Pop Quiz: Human Emissions Stabilize, but Carbon in Atmosphere still rises, what to think?

Apparently human emissions of CO2 have stopped growing in the last few years, but atmospheric levels of CO2 are rising anyway.

IEA data shows CO2 emissions stopped rising:

Global Carbon Emissions, 2017, IEA, Graph.

Global Carbon Emissions, 2017, IEA, Graph.

 

Pop-Quiz — The correct conclusion from this is:

1/ Human emissions are irrelevant — global CO2 is controlled by ocean currents, phytoplankton, other stuff. Efforts to control global CO2 through windmills and electric cars are a complete waste of money.
2/ Natural sinks have suddenly filled up, the ocean is full, and we are near a tipping point.  Panic. Give us your money.
3/ Pretend not to notice, instead, rejoice that Global GDP is still increasing which means that for the first time in 100,000 years, humans have disconnected economic development from burning carbon based stuff. This is proof finally, in your faith that renewables will not cripple economies. (See Scientific American.)
4/ Declare that global emissions are still rising rapidly anyway. (Here is the same award-winning Peter Boyer not researching his claims in 2016. When will he start?)

Global atmospheric CO2 levels at Mauna Loa are still rising:

Global CO2 Levels, Mauna Loa, graph, 2017, NOAA.

Global CO2 Levels, Mauna Loa, graph, 2017, NOAA.  | Source NY Times

….

 

Carbon in Atmosphere Is Rising, Even as Emissions Stabilize

Justin Gillis, NY Times.
… a bank of sophisticated machines sniffs that air day and night, revealing telltale indicators of the way human activity is altering the planet on a major scale.

For more than two years, the monitoring station here, along with its counterparts across the world, has been flashing a warning: The excess carbon dioxide scorching the planet rose at the highest rate on record in 2015 and 2016. A slightly slower but still unusual rate of increase has continued into 2017.

Scientists are concerned about the cause of the rapid rises because, in one of the most hopeful signs since the global climate crisis became widely understood in the 1980s, the amount of carbon dioxide that people are pumping into the air seems to have stabilized in recent years, at least judging from the data that countries compile on their own emissions.

That raises a conundrum: If the amount of the gas that people are putting out has stopped rising, how can the amount that stays in the air be going up faster than ever? Does it mean the natural sponges that have been absorbing carbon dioxide are now changing?

“To me, it’s a warning,” said Josep G. Canadell, an Australian climate scientist who runs the Global Carbon Project, a collaboration among several countries to monitor emissions trends.

Scientists have spent decades measuring what was happening to all of the carbon dioxide that was produced when people burned coal, oil and natural gas. They established that less than half of the gas was remaining in the atmosphere and warming the planet. The rest was being absorbed by the ocean and the land surface, in roughly equal amounts.

In essence, these natural sponges were doing humanity a huge service by disposing of much of its gaseous waste. But as emissions have risen higher and higher, it has been unclear how much longer the natural sponges will be able to keep up.

Continue reading the main story

For those looking for an economic growth and GDP link:

 

Global Carbon Emissions, 2016.

Global Carbon Emissions have leveled off in the last few years. | Source.

It depends on how you draw the graph. Here’s the new IEA version (looks like a pretty strong link to me, could it really have “diverged”?):

Global CO2 emissions, GDP, economic growth, graph, IEA, 2017.

Possible inferences:

1/ The global economy is still growing despite our CO2 emissions stabilizing — hence the global economy is being powered by “renewable energy” (or is not dependent on energy production for the first time in human civilization.)

2/ Our emissions records are more dodgy than ever. China and India are just pouring it out and no one trusts their statistics, or fudgy numbers on land-use hide the growth.

3/ Our method of counting global GDP is wrong, corrupted, or flawed, and overestimates economic growth, or economic growth is more dependent on money manufacturing or hidden inflation.

 

9.4 out of 10 based on 106 ratings

328 comments to Pop Quiz: Human Emissions Stabilize, but Carbon in Atmosphere still rises, what to think?

  • #

    What is the equilibrium ppm atmospheric CO2 for this level of emissions?

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    • #

      What makes you think there will be an equilibrium. With strong positive feedback, delay and a decline in human output, isn’t high amplitude oscillation more likely?

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      • #
        Bobl

        No natural systems have negative feedback

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        • #

          Agreed Bobl but warmists claim the opposite. So i want to see them attempt to paint the way back out of the corner.

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        • #
          Paul Aubrin

          The only natural systems with positive feedbacks are oscillators.
          A system with positive feedback is awaiting a perturbation, even the slightest one at the right frequency, to leave its state and trigger to a stabler state (one with stabilizing negative feedbacks).
          So all ‘natural’ systems have negative feedbacks.

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          • #

            Paul Aubrin. No that is not correct. Take for example a natural dam with a small leak. The leak will open and widen itself. This is positive feedback that will empty and destroy the dam. Oscillation needs a greater than 90 degree delay of positive feedback at a resonant frequency. So that the positive feedback becomes overwhelming negative feedback.
            “A system with positive feedback is awaiting a perturbation,…” No it will provide its own perturbation. There is always even if only very tiny, an offset from zero and noise. These are then amplified by the positive feedback. Oscillation and or runaway will occur without a trigger if the gain ever exceeds 1. That is a self reinforcing feedback doubles the amplitude. So Hanson’s early claim of 3 as a positive gain is a classic foot shot.

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            • #
              Craig Thomas

              Not to mention if the level of water in the dam falls below the level of the breach….

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            • #
              delory

              Sorry Siliggy, but I think you may be incorrect (unless your definition of ‘negative feedback’ and ‘positive feedback’ is different to the standard definition as used in control theory).

              Natural system occur that have both positive and negative feedback. Your example of a dam breach is a good example of a system with positive feedback. The classical example is the ‘inverted pendulum’. These systems do not remain in a stable state (due to the positive feedback) and quickly ‘undo’ themselves, as the feedback from any small deviation acts to drive the system further in the direction of the deviation.
              Examples of negative feedback in nature are also plentiful (predator/prey models, normal pendulum, etc..). These systems are stable, as the feedback acts on small deviations in a manner that opposes the deviation, which drives the system back toward the stable state.

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              • #

                Delory. The R & D company did not waste its money on worldwide patents in my name for nested feedback systems that control continuosly variable transmissions. With your upside down pendulum it will accelerate as it falls past zero degrees horizontal. As it passes 90 degrees verttical then it is going back up. The gain was less than one so it will not do a full revolution. If it had fallen through say a stream of fast falling water then the energy gain may be greater than one so the delayed energy now pushes it back up and over. Again and again.

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              • #
                cohenite

                Interesting; but doesn’t nature work on the basis of maximum entropy production (MEP). This is consistent with the second law and the energy asymmetry of the planet. Apart from relatively minor internal energy sources the Earth gets all its energy from the SUN; sans variations in that source the planet does not magnify that energy. AGW has attempted to circumvent this by postulating a delay in the MEP/second law by the ‘trapping’ action of CO2 and not just any CO2 but human CO2. ON first principles, if humans are not responsible for all or any of the increase in CO2 any homeostatic processes consistent with MEP are moot.

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              • #
                Craig Thomas

                We know for sure that humans are responsible for the recent 120ppm increase of CO2 in the atmosphere through carbon accounting as well as isotopic analysis, so your final hypothesis is moot.

                We also know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that fact has been known for the best part of 200 years. Roy Spencer explains it here:
                http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/12/what-if-there-was-no-greenhouse-effect/

                Finally, steer clear of bringing any law of thermodynamics into this, because that would be 100% crank. The second law of thermodynamics is not an argument against evolution any more than it is an argument against the atmospheric greenhouse effect. We aren’t talking about a simple closed system, but a relationship between complex systems.

                [I guess we should ignore water vapor and clouds which are demonstrably more powerful causes of “greenhouse effect” than CO2. But I’ll let you go ahead and make this argument if you want to.] AZ

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              • #
                Craigthomas

                No need and water vapour is not ignored.
                Roy Spencer explains it very clearly

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              • #
                Harry Twinotter

                “[I guess we should ignore water vapor and clouds which are demonstrably more powerful causes of “greenhouse effect” than CO2. But I’ll let you go ahead and make this argument if you want to.] AZ”

                And AZ comes out with the ol’ water vapour red herring. You are following the script I see – the blog owner will be proud.

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            • #
              Bobl

              No, bode feedback as in the climate models requires an energy source to be positive. Once the energy is expended the populations are always limited by negative feedback, the dam empties and stops flowing because the leak has destroyed the energy source.

              Mouse populations can grow exponentially but eventually are limited by the food (energy source) being limited. They saturate.

              As CO2 level grows, plants photosynthesise more and expand Teri Tori ally and in density (more plants per square metre) absorption of CO2 by water rises, these are negative feedback typical of natural systems. The only reason CO2 can rise is because emission is RISING whether natural or man made. If emissions are static (like) now then the CO2 level will fall as the increasing sinks in the biosphere take it up at an ever increasing rate. If CO2 is rising then emission IS rising, if it’s not mankind then it has to be the unknown natural emissions.

              Also, the climate models assume CO2 redirects Energy groundward then multiplies that energy by retaining heat through feedback, but that requires there be a power supply, but the suns energy is already used up. As such the feedback can’t draw on the suns energy to fuel it and can’t be positive. This is why the feedback models fail to conserve energy at the surface.

              To put it simpler if you want to make the surface hotter then something else has to be colder.

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              • #

                Do not confuse the sign of the change with the sign of the feedback. If a population is in decline, positive(reinforcing) feedback will make it decline faster. If you are pushing your friend on a swing in the park you only ever push them down to make them go higher. Positive feeddback is inphase with the change.

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              • #

                Likewise if temperatures begin to fall, positive feedback will make them fall faster. The sign belongs to the reinforcing or opposition to change.

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        • #
          delory

          Hi Bobl,
          In your first comment ((#1.1.1) you said “No natural systems have negative feedback”. Was there a comma (or hyphen) missing after the ‘No’? It seems that the rest of your posts give examples of how physical systems are ultimately limited (ie. cannot ‘go to infinity’), which you rightly point out is negative feedback. This seems to contradict your first comment which creates some confusion.

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      • #
        Alfred

        I am utterly confused. People use positive and negative feedback in totally contradictory ways.

        The proper definition for positive feedback is:

        “the enhancing or amplification of an effect by its own influence on the process which gives rise to it.”

        An example of positive feedback is population growth – the more people you have the more babies get born and the more people you have. Positive feedback is essentially when things are out of control. Eventually, some sort of negative feedback mechanism sets in to control this situation – e.g. old age, famine, war or disease – and prevents the population from growing any further or decreases it.

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        • #
          Bobl

          And it’s that ultimate saturation negative feedback that has it that all natural systems are ultimately bounded by negative feedback. The earth average temperature over the last million years hasn’t changed by more than 8 degrees in 288 or 3% that’s remarkably stable and therefore must be bounded by negative feedback.

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    • #
      Mikky

      Jo has made a schoolboy error here, if you keep pumping air into a bicycle tire, even at a constant rate, the pressure will keep rising.

      You need to look at the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2, and see if that rate has reduced in response to the (supposed) flattening off of human emissions.

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      • #
        el gordo

        Thankfully the earth is not a tube.

        ‘…(supposed) flattening off of human emissions.’

        Slower GDP will do it every time, the runs are on the board.

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      • #
        Craig Thomas

        Agreed.
        The really interesting observation would be if CO2 levels continued to rise if human emissions ceased altogether.
        That would be the positive feedback, as seen in the geological record, of warming causing CO2 increases.

        The fact is that humans are adding 10Gt/year, and CO2 is rising by about 5Gt/year. There is zero need to invoke unknown, unobserved, and thus entirely mysterious mechanisms to explain this when the +5Gt/year is clearly the result of the +10Gt/year.

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        • #
          el gordo

          ‘That would be the positive feedback …’

          If C12 and C13 are taken out of the mix and C14 continues to rise, then surely its a negative feedback.

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          • #
            Craig Thomas

            If C12 and C13 were taken out of the mix, all plant life on earth would die within days.

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            • #
              el gordo

              It would indicate that the biosphere had collapsed.

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            • #
              Bobl

              This IS the real risk with the Alarmist nonsense. Let’s just say your lot were successful Craig and they succeeded in reducing CO2 to 350 ppm as 350.org wants.

              Plants start growing at around 200 ppm and they grow faster and faster as the concentration of CO2 rises such that a 200 ppm rise gets you from zero to the current growth rate (let’s call that 100%). If you lot succeed then the CO2 drops 50ppm out of that 200, or by 25% of that 200ppm that is driving today’s crop yield, what is the loss of crop yield under those conditions.

              CO2 was at 350ppm around 1985 when the population was 4.8 billion, the population now is 7.5 billion, what do you think would happen if food production reduced to 1985 levels because we have 1985 CO2 levels (suitable for 4.8 billion people) with population of 7.5 billion?

              Ironically, it isn’t CO2 that is responding to our population, it’s or population responding to increased CO2 levels. The CO2 is increasing the carrying capacity ( biological health) of the planet.

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              • #
                Craig Thomas

                Our species evolved over the past 100,000 years.
                During that time, CO2 has consistently been between 200 and 300ppm.
                We have now increased it past 400ppm – a CO2 level that has never existed during our species’ time on this planet.

                The CO2 fertilisation effect is not a significant factor behind agricultural productivity improvements over the past 300 years.

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              • #
                el gordo

                Craig the increase in CO2 has only had good effects and if the hiatus continues into the never never it can be safely assumed the system has found equilibrium.

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              • #
                Harry Twinotter

                Bobl.

                You post makes no sense. You seem to be implying that any food production increase from 1985 to now was due to CO2 fertilization. Wow! That is quite the claim…

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        • #
          RB

          Human emissions are 3-4% of all emissions. CO2 is going up because Gaia can’t cope. Why couldn’t Gaia cope when emissions were 5 when it can cope with 5 of the 10?

          22

        • #
          cohenite

          The fact is that humans are adding 10Gt/year, and CO2 is rising by about 5Gt/year.

          That is incorrect. The correct measure of human addition to the atmosphere is the airborne fraction (AF), which is less than the atmospheric increase.

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          • #
            Craig Thomas

            That doesn’t even make sense.
            Carbon accounting tells us fairly precisely how much carbon we are adding to the atmosphere.
            Why would you ignore the known amount of CO2 being added and rely instead on a bizarre inference based on partial data?
            Oh, hang on, I think I know why…

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      • #
        cohenite

        The human emission growth chart is not a rate but a quantity which has declined. The atmospheric chart shows an increase in rate. Human decline in emissions in absolute terms cannot produce an increase in rate.

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        • #
          Gee Aye

          That is incorrect.

          There is nothing in the above data, as presented, that demonstrates support for a rate increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide or a slow down in emissions. Neither case was presented with any statistical rigour. Show me the error bars.

          Anyone, such as Jo who just did, can use that same information and claim just about anything they like regarding the relationship between the increase and its rate.

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        • #
          Gee Aye

          And just to annoy everyone here who is defending Jo’s position even more, this whole discussion is about an interpretation of estimated data put through modelling

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        • #
          Craig Thomas

          Cohenite’s “model” is illogical anyway: the emissions quantity and the annual rate of atmospheric increase do not vary in anything like lockstep.

          If emissions remain steady, and the rate of atmospheric increase goes up, that could indicate – for example – a saturation effect on some source of negative feedback.

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          • #
            cohenite

            I never said they do; don’t verbal me. There is no evidence of any saturation effect on sinks as the greening effect of extra CO2 shows.

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      • #
        Bobl

        No, the earth isn’t a closed system, the “Tyre” has a hole in it, and the size of that hole is proportional to the pressure in the Tyre, so the harder the Tyre is the faster the air escapes. Clearly at some pressure the air out the hole will equal the air being pumped into the Tyre and the Tyre stop inflsting.

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      • #

        In fact what has happened is the following:-

        CO2 emissions are reported by….err…HUMANS.
        The UN has many billions to offer to those who lower their emissions,
        HUMANS who report that they have lowered their CO2 emissions receive some of those billions,
        HUMANS report that they have lowered their emissions.(duh!)

        REALITY:-
        Buggerall has changed. The whole thing is…ummm…err…HUMAN error.

        13

  • #
    David Maddison

    I guess natural CO2 levels continue to rise due to the 800 year lag between natural warming events and CO2 levels. In this case the CO2 continues to rise due to the Medieval Climate Optimum 950-1250. We might expect it to continue to rise for another 30 odd years.

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    • #

      what is the mechanism for this 800 year lag? Where can I go and witness this phenomenon?

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      • #
        David Maddison

        http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming-2/ice-core-graph/

        The mechanism is related to the fact that 98% of “available” CO2 is in the oceans and 2% in the atmosphere, the remaining being buried in the earth and released by volcanoes.

        Due to the huge thermal mass of the oceans it takes some time for oceans to react to past warming when they release CO2 and past cooling where they absorb CO2 since the solubility of CO2 is inversely related to temperature.

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        • #

          you are saying that CO2 is coming out of the oceans now because it was warm 800 years ago?

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          • #
            David Maddison

            Yes.

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            • #

              Well… umm. That’s nice. I’ll be looking forward to seeing the empirical data on that.

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              • #
                crakar24

                LOL, once a mindless believer always a mindless believer.

                Go get educated GA

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              • #

                oh … you must know where it is the Craig my man.

