PREPRINT #2: The Physics Model Carbon Cycle for Human CO2
by Edwin X Berry, Ph.D., Physics
October 11, 2019: I posted the first draft of this Preprint for your comments.
June 20, 2020: Thanks to all your comments, I have replaced this Preprint #2 with my much updated Preprint #3.
I am preserving your comments and closing the discussions on this post.
Although your paper is very learned, I prefer a simpler means of disproving IPCCs alarmist predictions, as follows –
1. The Australian Academy of Science publishes data and graphs showing temp changes over (a) the last 800,000 years and also over (b) the last 160 years. The years in (b) represents .02% of the years in (a).
The data for (a) shows the planet’s temp has increased and decreased numerous times over a range of 16 degrees.
The data for (b) shows temps have increased over the last 160 years and that the increases correlate with increases in CO2, however, when the (b) graph is overlain on that part of the (a) graph for the last 160 years, it can be seen that the last 160 year increases are perfectly consistent with the increases and decreases that have been occurring for thousands of years and that we are presently in an temp up cycle which will be followed by a down cycle ie temp decrease.
2. There is 26 times the amount of CO2 in nature as there is man made. Water vapour accounts for 80% of greenhouse gas warming and CO2 less than 20%. One 26th of 20% is .7% and that is the amount which man made CO2 contributes to warming.
3. Simple maths shows that there is simply not enough snow and ice on the planet to increase sea levels by anywhere near the amount which IPCC claims, even on their revised downward sums.
Dear Larry, Thank you for your comment. I agree with your arguments but I think we need to show that every step of the climate argument is false. Step one is the IPCC claim that our CO2 is causing all the increase in atmospheric CO2. Step 2 is the IPCC claim that CO2 in the atmosphere is causing all the warming. Step 3 is the IPCC claim that warming causes bad stuff to happen. You have made good points on Steps 2 and 3.
By the way, do you have any links to the Australian data you mention?
I read all your work, but Pangburn is simpler
******
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change
GCM General Circulation Model (many, based on IPCC CO2 assertions)
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These six links from five authors are all you really need to understand global warming.
My speculation: As the temperature went down into the Little Ice Age, limestone was deposited around the edges of bodies of water. As the temperature has recovered since, the limestone dissolved and added CO2 to the oceans, with a delay of 300-400 years. It was just an accident that this added CO2 coincided with our industrial revolution. Temperature creates CO2, not the other way around. There is proof of that. Read on.
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Pangburn
Shows that temperature change over the last 170 years is due to 3 things: 1) cycling of the ocean temperature, 2) sun variations and 3) moisture in the air. There is no significant dependence of temperature on CO2.
https://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com/
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Connolly father & son
Shows the vertical temperature profile follows the ideal gas laws and is not caused by CO2. Millions of weather balloon scans and trillions of data points have been analyzed to come to these conclusions. One important conclusion is that there is no green house gas effect.
https://globalwarmingsolved.com/2013/11/summary-the-physics-of-the-earths-atmosphere-papers-1-3/
utube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfRBr7PEawY
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Pat Frank
Shows that GCM results cannot be extrapolated a few years, let alone 50 or 100.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00223/full
and
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/15/why-roy-spencers-criticism-is-wrong/
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Joe Postma
Shows that the “flat earth model”of the IPCC is too simple. Their real models are built into the GCMs which don’t fit the real data.
https://climateofsophistry.com/2019/10/19/the-thing-without-the-thing/
I wonder if there was ever any data collected on 13CO2? There should have been an increase of 13C02 also during the testing. If the 13CO2 data showed an e-time somewhere between natural e-time and 14CO2 e-time it would be pretty compelling.
At this point, I am simply “working through” your paper (no where near finished yet!). Therefore, please take my few introductory comments as more of an inquiry for clarification.
At the beginning of your paper, a number of statements are made but not referenced for verification. Examples include: “…only 1.5 percent of human carbon is left in the atmosphere.” How do we know that?
“…if all human emissions were to stop, that 18 ppm increase would fall to a 4-ppm increase in 20 years.”
How can we confirm this number? Where does the 20 years come from and on what is that claim based?
“…about 6 percent of human carbon emissions will end up on the land to increase the growth of vegetation.” 6%? How? Why?
Etc.
Please don’t take these comments in the wrong vane as I’m only trying to be sure I can understand and defend your paper, if need be.
Thanks and good luck with the research and paper,
Dale
Dear Dale, Thank you for your comment.
The Preface I wrote is not part of my paper. It is only a brief summary of some key conclusions of my paper. You will find all the numbers I mention in the Preface derived in Sections 3 and 4 of my paper. These numbers are the result of properly calculating how human and natural carbon flow through the carbon cycle.
Would part of your paper be better served if it referenced: (not my work)
IPCC has stated that man is responsible for 40% of the total amount of the CO2 in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution (taken as 1850 on), but admits man-made CO2 only contributes 3.4% annually. This must mean nature’s 96.6% is selected by nature to be recycled but not man-made CO2 despite there being no chemical difference or process that would explain this. This is impossible without an explanation as to why the recycling process does not select natural and man-made CO2 in proportional amounts.
One of the purported signatures of anthropogenic CO2 is the carbon isotope ratio, C13/C12. The difference between “natural” and “man-made” CO2 has a demarcation value of 1.1% C13. Above 1.1% C13 content is considered “natural”, and below is considered “man-made”.
The concentration of C13 isn’t reported directly, it is given as “dC13”, which is computed as:
dC13=1000*((C13/C12 Sample)/(C13/C12 STD)-1)
If you examine the above equation, you will see that the C13 index that is reported can go down not only from decreasing C13 content, but also from an increasing C12 content (the other 98.9% of the CO2).
We’ll fast forward through the science of analysing multi-year data trends and signals from Mauna Loa, an active volcano in Hawaii and state that no difference was found between the “natural” multiyear variability and that found for the trends, so the previous claims of all the increases of CO2 being man-made are false. Exactly what common sense would predict.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/28/spencer-pt2-more-co2-peculiarities-the-c13c12-isotope-ratio/
Dear John, Thank you for your comment and link. Spencer makes a good argument that the decrease in dC13 does not imply a human cause. Also, in my [1], I show that d13C does not support the IPCC claim of human cause.
However, this preprint does not need to involve 13C. This preprint simply calculates the effect of human CO2 emissions on the carbon cycle.
Dear Dr. Ed,
Your audience wants a clear, direct statement comparing annual contributions of CO2 from nature and humans. Your audience may tease the answer from:
Lbp = 4.6 (ppm/year) * 4 (years) = 18.4 ppm (9)
Lbn = 98 (ppm/year) * 4 (years) = 392 ppm (10)
Consider introducing this section with: “Each year, nature produces more than 21 times the human contribution of CO2” and state sources. Thereby, you will introduce dominance of the natural CO2 contribution, supporting your models.
Thank you!
Dear Ron, Thank you. I updated the section based on your comment.
Great work. Two comments! The sexual propensitivity of Termites is also important as it is estimated that they emit from two to ten times the green house gases from mans activity. This was before finding about two million new mounds in South America.
In 2000 Joseph O. Fletcher gave a lecture showing the heat released from the Warm Pool (sun induced) to be about ten times the then calculated estimate from green house gases. He predicted the slow down in warming at that time with a peak about 2020 then a drop.
Clearly we are fighting a against a UN grab for power.
Push forward because stupid laws might be passed before the cooling brings this to an end.
Dear Larry, Thank you for the information. So, does the IPCC include termite CO2 emissions in its data for natural emissions?
Did I find an auto-complete typo?
“This paper converts carbon units of GtC (Gigatons of Carbon) and PgC (Pentagrams of Carbon) into CO2 units of ppm (parts per million by volume in dry air) using:…”
Did you mean “petagrams”?? 🙂
And I would like to link your finished product to the ‘my website’ link, too!
Dear Alan, Thank you for catching my error and also for your continuing suggestions, which I have followed.
Introduction….
Why mix upper case with lower case here:
“This paper uses e-time rather than “residence” time because there are many definitions of residence time. E-time has a precise definition: the time for the level to move (1 – 1/e) of the distance from its present level to its balance level. The balance level is defined below.”
How about “e-time” has a…
Or “However, ‘e-time’ has a…”
Yes, it’s the first letter of the sentence, but….
?
Sorry, that last one was here…
2. The Physics Model
2.1 Physics Model description
can we edit comments?!?! 🙁
2.1 again… suggested edits… my style versus yours… SUGGESTIONS IN ALL-CAPS
The Physics Model is ALL THAT IS REQUIRED. It is not necessary to add separate inflows for human and natural CO2 to the Physics Model. Just ADD ANOTHER INSTANCE of the Physics Model for each CO2 definition desired.
………..
Kohler is wrong. There is no such thing as a system being “too simplistic.” A system should be as simple as NEEDED/REQUIRED(?) to solve a problem. The Physics Model shows how inflow, outflow, and e-time affect the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. The IPCC model DOES NOT do this.
2.5…. “PER MIL”??? new term here or previously used and I missed it?
“The 14C data are in units of D14C per mil. The lower bound in D14C units is -1000. “
I added references to “per mil.”
“The bottom line is while human emissions add carbon to the carbon cycle, human carbon that enters the atmosphere quickly finds its way to the land and deep ocean reservoirs.”.
Ed, could you tell me how the outflow from the atmosphere of human carbon dioxide or, indeed, naturally produced carbon dioxide is measured, please? Or are the amounts just based on modelling?
2.6…
How do the arrows, all of equal length in the figure, represent flows in petagrams per year?!
“Figure 4. The carbon-cycle system with corrected data for the IPCC natural carbon cycle.”
Ah, the numbers appear in figure 6…. so, in figure 4, they just represent “flows.” Hm?
But you’re still calling them ALL “outflows” when some are outflows and some are ‘inflows,’ as indicated by the directions of the arrows! Sounds like ‘flows’ is still a better term…
I agree and I have and am updating my figures accordingly.
Comments on this video please. https://youtu.be/CcmCBetoR18
Heidi
Nearly all of Potholler’s assertions have been adequately refuted in Dr. Ed’s Co2 paper at ( https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/human-co2-emissions-have-little-effect-on-atmospheric-co2/).
If you have time to watch videos addressing the things Potholler was trying unsuccessfully to debunk look for those by Dr. Murray Salby especially
https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/what-is-really-behind-the-increase-in-atmospheric-co2/
4.1
” Remarkably, IPCC’s result supports its assumption.”
… It’s no surprise that IPCC’s result….
?
Why is the e time for 14C different than the e time for CO2?
Nevermind, you answered in your paper.
The bomb test curve essentially shows the C14/C12 ratio compared to a reference ratio valid for year 1950. The ∆C14 value is among other things affected by human emissions of C14-free CO2 from fossil burning. The ratio we would have had today if the bomb tests were never done is of course unknown, but we can correct for the effects of human C12 emissions. Here is a paper showing the result: http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/2013/10/21/%e2%88%86c14-bombprovskurvan/ Fig 1, red dots. The reason for the C14 not to go to zero can be emissions from the nuclear power industry and also emissions from the biosphere which stored C14 enriched carbon ever since 1960. I do not know in what way the correction would affect your application of the physical model, but it seems you should mention this correction. Another thing, the increased CO2 concentration has caused greening of the planet with up to 30% increase of biomass production per year. That has obviously increased the flow of CO2 into the biosphere but the release back into the atmosphere from e.g. Amazonas will be delayed for a long time. It seems to me one could estimate this memory effect of the biosphere and perhaps neglect it after showing that it is small. Only long-lived plants will contribute, of course. This memory effect is a very good thing – it makes life on earth easier for humanity and all other animals that depend on plants for their living.
Ed,
I like the concept and am still studying the detail. My first observation (and probably my only one) is that your mass unit, pentagrams, shouldn’t that be petagrams?
Mark Harvey
Hi Ed,
1. You may have defined it somewhere in the paper, but to me “human emissions” are the exhalations of us people.
2. I view the matter of atmospheric carbon dioxide very simply. The partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is the same as the partial pressure of CO2 in our oceans (possibly with some delay although there is intimate contact between the two). As the oceans warm after the Little Ice Age, so the partial pressure of the contained CO2 rises – this will be balanced by the atmospheric CO2.
Dr. Berry,
Have you read Daniel Jacob’s text “Atmospheric Chemistry” and in particular section 6.5.3 about ocean carbon uptake?
Reason I ask is because he comes to approximately the same percentage as Archer utilizing a different method but promotes this view of climate carbon feedback from the ocean that resists ocean being a sink-i.e the sink is acting as a positive feedback instead of a sink.
Dear Stephen, my preprint considers the ocean as a reservoir for carbon. Carbon flows in and carbon flows out. The rate of change of level is the difference between inflow and outflow.
Yes, on my second reading now-very compelling.
In Sweden, where I live, about 70% of the land is covered by forests. That is 28 million hectares or 280000 square kilometers. 75 % of that is cultivated with an average time to felling of about 80 years. The Swedish forests bind about 0.14 GTCO2 per year. After felling a large part will become CO2 within a couple of years while roots will stay in the forest and give away CO2 during a long time. It seems reasonable to assume that the carbon stored in a forest will essentially be back in the atmosphere after 150 years. We can assume that
CO2 from a single event like the C-14 from the bomb tests that is stored in a forest will be given back to the atmosphere as a delayed, wide peak with a long tail.
In the period 1982 to 2015 the leaf area in Swedish forests has increased by about 25% on the average. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth/ According to the site about 70% of the increase is because of CO2 fertilization. From 1982 to 2015 CO2 has increased from 341 to 400 ppm. If we assume that the increased leaf area results in a proportionally bigger growth, the binding of CO2 per year would have increased by 0.025 GTCO2 each year. This is of course good – but it means
that the increase of CO2 we see today will cause an increase with a maximum maybe 80 years from now. That increase will in turn cause increased storage in threes that would be released another maybe 80 years into the future. Sweden with 0.7% of all forests stores 0.025 GTCO2 extra in 2015 relative to 1982. The entire world, if similar, would store 3.6 GTCO2 but that is with 341 ppm CO2 as the baseline. As compared to pre-industrial levels,
280 ppm, assuming a linear dependence the extra long-lived storage in the biosphere should be in the order of 7 GTCO2 or 2GTC or 4 ppm. Now, assuming the world as whole has the same growth rate of forests as the Swedish forest industry is most probably seriously wrong, more realistic would probably be to assume that the extra stored CO2 is an order of magnitude smaller. IPCC, 2007, states that the exchange between atmosphere and biosphere is about 120 GTC/year. Most of that is very fast because the life span of most plants is short. There is however a small fraction that goes into long lived threes.
The point of this posting is that indeed there is a tail on the response curve for a single CO2 emission like the bomb tests. How large it is and how long it lasts should be possible to estimate far more accurately by professionals on forestry. My very rough estimate was just intended to inspire someone to do it better.
Worldwide forests have a much wider life span so a computation for the entire world would presumably give something similar to a slow exponential fall-off. An exponential never falls to exactly zero so the statement from IPCC that a carbon emission to the atmosphere will change the atmospheric CO2 for thousands of years is mathematically correct. The way the political spokesmen for IPCC present this to the public is however most inappropriate. This is not a dooms day thing. An increased amount of long-lived biomass on the planet is a good thing. Mankind can make good use of it.
Based on the above I suggest that you mention the effects of long storage times in the biosphere and explain why you neglect them completely. Alternatively add one more reservoir that connects to the atmosphere with an appropriately guessed very long
e-time and size. This tail shows up in IPCC models as several long e-times in the bern model.
The big controversy, as I see it is that IPCC makes models under the assumption that the temperature would have stayed constant at the pre-industrial level if there would have been no antropogenic CO2. This means that IPCC assumes that the heating due to CO2 is the reason for for the oceans to give off more CO2 causing an increased heating – with an additional amplification from water vapor. That means they model our climate as a system with a very large feedback. To me that seems very unlikely because a large positive feedback should have made the climate very unstable – and that is not what we can learn from climate history.
The e-time from the bomb test curve is about 16.5 years. I do not understand why you use an e-time from IPCC. They use multiple e-times in a complicated model. I can not see any reason why the e-time should depend on the isotope. If you use a different time from 16.5 years there is at minimum a need for a precise reference so we can read what IPCC is saying that the time stands for – and how they arrived at it.
IPCC attributes all heating to antropogenic emissions and consequently they attribute the CO2 from the oceans due to a higher temperature to antropogenic CO2. In your model heating is external and causes a natural increase of CO2. With a 16.5 year time constant I think you would find that about 50% of CO2 is natural while 50% is antropogenic. Assuming external heating means that the radiative forcing of CO2 has to be much lower than the 3.7 W/m2 assumed by IPCC. (There are many papers that arrive at lower values.)
Dear Leif, Thank you for your comment. The NASA article repeats the incorrect IPCC claim that half of human CO2 emissions cause of all the rise in atmospheric CO2 and the remainder adds to the ocean and plants:
“Every year, about half of the 10 billion tons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere from human activities remains temporarily stored, in about equal parts, in the oceans and plants.”
The calculations in my preprint show human CO2 distributes itself in the same percentages as natural CO2 distributes itself, namely, 6% to land, 1.4% to the atmosphere, 2.2% to surface ocean, and 90.7% to deep ocean.
You are, of course, correct that the e-time for land is a composition of different e-times for the plants.
My paper [1] shows the e-time for 14CO2 is 16.5 years. The only place my preprint uses the IPCC e-time of 4 years is in Section 2.4 but that use is for illustration purposes only. Equation (11) shows that the ratio of human to natural CO2 in the atmosphere is independent of e-time.
Section 2.5 explains why the e-time for 12CO2 is smaller than for 14CO2. It is because the lighter isotopes react faster.
Dear ED, as we know, a CO2 molecule does not have any memory so it is obvious that molecules of human origin and natural origin behave the same. The statement from NASA that you refer to must be ill-written, neither NASA nor IPCC can believe molecules have memory. I, therefore, rephrase their statement like this: “Every year, when 10 billion tons of carbon is emitted into the atmosphere from human activities, about 5 billion tons is temporarily stored, in about equal parts, in the oceans and plants while 5 billion tons remain in the atmosphere. (forever?)” I think it is even more clear how absurd the statement is. Further, it is in clear disagreement with IPCC models.
This link: http://unfccc.int/resource/brazil/carbon.html “A preindustrial background (CO2 around 280 ppm, zero emissions) was used and a pulse of 40 GtC was released instantaneously into the model atmosphere”
The graph shows the response of IPCC models. The paper fits parameters to the IPCC-TAR curve: 15% or 6 GtC will stay forever in the atmosphere. I have seen arguments that the parameter a(0) must be identically zero. Now, that is false but we can estimate a(0) from 40 GtC in relation to all the carbon: (Approximate in GtC: 40000 sea, 2300 biosphere, and 780 atmosphere.)
After many thousand years reservoirs have evened out the extra CO2 in the atmosphere so a(0) could be 0.009 maximum. The somewhat higher CO2 level might increase the permanent storage of calcium carbonate at the sea bottom causing a(0) to be a bit smaller. The graph reaches 50% in about 20 years. The equivalent e-time is obviously very much longer than 4 years.
You write: “The IPCC [2] estimates the e-time for natural CO2 is 4 years. It takes an e-time of 4 years to make the IPCC’s flow estimates equal to the IPCC’s level of atmospheric CO2.”
There must be a misunderstanding here. The graph they show from the 40GtC sudden exposure is not consistent at all with an e-time of 4 years.
A remark: Your ref [2] does not have any figure 6.1. I did, however, find a figure 6.1 here: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf so I suggest you change the reference.
Your figure 5 with 90 down and 100 up from deep ocean does not agree with IPCC figure 6.1. When you ignore “Marine biota” and “dissolved organic carbon” you must move those boxes into the two ones you have. That means that from surface ocean to deep ocean IPCC has a flow of 103 down and 100 up. That makes more sense, if you would incorporate decimals you would find that the net flow into the ocean (surface+deep) is zero and to the sediments 1,75. The net flow into the atmosphere is 0,4 instead of zero, but that is well within error limits.
To me, it is obvious that the e-time for the atmosphere can not be 2.95 years. It has to be very close to the C14 e-time. Your ref. [29] states that the isotope effect is small. A factor of 5.6 is absurd. Exchange rates have to be seriously wrong since the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere should be fairly accurate.
Maybe you need one more box for the biosphere with a flow of maybe 80 in and 80 out and an e-time of 1 year representing the one year plant season. The amplitude of the 1-year variation of CO2 at Mauna Loa is in the order of 6 ppm. Maybe also another box for the surface of the sea where CO2 gas dissolves in water and releases again with a small e-time while 16.5 years is for carbon to get into “Surface Ocean.”
Dear Leif,
Thank you for your comment.
Regarding: “Every year, when 10 billion tons of carbon is emitted into the atmosphere from human activities, about 5 billion tons is temporarily stored, in about equal parts, in the oceans and plants while 5 billion tons remain in the atmosphere. (forever?)”
Even the IPCC Figure 6.1 data show this is not the case. When I extract the e-times from the IPCC data and apply them to human CO2, I calculate that human CO2 flows to the other reservoirs fast enough to keep the amount of human carbon in the atmosphere below about 15 percent. There is no calculation that shows it is 50 percent.
Regarding the link: http://unfccc.int/resource/brazil/carbon.html “A preindustrial background (CO2 around 280 ppm, zero emissions) was used and a pulse of 40 GtC was released instantaneously into the model atmosphere.”
My previous paper [1] references that link to the Bern model and discusses the Bern model. I am considering showing in this paper how the Berm model prediction compares with the Physics model prediction.
Regarding: “The IPCC [2] estimates the e-time for natural CO2 is 4 years. It takes an e-time of 4 years to make the IPCC’s flow estimates equal to the IPCC’s level of atmospheric CO2.”
