend in March, identified concerns about job losses among those surveyed…
Mr O’Brien accused the Gillard government of failing to explain how sufficient power would be generated to cover the loss of the coal-fired power stations, which produce a significant portion of the state’s electricity supply.
The proposal to pay electricity generators to shut down high-emission plants is being considered by the Prime Minister’s carbon pricing committee, The Australian revealed yesterday.
Any buyout option would be carefully considered by the owners of Victoria’s brown-coal plants, which would be rendered uncompetitive by a carbon tax due to their high emissions relative to NSW and Queensland black-coal generators.
Victoria relies on brown-coal generators for about 85 per cent of the state’s baseload electricity supply…
The ACCI survey of 550 people, conducted on March 26 and 27, found 59 per cent of those surveyed were against the carbon tax plan, while 29 per cent supported it. And 73 per cent believed a carbon tax would have a negative effect on their cost of living.
Only 26 per cent believed the tax would help cut global carbon emissions, while 55 per cent said it would not make a difference…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/survey-reveals-carbon-tax-fears/story-e6frg6xf-1226034314067
i know which results represent the opinions of every single person i know of any and no political persuasion, and it is not the Greens/Galaxy poll.
of course, ABC News Radio this morning only had the Galaxy poll, and UNSURPRISINGLY did not mention it was commissioned by the Greens!
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In regards to CO2 dispersion in the atmosphere, I’m sure I’ve read studies (peer reviewed type), that examine the unusual uniformity of CO2 aronud the globe despite the claim that a significantly large proportion of man-made CO2 is generated in the northern hemisphere. Their question was (much like the missing hotspot); why can’t any difference be detected?
I called a radio station yesterday, and lasted about 5 seconds because the announcer “did not and would not talk about the science”. But he was quite willing to talk about the “vast tonnes of (Carbon) pollution big/bad industry and all the car drivers pump into the air, and how an ETS/carbon tax was such a good thing to help correct for the sins of our past excesses.
Yet any callers that agreed with him banging on about how great it would be for those farmers planting trees to make money from eucalyptus oil and (potentially) carbon credits for the sequestering got plenty of air time. No-one asked who pays the money back if the tress burn down (deliberate or lightening strike). Afterall, the CO2 goes back into the air and the “damaging pollution” remains.
10
This article repeats a pretty big error – looking at individual molecule lifetime versus the “residence lifetime”.
An individual CO2 molecule enters and leaves the atmosphere pretty quickly, on the time frame that Flannery discusses. However, most times when a CO2 molecule gets pulled out of the atmosphere, it just gets swapped with another CO2 molecule; whether right away in the oceans or over the course of a single year as vegetation grows and dies back.
Right now we’re putting enough CO2 (emissions) into the air to increase levels by about 4 ppm/year. We’re actually seeing a 2 ppm/year increase, which means that another 2 ppm are getting absorbed by the biosphere.
If we were to stop producing CO2 right now, CO2 would decline at about 2 ppm/year at first; that’s a minimum of 55 years to return to pre-industrial levels, and I wouldn’t expect that rate to hold the entire time – rather, a rate dropping off exponentially as CO2 concentrations got closer to something balanced. Add to that the fact that the ocean absorption is likely to drop until deep circulation brings more alkaline waters to the surface, and the time frame will expand.
So Flannery is off, at a minimum, by an order of magnitude. He should really know that – his article is bull****.
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Might be a little off topic but a very intereting note from http://www.climatedepot.com/r/10450/Global-temperature-still-headed-down-UAH-negative-territory–It-is-quite-a-sharp-drop.
The power of observation to balance theoretical modelling – should be more of it.
”
HenryP says:
April 5, 2011 at 9:53 am
I got some interesting results from Marion Island
Latitude -46.88333
Longitude 37.86667
Altitude 22
This is quite a bit south of South Africa
So far I looked only at all the temperature data.
I collected all average mean-, maximum-and minimum- temperatures for all months of the year from 1976 and plotted these against time. A linear regression was then performed. The slope of these formulae i.e. the figure before the “x” in each of the reported formulae, is also the rate of incline or decline (if negative) by which the temperature has increased or decreased over the last 35 years in degrees C/year.
Taking the average over each of the 12 slopes for each of the months of the year, I find that from 1976 to 2010
1) the rate of change of the mean temperature was 0.00 degrees C per annum: in other words: flat
2) the maximum temperature has increased at a rate of 0.05 degrees C per annum
3) the minimum temperature has decreased at a rate of 0.02 degrees C per annum
Again these results indicate that heat content has stayed the same even though max. temps. have been rising.
If warming is due to an increase in greenhouse gases, it is the minimum temperatures that should rise as heat would be trapped due to the green house effect. You would then expect the minimum temperatures to rise at a rate as fast as – or even faster than – the mean- and maximum temperatures. What I find is exactly the opposite: minimum temperatures in Marion Island have actually declined by 0.02 degrees C per annum whereas the means have stayed the same and the maximum temperatures have increased. The theory of warming caused by an increase in green house gases is therefore again proved invalid by the evidence presented from the measured results here, at Marion Island.”
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Scaper @ 5: As an antidote to that particular article, read this please:
http://mises.org/daily/4888
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Melting sea ice is responsible for 25-40 % of the carbon sink in the Arctic according to Greenlandic Nature Institute.
I guess the same happens in the Antarctic Ocean
10
Interesting debate Jo I will enjoy reading the comments about this post.
But I still think Tim is the/our gift that keeps on giving.
Just thought I’d throw this in.
Good stuff from Bolt about choices for Labor and the latest polling on a carbon tax.
Not a very popular tax, except for MattB/ July and others who think you can subract 5% from 1.3% and improve the world’s climate. Bright people some of these warmists.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/labor_must_save_the_planet_or_save_itself/
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Sorry post above should read subtract 5% of 1.3% etc.
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The rain Labor said would not fall delays Labor’s solution to our “drought”
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_rain_labor_said_would_not_fall_delays_labors_solution_to_our_drought/
Labor must “save” the planet or save itself
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/labor_must_save_the_planet_or_save_itself/
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Jannes Kleintje: Thanks for the link. I’m poor on the science and I come here to get the latest and learn.
However, I have spoken publicly on the tax issue, the politics and economics on behalf of the organisation I belong to. We leave the speaking on the science to Mr P and Mr C.
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The carbon cycle model above is total nonesense – not one input from the earth itself via volcanic eruptions, and upwelling of methane from the upper mantle.
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Jo I don’t think you need to push the agenda anymore its over…
http://processtrends.com/images/RClimate_UAH_Ch5_latest.png
the world ain’t warming (the chart is from a warmist site)
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There is one BIG difference down there(Note my bolding).
“A team of NSF-funded scientists examined the effects on an area of the Weddell Sea of a large (20 mile long) berg moving through, melting as it went and diluting the salty sea water – also adding key nutrients carried from the land. They found that after the iceberg had passed, levels of CO2 had plunged and much more chlorophyll was present. Chlorophyll is the substance in green plants which lets them suck in nasty CO2 and emit precious life-giving oxygen: in the Weddell Sea it was present in phytoplankton, tiny seagoing plantoids which are thought to account for half the carbon removed from the atmosphere globally.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/29/iceberg_phytoplankton_boost/
Also WUWT
Scaper has highlighted at post 5 above how the scheming con artist scammers are going to try to explain why the Arctic sea ice is growing again. Remember they blamed ozone for the Antarctic growing (Where did it come from?).
Well now if the tables have turned due to the electrical nature of ozone and the solarcycles etc and…Simultaneosly the Antarctic does begin to melt back to normal or less:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
Then The sequestration of carbon dioxide around the Antarctic will be sped up. Also as the global temperatures continue to fall:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/04/uah-temperature-update-for-march-2011-cooler-still-0-10-deg-c/
More Carbon dioxide will move back into the sea because of the temperature/pressure balance shift.
Add to this the increased rainfall causing more plant growth on land and the floods adding nutrients to the sea and the whole big scam may soon need to rename oranisations like 350.org because the atmospheric level could fall way down. This would leave scapers mates trying to explain not just why the Arctic ice is back healthy and strong but why the CO2 is gone!
Sadly just one big volcanic eruption may give them the distraction they need.
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MAJORITY VOTE “NO” TO A TAX ON CARBON DIOXIDE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Results from an online poll conducted by ninemsn:-
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/previousvote/
Do you support the carbon tax?
NO: 131692 (83%)
yes: 27113 (17%)
global warming is the biggest FRAUD in the history of civilization!!
Australians will not tolerate being taxed back to the stone age based on a FRAUD!!
If this despot federal government persists with this BS there will be massive civil unrest all around Australia !!!!!!!
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I thought i would post my acceptance speach in this thread as well.
Jo,
I am honoured to be your 50,000th poster and i will humbly accept this prestigious award. I would like to thank Damian Allen for his efforts in coming in a close second and to all the other posters for without them i could not have achieved this feat.
I look forward to receiving the computer simulated bottle of Grange, in fact if you ever find your self in the back blocks of nowhere (Adelaide) you can present it to me in person.
Yours sincerely
Crakar
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I’m reminded of Stephen Schneider responding to this issue with the bathtub analogy: So, the earth’s atmosphere is like a full bathtub with a drain at the bottom and a tap at the top. Nature puts in just the right amount through the tap, and nature handles it by releasing just the right amount at the bottom. HUMAN emissions just overfill the bathtub.
These are the kind of inane (insane?) analogies that work with people who have no idea. Using the information above, and sticking with the same analogy (apologies!) it’s quite clear that the size of the drain at the bottom changes constantly.
Ain’t nature clever!?
Cheers,
Janet
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OT but worth a read……..
Temperature down in March – So Much For The global warming BS!!!
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/temperature_down_in_march/
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No wonder alarmist modelling has failed neck and crop! Actual temperatures tracking lower than predicted if emissions stabilised by 2000. And still they bang on! Maybe there’s a quid in it (/sarc)!
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Scaper in 5 & 20,
I am no expert either but if you go to this site
http://www.theozonehole.com
There is a lot of info about it, it is an interesting exercise to view this page
http://www.theozonehole.com/spectrototal.htm
where you will find that after 20 years of banning CFC’s the ozone hole was of record proportions which forces one to wonder just how much CFC’s affect the hole.
Another interesting exercise is to compare the suns activity and the amount of glactic cosmic rays that reach the Earth and then compare this to the size of the holes. Of course this is just an exercise in curiosity as we all know the sun has no affect on the climate outside of TSI.
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Treeman: “pontificating Garnaut and the alarmist Milne” yes that made me sick too i looked for a brick but I felt sorry for my TV!
Just another SBS MSM jack up! (or should that be ..off!)
Add to the carbon cycle the CO2 from volcanic emissions.
Its well known now that CO2 level lag temperature changes not precede it.
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@ crakar24 The CFC was another scam that was based on one dodgy scientific report that was falsified I think but no taxes were involved just the banning of a very good refrigerant!
10
Well, I have a hypothesis that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is subtly different from the regular carbon dioxide. For one thing, it has two isotopes, one male and one female.
When we emit anthropogenic carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, each molicule gets wafted into the upper atmosphere, where the two different isotopes form a bond.
Now there is a spectacular view from up there, and we all know how romantic a beautiful view can be, especially with the music of the spheres in the background, …
So although molecule of anthropogenic carbon dioxide has a relatively short life-span in the atmosphere, the dynasty associated with each pair can go on for a thousand years, or possibly more.
I am being quite serious here – this hypothesis makes just as much sense as anything else these learned gentlemen come out with.
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Cracker @ 29
Somewhere back in the ancient history of this sight a contributor mentioned that the mean atmospheric residence time of an O3 molecule was 3 days ( or something of that sort. I didn’t chase down the references but I got the impression that Ozone molecules were made & destroyed by natural processes( ie 2 x O3 3 x O2 ) was pushed one way by absorbing UV radiation hence the sunscreen action. This process was driven & halted ( at the poles at least) by the winter/ summer axis tilt shadow/light & therefore the Ozone hole was a annual occurrence. So the demon CFC molecules only have an individual effect of ~3 days.
Kinda makes you think that the Ozone Hole paranoia was a practice run.
10
Looks pretty much like temperature controls co2 lvls in the atmosphere.. Not the other way around, if its warm co2 lvls will rise.. if its cold co2 lvls will fall.