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              • #
                crakar24

                GA,

                I actually thought you were taking the piss as to your expressed lack of knowledge regarding ice core data, in hindsight I now understand you do actually lack knowledge and for that I apologise.

                Let me explain (note I have kept the math as simple as I can)

                The ice core data shows an 800 year lag between the increase in temperature taking the planet out of an ice age and the response from CO2 in regards to said temp rise. The same can be said for when the temps drop as we head into an ice age in that the CO2 drops 800 odd years later. In other words “something” drives the temps then 800 years later the CO2 responds.

                The Medieval Warm Period (MWP

                From WIKI:

                The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) is generally thought to have occurred from about 950–1250, during the European Middle Ages.[4] In 1965 Hubert Lamb, one of the first paleoclimatologists, published research based on data from botany, historical document research and meteorology, combined with records indicating prevailing temperature and rainfall in England around 1200 and around 1600. He proposed, “Evidence has been accumulating in many fields of investigation pointing to a notably warm climate in many parts of the world, that lasted a few centuries around 1000–1200 AD, and was followed by a decline of temperature levels till between 1500 and 1700 the coldest phase since the last ice age occurred.”[9]

                The MWP ended around 1250, now for the tricky math I warned you about.

                What does 1250 + 800 = ?

                Yes that’s right it is very similar to the current year of our lord, so perhaps………….just a tiny perhaps the recent miniscule CO2 increase we have seen may just may be from the 800 year lag.

                Cheers

                Cra….kar24

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              • #
                Mark M

                “you are saying that CO2 is coming out of the oceans now because it was warm 800 years ago?”

                “Well… umm. That’s nice. I’ll be looking forward to seeing the empirical data on that.”
                ~ ~ ~
                Kevin Trenberth: “The oceans can at times soak up a lot of heat. Some goes into the deep oceans where it can stay for centuries.”

                http://www.npr.org/2013/08/23/214198814/the-consensus-view-kevin-trenberths-take-on-climate-change

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              • #
                Gee Aye

                Craker. Is that a serious reply? That is so 2004 and I think you know what I am talking about. Does that really need another thrashing and if so you show me your data and I’ll show you mine. Mine, btw is those ice cores.

                How about considering that climate change has multiple causes and consider things from there. How is the carbon isotope data fro. Those ice cores?

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              • #
                Gee Aye

                iPad typos”data from those ice cores

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              • #
                The Deplorable Vlad the Impaler

                Greetings to you, and yours, Gee Aye:

                This is a most interesting statement: “How about considering that climate change has multiple causes and consider things from there.”

                Unless I have misinterpreted something, I believe that this is what sceptics (such as myself) have been saying for several decades now. Climate ‘change’ cannot be tied to a single variable: the system, global climate, is a coupled, non-linear, dynamic system (and, also lacks stationarity), so there are multitudinous things which can cause the global ‘climate’ to shift, change, alter, or even remain in something of a stasis, for a period of time.

                Geological history is replete with constant change of global ‘climate’ (and I am NOT referring to just the Vostok or EPICA cores; paleoenvironments have been reconstructed, with a measure of accuracy, back into the Late Archean. Obviously, the more recent in time (e.g., Ediacara), the more accurate the reconstruction.

                Over the history we have sufficient data for, there is no relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature. Ice ages should have been impossible in the Cryogenian, if CO2 has the “warming” power claimed by alarmists. The concentration of CO2 in the Cryogenian atmosphere was measured in percents, and you can take your pick of references, but some say as little as 4%, and others prefer numbers as high as 13% (Gradstein, Ogg, and Ogg, Geological Time Scale 2016).

                To head off any possible suggestion that you’ll throw the aged canard, ‘well, the sun was less luminous back then’, I’ll ask, then why was it ever warm in the Proterozoic? It should have been freezing cold all of the time, if the sun was less luminous. You cannot have it both ways: atmospheric CO2 was orders of magnitude higher than today, and under your belief system, the Earth should have been constantly warm. I would refer you to this statement: “How about considering that climate change has multiple causes and consider things from there.”

                I agree; climate change has multiple causes, and not a single one of them has anything to do with carbon dioxide, a trace-gas nutrient for plant life.

                My regards to you and yours,

                The Mostest Deplorablest Vlad the Impalerest, and a Big Bullyest, and and even bigger Bore-est, according to C.T.

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              • #
                Craig Thomas

                Let’s just look at these temp v. CO2 movements shall we?

                10,000 years ago, temperature rose by 10 degrees. CO2 rose by 100ppm
                130,000 years ago, temperature rose by 10 degrees. CO2 rose by 100ppm
                240,000 years ago, temperature rose by 9 degrees. CO2 rose by 80ppm
                330,000 years ago, temperature rose by 10 degrees. CO2 rose by 100ppm

                Now – the MWP involved a warming of 0.5 degrees. We have experienced since 1800 a CO2 increase of 120ppm.

                Can anybody else see the gaping hole in Crakar’s idea that the MWP is responseible for current CO2 increase in the same way that previous warmings caused CO2 increases?

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              • #
                el gordo

                ‘Can anybody else see the gaping hole in Crakar’s idea that the MWP is responsible for current CO2 increase in the same way that previous warmings caused CO2 increases?’

                Yep doesn’t work, as I mentioned elsewhere the CO2 from the MWP didn’t just hang around but was absorbed by the cooling oceans. During the LIA the enigmatic ENSO became robust, with El Nino spikes outgassing more C14.

                This is all fairly straight forward and the mechanisms easily understood, but what I don’t know is who turns off the carbon sinks as the world slides into full glaciation?

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              • #
                Craig Thomas

                How much CO2 is going to be fixed on a lifeless ice-covered continent?

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              • #
                Crakar24

                GA, stop talking gibberish if you believe me to be wrong explain why. (snipped) cts

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              • #
                Crakar24

                CT and gaping holes.

                CT firstly failed to acknowledged the CO2 rise he claims began 800 odd years AFTER the temp rose. This tells us one thing, CO2 did not nor does it now control the temps.

                What it also strongly suggests is the temp controls CO2 after centuries of lag.

                Perhaps this concept is difficult to understand for some people because it requires lateral thinking.

                Secondly, CT acknowledges a 10c increase is accompanied by a 120ppm CO2 rise. Our best guess is a comparable CO2 rise since 1750 so one must ask where is the 10c temp rise.

                Thirdly and finally if the 800 year lag is consistent throughout a 1 million year record then why does CT claim it no longer exists. What mechanism does CT declare to show the lad no longer e lists? Alas as always CT, GA et al simply project beliefs and hollow ones at that.

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              • #
                Craig Thomas

                If X has been known to cause Y, there is no logic on this planet that says that something else cannot also cause Y.

                If I have been late to work once every fortnight due to a late-running train, it is perfectly possible that today’s reason for me being late could be because of the bomb scare at the train station.

                You need to acknowledge that a long history of 10 degree temperature rises being associated with 100ppm CO2 increases *completely* blows out of the water your association between the MWP’s 0.5 degree temperature rise and today’s 120ppm CO2 increase.

                An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.

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              • #
                Crakar24

                CT,

                Your comment makes no sense, rather than resorting to linguistic gymnastics you should stick to the facts we have available.

                Once again……1 million years of temp and CO2 reconstructions clearly show there is an 800 year lag between temp rise and CO2 rise.

                Assuming this relationship holds true now then it is quite plausible to state some or part thereof the CO2 we are seeing is due to the warmth experienced during the MWP.

                A supporting fact to this theory is human emission have levelled over the last 3 years but yet CO2 has continued to rise at the same rate as previous. This fact strongly suggests the rise in CO2 levels recently has been in part from natural origins.

                If so then one must attempt to ascertain the source, I am suggesting that source is from the temp rise 800 years ago.

                I accept you may not agree and wish to debate the matter. However if you wish to debate you need to provide an alternative (fact based argument),I care not as to the reasons why you are late to work everyday.

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              • #
                el gordo

                ‘How much CO2 is going to be fixed on a lifeless ice-covered continent?’

                At the depth of the LGM 22,000 years bp, CO2 concentrations were running at 190 ppm. New York was under a mile of ice and Bondi Beach was 50 kilometers east of where it now sits, and dunes were lapping the western side of the Great Dividing Range.

                I propose that Australian iron dust initiated Meltwater Pulse 1A by invigorating the Southern Ocean. That is correct, it was a CO2 recovery, snowball earth averted yet again.

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              • #
                Gee Aye

                Sorry craker at 8.29. That is just not supported. You made that assertion up about the 800 years.

                All data aside, can you imagine how such a global mechanism could survive all the geophysical variations in the oceans and atmosphere?

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              • #
                Craig Thomas

                It’s almost as if Crakar doesn’t read the information we give him.

                Past temperature increases involving this “lag” were increases of 10 degrees, associated with CO2 increases of 100ppm.

                The MWP was a temperature spike of 0.5 degrees.
                Based on the “lag”, this should be expected to produce – around about now – an increase in CO2 of about 5ppm.

                We’ve had 120ppm.

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          • #
            Geoffrey Williams

            The oceans are vast and react extremely slowwlly. . .
            Just like some people.
            Regards GeoffW

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        • #

          and the mechanism for the changing C isotope ratio in this released CO2 is what?

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          • #
            David Maddison

            Since about 16ppm of the 400ppm of atmospheric CO2 is of anthropogenic origin you would expect some signature of this to show up in recent ice core samples, not all of the CO2 is from released 800 year old CO2 from the ocean.

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            • #

              right so you are saying that the predicted human contribution is being matched by some ocean CO2 with a C isotope ratio that makes scientists think that the human contribution is greater? Or something or something something?

              I’d enjoy seeing where the data on this is kept. Is it being suppressed?

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          • #
            Dave

            Gee Eye

            Are you talking of C Isotope ratio in Inorganic carbonates as well!
            Have you included weathering of these?

            Have you accounted for the differences in Red, Blue & Brown Algae C isotope variation!

            It’s a big field, maybe you could clarify your question to certain parameters?

            Which plant group is dominating at the moment? C4 CAM or C3 plants – which exhibit a huge variation in selection of C isotope!

            Are you talking C12:C13:C14 ratio?

            Your question lacks clarity!

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              Graeme No.3

              What GeeAye is trying to say is that “if man-made emissions are occurring at the usual rate but the concentration in air isn’t increasing, then by Henry’s Law the (surface of) oceans must be getting cooler increasing absorbtion”. So increasing CO2 means cooler surface layers of oceans. You will detect a disconection between his beliefs and reality which makes him hesitant to respond.

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                James Bradley

                Graeme #3,

                Big stretch there buddy… not sure you should attempt gender assign Gee Aye.

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                Craig Thomas

                Concentration *is* increasing, so I very much doubt that was Gee Eye’s point at all.

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              Gee Aye

              Interesting. Why are the ratios changing?

              74

              • #
                JJB MKI

                Probably natural regional and global temperature oscillations over periods ranging from 60 to 1000 years. You know, the ones that were clear and abundant in painstakingly compiled instrumental and palaeontological records (taken in isolation) before third rate sociology graduates with a minimal grasp of statistics and no idea of scientific method started to erase them with pathological averaging.

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                DMA

                GA
                Read Harde 2017 “Scrutinizing the carbon cycle and CO2 residence time in the atmosphere”
                Then watch Video for Salby in Londen in 2016

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGZqWMEpyUM

                Your questions will be answered and the erroneous isotope evidence of the increase in CO2 being human will be put to rest. These sources also address the faulty assumption of long residence time (300+ years) assumed in the IPCC reports. There is almost no Fossil fuel CO2 emitted prior to the year 2000 remaining in the atmosphere.
                Ask yourself “what mechanism controlled CO2 in 2002 when human emissions increased markedly and the atmospheric growth rate remained unchanged?” “Was it the same thing that maintained the same growth rate in 2013 when the emissions growth stopped”
                Jo’s #1 answer to the pop quiz is the correct one.

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                Craig Thomas

                Residence time is a function of cycling. It beggars belief that anybody wants to use residence time to argue about source.

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          toorightmate

          While we all vociferously debate CO2, it has nothing to do with climate.
          The CO2 horsesh*t has to stop.

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          EnvironmentSkeptic

          In the new world environmental order….Increased CO2 might as well be due to mindlessly poisoning of the environment by way of Glyphosate/herbicide, land degradation, oceanic pollution so that the toxic chemicals in the ocean destroy oxygen producing algae. destruction of oxygen producing forests and so on…

          32

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        Greg Cavanagh

        It has been speculated that the ocean currents create the lag, that is to say, it takes 800 years for the water absorbing CO2 in the artics to circulate to the tropics where it is released. I’ve not seen anything more definite on the subject.

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          David Maddison

          I have another post mentioning that which is in moderation for unknown reasons.

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        • #
          EnvironmentSkeptic

          My observations are….In todays world, human caused species extinction has already cleaned up most of the species on land and river systems and sea….The CO2 models need to take into account the pace of the current extinction. For example,,,99% of contemporary species extinction has nothing to do with CO2….indeed the mindboggling amount of toxic chemicals in the oceans might be poisoning marine flora in the same way entire river systems are taken out by a single chemical spill.

          CO2 must increase if the plant world is under attack from pesticide, desertification, chemical spills etc, etc…

          30

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        • #
          David Maddison

          My comment has been in moderation for a very long time and it was only a link.

          Please Google: “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Lags Temperature: the Proof” with the quote marks to find the paper to which I was referring.

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          • #
            David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

            Thanks David,
            It was interesting to see a proof of the 800 year delay. The reading I’d done around the UK court case against the screening of the Gore film didn’t include the proof, just the number. So I’d assumed it was more of a lawyers’ number than a scientific one.
            Thanks again,
            Dave B

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              Craig Thomas

              So given recent CO2 increase is 120ppm, whereabouts in the year 1200 did global temperature increase by 12 degrees?

              45

              • #
                James Bradley

                So what caused warming from the middle of the LIA when industrialisation began at the end of the LIA, Craig?

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              • #
                Craig Thomas

                How does what happened 250 years ago have anything to do with this 800-year “lag”?

                As to the “Little Ice Age” – this was caused by the Maunder Minimum. It ended because the Minimum ended and solar irradiance shot back up.

                I hope you find that useful.

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              • #
                James Bradley

                So why is the end of the LIA regarded as the ‘optimum climate’ when solar irradiance was still increasing, Craig?

                33

              • #
                el gordo

                ‘As to the “Little Ice Age” – this was caused by the Maunder Minimum.’

                There doesn’t appear to be any other culprit beyond a quiet sun.

                The Denialati believe we are returning to that state, but the consensus says natural variables of this nature cannot overwhelm the impact of AGW warming. Let’s talk sensitivity and crush the Lukewarmers, they are our common enemy and shouldn’t be given air.

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              • #
                Craigthomas

                I don’t know what an “optimum climate” is for you.
                To me , anything that involves no economy-wrecking rise in sea level would be good.
                Last time CO2 was above 400ppm, sea levels were 20 metres higher than today. I don’t want the taxpayer (that’s me) bankrupted by massive spending on inundation mitigation

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              • #
                James Bradley

                That’s great, Craig… care to share some data on where the sea levels are rising?

                23

              • #
              • #
                James Bradley

                Thanks Gee Aye,

                The data suggests steady as you go at about +1.78mm/year – BTW what was the margin of error on that?

                13

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                el gordo

                ‘I don’t know what an “optimum climate” is for you.’

                The Modern Climate Optimum is similar to the MWP, RWP etc. and the collapse of these warm blips holds a particular fascination.

                ‘Last time CO2 was above 400ppm, sea levels were 20 metres higher than today.’

                Yeah well thats not happening, last I saw SLR had plateaued.

                You will never capture the people’s imagination with this yarn about ‘inundation mitigation’, there is a building boom going on.

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      • #
        Geoffrey Williams

        Gee Aye, since this is quite a long timelag on the human scale you will have difficulty ‘witnessing this phenomenon’ wherever you go. On the other hand you could take a look at the Vostok ice core sample/analysis. Trust this is of some help to you.
        Regards GeoffW

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          sorry Geoffrey, I’ve read the ice-core papers – I think you need a different angle as I’d be surprised that even this chamber of echoes still misunderstand cause and effect

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            el gordo

            The Younger Dryas should offer an opportunity to test the 800 year lag theory, but at this stage the evidence appears inconclusive.

            ‘Here we confirm the proposed lead of the Antarctic Cold Reversal on the Younger Dryas cold event. The Antarctic cooling precedes the Younger Dryas by at least 1.8 kyr. This suggests that northern and southern hemispheres were in anti-phase during the Younger Dryas cold event. A further result of the synchronisation is that the long-term glacial-interglacial increase of atmospheric CO2 was not interrupted during the Younger Dryas event and that atmospheric CO2 changes are not necessarily dominated by changes in the North Atlantic circulation.’

            T Blunier et al 1997

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              Craig Thomas

              An event that occurred 11,000 years ago will enable you to test an 800-year lag?

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                el gordo

                Yep the 800 year lag is an urban myth.

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                Craig Thomas

                Glad we could clear that up.

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                el gordo

                From Dome Concordia in Antartica we have a timeline.

                ‘Our Late-glacial CO2 reconstructions reveal an abrupt ca. 77 ppm decrease in atmospheric CO2 at the onset of the Younger Dryas stadial, which lagged climatic cooling by ca. 130 yr. Furthermore, the trends recorded in the most accurate high-resolution ice-core record of CO2, from Dome Concordia, can be reproduced from our stomatal-based CO2 records, when time-averaged by the mean age distribution of air contained within Dome Concordia ice (200 to 550 yr).