The IPCC does say the e-time is about 4 years and, indeed, the Bern model disagrees. I am adding a new section to my preprint that shows how the Physics model calculates an e-time of about 6 years based, of course, on IPCC’s data for the levels.
Regarding the link to figure 6.1: thank you for checking. I have corrected the link.
Regarding: “Marine biota” and “dissolved organic carbon”. I consider these reservoirs negligible. The amounts in these levels are in the noise level of the carbon-cycle calculation.
Regarding e-time: As mentioned above, I am adding a section to my preprint that will show how to get an e-time of about 6.5 year using IPCC’s data.
Regarding “one more box for the biosphere: Perhaps but I think it is outside what I can include in this paper. I have enough to handle just sticking with IPCC’s for major levels.
Thanks again.
Leif what I don’t understand is how they can assume only 50% of human emission is absorbed every year. Only 50% absorbed in 1750. Only 50% absorbed in 1800, in 1850, in 1900, in 1950, in 2000. How is that possible?
Stephen,
The way it’s done is to assume that natural emissions have not increased at all since preindustrial times. Next, assume that all natural emissions are absorbed first followed by the human emissions. Voila! 50% of the human emissions corresponds to roughly 100% of the rise in atmospheric CO2.
Chic,
I’m a Louis L’amour fan too by the way. But they believe it was 50% in 1750 and then also 50% in say for instance 1950 when anthropogenic emission was much greater. I understand they need that scenario for their math to work but it defies all logic.
Off topic but very substantial finding supporting Dr. Ed’s contention of small effect from human CO2.
See( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfRBr7PEawY )
The Connolly’s analysis of 20 million radiosondes “categorically shows that there is no greenhouse effect in our atmosphere.” Conclusion is that increased radiative gasses will absorb more but simultaneously emit the same amount and cause no warming.
I had the same utube listed above.
Here is the definitive argument that the atmospheric carbon dioxide growth rate is driven by temperature (and not by human emissions):
First we’ll compare the carbon dioxide growth rate with the SSTs of the southern ocean going back to 1958…
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/mean:12/derivative/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1958/scale:0.253/offset:0.099/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/mean:12/derivative/trend/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1958/scale:0.253/offset:0.099/trend
Next we’ll compare the integrals of both data sets…
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/mean:12/derivative/integral/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1958/scale:0.253/offset:0.099/integral/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/mean:12/derivative/trend/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1958/scale:0.253/offset:0.099/trend
Then we’ll compare the carbon dioxide growth rate and temperature again, but this time extending temperature all the way back to 1850…
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/mean:12/derivative/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1850/scale:0.253/offset:0.099/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/mean:12/derivative/trend/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1958/scale:0.253/offset:0.099/trend
And then we’ll take the integral of the temperature data set from 1850…
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1850/scale:0.253/offset:0.099/integral
Note the increase of about 125ppm. Ice cores tell us that the carbon dioxide level was 287ppm in 1850. Add 125ppm to that and we get 412ppm. Let’s see how we did…
https://www.sealevel.info/co2.html
Not bad(!) Lastly lets compare the carbon dioxide levels in ice cores with the moberg temperature reconstruction…
https://i0.wp.com/i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/LawMob1.png
Note that for the past five hundred years the temperature relationship with the carbon dioxide growth rate still holds true. Low temperatures produce flat or falling carbon dioxide levels. Relatively high temperatures produce rising carbon dioxide levels. (and the higher the temps, the faster the rise)…
So, there you have it folks. The definitive argument that it is temperature that causes carbon dioxide levels to rise in the atmosphere. (a 500 year correlation !!!)
I applaud your efforts in taking on Big Climate. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it” comes to mind. I’ve been defending your model on drroyspencer.com, so some of my comments will only be the devil’s advocate variety.
My first point involves the title. This paper extends your argument from the previous paper “Human CO2 emissions have little effect on atmospheric CO2” by showing how the Physics model also applies to the other CO2 reservoirs involved in the carbon cycle. While the previous title addresses the accounting of the CO2 budget appropriately for the atmosphere, I do not think the current title is best for this paper. A seemingly small effect on the carbon cycle budget may translate into a large detrimental effect on the ecosystem in terms of ocean acidification and carbonate depletion. I agree that the IPCC climate cycle budget is in error. Would you consider changing the title to reflect your correction of the IPCC’s numerical accounting thus avoiding criticisms you may get from the title as is?
Furthermore, the effect of fossil fuel emissions on the increase in atmospheric CO2 is one thing. What about the effects of land use changes that contribute to changes in the carbon cycle, even potentially positive ones? A need for third paper perhaps?
The penultimate paragraph in your abstract contains sentences that invite criticism of the body of the paper. “The Physics carbon-cycle model shows if all human CO2 emissions stopped in 2020, the increase caused by human CO2 would fall by 78 percent in 20 years.” This presumes something about the future of natural emissions. You will already be challenged about the lack of data on past natural emissions. By my calculation, the fall would be 55%.
“Stopping all human emissions cannot lower the level of atmospheric CO2 below the level set by natural emissions which is about 390 ppm.” Isn’t 390 your model’s estimate of natural emissions? You will be challenged to cite actual data to back it up.
“In the long-term, only 1.5 percent of human carbon emissions will end up in the atmosphere.” Again this assumes some prediction about future emissions. Stopping human emissions would make it virtually 0%, holding both human and natural emissions constant at present levels would be more like 4%. The former is impossible and the latter very unlikely.
The model development sections seem to be mostly word for word from your previous paper. A brief summary with a reference would suffice. The thrust of this paper begins at section 2.6.
The caption for Figure 4 describes corrected data which you put in a later figure, not 4.
I agree with Lief that your IPCC Figure 6.1 numbers are wrong. The Physics carbon-cycle model still shows that IPCC flows don’t produce IPCC levels. But you can easily get the right levels by much more modest adjustment of their flows (109 for land to air and 105 for deep ocean to surface ocean).
You have 12 as the land to air flow in Figure 7. I sum all anthro emissions to 20.5 PgC/yr. That would explain the negative 30 PgC for the land reservoir. Again this doesn’t make the IPCC model right, just less wrong.
I’ll stop at this point to see if we are still on the same page, before proceeding to your other models.
Dear Chic,
Thank you very much for your extended comment. I will consider all of your suggestions as I edit my preprint.
Change title: yes.
Effects of land use changes? Well, the IPCC adds these into its numbers for human emissions. For this paper, I need to stick with IPCC’s numbers for the levels and human inflows.
Regarding: “The Physics carbon-cycle model shows if all human CO2 emissions stopped in 2020, the increase caused by human CO2 would fall by 78 percent in 20 years.”
Check again. It says the increase “caused by human CO2.” I think this makes the sentence independent of natural CO2.
Regarding: “Stopping all human emissions cannot lower the level of atmospheric CO2 below the level set by natural emissions which is about 390 ppm.”
You are correct. I need to justify the 390 ppm.
Regarding: “In the long-term, only 1.5 percent of human carbon emissions will end up in the atmosphere.”
I need to be sure this sentence is based on the assumption that all human CO2 emissions stop. If stopped, then that 1.5 percent is caused by the new carbon put into the carbon cycle by human CO2. It can never go to zero in the less than a million-year time frame.
Holding human emissions constant after 2020 would still increase the amount of human CO2 in the atmosphere, according to my latest calculations.
Since I am introducing additional equations in this paper, I choose to include the derivation of the Physics model. Perhaps I can reduce my descriptions and focus on the equations.
Thanks for catching my error in Figure 4, etc.
To correct the IPCC Figure 6.1 numbers, it takes more than simply adjusting the flows. It takes calculations of the equilibrium state where chosen e-times produce constant levels over time. This calculation can be done only with a carbon-cycle model.
No matter what, it is impossible to get a negative level. I will explain this more in my next edits but consider human carbon as water in four buckets connected by tubes. We add water to the atmosphere bucket, and it flows out into the other buckets. There is no way to get negative water in any of the buckets. Water will flow between buckets until all have the same water levels.
So far, so good until IPCC Figure 6.1. Check the arrows involving “Marine biota” and “dissolved organic carbon”. There is a net transfer of 13 PgC/yr from surface to deep ocean. This should be added to the 90 PgC/yr giving about 103 total. This constitutes a crucial error in your Figure 5 which will continue to cause you unnecessary further criticism if left uncorrected, IMO.
Regarding the IPCC flows and e-times, I believe I created a reasonable facsimile of your spreadsheet which uses ratios of flows divided by sums of flows to get the Ki “splits” as you call them. The method used to calculate IPCC e-times from Figure 5 are not consistent with the way you derive your e-times in Table 2. Is anyone else confused about this? Perhaps it would be more clear what you are doing with a link to your spreadsheet.
Splits are not very physically meaningful to me. They seem to be related to rate constants which are not arbitrary in nature. The Mauna Loa data seems to indicate the removal rate of CO2 is about 0.28 equivalent to an e-time of 3.6 years which is consistent with your model.
The bottom line is not how the IPCC preindustrial numbers don’t fit a model properly. The improper treatment of human emissions is the problem you should be emphasizing, not the IPCC preindustrial numbers.
Dear Chic,
Thank you very much for your helpful comment.
I changed Figure 5 and nearby text to include the flow through the marine biota, as you suggested. You are correct. This required a change to Table 1. It did not change anything else in my paper.
I will put my spreadsheet online so you can download it at the link I will put under downloads.
Of course, my overall goal is to calculate the effect of human emissions. But I must begin with the IPCC data if I am to refute the IPCC claims. That is why I use IPCC level data to derive equilibrium e-times that I can then use to calculate the human effect. The IPCC equilibrium levels are preindustrial by IPCC’s definition.
Dear Ed,
Regarding: “Marine biota” and “dissolved organic carbon”. You consider these reservoirs negligible. Yes, but ignoring them makes your figure 5 open for criticism since it implies that the IPCC figure 6.1has a source of 10 PgC in the deep ocean while they actually have a sink of 2 PgC. I suggest you just change 90 to 102 for the flow into the Deep Ocean. Then you represent 6.1 correctly and I do not think it would change anything of your basic results.
The e-time for CO2 is about 16 years. I find it ridiculous to assume isotopic effects could change that significantly. You have taken flows from IPCC 6.1 that sum up to 169 PgC/year for the atmosphere. With the correct e-time the summed flows into land and sea has to be about 36 PgC/year. To be consistent with the physical model all flows have to be reduced by the factor 169/36=4.7. In figure 5 the flow from the atmosphere to the biosphere is 109 PgC/year. This number, actually 123 (minus 14.1 for the increased growth today due to the fertilization effect of CO2.) The number comes from Beer et al. 2010. Here is table 1 in the paper:
Tropical forests 40.8
Temperate forests 9.9
Boreal forests 8.3
Tropical savannahs and grasslands 31.3
Temperate grasslands and shrublands 8.5
Deserts 6.4
Tundra 1.6
Croplands 14.8
Total 121.7
As stated by IPCC “carbon can be released back into the atmosphere … on a very wide range of time scales (seconds to millennia)” I think croplands savannahs and grasslands have an e-time of not much more than 1 year. Threes in the rain forest several hundred years. To me this seems to be a show stopper. I do not think you can use IPCC data to split the outflow from the atmosphere between sea and land. Also the sea is complicated somewhere I have seen that the equilibrium between CO2 in the atmosphere and dissolved CO2 in a thin laminar layer, less than 1 mm, is very fast. mixing with deeper layers and forming bicarbonate and other ions is much slower and mixing with deep water is presumably associated with the 16 year time constant. The biosphere is presumably essentially one reservoir with a very short e-time that we can include in the atmosphere and another with a much longer e-time that we can associate with threes. Had the biosphere e-time been similar to the sea e-time we should have seen a distortion on the bomb test curve as plants with twice the normal C-14 concentration would rotten and send out C14 to bend up the tail. The sea is a container of almost infinite size. We know that organisms that live in the sea seem to have an age of 500 to 1000 years when analyzed for the C14 content.
From the bomb-test curve we know the time constant and with only two containers, the atmosphere and “all the rest” it is possible to compute the contribution to the atmospheric CO2 from human emissions as you do in [1] while the rest of the CO2 is “natural.” That “natural” is essentially from the oceans that have become warmer. IPCC would argue that the warmer oceans are due to the heating effect of CO2 and argue they are not natural, but caused by humans! In case you would correct the e-time to 16.5 years and apply to the model in [1] you should find that about 50% of CO2 is human and 50% is natural. IPCC would of course still argue that what you attribute to natural, which is outgassing from the sea, is the greenhouse effect caused by humans, but it could equally well be caused by phenomena on the sun – and considering historical temperature data I personally find it most likely that the sun is responsible for a large part.
Dear Leif,
Thank you very much once again for your helpful comment.
I changed Figure 5 and nearby text to include the flow through the marine biota, as you suggested. You are correct. This required a change to Table 1. It did not change anything else in my paper.
Let’s review what I am attempting to do in my paper. I do not assign e-times from external information. I find e-times that support the IPCC data for natural levels at equilibrium. The IPCC claims (incorrectly) that nature remained constant after 1750 so it would support the level of 280 ppm. Therefore, I do not include information outside of the IPCC data.
If data exists for additional levels, then they would be easy to add to my calculations. For example, what I and the IPCC call land, could be separated into sublevels, as you describe. But that step is outside the scope of my present paper.
Yesterday, I made several other changes to my paper that will require a new read.
Regarding e-times, please note that the Physics model calculates an e-time for the atmosphere and surface ocean that is 2 times the IPCC model e-time.
The scope of my paper is to use IPCC data to show the IPCC claims are wrong, and to use IPCC data to calculate that human emissions since 1750 have increased atmospheric CO2 by only 32 ppm. Then, by default, nature has caused all the rest of the increase above 280 ppm … which, of course, is due to the increase in surface temperature.
Dr. Ed Berry,
I just started reading a book by Dr. J. Marvin Herndon, Ph.D.. Dr Herndon states that we should not assume “constant Earth-heat production” but “one should consider and investigate Earth-heat variability. The fundamental implication of Earth-heat variability is ocean temperature variability which directly affects atmospheric CO2 variability.” Dr. Herndon is questioning with scientific evidence the assumption that Earth-heat is constant. If there is a warmer ocean there will be more CO2 and a cooler ocean there will be less CO2.
As a lay person, I thought that Dr. Herndon’s information should be examined and might be beneficial in the study of atmospheric CO2. I’m not sure if this fits in with your paper on AGW.
“Herndon’s Earth and the Dark Side of Science”
Dan Dewey
You stated in one of the responses “The scope of my paper is to use IPCC data to show the IPCC claims are wrong, and to use IPCC data to calculate that human emissions since 1750 have increased atmospheric CO2 by only 32 ppm. Then, by default, nature has caused all the rest of the increase above 280 ppm … which, of course, is due to the increase in surface temperature.”
I am trying to figure out where the 100 ppm increase in atmosphere is coming from if it is not due to human activity adding Carbon Dioxide to the Carbon Cycle.
Are you saying there would be 100 ppm increase absent human activity just because the global temperature anomaly has increased by ~ 0.8C since 1880? Are you sure the increase in total atmospheric CO2 isn’t due to the increase in total carbon dioxide in the carbon cycle? My understanding is ice core data suggest CO2 was about 280 ppm during Roman and Medieval warm periods … so why would the modern warm period be having a different effect?
Regards,
Ken Van de Burgt
Dear Ed B. – will this be published? Is it going to be peer reviewed? Where are your other articles published?
Thanks
A lot of things I don’t understand your work. But what I would like to say is thank you for being there for all people and giving me a voice I trust.
Why do you trust a voice you don’t understand? Ed Berry’s work is nonsense and his misconceptions have been pointed put by myself and others. Do you just not want to face the truth?
Dear David, you have not pointed out any errors in my paper.
Dear Mr Andrews,
if a guy with just an engineering degree like myself can understand the physics model, and it’s basic hypothesis, and then understand that such model replicates measured data….well, then I believe that in Dr Ed’s paper there is no nonsense, but just a scientific approach that is honestly not visible in the other IPCC papers referenced to in Dr Ed’s preprint. How can the IPCC “theory” survive in the scientific community is the real nonsense to me. Let me say that IPCC theory “e-time” is incredibly long, compared with its extremely weak “foundations”…but in the long run we see how the curve goes…
Remarks on Dr. Ed Berry’s hypothesis.
Before going into details, a remark. The first and foremost test of a new hypothesis is plausibility. Berry’s hypothesis fails that test on two accounts:
• So, of the 134 ppm excess CO2, only 32ppm are from burning fossil fuels, the rest is natural. Where does it come from? It can not come out of the ocean, because that’s where the excess CO2 goes. What part of nature has so fundamentally changed after about 1850 that it started to spew CO2 into the atmosphere?
• Since the late 1950s, that is 6 decades, scientists have measured the isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2, the changing CO2 content of the oceans, tracked the amount of carbon burned and many more relevant parameters and have come to the conclusion: of the CO2 that we spew into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, about half remains in the atmosphere for a while, some is taken up by a growing phytosphere and the rest is taken up by the oceans. What we observe in the atmosphere is that part that goes neither in the ocean nor in plants. Now in 2019 Dr. Berry finds that they have all been wrong. Well, that’s not impossible – remember Galileo – but that requires a very rigorous proof. Berry doesn’t deliver.
The following notes are as I wrote them down while reading the paper attentively. Berrys words are in “Quotation marks”.
____________________
Physics Model: “Each reservoir has an e-time defined as the time for the level to move (1 – 1/e) of the distance from its present level to its balance level.”
With respect to which other reservoir? The e-time has to be calculated for each pair of reservoirs.
“Outflow = Level / e-time”
Should read:
Outflow = (Level- Balance Level) / e-time
because if level = balance level, the outflow is zero. Unless there is an inflow.
Hence, Equ 2 should read: Outflow = (L-Lb) / e-Time
Therefore (3): dL/dt = Inflow – (L-Lb) / Te
And (4): Inflow = (L-Lb) / Te
So equ. 5 becomes:
dL/dt = (L-Lb) / Te – (L-Lb)/Te = 0 which just states the assumption that lead to equ (4)
“Equation (4) shows CO2 does not accumulate in the atmosphere. If inflow decreases, the balance level decreases, and the level follows the balance level. The response is immediate. When inflow to a reservoir increases the level of the reservoir, that reservoir immediately increases its outflow.”
None of that can be derived from (4). It was derived under the assumption that dL/dt is 0. So, the conclusion “The response is immediate” follows from the assumption. If we increase Inflow, what happens? Either Te has to decrease or (L-Lb) has to increase what of course it does.
“Because of (2), it is not necessary (or desirable) to compute the carbon cycle for human and natural carbon simultaneously. It is better (and simpler) to compute their effects separately.”
Why? There is one carbon cycle and in the exchange between the atmosphere and the mixed layer it is one CO2-cycle. If we add something to one reservoir, we just get it out of its equilibrium and we need to calculate how fast it regains the new equilibrium.
“The replication of the 14C data by the Physics Model has significant consequences. It shows hypothesis ¬(2) is correct.”
That is so because the L(t) for 14CO2 is renormalized to have a Lb of 0. The Lb of total CO2 is not 0. There is another discrepancy that disallows the use of 14C data to calculate residence time of total CO2. Equ. 4, stated correctly, gives:
Inflow = (L-Lb) / Te; or Te = (L-Lb) / Inflow (A) (strictly, as defined, only for the equilibrium state)
Now, in the case of total CO2, the inflow is of the order of 1%, whereas in the case of 14CO2, it was almost a factor of 2 within a few years.
If the Te for 14CO2 is 16.5, then Te for total CO2 can be estimated according to equ. A:
L-Lb is 700 vs 412-280= 132
inflow is 0.1 vs 0.01
16.5*(132/700)/(0.01/.0.1) = 16.5*19 = 310 Years.
I have not checked if that corresponds to the number that the IPCC uses but it seems to confirm the generally accepted fact that CO2 remains in the air “for many centuries”.
Dec 29 2019 / SAe
Dear Simon,
Thank you for your comment. I will reply in sections to allow for separate discussion of the components of your comment.
First and foremost, you have the scientific burden of proof reversed. IPCC and its contributors claim (a) human emissions cause all the increase in atmospheric CO2 and (b) most human carbon stays in the atmosphere essentially forever. IPCC and its contributors have the burden of proof to show their claims are correct.
The Null Hypothesis requires that we assume these claims are wrong until they are proven otherwise. No one has provided evidence that the IPCC claims are correct. Many have proved the IPCC claims are not correct.
My preprint shows how these IPCC theories fail physics. I published my calculations so anyone can try to prove my calculations are wrong. No one has yet done this. I am prepared to defend all challenges to my calculations and arguments.
You are welcome to try to defend the IPCC claims or to prove my arguments are wrong. But merely stating the past papers disagree with my preprint does not constitute proof that my calculations or arguments are wrong. Those papers agree with the IPCC claims and I have proved the IPCC claims are wrong. So, the conclusions of past papers are not valid arguments against my preprint.
I show how IPCC’s natural carbon cycle is basically correct according to the Physics model.
(I realize you do not understand the Physics model from your comment further below. I will address that later. For now, assume the Physics model is correct.)
The fact that the Physics model shows the IPCC natural carbon cycle is basically self-consistent, indicates the value of the Physics model to calculate the carbon cycle. The Physics model allows calculation of IPCC’s e-times inherent in IPCC’s data.
The Physics model then allows the correction of IPCC’s natural carbon cycle e-times to make its levels consistent with its flows. IPCC did not do this.
Then, independent of the above, I show how IPCC made obvious, significant errors in its human carbon cycle. Those obvious IPCC errors prove all the contrary claims your comment lists are invalid.