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Good news – the scare is over! The global temperature has fallen .653°C (from +0.554 in March 2010 to -0.099 in March 2011) in just one year. That’s a magnitude nearly equivalent to the agreed upon global warming signal agreed upon by the IPCC. It is quite a sharp drop. (from WUWT)
Dr Spencer’s comments here
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/04/uah-temperature-update-for-march-2011-cooler-still-0-10-deg-c/
and interesting comments including this one:
All you guys are missing the point which is that The IPCC science team has, as yet, not had the opportunity to adjust these temperatures to a standard that is expected from such an organisation.
… sigh … and just when I was getting excited about not being alarmed …. or irritated
10
RU in 31,
Yes no taxes were applied but i think you will find financial windfalls were bestowed upon certain indiviuals and companies.
To all,
Last night i watched the final episode in a series this one was called “How Earth made us” on the ABC i beleive.
It began by discussing the Ice ages and how we are full bottle (Grange of course) on how they come and go, and by rights we should be in an Ice age by now. The reason why we are not is because we began farming 7 to 8,000 ya.
Yes thats right with a population of less than a million people man began changing the climate sooooooooooooo much that we actually stopped an ice age in its tracks.
For those of us who have had the misfortune to read Flannery’s block buster “we are the weather makers” will understand just how stupid this theory is.
All that CO2 from the burning of plants, all the methane from cows farting which according to the narrator are powerful GHG’s actually forestalled the onset of an ice age. Now if you ask me this is good news but apparently not.
If we had let nature take its course we should be up to our armpits in permafrost.
10
Gah. I made an error in my posting @13 – Flannery is the person correctly identifying the long residence time of CO2 concentrations. I misread the initial section, my apologies.
The claim that CO2 has a lifetime of 3-4 years is nonsense – given that 2ppm of our emissions are being absorbed every year (because we emit enough for 4ppm, but only see a 2ppm long term increase), if we were to stop CO2 emissions right now it would take >50 years at a minimum to get back to pre-industrial levels, a lot longer in reality, as absorption would taper off as we got closer to equilibrium.
Individual CO2 molecules don’t stay in the atmosphere very long, but they usually just change places with another molecule in the oceans or the biosphere. Long term changes of total concentration take a lot longer.
This 3-4 year claim is completely wrong, by well over an order of magnitude. I know folks would like to think that “This isn’t going to be a problem, ’cause our emissions will go away in no time” – but that’s purely wishful thinking. You’re welcome to jump off a building and “wishfully” think you can slow down at the sidewalk with no damage – but please don’t expect sensible folks to follow your example.
10
Pattoh in 33,
Have read this study
http://journalofcosmology.com/QingBinLu.pdf
When it was first published i argued this case on one of the last internet strong holds of the beleivers and in the end their defence came down to “that guy is an idiot” and “it was published in a discredited journal” or words to that effect.
Anyway this guy suggests CFC’s are the cause of global warming and he tells it like it is and it is very hard to ciome up with a counter argument. I would appreciate it if some of the more learned colleagues here could have a read and give us their opinions.
TIA
Crakar
10
The Ozone hole was discovered in 1956 by a British scientist and its increasing and decreasing has ever since been known as the Dobson effect.
10
KR Can you explain why there was no increase in CO2 over the year from Septempber 1973 to September 1974?
The 70s ice age scare remember?
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
Error above in post 23. Instead of “they blamed ozone for the Antarctic growing” should read
they blamed the ozone hole for the Antarctic growing
10
This site explains the deceptions re ozone hole and CFC’s
“FoS_Ozone&CarbonDioxide.doc-Powered by Go…” By Timothy Ball
10
crakar24@35
Yes I was enjoying what I saw of that series until last nights episode. I think the last episode should be titled – How We Made The Earth. I turned it off in disgust.
Ok, just be glad your computer simulated bottle was not made by the IPCC. If it were, it would rapidly heat up and then explode in your computer causing severe damage.
10
“GREENIE WATCH” by John Ray [M.A :Ph.D] Brisbane is very informative.
10
a “must” for doctors???
5 April: Guardian: Fiona Harvey: Doctors urged to take climate leadership role
Military and medical experts call on doctors to use their position of trust in society to build support for action on climate change
Doctors must take a leading role in highlighting the dangers of climate change, which will lead to conflict, disease and ill-health, and threatens global security, according to a stark warning from an unusual alliance of physicians and military leaders.
Writing in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday, a group of military and medical experts, including two rear admirals and two professors of health, sent out an urgent message to governments around the world…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/05/doctors-climate-change-leadership
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Tuesday night 5/4/11, on the ABC1, they had the last in a CO2 demonising series called ‘How the world made us’.
The last part showed the presenter in a frozen tundra, cracking rocks & showing fossils of tree flora, demonstrating that it was once a warm climate.
He said it was the evidence of a time 55m years ago, the last time the earth experienced a sudden surge in CO2.
Supposedly much like today’s AGW CO2 surge.
Not being a scientist, or having paid much attention in school, and/but, having the computer on, and an interest in CAGW, I typed into the search engine 55m years climate and found the Paleocene- Eocene thermal maximum.
Aside from wikipedia being the top of the list, was realclimate and a page: Petm Weirdness, 10 august 2009
To quote rc:
So what got rc onto the case, trying to deny the empirical evidence?
It is titled : Global warming: Our best guess is likely wrong (press release)
rc try to spin why they can’t explain it, as their science is settled. They fail.
Climate depot has a comprehensive page on the subject.
I typed in Paleocene- Eocene thermal maximum to your site search, looking for relative info, but received a ‘no response’.
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Siliggy @ 40
“Can you explain why there was no increase in CO2 over the year from Septempber 1973 to September 1974?”
Year to year variability? See this video, at 1:40 or so. The climate has a lot of internal variability – a monotonic increase shouldn’t be expected on long term trends until you look at a reasonable period, and a single year isn’t a reasonable period for that. I hate to say it, but that’s seriously cherry picking.
For CO2 I would say about 10 years are required for a statistically significant trend using the Mauna Loa data, perhaps 5 for the South Pole measure, which is more isolated from the year-to-year vegetation changes, although I will freely admit I haven’t run the ‘p’ tests with that data.
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Re my post @ 43. Should be Ph.D. I’ve no idea how that face took the place of “P”. Sorry.
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I am given to understand that Mauna Loa is a volcano.
Why would atmospheric readings from there carry any significance?
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KR in 45,
Sliggy did not ask for the standard excuse he asked for an explanation as to why the CO2 levels did not change for a 12 month period, if you dont know why just say so.
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Chris Smith will be talking to Richard Lindzen on Sydney radio 2GB shortly.
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kevin moore #47
Mauna Loa is pretty dormant. Wind blows onshore as far as I can gather.
To complain about Mauna Loa CO2 measurement is like complaining that Cape Grim CO2 measurements are not to be trusted because of the Greens-ALP coalition running the Tasmanian Government. I’d believe the Cape Grim results over the Tassie Govt any day of the millenium.
No, the Mauna Loa CO2 dataset is quite OK. The problem is warmists keep over-egging the climate sensitivity of CO2 and coming up with Mayan apocalypses or something. They should chill out, especially since that is what the world is doing.
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Seems to me this is a very incomplete handling of the issue. Is there a Part 2 in the pipeline?
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Well, Jooliar will have Richards Lindzen’s face on her dartboard after his talk with Chris Smith. There will probably be a podcast later.
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OT but interesting: http://www.kare11.com/news/article/917808/391/Harsh-winter-may-delay-fishing-opener-in-some-areas
KR, do you have an opinion about why the Arbor Day Foundation has moved the growing zones 100 miles (10 degrees F.) north? This was done in 2006 and supposedly is the difference from 1990.
See: http://www.arborday.org/media/mapchanges.cfm
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Off topic, but I looked at the link provided by scarper… in post 5. An interesting reason for the rapid ozone depletion made me perk up:
Oh dear, our darn atmosphere doesn’t want to cooperate with the models and warm up, so the alarmists have to find something else that isn’t white in colour (yet again) to run up the flag pole. This is getting sooo monotonous.
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IIRC, the diurnal (daily) fluctuation of CO2 is greater than the notional anthroprogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2. CO2 levels are higher at night due to lack of photosynthesis.
Anybody got a graph showing sea surface temperature and atmospheric CO2 over a long period?
ISTM that the temperature of the oceans is a far more significant influence on atmospheric CO2 than
polar bears dancing on the head of a needleanthroprogenic releases of CO2. Sea surface temperature is largely determined by insolation; the amount of sunlight striking the surface, causing its near-surface temperature to rise.There is more than just chemical solubility in action; it’s life in the oceans, using up CO2 under sunlight. While the solubility of CO2 decreases with increasing temperature, the absorbtion of CO2 by photosynthesis in the oceans, and subsequent production of sediment is not understood at all well enough to model. So, as with the role of water as vapour, as a condensate or precipitate in the atmosphere, it’s “too hard” to be incorporated in any “approved” climate models.
Nor are the ocean currents well understood. These transfer much of the accummulated heat from the tropical seas to the polar regions, supplying very cold water via circuitous return routes. Modelling is frequently shown to be quite inadequate when measurements are made in the real world.
The climate modellers perhaps don’t recognize the Sisyphean nature of their task at the outset. It’s all very interesting stuff if one is obsessed with developing a model. But how long can one remain ignorant?
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And at least one idiot who believes that the earth’s contribution to the carbon cycle is, er, zero. Amaaazing.
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Val in 35,
It is interesting isnt it, temps have dropped by over 0.6C in 12 months now i know people like KR, JB, Julya and MattyB will squeal like pig claiming 12 months does not make a trend but they can in no way explain this.
Lets not forget the team claim they can “tease” out a 0.6C warming trend from 100 years of data and lay it at the feet of CO2 but here we have that warming completely erased in 12 months (0.3C in 5 months).
These people are dillusional……….
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Mark D. @ 53
“KR, do you have an opinion about why the Arbor Day Foundation has moved the growing zones 100 miles (10 degrees F.) north?”
I hadn’t seen that (and it’s not my field of study), Mark, but all the growth zones have been moving. There was a study in my area (near Washington DC) where 89 of 100 plant species studied have shifted flowering dates earlier in the spring. Cherry tree blossoms, for example, have moved 5 and 7 days earlier from 1970 to 1999 for the two major varieties. And about half that didn’t changed flowering times or have moved to later dates aren’t native to the area.
Longer summers, shorter winters, growth zones moving towards the poles; I would suspect that’s why the ADF moved their zones. Again, though, not my field of expertise – I tend to a rather dry, dead, and crispy thumb when it comes to plants 🙂
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crakar24 @ 48
I did say why – there’s enough variability that you should expect some speeding and slowing in the CO2 rate of change in the short term, and two data points a single year apart is a really short term. That’s a really ripe cherry pick, there.
If you expect all short term periods to show a monotonic increase, you simply don’t understand variability. I hate to state it that bluntly, but there’s really nothing else I could say.
Looking at the data in the video I linked, I believe that those dates may be about the only ones in the entire Keeling data set that don’t increase from year to year. So that’s an extrema in the variation, about as valid for trends as picking 1998 as the warmest year or 2007 as the furthest retreat of Arctic ice. In other words – Not. They are definitely extrema, but the long term trend (30 years or so) is climate, not year to year variations (weather).
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KR,
Did mankind cease or at least reduce its CO2 emissions for a full year giving us a zero increase? No we did not so why did CO2 levels not increase for that year. No one is interested in you hiding behind claims of cherry pick or that grand old chestnut of not long enough for a trend. The question is why did CO2 levels not go up and by looking at your wordy responses i think it is safe to say that you have no idea.
The answer to this question should not be magic’d away by the wave of a hand for it lies at the very heart of this topic. People claim they can account for all the CO2 in the atmosphere and using simple math they can then tell you how much CO2 comes from man and from that make the extraordinary claim that it resides in the atmosphere for a 1000 years.
KR can you tell me how much CO2 is expelled by land based volcano’s, can you tell me how much is expelled by sub marine volcanos (trick question because we have no idea how many there are). Can you tell me why the CO2 level did not change for a 12 month period…of course not.
We know so little about a lot of things so every claim that is made is simply guesswork, what mechanism was in place to absorb all that extra CO2 between Sept 1973 and Sept 1974? What is to say it will not reappear? What made it appear? Are we missing something important in the carbon cycle?
You will not attempt to answer these questions because you are afraid of where they might lead so you trot out the usual BS.
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KR, sure I can imagine some movement of zones for 1/2 degree C in 100 years. But they moved the lines 10 degrees and for about 16 years! (Over 100 miles in some areas). You don’t need to be an expert (sorry that was a leading comment) What kind of expert claims warming to that degree?
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Wrote to Insight asking why no correction was made of Professor Garnaut’s and Christine Milne’s constant references to a “multi-party” Commission since it is my understanding the Federal Opposition have declined to participate on that Committee? Will send another Post if – and when – I receive a response.