                ‘If correct, our results indicate an abrupt drawdown of atmospheric CO2 within two centuries at the onset of GS-1, suggesting that some re-evaluation of the behaviour of atmospheric CO2 sinks and sources during times of rapid climatic change, such as the Late-glacial, may be required.’

                Mcelwain et al 2002

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            el gordo

            Stomata gives us a clearer picture, CO2 levels barrelled on throughout the Younger Dryas.

            http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.3390100407/full

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            Roger

            Gee Aye – you may have read the ice core papers …

            It would be interesting to understand why you feel that the ~800 year time lag between temp rises and CO2 that the ice-core data shows doesn’t represent some form of ’cause and effect’. The lag is understood to relate to the very slow overturning of deep, cold, CO2 bearing waters in the oceans – you may disagree and have an alternative suggestion.

            On a simpler level, if you look at CO2 levels graphed against El Nino and La Nina you will see that there is a clear correlation between the levels of atmospheric CO2 and global temperature.

            I don’t want you to get in a muddle and mistakenly think that it is CO2 which is driving those temperatures (El Nino / La Nina).

            It is totally accepted in science and even in climate ‘science’ that El Nino and La Nina are 100% natural phenomena and not in any way caused by atmospheric CO2 levels – not even the most fanatical climate ‘scientists’ suggests that CO2 ‘drives them’.

            Those graphs show that CO2 levels Rise significantly during El Nino years (warmer) and Fall significantly during La Nina years (cooler). You can further cross reference this against the global cooling that resulted from the Mount Pinutabo eruption and the resultant drop in CO2 levels in the atmosphere tha occurred during this cooling.

            If CO2 levels were driving temperature then, using the hypothesis that increased levels of atmospheric CO2 force temperatures upwards, both would remain high following El Nino years – but they don’t , both temperatures and CO2 levels drop back sharply – and even more so during La Nina.

            These are very inconvenient facts for the fundamentally flawed hypothesis that atmospheric CO2 levels, as opposed to the sun and planetary alignments, are the primary control of global temperatures.

            Hope that is helpful and would be interested to hear your hypothesis on the ice core data.

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              Popeye26

              Roger,

              You state the following: “and would be interested to hear your hypothesis on the ice core data”

              I’ll bet a shilling to a pound you don’t hear ANY hypothesis from Aw Gee!!

              He only ever pops in as a naysayer and never provides any proof of his assertions or ideas – in other words I think he’s full of..it!!

              Cheers,

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                Roger

                Hi Popeye,
                the nice thing about people like Gee Aye is that they seriously damage the warmist claims that CO2 dangerously increases global temperatures.

                By making statements that they are completely unable to substantiate they allow others to set out the science which proves their comment to be nonsense, fundamentally wrong or just plain propaganda. That helps others to see the warmist religion for what it is – an unfounded belief that is kept on life-support by propaganda and invented scares.

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              Gee Aye

              Interesting. How often has this 800 year thing happened?

              How many times has it not happened *wink

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                Roger

                You say earlier that you have read all about ice cores and the data – so why don’t you answer your own question?

                Perhaps you didn’t understand what you read?

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                el gordo

                Gee Aye

                The 800 year lag thingy is an arbitrary number, throughout cooler times ENSO periodicities pick up a notch and produce more C14. At the same time the cool oceans will absorb more CO2, but its not enough to draw down all that extra C14 because the carbon sinks automatically turn off when not required.

                Once again I point to the Younger Dryas as an example of how Gaia works to maintain atmospheric stability throughout glacial times, otherwise all life on this blue planet would have come to an end a long time ago.

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                Alexander

                It is happening all the time, continuously, up and down, down and up, around every inflection point in temperature.

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                Craig Thomas

                So what sort of “inflection point in temperature” would you predict, based on past “up and downs”, from the recent rise of 120ppm in atmospheric CO2?

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            • #
              Clyde Spencer

              Roger,

              You and El Gordo seem to be the only ones who have picked up on the high correlation between the El Nino events and the spikes in the CO2 anomalies recorded at Mauna Loa. [I’m reserving judgment on the cause of the apparent 800-year time lag in the Law Dome ice cores.] However, it seems to me that there is an almost immediate atmospheric CO2 response to increased SSTs in El Nino years, resulting from oceanic outgassing. The OCO-2 satellite maps clearly show bands of elevated CO2 in the tropical oceans. Therefore, while there may be a complicated feedback loop modulating the changes in CO2, it appears to me that it is primarily ocean temperatures that are driving short-term variations in atmospheric CO2 levels. The alternative explanation, that the sinks are getting saturated, need to explain why the CO2 anomalies go down after the El Nino events.

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              • #
                Roger

                Clyde,
                CO2 outgassing from the ocean when SSTs are slightly elevated during El Nino is the most logical explanation of the spikes and, as an explanation it is supported by the known science. The CO2 reduction during La Nina coolings and also during the short term cooling caused by Mount Pinutabo appear straight forward evidence to suggest that SSTs have a strong, and quite rapid effect on CO2 levels.

                As I said above, to me this of itself is strong evidence that CO2 is not the ‘driver’ of climate that the IPCC would have us believe – if it were then any reduction in temperatures following El Nino would be slow and truncated, and that is not the case.

                I also suspect, that as with most of climate, there are numerous overlapping cycles and it is the extremely long time (centuries) that it takes for overturning of the deep, cold CO2 rich waters which gives rise to peak CO2 at ~ 750 to 800 years after temperatures start a natural rising trend and have levelled off. During that period outgassing occurs in response to SST quite rapidly, as evidenced by Mauna Loa observations, and as deep waters reach the surface it continues over the centuries with peaks and stalls.

                NASA has suggested that there has been a ~20% increase in vegetation around the globe in the last 20 or so years – that alone will have removed 25% more CO2 than was previously removed by vegetation, another natural sink.

                The point that has been repeatedly made by many – and unanswered by any climate scientist that I am aware of – is that if high levels of CO2 force unstoppable temperature increases (as claimed by IPCC) then how has the world ever recovered from those high CO2 levels of up to 10,000 ppm that have occurred throughout the millennia ? CO2 levels that, as with El Nino warming, increased After and in response to the temperature rises – reaching their maximum at ~750 years after the temperature rose.

                The simple answer I find from that is that CO2 levels are largely if not entirely irrelevant to global temperatures – they weren’t in the past so it impossible to see how can they be now.

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              • #
                DMA

                Clyde
                Check out Ole Humlum’s site “Climate 4 you” to see his analysis that supports your suspicion of sea surface temperature controlling CO2 on an an annual scale.

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                el gordo

                Thank you Clyde but I take no credit, Ian Wilson further down the thread is leading the charge.

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        AndyG55

        Just so long as the atmospheric CO2 level KEEP CLIMBING..

        I HOPE that human emissions are having some small effect, because then the continued increase in atmospheric CO2 is ensured for MANY decades, centuries into the future.

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      • #
        turnedoutnice

        Thermo-haline circulation……………

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        PeterS

        The evidence oddly enough was given by zooming into Al Gore’s original slide shown in his Inconvenient Truth presentation – he got it backwards and erroneously stated temperature rises and falls occurred almost immediately after CO2 rises and falls. In fact the slide proves the CO2 rises and falls lagged the temperature rises and falls by several hundreds of years.

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    • #
      Jimmy haigh

      The first post I ever made on a climate blog said exactly that. It was back in around 2007 – on Real Climate of all places. Needless to say the resident lunatics, especially Mad Dhog Dhogaza, wasted no time in setting me straight!

      00

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    John Michelmore

    Sorry, just because the amount of CO2 produced has stabilised at 30 GT/year, does not mean that the CO2 in the atmosphere stops increasing. Surely atmospheric CO2 is a function of what consumes CO2 from the atmosphere as well. Now if the human race were wiped out tomorrow and anthropogenic CO2 emissions stopped you would probably expect the CO2 in the atmosphere to stabilise or even go down.

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    • #

      HI John…pretty much what I was getting at with my comment #1

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      • #
        Crakar24

        John/GA,

        Lets take a logical approach to this.

        Lets assume of the 100% of CO2 emissions each year 97% is natural and 3% is from human activities.

        Do you agree with this assumption?

        We have been told the natural component (source, 97%) was absorbed (sink) by the biosphere and oceans and hence CO2 levels remained practicably constant for millennia.

        Do you agree with this statement?

        Ergo the rise in CO2 levels witnessed over the past approx. 100 years has been through the addition of CO2 from human activities.

        Do you agree with this position?

        If you agree with all 3 above then you must also agree if the human component of the yearly CO2 emission budget has remained stable for 3 years then the global atmospheric CO2 content must also be seen as stable for the past 3 years.

        Do you agree with the above statement?

        If you do not agree then you can either produce a viable mechanism to explain why the above statement is incorrect or you can simply stop clogging up the thread by projecting your beliefs.

        Regards

        Crakar24

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          Tim Hammond

          No, there’s far too much wrong with your statements.

          For example, why assume that the natural sinks have stayed constant? Over the last 100 years or so we have seen deforestation and reforestation on large scales all over the Earth. We have seen yields of crops increase significantly through all kinds of things, from fertilisers to GMOs. And how knows hwta has been happening with animals and their carbonate shells? And what’s the rate of uptake of the sinks? Does that stay constant or is it dependent on CO2 concentration? Or temperature? Or both? Or what?

          And is there any lag on any of the uptake? After all, plants don’t grow in a day.

          And the percentage of C02 that is human produced is extremely difficult to measure – is it 3% this year but only 2.8% last year? Or vice-versa? And is it 3% this year but that is actually a lower level of emission than last year because natural emissions are higher?

          You cannot use simple logical assumptions on this, because the differences in data we are trying to explain are not very large and our accuracy of most of the figures is very poor.
          And what i

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            Crakar24

            Tim,

            You need to assume the mindset of a grant money rent seeker to understand my comment, ergo think like an alarmist shill similar to GA.

            We have been told by all and sundry there are only two sources of co2,natural and human. In addition to this we have been told repeatedly human emissions are driving co2 levels higher.

            Ergo, if human emission levelled off then global co2 levels must also level off.

            However it now appears this may not be the case, if so the rent seekers will be forced to come clean and acknowledge the points you raise.

            The alternative is they re analyse the data collected and find a couple of coal plants hidden somewhere to jack up the numbers, they could fiddle with the co2 measurements and drop the ppm retrospectively to show a zero trend but that would be committing financial hari kari.

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              OriginalSteve

              The silly thing is this – had we not the tech to even measure atmospheric C02,we’d have just called it weather…..

              And so what….CO2 is up…excellent….better growing seasons….now we have a professional worrier industry that wants to destroy democracy through it. I guess if it weren’t this it would have been something else…

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                Craig Thomas

                Yes, and we’d call lightning the anger of the gods. Your point being that ignorance is bliss?

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                Rereke Whakkaro

                Silly boy, Craig. A non-sequitur is not a valid response. It is you who is ignorant, blissful or otherwise.

                I am not an urbanite, like the vast majority of the climate-worriers. I live in the New Zealand bush on a twenty acre farm. The more carbon dioxide there is, the more grass growth we have, and the more stock we can carry through the year. Our neighbours, who are mostly dairy farmers, can also carry more more cows, the more grass there is. The more cows they can carry, then the more milk can be produced to provide for the latte coffees of the urbanites like yourself. The warmer it gets, the more evaporation there is from the coastal seas, and the more precipitation we get on our farms, and the more grass growth we get.

                The problems for Australia is lack of water. You may not have thought it relevant, being a latte-drinking urbanite, and all, that Australia is primarily desert, with little bits of green stuff around the edge. Deserts don’t encourage airborne moisture, so you don’t get much rain, it is one of the identifying characteristics of living in, or near, a desert.

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                Craig Thomas

                The topic here wasn’t dairy farms in New Zealand, it was OriginalSteve’s idea that the real problem here is that we have science.

                I’m not saying I don’t believe your long term weather prediction for your locality, but you should probably understand that other places have different futures ahead of them. My family’s 690 acres, for example, which currently experiences almost daily rainfall is predicted to dry out with the current climate change that is occurring.
                More importantly, due to the nature of its soil, the amount of rain has no effect on its unsuitability to carry a dairy herd.

                I guess you may not have thought this relevant, being a hobby-farmer with your little block of land, and all.

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                Dave

                Craig,

                This is amazing:

                “My family’s 690 acres, for example, which currently experiences almost daily rainfall”

                That’s extremely rare Craig, EVERY DAY? Currently? Daily Rainfall? Could you provide a location please? Even a hint?

                Plus:

                “Due to the nature of its soil, the amount of rain has no effect on its unsuitability to carry a dairy herd”

                The nature of the soil? What type of soil? So you can’t grow any feed for dairy cattle at all? Which means it’s highly acidic maybe from the daily rainfall? 690 acres of ALL the same soil type? Have you considered land management strategies? That scenario is fairly layman like Craig!

                Then this:

                “Is predicted to dry out with the current climate change that is occurring.”

                WOW! That report or peer reviewed paper predicting that it’s going to DRY OUT, must have been devastating to you and your family Craig. Lucky you had the foresight to discover the future and now you can make alternative plans!

                I am going to send this to the ABC rural news network, such a sad story Craig! From rain every day to Dry Out? That must be the very 1st true sad sack story of a family farm due to fail because of climate change that is occurring now!

                Maybe check for lithium, cobalt and graphite in the soils – you could go into mining for battery manufacturers? DRY is good for that!

                Just suggesting Craig

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              • #
                Graeme No.3

                Dave,
                emoticons don’t work. Neither do I think does Craig. Certainly I can’t see him becoming a miner.

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              • #

                Well, Dave, what do you think happens where there is a 400 metre change in altitude in the space of 700 metres on your coast-facing boundary, another 200m drop over the next 800 metres and additional drop beyond?

                As for the soil type, yes, it is uniform. Uniformly poor and composed of broken down semi-metamorphosed sandstone. There is a patch of basalt soil across a couple of properties to our West that we are envious about.

                As for the predicted change of climate – that is based on the last 50 years’ trend, which you could learn about on the BoM website.

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          • #
            Clyde Spencer

            Tim Hammond,
            It is well documented that predator/prey populations oscillate with time. Also, as every farmer knows all too well, vagaries in weather can affect the bounty of crops. So, it would be absurd to assume that biological CO2-sinks would remain constant over a long time period. One should expect variations (of unknown magnitude) about a mean value. Additionally, weather-induced variations in temperature will impact biogenic production of CO2, adding yet another variable to the net atmospheric concentration. It may well be that we would see increases in CO2 concentration similar in magnitude to what is measured, even in the absence of anthropogenic sources, if something else is driving the temperature changes on Earth.

            20

        • #

          if the human component of the yearly CO2 emission budget has remained stable for 3 years then the global atmospheric CO2 content must also be seen as stable for the past 3 years.

          I can’t believe you wrote that and I wonder if you mis-wrote. According to the graph above at least (and along with Jo’s acknowledgment that there might be recent under-reporting of CO2 outputs)emissions are at about their highest level for the last few years. Is that what you mean by stable?

          The bucket has a hole but water is being poured into the bucket from the hose at a rate that fills it. We keep the hose at the same rate and it still fills. The hose emission budget remained stable (ie the hose is still on not turned off!) so the level went up.

          The analogy has a problem in that the hole size is also a variable but it is actually not a problem for illustrating your comment.

          I really think you must have had a shot too many?

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          Craig Thomas

          1/ Global carbon accounting has been done, no assumptions are necessary. The land and oceans each absorb and release about 100Gt of carbon per year, with each of them currently absorbing about 2Gt more than they are releasing.
          Human activity releases about 10Gt per year.

          2/ Not sure what you’re getting at there – CO2 cycles between sinks. Atmospheric CO2 has been fairly uniform for about 10,000 years.

          3/ yes.

          4/ Completely and utterly wrong at every level.

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            Rereke Whakkaro

            “Global accounting has been done”. By whom, Craig?

            What were the terms of reference, and the limiting parameters? Where are the accounting standards applied and with what basis point is assumed? Who had input into defining and agreeing these standards, and who had final approval of the standards? By what criteria were they judged in the final approval process? What independent body is charged with auditing the application of the standards?

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              Craig Thomas

              By lots of people.
              There is nothing even remotely controversial about the fact that a given quantity of fuel, when burned, will produce a predictable amount of CO2.

              You could start with this:
              Wieland, ed.-in-chief: Ulrich (2010). Using official statistics to calculate greenhouse gas emissions : a statistical guide

              Also, google for the US Energy Information Agency’s page called:
              “How much carbon dioxide is produced when different fuels are burned?”

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        Roger

        Aye Gee – Crakar24 has given you the figures on CO2 emissions.

        The only thing to add to that is that anthropogenic CO2 emissions (from mankind) are just a tiny percentage of the Error Bars in the estimates of natural CO2 emissions.

        In other words they are so small that they are an irrelevance to global levels of atmospheric CO2 – and that is clearly illustrated by the El Nino and La Nina data I posted in response to you earlier.

        The reality of the level of human CO2 emissions compared to the natual ones is that, tongue in cheek, its a bit like saying if all the people in the world were to pee in the ocean tomorrow it would cause sea level rise.

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          Crakar24

          For example, Australia emits 1.3% of that varying 3%. Our power generation produces 30% of that 1.3% which puts it at approximately 0.4% of all human emissions and yet SA will resort to diesel generation to keep the lights on.