Then, I show IPCC made an invalid assumption that affects all its reports. IPCC assumed nature treats human carbon differently than it treats natural carbon. That is a no-no, and it blows all the IPCC conclusions in your comment out of the water.
So far, there is no math. Just simple observation. The IPCC human carbon cycle model is significantly incorrect. Yet this incorrect IPCC human carbon cycle is the basis of IPCC’s claims (a) and (b), as well as the worldwide “climate crisis” hallucination. No math and we have proved this basic IPCC claim is wrong!
Also, please see my prior preprint1 here
It describes the Physics model more completely that done in this preprint2.
Now, to address your specific comments:
• “So, of the 134-ppm excess CO2, only 32ppm are from burning fossil fuels, the rest is natural. Where does it come from? It cannot come out of the ocean, because that’s where the excess CO2 goes. What part of nature has so fundamentally changed after about 1850 that it started to spew CO2 into the atmosphere?”
Reply: Who says it cannot come out of the oceans? Who says that’s where the excess CO2 goes?
Courtney [10] (pp. 6-7) answered your comment back in 2008:
“… the relatively large increase of CO2concentration in the atmosphere in the twentieth century (some 30%) is likely to have been caused by the increased mean temperature that preceded it. The main cause may be desorption from the oceans. … Assessment of this conclusion requires a quantitative model of the carbon cycle, but – as previously explained – such a model cannot be constructed because the rate constants are not known for mechanisms operating in the carbon cycle.”
The earth has warmed after the Little Ice Age. The warming has released carbon formerly trapped in the oceans. This is consistent with all the data.
Section 5.2 addresses the issue of how surface temperature increase causes atmospheric CO2 to increase. Please see the noted references. My preprint1 shows Harde’s conclusions for how temperature changes CO2 level in 2.4.
Where are the models that supposedly prove the excess carbon cannot come out of the oceans?
Where is a formulation of the carbon cycle that any previous study has used to prove the assertations in your comments?
They all assume human carbon emissions have caused all the increase in atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm. That is circular reasoning.
• “Since the late 1950s, that is 6 decades, scientists have measured the isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2, the changing CO2 content of the oceans, tracked the amount of carbon burned and many more relevant parameters and have come to the conclusion: of the CO2 that we spew into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, about half remains in the atmosphere for a while, some is taken up by a growing phytosphere and the rest is taken up by the oceans. What we observe in the atmosphere is that part that goes neither in the ocean nor in plants.”
Those are not facts. They are assumptions. Carbon isotopes data do not prove human carbon emissions caused all the rise in atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm.
My preprint1 shows how the IPCC theory does not fit the isotope data in 3.3 and 3.4. The burden of proof is upon those authors to prove their calculations are correct.
Their calculations did not begin with a valid carbon cycle formulation. Then they made unwarranted assumptions.
So far, your comment has not shown there is an error in my preprint’s calculations or arguments.
You are welcome to try to defend the calculations made in the papers that support your comment.
I will reply to the rest of your comment in another comment.
Thank you again for your comment.
I am not a scientist, but the answer to Aegerters question what part of nature changed around 1850 seems, if i am not mistaken, obvious to me: The Dalton mimimum came to its end.
Dear Simon,
Thank you for your comment. This replies to the second part of your comment.
My replies are in bold.
Physics Model: “Each reservoir has an e-time defined as the time for the level to move (1 – 1/e) of the distance from its present level to its balance level.”
With respect to which other reservoir? The e-time has to be calculated for each pair of reservoirs.
“Outflow = Level / e-time”
Not true. The e-time is a function of each individual reservoir:
e-time = Level / Outflow.
Should read:
Outflow = (Level- Balance Level) / e-time
because if level = balance level, the outflow is zero. Unless there is an inflow.
No. Outflow is NOT a function of Balance Level. That is incorrect physics.
At the Balance Level, Outflow still = Level / e-time.
But when Level = Balance Level, then Outflow = Inflow.
Hence, Equ 2 should read: Outflow = (L-Lb) / e-Time
Therefore (3): dL/dt = Inflow – (L-Lb) / Te
And (4): Inflow = (L-Lb) / Te
So equ. 5 becomes:
dL/dt = (L-Lb) / Te – (L-Lb)/Te = 0 which just states the assumption that lead to equ (4)
No, no, no, and no! Please go back and do the physics correctly.
“Equation (4) shows CO2 does not accumulate in the atmosphere. If inflow decreases, the balance level decreases, and the level follows the balance level. The response is immediate. When inflow to a reservoir increases the level of the reservoir, that reservoir immediately increases its outflow.”
None of that can be derived from (4). It was derived under the assumption that dL/dt is 0. So, the conclusion “The response is immediate” follows from the assumption. If we increase Inflow, what happens? Either Te has to decrease or (L-Lb) has to increase what of course it does.
Lb = Inflow * Te (4)
(4) was not “derived under the assumption that dL/dt is 0.” (4) is a definition, not an assumption. Nothing in the physics changes by using the definition of Balance Level, but the definition simply makes the physics easier to understand.
“Because of (2), it is not necessary (or desirable) to compute the carbon cycle for human and natural carbon simultaneously. It is better (and simpler) to compute their effects separately.”
Why? There is one carbon cycle and in the exchange between the atmosphere and the mixed layer it is one CO2-cycle. If we add something to one reservoir, we just get it out of its equilibrium, and we need to calculate how fast it regains the new equilibrium.
Stop and think. (2) makes the system linear. Therefore, we can compute carbon cycles separately and add them up afterward. The answer will be the same as when we calculate the cycles together.
It is no different than if we calculated with half the natural carbon and then doubled the answer.
And since we can do this, we should do this because it very much simplifies the calculations. Yes, IPCC did not understand this either. I may be the first to point this out.
If IPCC had understood this simplification, it might have found its significant error in its human carbon cycle. Then IPCC might have corrected its error and saved the world from the climate delusion.
The key point is the human and natural carbon cycles are truly independent and do not interfere with one another. And they must use the same e-times because nature cannot tell the difference between human and natural carbon atoms.
“The replication of the 14C data by the Physics Model has significant consequences. It shows hypothesis (2) is correct.”
That is so because the L(t) for 14CO2 is renormalized to have a Lb of 0. The Lb of total CO2 is not 0.
The Lb for 14CO2 of zero is not really zero 14C. The true zero level in D14C units is -1000. The D14C zero level is defined as the normal 14C level before the bomb tests. It is 1000 D14C units above the 14C zero level.
The important point is that (2) properly replicates the 14C data when Lb is set to zero and Te is set to 16.5. No IPCC model can do that.
There is another discrepancy that disallows the use of 14C data to calculate residence time of total CO2. Equ. 4, stated correctly, gives:
Inflow = (L-Lb) / Te; or Te = (L-Lb) / Inflow (A) (strictly, as defined, only for the equilibrium state)
Those are not correct equations, as I pointed out above.
Now, in the case of total CO2, the inflow is of the order of 1%, whereas in the case of 14CO2, it was almost a factor of 2 within a few years.
That is irrelevant.
If the Te for 14CO2 is 16.5, then Te for total CO2 can be estimated according to equ. A:
L-Lb is 700 vs 412-280= 132
inflow is 0.1 vs 0.01
16.5*(132/700)/(0.01/.0.1) = 16.5*19 = 310 Years.
Sorry, that is incorrect because the equations are incorrect. There is no way to estimate the Te for 12CO2 from the 14C data other than to say the Te for 12CO2 will be less than the Te for 14CO2.
I have not checked if that corresponds to the number that the IPCC uses but it seems to confirm the generally accepted fact that CO2 remains in the air “for many centuries”.
Sorry, it does not so confirm this.
Thank you again for your comment.
As an amateur scientist, I can answer the very first line of your response. Since 1950 the World population has exploded. Each of us spews out 2.3 pounds per DAY of CO2. Seven billion of us spew out 2.94 BILLION tons of CO2 per year. Compare that to the population in 1950. The IPCC didn’t take anything but SUV’s into consideration. What about Termites? Have they increased? Have any of the 700+ volcanoes changed their out put? And prove to me that CO2 is a pollutant causing the temp to rise when it is only .039% of the atmosphere. Putting that into context, imagine the atmosphere as a 100 yard football field. CO2 makes up only one INCH at the goal line. Water vapor and the sun determine our climate, not the IPCC.
Who to trust in the climate debate? One minute it is volcanoes and fires that are major CO2 sources, but who can see CO2. Best explanation Dr Willy Soon, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zrejG-WI3U who explained this very well.
And who decided that the base line should be after an ice period? Chemically CO2 dissolves better in cold water than warm and if temperature arisen then water will be realized. Check out cold coke versus warm coke.
And climate models, have they ever given the correct measurements? 415 ppm equals 0,04% amongst approx. 78% N2 and 21% O2 ++. How log spacing between each CO2 molecule that can adsorb desorb beams (agree that it can in a 100% filled tube, but comparing to clouds where you can see a lot of them when you have heat in northern part of the earth and the other way along equator when it rains there gets colder.
Then you have all the activities from sun, rotation of the earth and so forth- but still the believers say it is almost certain this is a human created disaster due to CO2 emission. Well a religion it is and therefor even though I do not understand all the arguments in Eds model to be more thrust worthy than the Swiss very unclear criticism.
If you can not prove something so many can understand and claim models gives the truth then we are back to how good are they to predict weather or in the oil industry do the models find the oil. No rubbish in = rubbish out.
Dear Raymond,
To follow up on your note about Soon’s video, you can read my summary of Soon’s paper here. It shows why the sun and not CO2 drives the earth’s climate.
While the level or concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is relevant to our discussion, the percentage of CO2 compared to N2 and O2 is irrelevant. The calculations of all models, so far as I know, do not care about how much N2 or O2 is in the atmosphere except when they do radiation calculations.
My Physics model is much different than a climate model. My Physics model has only one hypothesis (outflow = level / e-time). By contrast, climate models have a multitude of interconnected hypotheses and arbitrary parameters for curve fitting.
The Physics model can replicate the decay of 14C from 1970 to 2014, and it replicates the IPCC natural carbon cycle within the error bounds of the IPCC numbers. IPCC has no such model.
Independently of the Physics model, I show that the IPCC human carbon cycle contains such gross errors that it must be rejected. That leaves the IPCC without a valid human carbon cycle…. which means there is no scientific basis for the so-called climate crisis.
Only then, do I use the Physics model to calculate the human carbon cycle. I simply apply the e-times found for IPCC’s natural carbon cycle to the human carbon cycle. That is how the IPCC should have calculated the human carbon cycle.
Overall, if you don’t let the required math in this preprint stop you, this preprint is really very simple. Far simpler, I might add, than the many papers that support the IPCC invalid claims about the human carbon cycle.
Interesting. However someone here says Soon & Connery have cherry picked the satellite measurements 🙁https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=18&p=24)….
It’s really hard for a non-expert to discern.
On Dr.Ed’s preprint, it seems to me that no one has so far raised any solid argument against. Presumed formulations of the carbon cycle suggested by John and endorsed by Prof Aergerter do not stand (in my very humble opinion).
I agree fully with DR Ed’s preprint. However, I do feel that the whole question really revolves around whether or not the small amount of CO2 in the atmostphere has any measurable effect on climate. So far, I have seen nothing to make me thing it has, and I have been studying climate for the last 40 years.
Thanks for the reply and informative arguments. I will study your paper, but so far we are agreeing but I am only in the start phase of digging into this based on all the so-called facts coming from IPPC that in my mind do not ad up. When also an environmentalist like Patrick Moore is onto it the maybe some of those org might turn. This presentation was quite good, https://youtu.be/UWahKIG4BE4
Anyway, hopefully time and your excellent work will turn this CO2 religion, but so far at least in Europa the madness increases every year! Have a nice weekend
Dear Raymond,
Although Patrick Moore and I agree that more CO2 is beneficial to humanity, Patrick and I disagree on one major point:
Patrick Moore claims, like the IPCC, that human carbon emissions are the sole cause of the increase of atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm.
Whereas, I believe I have proved the IPCC claim makes serious errors, and human emissions have caused no more than 31 ppm of the rise above 280 ppm, and nature has caused the other 100 ppm rise.
Keep up the excellent work and maybe this paper will ad some more information https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com/2019/11/abstract-during-time-periodwhen-water.html?fbclid=IwAR08x9jb5YQB79AgyQmh2JYWPFSk7IJ2k0vto-2xUmUdgLXj-yuFetkrNcM
Nice weekend
This discussion with Swiss physicist, Dr. Simon Aegerter, should be very helpful everyone. Dr. Aegerter says that man-made carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere a long time. Dr. Berry says it stays a much shorter time. Whether they come to agreement or not, the most important thing for many non experts on this topic will be if they can come to agreement as to whether the additional CO2 is having a serious effect on Earth’s climate and if so what must be done about it and in what time frame.
I look forward to their discussion and answers to the points mentioned here.
The fact is CO2, both Natural and Man-Made, have absolutely no driving influence on Earth’s climate, whatsoever. CO2 is basically meaningless, as it follows…and does not presage…climatic change. Water vapor simply overwhelms any effect CO2 might have completely. Man-made CO2 is absolutely meaningless to climate, but very important in regards to controlling humanity…and in the confiscation of wealth.
They’ll find a way to tax water vapor.
I fully endoese this comment. The idea that CO2 is the driving force in climate change dates back to the time of Arrehnius and Forier who were looking for a reason why the earth came out of an ice age into an inter-glacial period. Their assumption was later proved wrong, but the establishment keeps on pushing it.
If you study the underlying cyclic events, you will see that we are, in fact, just starting the long slow descent into the next ice age. This will take about 5,000 years, so shouldn’t bother us too much at the moment.
CO2 is highly relevant in the higher colder (& DRIER) regions of the troposphere. It is here that a significant proportion of LWIR is finally emitted to space. Because of the lower temperatures, the rate of emission is reduced (S-B Law). This disturbs the energy equlibrium at the Top of the Atmosphere (outgoing less than incoming). The surface & lower atmosphere must, therefore, warm until balance is restored.
Increased CO2 is warming the planet – not catastrophically perhaps – bit it’s happening.
Without CO2 there would be less Water Vapour.
John Shanahan,
You assert,
“the most important thing for many non experts on this topic will be if they can come to agreement as to whether the additional CO2 is having a serious effect on Earth’s climate and if so what must be done about it and in what time frame.”
Sorry, but NO.
The important point about this topic is whether or not human activities are making a significant contribution to changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
This is because any effects of altered atmospheric CO2 concentration are not affected by human activities which do not make a significant difference to atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Richard
Richard,
You have three NOs in your comment. I don’t understand what you are trying to say.
Here is my position:
1) The website allaboutenergy.net presents over 600 articles on all sides of the man-made global warming debate so the public can access any material. I’m the editor and have uploaded all this content after studying it carefully. See here:
http://allaboutenergy.net/environment
2) The conclusions about future use of fossil fuels are of the utmost importance of the modern world. They must be scientifically sound, not a politician’s or activist’s whim.
3) After carefully studying all these articles and speaking and e-mailing many of these authors, my conclusion as of January 2020 is that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is not causing serious man-made global warming, man-made climate change, man-made climate disruption (President Obama’s Science Advisor, John Holdren’s terms). It is important that the world continue to use fossil fuels, especially with real pollution control systems and no cheating on pollution monitoring instrumentation.
In following the Scientific Method, I am open to changing my position, given the necessary proof.
John Shanahan,
You claim you “do not understand” what I was “trying to say” when I wrote,
“The important point about this topic is whether or not human activities are making a significant contribution to changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
This is because any effects of altered atmospheric CO2 concentration are not affected by human activities which do not make a significant difference to atmospheric CO2 concentration.”
I fail to understand how I could be more clear than those two sentences. Perhaps the problem is that I was not sufficiently explicit in my use of the word “significant”. If that is the problem them I correct it by explaining why I thought my meaning was indicated by the context of the explanation.
In the context of my explanation
a “significant difference to atmospheric CO2 concentration”
is
a “difference to atmospheric CO2 concentration” that has discernible effects.
I hope the matter is now clear.
Richard
Dear John: As Dr. Ed has stated multiple times, there is no molecular difference between naturally occurring CO2 and manmade CO2 so to try to claim that manmade CO2 remains in the atmosphere longer is just plain false. Dr. Ed has proven that extensively.
One question that has never been answered by any of the “Experts” is what is the perfect level of CO2 our planet should be experiencing. Can you give us an answer?
Last but not least, the current alleged CO2 level in our atmosphere is supposedly around 410 PPM. Why is that bad and what should the level be? 410 PPM sounds pretty bad but when you put it into the proper context and compare it to a monetary value, that turns out to be a mere 41 cents per $1,000…………….LOL!
I think that Dr Berry should be honored to have the attention of a prestigious professor like Simon Aergerter, and I see that the discussion is becoming quite stimulating, if not exciting.
Hopefully Prof Aergerter will have better points than what I’ve read here in this thread : https://www.quora.com/profile/Simon-Aegerter, by which he assumes as an apodiptic truth the fact that the entire increase of CO2 from 280 to 410 is due to humans, without even a doubt, simply because other hypothesis are not “plausible” ? With all my due respect (I am just a poor engineer that loves physics, not a professor, not a climatologist) I cannot believe that the scientific method – that was really rigorous when I was taught it by my professors a long ago – has evolved to this point.
The argument for all/most of the increase in CO2 being man made strikes me as similar to the Police taking someone to court and saying, “Well if he didn’t do it, then who did” ?? Whilst the argument is obviously stupid in this example, in the form of the climate debate it has gained far more credibility than it deserves.
Please see Eric Jelinski’s comments on the Ed Berry – Simon Aegerte debate on man-made carbon dioxide at the following link:
http://allaboutenergy.net/environment/item/2488-eric-jelinski-comments-on-carbon-dioxide-debate-between-ed-berry-and-simon-aegerter-canada-switzerland-usa
Eric’s comments were not posted on Ed’s website because we couldn’t find a way to include Eric’s graphics and figures.
This is an important debate because it is between two physicists. A debate between a physicist and a scientist in any other field often runs into needless differences, the other debaters not accepting the physics model Ed presents.
Eric’s endorsement of Ed’s physics flow model is important.
Eric Jelinski has degrees in mechanical and chemical-nuclear engineering. He has a long and distinguished career working as a project manager for Canada’s nuclear power plants. He is a lecturer in nuclear engineering at the University of Toronto. In addition to all this, he is an outstanding and very observant farmer. We did not post his comments on the Ed Berry – Simon Aegerter debate about man-made carbon dioxide because we wanted everyone to see his graphics.
Please see Eric Jelinski’s comments at this link:
http://allaboutenergy.net/environment/item/2488-eric-jelinski-comments-on-carbon-dioxide-debate-between-ed-berry-and-simon-aegerter-canada-switzerland-usa
Eric supports Ed Berry’s physics flow model. This is an important endorsement.
There is no doubt that the core issue of alarmism is whether human emissions of CO2, ACO2, causes all or most of the undisputed increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1900. If humans are not responsible for the increase in CO2 it doesn’t matter whether CO2 does the magical things alarmists claim it does.
The Barrett/Bellamy emission page sums up as well as any pro-ACO2 source the reasons for ACO2 causing the increase in CO2:
http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/page24.htm
Until Dr Berry and others started work on this issue myself and Bob Cormack summed up the arguments against ACO2 being the main or entire source of the increase in atmospheric CO2:
https://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14581
Bob did a separate proof which goes into much more detail than the journal article. I have asked him if he is ok in communicating with Dr Berry about this.
I think the main issue is whether CO2 in the atmosphere actually causes climate change. This is purely conjecture, and until that is proven, the amount in the atmosphere is irrelevant.
I would have to disagree David. Whether CO2 causes climate change is an important point that has not been proven. However if it can be proven that usage of fossil fuels does not cause significant CO2 increase then the role of CO2 in climate change becomes moot. If anthropogenic CO2 is an insignificant contributor to overall CO2 increase then we cannot control the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. If we cannot control the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere then we cannot control Climate Change. This is regardless of whether CO2 actually causes Climate Change. Therefore all the angst about our use of fossil fuels is unwarranted.
It is often stated: “IPCC and its contributors claim that most human carbon stays in the atmosphere essentially forever.” That is however not true. What they claim is that the consequences of human carbon emissions last essentially forever. This becomes quite clear if you look at the definition of the Bern model https://unfccc.int/resource/brazil/carbon.html where one can find that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere according to the IPCC SAR model depends on “The CO2-fertilization parameter beta.” After 30 years CO2 concentration could be anything between 36% and 48% of the original increase depending on beta when beta is “varied within plausible ranges ”
What the IPCC climate model is telling us is thus that 40GtC into the preindustrial atmosphere would quickly fertilize the carbon-starving biosphere and store a large fraction of the human emission in plants. According to the model plants will die and release carbon to the atmosphere to make the concentration higher than it would have been without the human emission. This elevated CO2 concentration will continue to fertilize the green plants and keep the CO2 levels elevated and the planet greener for a very long time.
It is obvious to me that this mechanism exists. Earth is greener now according to satellite data. Whether the IPCC climate models reproduce the mechanism anywhere near correctly is beyond my understanding – but it is quite clear that the statement that most human carbon stays in the atmosphere essentially forever leads our thinking wrong – and it is particularly unfortunate when spoken out to the general public.
The fertilization effect of CO2 stays for a long time. The planet is greener and at the same time the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is elevated.