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“You can see below in the NASA diagram that plants absorb 16% of all the carbon dioxide in the entire atmosphere each and every year (121Gt of the 750 Gt in the air) and oceans absorb 12%, meaning that 28% of all the CO2 in the global atmosphere is sucked down each year. Let’s call it “one quarter”.”
Erm… in the NASA Diagram…. plants absorb 121Gt per year, but emit 60Gt per year. Soils emit 60Gt, and fires emit 1.6,,,, total net impact of plants/soils therefore = 0.6Gt emissions to the atmosphere. That is what the NASA diagram says.
The oceans absorb 12% (92Gt) but release 90Gt per year. meaning only a 2Gt transfer to the oceans.
This is that common problem you guys have with residency of CO2… turnover =/= removed, as there is CO2 heading the other way.
But basically rather than 1/4 being removed each year (approx 160Gt), it is about 1.4Gt per year, about 100 times smaller. so 100 times longer…. and that ignores the “locked in” warming.
Your use/interpretation of the above NASA diagram is, quite frankly, and I don’t mean to sound rude, childish, ignorant, or downright deceptive and playing on the general science/maths ignorance of your readers. You cannot expose climate science by the use of a Year 8 Science textbook image, sorry.
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it is funny KR – your 1st post lampoons the science in this thread, but because you confused who said what and had a go at flannery you got 6 thumbs up:) Deduction – no one here cares about the science, they jsut react to insults to someonle like Flannery:) Come post 37 they hate you again lol.
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Here is the website for “Greenie Watch”.
http://antigreen.blogspot.com/
I recommend it!
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One of our regular Warmist Contributers “Matt b” actually stated the following admission in post (199) of this discussion
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/03/thousands-of-angry-ordinary-australians-turn-up-and-alarmist-smears-begin/comment-page-5/#comment-244212
…………++
The words of MattB;-
“Therefore we can only logically conclude that there is No Proof, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that mankind is responsible for global warming”
THAT’S WHAT I SAID!!!
THAT’S THE ANSWER!
……………….
That response was in relation to my challenge at post (121) of the same discussion
My Words (and challenge):-
Simple question for you characters “MattB”, “John Brookes” etc..
Please post at least one Peer Reviewed Scientific Paper which PROVES, Beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt, that mankind is responsible for global warming.
I await your responses with baited breath…….
…………
Well there you have it!
The warmists admit that there is No Proof and thus No Justification for a carbon DIOXIDE (Plant Food) Tax!!
I rest my case.
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Damian you are a moron, again and again and again. Maybe you are actually Andrew Bolt the amount of links you post to his site and your generall pig-headedness and lack of one iota of scientific nouse, or any semblance of a positive character trait.
If your response every time I post is to repeat the above then I hate to tell you but it just backs me up and exposes you as the king of bufoons.
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“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time” (Abraham Lincoln – Still debated whether the Civil War was illegal under the Constitution which “intimates” that States have the right to secede from the Union)
But PLEASE, don’t hold your breath!
The Federal Reserve Scam has lasted 100 years although they are now fighting for their survival. These same designers are also now the designers of the Climate Change/Climate Warming Scam
You might find this video of vital interest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3McQWdcfaY&feature=related
Thank God we now have the Internet.
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The “carbon cycle ” is a total garbage. Over 99.99% of the potentially available carbon is in the form of carbon rich minerals in the upper crust. The actual “carbon cycle” is almost entirely the “rock weathering + volcanism cycle”.
Next the Greenies will be feeding us more BS such as ‘the rainforests are the lungs of the Earth’. In fact:
a) Plants actually split H2O molecules not CO2 to produce oxygen during photosynthesis.
b) Most atmospheric oxygen is created in the upper atmosphere by cosmic radiation splitting water molecules.
c) Plants produce CO2 at night.
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MattyB in 63,
According to my math we have a total absorption of 213.8
Trees 121.3
Trees (Pine by looks) 0.5
Oceans 92
We have a total emission (minus man 5.5) of 211.6
Trees (non pine) 60
Soils 60
Farming 1.6
Oceans 90
So before man came along it is obvious to even the most uneducated CO2 levels must have been going down due to an imbalance of -2.2, however if we add in the 5.5 from man we can see that the total emissions are 217.1 therefore we have an imbalance of +3.3.
The conversion from GT to ppm is 1ppm by volume of atmospheric CO2 = 2.13GT.
Conversion can be found here
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/convert.html
Mans emissions per year can be found here
http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions-intermediate.htm
CO2 ppm per year can be found here
http://www.carbonify.com/carbon-dioxide-levels.htm
So lets use all this info we have and see just how accurate that graph is, lets pick the year 1966.
In 1990 the CO2 level rose by 0.94ppm and using our conversion we can see that this equates to 2.00 gigatons. Now if the graph above is accurate, accurate enough for you to hole the good ship denier below the water line then mans emissions in 1990 MUST be 2.00 GT so lets look at that.
When we look we find the emissions in 1990 was approx 6.2 GT’s…..but how can this be MattB?
Lets try another year just in case the first was a fluke….lets pick…..1982 (and seriously i am making up the years as i go here.
1982, CO2 rose by 0.98ppm which equates to 2.08 GT’s and in that year man produced approx 5.2 GT’s. Once again we show the above graph to be flawed.
Just in case that was a fluke lets look at 2005 (latest date for IPCC)
2005 co2 rose by 2.38ppm which equates to 5 GT’s but when we look at the IPCC figures we find we emitted 7.6 GT’s.
So what we find is that the Earth is absorbing more CO2 than it is emitting and the graph above is just another fabrication to fool the likes of you.
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Slight typo with 1966 should have 1990 (as with all the evidence it only goes back to 1970)
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It’s more likely that sea surface temperatures are changing the solubility of CO2 which is responsible for cycling the CO2 levels at Mauna Loa.
No “climate” scientist seems to be aware of Henry’s Law.
[Btw forests make bugger all contribution to photosynthesis compared with marine algae.}
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Haven’t read all the comments, but surely your scenario works if there were 25% absorption, not turnover.
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Crackar: “1982, CO2 rose by 0.98ppm which equates to 2.08 GT’s and in that year man produced approx 5.2 GT’s. Once again we show the above graph to be flawed.”
You are forgetting the natural -2.2GT… so it equates to 4.28Gt compared to your 5.2GTs, and I don’t think the NASA simplification of the carbon cycle in the diagram could be expected to give you any closer than that. And a bit of rounding here and there and possibly and slightly dubious source or two you’ve used (I just mean could be similar simplifications, rounding errors who knows).
But anyway that does nothing to dispel my point that the use of the 200+GT absorbed p.a. as Jo has done is a gross distrotion of the situation. You’d fail a year 10 exam with that.
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Crakar, I’d be delighted to buy you a drink when next I make it to Adelaide, though sadly I can’t foresee when that might be…
Gracious speech I must say. Thanks,
Jo
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I see Matt B and KR are peddling mischief; the issue of atmospheric residency of human CO2, ACO2, is a vexed one and the distinction between a single ACO2 molecule and the accumulative mass increase of CO2 over the 20thC and the differences in the residency of the two and therefore their AGW effect has been capitalised on by the pro-AGW spruikers like Flannery.
Unfortunately for Flannery he is a dolt and a verbose dolt at that and got caught in Bolt’s trap and couldn’t shut up. According to the IPCC the source of calculations of mass ACO2 residency and the assumption that is long-lived and therefore so to is the AGW response is Figure 7.3, AR4:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-7-3.html
In respect of an individual ACO2 molecule the residency time can be calculated simply thus: the ACO2 contribution [in Figure 7.3]is 8Gt out of 218.2 Gt CO2 flux or 3.67%; DOE stats give an even lower figure of 2.91% of the emitted CO2 from the surface; DOE shows that about 98.5% of total emitted CO2 is reabsorbed so the proportion of ACO2 after one year is 3.67/100 x 1.5/100 = 0.000552 so that one ACO2 has a 1 in 1811.594203 chance of still being there after one year; the chance after 2 years is 1 in 120772.9469. Effectively one ACO2 molecule will be gone in 2 years.
The issue is how long will the accumulating mass of ACO2 remain; a detailed discussion of that is here:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/09/why-i-am-an-anthropogenic-global-warming-sceptic-part-3/?cp=1
A comparison of studies to do with how long a mass of ACO2 resides in the atmosphere is here:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5e507c9970c-pi
The IPCC is clearly an outlier but even by the exaggerated standard of the IPCC Flannery is still out by about 900 years. But the point is moot because the idea that ACO2 lingers for a century with ongoing effects on the climate is a stupid one which the IPCC and AGW had to support with the artificial and totally false idea of the difference between an immediate climate response from increasing ACO2 called the transient climate sensitivity [TCS] and the delayed climate response called the equilibrium climate sensitivity [ECS].
There is no evidence and indeed much evidence against there being such a difference between TCS and ECS; there is no THS, no sea level effect, no OHC effect, nothing to suggest a delayed effect in the pipeline; and neither is there any evidence for a TCS. In short what Flannery was implying from a long term residency period for ACO2, an ECS with higher temperatures than today and CAGW, is built upon the falsehood that there is an existing TCS happening now. That is, something worse is going to happen in the future which will be much worse than what is not happening today.
This is nuts.
So, KR and Matt B, do your homework at Jen’s but don’t forget I haven’t even mentioned Essenhigh’s and Knorr’s papers.
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MattyBee
If man produced 5.2 GT of CO2 – then a porportional reduction of O2 occured to the tune of some 3.8 GT – which means that you are suffering Oxygen Deficiency – SIGNS are Stress, Irritations, Distortion, Wrong Spelling etc.
CO2 is NOT the cause of Global Warming – it is only in Oxygen Deficient Minds.
Well done with the Grange – Cracker.
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“I see Matt B and KR are peddling mischief”… really? I’m simply pointing out that the use of the NASA graph in the OP is rediculous. No more no less.
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“the ACO2 contribution [in Figure 7.3]is 8Gt out of 218.2 Gt CO2 flux or 3.67%; DOE stats give an even lower figure of 2.91% of the emitted CO2 from the surface; DOE shows that about 98.5% of total emitted CO2 is reabsorbed so the proportion of ACO2 after one year is 3.67/100 x 1.5/100 = 0.000552 so that one ACO2 has a 1 in 1811.594203 chance of still being there after one year; the chance after 2 years is 1 in 120772.9469. Effectively one ACO2 molecule will be gone in 2 years.”
Incorrect. Any individual molecule does not have a 98.5% chance of being reabsorbed. The carbon cycle does not only reabsorb individual molecules that have been emitted.
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“If man produced 5.2 GT of CO2 – then a porportional reduction of O2 occured to the tune of some 3.8 GT”
Fortunately the atmosphere is 20.95% Oxygen, compared to 0.039% CO2.
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Kabana Banana
You state that Plants actually split H2O molecules not CO2 to produce oxygen during photosynthesis
So the CO2 molecule doesn’t get split? Then how come in the KREB cycle or CAM – the result is CH2O plus O2 with no intact CO2 molecule?
Science is not your strong point in plant physiology Bananas in Pajamas !
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Jo,
Has anyone noticed a mistake in that picture?
No a single gas giving planetary disturbance such as volcanoes or pressure cracks that emit gases from under the planet surface.
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Matt B@80; I do not mind being corrected but I resent being corrected by declaration; refute my calculations or the DOE statistics from which the 98.5% reabsorption figure comes from:
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/environment/057304
[above link dead. Try this one: ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oiaf/1605/cdrom/pdf/ggrpt/057303.pdf ]ED
Table 3, page 26.
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Sorry Cohenite that link gives me a file not found message?
An amount of CO2 gets reabsorbed that is equivalent to 98.5% of the CO2 emitted. I assume that is what your link confirms and I don’t think it is in question. I’m not questioning that.
But you have then applied calculations to indicate how long any specific molecule would take to be reabsorbed, based upon 98.5% of emitted CO2 molecules being reabsorbed within 1 year. But once a CO2 molecule is emitted it is no more likely to be reabsorbed than any other CO2 molecule, so it’s individual chances of being reabsorbed are AMOUNT REABSORBED/AMOUNT IN ATMOSPHERE = approx 121/750 or 16% not 98.5%.
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cracker24 & MaxL:
In reference to How Earth Made Us’ Maybe the final episode of the series was the trade off required to get it produced by the BBC.