          Its all about perspective.

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            mal

            Australia’s emissions therefore equate to approx. 1.56 parts per 10 million of the atmosphere. Why are we bothering to spend money in reducing Australia’s contribution of CO2 when it has virtually immeasurable impact on the climate, even if the theory was true?

            In doing a cost benefit analysis It is a complete waste of money and effort.
            Furthermore you would have to take in the benefits which include better crop production.

            I recall seeing a presentation (don’t have the link) of a economists submission to an American Senate committee who actually stated that when you take account of the benefits, there is about a $8-10/tonne of nett benefit to the environment and that emitters of CO2 should actually be paid to produce more CO2.

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          joseph

          Roger,

          I wouldn’t like to be the one tasked with having to determine just how much of the sea level rise was caused by the urine, and not by the all of the global warming CO2 which had been produced while transporting all of the people to the nearest ocean, resulting in an additional melting of ice.

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          Rereke Whakkaro

          … its a bit like saying if all the people in the world were to pee in the ocean tomorrow it would cause sea level rise

          … and would it change the PH of the oceans? I think not.

          These Climate Worriers have no sense of scale, no sense of humour, and no sense of how to form a coherent argument.

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      RickWill

      The post refers to annual carbon output being near constant from 2013 to 2016 however the CHANGE in atmospheric CO2 was down around 2ppm in 2013 and 2014 but jumped to almost 3ppm increase in 2015 and 2016.

      It demonstrates that burning fossil fuel is not as tightly linked to increasing CO2 levels as the CD alarmists would have you believe.

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  • #

    Don’t like living in an interglacial? There’s a fix for that, but you might need a bearskin or two. Like your ancestor Grok.

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    Richard111

    Seem to be more reports of earthquakes around the world lately. What is happening with all those undersea volcanoes?

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      It is interesting stuff, isn’t it? Surprisingly, institutions like Decade Volcanoes are underfunded, though the vast bulk of a close and somewhat important planet called Earth remains unvisited and full of mysteries.

      Hard to say where all the science money has gone…though a lot of it has definitely gone.

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      • #

        Herewith, mosomoso,

        https://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/61/MPW-30731

        – and other renewables promoted by opportunists by way of
        fear ‘n guilt.

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        • #

          Ah yes, the burning of Adelaide when a power plant explosion got out of control but all the water was needed to keep the levels high at the Goolwa Barrages. Only dam the greenoids have ever liked.

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        Craig Thomas

        Wow, so the alarmists who are going to conspire to make volcanoes seem dangerous weren’t funded by Agenda 21 then?

        The UN is slipping…..

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        • #

          The Laki series, long, dirty and basaltic, was as recent as 1783-4. Judging by the effects of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 a Laki scale eruption (VEI 6, but that’s only part of the story) has the potential to be very dangerous indeed for a heavily populated Europe. It would be a relatively short term catastrophe compared to an end to our interglacial or a warming heave like the one that resulted in the Storegga Slides just eight thousand years ago. Still, pretty bad when one considers mass toxicity, no aviation, agricultural failures etc. (Fortunately Germany burns lots of its own coal and Russian gas, keeping the carbon “price” in the toilet while it talks the green talk for the mugs at COP, and France has nukes. Still, all those solar panels in Bavaria and Brandenburg will be even more of a liability in a dimming event.)

          Of course, the real catastrophe would be to confront such climate changes with the pea-shooter energy infrastructure of a South Australia. Which is why we have to sack the climatariat with a very big sack and stop wasting coal by either leaving it in the ground or burning it in aging clunkers. As for depending on diesel imports while we wait for Green Blob’s fairy dust to click in…three words: Strait of Hormuz.

          Kiddies to bed. It’s grown-ups time.

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        • #
          Rereke Whakkaro

          The difference is that Volcanoes can seriously kill people, and totally disrupt commerce, and limit the ability for society to resume functioning, with any alacrity.

          A rise in global temperature of 0.6 degrees per century on average …?

          Give me a break.

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          • #
            ROM

            Reality!
            “When you can show me you can control a volcano then come back and we will discuss your ideas on controlling the global climate”.

            50

            • #

              Sure, but why stop there?

              “When you can show me you can dance a polka, then come back and we can discuss your ideas on carpentry”

              “When you can show me you can fly to the moon, then come back and we can discuss your ideas on philately”

              Actually, ROM, you could get a job as a random word generator. I’ll give you a reference.

              11

  • #
    Geoffrey Williams

    I have thought about this in the past and it would appear to be a ‘chink’ in the warmist argument. I notice also that the Co2 atmospheric level is kept sort of quiet. It is presently well over the 400 mark and one might have expected the alarmists to be waving this figure in the air. We know world emmissions are down due to world economic stagnation.
    We should be perusing this argument as we may well have good case for them to answer. So where has the Co2 come from!?
    GeoffW

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      “kept sort of quiet” because you say so? You’ve graphed the media attention? Let’s see

      There are any number of sites where you can go and visit the [CO2] updates. CO2 earth is one – although it was broken last time I looked.

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      • #
        Geoffrey Williams

        Gee Aye, according to the warmists the level of Co2 in the atmosphere should be the single most and clear indicator of warming. In which case it should be headline news on a weekly if not daily basis! Why don’t we hear about it!? Is it because there has been no warming!?
        Regards GeoffW

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        • #

          Fantastic reasoning. If the news services are not headlining every day with the new [CO2] there is something going on that with the warmists that someone is not telling us. Yeah you got it nailed there.

          Or maybe they are reporting other stuff that they think will sell a paper. Maybe a tweet or similar.

          PS… I just scrolled through 2 screens of news reports on global warming from the last 24 hours. What level of reporting is required for you to not suspect some sort of cover up by “the warmists”?

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          • #
            David Maddison

            What global warming are you talking about Gee Aye?

            There hasn’t been any for about 19 years.

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            • #
              Dennis

              I remember the media release from the British Met Office late in December 2012 announcing that global warming ended in 1998 – that is the last warming period of numerous warming periods in past history.

              Of course the release also claimed that warming would return in future. I would have thought that was obvious considering the history of Earth Cycles.

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              • #
                Rereke Whakkaro

                Of course, before that, we had the scare of entering a new ice age, with Stephen Schneider in tight trousers with flares and platform shoes, no less.

                Actually, he was quite presentable, back in the day.

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            • #
              Gee Aye

              Hi DM. I was telling you about news reports. Pay attention

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          • #
            el gordo

            ‘Yeah you got it nailed there.’

            It would be nice to hear some good news like industrial CO2 plateaus, we are saved.

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          • #
            Rereke Whakkaro

            What level of reporting is required for you to not suspect some sort of cover up by “the warmists”?

            Something that didn’t read like a snake-oil scheme that was 10% agreed fact, and 90% vaporous hand-wringing.

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    • #
      sophocles

      A bit of research:

      Have a look at the CO2 map from the OCO-2 satellite.
      (the map for Oct–Nov 2014, free of all taint from large El Nino events.)

      The gyres (ocean currents) in the Southern Hemisphere are Anti-Clockwise as shown here

      The blue arrows indicate deep cold water. Cold water carries much more CO2 than warm water. Compare with the CO2 map. Maybe those blobs of C02 over the oceans are where cold water rises towards the surface (upwelling)?

      Another overlay to consider is the Tectonic plates maps (scroll down) and compare the SH emission locations. The southern Pacific Plate boundary is a deep oceanic trench (cold! and lined with lots of submarine volcanoes along the western edge).

      Last to consider are the winds for the southern hemisphere.

      Look for Australia and NZ. What a huge amount of CO2 released by both countries. Must destroy their economies to save the planet. (/sarc).

      Note that there are CO2 concentrations around both countries over open ocean
      – one to the north of NZ
      – one to the west of Australia
      – one to the North of Australia

      They are all hundreds of kilometers (if not several thousand,) away from any human industry.
      Indonesia can be seen to be a major source from all their forest clearing, vegetation burning and other reasons.

      Currents, tectonics and winds are the three main templates.
      – engage brains (difficult for some) and play “Spot the correlations.”

      Enjoy.

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      • #
        Annie

        Very interesting though not all came up on the second link.

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      • #
        Craig Thomas

        Er, those concentrations seem to follow a latitudinal band that crosses land and water equally.

        It’s probably a bit silly to be looking for a human fingerprint in all of it, when the annual cycling in the ocean involves an order of magnitude more CO2 than all of anthropogenic emissions put together.

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  • #
    Geoffrey Williams

    Oops -‘perusing’ – should have been ‘persuing’
    GeoffW

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    Greg Cavanagh

    To me it looks like the GDP has been going down as they ramp up the costs of CO2 and electricity.
    The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is incidental. I’m not yet convinced the human contribution can be detected, only estimated.

    It’s all “broken window fallacy” to me. Throwing rocks and money at windows, taking money out of useful circulation.

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    • #
      Craig Thomas

      It’s basic chemistry Greg – for any given amount of a fuel that is burnt, a known amount of water and CO2 is produced.

      The quantity of coal and other fossil fuels being burned every year is easy to track, so we know that fossil fuel burning puts about 8Gt of carbon into the atmosphere every year.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakkaro

        … a known amount of water and CO2 is produced

        How do we know? How do we assess the quality and composition of the fuel? It is far from basic chemistry. You assume that all fuel is the same – massive fail.

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        • #
          Craig Thomas

          According to the US Energy Information Administration, we know. *You* don’t know, but we won’t dwell on that, because if we start making a list it will take us forever.

          Pounds of CO2 emitted per million British thermal units (Btu) of energy for various fuels:
          Coal (anthracite) 228.6
          Coal (bituminous) 205.7
          Coal (lignite) 215.4
          Coal (subbituminous) 214.3
          Diesel fuel and heating oil 161.3
          Gasoline (without ethanol)
          157.2
          Propane 139.0
          Natural gas 117.0

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        Greg Cavanagh

        Let me clarify:
        “I’m not yet convinced the human contribution can be detected, only estimated.”

        You have estimated the human contribution to be “about 8Gt of carbon into the atmosphere every year.”

        I am saying; I’m not yet convinced that this about of additional CO2 in the atmosphere “can be detected.”

        And I’m saying that because the natural CO2 ppm has been steadily rising ever since we started measuring it. So the majority of the rise is natural. What part of the “detected” CO2 is the human contribution? So far, since the rise has been quite uniform, we haven’t detected the human anomalous contribution portion.

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  • #
    Leonard Lane

    As usual, there is not something, that is obvious to everyone, increasing the atmospheric concentration of CO2 when anthropogenic CO2 seems to be nearly flat.
    The first is the oceans control atmospheric CO2 and the second is that the atmospheric CO2 data have been adjusted and corrupted like most data used to show global warming (call it climate change but the loudest thing screamed from the warmunists is global warming).

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  • #
    RobK

    Unfortunately the presented data appears insufficient to draw any meaningful conclusions. This has been the story of climate change from the outset. The system is large, chaotic and insufficiently understood to base policy decisions on with any certainty.

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    • #
      RobK

      To date the null hypothesis hasn’t been overturned in my book.

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      • #
        Craig Thomas

        What’s the “null hypothesis”?

        That increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from 280ppm to 410ppm has had null effect?

        *Nobody* is arguing that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. The argument is about sensitivity, with the sensible people having agreed that lies in a range of between 2 and 6 degrees, with a few dodgy attempts at putting it close to 1 degree.

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        • #
          Rereke Whakkaro

          What’s the “null hypothesis”?

          Craig, With that one question, you expressly admit that you know nothing about science, nothing about the scientific method, and nothing about scientific integrity.

          I will give you some professional advice: Always do as much reading as you can, regarding the terminology and professional practices, and disciplines, of whatever speciality you are about to express an opinion on.

          If you don’t do that, you will inevitably end up looking like a jerk.

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          • #
            Craig Thomas

            So you can’t explain this usage of the term “null hypothesis” either.

            Here’s a hint for any others here who haven’t opened a book in over a year but like to parrot cool phrases they pick up off blogs: words have meanings. If you’re not sure what they are, don’t use them.

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            • #
              Rereke Whakaaro

              I was quoting your original statement, as is normal on this blog. The claim that I couldn’t explain the usage, was a poor excuse for a deflection.

              The null hypothesis is that a)the majority of atmospheric CO2, and the observable variations in the level of atmospheric CO2, are due to the normal non-linear processes of nature; and b) the observable variations in the level of atmospheric CO2 across time, and geographies, can be explained by non-linear dynamics and chaos theory. Nothing you have ever claimed on this blog, explains the cause and effect mechanisms for what you claim. We get hype and sound-bytes from you, but nothing backed by any plausible scientific facts.

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              • #

                No.
                Your a) is not a null hypothesis, it’s a denial of observations.
                Your b) doesn’t say anything.

                The source of the increased CO2 & CH4 in the atmosphere is known to be fossil fuels and other human activity such as concrete making and land use changes.
                Carbon accounting tells you how much C is being released through fuel burning.
                The changing C12:C13 ratio tells you the origin is organic matter, and the changing C12:C14 ratio tells you the source is over a million years old.

                If you have an alternative theory, then the null hypothesis is that the increase is due to human activity, and you have to test your theory against this.

                But we don’t hear any alternative theory, all we hear is some word salad about “non-linear dynamics and chaos theory”.

                What’s your alternative theory? How do we test it? Can you present it without the appalling maths errors that were in Salby’s YouTube “thesis”?

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              • #
                Jim Ross

                Oh dear, Craig. The increasing CH4 since about 2007 is demonstrably due to biogenic sources and not thermogenic sources (i.e. not fossil fuels). Please do some research. Ironically, given your comments elsehwere on this thread, it is the C12:C13 ratio that tells us this.

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              • #
                Rereke Whakaaro

                Great! I do so enjoy it, when I get you wriggling and chopping logic.

                I don’t deny observations.

                To quote you: “the null hypothesis is that the increase is due to human activity, and you have to test your theory against this.”

                Your denial of any other potential causes for increased CO2, other than human activity, indicates that you have a strong bias away from any considerations other than your own, or rather the song sheet you have been given. That is the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

                Did the level of carbon dioxide remain at a constant value over millennia, prior to mankind starting to burn wood, and animal dung for heating and cooking purposes? Did the dinosaurs, or the early Mammalia not fart, and emit methane? Did thunderstorms not occur before the appearance of mankind, and did those thunderstorms not cause immense fires?

                The null hypothesis is that carbon, carbon dioxide and methane were all present in the atmosphere prior to the advent of mankind. Or as I stated before, “The null hypothesis is that the majority of atmospheric CO2, and the observable variations in the level of atmospheric CO2, are due to the normal non-linear processes of nature”

                It is up to you to demonstrate why that statement is fallacious.

                Yes, mankind can and does have an influence on the atmospheric composition, but it is not new chemicals that are being “pumped” into the atmosphere. Mankind is merely recycling what has gone before. You can complain about the rate of recycling, if you wish, and I would support you in that. But the arguments you present here, are overly simplistic to be useful from a scientific point of view.

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                I agree with RW sort of.

                The root null hypothesis is that the observed variation is due to random fluctuations (which, by the way includes error in measurements/estimates).

                That one is dismissed entirely by some very basic stats – CO2 is clearly going up and is not random wrt time.

                One then moves onto the next stage is to identify a cause of the directional change. At this point one deviates from a simple null as one is then proposing explanations and it becomes a null hypothesis for each proposal. ie for anthropogenic or volcanos or leakage from a parallel universe or a combination – the null is that it is not the thing being proposed.

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              • #

                Rereke is having trouble with long sentences, which may explain his problem of understanding.

                Here he misquotes me:
                “To quote you: “the null hypothesis is that the increase is due to human activity, and you have to test your theory against this.””

                That is not what I said. What I said was:
                “If you have an alternative theory, then the null hypothesis is that the increase is due to human activity, and you have to test your theory against this.”

                And you still can’t seem to provide any evidence that any alternative theory* exists.

                *Theory: Does *not* mean, random thoughts dreamt up to support a belief.

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          el gordo

          ‘…..the sensible people having agreed that lies in a range of between 2 and 6 degrees…’

          No the sensible people are the Lukewarmers who reckon its closer to one degree.

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  • #
    manalive

    Like the global climate system itself the CO2 — GAT relationship must be very complex.
    I’m not equipped to offer an explanation but there appears to be a clear relationship here with the changes in CO2 trailing temperatures by about 4 months.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Concerning the CO2 observatory at Mauna Loa, why do they have it located at the site of an active volcano?

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    • #
      King Geo

      Apparently Mauna Loa [MLO] was chosen because the observatory is located at ~3,400m, which is above the inversion layer, and also because Hawaii is in the central Pacific Ocean well away from continents. Corrections are made for nearby volcanic activity. CO2 levels in the atmosphere are very low historically for one obvious reason. The current ICE AGE EPOCH (2.5Ma – present) is the coolest that planet Earth has been since the Permian Ice Age (300Ma – 250Ma). The current figure of ~400ppm is still very low but was obviously lower during the recent Ice Age cycles. Clearly while we continue in the current Holocene Interglacial (11.7ka – present) CO2 in the atmosphere will keep rising, no matter how much we Homo Sapiens de-carbonize. “De-carbonization” is a waste of time but I guess the World Economy can afford to squander US$trillions engaging in this pursuit. Clearly Trump’s USA (except the western seaboard), Russia, China, Japan, India etc are not willing to engage in “large scale economically suicidal de-carbonization”, unlike the EU, Canada, UK, Australia etc. It will be interesting to compare the respective health of the economies of these nations in 10 years time, ie about the time the next LIA kicks in.