The question about whether the increased CO2 concentration is natural or induced by humans is another thing. We have two different assumptions: Human CO2 disappears into the other reservoirs quickly just like C14 from the bomb tests. The rest of the increased CO2 comes from the higher temperature of the sea that has natural causes (sun, cosmic rays,…whatever.) The other alternative: All the CO2 increase is caused by humans. In this assumption the increased temperature is entirely caused by the greenhouse effect of CO2 so the CO2 released from the sea is caused by the human CO2. The fundamental difference between the two alternatives is the assumption about the net warming effect of a higher CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The first assumption is that it is negligible and the second assumption is that CO2 is the only factor behind the increased temperature since 1880.
My personal belief is that the truth is somewhere in between (based on historical temperature variations) and I do not think that available scientific evidence supports any of the two extremes.
I do not think the discussion about the CO2 decay time is helpful at all. The simple physics model can not prove IPCC is wrong in the assumption that CO2 is the only reason for the global warming we have experienced since preindustrial times. The increased growth rate today (by 30% due to more CO2 that we can find claimed on the Internet) will certainly lead to higher CO2 concentrations hundreds of years into the future (lifetime of trees in a rain forest). It seems to me that the simple physics model does not describe that phenomenon properly – but I find it difficult to believe that IPCC models are particularly accurate either.
Dear Leif,
You make a valid point about the terminology of whether human carbon “stays in the atmosphere essentially forever” or whether “the consequences of human carbon emissions last essentially forever.”
However, I think the human carbon cycle presented in this preprint shows that the two phrases mean “essentially” the same thing.
To help clarify this point, I added the “Section 5.3 Summary.” I may have added this section after you last read this preprint.
The point is, when we treat the human carbon cycle independently from the natural carbon cycle then we include all the “consequences of human carbon emissions.” This treatment accounts for the increase of carbon in the land reservoir that you point out. Section 4.2 explains this.
The human carbon cycle adds a layer of new carbon on the natural carbon cycle. The human carbon cycle operates independently from the natural carbon cycle, but it must obey the same “rules” as natural carbon.
It does not take the Physics model to prove IPCC’s human carbon cycle is wrong. IPCC’s data alone prove IPCC’s human carbon cycle is wrong. We need no math. We only need to realize that human carbon must obey the same rules as natural carbon. Mere observation of IPCC’s human carbon cycle proves it is wrong. Figure 18 in Section 5.3 shows how the IPCC human carbon cycle fails basic physics.
The Physics model fills the gap left by IPCC’s failed human carbon cycle. To date, the Physics model is the only model that fills this gap.
The first step is to solve for the static solution. The long-term distribution of human carbon will equal the long-term distribution of natural carbon, which is shown by IPCC’s natural carbon cycle.
See Section 5.3, Figure 17. We do not need time constants. This step proves wrong the IPCC claim that significant human carbon will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years.
For the dynamic solution, we need time constants, or e-times, to calculate how human carbon distributes itself to the other carbon reservoirs over time. This calculation first derives the e-times for IPCC’s natural carbon cycle. Then it applies the same e-times to the human carbon cycle.
The result of this dynamic calculation shows the faster the inflow of human carbon, the more human carbon that will temporarily reside in the atmosphere. This calculation includes all recycling of human carbon among the carbon reservoirs, or the “consequences” of human carbon.
The amount of human carbon that remains in the atmosphere in any year is a competition of inflow and outflow. The faster the inflow, the higher the temporary level of human CO2. And the more total human carbon added to the carbon cycle, the higher the long-term level of human CO2.
The calculations (which are elementary calculations that every engineer should know how to do) show the human carbon that exists in the atmosphere at the end of 2019 is about 31 ppm. That leaves 100 ppm that must be filled by the increased inflow of natural carbon.
So, we have replaced our need for “belief” with numbers that guide us in our quest to understand the real effect of human carbon emissions.
Dear Ed,
thank you for the extensive replies. The first one is to my argument of plausibility. You call this reversal of burden of proof. I don’t think so. If somebody challenges established knowledge the burden of proof is on him.
Then the question on where the excess CO2 is coming from and the contention that it is outgassing from the ocean: In this paper:
Gruber, Nicolas et al.: “The oceanic sink for anthropogenic CO2 from 1994 to 2007”, Science, 15. March 2019, (363) pg. 1193
Measurements of CO2 in the oceans have been compiled for all the oceans and the authors come to the conclusion that the total amount has increased by 125 billion tons during these 13 years. I don’t call that outgassing. That paper was not published in some crackpot journal, but in AAASs “Science”.
If the excess CO2 comes out of the ocean, then why is the excess larger in the northern hemispere and not in the southern hemisphere, where most of the oceans are? And if the excess CO2 does come out of the oceans, where are the 35 billion tons of CO2 hiding, that come out of stacks and tailpipes every year?
That’s what I mean by a plausibility test. If a result looks implausible, the first thing to do is look for an error. I am convinced that the error is the use of 14CO2 to estimate the e-time of 12CO2. You think otherwise. let’s agree to disagree. I understand that the paper is submitted for publication. Let the reviewer be the judge.
Best
Simon
Dear Simon,
Thank you for your contribution to the discussion of my preprint.
You say, “If somebody challenges established knowledge the burden of proof is on him.”
Given all the challenges to the IPCC theory, the IPCC theory cannot be called “established knowledge.” The IPCC theory is not a physical law.
The scientific method always puts the burden of proof on those who claim a theory is true. This means, if anyone finds an error in the theory, then the theory is false. Such errors can be an incorrect prediction or a violation of established physics in the formulation of the theory.
I have shown the existence of blatant, obvious errors in IPCC’s human carbon cycle. I have shown that IPCC’s theory incorrectly assumes nature treats human and natural carbon differently. Each observation alone proves the IPCC theory is not “established knowledge.”
You reference the Gerber, Nicolas et al. paper, which can be read here.
Section “5.1 Why the IPCC carbon-cycle models are wrong” discusses papers reviewed by Archer [29] and shows why they are incorrect. The Gerber paper is simply another of the many papers that base their conclusions on the assumption that human emissions cause all the observed changes in the carbon cycle. Its conclusions are the result of circular reasoning.
The Gerber paper has no carbon cycle formulation or calculation. It draws conclusions that are not justified by the data. It offers no proof or even an argument to justify its conclusion that the increase in ocean carbon has been caused by human emissions. It could have been caused by nature.
Gerber et al. and all the Archer [29] papers omit discussion of the natural alternative. Therefore, they cannot show how human emissions change the carbon cycle. This preprint may be the only scientific paper that properly treats both human and natural carbon cycles.
You ask, “And if the excess CO2 does come out of the oceans, where are the 35 billion tons of CO2 hiding, that come out of stacks and tailpipes every year?”
The carbon cycle model presented in this preprint answers that question. No one else has answered that question.
Thank you again for your comments.
“[The Gruber paper] offers no proof or even an argument to justify its conclusion that the increase in ocean carbon has been caused by human emissions.”
Even if the carbon they identified wasn’t from anthropogenic sources, an increase of 34 petagrams over 13 years shows the oceans are gaining not losing carbon. Since the supplemental text with the paper goes into detail on the technique used to determined the percent of anthropogenic carbon in the samples you could explain what was wrong with their findings.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2019/03/13/363.6432.1193.DC1/aau5153_Gruber_SM.pdf
Dear Craig,
Concentrations do not reveal the direction of the flow. If warming causes oceans to release carbon, where do you think the carbon will increase first? Obviously, in the oceans. And if carbon is released in the oceans, it will then add to carbon in the atmosphere.
The paper assumed, without any proof, that human carbon caused all the rise in atmospheric carbon and then this human carbon flowed into the ocean. The paper excluded alternative hypotheses about what caused the increase in the carbon in the oceans. Not good science.
The carbon cycle models my preprint presents for natural and human carbon are the only present means to determine which way the carbon flows.
The ocean surface CO2 and atmospheric CO2 are always going to be in equilibrium no matter which way CO2 flows. This argument that because ocean pH is decreasing that CO2 is flowing from atm. to sur. ocean doesn’t seem logical. If flow of CO2 was going from deep ocean to sur. to atm. this would also cause pH to drop. It seems illogical therefore to make bold statements about ocean acting as sink because of pH measurements.
My understanding is that water holds CO2, the colder the more it holds.
That being the case if the Ocean temperature is rising atmospheric CO2 should also increase? Is this not the case?
Not at the rate it has since the 19th century. A one degree increase might be responsible for a 20 ppm increase at most.
John Finn,
Please state your evidence and/or reasoning for your assertion.
Richard
1. Oceans are becoming more acidic (less alkaline). The opposite would be the case if the atmospheric CO2 increase was due to “outgassing” from oceans.
2. The correlation between ice core data & temperature changes show a 10 to 16 ppm increase per degree C.
Dear John,
It is not that simple:
1. The oceans become equally less alkaline if the CO2 is created in the ocean when carbon becomes CO2.
2. Ice core data do not reveal the full effect of temperature on CO2 because ice cores underestimate CO2 concentration. Harde presents additional information on how temperature changes CO2.
Thanks Ed, for your careful presentation of the physics and chemistry underlying carbon dioxide which, by your rational treatment that there is no difference between human and natural varieties of this molecule, gives us clear scientific proof that human carbon dioxide comprises only a small part of this trace gas in the atmosphere. Whilst we are dealing with a carefully built belief system, albeit irrational, it is essential that people such as yourself keep presenting scientific arguments to bring reality back to the table.
I do not understand why there is a debate. Carbon is the one atom which can be dated absolutely using C14. This was understood when radio carbon dating was discovered in 1956. So you have a conclusive way of determining how much CO2 is from ancient fossil fuel and how much from the last 50,000 years. In 1958, after two world wars, it was only 2%
Reduction of Atmospheric Radiocarbon Concentration by Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide and the Mean Life of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere
G. J. Fergusson
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences
Vol. 243, No. 1235 (Feb. 11, 1958), pp. 561-574
Abstract
It is generally accepted that the combustion of fossil fuels over the period 1860 to 1954 has produced an amount of carbon dioxide, containing no radiocarbon, that is equal to approxi¬mately 13% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The addition of this 4 ‘old’ carbon dioxide to the atmosphere has observably disturbed the steady-state distribution of carbon-14 in nature. In the present paper measurements are described of the carbon-14 concentration in sets of wood samples from the northern and southern hemispheres, and these show that the carbon-14 specific activity of atmospheric carbon dioxide has decreased by 2.03 ± 0.15% over the period 1860 to 1954, and that the present-day difference between the decrease in the northern and southern hemispheres is less than 0.50%.
and I do not see what has changed except the unproven statements that the increase is all man made and that CO2 stays in the air for a half life of 80 years (IPCC) or for thousands of years (also IPCC).
It is not a question of where it goes although that is obvious, it is a question of whether the increase in CO2 is man made. Radio carbon dating says it is not true.
As for the temperature of the ocean, it is only the surface temperature which matters and the amount of CO2 dissolved is agreed to be 50x that in the thin air above so measuring changes in the ocean is pointless. Henry’s Law tells you that even a slight surface warming would dramatically change CO2 levels. What is also completely unproven is that CO2 has any impact at all on temperatures given that it is effectively a constant from year to year and the temperatures in desert areas vary from -40C to +40C winter to summer, which would make CO2 the worst blanket in history.
The other point is that C14 cannot be destroyed. When it was doubled in 1965 it told us everything about what happens to CO2. That C14 is almost all gone from the biosphere in 55 years but cannot vanish and CO2 levels have no gone down. There is only one place, a sink so large that it dwarfs the biosphere amounts and every one agrees 98% of all CO2 is dissolved in the oceans.
The sun and the oceans are the controlling factors in all climate. Water. The average depth of the oceans is 3.4km and at 1 atmosphere per 10 metres, that is 340x the weight of the atmosphere and when you add specific heat, 1200x the energy content. Oceans, sun, evaporation, rain, clouds, these things are the weather and all of the major events like El Nino, La Nina, the PDO, the Indian dipole are ocean surface temperature oscillations which dramatically change the weather, against tiny CO2 which has increase so slowly over 120 years. So if you want to predict the climate, the weather, study the oceans and the sun. Then add clouds, evaporation, rain. It’s all about the greatest greenhouse gas, water.
As Dr. Weiss has shown so conclusively on YouTube, Fourier analysis gives a near perfect fit to temperatures with only two cycles, the De Vries cycle of 260 years and the PDO induced ocean oscillation of 60 years. This was without CO2 and done blind, so it is convincing.
There is absolutely no evidence that CO2 is not part of an equlibrium system and has rapid exchange with the oceans. Oxygen does or fish would drown. Why not highly soluble CO2?
Sunshine, CO2 and H2O are the basis of all life on earth. It is fantastic that CO2 is going up, which increases vegetation across the globe by 50%. Unfortunately that also dramtically increases the size of bushfires in Australia, but that is real science not alarmism.
Worst bushfire in Australia in terms of area of land burnt was 1974/75. Very severe bushfires occurred in 1851 & 1939. This predates large increases in CO2 levels. Intensity and severity of bushfires are dependent of fuel loads present. White settlement disrupted Aboriginal practices of frequent burning of the land to reduce undergrowth (and fuel loads) resulting in devastating fires. Current “Green” philosophy of protecting nature and locking up natural areas of bushland to be untouched has again resulted in dramatic increases in fuel loads and hence more devastating fires. 2019 was also a year of very low rainfall. Blaming Australia’s bushfires on Climate Change is Alarmist nonsense. CO2 fertilisation in all probability has little to do with the problem. Lack of responsible land and forestry management is the major cause for devastating bushfires in Australia
I’m astonished to read the final comments of the Swiss Physicist. The notion that humans have produced all the increase of CO2 from 280 to 410 ppm comes directly from the authority of God and as such needs not to be proved.
Dear Ed, thank you for pointing me to “Section 5.3 Summary.” which I did not see before. Figure 18 is obviously absurd and since it comes from figure 7 there must be an error in figure 7. The Land box is -30 in fig 7, but IPCC fig 6.1 shows -30±45 which means it is essentially unknown. IPCC table 6.1 explains:
Cumulative 2002-2011
1750-2011 PgC/yr
Land-to-atmosphere 30 ± 45 -1.6 ± 1.0
Partitioned as follows:
Net land use change 180 ± 80 0.9 ± 0.8
Residual land sink -160 ± 90 -2.5 ± 1.3
In figure 7 the arrow Atmos to Land has to be 1.6 (The red arrow “Net land use change” has to be included.) Consequently human should be changed from 9 to 8. The text under figure 6.1 further says: “Note that the mass balance of the two ocean carbon stocks Surface ocean and Intermediate and deep ocean includes a yearly accumulation of anthropogenic carbon (not shown.)” Something not shown in fig 6.1 that should be included in your figure 7 or alternatively you might treat all parts of the ocean as a single box.
“Question: In Figure 18, how did IPCC get the 66 percent of human carbon in the atmosphere?”
Answer: The about 1 degree higher temperature is caused by humans according to IPCC and therefore the changed equilibrium between ocean and atmosphere is human. The entire increase of CO2, 133 ppm is therefore human even though a lot of it comes from the ocean.
The IPCC models must contain a description of how the equilibrium between ocean and atmosphere depends on the temperature. The net result of running the models like a black box gives a temperature and an associated CO2 concentration. It is something non-linear and one can not separate the totals in the different reservoirs in additive parts “Natural” and “Human.”
The fundamental problem is to what extent CO2 causes the observed warming. I do not think IPCC is describing well what they are doing. Reading many enough of the referenced papers to build a good understanding of what they really do is impossible for me. My life will not last long enough – I am already fairly old…
There is however something I really would love to see: Someone who is capable of running IPCC models who would add to the models an external forcing that would cause 50% of the observed global warming. Obviously parameters in the models would have to be changed to retain agreement with historical data. Presumably the heating caused by CO2 would have to be made significantly lower for example.
Question: What projections for the future climate would come out of such a model if the external forcing stops or reverses sign year 2020 and becomes a cooling factor? The purpose of such an exercise would be to see how sensitive the IPCC models are to the assumption on how large fraction of the warming is caused by humans.
Bush fires in Australia are of course very upsetting. But they are still, according to Wikipedia, nowhere near as bad as 1974. The trees and scrub recover; and sequester CO2 as they do so.
The convincing argument against global warming by human caused CO2 to me has always been that between 1940 and 1980 (half my life) CO2 was rising but the global temperatures were falling. Argument over. Then they rose together for 20 years (IPCC came into being), followed by a time when global temperatures rose and fell, with no net gain for 20 years, while CO2 continuously rose. Again no link between CO2 and temperature. The Bible definitely speaks of climate change coming, (Revelation 8 and 16), but not at random and apparently the agent is the sun. Sounds like that is what is confirmed by many scientists. One area for research for Ed is how fast is CO2 desorbed from seawater at different temperatures. Numbers often help an argument, as you have so well pointed out in your paper. Thanks for your excellent work.
As an interested non-scientist, these discussions are very important. Thank you. We need more of them.
I’m AMAZED at the lack of knowledge about the Scientific Method among today’s scientists. There should be a requirement placed within new studies and articles that come out for the author’s to demonstrate, up front, their understanding of the Scientific Method generally and then within the context of specific industry assertions that they are addressing in their study/article.
Imagine the enormous waste of time, energy, and costs we could have saved had this one simple scientific rigor been followed all these decades. But who knew it would be this bad? Ugh!
Dear Ed, – Your approach is most interesting. It has the merit of elegant simplicity and, at first blush, it looks correct. The physicist who has commented has certainly not convinced me that you are wrong.
Your paper now needs redrafting as a proper scientific paper. If you want a hand with the technical drafting, let me know and I’ll put my team on it (our own paper on the error in IPCC’s definition of feedback is out for review, so we have some time to spare). Then your paper should be submitted to a suitable top-ten journal for peer review. I’d very much like to see the reviews. – Christopher
I believe that the answer is simple. I have looked up (basic research) graphs of the past relationship of temperature and CO2 level The statement I was exposed to at school in Physics and Chemistry was simply CAUSE AND EFFECT. In all the data I was able to view the changes of CO2 followed after Temperature. How could anyone not take that into account and claim to be a scientist.
I put this to our government dept which deals with climate, and they said that yes, the temperature rose before CO2, but then when CO2 became greater, it then caused further heating. You can’t argue with these people. They want their cake and eat it.
Carbon dioxide is our good friend and not an enemy
The Earth is surrounded by a blanket of atmosphere that keeps it warm and habitable. In contrast, other celestial bodies with little or no atmosphere, such as Mars and the Moon are too cold for life as we know it.
Our atmosphere contains two vitally important parts—water and carbon dioxide (CO2). Energy from the Sun is necessary for both water and carbon dioxide to function. Water through evaporation, precipitation and ocean currents distributes heat from the Sun around the Earth and keeps it from becoming too hot or too cold.
Through the process of photosynthesis, energy from the Sun in the presence of chlorophyll, the green color in plants, causes carbon dioxide to react with water to form food and release oxygen. The Earth has the right conditions for life as we know it to take hold and to grow and develop. We live in a wonderful world.
Currently, there is widespread concern that a climate catastrophe is approaching because of rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Scientists writing in the IPCC First Assessment Report for the IPCC in 1990 stated that water vapor amplified warming of the atmosphere by CO2. This led to the belief that life on Earth is headed for dangerous levels of warming. Since 1990, new information has been developed that was not available to the scientists. This is, namely, back radiation measurements and the ability to easily record air temperature and relative humidity at several places around the Earth at the same time.
Applying this information proves by reproducible evidence that water vapor does not amplify warming by CO2. In fact, warming by water vapor is approximately 8 to 47 times larger than that of CO2 and renders it ineffective as a warming gas.
CO2 is our good friend and not our enemy. We can continue to enjoy our lives on Earth without fear of a man made climate catastrophe.
Full paper and Two page summary available at: http://www.thelightfootinstitute.ca/papers.html
H. Douglas Lightfoot
The Two-page summary is well worth the look, as it presents a new and simple way to show that CO2 is not the prime driver of Climate Change.
http://www.thelightfootinstitute.ca/documents/A%20new%20look%20at%20current%20climate%20science%20Two%20page%20summary%20Sept%2014%202019.pdf
Anyone with a cellphone can cross-check the data collection aspects of this research.
I’m not a scientist. Even if I don’t understand any detail, I think Ed Berry is doing a good job showing that IPCC is using flawed science for a political agenda. However, whether human emissions cause any increase of atmospherical co2 or not, it matters if we suppose, that co2 has a significant greenhouse effect. Does it at all? I’ve been reading hundreds of discussions about climate change for years, but I never found any convincing explanation of the greenhouse effect co2 allegedly has. It must be work with a kind of back radiation of IR from the earth. The co2 molecule absorbs a certain amount of IR coming back from the earth’s surface. So it will be warmer, expand and rise. It can transfer heat by contact with the other cooler surrounding nitrogen and oxygen molecules. So they will expand and rise too. ( 1 co2 molecule surrounded by 5000 other gas molecules! how tiny will be this heat-transfer?) Contemporaneously it will radiate IR in every direction. But only opaque molecules will absorb it and will further warm if their temperature is lower than the T of the co2 molecule. Can it be the earth’s surface or oceans, lakes, and rivers? Of course not because they are warmer than co2. Neither it can not be atmospherical nitrogen and oxygen because they are not IR sensitive. So it can heat only water vapor. Thus water vapor will expand and rise. We are talking about a minimal amount of energy due to the tiny number of co2 molecules in the atmosphere. Finally, all the thermic effect of co2 IR-radiation absorbency will only cause further micro-convection in the already moving air.
Did I understand well? Please correct me! Matt
Monckton of Brenchley mentions “peer review.” Although this series of discussions might satisfy that effort somewhat, I am personally skeptical of any modern academic peer review’s value, simply because the suffocating majority of academia globally has been trained in the universal swamp of false assumptions, without scientific verification by the scientific method.