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Excuse me my 121 above is only one part of the reabsorbtion. The correct figure is 121 + 90. Which is the figure Jo uses in her OP. So Cohenite you’re not arguing against me, you’re arguing against Jo, and I back her calcs. What she has shown is that in 4 years pretty much every CO2 molecule emitted will have been reabsorbed. What she omits is that at the same time a whole heap of CO2 gets emitted from natural sources too.
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The link is here:
ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oiaf/1605/cdrom/pdf/ggrpt/057303.pdf
Try page 22, Table 3.
You still have not addressed my calculations because you have not understood that if 98.5% of ALL CO2, that is both natural and manmade CO2, are reabsorbed than that leaves only 1.5% in the atmosphere; what is the proportion of that 1.5% which is sourced from humans: 3.67%; using that figure of 3.67% allows you to calculate the proportion of ACO2 remaining after ONE year, which I have done; the chances of one molecule of ACO2 remaining after TWO years is as I have calculated, and is vanishingly small.
On the other hand the chances of you hanging around and making a nuisance of yourself are quite high.
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Go on Jo – I dare you to back me up here;) In that Cohenite’s use of 98.5% to calculate that residency period conflict directly with your use of “meaning that 28% of all the CO2 in the global atmosphere is sucked down each year. Let’s call it “one quarter””. I think we are both mature enough to agree, in the knowledge that what we disagree on is the next line in the thought process.
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neither poage 22 nor page 26 of that link has a “Table 3.”
Cohenite, and this has nothing to do with the broader AGW issue. As an admission I once had a lengthy debate around daylinght saving and the time difference between Perth and London, and after about an hour I realised I had the northern and southern hemispheres rotating in opposite directions.
My point being is that your line of reasoning in post 88 (and others) relies on that being 98.5% of actual molecules that were emitted by natural and man made emissions in any given year, but the reality is that the planet cannot discriminate between molecules that were emitted that year (all sources) or were already up there in the atmosphere just hanging around. Therefore when you are talking about how long an actual molecule that was emitted in a given year takes to get reabsorbed then you can only use probabilities based on the total CO2 content of the atmosphere.
You are going to get this soon, and you’ll be sheepish, and I’ll not rub it in to much I assure you.
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Yeah, right sheepish; baaa. I really don’t care if you in are the Nthrn or Sthrn hemispheres, you are wrong; since you can’t find Table 3, here it is, from my link:
Table 3. Global Natural and Anthropogenic Sources and Absorption of Greenhouse Gases in the 1990s
Gas
Sources
Absorption
Annual Increase in Gas
Natural Human-Made Total in the Atmosphere
Carbon Dioxide
(Million Metric Tons of Gas)a . . . . . . . . . . . 770,000 23,100 793,100 781,400 11,700
Have you even looked at Figure 3? NO, I guess not and the point about my calculations is that the planet cannot “discriminate between molecules that were emitted that year (all sources) or were already up there in the atmosphere just hanging around”, as you so wittily put it; that only becomes a factor for subsequent years; according to the DOE statistics which are now in front of you, in any one year, 98.5% of emitted CO2, from all sources, is reabsorbed; so:
1 After ONE year the proportion of human CO2, ACO2, staying in the atmosphere is 3.67/100 X 1.5/100 = 0.000552
Do you dispute that? If not, than the chances of an ACO2 remaining in the atmosphere after one year is 1 in 1811.594203 because…[try inverting 0.000552].
The second year is really fun, but we’ll go on to that when you agree or disagree with the above.
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Jo,
Simple question NOT being asked:
WHY IS THE OCEAN NOT ABSORBING HEAT ANYMORE?
Every time I bring up ocean surface salt changes, they go on deaf ears.
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Bob Malloy@86
Hi Bob,
Yeah maybe, but I remember seeing a BBC documentary: BBC Wonders of the Solar System produced in 2010 by Professor Brian Cox.
In it’s first episode, he showed how a particular river’s level correlated “beautifully” with variations in the sun’s intensity. So I assume he had ample opportunity to talk global warming crap. He didn’t, and I was impressed. None of his 5 episodes mentions AGW.
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It’s one of those fatuous non sequiturs in which the CAGW hysterics specialize and a complex questions (e.g.”have you stopped beating your wife?”) which can’t be fully exposed in the limited time available on-air.
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KR and MattB:
I strongly suggest that you read the range of available scientific literature instead of ‘warmist’ propaganda blogs before pontificating on atmospheric CO2 changes.
And I cite one of our 2005 papers; i.e.
Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005)
I offer these extracts from it:
and
Importantly, we produced models of the carbon cycle to emulate change in atmospheric CO2 as measured at Mauna Loa. We reported
So, each of our models matches the observations but the Berne Model used by the IPCC does not unless the data is “adjusted” by unjustifiable 5-year smoothing.
And
So, if one of the six models of this paper is adopted then there is a 5:1 probability that the choice is wrong. And other models are probably also possible. And the six models each give a different indication of future atmospheric CO2 concentration for the same future anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide.
Data that fits all the possible causes is not evidence for the true cause. Data that only fits the true cause would be evidence of the true cause. But the above demonstrates that there is no data that only fits either an anthropogenic or a natural cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Hence, the only factual statements that can be made on the true cause are
(a) the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have an anthropogenic cause, or a natural cause, or some combination of anthropogenic and natural causes,
but
(b) there is no evidence that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration has a mostly anthropogenic cause or a mostly natural cause.
Richard
PS
When MattB had failed to provide proof of AGW, I pressed him to provide any empirical evidence that human activities were having any discernible effect on global climate. He could not provide one jot of evidence that human activities are having any discernible effect on global climate (which is not surprising because no such evidence exists).
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http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=392&catid=10&subcatid=66#02
I cringe everytime I hear those so called warmist nutters continue to claim China is going green, how can anyone believe anything the chinese government says “freedom of speech in china means the government is free to lie to the world”, how about travelling there, the cities are putrid with smog, they burn high sulphur coal, we could never burn, they have 60+ coal fires that have been burning for years, they dont care and never will about the enviroment, they will agree to every target, how can we prove what they emit “trust them” They have massive coal reserves but buy ours so they can use theres when ours run out, study the above link, send it out to anyone who cares
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Richard@95, do you have a link to your paper; I have been trying to argue this point since the Knorr paper surfaced and it would be good to check your effort.
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Cohenite:
Sorry, it is behind a pay wall and – because I am now on the Editorial Board of E&E – I cannot breach that.
If you email me I will send you a copy of the exposition of it that I gave at the 2008 Heartland Conference: that presentation paper is almost entirely a ‘copy and paste’ from the original paper and it contains all the calculations.
Richard
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“In Tangshan, a large industrial, coastal city 125 miles east of Beijing, people can tell which way the wind is blowing by what color the smog is. Grayish color smog comes from iron deposits blown from steel mills to the south; whitish smog comes from chemical factories to the east; and black dust comes from the coal and coking plant to the west. Tangshan itself is home to many dirty factories and plants such as Beijing Coking-Chemical Plant and Capital Iron and Steel, both of which were relocated to Tangshan from Beijing to reduce pollution there”
The above says it all, has everyone noted that Japan will be applying for exemption from the Kyoto Agreement due to the amount of nuclear energy generation it has lost, that it will have to replace with coal, Why wouldnt they replace it with wind solar geothermal??? because you cant, Julia Ross Tim Wayne Bob are you listning, you cant replace base load with green, you can compliment not replace.
10
The above is a statement by KR at #37
Now let me take you on a related story…
Lets now put these two together where KR stated “Individual CO2 molecules don’t stay in the atmosphere very long, but they usually just change places with another molecule”
Anybody capable of scratching their heads would ask the question “Don’t H2O molecules also exchange constantly between the biosphere, atmosphere and oceans? where’s the difference? just as a molecule of Co2 goes through it’s cycles, so does a molecule of H2O.
Perhaps KR can point us to data (a NASA image would be good) showing periods in the planets history when there was NO water vapour in the atmosphere. Nah, that was a silly question, maybe he can show us data that indicates huge fluctuations in WV content and cloud cover across the globe?
If not, us head scratchers would have to conclude that WV is ALWAYS present in the atmosphere, and to our best knowledge cloud cover (currently about 63.5%) though it varies by small percentages, those small variations swamp the level of CO2 in the atmosphere leading us to conclude that WV is THE important driver of atmospheric radiation and a much stronger forcing than CO2, rendering the AGW hypothesis to the level of junk science that it deserves.
Comments?
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MattyBee!
Can you explain what would occur in a one cubic meter glass cube that had the identical replication of the atmosphere at surface level – and you added 100ppm of CO2 (and reduced something else to keep pressure identical – the atmosphere contracts and expands) – under a 10 hours day sunlight cycle – would the temperature increase compared to an indentical cube without the CO2 increase!
CSIRO has tried this and will not release the results! JCUNQ also!
10
Cohenite:
I add this because I think it may be of general interest.
As I said at #95;
And, the rate of change of seasonal variation in atmospheric CO2 concentration at each measured locality demonstrates that;
However, that does not mean the anthropogenic emission cannot be the cause of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Our modelling explains this as follows:
Simply, it is possible that the anthropogenic emission of each year disrupts the system and the system response time is very long. Please note that this has nothing to do with CO2 residence time: it is an effect of the possible response time of the total system of the carbon cycle.
Howver, this possibility is improbable because the annual flow of carbon into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels is less than 0.02% of the carbon flowing around the carbon cycle. And it is not obvious that so small an addition to the carbon cycle is certain to disrupt the system because no other activity in nature is so constant that it only varies by less than +/- 0.02% per year.
Richard
10
Forgive me – I posted this in the wrong thread – it was meant for this thread:
once again may I direct you to this website regarding the actual amount of CO2 and it’s source.
http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
10
Cohenite what you posted in 91 does not make sense, and does not make your table miraculously appear where it is not in the link.
Now to explain… I was at work not much time, but that TABLE 3 is on what I’d call “Page 6” as in, there is a number 6 on the bottom of the page. It is on the 22nd page of the PDF I now see so excuse the honest inability to find the table.
Anyway as I expected Table 3 says what you said it said, and what I agreed it probably said.
I put it to you that if you released 1million CO2 molecules in to the atmosphere, and could track those specific molecules, in a years time 0.985million of those molecules WOULD NOT have been reabsorbed. Rather about 0.26 million would have been. Unless you have god-like powers.
10
MattB – and in four years time all the molecules would have been reabsorbed.
10
Cohenite said in post 84,
“Matt B@80; I do not mind being corrected but I resent being corrected by declaration; refute my calculations or the DOE statistics from which the 98.5% reabsorption figure comes from:”
In post 63 i used 3 references one was straight from the horses mouth (AR4)on levels of CO2 emitted by man, the second was CO2 levels from Mauna Lau which is also used by the IPCC and the third was a simple ppm to GT conversion and how did MattB dodge the issue? he said
“And a bit of rounding here and there and possibly and slightly dubious source or two you’ve used” he also said “You’d fail a year 10 exam with that.”
So both Cohenite and myself have demonstrated that the earth is absorbing more CO2 than it emits, Jo has stated that if we stopped emitting at lunchtime tomorrow in 10 years time we would have reduced that figure by 90%.
Now Matt you can lambast Jo for using a dodgy peice of NASA global warming artwork if you like but the fact is CO2 would reduce rather quickly, which blows holes in anything Tim 1000 years flannery claims.
So give and move on
10
crakar24 @ 61 – “…that grand old chestnut of not long enough for a trend”
I see, crakar24, I see…
Monday (April 4) the temperature here in my section of the Eastern US was 21°C, very pleasant. On Tuesday (April 5) it fell to 10°C with rain. By crakar24 logic that should be enough to establish a trend (one day) – May will be much colder than March, and June should have more snow than January.
/sarcasm
—
Sorry, crakar24, but I’m not going to invest in a warmer June wardrobe based on your logic. There is variability in the climate, vegetation, seawater circulation, etc. – it appears you don’t understand it. You need to look at a period a couple times longer than the variations to get a trend, which is why 30 years is the usual statement for climate; long enough for a couple of PDO cycles.
10
cohenite @ 77
Glad to see you referenced the IPCC work on residence times for individual CO2 molecules. But you’re still repeating the silliness of claiming that exchanges mean a total concentration drop.
Here’s the associated work on how long various factors can/will reduce CO2 over time for the ocean, the largest sink: IPCC WG1 7.3.4.5 Summary of Marine Carbon Cycle Climate Couplings. The various processes range in re-equilibration speed between 500-50,000 years or so.
10
Addendum to my post @ 108 – note that not all of the re-equilibrium processes described in that table provide negative feedback – some provide positive feedback amplifying changes.
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KR:
At #107 you assert:
Sorry, but that is wrong on two counts.