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      • #
        Geoffrey Williams

        Thanks King G, what I would say is that I’m not too keen on the idea that ‘corrections are made for nearby volcanic activity’
        We know all about the ‘corrections to temperatures’ made in Australia under the label of ‘homogenicity’
        Thanks GeoffW

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    • #
      Peter C

      The idea, AFAIK, was to place the collection point in the mid ocean and as high as possible to collect well mixed air.

      The measurements from Cape Grim, Tasmania are probably a bit better and also a little lower but the trend is the same.

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    • #
      Geoffrey Williams

      Better stil David why do we not take multi-samples around the world and perhaps average them. This would seem to be a method that would be fair and representative.
      GeoffW

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      Annie

      I’ve often wondered about that. It seems like positioning thermometers where large aircraft are operating on great expanses of concrete and tarmac and then wondering why temperatures there seem a bit higher than elsewhere!

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      • #
        toorightmate

        Annie,
        Common sense is like deodorant.
        Those that need it the most don’t use it.

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      • #
        Roger

        @ Annie

        and then adjusting the ‘elsewhere’ temperatures upwards to homogenise them with the heat from aircraft and tarmac…… now that is the true meaning of ‘man made’ global warming , and it seems to all come down to manipulation ‘homogenisation’ of the raw data by man.

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      • #
        Pauly

        Annie,
        Weather stations in general are located where people live. Apart from the obvious relationship, for most of modern history, weather stations required someone to record the actual measurements. Automatic recording of data is a more recent feature.
        The aviation industry is one of the biggest users of meteorological data, which is why almost every major airfield has a weather station. But I haven’t seen any analysis that shows airfield sited weather stations show a more pronounced Urban Heat Island effect, or that temperature fluctuations at airfields are correlated to the number of aircraft movements. That’s not saying that such a relationship doesn’t exist – just that I haven’t come across a paper or article presenting that information.
        From another perspective, airfields tend to be sited on alluvial plains, so tend to be in valleys, and generally were originally sited well away from residential and business areas. More recently, urban sprawl has resulted in airfields being surrounded by industrial parks. So I would have thought that any differences in airfield based weather station readings, compared to nearby town based weather station readings would have been obvious in the historical records.
        I could only suggest that the lack of academic papers dealing with this topic indicates that airfields are not that significant, in terms of having a different local climate.
        That seems counterintuitive, given that aviation remains as one of the biggest users of fossil fuel. But a similar outcome (ie no significant effect) can be found when looking at the climate impact of nuclear weapons testing. It surprised me to find out that there have been a total of over 1900 nuclear explosions on our planet with a total yield of around 635Mt. Up to 50% of that yield is thermal, but apparently the climate impact has been negligible.
        It almost seems as if human effort has no impact on climate!

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        • #
          sophocles

          Pauly said:

          But I haven’t seen any analysis that shows airfield sited weather stations show a more pronounced Urban Heat Island effect, or that temperature fluctuations at airfields are correlated to the number of aircraft movements.

          Well, there’s this year’s “Record high temperature” at Heathrow Airport end of June/early July, and Paul Homewood’s take on it.

          Anthony Watts mentioned jet wash affecting some US airport thermometers in his paper about weather station thermometer siting but that’s all I know of. Perhaps it’s because the higher temps support the dogma too well to de-rail.

          It’s not the first time Heathrow’s thermometer has pressed the buttons of the English Press Gallery, and set them all off.
          (See Paul Homewood’s blog).

          It almost seems as if human effort has no impact on climate!

          Hold onto that thought. Don’t lose it. You could be onto something there.
          Human effort sure has an effect on the measurements. But on the climate?
          This is probably what is really in control.

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          • #
            sophocles

            and some papers about Modern Warming being Artificial from NoTricksZone. Airports specifically are not blamed, but neither are they blameless (lots of tarmac and hot air from jet exhausts etc).

            20

          • #
            Annie

            We had just moved back to England when we had that hot summer in 2003. The highest temperature one day, in August, was at Heathrow, when some poor Aussie friends of ours were melting in a small stuffy flat in London. They came to us not long afterwards, having been instructed to visit this, that and the other place. They were exhausted, so we sat them down with a cold Gin and Tonic and told them to rest!

            Were not the temperature spikes at LHR recorded when a couple of the large jets were operating by the met station?

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      • #

        Here’s a fun fact about an airport.

        Our local one is now our official weather station, after recent closure of the old town station which has been measuring rainfall since 1882. The 13th of this month was a dry day in these parts…except for the nearly six inches which supposedly fell at the airport. That’s right, a ghost or real flood just at the airport, 149.4m, well over a tenth of our annual mean, which will stand in the books forever as an official reading. On a dry day.

        I’ve asked around for explanations but nobody knows. But it’s now a statistic in the hands of whoever wants to further manipulate it. And anyone contradicting will be convicted of “anecdote” and told they need to watch more Degrasse Tyson or Brian Cox shows.

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    • #
      Craig Thomas

      Have you looked at the data from Mauna Laua?

      Have you wondered what it would look like if they stupidly allowed it to reflect random plumes of volcanic CO2 emissions?

      Have you wondered how it compares to, say, Cape Grim data?

      I ask these questions, because those are the questions I asked myself, because I am naturally sceptical. The answers *really* aren’t hard to find.

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  • #
    Gazman

    Whatever the cause, whatever the effect it is a clear case for more money from the taxpayer. Just watch and see.

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    Ian Wilson

    Once again, Jo have posted a logical and well presented scientific article on a very important issue concerning global warming. I hope people here appreciate what Jo Nova does day-in and day-out to get across important scientific, social and political issues on this topic, many of which are not covered in the main stream press.

    People might find the following post at my blog of some interest as it is related to this topic. My apologies in advance for the cynicism in the title but I cannot match the outstanding level of journalist restraint and professionalism that Jo exhibits throughout all of her articles and posts.


    Pro Tip: Tin-Foil Hat Alarmists Tilt Your Heads 21 Degrees to the Left!!

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  • #

    Has the abnormal shift in solar spectrum caused UV to break down methane faster than before? Has this been caused by the increase in Cosmic radiation?
    “Annual Increase in Globally-Averaged Atmospheric Methane” 2014>2015>2016
    https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends_ch4/

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    • #
      Craig Thomas

      Approaching this comment is like approaching a trapped crimson parrot without gloves….but I’ll give it a go by breaking it down:

      1/ What abnormal shift in solar spectrum? Did the Sun go blue yesterday when I wasn’t watching?
      2/ Your link shows Methane increasing, so what does it have to do with the idea that methane is breaking down faster than before?
      3/ You might have to explain how the theory of “increased cosmic rays causing more methane to break down causing more methane” works.

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  • #
    Mark M

    “The last time Earth had comparable levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide was about three million years ago, during the mid-Pliocene.

    Back then, global average temperature was about 3.6–5.2°F (2–3°C) warmer than it is today.

    Sea levels were also higher, by about 15–25 meters.”

    https://thinkprogress.org/410-ppm-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-71aa17fef076
    > > >
    As of today, global average temperature was about is not 3.6–5.2°F (2–3°C) warmer.

    As of today, sea levels were also are not higher, by about 15–25 meters.

    Why?

    Perhaps one reason might be that carbon (sic) has nothing to do with it.

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    TdeF

    In the last previous post I listed some of the things which CO2 levels do NOT reflect.
    These include any obvious connection with human output, windmills, solar panels, electric cars, blowing up power stations, coal power, $1.5Trillion a year in the UN river of money or even the temperature. Perhaps the only real correlation is between the money and CO2 levels?

    As I have explained, there is no scientific explanation for CO2 producing heating. There is simply not enough and that is universally agreed. Every scientist has concluded more is needed but the random hypothesis of water assisted heating has proven wrong. There is no hot spot. There is no steady warming let alone runaway, tipping point, disastrous end of world warming and sea rise and worse everything. It is all nonsense.

    The IPCC do recognize that CO2 in the air has an equilibrium with water. Plus O2. The fish are grateful. The IPCC management just argue that the vast reserved (50x) of CO2 are trapped in deep ocean currents unconnected with the atmosphere, without any justification given and against normal experience. CO2 often comes from the bottom, as observed by many people, especially geologists and engineers.

    Also in my reading of the IPCC reports the closest they come to an actual number is an 80 year half life for the exchange/absorption of CO2, man made or not. There is even mention of man made CO2 hanging around for ‘thousands of years without any logic at all. You really have to doubt if any of these summaries are written by a scientist. This is the oceans at my warming stuff.

    In the 1950s suggested half life of CO2 was 5 years. This is a feeling as it is near impossible to perform experiments on a 4km deep column of turbulent water in a laboratory. Now 50 years after the atmospheric bomb tests, we know with certainty that the half life is 14 years. So we know the human CO2 from 1960 has been reduced by 2^4 or to 1/16th. This is the original Suess effect, before champions of man made CO2 changed history in Wikipedia.

    So without the utterly baseless and random IPCC statements, any rational person based on their own real life experience would think if a) the oceans steadily warmed, b) atmospheric CO2 would steadily increase. This is fully supported by Henry’s Law which covers equilibrium with dissolved gases and our own experience with champagne and lemonade. Howver for reasons not explained and which can be guessed, this the simplest of explanations is utterly unacceptable to anyone who believes in man made Global Warming. To them aerial CO2 must cause warming. Only CO2 keeps the planet warm. Rubbish.

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    Jan Braam

    I choose answer 1/ Human emissions are irrelevant.
    Here’s why :
    Did I win?

    01

  • #
    Jan Braam

    I choose answer 1/ Human emissions are irrelevant.
    Here’s why.
    Did I win?

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  • #
    el gordo

    After reading Ian Wilson I had a closer look at ENSO.

    ‘With respect to the last 1,200 years of the record, the decline in the frequency of ENSO events is anything but smooth. In coming out of the Dark Ages Cold Period, which was one of the coldest intervals of the Holocene (McDermott et al., 2001), the number of ENSO events experienced by the earth drops by an order of magnitude, from a high of approximately 33 events per 100 yr to a low of about 3 events per 100 yr, centered approximately on the year AD 1000, which is right in the middle of the Medieval Warm Period, as delineated by the work of Esper et al. (2002).

    ‘Then, at approximately AD 1250, the frequency of ENSO events exhibits a new peak of approximately 27 events per 100 yr in the midst of the longest sustained cold period of the Little Ice Age, again as delineated by the work of Esper et al. Finally, ENSO event frequency declines in zigzag fashion to a low on the order of 4 to 5 events per 100 yr at the start of the Modern Warm Period, which according to the temperature history of Esper et al. begins at about 1940.’

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      TedM

      The number of ENSO events? E#l gordo just what type of ENSO events are you referring to? ElNino LaNina? Or possibly both.

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      sophocles

      1250 was towards the end of the Medieval Warming period. 1645-1715 was the Maunder Minimum and 1690 +/- a few years was the coldest period of the LIA. Just a few years out …

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      • #
        el gordo

        Imagine we are back in 1245 AD and Greenland is gaining mass balance at a rapid rate, soon there will be large icebergs in the North Atlantic.

        Its going to be fun watching AGW fall asunder, I’ll bring the popcorn.

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        • #
          sophocles

          I’m well stocked in the popcorn and beer departments 🙂
          The LazyBoy has regular lubes and the entertainment has been increasing.
          In about five years time (if the world isn’t at war) it’s going to be highly amusing.

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  • #
    ROM

    I have just spent an hour or more wading through a mass of papers and government reports on estimating/ guesstimating / modelling national and specific industry case CO2 emmissions.

    Yeh ! I needed the relaxation after a number of rather traumatic personally related events recently.
    ” means of estimating CO2 emissions from just about everything that moves and if doesn’t move then guestimate its CO2 emmissions,[ Wiki ] there is a plethora of emmission models allied with guestimates allied with wild arsed guesses as to what a nations and even entire industries real and actual CO2 emmissions actually are.

    China for instance not very long ago had its emmissions profile changed by a considerable margin as the CO2 emmissions estimates from the tonnages of coal burned were way off because a different grade of coal was being used in a wide range of Chinese coal fired generators to that on which the emissions estimates were based.

    The whole emissions thing both industry, national and international is nothing more than a chimera and a mirage of guesses and guestimates all supposedly carefully modelled to give the impression that the so called Experts seem to know what they are talking about.
    Which, as is usual in anything climate related today, they rarely seem to when it comes down to hard core emmission level proving evidence.

    Or in another time and another era, Astonaut James Lovell’s fatefull Apollo 13 call to the Houston Control Centre . “Houston. We had a problem” seems applicable to the universally used term for CO2 emmissions, “estimating” [ guesstimating!] and so called “modelling” of national and international emmissions of CO2.

    I have lost the source now in the plethora of papers I scanned over the last couple of hours but one paper on UK power generator emmissions gave a margin of + /- 10% [ plus or minus ten percent ], a range of 20% in its estimates and calculations for power generator CO2 emmissions.
    And power generators being stationary and very closely controlled both by output and fuel use, fuel does cost a lot of money, should be a pushover to accurately calculate CO2 emmissions.

    But +/- 10% was the margin and range of the calculated CO2 emmissions of those british power generators.

    Which I strongly suspect is much closer to reality than all the hoopla that surrounds such precise figures on CO2 emmissions that are so casually thrown around by “experts” skilled in the mushrooming
    techniques used to divert the public from knowing the real data if it actually exists which in most alarmist climate science output, it doesn’t.

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    • #

      Adjustments must be made.

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    • #
      TdeF

      The level CO2 emissions just does not fit everything else on the internet about coal and oil. For example. How can that be? These graphs show energy
      production and specifically coal and oil to be rocketing upwards but the IEA draws a flat consumption graph?
      That’s the problem with new political science. The facts have to be homogenized to fit the politics. Fake Facts.

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    William Astley

    It is turtles all the way down. We are not even on the correct path. OMG, there are different paths? What is the difference between a path and a theory?

    Anthropogenic CO2 emissions: 1) did not cause the majority of the rise in atmospheric CO2 in the last 150 years and 2) did not cause the majority of the warming (corollary, consequences of assertion 1), in the last 150 years.

    “Scrutinizing the carbon cycle and CO2 residence time in the atmosphere

    Climate scientists presume that the carbon cycle has come out of balance due to the increasing anthropogenic emissions from fossil fuel combustion and land use change. This is made responsible for the rapidly increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations over recent years, and it is estimated that the removal of the additional emissions from the atmosphere will take a few hundred thousand years (William: ‘Theoretical’ assumption of 100,000s of years is necessary to create CAGW). Since this goes along with an increasing greenhouse effect and a further global warming, a better understanding of the carbon cycle is of great importancevfor all future climate change predictions. We have critically scrutinized this cycle and present an alternative concept, for which the uptake of CO2 by natural sinks scales proportional with the CO2 concentration.

    In addition, we consider temperature dependent natural emission and absorption rates, by which the paleoclimatic CO2 variations and the actual CO2 growth rate can well be explained. The anthropogenic contribution to the actual CO2 concentration is found to be 4.3%, its fraction to the CO2 increase over the Industrial Era is 15% and the average residence time 4 years.”

    https://www.heartland.org/_template-assets/documents/publications/HardeHermann%20CarbonCycle%20ResidenceTime.pdf

    Available online 24 February 2017

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      TdeF

      A few years ago I wrote a lot about the physics of the Atom bomb C14 curve, C14 being the element used for carbon dating. There is now a lot of discussion on the ‘Atom bomb curve carbon’. This is a pure e-kt decay, with a half life of 14 years. It destroys the previous Bern curve. Invalidates it. I am surprised that anyone has reverted to 4 years as a residence time, but the point is clear. Man released CO2 does not hang around.

      The simple physical chemistry is that the earth maintains the CO2 level, the oceans in particular. We don’t. Consider that CO2 was 300 parts per million before we even had fossil fuels. Now the allegation is that we are mostly responsible for the additional 100 ppm in 150 years, but we were not responsible for the first 300million, so it may be just a natural variation driven entirely by slightly warming oceans which contain much more air than the atmosphere.

      By the way, as most of the CO2 is in the ocean with an exchange half life of 14 years and the half life of C14 is 5,200 years, the C14 content in the ocean is the same. So radio carbon dating is independent of CO2 content, unless you let off some atom bombs and suddenly double the C14 content, as happened.

      In a way, the atom bomb tests were an incredible accurate way to measure CO2 behaviour in the biosphere with the whole planet as a laboratory. This was something we could not possibly simulate. Now everything is known. The only problem is that it is highly embarrassing for the IPCC. So they ignore reality. It is a political Inter Governmental Panel anyway and needs Climate Change for its continued existence. That explains everything.

      Hundreds of thousands of years, eh? Fake science.

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        TdeF

        I means it is an interesting paper, but the fact that the C14 curve is a perfect straight line as a logarithm tells you that there is only one huge sink for CO2 and it contains so much CO2 that the C14 appears to vanish completely. So you need a sink which contains vastly more CO2 than the atmosphere itself. Now where could you find such a thing?