When honesty is on trial before such a tribunal, history shows the “peers” currently in political power simply burn the deviant. This has been true in all areas of Truth – vs – Tradition: Religion, Science and Politics. “Peers” of modern science-so-called are merely an establishment of co-believers, intoxicated with their accepted, group-think of assumptions. They have converted true science into philosophy.
For example, in science, a simple crystal of quartz verifies that earth has never had a molten core, hence the academic peer-group’s “big bang theory” is pseudo-science. Similarly, since the replicable scientific method has verified that there are NO intermediate mutant forms in the genealogy of ANY species of life forms in the geologic record, the peer-dominant theory of evolution is below pseudo-science; it is fraud. Prime proof is Smithsonian’s sequence of “pre-men,” all verified as gross frauds!
Whether it’s CO2, ozone, fossils or carbon 14 dating, false assumptions rule among the peer majority, occupying positions of self-established authority. The same distortion of principle is found in Religion and Politics. Their ultimate goal is control of the minds of men. Too few men are independent thinkers focused on verifiable truth. It is a fact that some assumed facts are not facts.
Bob Webster websterbob801@gmail.com
Seems you and Dr. Asbrink areessentially on the same page. You say 31 ppm human added, he’s saying 131 ppm, “even though a lot of it comes from the ocean”. What I understand you to call desporbtion from nature. As a layperson, am I missing something?
copy:
Leif Åsbrink January 7, 2020 at 3:39 pm states,
“Question: In Figure 18, how did IPCC get the 66 percent of human carbon in the atmosphere?”
Answer: The about 1 degree higher temperature is caused by humans according to IPCC and therefore the changed equilibrium between ocean and atmosphere is human. The entire increase of CO2, 133 ppm is therefore human even though a lot of it comes from the ocean….
The fundamental problem is to what extent CO2 causes the observed warming. I do not think IPCC is describing well what they are doing….
I don’t know much about the math, but I do know about natural forces like white smokers on the ocean floor emitting liquid CO2. Given the existence of such things, and knowing how little we know about what else is going on under the ocean, the minuscule annual amount of human CO2 emissions cannot – absolutely cannot – be responsible for any part of climate change. We’re just too small.
Try looking at this logically using a simple (slightly imperfect) example. Let’s assume there are 500 units of CO2 in the atmosphere in year n. For the previous n years, during the annual cycle, land and oceans have emitted 100 units and absorbed 100 units leaving a near constant balance of 500 units.
Now let’s assume if the following happens in year n+1 (and every subsequent year).
Land + Oceans emit 100 units
Humans emit (fossil fuel use) 4 units
Land + Ocean absorb 100 units
The 100 re-absorbed units will be selected at random and since the proportion of human CO2 will be less than 1% of the total concentration it is highly unlikely likely that any more than ONE unit will be selected. This means the atmosphere will retain 501 units of natural CO2 & 3 units of human CO2.
Year n+2 will be similar as the human proportion will still only be just over 1%. However, as the years pass, the human proportion in the atmosphere will increase and eventually reach just under 4% – or the same as the proportion of the annual emissions – at which point the proportion (not the amount) will remain fairly constant.
This is EXACTLY what we now see happening. The atmospheric proportion of CO2 from fossil fuels is virtually identical to the proportion of annual emissions. While the proportion of human CO2 is small, fossil fuel burning is responsible for almost all of the excess since 1850.
Surface temperature increases cannot explain the increase in atmospheric CO2. Ice core data shows that a 100 ppm increase was in response to temperature increase of at least 5 degrees C over hundreds of years. If CO2 responded to a 1 degree increase in a few years we’d surely see much larger fluctuations in CO2 changes during ENSO cycles (i.e. El Nino to La Nina & vice versa).
Sorry, folks, there’s no other explanation. We are providing an additional source of atmospheric CO2 which is independent of any fluctuations in earth’s temperature.
John F
Then why is there no response in atmospheric concentration to changes in rates of fossil fuel emissions? I believe the scenario of equilibrium you postulate for your explanation is not valid and the small part of emissions that is human is lost in the widely variable, unmeasured natural flux. Watch Salby’s videos (all referenced here on Dr. Ed’s site) to get a good feel for the limiting factors and calculations of limits involved.
” Then why is there no response in atmospheric concentration to changes in rates of fossil fuel emissions? ”
There is a response. What makes you think there isn’t? I’m using a simple example to show how the proportion of the human contribution in the atmosphere will tend towards the proportion of human emissions. If human emissions increased to 5% then the atmospheric contribution of human emissions would increase (over time) until they reached 5%.
There’s no mystery to this – it’s simple statistics.
Regarding Murray Salby’s ‘opinions’, as I recall Salby correlates the derivative (rate of change) of atmospheric CO2 with temperature. So what? He’s simply showing that concentration grows faster when it’s warmer. We know this. This, however, does not address the underlying trend. Year to year temperature changes cause CO2 increases to vary by +/- 1 ppm. This cannot explain the 130 ppm increase since 1850.
John Finn:
You should do your homework before issuing a torrent of weakly supported opinions. Had you done so, as suggested by DMA, then you would have seen that Professor Salby and Dr. Ed show that the human component of increased CO2 has to be small even without reliance on temperature.
PHILIP JANUARY 8, 2020 AT 4:02 PM
Philip No-one has shown any such thing. The proportion of human produced CO2 at any time is only about 4% because that is the proportion of total CO2 emitted. That does not mean the accumulated excess is not due to fossil fuel burning by humans.
It’s quite simple. Humans produce about 9 GtC per year. The atmospheric concentration increases by about 5 GtC per year.
1ppm = 2.12 GtC
Dr. Ed has boundless tolerance…
“However, as the years pass, the human proportion in the atmosphere will increase and eventually reach just under 4% – or the same as the proportion of the annual emissions – at which point the proportion (not the amount) will remain fairly constant.”
If this is correct and all fossil fuel emissions were magically stopped is it reasonable to conclude that the growth rate in the atmosphere will go to zero? That would assume that the 96 % natural emissions are constant enough that the 4% human emissions is the only controlling factor in the concentration growth and as such is the only cause of the increase and would necessarily have to show correlation in the growth rate of the concentration. Look at the no growth period of human emissions from 2011 to 2016 (https://edberry.com/blog/climate/climate-physics/what-is-really-behind-the-increase-in-atmospheric-co2/ at 42:20 min.) and note that there was no change in the growth rate of concentration in the atmosphere. Can you describe a natural mechanism that decided to not continue increasing natural sinks so the concentration growth was unaffected by this plateau in the emissions? I can’t.
I’m not sure what your point is. There doesn’t need to be growth of emissions to produce growth in the atmosphere. The growth is the atmosphere comes from the fact that not all annual emissions can be removed from the atmosphere.
Year 1
Start of Yr balance = 500
IN = 100+4 = 104
OUT = 100
End of Yr Balance = 504
Year 2
Start of Yr balance = 504
IN = 100+4 = 104
OUT = 100
End of Yr Balance = 508
… and so on. No change in emissions but an increase in atmospheric concentration.
The 96% and 4% are not fixed values. They increase as the concentration increases.
If human emissions stopped atmospheric CO2 would be subject to natural decay and would decline over time. As a guess I’d estimate half the EXCESS (~65 ppm) might disappear after about 40 or 50 years but I’d need to take a closer look before being in any way confident about that figure.
In your post above you state:
“While the proportion of human CO2 is small, fossil fuel burning is responsible for almost all of the excess since 1850.” Harde’s analysis concludes “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%”. Berry’s analysis concludes: “The ratio conclusion means human CO2 adds only about 18 ppm and natural CO2 adds about 392 ppm to today’s CO2 level of 410 ppm.”
I guess I am saying I think their derivation convinces me and yours seems weekly anchored in assumptions I have reason to question.
It occurred to me that my understanding would rewrite the equation you show above:
IN = 100+4 = 104
OUT = 100
to be:
IN = 100(+- 20)+4 = 104(+-20)
OUT = 100(+- 20)
In my equation the resultant figure at the end is uncertain enough that the increase shouldn’t be blamed on the 4 that are not thermally induced.
Would not outflow be proportional to concentration?
Ocean concentration does not change, but atmospheric does.
Like this:
Year 1
Start of Yr balance = 500
Average Yr 1 = 501.8
IN = 100+4 = 104
OUT = 100*(501.8/500) = 100.4
End of Yr Balance = 503.6
Year 2
Start of Yr balance = 503.6
Average Yr 2 =505.1
IN = 100+4 = 104
OUT = 100*(505.1/500)=101
End of Yr Balance = 506.6
… and so on. No change in emissions but an increase in atmospheric concentration up to a point where an equilibrium is reached with the almost infinitely large ocean. The inflow would not remain constant at 100, it would be proportional to the CO2 concentration in the ocean, but that change is negligible in the short time scale and there is not enough fossil carbon on earth to ever change it much.
Rate of change of CO2 is proportional to the sea surface temperature (https://edberry.com/blog/climate/climate-physics/what-is-really-behind-the-increase-in-atmospheric-co2/ at 31:30 min.) 8 ppm/year/kelvin for inter-annual variation according to this site: https://climategrog.wordpress.com/d2dt2_co2_ddt_sst-2/
That number 8 ppm/year/kelvin with a time constant of about 15 years as given by 14C data would give something like 13 ppm after 50 years for a single sudden temperature rise of 0.11 degrees. A constantly increasing temperature of 0.11 degrees per decade for 50 years (the change rate we see in satellite data) would give about 50 ppm outgassing from the oceans with the 8 ppm/year/kelvin and a time constant of about 15 years. The temperature rise, 0.2 degrees before 1970 should have caused an outgassing of about 25 ppm. The rest, 410-280-50-25 = 55 ppm should be the anthropogenic contribution to todays atmospheric CO2. All the above is under the assumption that CO2 would not have any heating effect at all.
If we instead would accept the IPCC standpoint that all the heating is caused by CO2, then, of course, the contribution from outgassing would be caused by humans and all the increase, 230 ppm would be anthropogenic. With that assumption the IPCC projections for future temperatures would be realistic…
LEIF ÅSBRINKJANUARY 9, 2020 AT 9:39 AM
My example is simply intended to show that the atmospheric concentration will grow even if the emissions don’t grow. I am not modelling the exact process.
Why would the outflow stay constant if the atmospheric concentration was increasing. The outflow should also increase. That’s the first flaw in your argument. If human and natural inputs of CO2 remain constant then atmospheric CO2 will reach a new equilibrium level. It would not keep increasing as you suggest. Otherwise any increase in natural CO2 input would have the same effect, increasing CO2 levels.
That’s not exactly how it works. Outflow is increasing simultaneously as inflow is increasing. Inflow sets the balance level and e time sets the outflow (e time is a function of the size of the hole). Outflow is proportional to level not the balance level.
That is the perfectly correct argument. It doesn’t come from god, as somebody said. It’s pure reason.
Sorry Prof Simon I thought god was smarter 🙂 Apologies if my comment looked disrespectful beyond my intention.
Prof Finn I still can’t understand the “cap” provided by the human inflow concentration (let’s say 4% in your example). I think this is more or less the same question as DMA.
Dr. Aegerter: You stated that the implausibility was based on “What we observe in the atmosphere is that part that goes neither in ocean nor in plants”. I wonder if an unaccounted for source of naturally produced CO2 is missing here. Isotopes in the Earth’s core decay following their half life cycles. This produces a variable heat that adds extra heat to the oceans. A warming Ocean releases additional CO2 which, as John Finn describes is small but does continuously accumulate.
Are we missing here the geothermal heat produced by isotope decaying? Such a heat will likely release unaccounted CO2 from the oceans to the atmosphere. As John Finn showed it will accumulate and show a difference for non anthropogenic CO2.
There is a wealth of information coming in through these comments. It is also apparent to me that this audience is highly intelligent and almost unanimously rejects the ‘religion’ of the alarmists.
If only our politicians (especially here in Australia) had the sense and the intelligence to really immerse themselves in the subject and then go about sensible decision-making for the future good of this country.
Similarly, other countries need to follow the reasoning and reject the ‘Chicken Little’ brigade and its doomsday predictions.
Unfortunately, however, there appears to be so much money invested in the UN and the IPCC that there are significant forces working hard against true sanity!
Keep up the good work Dr.Ed.
Dear John
one question – does your model replicate the 14CO2 data (above ground atomic bomb tests) described in Dr.Ed’s preprint ? I still cannot figure this out.
Thanks
Massimo
Ed:
I do not understand Figure 5, IPCC Natural carbon cycle flows. The flow into and out of each sink is the same. This means the sizes of the sinks cannot change.
How were the sizes of the sinks established in the first place? I suspect the sizes of the sinks have changed over time. If so, then the flows into and out of the sinks must be different.
H. Douglas Lightfoot
Dear Doug,
These are IPCC numbers. IPCC’s reports describe how they got their levels and flows. I assume these are the most accurate levels available to us at this time
The net flows are zero or near zero. This means the levels are near their equilibrium levels. Small differences in the flows will, of course, change the levels over time.
IPCC’s referenced papers must have used a model something like the Physics model to calculate their flows from their levels because the Physics model “right out of the box” calculates flows that are not too different from the IPCC flows.
This close approximation also means the Physics model explains the IPCC data for natural carbon. This means IPCC’s data for the natural carbon cycle supports the Physics model. IPCC does not present any alternative to the Physics model. This means the Physics model is the “only game in town” for calculating carbon cycles.
Ed
Let’s make this even more simple.
Humans produce about 9 GtC of carbon each year.
The atmospheric concentration increases by 5 GtC each year (1 ppm = 2.12 GtC).
Nature doesn’t differentiate between human CO2 & natural CO2. There isn’t a new separate ‘sink’ which sequesters all the human (fossil fuel) CO2.
Dear John,j
All your points are correct. So, what is your conclusion from your points?
” All your points are correct. So, what is your conclusion from your points? ”
Ed
My conclusion is that without human contribution there would be no accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere.
This is in the same way that there would be NO change in my bank account balance if I deposited £500 every week and spent £500 every week. However if my bank account received £10 per week from an additional source (e.g. interest) my balance would increase – even though the extra £10 is only a small fraction of the £500.
The correlation coefficient between cumulative CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 since 1900 is 0.999. It’s possible this is simply coincidence , after all, correlations doesn’t necessarily mean causation, but since ice core data suggest CO2 levels varied less than +/- 10 ppm for several thousand years before 1850, you’re going to need to provide a much more convincing argument than the one above to convince anyone that fossil fuel burning is not an issue.
Dear John,
Your analogy must assume the weekly outflow from your bank account is proportional to the amount in your account. For example, if your outflow = Level / Te and Te = 2.
Then your inflow of L500 will produce a balance level of L1000, and the L1000 will cause outflow to equal L500. Your account will stay at L1000 so long as your L500 inflow continues.
Then your additional weekly inflow of L10 will have the same Te and produce a level of L20, to make your account level L1020.
Your analogy shows that each inflow is independent. The effect of each inflow can be calculated independently and the sum of the results is the same as the total result.
Suppose you were to measure the level of your bank account and your new inflow of L10 but you found your bank account level increased to L1080, not L1020. This means the total inflow must equal L540. But you know your smaller inflow is only L10. Therefore, your larger inflow must have increased to L530.
That is how the Physics model computes the relative effects of human and natural inflows. It finds IPCC’s Te for natural levels and flows. Then it applies the same Te to human inflows. The known human inflow with this Te adds only 31 ppm to the CO2 level. Therefore, natural inflow had to to add 100 ppm to the level.
John
You might find the post at : https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/14/climateaction/
interesting as is looks at the computation problems in the production of the correlation between cumulative CO2 and temperature and concludes “We conclude from these results that no empirical evidence exists to support the rationale for costly climate action that assumes a causal relationship between the rate of emissions and the rate of warming. The evidence does not show that reducing emissions will lower the rate of warming.” Also: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/19/co2responsiveness/
that concludes: “We conclude that atmospheric composition specifically in relation to the CO2 concentration is not responsive to the rate of fossil fuel emissions. This finding is a serious weakness in the theory of anthropogenic global warming by way of rising atmospheric CO2 attributed to the use of fossil fuels in the industrial economy; and of the “Climate Action proposition of the UN that reducing fossil fuel emissions will moderate the rate of warming by slowing the rise of atmospheric CO2. The finding also establishes that the climate action project of creating a Climate Neutral Economies, that is Economies that have no impact on atmospheric CO2, is unnecessary because the global economy is already Climate Neutral. Because climate research subsumes human cause other sources of CO2, both geological and from the oceans are missed or minimized in importance.”
Even as a non-climatologist I find the hypothesis of Dr. Berry (the minimal contribution of anthropogenic emission to the post-industrial rise of CO2) not surprising, based on the following considerations.
Abbreviations:
t = time
V = Volume of the atmosphere
T = elimination half life of CO2 in the atmosphere
ke = ln2/T (the FRACTION (not the amount) of CO2 that is removed from the atmosphere per unit of time)
ki = the rate of inflow of CO2 into the atmosphere
Ct = concentration of CO2 at time t
Css = concentration at steady state
Suppose there is no CO2 in the atmosphere at t=0; then natural emission starts and also the elimination. The concentration of CO2 will increase (if ke<1).
The concentration of CO2 in function of time is given by:
Ct = ki/Vke . (1 – e^-ket) (1)
CO2 concentrations do not increase infinitely, but a steady state is reached (after 7xT, about 99% of the steady state is reached). At steady state the equation can be simplified (t=>infinity) :
Css = ki/Vke (2)
This situation is comparable to the pre-industrial period: CO2 concentrations rather constant (280 ppm), an equilibrium between natural emission and natural elimination.
Then anthropogenic emission adds CO2 to the natural emission (let us say 5% of the yearly natural emission). The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase and after again 7xT a new steady state is reached. According to equation 2, ki increases with a factor 1,05 and consequently also Css (if ke remains constant).
Conclusion : if ke remains constant, the anthropogenic emissions cannot explain the increase from 280 to 410 ppm.
Even when ke decreases by a factor 2, the anthropogenic contribution remains small.
The foregoing calculations are based on principles used in pharmacokinetics, which studies the fate of a drug in the body.
https://pharmacy.ufl.edu/files/2013/01/5127-28-equations.pdf
This approach may seem an oversimplification, but it has been tested many times (which cannot be done in climatology) by observations. The two situations are comparable: the distribution and elimination of a drug is very complicated (different compartments in which the drug is distributed, all with different distribution rate constants and different organs that eliminate the drug).
With the foregoing in mind I have also difficulties to accept statements like ‘ half of the yearly anthropogenic CO2 emission is eliminated from the atmosphere and half cumulates in it’ .
Dear Andre,
Your equations derived from pharmacology are the same as my equations for the Physics model. We only need to relate your terms to my terms to see that they are the same:
t = time
V = Volume of the atmosphere
T = elimination half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere = Th
ke = ln2/T = 1/Te
Let V = 1, then
Ki = Inflow
Ct = Level = L
Css = Balance Level = Lb
Your “Suppose there is no CO2 in the atmosphere at t=0” is my
Lo = 0
Your (ke < 1) is the same as my (Te > 1).
Your (Ki / Vke) is the same as my (Inflow * Te) = Balance Level = Lb
Your concentration of CO2 as a function of time is:
Ct = (ki/Vke)(1 – exp(-ket) (1)
This is the same as my equation (8) when Lo = 0:
L(t) = Lb (1 – exp(– t/Te) (8)
When t goes to infinity, then (8) becomes
L(infinity) = (1 – 1) = 0
Otherwise, when Lb is not zero
L(infinity) = Lb
You say your equations have “been tested many times (which cannot be done in climatology) by observations.”
Your equations show the Physics model is supported by pharmacology. I did write that the Physics model is the same as used in many engineering applications.
So, I wonder why so many physicists cannot understand the Physics model. I studied engineering as an undergraduate at Caltech. We used equations like this many times. But maybe those who study only physics never learn to use models like the Physics and pharmacology models.
https://edberry.com/blog/climate/climate-physics/human-co2-has-little-effect-on-the-carbon-cycle/?
Hello Dr Ed Berry,
Thank you for your latest paper. I have been pondering this subject for ~12 years and am still doing so. I wonder if the following close relationship of dCO2/dt vs Temperature from my 2008 paper is helpful to your hypothesis. Please consider and advise.
In my January 2008 paper, the close correlation of the velocity dCO2/dt and delta Temperature proves that atmospheric CO2 changes lag atmospheric temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record, and this observation suggests Climate Sensitivity to Atmospheric CO2 must be very small, and may not even exist in measureable reality.
This plot approximates the dCO2/dt vs T correlation. Major volcanoes El Chichon (1982) and Pinatubo (1991+) disrupt the relationship.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah6/from:1979/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
Best personal regards, Allan MacRae
Carbon Dioxide Is Not The Primary Cause Of Global Warming, The Future Can Not Cause The Past
By Allan M.R. MacRae, January 2008
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
Excel: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRaeFig5b.xls
[excerpt]
The IPCC’s position that increased CO2 is the primary cause of global warming is not supported by the temperature data. In fact, strong evidence exists that disproves the IPCC’s scientific position. This UPDATED paper and Excel spreadsheet show that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration lag (occur after) variations in Earth’s Surface Temperature by ~9 months. The IPCC states that increasing atmospheric CO2 is the primary cause of global warming – in effect, the IPCC states that the future is causing the past. The IPCC’s core scientific conclusion is illogical and false.
There is strong correlation among three parameters: Surface Temperature (“ST”), Lower Troposphere Temperature (“LT”) and the rate of change with time of atmospheric CO2 (“dCO2/dt”). For the time period of this analysis, variations in ST lead (occur before) variations in both LT and dCO2/dt, by ~1 month. The integral of dCO2/dt is the atmospheric concentration of CO2 (“CO2”).