Firstly, the 30-year period for Standard Climate Data is purely arbitrary and was adopted in 1958 as part of the International Geophysical Year because it was then thought that only 30 years of reliable climate data then existed.
Indeed, 30 years is a silly period to choose acording to your assertion because it is not a multiple of e.g. the 11-year solar cycle or the 22-year Hale Cycle.
The purpose of 30-year period for Standard Climate Data is to provide a base for comparison. So, for example, the GHCN and HadCRUT global temperature data series cite their data as “anomalies” (i.e. differences) from the average global temperature of a 30-year period (and they each compare to different periods).
Secondly, the 30-year period for Standard Climate Data has nothing to do with whether or not a trend is valid: a trend is a statistical result and its validity is a statistical function of the analysed data (google r^2 statistic).
Any period may be assessed for climate data. For example, the 1994 IPCC Report used 4-year periods to assess apparent changes in cyclone activity.
To quote your own words in #107
Richard
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Richard S Courtney @ 110
Actually, I do understand the subject to some extent. Do you? Are you actually claiming that a single year is sufficient to identify a climate temperature trend? A CO2 trend? Actic ice trend? That a one day change in weather is sufficent to predict next month’s average temperature or rainfall?
Yep, it depends on the statistics, the variability of the data you are looking at. 25-30 years is pretty reasonable for a basic temperature trend, you can drop that closer to 10-12 years if you attempt to correct for insolation, volcanos, the PDO, yearly cycles, and the like (Tamino has done this on several occasions). I wouldn’t try a CO2 trend identification (based on the Mark I eyeball) for Mauna Loa without at least 5-10 years data, 3-5 for the South Pole data. Different data require different time frames for significance.
The point remains, though – picking too short a time period for any data set will, based on the variability of that data, make any identified trends insignificant. And that’s the basis of cherry picking.
10
KR:
I agree with you when you say:
So, we agree that since the last ice age there has been a consistent trend of cooling for the last 10 thousand years and the variability of that data has given us; e.g.
the Roman Warm Period,
the Dark Age Cool Period,
the Medieval Warm Period,
the Little Ice Age, and
the Present Warm Period.
So, as you say, choosing any period of a millenium, century, decade or year and drawing conclusions from it is cherry picking.
It is good to be able to agree with a ‘warmist’ about this: such agreement is rare because they usually spout nonsense.
Richard
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Richard S Courtney @ 112
So you agree with me that a single year is insufficient to determine a trend? Excellent!
It is good to be able to agree with a ‘coolist’ about this: such agreement is rare because they usually spout nonsense. Hmmm… does that sound as odd (or as insulting) here as in your post?
Of course, now you switch to the “climate has changed before” meme to deny our effect on temperatures. Not to mention making a mockery of your claim to understand statistical significance.
The climate’s changed before, both due to internal variability and external forcings, such as volcanos, Milankovitch cycles, insolation, etc. Looking at those factors, we can get some idea of how the climate responds to various forcings. To the extent that you argue “climate’s changed before”, you’re actually arguing that the climate is sensitive to such changes, and arguing for a high climate sensitivity.
Which would not be good – increased CO2 energy forcing is based on well known physics, measured, and on the order of past forcings that tipped the world into and out of ice ages. I personally hope that the climate sensitivity is lower than the IPCC estimates, but I can’t say that the evidence supports such hopes.
10
KR:
Your post at #113 is daft (and, no, that is not “insulting”).
Of course I agree
How could a single datum indicate a trend? It seems that you do not know what a trend is.
And I did NOT “switch” the subject: changing the subject is a common ‘warmist’ ploy that I never – not ever – use.
At #111 you said
At #112 I agreed with that statement and I explained what it meant.
Do not blame me for what you said: instead, apologise to your ‘warmist’ friends that you made the mistake of saying something sensible.
Then, having falsely accused me of changing the subject – your post at #113 tries to change the subject to “climate sensitivity”. That attempt has failed and will fail. I always cling to the subject like a dog to a bone when a ‘warmist’ tries to change the subject.
So answer this;
You assert that
(a) the time since the last ice age is too long for trend assessment
but
(b) a time less than 30 years is too short for trend assessment
so
what is the correct time, how does one determine its end dates, and why?
Please note that I agree with the IPCC that any time period can be chosen so long as it is stated. And I agree with statisticians that the r^2 statistic indicates the confidence of a trend in a data set and not the time period of a temporal data set.
Richard
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Richard S Courtney @ 114
30 years is just about right for a temperature trend assessment with unadjusted data [as I’ve said in @111], while 5-10 years (depending on which data set, Mauna Loa or South Pole, you are looking at) is about right for a CO2 change trend.
“You assert that … the time since the last ice age is too long for trend assessment” – Strawman; you asserted that, I did not.
Any statistic analysis of a data set must include knowns, unknowns, and noise/variability – and the knowns (within measurement error, which I shouldn’t have to say, but will since someone will complain about it) include orbital positions, solar level, volcanic activity, etc.
Using these ‘knowns’, we can follow climate pretty well, including the last 10 ice ages or so. We can even back-project (using these knowns and physics, not tuned parameters designed to make non-physical models fit) through the MWP, the Little Ice Age, etc. – which you are apparently ascribing to large scale climate variability.
Right now, though, we should (according to the natural forcings and those physics) be cooling; temperatures should have dropped by 0.2C since the beginning of the industrial period. Unless you include the forcings from CO2, in which case we are sadly on track.
Our CO2 output is 100x what volcanos put out every year. D’ you think that’s insignificant?
—
Back to the matter of this thread:
Currently we’re emitting enough CO2 to raise levels by 4ppm/year – we’re seeing an actual rise of 2pmm/year. So the oceans and biosphere are absorbing that fast, mainly by ocean absorption/acidification (yes, I know, some folks hate that term, but that’s the technical term used when a solution moves from alkaline towards acidic, so I’m going to stick with it).
If we stop emitting CO2 tomorrow, at a rate of 2ppm/year absorption it will take a minimum of 55 years to be absorbed back to pre-industrial levels. And that rate will definitely slow as we get closer to equilibrium.
If (as someone stated earlier, and by the misinformation in the initial posting) you expect all the emitted CO2 to be absorbed in 3-4 years (110ppm!!!), that’s a rate of 26-35X faster than we’re currently seeing the biosphere absorbing it.
So – The absorption rate claims of 3-4 years made in the posting at the top of the thread are false.
—
It might be argued that a time frame of 100 years or so was plausible, although I would like to see the science behind it before taking it as accurate. But 3-4 years? No – that’s based upon mixing the individual molecule lifetime in the atmosphere with the change in concentration level in the presence of the carbon cycle.
When making this (bogus) claim, why don’t folks include the transport rates into the atmosphere via the carbon cycle as well as those out of the atmosphere?
10
Isn’t it sweet to see “KR” and “MattB” making all Kissy Kissy Posts to each other..
Wonder what else they get up to together??
10
Richard S Courtney @ 114
My apologies, my last posting was incomplete and did not reply to all of your questions.
“What is the correct time, how does one determine its end dates, and why?”
As stated, (a) 25-30 years for temperature, (b) testing for statistical significance against the null hypothesis (which includes known influences), and (c) looking for a p > 0.05 significance. That 5% chance of an apparent trend being due to internal variations rather than an actual trend is a statistically accepted threshold – one that’s found general agreement: a 95% chance that it will require that actual trend to meet the observed data over that time period with it’s internal variations.
And that significance improves with more data – if you include the last 100 years you’re at something over 0.9999% confident that CO2 forcing is required for the temperatures to have behaved the way they do.
10
Damian Allen @ 116
Argumentum Ad Hominem adds little to your position – it’s one of the weakest of logical fallacies. In fact, it indicates to me that you have nothing relevant to say.
10
Interesting aspect in terms of Uncle(1000 years)Tim but really quite irrelevant in terms of the little bit of science the warmists depend on aka the “Arrhenius effect”. That combined with the nature of the CO2/WV feedback is where the only action is. The rest, including predictions of more frequent and more severe weather events resulting in more and worse droughts and floods and running out of water and food is just fun and games for the well paid professional climate changers who seem to have forgotten the basics (as well as weather history). Which of course is the most likely reason they haven’t yet got one prediction right. With respect to their predictions of the future that supposedly awaits us all we can judge them only on their past endeavours
It doesn’t much matter how long its been up there (except to scare the uninformed witless) but rather just how much there was at say pre the IR and how much is up there now, or as per uncle, in a 1000 years and anywhere in between. If one knows what the curve of the relationship between temperature change and the increase in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 looks like that’s all that is needed to realise that Uncle Tim and his warmist fellow travelers weren’t really paying attention in their secondary school elementary maths classes.
10
KR:
I raised no “straw man”. That is another ‘warmist’ trick that I never use.
Your several posts in response to my refutation of your silly assertions concerning trends contain only one reply (at #117) that attempts to answer my clear questions calling for explanation of the basis of your assertions.
That reply is obfuscation and not an answer.
You cannot merely assert
and expect anybody other than a deluded ‘warmist’ to accept it.
An explanatiuon and/or citation with selected quotation is required to justify such an assertion.
Anyway, your assertions are plain wrong.
95% confidence is the very least acceptable (it equates to being wrong one time in twenty).
The length of the time period – be it “25-30 years” or any other – does not define the statistical confidence. The variability of the data defines it. And the variability of the global temperature data varies with the choice of start and end points if one chooses 30-year periods.
This variability of the data’s variability over time is why I asked you
See e.g. the HadCRUT3 data set for mean global temperature. It (and e.g. GGHCN) show these temperature trends for these 30 year periods
1881 to 1910 – negative trend
1911 to 1940 – positive trend
1941 to 1970 – negative trend
1971 to 2000 – positive trend
Importantly, the slope of the trend was the same in the periods 1911 to 1940 and 1971 to 2000. But over 80% of the increase to atnmospheric CO2 concentration was after 1940. Therefore, this similarity of the trends of the two warming periods completely disproves your assertion saying
Indeed, the trends of the two warming periods indicate NO discernible effect of the increase to atmospheric CO2 concentration.
How the H*ll did you get that ridiculous idea when the two warming periods in the last 100 years show no change – none, zilch, nada – between their trends? Or are you just making stuff up?
Richard
10
I wonder if the United Nations Earth Summit in 1992 – Kevin Rudd – and the implementation of the treaty through a policy called Sustainable Development has any link with the present climate change policy?
http://www.alor.org/
10
KR
At post you were asked:
Can you explain why there was no increase in CO2 over the year from Septempber 1973 to September 1974?
The video in your reply was interesting but i think your reply also showed why you would not ever figure it out!
For the same months of the year 1997 to 1998 the growth was nearly 4PPM.
Now how long would it take a preschooler to spot the pattern if you mention those two years and showed them this?
http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm
Why run averages that hide the pattern?
and
10
KR has been busy but he has verballed me @108: “But you’re still repeating the silliness of claiming that exchanges mean a total concentration drop.”
I do no such thing; the point is whether ACO2 is responsible entirely or in part for the increase in CO2; I am aware of the difference between the residency of one ACO2 molecule and the residency of a mass of ACO2 but you have obviously not had a read of this thread at Jen’s which considers this issue:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/09/why-i-am-an-anthropogenic-global-warming-sceptic-part-3/?cp=3#comment-137868
At the time of the discussion at Jens the Knorr paper had not been published but the Essenhigh paper had which also dovetails with the chart of residency times published at Jen’s and elsewhere; Essenhigh is discussed here:
http://climateresearchnews.com/2009/08/atmospheric-residence-time-of-man-made-co2/
Richard’s comments at 95 and 102 summarise the issue of residency times for CO2/ACO2 and whether ACO2 is responsible for the increase in CO2, and I think the Knorr paper is the final nail showing that ACO2 cannot be responsible for the increase in CO2. But, as with Matt B, I will put the question to you [from 91]:
“1 After ONE year the proportion of human CO2, ACO2, staying in the atmosphere is 3.67/100 X 1.5/100 = 0.000552
Do you dispute that? If not, than the chances of an ACO2 remaining in the atmosphere after one year is 1 in 1811.594203 because…[try inverting 0.000552].
The second year is really fun, but we’ll go on to that when you agree or disagree with the above”
10
This chart should be exciting.It is based on decades of peer reviewed science papers.
CHART
It will be very interesting what rationalizations Matt and KR will come up with.
10
““1 After ONE year the proportion of human CO2, ACO2, staying in the atmosphere is 3.67/100 X 1.5/100 = 0.000552”
yes I dispute that it is a load of crap. You’ve been told why.