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        • #
          TdeF

          Also the horizontal asymptote for C14 after doubling is almost exactly what it was 70 years ago. If an extra 50% CO2 was due to human emissions and ancient fossil fuel has no C14 at all, the asymptote would be at 2/3 of the historic level. As C14 cannot be destroyed it tells you that this new tagged CO2 is being replaced entirely with older CO2 with the long term average of C14. This again confirms the sheer size of the sink of free gaseous CO2. It would have to be 50x as much as in the atmosphere, which eliminates the biosphere completely.

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          • #
            Clyde Spencer

            TdeF,

            You said, “As C14 cannot be destroyed it tells you that this new tagged CO2 is being replaced entirely with older CO2 with the long term average of C14.”

            C14 destroys itself through radioactive decay.

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            • #
              TdeF

              We humans cannot destroy it and it has a half life of 5,400 years so over a human lifetime, it hardly changes. It can only combine and recombine with other elements. Form carbohydrates, make leaves and wheat and trees and reappear. It enters people as food. People even used it to date teeth and bones in the 20th century for rate of growth. You can easily tell whether someone was born before 1965.

              Because C14 is highly radioactive and radiation is easily detected even in one part in a trillion, you will detect it easily anywhere. However aerial concentrations halved in the first 14 years after being doubled suddenly in 1965. So it very vanished from our terrestial biosphere and that special CO2 from 1965 is nearly all gone. So where did it go? Answer that and you could laugh at CAGW.

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                Clyde Spencer

                TdeF,

                I was just pointing out that your statement was not literally true and was an unsupported generalization.

                What we have is a situation where the atmospheric C14 spike is being simultaneously depleted by radioactive decay, and being removed from the atmosphere by the classic carbon sinks, where it continues to decay (destroyed).

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              • #
                TdeF

                Clyde, the point is about time scales. The half life of C14 in the atmosphere is around 14 years. The half life of C14 itself is 5400 years. On a time scale of 14 years, the C14 will have decayed 0.15% but half of it will have vanished from the atmosphere. As we cannot destroy it and only 0.15% will have decayed naturally, where has it gone?

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              • #
                sophocles

                14C is also a cosmogenic isotope created by cosmic rays. It’s fluctuations are a useful measure of solar and GCR exposure.

                10

              • #
                ROM

                The C14 marker generated by the 1950′-60”s northern hemisphere atmospheric atomic bomb tests reached a peak in the NH in 1963 and in the SH in 1965.

                [ Radiocarbon Dating and Bomb Carbon ]

                Other articles also mention the close to two year delay for the C14 radio active tracer gas to cross the Troposphere’s “Intertropical Convergence Zone” from the NH to SH in this case.

                Which destroys the claims from a good percentage of climate alarmists who are apparently quite ignorant of the Atomic Bomb tests and the atmospheric measurements done at that time using the radio active trace gases across the global atmosphere and in the global biological system and who continue to promote the extreme claim of close to a century lifetime of the quite unique apparently but un-identifiable specific CO2 molecule from the burning of fossil fuels.

                NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory ; The Bomb Spike

                The graph below shows how the amount of 14C rapidly increased in the atmosphere–can you pick out series of nuclear tests in the late 1950s? The last tests were just before the treaty went into effect in late 1963, when the highest 14C levels are seen. The decrease since then is not due to radioactive decay, but mostly due to the exchange of CO2 (containing the high levels of 14C) with the ocean, as well as with land biota. Scientists use this graph to help understand how quickly atmospheric CO2 flows in and out of the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems.
                .

                Graph—
                .

                The Southern Hemisphere measurements, from Baring Head, just near Wellington, New Zealand, look quite different to the measurements from the Northern Hemisphere. The peak of the “bomb spike” is much lower–and it occurs later. This is because the atmospheric nuclear weapons tests were done in the Northern Hemisphere, and the biggest ones were done in the Russian Arctic. It takes about a year for air to mix from the Northern Hemisphere into the Southern Hemisphere, so the peak occurs about a year later in the south, and it is smaller, because, during that year, some of the 14C had already been absorbed into the oceans.

                By the 1980s, most of the “bomb” 14C had been absorbed into the oceans and land biota, leaving slightly elevated levels in the atmosphere.

                and the backside covering caveat ;

                Yet atmospheric C14 levels continue to decrease–now because of fossil fuel CO2 emissions.

                The distribution of C14 in CO2 from those same radioactive C14 tracer gas molecules as found in tree rings in the NH and SH and now the very uneven and sometimes concentrated CO2 distribution as detected by satellite are also quite clearly found by many 1950’s and early 2000’s researchers using C14 levels as measured in tree rings from the 1950’s era as the growing trees took up CO2 and its radio active C14 tracer component over the next half a century.

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  • #
    William Astley

    More turtles. The idiotic CAGW CO2 hypothesis, requires a very small input of CO2 into the biosphere (volcanic).

    The C13/C12 observations support the assertion that there is a time varying large source of primordial CH4 into the biosphere which explains why the C13/C12 variance in recent times does not track anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

    There are methane (CH4) seeps all over the ocean floor which supports the assertion that the source of hydrocarbons on the earth’s surface and the reason why 70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water (the solar wind strips water out of the atmosphere so if there was no new source of CH4 into the atmosphere the earth would be a desert), is deep core CH4 that is extruded from the core as it solidifies. The super high-pressure liquid CH4 that is extruded from the core, is the source of the force that moves the ocean floor underneath the continents and that splits apart the continents.

    P.S. The reason it took 30 years for the tectonic plate theory to be accepted is a back of the envelope calculation unequivocally supports the assertion that convection motion in the mantel cannot possibly explain the motion of the plates and cannot explain basic geological phenomena such as mountains or plateaus.

    http://www.newgeology.us/presentation21.html
    Piles and piles of anomalies and paradoxes that do not make it into textbooks.

    “Around the end of the first decade of dominance by plate tectonics, in 1975, the situation was described this way: “In recent years, the kinematics of continental drift and sea-floor spreading have been successfully described by the theory of plate tectonics. However, rather little is known about the driving mechanisms of plate tectonics, although various types of forces have been suggested”14.

    Seven years later, in 1982, the assessment was: “At the present time the geometry of plate movements is largely understood, but the driving mechanism of plate tectonics remains elusive”3.

    By 1995 we find that: “In spite of all the mysteries this picture of moving tectonic plates has solved, it has a central, unsolved mystery of its own: What drives the plates in the first place? ‘[That] has got to be one of the more fundamental problems in plate tectonics,’ notes geodynamicist Richard O’Connell of Harvard University. ‘It’s interesting it has stayed around so long’ “25.

    In 2002 it could be said that: “Although the concept of plates moving on Earth’s surface is universally accepted, it is less clear which forces cause that motion. Understanding the mechanism of plate tectonics is one of the most important problems in the geosciences”8.

    A 2004 paper noted that “considerable debate remains about the driving forces of the tectonic plates and their relative contribution”40. “Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift died in 1926, primarily because no one could suggest an acceptable driving mechanism. In an ironical twist, continental drift (now generalized to plate tectonics) is almost universally accepted, but we still do not understand the driving mechanism in anything other than the most general terms”2.”

    The oldest section of ocean floor is 200 million years old. A portion of the CH4 is left at the continental edge which explains why there are chains of mountains all on the edge of the continents.

    The deep core source of CH4 explains why there is more carbon in Methane hydrates on the ocean floor than there are liquid hydrocarbon reserves and why the upper ocean is saturated with CH4.

    Widespread methane leakage from the sea floor on the northern US Atlantic margin
    Methane emissions from the sea floor affect methane inputs into the atmosphere1, ocean acidification and de-oxygenation2, 3, the distribution of chemosynthetic communities and energy resources. Global methane flux from seabed cold seeps has only been estimated for continental shelves4, at 8 to 65 Tg CH4 yr−1, yet other parts of marine continental margins are also emitting methane. The US Atlantic margin has not been considered an area of widespread seepage, with only three methane seeps recognized seaward of the shelf break. However, massive upper-slope seepage related to gas hydrate degradation has been predicted for the southern part of this margin5, even though this process has previously only been recognized in the Arctic2, 6, 7. Here we use multibeam water-column backscatter data that cover 94,000 km2 of sea floor to identify about 570 gas plumes at water depths between 50 and 1,700 m between Cape Hatteras and Georges Bank on the northern US Atlantic passive margin. About 440 seeps originate at water depths that bracket the up dip limit for methane hydrate stability. Contemporary upper-slope seepage there may be triggered by ongoing warming of intermediate waters, but authigenic carbonates observed imply that emissions have continued for more than 1,000 years at some seeps. Extrapolating the upper-slope seep density on this margin to the global passive margin system, we suggest that tens of thousands of seeps could be discoverable.

    http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n9/full/ngeo2232.html#affil-auth

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      TdeF

      I have found this C13/C12 measurement is very tricky and confusing. In stark contrast you can be absolute with C14. C14 does not exist at all in fossil fuels, so it is a perfect tracer in talking about fossil fuel CO2 which is at the heart of the CAGW story. You can deal with unquestionable absolutes. You can radiocarbon date the CO2 in the air and there is almost no fossil fuel CO2.

      C13 is however 1% of all Carbon, the other 99% being C12. Both are completely stable. (C14 atoms are 1 in a trillion.) So you have to postulate and measure a very slightly different uptake of carbon atoms which are 9% different in weight but otherwise chemically absolutely identical. This is all very debatable. It almost seems to have been invented for the fun of it or to confuse the issues. Turtles? More like red herrings.

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      • #
        Craig Thomas

        That is incorrect. Plants discriminate against C13, and the recent increase in atmospheric CO2, which we know is related to the burning of fossil fuels, is also associated with a reduction in the c13:C12 ratio for the obvious reason that every body in their right mind perfectly understands.

        http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095556824

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        • #
          TdeF

          ” every body in their right mind perfectly understands”. Are you sure?

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          • #
            Craig Thomas

            I hope you clicked on the link so as to improve the fact-base of your future commenting.

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        • #
          Jim Ross

          Craig,

          As you perfectly understand this, perhaps you would be kind enough to explain for the rest of us why the incremental CO2 has a long-term average δ13C content of -13 per mil, while anthropogenic emissions from burning fossil fuels are around -28 per mil. Oh, and while you are at it, perhaps you would also explain the variations in δ13C content of the incremental CO2 with ENSO events and why the widely-quoted CDIAC carbon budget data assumes that ENSO events have virtually no impact on oceanic adsorption/release of CO2. That will do for starters.

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          • #
            Craig Thomas

            Are you saying you are confused because C12 emitted by the burning of fossil fuels is entering the carbon cycle?

            Did you know the atmosphere represents about 1% of our planet’s carbon sinks?

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            • #
              Jim Ross

              Did I say I was confused? No, I asked you for your explanation of three issues. Perhaps you failed to understand the questions, so I shall try again with the first one and see if you can handle one at a time.

              The Scripps database has δ13C measurements for atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa since 1980. It shows a decrease from around -7.5 per mil in 1980 to -8.5 per mil in 2016 (latest figures are for mid-2016). This decline shows that the incremental CO2 during that period had a lower δ13C value, on average, than the atmosphere, i.e. less than circa -8 per mil. OK so far? As an expert, you will be familiar with the Keeling equation. If we apply this to the measurements of CO2 and δ13C, we find that the incremental CO2 had an average content of -13.3 per mil (R squared of .98).

              So, my first question to you was how do you explain the difference between the actual measurement of -13 per mil and the view (e.g. of NOAA) that anthropogenic emissions have a δ13C content of -28 per mil. If you still don’t understand the question, please ask.

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              • #

                I know you are confused because you persist in a fundamental error of logic.
                Why are you expecting it all to show up in the atmosphere when the atmosphere only represents 1% of the sinks?

                Your first assumption is thus wrong – you can’t say anything about the average C12:C13 ratio of “incremental CO2” if you are only measuring the effect of “incremental CO2” in 1% of the places it has been going.

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              • #
                Jim Ross

                I have not made any assumptions. I have simply looked at the data. You have failed to explain the data. I thought you might know what you were talking about. My mistake.

                What is really sad, is that the “consensus” does pretend to have an explanation, but you have just proved that you do not know what that is.

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              • #

                The problem here is that I have explained to you a fundamental error on your part and you are refusing to learn from it.

                Let me try again:
                Mauna Laua measures CO2 *in the atmosphere*
                The atmosphere at any one time contains only 1% of the CO2 that is participating in the carbon cycle.
                Each year, 10 times more CO2 is cycled through the sinks than is emitted by humans.

                Therefore, you can’t look at 1% of the world’s CO2, comparing the C12:C13 ratio, and assume that all human-emitted CO2 is going to be there.

                Human-emitted CO2 is not uniformly distributed throughout the carbon cycle, so the simplistic calculation you are trying will never be of any use to you in making the argument you are trying to make.

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              • #
                Jim Ross

                So, Craig, you seem to be saying that the δ13C value of incremental atmospheric CO2 of circa -13 per mil, is a useless number and therefore not worthy of further consideration, Please let me know if I have misunderstood your comments. Perhaps you could then explain why the authors of the following paper find it so important to explain this value. Thank you.

                Randerson et al: A possible global covariance between terrestrial gross primary production and 13C discrimination: Consequences for the atmospheric 13C budget and its response to ENSO. GLOBAL BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES, VOL. 16, NO. 4, 1136, doi:10.1029/2001GB001845, 2002

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        • #
          Dave

          Craig!

          You are very wrong in this!
          “Plants discriminate against C13”

          PLANTS? You have no idea about C13 or C12 ratios!
          Do you understand the different pathways?
          C3
          C4
          CAM
          Do you understand the ratio of the crops currently growing on our planet?

          Make sure you understand the biomass of C4 plant groups is far greater than C3! Do you know this Craig? I won’t go into CAM pathways, because it maybe too difficult!

          Do you know the result of this is a BIAS toward increase in Fossil Fuel usage in the atmosphere!
          SIMPLY because they IGNORE the C4 plant biomass actually is the one that gets measured!

          You have got no idea at all regarding the different plant pathways & their influence of your C12 C13 ratio argument!
          But Craig, this is what NONE of the dimwits in climate science admit!

          You have 690 acres of family farm, surely you can start making it into a Carbon Sink? Or just mine it!

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          • #

            Yes, plants discriminate against C13. This is a very well known fact. As my high school text book states:
            “Discrimination against C13 is attributed to the great mass of the Isotope”.

            You are also entertaining us with a fundamental error of logic:

            Fact: C4 plants have a higher C13:C12 ratio than C3 plants.

            Your error: You seem to have misunderstood this as meaning C4 plants have a higher C13:C12 ratio than the atmosphere. They don’t.

            C4 and C3 plants both have a lower C13:C12 ratio than exists in the atmosphere.

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    Art

    “the amount of carbon dioxide that people are pumping into the air seems to have stabilized in recent years, at least judging from the data that countries compile on their own emissions.”
    ——————————-
    Therein lies the explanation. Like Jo said:

    “2/ Our emissions records are more dodgy than ever. China and India are just pouring it out and no one trusts their statistics, or fudgy numbers on land-use hide the growth.”

    Global warming alarmists never doubt the word of China, India or other “developing” countries when they submit their numbers.

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    I looked link between economic growth and CO2 emissions Globally it is very difficult to assess because as developed countries mature, emissions stabilize. I created a graph of CO2 emissions per capita for the period 1900 to 2010 from Climate Interactive’s C-ROADS data for US, EU, Australia and Canada.
    https://manicbeancounter.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/fig1a.jpgIn the US emissions per capita peaked in 1973. In the EU they peaked in 1980. The changes since have tracked the business cycle. The reason is that as countries mature they lose heavy industry, switching to service jobs. Australia and Canada have both seen emissions per capita continuing to increase. Both have extreme climates, so as they continue to become richer people will use more energy. In more temperate climates, energy use for heating and air conditioning is much less.

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    doubtingdave

    CO2 increases lag temperature rise by approximately 800 years , its been approximately 800 years since the medieval warming period , so whats the problem unless your name is Al Gore and you get your facts about face , its all perfectly natural.
    [I removed the word that put you in moderation – it was unnecessary to making your point] Fly

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      The 800-year “lag” you believe concerns 100ppm changes in CO2 associated with 10-degree changes in temperature.

      The MWP was a 0.5 degree temperature spike. So if there is such a thing as an 800-year lag, based on previous episodes, then the MWP is causing about 5ppm of CO2 rise.

      Do think about things a bit harder before posting, won’t you? You wouldn’t want to be sillier than Al Gore, would you?

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    Frank

    If you look carefully at the rise in emissions, one will see that the rise in El Nino years is up to 1 ppm higher than average and that after volcanic eruptions and strong La Nina up to 1 ppm lower. This is from the mixed layer of the ocean outgassing and taking up CO2. The change in only about 1 ppm for about a few tenths of a degK, meaning that this amounts to perhaps 5-10 ppm for 20th-century warming.

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    doubtingdave

    so we care about so called offensive words , what about BUM , OR BUTTUCKS OR ASHOLE , HAS YOUR SOCIETY LOST THE PLOT

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    Another Ian

    Helping the EU with CO2 – and “doing as we say not as we do”

    “Who would have guessed that half of US coal exports go to Europe? Or that half of our coal exports to Europe would go to the Netherlands (“going Dutch”)?”

    And

    “U.S. coal exports have increased over the past six months

    Coal exports for the first quarter of 2017 were 58% higher than in the same quarter last year, with steam coal exports increasing by 6 million short tons (MMst) and metallurgical coal exports increasing by 2 MMst.”