___________________________________
CO2, Global Warming, Climate and Energy
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., June 15, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2/
Excel: https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Rev_CO2-Global-Warming-Climate-and-Energy-June2019-FINAL.xlsx
[excerpt]
Global warming alarmism, which falsely assumes that increasing atmospheric CO2 causes catastrophic global warming, is disproved – essentially, it assumes that the future is causing the past. In reality, atmospheric CO2 changes lag global temperature changes at all measured time scales.
Nino34 Area Sea Surface Temperature changes, then tropical humidity changes, then atmospheric temperature changes, then CO2 changes.
The velocity dCO2/dt changes ~contemporaneously with global temperature changes and CO2 changes occur ~9 months later (MacRae 2008).
The process that causes the ~9-month average lag of CO2 changes after temperature changes is hypothesized and supported by observations.
The ~9-month lag, +/- several months, averages 1/4 of the full-period duration of the variable global temperature cycle, which averages ~3 years.
Based on the above observations, global temperatures drive atmospheric CO2 concentrations much more than CO2 drives temperature.
Alan,
The correlation between d[CO2]/dt and T (temperature anomaly) can be written :
d[CO2]/dt = aT + b
aT explains the local variations (puffs) in the CO2 curve (due to CO2 desorptions/absorption from the ocean with varying temperature (anomaly)), but do you have an explanation for b (the heavy tendancy) ?
Hello Jacques-Marie. You wrote:
“The correlation between d[CO2]/dt and T (temperature anomaly) can be written :
d[CO2]/dt = aT + b
aT explains the local variations (puffs) in the CO2 curve (due to CO2 desorptions/absorption from the ocean with varying temperature (anomaly)), but do you have an explanation for b (the heavy tendency)?”
As I stated elsewhere on this page, I am agnostic on your question because I have not studied it in detail – and that is because it is conclusive based on observations that climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 is far too low to cause catastrophic global warming or dangerous climate change – both those scary hypotheses have been falsified numerous ways.
Berry stated in this paper:
“Human emissions through 2019 have added only 31 ppm to atmospheric CO2 while nature has added 100 ppm.”
Sounds about right to me – humankind’s contribution to atm. CO2 is not zero, neither is it significant nor harmful – it fact it is highly beneficial. Atm. CO2 is too low for optimal plant and crop growth, and far too low for the continued survival of carbon-based life on this planet – see my 2020Jan10 paper..
Note also that the changes in atm. CO2 are not just due to solution/exsolution of CO2 from seawater – there is also a huge biological component.
Regards, Allan
Note: Annualized Mauna Loa dCO2/dt “went negative” a few times in the past (calculating dCO2/dt from monthly data, by taking CO2MonthX (year n+1) minus CO2MonthX (year n) to minimize the seasonal CO2 “sawtooth”.)
All these events occurred during the global cooling period that occurred from ~1940 to 1977. Note that fossil fuel combustion strongly accelerated starting circa 1940, at the beginning of WW2. This observation is one of many that falsifies the CAGW hypo.
These 12-month periods when CO2 decreased are (Year and Month ending in):
1959-8
1963-9
1964-5
1965-1
1965-5
1965-6
1971-4
1974-6
1974-8
1974-9
Data Source (2008 version of):
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
Dear Allan,
Thank you for your comments.
In my opinion, you have done an excellent job of showing how temperature drives CO2 concentration. Your 2008 paper predates Salby’s video presentations where he also shows how the rate of change of CO2 is a function of temperature.
By the way, it appears that you and Salby used different mathematical approaches to show the same result. If you would like to explain how your approach differs from Salby’s, you are welcome to do so.
You wrote, “I wonder if the following close relationship of dCO2/dt vs Temperature from my 2008 paper is helpful to your hypothesis. Please consider and advise.”
I think our papers together help form a consistent argument. My paper shows that human emissions are, at most, an insignificant contributor to the increase atmospheric CO2 based on carbon cycle calculations. Your paper shows that temperature change is the dominant cause of changes in atmospheric CO2.
Here is the Physics model equation (2):
Outflow = Level / Te (2)
Applied to the surface ocean, (2) says outflow will increase when Te decreases, which it will do if the surface temperature increases, according to Henry’s law. This Outflow becomes Inflow into the atmosphere. Here is the Physics model equation (1):
dL/dt = Inflow – Outflow (1)
The shows how the rate of change of CO2 is a function of the Inflow, which is a function of temperature. So, the physics model supports your paper and your paper supports the Physics model.
When Inflow increases, it sets a higher balance level. Then the level will move toward the new balance level. If the balance level oscillates, the level will also oscillate as it follows the balance level.
My carbon cycle calculations show there are two ways that temperature increase can increase atmospheric CO2. The fast response way is likely Henry’s law which lowers the Te of the surface ocean and sends more CO2 into the atmosphere.
The slow response way is the release of stored carbon into the carbon cycle. I calculate human carbon has added about one percent to the carbon in the carbon cycle. But nature has added about 3 percent since, say, 1750, likely due to the warming out of the Little Ice Age.
Thank you for your reply Ed. This is very interesting and enjoyable!
A simplified version of my analysis is approximated by this formula from woodfortrees:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah6/from:1979/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
A more detailed description is included in the spreadsheets attached to the two papers (2008 and 2019) referenced in my first post today at 6:14am:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRaeFig5b.xls
https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Rev_CO2-Global-Warming-Climate-and-Energy-June2019-FINAL.xlsx
It is late here – I’ll try to revisit this question in more detail tomorrow.
I don’t know how my friend Murry Salby did his analysis.
Hi again Ed,
This explains the December 2007 genesis of my dCO2/dt vs. Temperature close relationship.
I did my original work “longhand” in Excel, but using woodfortrees is easier to explain.
Start with the Keeling Curve at Mauna Loa (the Global average CO2 curve works just as well)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979
Smooth out the “seasonal sawtooth” by one of several methods – I used a different method in 2007-8 as I recall, but no matter.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12
Take the derivative of the smoothed curve
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative
At this point I saw a familiar curve with the 1998 El Nino spike, and soon added the global temperature curve, using UAH5.6 at that time – here I use UAH 6.0 and scaled and offset it vertically to fit.
Voila! Imagine my surprise!
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah6/from:1979/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
I wrote the paper and it was published in January 2008 on Joe D’Aleo’s icecap.us. I revised it to prove a point and it was re-published in February 2008.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
Excel: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRaeFig5b.xls
Best, Allan
Hi Ed,
There are a few details we should discuss offline.
You can contact me through my email address, which is included in my Contact to you send days ago.
Best, Allan
Let’s put it this way :
What Dr Ed demonstrates can be hold in one line : Since the human share of the input is 4%, then the human share of the stock is necessarily also 4%, whatever the output.
But, if (for unknown reasons) the output is limited and cannot increase, then, the stock will increase, due to the human supplementary input.
And then, in this case, even if the human share of the stock remains 4%, the responsibility of the stock increase is actually human.
In reality, everything looks as if the supplementary output was limited to 50% of the supplementary (human) input : current human CO2 input represents 4 ppm/year while the stock increases by 2 ppm/year : not human, but from human responsibility.
Jacques,
Does that make sense? So the supplementary output was limited to 50% in 1750? In 1800? In 1850? In 1900? In 1950? and in 2000? What law of physics is this?
Stephen,
It is only maths, I recognize ; and not a proof (and I confirm “unknown reasons”).
(BTW, there was no supplementary input (thus also output), when the concentration was stable (i.e. before man massively used fossil fuels), let’s say around 1950. But it’s just a correlation, not a proof, and, indeed, not a physical explanation either)
But, anyway, I currently have no physical explanation regarding the current atmospheric increase in CO2. And I would be happy to have one.
You have a perfect explanation from Berry. One that makes total sense and complies with all the laws of physics.
Hello Jacques-Marie. You wrote in part:
“In reality, everything looks as if the supplementary output was limited to 50% of the supplementary (human) input : current human CO2 input represents 4 ppm/year while the stock increases by 2 ppm/year : not human, but from human responsibility.”
This is called the “mass balance argument” and it has been ably debated on blogs for about a decade by Ferdinand Engelbeen and Richard S Courtney. While I remain agnostic, I also recognize that highly intelligent people are persuaded by Salby, Berry and Harde. Your debate is with them.
Part of the reason I have not spent much time on this important scientific question is because I do not need it to falsify the CAGW and the “Wilder Weather” hypotheses. My recent paper does so ~25 times, but as Albert Einstein famously stated “One would be enough”.
“The Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) and The Humanmade Climate Change Crises Are Proved False”
By Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc.(Eng.), M.Eng., January 10, 2020
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/the-catastrophic-anthropogenic-global-warming-cagw-and-the-humanmade-climate-change-crises-are-proved-false.docx
Regards, Allan
Thanks Allan,
You mechanical engineers understand thermodynamics and heat transfer better than anyone.
Thank you Stephen for your kind words.
For clarity, my degrees are in Mining Engineering (Queens U) and a Masters in Geotechnical Engineering (U of Alberta), plus a few years of Biology at McGill. Mining is probably the most general of engineering degrees, and we did take some good courses in thermodynamics. We also studied geology which includes paleoclimatology.
My interest in the CAGW hypothesis started in ~1985 and I was highly skeptical from the start, based on my understanding of the prehistorical and historical climate records. I studied CAGW and climate for 17 years and wrote my first papers starting in 2002. The following two statements were published by my co-authors and me in 2002 and are clearly correct-to-date:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
In contrast, all the CAGW alarmists’ scary climate predictions have failed to materialize. The global warming/climate change alarmists have a perfectly negative predictive track record, and thus perfectly negative credibility.
Also in 2002, I published a prediction of global cooling starting by 2020-2030, modified about five years ago to “starting about 2020 or sooner”, primarily driven by low solar activity, not CO2 – and that prediction is now materializing. I’d prefer to be wrong, because humanity suffers during cold periods, but the early signs point to a cooling world, and it may have already started.
Hi Alan,
I do not need it to falsify CAGW either : I completely agree with you on this point.
My concern is just curiosity : even if it is useless regarding CAGW, what explains the current CO2 concentration increase ? Where does this extra CO2 come from ? Why and how ?
I confirm that I agree with you : especially when you write :
“Scientists including Salby, Berry and Harde have hypothesized that the increase in atmospheric CO2 from the alleged “pre-industrial” concentration of ~250ppm to more than 400 ppm is largely natural and not mostly humanmade. I have considered this question for ~12 years, and am still agnostic on the conclusion, so I have not included it in my above falsifications of the CAGW hypothesis. Regardless of the cause, the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 is hugely beneficial to humanity and the environment.”
I have also considered this question for years and I have no explanation either.
Dear Allan ,
My Preprint #1 discusses the “mass balance argument ” in its section 4.1. It concludes this argument fails because it assumes natural CO2 emissions have stayed constant since 1750.
It also concludes IPCC’s “net carbon sink” argument fails because this argument assumes outflow is a function of inflow, which is untrue.
Dr Ed one question : according to the physics model, humans have added 32 ppm while nature has added 100 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. But the 100 ppm added by nature from land / oceans due to the temperature increase, may again come partly from human CO2 molecules that are already stored in such reservoirs. The “worst case” (unrealistic) would be to consider that the 100 ppm come only from land/surface ocean “evaporation” (sort of) where humans “share” of CO2 is around 7%. In such case shouldn’t we add 0.07*100 =7 ppm on top of the 32 ?
Dear Massimo,
The Physics model allows independent calculations of the natural and human carbon cycles. Therefore, the 32 ppm is the total contribution of human carbon to the atmosphere. This includes all the recycling of human carbon between the reservoirs.
Also, human carbon emissions through 2019 have added about one percent to the total carbon in the carbon cycle. Meanwhile, nature has added about 3 percent to the carbon in the carbon cycle because of the carbon release due to warming since the Little Ice Age.
Corrected a typo – new url:
THE CATASTROPHIC ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING (CAGW) AND THE HUMANMADE CLIMATE CHANGE CRISES ARE PROVED FALSE
By Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc.(Eng.), M.Eng., January 10, 2020
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/the-catastrophic-anthropogenic-global-warming-cagw-and-the-humanmade-climate-change-crises-are-proved-false.pdf
Also, to rephrase as you did what Berry is saying, “man might be causing the warming” but it ain’t because of carbon dioxide. Temperature is causing carbon dioxide, not the other way around. Murry Salby says man isn’t even causing the warming. He’s saying it’s random.
Thanks Allan,
one questions : doesnt it look like in the very recent years the two curves seem to diverge (uha6 pointing upward while c02 derivative going down) – at a closer look there seem to be a few anomalies.
max
Hi Max,
Yes, I noticed this divergence some time ago and wrote John Christy about it recently. He usually responds quickly, but has not yet replied to this email.
Regards, Allan
From: Allan MacRae
Sent: January-04-20 12:17 AM
To: John Christy
Subject: . The close relationship seems to break down starting about 2017..
Hi John and Happy New Year. I think we corresponded on this subject a few years ago.
I wrote in January 2008 that the close correlation of the velocity dCO2/dt and delta temperature proves that atmospheric CO2 changes lag temperature changes by ~9 months in the modern data record.
Observing the most recent data in this dCO2/dt vs UAHLT plot raises an interesting question:
1. The close relationship holds quite well except for periods of major volcanic activity, such as El Chichon 1982 and Pinatubo 1991+.
2. The close relationship seems to break down starting about 2017, where temperature spikes above dCO2/dt twice; also note that dCO2/dt is now declining, typical of cooling, even as temperature increases. I have studied this data back to 1958 and never seen this pattern before. [I do suspect we are seeing early sporadic signs of a new cooling trend.]
There could be a few explanations for this change in a consistent multi-decadal pattern – do you have any suggestions as to what is happening?
Thank you for your thoughts, Allan MacRae
_____________________________
From: Allan MacRae
Sent: January-05-20 10:02 AM
To: John Christy
Subject: RE: . The close relationship seems to break down starting about 2017…
OK John – maybe this explains the divergence of dCO2/dt from UAHLT noted in my earlier email below:
The warming is happening at the North and South Poles NoPol and SoPol and also in the SoExt area from 90S-20S and that is causing the global average temperature to increase.
Cooling IS occurring in the Tropics area Trpcs and that is where the “temperature changes drive atm.CO2 changes ~9-month later” happens.
The probable mechanism is described here:
CO2, GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE AND ENERGY
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., June 15, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2/
Excel: https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Rev_CO2-Global-Warming-Climate-and-Energy-June2019-FINAL.xlsx
Your thoughts?
Best, Allan
Of course Allan you are familiar that Salby shows that CO2 lags temperature on both short and long time scales?
Yes Stephen – and Murry Salby is my friend.
But I wrote my relevant paper in January 2008.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
That was 3+ years before Salby’s first presentation – I think to the Sydney Institute in August 2011.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrI03ts–9I&feature=youtu.be
Salby, Berry and Harde have developed the hypo that increasing atmospheric CO2 is not primarily humanmade, but is natural. That is a rational outcome of the observed lag of CO2 after temperature.
I have written that increasing CO2 is partly humanmade and partly natural but have not attempted to quantify the components as these fine gentlemen have done. I struggled with the data provided by Ernst Beck and still feel that he was badly treated by those who just KNEW that CO2 was the primary driver of temperature – pseudo-religious nonsense in my opinion (“imo”).
I have pondered this important scientific question since early 2008 and am still agnostic – I can’t seem to find the time to study it properly.
One reason is because I don’t need it to falsify the CAGW hypothesis – because climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 is so low that there can be NO catastrophic global warming, regardless of increasing atmospheric CO2. The upper bound of climate sensitivity to CO2 is ~1C/(2xCO2), but the real number is probably near-zero or even non-existent, imo.
Regards, Allan
Allan, not asking you to be indiscreet but is Salby still living in Australia or has he moved back to the states? Unbelievable what academia has done to him.
Dear Stephen,
Information I have indicates Salby is now living in Reno, Nevada.
Ed,
Have you worked through the analysis that illustrates the Revelle factor? Would seem difficult to make strong claims about the carbon cycle if you haven’t.
Dear “then there’s physics”,
In section 2.1, I wrote:
“The only way external processes can change a reservoir’s level is by changing the reservoir’s inflow, outflow, or e-time. Therefore, the Physics model INCLUDES ALL EFFECTS OF EXTERNAL PROCESSES (chemical, biological, etc.) on the level of carbon in a reservoir.”
Ed,
I think this is wrong. The carbonate chemistry of seawater suggests that there is a limit to how much CO2 can be dissolved in the oceans. If you haven’t considered this, then it seems likely that your analysis is missing an important process.
Dear “then there’s physics”,
Every hypothesis must be anchored to data. The IPCC natural carbon cycle data is the best data we have. My Preprint merely finds the e-times for the IPCC carbon cycle data.
Therefore, IPCC’s data and my e-times for the IPCC data include the effects of the Revelle factor.
Ed,
If you’re using the bomb test data, then you’re almost certainly confusing residence time and adjustment time. It’s well known that that individual molecules will only spend a few years in the atmosphere before cycling into one of the other sinks. This doesn’t mean that an enhancement in atmospheric CO2 will decay on the same timescale.
Dear “then there’s physics”,
If you want to learn physics, let me be your teacher.
First, “IPCC natural carbon cycle” data means the data from reference [1] in this preprint. Carbon cycle data are NOT the 14C data from the bomb tests.
Second, please read my first preprint that you can find by clicking “ALL” in the menu above and selected the second preprint.
Its section 4.2 explains why the claim you refer to as “It is well known” may be the most incorrect popular illusion in the subject of climate science. The so-called difference between residence time and adjustment time is a result of very poor physics.
The idea that the “exchange of molecules” properly describes the way a level approaches its balance level is very poor physics. It is such a poor idea that it may cause brain damage to those who try to “understand” it.
Just use the Physics model. Its e-time describes how a level approaches its balance level with no need to change the definition of e-time during the approach.
If you can’t get this point correct, then you will never understand atmospheric physics.
Ed,
Can I clarify what you’re implying in section 4.2? Are you simply suggesting that only 14.7% of the CO2 molecules that we’ve emitted remain in the atmosphere today?
Dear “then there’s physics”,
Section 4.2 of THIS post shows the calculation of the human carbon cycle. Yes, it shows only 14.7 percent of human carbon emissions remain in the atmosphere at the end of 2019.
But in my previous comment, I referred to Section 4.2 of my previous preprint, not this preprint. That is where I explain about the different time constants.
Ed,
Maybe you can point me to your previous pre-print. I can’t seem to find it.
Dear “then there’s physics”,
Here is the link to Preprint #1:
https://edberry.com/blog/climate/climate-physics/contradictions-to-ipccs-climate-change-theory/
You can also find it by clicking “All” in the menu above.
Ed,
Well, it seems to me that you are confusing residence and adjustment times (or assuming they’re the same, which they aren’t) and aren’t taking into account the Revelle factor which does limit how much of our emissions can be taken up by the ocean.
Remember that the C14 was introduced by the bomb tests. This means that when a C14 is taken up by one of the natural sinks, it isn’t necessarily replaced by another C14 molecule. Hence, using the decay of C14 might reasonably represent the residence time of a molecule, but it doesn’t properly represent the adjustment timescale of an enhancement, which has to be longer than the residence time of a molecule.
Dear “then there’s physics”,
How can you think I confuse residence time and adjustment time when I quote IPCC’s definitions of each, and summarize as follows?
And then I show in Figure 11 how these IPCC definitions are irrational. It is nonsense to apply two different time constants to different parts of a curve, especially when e-time covers the whole process. Your continued use of residence and adjustment times to attempt to explain the physics is not physics.
I have already addressed your Revelle claim and you have made to attempt to disprove my argument.
Then you argue:
I submit that your argument above is so far outside of physics that it is irrational. To do real physics, simply use the Physics model. It not only explains the physics, it exactly replicates the 14C data from 1970 to 2014 using only one e-time.
The explanation you propose does not explain the physics. It is so complex that it loses by Occam’s Razor. It is so complex that you cannot even explain it. And it cannot replicate the 14C data. I think it is time you dumped the ideas you are proposing.
@then there’s physics:
“the decay of C14 might reasonably represent the residence time of a molecule, but it doesn’t properly represent the adjustment timescale of an enhancement, which has to be longer than the residence time of a molecule.“
This is a claim pushed by the IPCC to argue that human emission is what’s causing CO2 to increase. In addition to Dr. Ed’s response that it’s irrational, Professor Salby shows that the claim is a joke. See:
https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/what-is-really-behind-the-increase-in-atmospheric-co2/ at times 58:00 to 1:08:00
After all, the only way that CO2 in the atmosphere can adjust to an enhancement is thru its removal by absorption at the earth’s surface. That’s the same process that determines how long CO2 resides in the atmosphere.
Ed,
Maybe I can ask you a question here. Let’s consider a scenario where we add a particular isotope of carbon into the atmosphere that isn’t present in the other reservoirs (ocean and biosphere). We then observe the decay of this isotope in the atmosphere and use this to estimate the decay timescale. Does this represent the residence time, the adjustment time, or both?
Dear “then there’s physics”,
Thank you for your question.
As you know, the Physics model allows individual calculation of all definitions of carbon. That is why we calculated the carbon cycles for natural carbon and human carbon independently. So, we will treat your hypothesized carbon isotope independently from all other carbon.
Section 4.4 shows the result of your scenario. Figure 12 plots how your carbon isotope in the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide would decrease with time. This calculation uses the e-times found to best represent IPCC’s natural carbon cycle.
Notice that the curve for the decrease does not go to zero because the total carbon added remains in the reservoirs. The curve goes to the level where the carbon in all the reservoirs is in equilibrium. Figure 13 represents how the carbon, initially all in the atmosphere, moves to the other reservoirs with time.
You desire to use the Physics model decay curve of Figure 12 to estimate the decay timescale.