10
No MattB, I haven’t; have another go will you and stop trolling.
10
Richard S Courtney @ 114 says many things but this line:
I recall once you admitted lacking humor as either a sense or perhaps a talent. I’m here to say that the quote above is evidence that proves without a doubt, you are wrong. With all the upper lip I can muster: LOL LOLOF ROFLMAO Guffawwwa Ha HAaa HHAHHAHHA BWHAWWWWWAA aaa aaa (BREATH) Ha HA HAAAAh
That sir was your finest (shall I say Benny Hill?) humor moment!
(please forgive me if I in any way have breached standard etiquette!)
10
Cohenite – here’s an experiment you can try at home.
Put 750 grains of rice in a bowl. Add another 136 (natural CO2 emissions). Paint another 6 red (ACO2). Mix it all up. Take out 200-240 odd random grains of rice (CO2 absorbed). See how many red ones are left in the bowl. You will be amazed to find that the chance of any given red grain of rice still being in the bowl is massively more than 1 in 1800.
10
All the arguments about CO2 residence time and decay time are speculation as we don’t know what all the inputs and outputs are.
We’re guessing.
10
I don’t know what it is with you alarmists, with your bath-tubs, money in wallets, cookies and now rice to illustrate simple probability issues. MattB, if you think I’m painting grains of rice red you’re nuttier than I thought.
10
Sorry to see this thread degenerating into ad homs rather than addressing the issues; not up to the usual standards, and I’m sorry to say that , in this rare case, Jo has it wrong IMHO to say 4 years… tendentious at best. KR was right at 13, and all the ticks/crosses attacks on him/her since have been along “party” lines. How about addressing the simple issue, which is pretty much as MattB has expalined in 128. The issue is not residency time of ACO2 vs “Natural” CO2, it’s about residency of all CO2 from any source. Professor Flim-Flam is anb idiot for thinking that nothing will change over 1000 years, but I reckon, based on the Mauna Loa observed seasonal cycles, that KR has it about right, in terms of a century or so to revert to pre-industrial concs, if we stopped emitting tomorrow. Warren at 52… yes lets please see a part2 to fix up the most egregious errors in the original post.
10
mullumhillbilly @ 131: While you are worried about the ad homs I’m worried more about the Argument from Authority.
How about realizing that while co2 is interesting, warming is what matters. You got no human caused warming. You do have complex natural systems that are able to cope with your measly co2.
10
Mark D. Agreed. The rise in CO2 over the last century, from whatever source, is making no discernible difference to climate. It’s effects are essentially just background noise in a natural variation.
10
Cohers I’d not have to resort to rice if your basic grasp of probability were not so hopeless.
10
I suppose rice is the last meal for many hopeless. Matt, do you realize how prophetic that is IF warmists get control of the significant economies of the world?
10
Mark D – you do realise that this discussion with Cohers is quite unrelated to the greenhouse effect. Certainly what I am saying has no impact whatsoever on determining whether or not AGW is a genuine concern. I’m just agreeing with Jo in the article above.
10
Don’t get ahead of me Matt, what is your answer to my question at 135?
10
no.
10
Mull@131, the point which MattB is ignoring or not understanding is that the flux figures for annual emissions from ALL sources of CO2/ACO2 is shown at Figure 7.3 of AR4 which I link to:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-7-3.html
ACO2 annual flux is is 8Gt out of 218.2 Gt CO2 flux or 3.67%; do the additions yourself; these are AR4’s figures, not mine. From DOE we get information that 98.5% of ALL annual emissions of CO2/ACO2 are reabsorbed:
ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oiaf/1605/cdrom/pdf/ggrpt/057303.pdf
See Table 3 on page 22 of the Pdf. Again DOE’s quantities, not mine.
Now, given that this information is from official sources how can there be any other conclusion that the % of ACO2 in the remaining 1.5% accumulating CO2 is calculated by 3.67/100 x 1.5/100 = 0.000552? You can bend and twist 0.000552 anyway you like but that is the % of ACO2 remaining in the atmosphere from the annual flux figures from AR4 and the DOE.
At comment 77 above I explain how AGW ‘theory’ has had to generate a difference between Transient Climate Sensitivity [TCS] and Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity [ECS] to explain away the fact that there is no short term climate affect relatable to CO2 increase; the idea that CO2 has a long residence time is just a prop to that falsehood; in short a falsehood supporting another falsehood.
10
Found this slick production on YouTube this morning. It has been produced by Greenpeace Australia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt7yFndJyNA&feature=channel_video_title
It”s a fairly high budget production, not something produced by amateurs.
Greenpeace is attacking the ANZ bank as the biggest financier of the coal industry. The final scenes are tactics designed to scare people.
Please forward this to your friends and family.
It is important that Australians recognise the type of propaganda that is being produced and how the fear factor is being ramped up by organisations such as Greenpeace Australia.
10
Cohenite. We’ll play your game for a second. If ACO2 is 3.67% of the annual flux, then if 98.5% are reabsorbed… well the % of ACO2 in the remaining 1.5% is 3.67%. It is not 1.5% of 3.67%, which is what you’ve calculated.
To get the “ACO2 remaining in the atmosphere” from that year you’d do 3.67% x
The bit you avoid again and again and yet again and possibly even again is that the DOE link you provide does not say that of the molecules that are emitted, 98.5% are reabsorbed. What they say is that an amount equivalent to 98.5% of the emissions are reabsorbed. This is the KEY DIFFERENCE. As Jo has CORRECTLY pointed out above the reabsorbed CO2 molecules are just as likely to be a CO2 molecule that was already in the atmosphere, as one emitted that year… so you have to use the TOTAL CO2 in the atmosphere – leaving about 26% of any ACO2 molecules emitted being reabsorbed in a given year.
Again – I have no problems with your sources, but your comment “how can there be any other conclusion that the % of ACO2 in the remaining 1.5% accumulating CO2 is calculated by 3.67/100 x 1.5/100 = 0.000552?” is incorrect. The % ACO2 in the remaining 1.5% is 3.67%. Not 1.5% of 3.67%. Even if I accepted that the earth could somehow selectively reabsorb ACO2 versus CO2.
10
“The % ACO2 in the remaining 1.5% is 3.67%.” Thank you MattB, correct; that is, of the accumulating CO2 3.67% is sourced from humans, ACO2; from the official sources; so, how can you say that ACO2 is responsible for ALL the increase in CO2?
10
That’s like asking how can bulldust blame the cream cakes on getting fat when cream cakes only make up a small part of his diet.
10
Also, thank you for your implicit recognition that your calcs have been wrong since the get go.
10
This is becoming ridiculous, you claim my post in 71 was bullshit based on dodgy links which 1 was straight from AR4 and the other was from a warmist site using data straight from IPCC and now you are leading Cohenite a merry dance with your typical warmist dodge and avoidance techniques.
Can everyone please ignore this fool.
10
No MattB, no cream cakes, just snake oil; now calculate the residency time from your 3.67% figure; how many years for a ACO2 molecule if ACO2 is 3.67% of the accumulation?
10
cohenite @139. I’m sure your figures and sources are right, but the reasoning in this post which leads to the 4 year re-absorbtion statement in the headline is just plain wrong and embarassingly so. Much as I disagree with where MattB is coming from, his reasoning (and KR’s) are correct. The biosphere and oceans, based on Mauna Loa seasonal cycles might take about a century to pull the +100ppm CO2 increase since 1850 back to pre-industrial equilibrium. I’ll take Freeman Dyson as my authority on that one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
http://noconsensus.org/scientists/freeman-dyson.php
10
Well theoretically any given CO2 molecule could stay up there indefinately. And the average residency of an ACO2 molecule is no different than any other CO2 molecule. There is 26% turnover of CO2 per year. Can I call it 25% for convenience. So after 1 year any given CO2 molecule has 75% chance of still being in the atmosphere. Compared to your claim in #77 that “one ACO2 has a 1 in 1811.594203 chance of still being there after one year”
2 years 56%
3 years 42%
4 years 32% (note above Jo says 30% so again I agree with Jo)
and so on so on. probability after n years = (0.75)^n
This should be completely common ground between us.
The skeptical problem in clinging to this is that there is also 200+ Gt heading the other way… so the impact of additional CO2 is far longer than simply calculating the average residence time of any given molecule.
10
Mull, the 100 year figure is wrong:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5e507c9970c-pi
See also the Essenhigh paper which is not included in the chart:
http://climateresearchnews.com/2009/08/atmospheric-residence-time-of-man-made-co2/
Now let’s get back to my teacher MattB, and feel free to play with the numbers; so far we have established that human CO2, ACO2, is only 3.67% of the accumulating total of CO2; if we add Knorr’s findings that the % of ACO2 in the atmosphere, the Airborne Fraction, AF, has remained constant since 1850:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/knorr2009_co2_sequestration.pdf
We should be able to calculate the residency period for ACO2.
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Or as mullimhillbilly woud say, my problem is in clinging to my interpretation. Of course if people really believed that AGW contravened the 2nd law of thermodynamics, or that CO2 didn’t cause warming, then this really is a moot point. I am 100% confident that my interpretation is correct.
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ACtually I should not put word in hill billy’s mouth – he/she may agree also with my interpretation of residency, and simply disagree with the rest of the AGW hypothesis. I think in fact that is a far more sensible posistion as the residency issue is a red herring.
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Well gee MattB, even after I agreed with you about the 3.67% you don’t stick with that, now its a 25% turnover; you’re slippery as an eel; and 100% confident as well.
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MattB @151, What is your number for residency? Surely you are not taking the Flummery view?
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cohenite @149. I wasn’t saying 100 year residency, I was saying 100 year re-absorption by the biosphere if ACO2 stopped tomorrow. They are different things.
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Cohers your sticking to that 3.67% versus my 25% relies, as I’ve explained time and time again, on the planet some how being able to selectively reabsorb ACO2 in preference to CO2. I cna;t put it any simpler than that.
hillbilly – Flannery didn’t actually say it would take 1000 years for CO2 levels to drop did he? I’m pretty sure he said that was how long it would take temps to drop. So he would be accepting a certain level of built in warming, leading to other feedbacks (say reduction in sea ice leading to more absorbtion less reflection) similar with glaciers, and a range of other things. These all meaning that it would take a lot longer for temps to start dropping.
So I take it from the above posts by yourself that you are comfortable with the 100 year figure for CO2 being elevated in the atmosphere. I don’t think it is unreasonable to draw from that figure that it will be > 100 years before temps would drop as well. I do not know what Flannery bases the 1000 years on – my initial reaction was that indeed it was high. If you’d asked me my money would have been on say 300 years? but it would be a bit of a stab in the dark.
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Nobody can say Vladimir Putin doesn’t have a wry sense of humour. This was taken from a comment at Bishop Hill.
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin has told German businessmen that they may have to rely on Russian firewood for heating if they do not want to construct new nuclear power plants or bring in Russian gas supplies
At a business conference organized in Berlin by the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Putin recognised that “the German public does not like the nuclear power industry for some reason.” He continued: “But I cannot understand what fuel you will take for heating. You do not want gas, you do not develop the nuclear power industry, so you will heat with firewood?”
Putin then noted, “You will have to go to Siberia to buy the firewood there,” as Europeans “do not even have firewood.”
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This conversation is bizarre. Mull@154 says this:”I wasn’t saying 100 year residency, I was saying 100 year re-absorption by the biosphere if ACO2 stopped tomorrow. They are different things.”
Mull’s statement is the official IPCC position. That is, putting aside the residency of ACO2 the fact is it will be a long time, at least 100 years, before CO2 levels drop to pre-industrial levels, ~290PPM, even if all ACO2 emissions cease tommorrow. So, we can have a situation where, according to the official sources, ACO2 only constitutes 3.67% of the accumulating CO2 levels, which must mean that other, ie, natural sources, are supplying 96% of the accumulating amount, and the argument is that if the 3.67% amount ceases it will still take a century for the CO2 levels to drop back. Remarkable.
But there’s more; MattB@155 says: “I don’t think it is unreasonable to draw from that figure that it will be > 100 years before temps would drop as well”; here’s what the IPCC says about the temperature delay: IPCC AR4 summary for policy makers, Page 13 line 5 from the top:
“even if all radiative forcing agents are held constant at year 2000 level a further warming trend would occur in the next 2 decades at a rate of about 0.1C per decade, due mainly to the slow response of the oceans”.
Since 2000, CO2 levels and ACO2 emissions have continued to rise; and what has been the temperature response: 0.00298777 per year or 0.029 per decade according to HADCRUT. I repeat this idea of a delayed temperature response, the pipeline effect, is a fabrication by the IPCC to justify their distinction between TCS and ECS [as explained at comment 77], a distinction which does not exist in the real world.