    More at

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/24/the-resurgence-of-the-american-coal-industry-part-trois-going-dutch/

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      Dennis

      Thankfully by denying 24 million Australians coal and gas power stations over time we are saving the planet so exporting coal and gas is not a problem

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        TdeF

        South Australian lemmings led by Weatherill and Koutsantonis have been the first over the cliff. All for the greater good.

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      TdeF

      You should see the thousands of giant windmills in the North Sea off Holland. The Dutch have form. They abandoned their windmills once before for coal. Then they were much more useful for pumping water over dykes, an application which is not time critical like making toast.

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    doubtingdave

    DR Richard Lindzen debunked global warming many years ago with his cloud iris theory , how many of you remember that clouds ) because of albedo ) reflect radiation back out into space , water vapour is earths thermostat , what is the point of arguing the toss ever since , its not about science , it never was , so why continue to argue the science when you all know its actually political ideology

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    Dave in the States

    Forgive me if someone already pointed this possibility out and I missed it, but to the question of economic growth vs emissions growth, the answer may be fracking and other modern drilling technologies.

    We now have more abundant hydrocarbon fuels that are more efficient in terms of emissions and usable energy, at much lower costs. Cheap energy spurs economic growth going back to econ 101, freshmen year.

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    David Maddison

    MODS – please release my moderated comment! It was only a link!

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    • #
      David Maddison

      He’s a correlation for you.

      CO2 lags temperature but Tesla car sales are directly proportional to government subsidies.

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    el gordo

    Nate (the ABC weather man) said we can expect a big El Nino every 22 years (roughly the solar cycle), do you suppose we could test this assumption?

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    TdeF

    There is almost a presumption in the question Jo raises. In our human world of high energy use, at least in Australia, the US and Europe, we are aware that we are outputting what to us are vast amounts of CO2. However we are not aware that on a planetary scale, we are irrelevant. It is fascinating the transition from the 18th Century where so many people never saw into the next valley, saw the ocean and countries did not exist. They didn’t even have television! We are now masters of the universe.

    The IPCC fed delusion that we now control the weather is quite amazing. The extraordinary idea that burning old plant matter heats the planet directly or indirectly is a symptom of our transition from being villagers to flying in jet aircraft in just seventy years. It scares people. Al Gore plays on those fears and even guilt. The very idea that CO2 or H2O, the only two ingredients of photosynthesis are dangerous industrial pollution is just amazing. It makes every living thing a polluter and CO2 pollution.

    CO2 has existed for ever in the air, minding its own business, in equilibrium and the long term level set, as the IPCC agrees and every scientist by ocean temperature.

    Vast quantities, 98% of free CO2 is compressed into the oceans which cover 3/4 of this planet to an average depth of 3.4km, including Antarctica. The reason there are ice core measures is that CO2 is even in the ice. We came from the ocean and the human embryo shows gills in development, we need water and salt to survive out of water. Our blood even reflects the NaCL concentration of the ancient oceans and our lungs have 40sq.meters of wet surface to intake O2 and output 14% CO2. Our new land based world of plants is a creation of water and sunlight and CO2 and DNA.

    Since 1900 we now control the planet. We even control the CO2 level. We are the masters. It’s obvious. At what point did ego conquer science? At what point did we lose our religions and start believing we were all powerful. In an internet world, how many tens of thousands of Greens even feel slightly guilty jetting business class into Rio and Lima and Paris and Rio and Qatar to discuss the evils of flying? Not Al Gore, Tim Flannery or Michael Mann. They are the evangalists who wrote this story. It is just silly.

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  • #
    Allen Ford

    The missing CO2 emissions have clearly joined the missing heat in the deep oceans.

    It’s worse than we thought.

    60

    • #
      Another Ian

      Allen

      Must be getting crowded down there. I wonder how much more room there is for “undiscovered missings”

      10

      • #
        Lionell Griffith

        There must be a huge pile of no longer used commonsense down there. The so called leaders of the world have abandoned it without so much as a blink of an eye.

        They have wasted almost half of the world’s wealth and are demanding to be allowed to waste the rest. All in the name of saving what obviously does not need saving.

        That everything they have done has failed monumentally is their excuse for doing more of the same only more so. It doesn’t come close to being as good as insanity. Just when you think it couldn’t get worse, it does.

        The catastrophe they have been predicting for so many decades is even further from happening than it was at the start. This fuels their doubling down on their demands to waste the wealth of the world on their totally misguided efforts.

        It is way past time we stop feeding them.

        30

  • #
    Mark M

    O/T

    Science Unsettled:

    How a Guy From a Montana Trailer Park Overturned 150 Years of Biology

    Biology textbooks tell us that lichens are alliances between two organisms—a fungus and an alga. They are wrong.

    “In the 150 years since Schwendener, biologists have tried in vain to grow lichens in laboratories.
    Whenever they artificially united the fungus and the alga, the two partners would never fully recreate their natural structures.
    It was as if something was missing—and Spribille might have discovered it.

    He has shown that largest and most species-rich group of lichens are not alliances between two organisms, as every scientist since Schwendener has claimed.

    Instead, they’re alliances between three. All this time, a second type of fungus has been hiding in plain view.

    “There’s been over 140 years of microscopy,” says Spribille. “The idea that there’s something so fundamental that people have been missing is stunning.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-a-guy-from-a-montana-trailer-park-upturned-150-years-of-biology/491702/

    31

  • #
    pat

    no surprise.

    top story on Carbon Pulse today:

    24 Jul: CarbonPulse: India to close Paris clean energy fund, divert revenues – paper
    India will shut down a major fund for renewable energy projects and divert the cash to state government coffers instead, according to local media.

    top story at Climate Home/Climate Change News today:

    24 Jul: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: India diverts $25 billion away from clean energy fund
    Revenue raised by a tax on coal was originally intended to support renewables, but a Scroll.in investigation revealed it is being spent on an unrelated policy
    Narendra Modi’s administration has won plaudits internationally for hiking taxes on coal production and aiming to install 175GW of renewables by 2022.
    Yet the biggest pot of money raised to support solar, wind and other climate-friendly power sources has been sacrificed to a major reform of India’s goods and services tax (GST).
    The move was confirmed by the finance ministry in response to a query filed under India’s Right to Information Act by Scroll.in…
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/07/24/india-diverts-25-billion-away-clean-energy-fund/

    Scroll.in pieces pieces post at bottom of jo’s “Unthreaded” thread yesterday. HUUUUGE story.

    51

  • #
    pat

    24 Jul: Washington Examiner: John Siciliano: Trump Administration Lining Up Climate Change ‘Red Team’
    The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency are recruiting scientists by enlisting the help of the Heartland Institute, considered to be the lead think tank for challenging the majority of scientists on climate change.
    The institute has its own red team, which is the antithesis to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which it calls, unabashedly, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change…

    “The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency have reached out to the Heartland Institute to help identify scientists who could constitute a red team, and we’ve been happy to oblige,” Jim Lakely, the group’s communications director, told the Washington Examiner.
    “This effort is long overdue,” he said. “The climate scientists who have dominated the deliberations and the products of the IPCC have gone almost wholly without challenge. That is a violation of the scientific method and the public’s trust.”…READ ALL
    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-administration-lining-up-climate-change-red-team/article/2629124

    21

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Now if along with doing the right thing he would just cut off his damned twittering finger. But no, has to piss off all the Republicans in the House and Senate whose support he needs… …time after time.

      Does he want to end up being impeached and removed from office by his own party? He already has enough enemies.

      10

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    You can’t fool me anymore. Show me that global warming is actually happening and then show me that carbon dioxide is responsible for it. Then I’ll take the quiz.

    Isn’t that the right answer you’re looking for, Jo? I think so. So what’s my prize? Probably red thumbs.

    The whole United States is not worried about climate change as the article states. It’s so far down the real list of worries that I can’t even see it.

    So bring on your red, you thumb bombers. By your color you shall be known.

    71

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Roy,

      Calm down, and take some deep slow breaths.

      Now, doesn’t that feel better?

      41

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Frankly, no! What would make me feel a whole lot better is if the rest of the world calmed down, took some deep slow breaths and stopped trying to outdo each other with claims about climate change. Then maybe the reality that it’s not happening, that it’s all just weather could sink in.

        I think that’s probably asking too much though, isn’t it? So the nonsense will go on. And anyway, we wouldn’t want to put Jo and David out of work now, would we. So bring on the red thumbs. 🙂

        Human emissions go up or maybe they go down or, heaven forbid, they stay constant but no one is happy no matter what happens. And one of those three possibilities ought to be making someone very happy. Yet no one is happy and they all say send me your money.

        Maybe it’s all Donald Trump’s fault. God knows, everthing else is. And he’s the only one saying, “I want you to send me less of your money.” 😉

        61

      • #
        Another Ian

        RW
        Maybe this sort of meds will help Roy?

        “Trump administration lining up climate change ‘red team’ ”

        Heartland helping

        https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/24/trump-administration-lining-up-climate-change-red-team/

        51

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          I saw that yesterday and Pat mentioned it above. It’s exactly the right thing to do. And both Trump and Heartland have been demonized so much that even the name is anathema to some people. Which is a shame because Heartland has been exposing the sham that climate change is for a long time.

          31

          • #
            Roy Hogue

            I should have added this just to be complete. It was Heartland Institute who sent me a beautifully bound paper copy of Jo’s first version of The Skeptic’s Handbook back in about 2008 — could be wrong about the year plus or minus — and they put me onto joannenova.com.au.

            So they were fighting the good fight already for a long time when Trump started thinking about them as the basis for his red-team.

            41

  • #
    pat

    posted at ClimateDepot. see About for more info on Alan Carlin:

    20 Jul: CarlinEconomics&Science: Alan Carlin: The Climate Alarmists’ Gross Perversion of the Word Clean
    (Climate change from the viewpoint of a skeptical former Sierra Club activist and USEPA senior analyst)
    They have fudged the surface temperature data, used meaningless climate models, argued that human emissions of carbon dioxide will warm the planet despite the strong evidence to the contrary, and so on, but their greatest perversion is of the English language.

    They have branded CO2 as a pollutant and claimed that reducing it is necessary to make the world “clean.” All the alarmists from Gore to McKibben to Obama are guilty of this; in fact, the use of this terminology is so uniform that one suspects that they all have been coached to say it at every opportunity. Unfortunately, their efforts have even been supported by the Supreme Court, which decreed that CO2 is subject to regulation by the USEPA under the Clean Air Act despite no real support for this in the legislative history…READ ALL
    http://www.carlineconomics.com/archives/3740

    31

  • #
    pat

    people power:

    24 Jul: BBC: Electricity shake-up could save consumers ‘up to £40bn’
    By Roger Harrabin
    New rules will make it easier for people to generate their own power with solar panels, store it in batteries and sell it to the National Grid.
    If they work, consumers will save £17bn to £40bn by 2050, according to the government and energy regulator Ofgem.
    The rules are due to come into effect over the next year.
    They will reduce costs for someone who allows their washing machine to be turned on by the internet to maximise use of cheap solar power on a sunny afternoon.
    And they will even support people who agree to have their freezers switched off for a few minutes to smooth demand at peak times.
    They’ll also benefit a business that allows its air-conditioning to be turned down briefly to help balance a spell of peak energy demand on the National Grid…

    The tiny energy savings of millions of people and firms will be pulled together into packages by traders, who will offer substantial chunks of energy saving to the National Grid at the click of a computer…
    So instead of predicting peak demand then building power stations to meet it, energy managers will be able to trade in Negawatts – negative electricity…

    Some will urge a degree of caution amongst the enthusiasm: the more the energy industry embraces the digital age, the more vulnerable it will be to hacking.
    (OH NO, NOT RUSSIA) Recent reports suggest that Russian hackers may already have tried to compromise the system.
    http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40699986

    31

    • #
      Tal

      Given that solar AND energy storage combined is not YET energetically net positive (EROI), it’s pretty easy to say bullshit to this report. EROEI first, ROI second. This is not optional. Unless, subsidies. Who pays?

      00

  • #
    pat

    lengthy, read all:

    25 Jul: Daily Telegraph: Sydney is on the blink as surging electricity prices put 60,000 homes in danger of disconnection
    by ANNABEL HENNESSY
    It comes as the NSW government boosts the budget for their Energy Accounts Payments Assistance (EAPA) scheme to $17.1 million for this year. The scheme gives emergency $50 vouchers to households at risk of power disconnection — with the average household needing five vouchers…
    Data released exclusively to The Daily Telegraph reveals Western Sydney is being hit the hardest, with the top 10 metropolitan postcodes needing the most government help to pay bills all in the region…

    It comes after Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims announced he was investigating whether there was price manipulation occurring in NSW as a result of only a few generators operating…
    He said nationally the energy market was “broken” with clean energy policies, gas exportations and the shutdown of power stations creating a perfect storm…

    Charity workers said Western Sydney was being hit with a double whammy because the freezing temperatures and high proportion of fibro homes meant families were being whacked with bigger bills…READ ALL
    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/sydney-is-on-the-blink-as-surging-electricity-prices-put-60000-homes-in-danger-of-disconnection/news-story/3357cece8e5e2c267611a36e4b75309c

    31

    • #
      Tal

      Sadly, this is what happens when a collective goes down the IPCC rabbit hole, not considering if the science, technology, energy balance, or cash will be there to ease the transition. It is sad.

      00

  • #
    pat

    24 Jul: TheConversation: Rising carbon dioxide is making the world’s plants more water-wise
    Authors
    Pep Canadell, CSIRO Scientist, and Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project, CSIRO
    Francis Chiew, Senior Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO
    Lei Cheng, Postdoctoral research fellow, CSIRO
    Lu Zhang, Senior Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO
    Yingping Wang, Chief research scientist, CSIRO

    Disclosure statement:
    Pep Canadell receives funding from the Australian National Environmental Science Program.
    Francis Chiew works for CSIRO, which receives funding from the Commonwealth Government.
    Lei Cheng works for CSIRO, which receives funding from the Commonwealth Government.
    Lu Zhang works for CSIRO, which receives funding from the Commonwealth Government.
    Ying-Ping Wang receives funding from the Australian National Environmental Science Program.

    Land plants are absorbing 17% more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere now than 30 years ago, our research published today shows. Equally extraordinarily, our study also shows that the vegetation is hardly using any extra water to do it, suggesting that global change is causing the world’s plants to grow in a more water-efficient way…

    Our confirmation of a global trend of increasing water use efficiency is a rare piece of good news when it comes to the consequences of global environmental change. It will strengthen plants’ vital role as global carbon sinks, improve food production, and might boost water availability for the well-being of society and the natural world…

    It’s not all good news…READ ALL
    http://theconversation.com/rising-carbon-dioxide-is-making-the-worlds-plants-more-water-wise-79427

    01

    • #
      ROM

      Please!!!!

      The [ deleted ] “Conversation” refered to in Pat’s comment and link above is at least two decades behind the times in its news on water use efficiency of plants under higher CO2 levels.

      The climate science reference site CO2 Science has links to papers on this very subject going bac which 99 whs h refers to papers written a decade or more before that.
      CO Science; Science;;

      Pospisilova, J. and Catsky, J. 1999. Development of water stress under increased atmospheric CO2 concentration. Biologia Plantarum 42: 1-24.

      What was done;

      The authors analyzed the peer-reviewed literature of the past decade to determine how elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations affect plant water use. In their review, they compiled over 150 individual plant water use responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment.

      What was learned ;

      Elevated CO2 increased rates of net photosynthesis in about 85% of the reported studies, while reducing stomatal conductances and rates of transpiration in approximately 75% of the cases analyzed. Consequently, atmospheric CO2 enrichment increased plant water-use efficiency in more than 90% of the experiments that were conducted. In addition, elevated CO2 reduced total water uptake in more than 50% of the studies, while slowing the development of water stress as indicated by plant water potential data.

      What it means ;

      As the air’s CO2 content continues to rise, the vast majority of earth’s plants will likely display increases in water-use efficiency, which may actually be a more common response to atmospheric CO2 enrichment than enhanced rates of photosynthesis. Thus, as the authors conclude, plants growing in future atmospheres of higher CO2 concentration “will probably survive eventual higher drought stress and some species may even be able to extend their biotope into less favourable sites.”

      ——–
      Secondly there are a number of FACE projects ongoing around the world at the moment. [ FACE; Free Air Carbon dioxide Experiments ] one of which is here in Horsham at the local large Agriculture research establishment, the Grains Innovation Park using the FACE system to establish the future effects of higher CO2 concentrations on the growth and productivity of the various field crops grown across Australia’s vast grain growing areas.

      Some photos of the FACE ring experiments and research goals

      And the AGFACE experimental outline and some findings; here including references to much greater water use efficiencies in some crops and some varieties but not all varetities.
      The increased yields from higheratmospheric CO2 will be available to crop breeders and geneticists through carefully selected genetic sources including some of the very ancient parents of our current crop types for the breeding of new and advanced crop varieties that will be fully capable of taking advantage of the greater availability of the plant growth enhancing CO2 aligned with little or no increase needed in water availability to generate those higher yields.