Although each reservoir in the carbon cycle follows the Physics model equation (2) with constant e-times, the final result for the decay of atmospheric carbon begins with a shorter e-time and ends with a larger e-time. That is because of two things.
First, the carbon cycle model is a complex, interactive model. As the land and reservoirs begin to fill, they send carbon back to the atmosphere. And the surface ocean is the pathway to the deep ocean.
Second, the scenario begins with all reservoirs but the atmosphere empty. This is not a realistic scenario. That is why the decay is very fast for about the first 5 to 10 years and then slows as the other reservoirs approach their equilibrium levels. For example, the 14C data curve shows the e-time when the deviation from its balance level is less than two times its balance level. This would be somewhere after 30 years in Figure 12.
Back to your question. We get nowhere if we attempt to explain pulse decay by trying to fit the decay curve with a formula or explain it with imprecise definitions. We get nowhere if we try to explain the time factor during the first 10 years as an “adjustment time” and then, somewhere after 10 to 30 years, change to call it a “residence time.” Doing so avoids using physics to explain what is happening.
He doesn’t have to work out the Revelle Factor. Do you see the Revelle Factor in any of the equations?
No, hence my question. It’s quite a key factor that illustrates why there is a limit to how much of our emissions can be taken up by the ocean. Would seem important to either demonstrate that this has been taken into account, or (if Ed thinks it isn’t important) why it doesn’t need to be taken into account.
Why don’t you ask him if he’s taken into account all the seaweed in the ocean?
Some comments on Simon Aegerter’s note from January 7:
What we can learn from the paper of Gruber et al. is: Despite the increasing anthropogenic emissions over the period 1972 to 2012 apparently the oceans absorb the same relative amount of extra CO2 from the atmosphere as over the period from pre-industrial times to 1972, which was 31%. Gruber’s global ocean sink estimate is consistent with the expectation of the ocean uptake having increased in proportion to the rise in atmospheric CO2, which is in full agreement with a first order absorption process (or here called physics model), and which is a clear indication that the oceans and also the whole biosphere by no means show any saturation in the uptake of CO2. This is also a clear indication that the Revelle factor is of no relevance.
Only surprising is that Gruber et al. believe to have measured the pure human caused carbon changes. So, they claim that with an extended multiple linear regression approach they can separate anthropogenic carbon changes from any natural CO2-driven change in dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC). Apparently they can distinguish between molecules coming from a volcanic eruption, from permafrost, outgazing oceans or soil due to global warming and on the other hand between molecules from fossil fuels or land use change. To my knowledge no isotope selective measurements were evaluated and cannot be used to differentiate between the different sources, and no one is measuring fluxes from one reservoir to the other. All studies are based on concentration measurements from ships or buoys in different depths, and the main data they employed are coming from measurements of DIC, total alkalinity and related parameters.
Better would have been to measure the temperatures and partial pressures of the oceans in different depths. From such data reliable information about the solubility and exchange fluxes between the oceans and the atmosphere under conditions of increasing temperatures could have been derived. Actual studies of Cheng et al. (https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs00376-020-9283-7.pdf) in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, February 2020, support the further warming of the oceans, from which the Southern Ocean with about 40% has taken up most of the global warming heat since 1970.
Unfortunately Cheng et al. try to explain their calculated increase of the ocean heat content only by greenhouse gases and forget the Sun with a modern Grand solar maximum during solar cycles 19–23 (1950–2009) (see Usoskin et al.: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2014/02/aa23391-14.pdf or Soon et al.: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012825215300349).
Aegerter’s comment also contains the question, if the environment acting as a net sink at the same time can be responsible for a higher CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This question has already been discussed in Ed’s previous paper and also in my Earth Sciences paper (ES-paper: http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo?journalid=161&doi=10.11648/j.earth.20190803.13, Subsection 5.3).
It can simply be answered by looking at the balance equation, the conservation law. With anthropogenic emissions the atmospheric concentration increases, and thus, the uptake by extraneous reservoirs rises. At the same time the flux from the adjacent reservoirs to the atmosphere may increase, e.g., caused by an inclining solar irradiance or by internal oscillations, which change the total balance. Particularly temperature variations, independent from concentration changes, significantly affect this balance. This is discussed in Subsection 5.6 of the ES-paper, not only affecting the temperature induced native emissions, but also reducing the solubility of CO2 in oceans and the uptake by the biosphere.
The seasonal variations on the Mauna Loa curve reveal the strong solar and thermal influence on the atmospheric CO2 concentration.
– These oscillations, in amplitude and shape, are in good approximation independent of the absorption (or residence) time, but are almost exclusively molded by the seasonal emissions.
– On the other hand is the average CO2 concentration at a given total emission rate almost only determined by the absorption time.
From the first item it follows that the additional seasonal emissions from August till April have to be 27 ppm/yr to reproduce the modulation amplitude on the Mauna Loa curve, this in a regular rhythm already over millions of years. These seasonal emissions are part of the total native emissions, which in AR5 were specified as about 93 ppm/yr.
Comparison only of these seasonal emissions of 27 ppm/yr together with the actual anthropogenic emissions of 5.3 ppm/yr (fossil fuel and land use change) already shows a 5 times larger natural emission, and as average over the last 270 yr this is even 24 times larger than all human contributions. The seasonal emissions could not have cumulated over this period, also not with an airborne fraction of 50% as assumed by IPCC models. Then we would already experience a CO2 concentration of 4 ‰ (27.4×270/2+280 ppm) and together with the human emissions 4.13 ‰. These seasonal emissions demonstrate the strong solar and thermal influence on the observed CO2 concentration, and they explain, why also in pre-industrial times this concentration could never have been constant.
From the second item we can conclude that the true absorption time cannot be larger than 11 yr. So, without any additional natural emissions – only the seasonal emissions of 27 ppm/yr and the anthropogenic emissions of 5.3 ppm/yr – the observed CO2 concentration of 400 ppm can only be reproduced for an ‘apparent’ absorption time of 12 yr, and with a further correction due to global warming this reduces to 11 yr.
This analysis of the Mauna Loa measurements allows a second, independent approach, in full agreement with the 14C-decay observations, to hedge the true absorption time to be shorter than 11 yr. And when the estimated natural emission rates as presented in AR5, Fig. 6.1, which by the way are not better known than ± 20%, are not completely unrealistic, the true absorption time can only be 3 to 4 yr (see Earth Sciences paper, Section 4: http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo?journalid=161&doi=10.11648/j.earth.20190803.13).
By the way: A larger decay time for the 14C than for 12C or 13C isotopes cannot be explained by a faster absorption of lighter molecules. Such fractionation correction is in the per mil regime (‰) and makes no difference in the absorption process. But after an uptake a CO2 molecule can be re-emitted from the surface layer of the ocean or by decomposition of plants. While for 12C and 13C isotopes a direct re-emission is indistinguishable from all other molecules of a reservoir, which may be released after hundred or thousand years, 14C is identified by its radioactivity. The re-emission of the 14CO2 isotopologues is proportional to their concentration in the upper layer, and this concentration passes off with a decay time determined by the sequestration time or dilution and mixture process with the other molecules in the reservoir. This represents the apparent absorption time, while the true absorption time can only be shorter. For details see Subsection 5.7.3 and Appendix B of the ES-paper.
Regularly for the analysis of the 14C-decay smoothed and fractionation corrected data are used, yielding e-times between 15 and 16.5 yr, depending on the authors. When directly using the original un-smoothed data, which still show clear seasonal oscillations on the decay, the same apparent absorption time of 11 yr as derived from the Mauna Loa curve can be found. So, an absorption time smaller than 11 yr is confirmed by two independent methods.
Concerning the observation of a higher CO2 concentrations in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere the reader may look to Subsection 5.7.4. of the ES-paper and also remember that warmer water stores less CO2 than colder. So, one °C warmer water already reduces its solubility by about 85 mg/l.
Nice Job Dr Berry. I have read your revised Preprint #2. While the first comment of the reviewers seems very difficult to be supported, I expect that they will make a strong battle on the second one (e-time constant, and relatively short, is something Bern model advocates do not digest). I have seen that you intend to expand on this topic, and I think this is good. Any other reviewers comments (good or bad…) ?
Ed,
I pointed out several issues with your analysis on this site some months ago, but I always had an uneasy feeling about the C14 plots, not only in your paper but also in Harde’s. They seemed to verify your argument that carbon put into the atmosphere by whatever process would exponentially disappear into one of the sinks, with a time constant of about 15 years, and would then stay put. On Sunday I dug out Turnbull, your reference 34, and tried to figure put what “delta14C”, the vertical axis on the key plots, means. Neither you nor Turnbull nor Harde define it, but Harde’s analysis explicitly make clear that he takes it as the excess concentration of C14 from bomb tests, over and above that produced by cosmic rays, and your comments indicate that is your interpretation as well. That interpretation is wrong. A little research shows that isotope specialists use it as a measure of the deviation of the C14/C12 isotope ratio from a standard value
delta14C(per mil)=1000{[(C14/C12)(measured)]/[(C14/C12)(standard)]-1}
[sorry I can’t use subscripts and superscripts here to make this formula more readable]
As this quantity approaches zero, as it appears to be doing, it means that the isotope ratio is approaching the old, standard value that preceded the bomb testing. But that does NOT mean the C14 concentration in the atmosphere is returning to its old, pre-bomb-testing value, as you and Harde both erroneously conclude. You must multiply the isotope ratio by the quantity in the denominator to get the quantity of C14. Since total carbon in the atmosphere is up about 30% since 1950, then the quantity of C14 is also up by about 30% from its 1950 value. The bomb tests raised the quantity about 60%. We must conclude that as much as half of the bomb C14 is still in the atmosphere. If you worked out the true time dependence of the C14 concentration using the correct definition of “delta14C”, and the Mauna Loa data, you would get a curve at least roughly similar to, and maybe identical to, the Bern model that you disparage.
Of course the CO2 increase in the atmosphere is the result of human activity.
Dave Andrews
Dave
See page 142 of Harde 2019 for a chart of the measured data on reduction of C14 perturbation vs Bern model. It does not purport to be a plot of C14 percent in the atmosphere. If C14 is approaching the prepurturbation level I would conclude that the C14 in the atmosphere now is nearly all natural. Sure, more CO2 means more C14 but not that the extra above the early ratio is left from the bomb.
DMA
Harde’s (and Berry’s) misinterpretation of the C14 data led them to believe that carbon in the atmosphere is absorbed by the land and sea sinks with a time constant of ~15 years and held there indefinitely. This honest error was the basis of their wrong conclusion that human produced CO2 is similarly sequestered in the land and sea sinks indefinitely, and that the absorption could be described by a simple one-time-constant process.
All C14 originates in the atmosphere, whether from cosmic ray interactions with nitrogen, or from atmospheric nuclear testing. Indeed it does flow back and forth between the atmosphere and the land and sea sinks, like carbon in the atmosphere from other sources. But when “delta C14” is correctly interpreted as the C14/C12 ratio, and not as the amount of C14, accounting for the amount of C14 in the atmosphere cannot be done with the sort of simple one time constant models that Harde and Berry make. If you want to argue that the measured increase in atmospheric C14 from 1950 to the present, is from oceanic outgassing or something, when you know that that C14 was in the atmosphere in the past ~6000 years (the C14 lifetime) then how can you avoid concluding that carbon which humans produce is similarly not safely gone forever?
Dear Dave,
You make a good point. Indeed, ratios do not “flow”. Only quantities flow. The only way to resolve how 14C flows through the reservoirs may be with a 14C carbon cycle model.
Until that happens, we have an approximation of how 14C would move out of the atmosphere in Figures 12 and 17. Both represent how a pulse of 12C would flow out of the atmosphere according to this carbon cycle model that uses IPCC data to calculate e-times. And, we can see that neither Figure shows a constant e-time. The e-time appears to increase as the level approaches its balance level. That is the effect of carbon recycling back into the atmosphere. As you note, my previous paper does not account for this recycling.
So, to make further progress on this subject, I think we need data on other sources of 14C inflows into the atmosphere. Something, so far unexplained, is happening that has caused the 14C ratio to decay with a constant e-time. Maybe it is the fact, as you noted, that this is a ratio and not a level.
Thank you for your comment.
Ed,
I too have been puzzled that the C14/C12 ratio appears to be approaching its pre-bomb-test value. If you put in values for the total C14 from bomb testing (1.3t per Wikipedia) and the total (C14 free) fossil fuel carbon emissions since 1950 (I estimate 660 Gt from various sources), you get a C14/C12 ratio for the “new “ carbon put in circulation since 1950 that is about 2x the 1950 value. Yet the observed ratio came almost all the way back to its original value. The resolution seems to be that atmospheric carbon is less than 2% of the total carbon in circulation between land, sea and air. So as new and old (pre1950) carbon get mixed, the old carbon dominates, and the isotope ratio in the atmosphere eventually changes very little. Exactly what dynamic or balance sets the CO2 level in the atmosphere, after all the important question, remains unclear to me. But I am certain that the system is too complex to be modeled by single time constant flows. And the injection of 660 Gt of carbon from human activity into the system must have something to do with the observed rise in atmospheric carbon, even though it is but a small part of the total in circulation.
I recently read a paper discussing the bomb C14 deposited in the deep ocean trenches measured in the sediments. That author stated that there is a massive biological flux of dead phytoplankton that absorbed CO2 from the ocean surface that he did not think the IPCC included in their carbon cycle estimates. I have not had time to check on his claim but assume it could be part of the decay you are concerned about.
Simple calculations using data from Hitran show that the increase of water vapor has been about 10 times more effective than the increase of CO2 at ground level warming.
Measured water vapor trend has been increasing faster than possible from feedback. https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com
Can’t wait for the final finished version.
Dr Ed,
Thank you for acknowledging your error in interpreting the quantity “delta C14” in your Figure 2. It represents the C14/C12 isotope ratio rather than a quantity of C14 as you had assumed. Therefore its return to its pre 1950 value, while C12 has gone up by about 30%. means that much of the C14 put into the atmosphere by bomb tests over 60 years ago remains in circulation between the atmosphere and land or sea sinks. It does NOT get permanently removed with a 15-16 year time constant. We infer from this that CO2 put into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning similarly remains in the atmosphere for much longer than you had estimated, and that the back and forth exchange with land and sea sinks cannot be described by a model using single time constants. We can conclude that CO2 emissions from human activity are very much responsible for the increase in atmospheric CO2.
Scientists make mistakes. Hermann Harde made the same mistake you did in interpreting how the C14 data were presented by those who did the measurements. (In defense of both of you, the paper you both cited did not explicitly define “delta C14”, because evidently it was standard terminology in the carbon 14 business, which none of us are in.) But science advances because the process of science is self-correcting. When mistakes are found, wrong conclusions are retracted. Please be part of the process of advancing science by making a prominent retraction of your conclusions about human responsibility for atmospheric CO2.
Dear Dave,
Thank you very much for your contribution to this discussion. In science, we win some and we lose some. We can never win them all. In fact, we learn the most when we have to acknowledge an error.
(Hey, in my competitive sailboat racing past, I did not win every race. No one does. But, I ended up winning the US National, the North American, and the 1974 Canadian Olympic Regatta which was the effective World Championship.)
At the moment, I am tied up doing my income tax data for my accountant and I am upgrading my accounting software to Quickbooks Online. So, outside forces prevent me from immediately making a longer reply to your comment.
Here is where I think this is going. First, we have to learn more about what the 14C data that I use really represents. We will have to identify the best known or estimates of other sources of 14C inflow. Then, I plan to run a 14C carbon cycle model using the same formulation I describe in this post. I think this is a necessary step in understanding how 14C itself has changed since 1970.
In addition, while your comments on 14C are very important to this subject, the loss of fitting the 14C data does not invalidate my Physics model or my related carbon cycle model. It merely removes one check point that supported the Physics model.
The carbon cycle model I describe in this post stands on its own. It is the only carbon cycle model I know of that exactly fits the IPCC natural carbon cycle data.
Also, I now have significant updates to the derivation of this carbon cycle model that I have not had time to post. So, hang tight until I have time to provide a lot more information on this subject.
Thanks again, Ed
Between 1964 and 1984, amplified Delta C14 that was measured
at Vermunt Austria decreased by almost 80%.
During the same period, CO2 increased by 7%.
You’re dreaming.
Dear Dave and Ian,
Do we agree that we can calculate the concentration of 14C as follows?
14C = D14C * 12C
If so, then I will run this calculation because I already have the data for D14C and 12C. I should be able to run this and post the result here by tomorrow.
Ed,
Since D14 is the deviation of the isotope ratio from a standard value, that formula will give you the excess C14 over the (presumed constant) cosmic ray produced amount, not the total amount. I believe that you will find that this excess cannot be fit by a single time constant exponential. Harde gave an argument that the process had to be represented by a single time constant, but his argument hinged on the wrong assumption that the flow between atmosphere and (sea plus land) was one way. It is not. I am about to send some carbon that vegetation has removed from the atmosphere, back into the atmosphere by burning some slash on my property.
Dave
Dear Dave,
Good point about the “standard value.” Since the standard value is 1000 points above the actual ratio (the way I read the references on 14C) then the formula should be:
14C = (D14C + 1000) * 12C
since the definition of D14C is:
D14C = (14C / 12C) – 1000
Ed,
No that’s not right.
Let Rm be the ratio of C14 to C12 in some sample
Let Rs be the “modern carbon standard” ratio. I have not been able to find an exact value for this; it is somewhere around a part per trillion. It gets complicated because of fractionation. Think of it as what you would have measured for atmospheric carbon in 1950, before the bomb tests. Then by definition
delta C14 = ( Rm/Rs-1)* 1000
The 1000 is there just to express the usual numerical value more conveniently in “parts per thousand” rather than as a small number with a couple of zeros after the decimal point. So for example if
Rm=Rs then delta C14 is 0 but if
Rm=1.1*Rs, then delta C14 =100 parts per thousand
Dave
Ed,
Since you are tied up I will do the analysis you said you would get to. (I don’t have enough to do during the quarantine.) Continuing from my previous post:
Rm(t) is the measured C14(t)/C12(t) ratio in some atmospheric sample
Rs is the constant, pre-bomb-test standard value for this ratio
By definition deltaC14(t)=(Rm(t)/Rs-1)*1000
For clarity I am explicitly showing which quantities change with time. So
Rm(t)=(deltaC14(t)/1000+1)*Rs.
We are interested in how the excess of C14 over its pre-bomb-test value changes with time, so call that dC14(t). (This is the quantity that you mistakenly thought was deltaC14.)
dC14(t)=C14(t)-C14o, where C14o is the pre-bomb-test abundance of C14. Similarly
dC12(t)=C12(t)-C12o
Using Rs=C14o/C12o, a little algebra gives
dC14(t)=Rs*(deltaC14(t)*C12(t)/1000+dC12(t)).
I read off deltaC14(t) from your Figure 2, read off C12(t) from a Mauna Loa plot, and used C12o=315ppm to get dC12(t). Here is what I got for every five years from 1970 to 2010, for the quantity inside the parantheses on the right hand side, which is proportional to the measured C14 concentration in the atmosphere. The units are unimportant. The shape of the time dependence is.
1970 177
1975 148
1980 122
1985 104
1990 95
1995 87
2000 89
2005 93
2010 95
I was surprised to see a slight increase in atmospheric C14 in recent years. Fossil fuels of course contain no C14, but apparently as C12 from fossil fuel emissions exchanges with carbon in the sinks, there can be a net migration of C14 to the atmosphere.
Note that the above is not some model such as you have produced. This is data from the C14 measurements and from the Mauna Loa observations properly combined. It is data that any model, including yours and Hermann Harde’s , has to replicate. Both of your models fail, but the IPCC/ Bern model looks at least qualitatively correct. You CANNOT explain the C14 data with a simple, relatively short time constant, exponential absorption. And since the flows between the atmosphere and the (land plus sea) go in both directions, there is no reason that you should expect a simple exponential decrease of the net change.
This result is not merely the loss of “one check point” of your model. This result invalidates your entire scheme. I say again, please prominently retract your mistaken conclusions about the role of humans in accounting for the observed increase of atmospheric CO2, and if you have contact with Hermann Harde, please ask him to do the same.
Dear Dave,
Thank you for putting your interpretation of 14C data in your comment so I can reply.
To provide an extended explanation of 14C data, I added a new post. This new post explains the D14C and pMC units with appropriate references for your further study. It goes further than is possible in a comment.
Your comment requires two fundamental corrections:
First, your attempt to calculate 14C content by multiplying by Mauna Loa data introduces an error because the D14C units do not contain any reference to the prevailing 12C content. D14C represents “the 14C content.” It is rather obvious that the scientists who work on 14C dating needed to construct a measurement of 14C that does not depend upon the prevailing 12C content.
Second, your calculation of the “excess of C14 over its pre-bomb-test value” shows you still do not understand the definition of balance level. If you wish to test the Physics model, you should produce a complete data set without a lower cutoff and let the Physics model find the appropriate balance level and e-time.
In conclusion, the Physics model properly replicates how 14CO2 flows out of the atmosphere. The IPCC has no model that can replicate the 14C data. So far, there are no corrections needed on my side but the IPCC climate claims violate physics.
Ed
Ed,
Thanks for the reference to Stenstrom, et. al which is more complete than the source I was using. But you continue to make the same mistake. D14C DOES contain reference to other carbon isotopes in the sample. D14C is NOT simply proportional to the C14 concentration.