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I think maybe you studied physics at Hogwarts, ’cause there is no mechanism outside of magic that can distinguish the two species.
Once again I’ll link the graph of the definitive tracer experiment that shows empirically how long CO2 stays in the atmosphere.
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So Mattb @155, increasing CO2 has a warming effect but decreasing it doesn’t lead to cooling?. Is that a handwave or asssumption of (so far hidden) ocean heat?
In response to your assertion “that it will be > 100 years before temps would drop as well” here’s three points in reply.
1. non sequitur since elevated [CO2] is not causing warming. Whether he meant Temps or CO2 concentration, Flummery’s 1000 years is all Flim-Flam.
2. The main thing I disagree with in Jo’s post is the 4 year figure for complete reabsorbtion back to 1850’s [CO2]. nb.[]=”concentration of”. Jo says above “If a quarter of all atmospheric CO2 is being turned over each year, this implies that if humans found the Fountain of Endless Energy and stopped emitting any CO2 tomorrow, within just four years, only about 30% of that CO2 would remain. …(BTW note she’s correctly using an exponential decline here in the calc, unlike some of those posters here who seem to assume linear)… Indeed 90% of all the emissions that we’d ever put up there since Cheops built a pointy rock house* would be gone by 2020.
But this doesn’t mean the cumulative (lets assume all anthropogenic) emissions of +100ppm would be gone in four years as the headline suggests, and others seem to be trying to argue. That assumes linear decline. Nor does it mean a residency time of four years.
3. regarding Residency time of CO2, and time for [CO2] to decline.
I’ll go along with Freeman Dyson who says that
So residency time is 12 years, but turnover of 8% does not lead to 12 years reversion to baseline [CO2]. Not only is that a linear assumption, but it doesn’t take into account, as Dyson says “and returned” ; ie. decay and fires re-emit. So 8% linear reabsorption rate (much less 25%) will not happen. If even if 8% exponential decline were true atmospheric CO2 could be halved in just nine years (1.08^-9 =0.5), ie back to below pre-Industrial concentrations, <285ppm.
Hmmm.. If 8% is too much and 12 years too short, what [CO2] decline rate are reasonable if A-emissions stop tomorrow?
Firstly, I note the Mauna Loa graph has a wiggle and a step. Lets say the wiggle is natural emission and re-emissions, and the step is the anthropogenic bit ‘A’CO2. That means if ACO2 stops and all other sources and sinks are as per yr1850 conditions, the step part flattens immediately, no more trends, just the wiggle. For it to change direction and wiggle downward to 285ppm, the downwiggle has to become bigger than the upwiggle, ie biosphere must become a greater sink than it is now. While I don’t find it too hard to imagine that Mother Gaia (in a strictly empirical sense 🙂 ) can reabsorb at the same rate we have been emitting without batting an eyelid*, the decline rate could be perhaps 1-2% p.a, but not 8% p.a and certainly not 25% p.a.
Thats why IMHO 4 years is just not a reasonable headline number. On some further reflection 100 years is probably too long. At even 1% p.a exponentially declining downstep, we could reach 285ppm in 30 years. Of course ACO2 is not going to stop tomorrow, but it will pull up in short order as solar technologies continue to drop in cost. When they are oil and coal equivalent, the hydrocarbon energy era will be over. I will live to see it happen.
So even if four years is too quick by far, the Flummery conjecture is not just half-baked, it is completely cooked.
*The biosphere can re-absorb, with vegetation expansion, by as little as 1% biomass p.a. …would you notice if leaves were 1% bigger each year? And even if the ocean outgasses for a while, soil carbon and vegetation will continue to soak it up as should the Carbonistas. But 2% exponential decline is probably an overestimate, since this would mean it could take only 15 years to decline from 385 to 285ppm (1.02^-15=0.74, 0.74 x 385=285ppm).
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2. The main thing I disagree with in Jo’s post is the 4 year figure for complete reabsorbtion back to 1850′s [CO2].
Sorry that’s misquoting Jo. I see she meant a reduction of 70/100 ppm in four years, ie back to ~300ppm CO2.
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No wrong again
90% of mans emissions will be gone in ten years (2020) all you have to do now is show conclusively how much the increase from 275ppm in 1750 to the 390 odd ppm today is from man then work out what 90% is and so on.
Good luck with that Mullingbulimiilie
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Mull; if you assume an exponential decline of CO2, if ACO2 stops then reversion to pre-industrial levels of ~280PPM would take 13 years at a constant decline factor of 2% [380 X 0.02, X 13],
which is well within the parameters of accumulation set by Ferdinand Engelbeen, the leading advocate of ACO2 being the entire cause of the increase in CO2;
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html#Extra:_how_much_human_CO2_is_in_the_atmosphere
If you are interested in Fredinand’s debate with Spencer on this topic you can google it; I can’t be bothered linking it; I respect Ferdinand but this aspect of the AGW debate is bonkers; the 3 issues, whether ACO2 has caused the entire increase in CO2, the residency time of that CO2 and how long it would take for reversion to pre-industrial levels are, in my opinion, red herrings for reasons I mention at comment 77 above about climate sensitivity, which is the real issue. The point about all the charts, 1/2 lifes, residency times of molecules and mass, blah, blah are just a distraction by the IPCC from the fact that ACO2 has no effect; bone up on Beer-Lambert and Miskolczi instead.
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“So Mattb @155, increasing CO2 has a warming effect but decreasing it doesn’t lead to cooling?. Is that a handwave or asssumption of (so far hidden) ocean heat?”
That’s not at all what I said. you know that.
On Dyson… why does he use 8% as what is dealt with by vegetation, but ignore the turnover directly with the oceans. You can see in the diagram Jo uses that the ocean annual turnover is 50% larger than the 60GT turnover by vegetation. and then there is anothy 60GT with the soils If his 8% is that 60GT, then the full 60 + 60 + 90 = about 25%. His paragraph only deals with vegetation turnover.
Dyson also does not suggest that 8% is removed, but absorbed and reemitted.
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Crackar “90% of mans emissions will be gone in ten years (2020) all you have to do now is show conclusively how much the increase from 275ppm in 1750 to the 390 odd ppm today is from man then work out what 90% is and so on.”
NO NO NO NO! because over the years to 2020 nearly every single molecule of CO2 that is “gone” as you put it will have been directly replaced by another CO2 molecule (Just like Dyson says in hillbilly’s quote). SO you cannot just use the calculation you propose.
TRY MY RICE EXPERIMENT!!!
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Cohenite@162 “[380 X 0.02, X 13] “… that’s linear ! Surely you’re not suggesting that another 13 years of no emissions after the first 13, would result in 185ppm? and then ~85ppm by year 39? (that’s the implication of your calc). For 13 years exponential decline you could use 1.02^-13 as I did, but to be honest, even that’s only an approximation, and will overshoot as well.
So lets assume the 285ppm is an asymptote, ie Mother Nature vacuums up the Carbon at a slower and slower rate as the asymptote is approached, and no amount of reduced ACO2 emission is going to result in less than 285ppm. The argument is now about the steepness of initial decline. The step and wiggle of the curvaceous Mauna Loa hula dance suggests where to look for an answer for that exponent. Prof. Fluffy’s 1000 year figure would have to assume an impossibly slow decline in both [CO2] and temp (ie radiant and convective heat loss at surface). On the other hand the 4 year x 90% (ie 90ppm) figure in this post assumes a seemingly impossibly high boost in biosphere uptake. I would notice if my lawn and every surrounding leaf on every tree was 25% bigger next year, but I mightn’t really notice if it was just 1% bigger every year for 30 years. I’d especially not notice, if plenty of the 1% was sequestered in the soil or, as MattB helpfully points out, accreted in marine shells and sediments. 🙂
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I assumed he meant ^13 not X 13 to be honest.
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MattB@163
I asked >increasing CO2 has a warming effect but decreasing it doesn’t lead to cooling?
Can you answer that directly?
You said >Dyson also does not suggest that 8% is removed, but absorbed and reemitted.
which is actually what I said too. The ~8% annual fluctuation is the wiggle part. Do you have a credible view on the step part if ACO2 ceases?
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Mull, the formula I used is a negative compound interest one, so I don’t know what your point is, and I’m not suggesting anything other than what I’ve already said at 162; as interesting as this is it still is as relevant as Lady Ga Ga’s IQ. The fact is noone has any idea about the system’s capacity to suck down CO2 and at what rate, although the history is interesting for not only showing no correlation between CO2 and temperature:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2,Temperaturesandiceages-f.pdf
But also the uncertainty about previous levels of CO2:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
It is probably the case that the current rate of CO2 increase is unusual but the thing is while there have been numerous sudden and rapid temperature changes recorded in recent and long history, only one, the PETM, has been upward, and NONE have been correlated with CO2 spurts, up or down, not even the PETM.
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…Continuing with using an asymptote to describe the decline… (It would be easier to do this If I could pop a graph in here).
Let’s think of [CO2] on the Y-axis and time on the X-axis. We are currently at say Y=385, and are interested in the region above Y=285, ie lets say the anthropogenic “excess” is 100ppm, which of course Mother Nature will vacuum up if emissions stopped.
Since 285 is an asymptote it will never, (purely in a mathematical sense) never actually get to 285, but its easy to calculate how long it will take to get to a 90% reduction of that 100ppm, (ie drop from 385 to 295 mm) by simply assuming a certain percentage rate reduction in the “excess” only.
For example, a 90% reduction in the 100ppm “excess” that is available to the biophere could happen in 30 years using a rate of 8% purely for that excess fraction of 100ppm. (1.08^-30 =0.10)
So that’s 8ppm decline year 1, 7.4ppm in year 2, 6.9ppm in year 3…year 30 0.8ppm decline, sum total ~90ppm decline.
Even if the annual decline was just 1% of the “excess” 100ppm (I don’t believe for a moment that Mother Nature’s appetite for Carbon is so limted), it would fall back to 295ppm within 230 years.
1000 year egg on face Prof Funnery.! Copping a hiding from another decline !
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Cohenite@168, all good points with which I can agree, since you and I and most readers of this blog know that elevated [CO2] is not causing significant warming, let alone CAGW. So, yes, in that sense who cares if its 4 years or 1000 for [CO2] to decline by a given amount? On the other hand it would be nice to see a correction to the 4 year 90% decline figure up there in the headline, and the 28% per year up-suck in the text, because it undermines credibility to stick with those figures.
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“increasing CO2 has a warming effect but decreasing it doesn’t lead to cooling?”
as soon as you stop emitting the CO2 don’t stop dropping, and once it starts the T does not start dropping as there are other feedbacks (that you guys dispute) that are also warming. For example depleted arctic sea ice reduces reflection of solar radiation.
in 170, how is the 28% in the text bogus?
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I do wonder if Flannery had meant to say 1000 years until temps would reach pre-industrial levels though.
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MattB @172
Flummoxery said “ ..perhaps as much as a thousand years because the system is overburdened with CO2 that has to be absorbed and that only happens slowly“. So, he’s not talking about less albedo reflectivity as you suggest, …which BTW I accept as real enough in a physical sense but nowhere near sufficient to keep T elevated for 1000 years. He is grossly underestimating [CO2] absorbtion by the biosphere.
28% is the gross uptake, but as you have already pointed out, it doesn’t take into account the decay releases.
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About the myth that CO2 is rising at 2PPM/year.
The March 1958 level was 315.71 PPM the current level is 392.40 so that is 1.45 PPM/year.
The March 2010 level was 391.01 so the growth rate has dropped to 1.39/year and is falling fast.
Season corrected CO2 for 2011
Jan 390.99
Feb 390.92
March 390.86
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
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“28% is the gross uptake, but as you have already pointed out, it doesn’t take into account the decay releases.”
NO!!!!! 28% is the turnover! The uptake is about 1Gt p.a. and that does not take into account decay releases.
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Good point Siliggy; and emissions are rising an an increasing rate; so sinks are definately increasing and as Richard said earlier, CO2 is not increasing and only ACO2 is but sinks are increasing more OR CO2 is increasing at a greater or lessor rate than ACO2 but sinks are increasing at an even greater rate than the first option.
But at least the science is settled.
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MattB
>as soon as you stop emitting the CO2 don’t stop dropping,
Why not? Plants and marine organisms have a voracious appetite for CO2 when a “surplus” is available.
On the other hand if you’re talking about Australia only, then I’d agree. We can stop emitting tomorrow, and it would make less than 0.5ppm difference to [CO2] over the next 15 years.