      11

  • #
    pat

    re-defining:

    24 Jul: WaPo: We may have even less time to stop global warming than we thought
    By Chris Mooney
    But now, a team of prominent climate scientists say the budget is probably even narrower. The problem is how you define “preindustrial,” or when you consider human-caused perturbations of the atmosphere to have begun. Many analyses have taken the late 19th century as the starting point, but the new study in Nature Climate Change suggests significant human influence was afoot by at least 1750, and may have contributed as much as one-fifth of a degree Celsius of warming (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) before the late 1800s…

    “Frankly, this study does indicate that it may be more of an uphill battle than we previously thought in order to stabilize warming below the commonly defined dangerous limit of 2 degrees Celsius,” said Pennsylvania State University’s Michael Mann, one of the study’s authors. He completed the research with scientists from the universities of Edinburgh and Reading in the United Kingdom…

    The scientists don’t know precisely how much the planet warmed between the true start of industrialization and the late 19th century, when it was really starting to hum…
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/07/24/we-may-have-even-less-time-to-stop-global-warming-than-we-thought/?utm_term=.5656ec489046

    24 Jul: Phys.org: Allowable ‘carbon budget’ most likely overestimated
    https://phys.org/news/2017-07-carbon-overestimated.html

    24 Jul: Guardian: Study: our Paris carbon budget may be 40% smaller than thought
    How we define “pre-industrial” is important
    by Dana Nuccitelli
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/jul/24/study-our-paris-carbon-budget-may-be-40-smaller-than-thought

    11

    • #
      pat

      funny how Mann is being reported today as saying it’s worse than we think, when it seems like only yesterday he was continuing his criticism of New York Magazine’s David Wallace-Wells for saying “it’s worse than you think”!

      VIDEO: 19mins01secs: 23 Jul: RealNewsNetwork: Michael Mann Responds to ‘Uninhabitable Earth’
      Leading climate scientist Michael Mann separates myth from reality in climate change reporting
      FULL TRANSCRIPT:
      DIMITRI LASCARIS (REAL NEWS): On July 9th New York Magazine published a grim assessment of humanity’s future. The lengthy article authored by David Wallace-Wells was entitled The Uninhabitable Earth. The article began with these ominous words, “It is, I promise, worse than you think.”…

      So how bad is it really? Now here to impact this dire assessment of humanity’s future is Professor Michael Mann. Professor Mann, a frequent guest on The Real News, is a distinguished research professor and a director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University…WATCH AND/OR READ ON
      http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19584:Michael-Mann-Responds-to-%27Uninhabitable-Earth%27

      11

      • #
        Tal

        I think the IPCC talking heads came out at least four or five times over the past 20 years, saying “if we do not do something in the next couple of years, we will cross the rubicon. Classic fear mongering.

        00

  • #
    Robert Rosicka

    And from the their ABC and no need to fact check comes this gem .

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-24/sunshine-coast-council-solar-farm-opens-in-local-govt-first/8738320

    Yes folks you heard it first 100 % of all their electricity needs from $50million in solar panels , so what happens at night or when it’s cloudy ?

    50

    • #
      Dennis

      They have an interconnector to New Zealand arranged by the Kiwi councillors?

      30

    • #
      David Maddison

      In the article it says they will save $22,000,000 over 30 years.

      That represents an annualised return of a mere1.22% even if that figure were true.

      In any case the panels won’t last that last long.

      It is likely to be a net loss, probably all $50,000,000 of it.

      61

      • #
        Tal

        And how many times will the batteries have to be replaced, with existing technology? At what energetic cost? 😛 My car battery still doesn’t last 10 years. Perhaps Li-ion,….nope.

        10

    • #
      David Maddison

      For night time and production with cloud cover they can just direct some grid powered floodlights onto the panels…

      50

      • #
        Dennis

        Cost-benefit analysis is apparently beyond the renewables crowd

        40

      • #
      • #
        ROM

        You have been reading too many Spanish renewable energy magazines, David,

        The Spaniards came up with that one about twenty years ago.

        Government knows best and regulates accordingly.
        So the entrepreneurs of this world figure out how they can take advantage of government regulations and decrees.

        Item; 1
        Install a whole field of solar panels;
        Generate big profit solar energy from solar panels.
        Buy cheap industrial power to drive arc lights on solar panels at night.
        Pocket very lucrative profits from highly paid 24 hour solar power.

        Item; 2

        And if those arc lights are a bit noticeable to any bypassers during the night!
        A bit more expensive but install a couple of heavily silenced 400 to 600 HP HP gen sets way down the back of the block to boost that solar panel generated night power.

        And then wonder how the hell the Spanish government came to be out of pocket by somewhere around 30 billion euros to energy generators.

        And then scream your head off at the injustice of it all when the aforesaid Spanish government stopped all subsidises to renewable energy outfits.
        And got challeneged in the European court by the aforesaid renewable energy outfits.

        The EU Court then ruled that subsidies were subsidies and therefore were never guaranteed as a contracted and enforceable government payments to the formerly subsidised groups and could be altered or implemented or with drawn at the government’s discretion.

        20

  • #
    pat

    25 Jul: Herald Sun: Terry McCrann: Why it’s time to abolish the Renewable Energy Target
    The RET is the fundamental reason that power prices across the nation have more than doubled to now be among the highest in the world in a country awash with the coal that used to give us the cheapest and most reliable power in the world…READ ALL
    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/terry-mccrann-why-its-time-to-abolish-the-renewable-energy-target/news-story/b8ec8f2ce2cbf659b8061c543809af20

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    • #
      Ross Stacey

      This is the best description of the ” ridiculous state of Australian politics” you could ever wish to read. Tick to the editor for allowing it through.

      60

    • #

      Yes Pat,
      time for a CIT
      protest re the RET.

      … In less civilized times they used to burn an effigy in
      the city square.*

      * In even less civilized times, like The Even Younger Dryas*
      not an effigy, more like reality T.V.

      (* H/t Climate Nuremburg blog for T E-Y D.)

      20

  • #
    el gordo

    Breaking Nooze

    ‘The Trump administration is in the beginning stages of forming an adversarial “red team” to play devil’s advocate in a plan to debate the facts behind global warming and take on what skeptics call climate alarmism.

    ‘The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency are recruiting scientists by enlisting the help of the Heartland Institute, considered to be the lead think tank for challenging the majority of scientists on climate change.’

    Washington Examiner

    40

  • #
    pat

    quite sensibly, ignoring the Paris Agreement:

    24 Jul: The Ecologist: Pakistan to quadruple carbon emissions despite feeling pain of climate change
    by Anam Zeb, in Pakistan
    (Anam manages the media research projects of Climate Tracker, and has been investigating climate reporting in over 20 countries on three continents in countless languages. This article is part of a collaboration between Carbon Tracker and The Ecologist)
    At the same time, as Pakistan has developed, its carbon emissions have grown. Between 1994 and 2015, the country’s carbon emissions grew 123 percent.
    And as the country continues to push forward with economic development, under its Vision 2025 strategy and the CPEC, the prime minister recently reiterated the goal of becoming one of the top 20 economies of the world by 2025…
    In a recent statement, Pakistan’s minister for climate change stated that given the projected economic growth trajectory, emissions in Pakistan were expected to increase from 405 metric tons carbon dioxide to more than ***1,603 metric tons of CO2 in the next 15 years – that means increasing by almost four times…
    http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2989149/pakistan_to_quadruple_carbon_emissions_despite_feeling_pain_of_climate_change.html

    11

  • #
    Jim Ross

    The article states: “For more than two years, the monitoring station here, along with its counterparts across the world, has been flashing a warning: The excess carbon dioxide scorching the planet rose at the highest rate on record in 2015 and 2016. A slightly slower but still unusual rate of increase has continued into 2017.”

    There are two problems with these statements: the first is misleading and the second is wrong.

    The last few years of the CO2 cycle at Mauna Loa can be see here:
    https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

    What is immediately obvious is that the cycle reaches a maximum each May and a minimum each September. What may be less obvious is the fact that the annual decreases barely change while all the variation in growth occurs during the September to May part of the cycle, i.e. it is “smeared” over two calendar years, but only occurs during one part of one cycle.

    The actual monthly values (in ppm) show that the September to May increases were:
    2013-14 8.33
    2014-15 8.58
    2015-16 10.07
    2016-17 8.62

    See if you can spot the El Niño year!

    The decreases from May to September were:
    2013 6.33
    2014 6.40
    2015 6.33
    2016 6.67

    Interestingly, the annual decrease seems to change only very little over time, with the variation in annual growth rate predominately reflected by the September to May period. Clearly, it is not true that the “unusual rate of increase has continued into 2017”.

    10

  • #
    RB

    global CO2 is controlled by temperature measurements. There is no plausible explanation for d[CO2]/DT actually being so closely in sync with global temperature anomalies.
    Using the example of a car accelerator (gas) pedal. Of course it controls speed while dv/dt should be a better match to angle of depression of the pedal if the driver’s foot is shaking ( changes quicker than an equilibrium speed can be reached). Still, a lot of things, incline, road surface, wind, gear, speed, etc mean only a very rough correlation with depression angle.
    Now consider what the result would be if the angle was guessed at by a deckhand in the back seat, put through a black box in Philip Jones’s lab, while the speed is calculated by another car driving in the other direction of the freeway.

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  • #
    Andrew Richards

    Pop Quiz: #1 is obviously true. #4 conclusion rest on essentially 3 data points. Would like to see a few more to be confident of discounting this.

    Inferences: # 2 and #3 are both true. #1 is plainly false.

    Your inclusion of the Justin Gills NY Times piece was an excellent inclusion Jo. It self-demonstrates quite succinctly just how delusional (utopian?) the [snip] left is.

    10

  • #
    Mic

    Submarine Volcanoes? The oceans degassing? Has polar shift increased the core temperatures and kinetic energy, effecting the magnetosphere and causing the energy content of the oceans to increase? Are we more susceptible to solar and cosmic bombardment due to a potentially weakened magnetosphere? Literally 1000’s of submarine volcanoes have be discovered in recent years with similar C12/C13 ratios to burning fossil fuels.

    20

  • #
    William Astley

    The following is additional observational support for the above assertions.

    The discussion of the origin of water, oil, and natural gas ignores hundreds of observations that support the assertion that CH4 is extruded from the core of the planet as it solidifies.

    The super high pressure, extruded liquid CH4 from the core is what drives tectonic plate movement on the planet.

    The core of the planet is estimated to have started to solidify roughly 1 billion years ago.

    It is estimated that roughly 5% of the liquid iron core is made up of CH4. (Seismic wave timing indicates the core contains lighter elements.)

    The movement of super high pressure CH4 up to the surface of the planet explains multiple geological anomalies such as the Denver plateau or the Tibet plateau and the formation of mountain ranges.

    It also explains why there are methane seeps all over the planet’s surface and explains massive methane releases such as the Madrid Missouri earthquake.

    It also explains why tectonic plate motion has doubled in the last 1.2 billion years.

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329843-000-earths-tectonic-plates-have-doubled-their-speed/

    Earth’s tectonic plates have doubled their speed

    Plate tectonics is driven by the formation and destruction of oceanic crust. This crust forms where plates move apart, allowing hot, light magma to rise from the mantle below and solidify. Where plates are being pushed together, the crust can either rise up to form mountains or one plate is shoved under the other and is sucked back into the mantle.

    The planet’s inner heat powers plate tectonics. That heat is ebbing away as Earth ages, and this was expected to slow plate motion. A study last year by Martin Van Kranendonk at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues measured elements concentrated by tectonic action in 3200 rocks from around the world, and concluded that plate motion has been slowing for 1.2 billion years.

    Now Kent Condie, a geochemist at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro and his colleagues have used a different approach and concluded that tectonic activity is increasing. They looked at how often new mountain belts form when tectonic plates collide with one another. They then combined these measurements with magnetic data from volcanic rocks to work out at which latitude the rocks formed and how quickly the continents had moved.

    Both techniques showed plate motion has accelerated. The average rate of continental collisions, and the average speed with which the continents change latitude, has doubled over the last 2 billion years (Precambrian Research, doi.org/vbv).

    Peter Cawood at the University of St Andrews in the UK thinks the work is interesting and provocative. “The overall increase in the rate of plate motion with time seems real and believable,” he says, and could well be linked to changes in the mantle’s water content – although convincing sceptics that plates move faster now will be difficult without more data, he adds.

    Van Kranendonk is not ready to change his mind. “Our paper documents a reduction in the rate and volume of crustal recycling for 1.2 billion years, supporting the idea that plate tectonics actually has been slowing down since that time,” he says.

    Observational evidence of massive release of CH4, in the centre of a continent.

    http://www.new-madrid.mo.us/index.aspx?nid=132

    New Madrid earthquake, Missouri.
    Earthquake Phenomena
    Sand Boils
    The world’s largest sand boil was created by the New Madrid earthquake. It is 1.4 miles long and 136 acres in extent, located in the Bootheel of Missouri, about eight miles west of Hayti, Missouri. Locals call it “The Beach.” Other, much smaller, sand boils are found throughout the area.

    Seismic Tar Balls
    Small pellets up to golf ball sized tar balls are found in sand boils and fissures. They are petroleum that has been solidified, or “petroliferous nodules.”

    Earthquake Lights
    Lights flashed from the ground, caused by quartz crystals being squeezed. The phenomena is called “seismoluminescence.”

    Warm Water
    Water thrown up by an earthquake was lukewarm. It is speculated that the shaking caused the water to heat up and/or quartz light heated the water.

    Earthquake Smog
    The skies turned dark during the earthquakes, so dark that lighted lamps didn’t help. The air smelled bad, and it was hard to breathe. It is speculated that it was smog containing dust particles caused by the eruption of warm water into cold air.

    Loud Thunder
    Sounds of distant thunder and loud explosions accompanied the earthquakes.

    Strange Happenings during the Earthquakes
    EarthquakesStrange Happenings
    The New Madrid earthquakes were the biggest earthquakes in American history. They occurred in the central Mississippi Valley, but were felt as far away as New York City, Boston, Montreal, and Washington D.C. President James Madison and his wife Dolly felt them in the White House. Church bells rang in Boston. From December 16, 1811 through March of 1812 there were over 2,000 earthquakes in the central Midwest, and between 6,000-10,000 earthquakes in the Bootheel of Missouri where New Madrid is located near the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

    In the known history of the world, no other earthquakes have lasted so long or produced so much evidence of damage as the New Madrid earthquakes. Three of the earthquakes are on the list of America’s top earthquakes: the first one on December 16, 1811, a magnitude of 8.1 on the Richter scale; the second on January 23, 1812, at 7.8; and the third on February 7, 1812, at as much as 8.8 magnitude.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/500-champagne-methane-seeps-discovered-114400702.html

    About 500 new streams of shimmering methane bubbles have been discovered off the Pacific Northwest coast.

    The discovery of copious methane seeps in the Cascadia margin near Oregon and Washington was “at the top” of the list of 2016 discoveries, Ausubel said.

    “It’s a scale question,” he said. “We’ve known for a few decades that these exist, but it’s turning out that they could be really extensive, and if they’re very extensive, that starts to change your ideas about ocean life, because there are animals, mussels and sea worms and so forth, that can live off the energy” released by the seeps.

    http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/08/numerous-methane-leaks-found-atlantic-sea-floor

    Numerous methane leaks found on Atlantic sea floor

    “So far everybody has been looking at small spots. This is the first time anyone has systematically mapped an entire margin,” says Christian Berndt, a marine geophysicist at GEOMAR in Kiel, Germany, who was not involved in the study. It was also a surprise because seeps are typically found above known methane reservoirs, or above regions of active tectonic activity. The continental margin was thought to be virtually devoid of seeps—until scientists studied the sonar data. “They found that there was much more methane coming out than was suspected beforehand,” Berndt says.

    Proving that climate change is directly responsible could be difficult, Berndt says. In January, he and colleagues published a study in Science on methane seeps in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of the island of Svalbard, where temperature changes are occurring more rapidly. Berndt found evidence that the seeps there had existed for at least 3000 years and saw no evidence that the ocean sediments had been heating up—and releasing methane—on the decadeslong timescales associated with climate change. At the very least, though, he says, the Atlantic Ocean study shows that ocean and climate modelers should start to incorporate methane inputs from many more types of seafloor terrains around the world. “We have this extra source here,” he says. “Not much attention has been paid to it.

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    Bite Back

    Did I read in here somewhere that nations self report their emissions?

    Were I anyone but who I am I night believe they had no incentive to lie and cheat. But having been around for a while, I think you can guess what I think of that.

    No more words needed.

    Almost no more. Once you get lied to and cheated a few times you become a skeptic just for self defence. Now no more words.

    BB

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    Harry Twinotter

    Atmospheric CO2 level will still accumulate even if emissions stabilize if the emissions are still above what the earth can absorb.

    This is simple and straightforward logic – I am surprised you missed it (I am assuming you posted in good faith, and just did not realize your error).

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Well Harry,

      Your comment appears to be less than coherent. It swings on how you define, “… if emissions stabilize …”

      Now, if you are quoting from Jo’s post, then it behoves you to put it in quotation marks, and mention the context in which you are interpreting it.

      It also depends on your definition of, “what the earth can absorb”. Note that “earth” is not capitalised, so you actually imply, “soil”. Is that what you meant to imply?

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        Harry Twinotter

        Seriously? You are arguing grammar and semantics?

        When someone tries childish tricks to try and distract from my points, I know I have won.

        So…. I won!

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          Rereke Whakaaro

          No.

          I was pointing out that your comments are often incoherent. How do you define, “emissions stabilize”; and stabilize, relative to what; and what part does water vapour play in this “stabilization” phenominon?

          It is not I, who is resorting to the childish concept, of winning or losing,

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          Giving yerself the verdict, Harry…
          Wot wot wot ???

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