So what is the purpose of stopping or reducing [CO2] emissions if it won’t change the climate?
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MattB, read the diagram again. Plants absorb 121+0.5 Gt C (16%of the 750 Gt in the air, and oceans absorb 92Gt (12%). BUT the vegetation emits 60 Gt, soil 60 Gt and fire 1.6 Gt yr, and oceans emit 92 Gt. So gross uptake may be 28%, but re-emission is pretty close to balancing that, as it must if there is no “natural” build up. Dyson’s figure of 8% presumably excludes the soil/litter decay emissions.
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“Carbon sink at South Pole has grown recently, historical collections reveal”
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-02/cp-csa021611.php
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I’m reading the figure just fine thanks.
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Sp where do you (dyson) get 8% if the natural inputs and outputs balance? To me his 8% is clearly a reference to the 60Gt vegetation role.
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Matt B, you are a secular saint! It is amazing watching people showing an inability to understand simple things – “I can’t understand this because I don’t want to”.
And KR, I read your first post with confusion – saying that Flannery was out by an order of magnitude, but your argument indicated that you understood the basics of what was going on. I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt and join with the others here and give you a thumbs up 🙂
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Silligy, Cohenite, it has been my opinion that when there is less ice at the poles there would be both more co2 absorption AND more efficient cooling to space. In other words the overall effect of less ice is a modulation effect reducing earth average temp. The warmists would all claim albedo changes due to ice loss work in reverse of what is really happening.
Care to comment?
yes indeed!
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Friends:
This argument about residence time is mistaken because it is using the wrong model. You are assuming that the carbon cycle acts like a set of tanks linked by pipes that carry CO2 between them and with e.g. the atmosophere, the oceans and the biosphere each emulating one of the tanks.
But as I repeatedly explained above (e.g. at #95 and #102) that is certainly not a correct model. For example, I repeatedly said;
If the model you are debating were correct then the pulse of anthropogenic CO2 into the atmosphere in a year would relate to that year’s rise of CO2 in the atmosphere. But it does not. In some years the pulse is almosty entirely absorbed by the system and in other years almost none of it is.
The IPCC ignores the implication of this empirical refutation of their model and they overcome it by applying 5-year smoothing to the data. But this ‘fiddle’ cannot be justified.
Two or three year smoothing could be justified, but smoothing over longer periods than three years cannot.
Two year smoothing is justifiable because some countries may estimate their annual emissions from different start times (i.e. some may assess from the start of January to the end of the following December while others assess from the start of April to the end of the following March).
And additional smoothing can be jusatified because in some years some countries may not complete their accounting on time so some of their CO2 from one year may be recorded as having been emitted in the following year. Hence, three year smoothing can be justified.
But there is no known reason why smoothing over periods longer than three years would be required.
However, the Berne Model adopted by the IPCC is applied using data that is smoothed over 5-years because it does not agree with the data unless the data subjected to this unjustifiable amount of smoothing. (Any data can be made to fit any model if the data is tortured sufficiently).
And that model is similar to the one you are considering.
The need for that 5-year smoothing demonstrates that a realistic model of that type would have ‘tanks’ and ‘pipes’ that constantly vary their sizes in response to a variety of factors (e.g. solar behaviour, cloud variation, etc.) including the CO2 concentrations in each ‘tank’.
Simply, you are having an ‘Angels on a pin’ discussion because you are not discussing what happens in the real world where everything is changing all the time.
Richard
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Where to begin?
Joe Lalonde: #83. Yes. The omission is rather blatant. Note too that very small errors in the estimated oceanic absorption/emission quantities will quickly overshadow the alleged human output.
janama: #103. Great link. I’d noticed previously that, based on the Lake Nyos data and estimates of total volcano count, volcanic CO2 output is very likely significant. Remember, however, that subsea volcanic CO2 probably takes a long, long time to reach the surface.
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Sticking to the actual thread topic:
Currently we’re producing enough CO2 to raise atmospheric concentration by 4ppm/year, but seeing an actual rise of around 2ppm. So the oceans and biosphere are absorbing 2ppm/year or so.
We’re currently at 390ppm, with a pre-industrial level of 280. If we stopped producing CO2 right now a 2ppm/year decrease would (if linear) take 55 years to reduce CO2 to the pre-industrial levels. Consider that a minimum timeframe.
If, instead, the rate of decrease is proportional to the amount over equilibrium, and the decrease is by just under 2%/year (2ppm of the excess 110ppm present as a ratio), then the half-life of the CO2 excess will be about 38 years – the time to drop from 390 to 335.
That means half will be gone in 38 years, 75% in 76 years, 125 years to reach 90% gone.
Details on the math I used: 108/110 = 0.98182 left after one year. Ln(0.5)/Ln(0.98182) = 37.78 years to 50%, Ln(0.1)/Ln(0.98182) = 125.49 years to 10% excess left.
I believe that’s a more appropriate physical model – certainly the rate of absorption will go down as the excess decreases.
So – a minimum of 55 years at a continuous steady rate, >125 years to 90% gone with exponential reductions: The 3-4 year claim starting this thread does not hold up.
—
Side notes:
People putting forth this 3-4 year claim based on CO2 leaving the atmosphere simply don’t take into account the rate of CO2 entering the atmosphere. As to “Anthropogenic CO2” decreasing, and whether that matters – whether it’s CO2 concentration, water behind a dam, or for that matter dollars in my pocket, I don’t care where the CO2, water, or money came from – I care about how much there is!
Adieu.
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Kr as per post 174 the growth rate is 1.45PPM long term or 1.39PPM over the last year.
CO2 can fall Quickly as it did after the 1940 blip:
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/
CO2 did not increase over the year 1964 so why would it now?
“1964.042 319.57”
“1965.042 319.44”
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
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Mark D.:
April 7th, 2011 at 10:59 pm
The Arctic ice has been increasing in area for long enough to see that it is a clear and continuing trend. So the increased albedo from all the extra northern hemisphere snow would be much more significant.
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KR, @ 186 good you disagree with all the “hot” warmists too.
The neat and simple 4 in 2 out looks reasonable and it is good to know that even though co2 is on a natural rise, apparently the well understood sinks can gobble up half of what we dump into the air.
You haven’t explained why the co2 was rising much before the use of petroleum and coal however. http://www.realclimate.org/epica_co2_f4.jpeg
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Siliggy (spelled right this time) I wouldn’t quarrel with snow albedo, I still have some in my back yard today. The DNR in Minnesota has delayed fishing season opener by one week because it has been such an AGW winter.
It seems though that arctic ice area is less than it was in 79 and seems to have been less for a while. That is what I was considering in my earlier post. More open water = more cooling and more sinking of c02
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Mark D.:
April 8th, 2011 at 7:52 am
“It seems though that arctic ice area is less than it was in 79”
It is less but by a very very small amount (0.6 percent per decade) and what a relief that is!
Imagine how bad the screaming would be if it was larger than what it got to at the end of the 70s ice age scare.
Yes the darker sea will radiate more heat out during the long Arctic night. Yes the angle of the sun being so low means the albedo up there makes very little difference (more reflection due to angle of incidence).
However this is all such a very small change. Look at the tiny difference between the ice and the lines. http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent_hires.png
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KR:
Your post at #186 asserts:
Say what!?
Have you read the discussion or are you simply making stuff up again?
Please note that I do not agree the methodology being applied to get any of the ‘residence time’ values. Indeed, as I explained in my post at #184 I consider the concept of ‘residence time’ to be mistaken. But I do not assert that the discussants “don’t take into account the rate of CO2 entering the atmosphere”. They all do: read their comments.
The important matter to determine is whether the atmospheric CO2 concentration would have risen more, or less or at the same rate if the anthropogenic emission had not occured: and we know too little about the carbon cycle to resolve that issue.
Richard
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MattB in 164,
This is getting tiresome, Mullunbinny said “Sorry that’s misquoting Jo. I see she meant a reduction of 70/100 ppm in four years, ie back to ~300ppm CO2.”
I said in response in an effort to keep it factual “No wrong again 90% of mans emissions will be gone in ten years (2020)”
What did Jo say “Indeed 90% of all the emissions that we’d ever put up there since Cheops built a pointy rock house* would be gone by 2020.”
And you jump talking about rice………….
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Richard in 192,
Yes we do not know enough about the carbon cycle to make the bold statements being made here but then again all great religions are based on bold statements.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
This link talks about a study which shows the planet is getting greener, due to CO2? If so then KR’s calculations are thrown out the window.
This link gives you a small taste as to how many sub marine volcanos are out there, this obviously effects sea level, sea temp, CO2 levels and of course acidification.
http://www.iceagenow.com/Ocean_Warming.htm
Whilst on the subject how come the oceans are acidifying but lakes and rivers are not?
A head line from a NASA article (not linked)
“We thought we’d find a dozen, but we found a thousand volcanoes”
So yes Richard you are correct when you say we dont know shit from clay when it comes to the carbon cycle.
By the way i will throw in this link i stumbled across just for laughs.
http://www.brighthub.com/environment/green-living/articles/61664.aspx
Opening statement
“Part of working towards a cleaner planet and reducing the effects of pollution is creating more green material to purify the air and provide a healthier, more sustainable earth. Learn how plants help us reduce pollution and easy ways to enhance the biosphere simply by planting a seed.”
So plants reduce pollution?
The pollution scare is quickly dropped and replaced with carbon dioxide from here on as they explain that planting more trees will reduce the CO2 levels. Shamefully the warmist buffoons will gobble this up.
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The carbon cycle has “dead ends”.
“In the May issue of Deep Sea Research, scientists report that salps, about the size of a human thumb, swarming by the billions in “hot spots” may be transporting tons of carbon per day from the ocean surface to the deep sea and keep it from re-entering the atmosphere.”
http://www.astrobiology.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=20252
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What about other types of jellyfish growing up in large numbers to take the carbon suddenly down down and away?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFht6owZ69k
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12235-jellyfish-swarms-threaten-mediterranean-beach-bums.html
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o/t but
Top climate scientist needs donations to fight a libel suit by Mann
see http://johnosullivan.livejournal.com/34877.html
when Climategate occurred I started to look into the evidence substantiating AGW and non AGW
And I found Dr Ball’s articles most illuminating
I’m donating a large amount (for me) and will continue donating
I do thank the scientists including of course Dr Ball who were not influenced by the money trail
and they deserve support
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“If a quarter of all atmospheric CO2 is being turned over each year, this implies that if humans found the Fountain of Endless Energy and stopped emitting any CO2 tomorrow, within just four years, only about 30% of that CO2 would remain. Indeed 90% of all the emissions that we’d ever put up there since Cheops built a pointy rock house* would be gone by 2020.”
That is completely wrong. “Turned over” doesn’t mean CO2 levels actually fall. It means CO2 molecules getting replaced by other CO2 molecules. The idea that CO2 levels would drop back to preindustrial levels in 4 years is wrong.
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SoCold or LowLot
Have a look at plant growth in 2011 – keep the CO2 levels increasing – food production world wide has increased. Amazed LOWLOT? Temperatures down and ice increasing?
You missed the mistake in your post 198 as per below: “NOT your warped unscientific view of the world”
Cheops did not build a “pointy rock house” – his name was KHUFU not Cheops – and his mummy has never been found!
Don’t comment on history or science if you are unable to realise fact from fiction. You with me So Cold / Low Lot.
MattyBee has manners and a belief in his desire to join the IPCC – you are as Matty Bee described that Johny Brookie (your Lucy mate – the farmer LOL) someone – “as useful as flyscreens on a submarine”
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Socold, do you agree with what KR said at 186:
?
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Siliggy, You know that scalps piss acid don’t you?
🙂
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The carbon reservoir cartoon misses out the CO2 being emitted by the earth’s crust itself – via volcanoes, fracture systems, etc. The model is incomplete.
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I am looking for evidence of the effects of CO2 as demonstrated using an updated apparatus based on the one described by John Tyndall in 1861. I’ve searched the internet, asked the UK’s Met Office, the USA’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre (CDIAC) and also posed the question on the Watt’s Up With That and Skeptical Science websites. No-one knows of such an experiment. I’ve been told that ‘the physics is well understood’, and that the experiment is conducted in schools everywhere. Perhaps so. However, unless someone’s conducted experiments in a professional laboratory using a chamber into which various gases at different concentrations can be pumped using modern instrumentation to assess the effect of CO2, then I think the whole CO2 story is on very weak foundations indeed. Yes, an apparatus as suggested isn’t the real world, but it would give measurable results using actual gases in a controlled experiment. If it hasn’t been done, why not?
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