Think about how the measurement is made with a mass spectrometer. The sample is ionized, and the total charge delivered in a beam of C14 is measured for some period. How can you normalize that measurement so that it tells you something about the abundance of C14, rather than the size of the sample or your patience in making the measurement? You simultaneously measure the charge delivered in the beam of another isotope and report the ratio. (The other isotope appears to generally be C13, not C12 as I had assumed. C13 is much less abundant than C12, but still much more abundant than C14 and any statistical errors are still dominated by the C14. So change all the 12’s to 13’s in my earlier comment if you wish. It changes nothing.) If thinking about the measurement doesn’t help, look at the definition of one of the A’s (I called them R’s) in Stenstrom equation 16: the units are Bq/kg C. Bq is a measure of the C14 content, as it is the radioactive isotope. How “hot” a sample is tells you nothing about its abundance, unless you also know what the carbon in the sample weighs, hence the units. Only ratios are easily measured. Only ratios have the information you need to date something.
Your second comment, objecting to my talking about “excess C14” is also misplaced. This delta can be negative, and it usually would be in a classic C14 dating measurement, since the C14/C13 ratio would be smaller than the 1950 standard in, say an old Egyptian tomb, because of the half life of C14.
The analysis of my earlier note stands as written.
You make further mistakes in your new note which I will comment on there.
For your information, I have never taught climate science and am retired anyway. My career was in high energy physics, applied superconductivity in industry, and my university teaching was only in the physics department. My initial investigation of websites such as yours was to see if there was anything to be learned from “alternate views” to the climate science that is taught in universities. I have not found any, and I have looked on other “denier” sites as well as yours. Where we would probably agree is that the most extreme disaster scenarios are not credible. But we do have a serious public policy issue that involves science, more serious than the more immediate one plaguing us now. I will continue to press you to act like a scientist by retracting erroneous conclusions rather than continuing to confuse the public.
Dear Dave,
Thank you for your comment. We will have to agree that we disagree on the points that you have made.
Since neither of us is an expert in the field of carbon 14 measurement, we may have to wait until an expert, like Kristina Stenström or other, explains why one of us is wrong.
Meanwhile, I have nothing to retract because the paper by Stenstrom et al. clearly states that D14C measures the “content” of 14C in the atmosphere.
David Andrews
I see that Dr. Ed has responded while I was typing this reply. I am not addressing the same points as he did so I will ask you my question as well.
In Salbys video at (https://edberry.com/blog/climate/climate-physics/what-is-really-behind-the-increase-in-atmospheric-co2/) from time about 37 :40 to about 49:10 he presents an alternate analysis that doesn’t reference the C14 curve. He clearly states this analysis is independent of others he has presented. It relies on the conservation equation, standard math, and data from Mauna Loa. He concludes the anthropogenic CO2 is about 3% of the atmospheric content. this is very similar to Dr. Ed’s and Professor Harde’s conclusions. My question: Is Salby in error in this analysis as well?
DMA
You recommended Salby to me some months ago, and I started to watch the video. But I was put off by his beginning diatribes about how alternate views were not getting published, and never got to the meat of his argument. Maybe sheltering in place now will give me time to go back to it. There is a good reason for reviewers to reject demonstrably wrong papers: there are enough real problems for researchers to work on without everyone having to figure out what somebody’s errors were.
For me the fact that alternative views are not being published solidifieds my understanding that the consensus side did not have good responses to the first principal derivations that falsified their assumptions. The processes of Harde being censored (https://hhgpc0.wixsite.com/harde-2017-censored ) and Salby being fired (https://mlsxmq.wixsite.com/salby-macquarie/page-1f ) are blots on the consensus record and are the opposite of a scientific response. Kohler’s review of Harde is hollow and in error as explained later in that video I referenced where Salby shows the Bern model Kohler sites produces nonphysical results.
DMA
I watched the whole Salby video, not just the part you highlighted. Some comments:
1. His argument that global temperatures hadn’t really changed was odd. He said if we subtract the rise in such and such a four-year period, lowering temperatures in subsequent years, then did that again a decade or two earlier, in the end we would have no measured temperature rise!? Does he really expect to convince anyone that therefore temperatures haven’t changed? No true scientist treats data like that.
2. I was amused by the Feynman clips with derogatory comments on social sciences. (I have seen that interview before, and I am aware of his opinions. I was scheduled to teach an adult ed course on Feynman and his science this spring, but it was cancelled by the pandemic.) It is Salby, not Feynman, calling climate science a social science, and I disagree with that characterization. The interesting social science question is why non-scientists’ opinion on the subject of climate change correlates so closely with political beliefs. Given the strong consensus on climate change among scientists, that has unfortunately led to a dangerous disrespect of science from one side of the political spectrum. Of course, the Salby’s and the Berry’s would have you believe that only their error riddled stuff is true science.
3. Salby’s main argument that humans are not responsible for the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 is that he finds insufficient correlation between the details of changes in human emissions and the growth of atmospheric CO2. This is the section you highlighted. We should step back and note that a.) broadly speaking human emissions have been increasing over the past couple of decades and b.) the atmospheric CO2 vs time curve has a positive second derivative. Of course, that is the sort of correlation you would then expect if human emissions were the important factor. But Salby ignores that and instead models the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere with time as linear(!) Then he notes changes in the human emissions and from that makes suspicious “fits” to data and with NO DISCUSSION OF ERRORS extracts a value for the net contribution of human produced carbon in the atmosphere. Granted it is a talk not a paper (to Hermann Harde and perhaps a few others) but no climate science professional would expect to get this sort of loose analysis published. Salby’s professional failure appears to be not the conclusions he gets (as he would like you to believe.) His failure is lack of rigor. I am certain that were he to do a rigorous analysis, he would find that he could conclude little about how to separate “natural” from “human” carbon with this sort of analysis. Probably he knows that.
4. Everyone understands that the carbon cycle is complicated, with flows to and from the atmosphere that are larger than the one-way flow between fossil fuels and the atmosphere. Salby tries to summarize this with a draining bathtub analogy. (I think this might be where you claim the conventional (IPCC) analysis is “unphysical”.) Tell me, how does a draining bathtub account for wildfires in the Amazon? Does the fact that C14 abundance vs time does not follow a simple exponential curve with a single time constant (which was a central and erroneous argument of Berry) mean that the C14 data itself is “unphysical”? It looks somewhat like the Bern model. Good models need to be as simple as possible, but they can’t be too simple. That might be a Feynman quote.
In summary, there is nothing here to change my low opinion of “denier science”. My only surprise is that while Salby argued temperatures weren’t really changing, and that the increase in atmospheric CO2 was not from humans, he neglected to make the further argument that it didn’t matter that humans were not responsible for the CO2 increase, because CO2 has nothing to do with global temperatures anyway.
“1. His argument that global temperatures hadn’t really changed was odd.”
Salby wasn’t arguing that the temperatures didn’t change but that the odds of them changing as they did (in four year spurts) when the forcing grew smoothly and nearly linearly were insignificant.
” It is Salby, not Feynman, calling climate science a social science, and I disagree with that characterization.”
I believe Salby’s point was that if there is nothing that can disprove the hypothesis it is not rigorous science and much of climate science by models is just that.
” His failure is lack of rigor. I am certain that were he to do a rigorous analysis, he would find that he could conclude little about how to separate “natural” from “human” carbon with this sort of analysis. Probably he knows that.”
So you have determined that his lack of rigor invalidates his analysis. Which step in the derivation was the one where the rigor slipped and he went down the wrong path to his erroneous conclusion?
“I think this might be where you claim the conventional (IPCC) analysis is “unphysical”.
So the fact that the Bern model will sequester CO2 out of the atmosphere when there is no CO2 left in the atmosphere doesn’t bother you? Maybe it only works when there is more than 280 PPM but the IPCC forgot to specify that part. Can you calculate at which concentration the Bern model changes its assumed constant natural absorption rate ?
DMA
The main problem with Salby’s analysis on both the temperature rise and his attempt to separate human and natural carbon is his complete disregard or sensitivity to error analysis. That is what I meant by “lack of rigor.” The temperature data obviously has a lot of noise in it, but there is a clear upward trend, and one that becomes even more significant if the two most recent years are added. You can’t make any meaningful statements about “spurts”. In his separation of human from natural carbon, he makes biased “fits” (at least based on the dotted lines he draws), then assumes these fits have no errors and extracts an error free result. We teach freshman lab students how to handle data better than that.
You say climate science, because it uses models, is not falsifiable. It may be true that models with adjustable parameters leave wiggle room. But climate models made ~2000, on balance, did a pretty good job of predicting 2020 temperatures. Those who argue that we should dismiss what 2020 models predict about 2040 remind me of those who dismissed what epidemiologists said about coronavirus in January. Junk science comes with a risk.
I don’t know what parameter values the Bern model is good for, but it is plain silly to criticize it by pointing out that it fails for extreme parameter inputs. You want to criticize them for not specifying, but give Salby a pass for not quoting the uncertainties in his answer? I will tell you again why he didn’t: the uncertainties are so large as to make his answer meaningless, and I suspect he knew that. Let him prove me wrong.
[This is a reply to your April 17 comment.]
Your description didn’t match my recollection of Salby’s lecture, so I watched it again. It’s clear that you don’t understand it. But then you don’t understand Dr. Ed’s physics treatment either. Most of your latest confused rant doesn’t deserve a response. But two fallacies are so absurd that they are worth correcting.
As one who works on biomedical data, I find your claims regarding temperature preposterous. That temperature has changed is obvious. The question Salby addressed is how it changed. He showed that, in contrast to continually rising CO2, the net temperature increase over the last 60 years followed from just two brief pulses of heating. They occupied only 10% of the overall period. For the other 90% of the period, there was no net heating, even though CO2 rose continually. The absence of a trend is the same behavior that is widely recognized to have existed over the last two decades, referred to as the “pause”. Salby’s analysis shows that, except for those two brief pulses of heating, this is how temperature behaved for the last 60 years. If you are unable to grasp the difference between two isolated events and a continuing trend, then you’re wasting your time (and others’) trying to interpret data.
Related is your strident claim of a disregard of error. Unfortunately, it is not matched by your comprehension. In his analysis of a trend in temperature, Salby showed that the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis (that the temperature increase could have resulted simply through chance) is nowhere near the probability that is necessary for the existence of a physically meaningful trend. In relation to error, it doesn’t get more definitive and, notably, more “rigorous”.
Salby did not “model the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere with time as linear”. He showed that, for CO2 to have increased *as was observed*, its removal from the atmosphere (including CO2 emitted by humans) must be fast, much faster than is assumed by the IPCC. That, he showed, makes the human contribution small. It has likewise been shown by Drs. Berry and Harde.
Your claims of lack of rigor are ironic. If anything differentiates the physics treatments of Drs. Berry, Harde, and Salby from the IPCC’s artificial data and contrived models, ingredients that you accept uncritically, it is rigor. Pity you don’t understand it.
Hear! Hear!
David Andrews waxes on about upholding the standard of science.
Yet he seems comfortable with or simply ignorant of these and
similar events which have undermined the scientific method,
conduct that has become the standard of climate “science”.
What a disgrace.
Philip
Requiring papers to meet a minimal standard does not undermine the scientific method. It is necessary to keep the science going forward, not backwards. And it seems that those whose papers are rejected can always publish them on a blog.
David Andrews,
Exit advice: You really should read carefully before issuing proclamations.
But then, that’s a feature of unscientific bias.
What DMA referred to was not about publishing papers.
After Salby presented research that contradicted the party line,
he was demoted and then fired. Harde was not seeking to publish a paper.
He sought to reply to a criticism. From the link that DMA supplied,
what was censored (i.e., gagged) was Harde’s response to Kohler’s
hand-waving criticism which, as DMA noted and is shown clearly in the video,
was rife with error. In a court, limiting evidence to one side would be promptly quashed,
because it prevents the determination of fact. It is for this very reason
that such conduct is not science. It is, however, climate “science”.
To declare that one is protecting science by embracing
the concealment of evidence, even in response to criticism,
strikes me as grossly hypocritical.
Philip
You imply that Salby was fired because his conclusions “contradicted the party line.” Did you not consider that his embarrassingly shoddy handling of data, not his conclusions, was the reason?
There is a nice saying in science that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” If someone comes to you and says that he has mental telepathy, you would be right to be skeptical of his extraordinary claim, and you would insist on careful, controlled demonstrations. You may not like it, but (contrary to what Dr Ed asserts) at this point in time the burden of proof is on climate skeptics. If one comes forward with a well argued case, he will be listened to. Early in 2019 William Happer, then a member of Trump’s National Security Council, a climate change skeptic with a respected career in physics, proposed a national high level debate on the climate question. To my disappointment, it didn’t happen. The administration certainly had the power to make it happen, but got cold feet. I can guess why. Salby, Harde, and Berry do not come close to making a credible case.
Dear Dave,
Everyone has a political opinion, including me. And you have done a fair enough job in arguing science in most of your previous comments. However, your comment above is purely your own “extraordinary claims” wherein you have presented NO evidence to back up your opinions.
You do not know why Salby was fired. You CLAIM Salby did not handle data properly. In your opinion, what data caused the university to terminate Salby’s employment?
Have you studied Salby’s book? In my opinion, it is the best climate physics book available. His video calculation shows that temperature change precedes change in carbon dioxide.
Consider the parallel case of Peter Ridd. Ridd took his case against the university to trial, and he won. His case is evidence that universities will terminate the employment of professors who do not support the IPCC agenda.
You claim climate skeptics have the “burden of proof”. You do not understand how science works. The issues in climate science are the proclamations, theories, ideas, and assumptions of the IPCC. The scientific “burden of proof” is upon the IPCC and its supporters.
Maybe you do not understand how to use the null hypothesis in science. The null hypothesis for climate change is that “all climate change is assumed to be natural until proven otherwise.”
Your claim that the proposed “high-level climate debate” was cancelled because of Salby, Harde, and me is ridiculous. You can rest assured that those who planned for such a debate did not consider any participation by Salby, Harde, or me.
However, if I were planning such a debate, I would ask: Who will serve as judge and who will serve as jury?
It is clear that such a debate will not change any alarmist minds because the alarmists did not choose their side using logic, so logic will never change their minds.
Here is my challenge to you.
What is your argument and evidence to support the ridiculous IPCC claim that human carbon emissions have caused all the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1750 and above 280 ppm?
Ed,
I hadn’t meant to imply that it was your, Salby, and Harde’s work that discouraged the White House from a national climate change debate, but I see my wording was ambiguous. I suspect Happer drafted the complete skeptic’s case, it was reviewed, and someone decided it best not to expose the overall weakness of the argument. Merchants of Doubt, like the recently departed Fred Singer, don’t need to convince to succeed. They just need to sow enough doubt to give politicians cover. Skeptics survive by being nimble like guerilla fighters. A decisive, all in battle would be their Waterloo.
I don’t know what is in Salby’s personnel file, nor am I particularly interested. But the chorus of self-pity by skeptics that their brilliant analysis is not being heard (the video is a typical example) gets old. The sad fact is that skeptics’ conclusions are being heard far more than they deserve. An important segment of the media, you know which one, airs them exclusively. Non-scientists are easily taken in when the results line up with what we would all like to hear. Some cannot take the truth.
Your bizarre view of science apparently leaves no room for human caused climate change because you assert both
1.The “null hypothesis” requires anything other than “natural” climate change be “proven” and
2. One cannot prove any theory is true, only that it is not true.
Can’t you see the absurdity of these two statements together? Here is a very brief history:
1. The greenhouse effect was predicted in the 19th century, while CO2 levels were stable around historical values.
2. CO2 levels rose in the 20th century.
3. Temperatures rise, more or less according to the predictions, in the 21st century.
This sounds to me like a classic scientific success story. Sure, climate change is more complicated than Einstein predicting the sun would bend starlight. But don’t tell me the ball is in my court. It is in yours. You ask me to defend the IPCC view. Why? Are you too lazy to read the 1000+ pages of analysis?
I will do you the favor of telling you the obvious weakness of Berry + Salby + Harde. You are vague about where the anthropogenic carbon goes, and where the “natural” carbon comes from. I think, but I am not sure, that you believe the anthropogenic carbon goes mostly into the ocean, and the “natural” carbon comes mostly from the ocean.
Since roughly only half of the anthropogenic carbon emissions are needed to account for the growth in atmospheric carbon, you have to tell me why 97% of the anthropogenic carbon (using Salby’s numbers) get sucked up by the oceans while at the same time about half of that amount already in the oceans is being transferred to the atmosphere. Does that sound reasonable to you?
But I know where you got a wrong steer. You misinterpreted the C14 data, which seemed to show, but didn’t, that a pulse of carbon put into the atmosphere was absorbed by land and sea sinks, and stayed absorbed, with a short time constant. Your error, and Harde’s, was in interpreting “delta C14” as the change in C14 concentration relative to a ~1950 standard, rather than the change from an isotope ratio standard. This makes all the difference in determining the time scale in which the environment absorbs carbon put into the atmosphere, whether by an a-bomb test or by burning fossil fuels.
You suggested that we “agree to disagree” on this. Shall we agree to disagree on whether 1+1=2 as well? On Friday I emailed Jocelyn Turnbull in New Zealand, the lead author of the paper whose data you used in your C14 plots, and asked for her definition of “delta C14”. I had hoped for a response today, but got none. I will give her another couple of days, then contact others if necessary. Stay tuned.
Dear Dave,
Your comment has three distinct sections. Your first section has nothing to do with the core of our discussion. Or shall I say debate?
Your third section about 14C, while relevant, also has nothing to do with our core discussion because nothing in my post above relies upon the e-time I found using the D14C data. But, apparently, you don’t understand that fact.
So, we shall have to wait until we gather some expert opinions about the meaning of the definition of D14C. Meanwhile, I say D14C is a measure of the 14C content in the atmosphere, and you say it is not. There is nothing else either of us can say on this subject to convince the other.
Therefore, I wish to focus our discussion on your second section that I will reply to in a separate comment. Here I quote your second section where you wrote the following:
_________________________________________________________________
The following is by Dave Andrews:
Your bizarre view of science apparently leaves no room for human caused climate change because you assert both
1.The “null hypothesis” requires anything other than “natural” climate change be “proven” and
2. One cannot prove any theory is true, only that it is not true.
Can’t you see the absurdity of these two statements together?
Here is a very brief history:
1. The greenhouse effect was predicted in the 19th century, while CO2 levels were stable around historical values.
2. CO2 levels rose in the 20th century.
3. Temperatures rise, more or less according to the predictions, in the 21st century.
This sounds to me like a classic scientific success story.
But don’t tell me the ball is in my court. It is in yours. You ask me to defend the IPCC view. Why? Are you too lazy to read the 1000+ pages of analysis?
I will do you the favor of telling you the obvious weakness of Berry + Salby + Harde. You are vague about where the anthropogenic carbon goes, and where the “natural” carbon comes from. I think, but I am not sure, that you believe the anthropogenic carbon goes mostly into the ocean, and the “natural” carbon comes mostly from the ocean.
Since roughly only half of the anthropogenic carbon emissions are needed to account for the growth in atmospheric carbon, you have to tell me why 97% of the anthropogenic carbon (using Salby’s numbers) get sucked up by the oceans while at the same time about half of that amount already in the oceans is being transferred to the atmosphere.
Does that sound reasonable to you?
Dear Dave,
Here, I address the second section of your recent comment.
I wrote, “The null hypothesis for climate change is that all climate change is assumed to be natural until proven otherwise.” That is not the way you phrased it.
Have you studied in a formal manner the philosophy of science and the scientific method? Your arguments suggest you have not.
What you call absurd is the proper use of the scientific method.
What you list as history is not evidence to support the IPCC claim.
What you claim is a “classic scientific success story” is a classic error in your science. History does not prove cause and effect. Events do not prove their cause.
When you claim the ball is in my court based upon your preceding statements, you have assumed that the IPCC claim has somehow been proven true by your review of selected history.
By contrast, my post proves the IPCC core assumption – that human carbon emissions have caused all the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide above 280 ppm – is invalid.
IPCC’s core assumption contradicts IPCC’s own data as well as physics. But apparently, you don’t get it.
My post above is very detailed where the human carbon goes, but you don’t understand my post.
And finally, you write:
I have explained how human carbon moves through its carbon cycle.
Figure 7 shows IPCC’s distribution of natural carbon. This represents the long-term equilibrium distribution in percent for both the natural and human carbon cycles according to IPCC data.
IPCC’s data also provide the six e-times for the six natural carbon outflows between land, atmosphere, surface ocean, and deep ocean. These natural e-times must apply to human carbon as well as to natural carbon.
Figure 10 shows the results as of 2020 when annual human carbon emissions are numerically inserted into the atmosphere and human carbon in the atmosphere is allowed to flow to land and surface ocean, and from surface ocean to deep ocean, using the natural carbon e-times found in IPCC’s data. It is a very straight-forward calculation. IPCC should have done it.
To get the combined result of natural and human carbon flows, simply add the human carbon result of Figure 10 to IPCC’s natural carbon result of Figure 7.
Figure 10 shows all the human carbon emissions since 1750 have added only 31 ppm to the atmosphere by 2020. (My improved model calculates 33 ppm.)
The above is the proper way to compute the effects of human carbon emissions. It eliminates the nonsense you write as “only half of the anthropogenic carbon emissions are needed to account for the growth in atmospheric carbon” and human carbon getting “sucked up by the oceans,” etc. Your whole paragraph with these statements is junk science.
The result of my post raises a problem for the IPCC. It negates IPCC’s core assumption. It proves nature had to cause about ¾ of the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide above 280 ppm to get today’s level of carbon dioxide. This simple result negates all IPCC’s claims about climate change.
Hi Dr. Ed.
And thank you for your blog, your research and the latest pre-prints. Very interresting.
I have a question; It has beeen widely reported in the media that levels of NOx and SO2 are down over many cities around the world due to the ongoing crisis. Not a single word on CO2 in the same context though. Following Copernicus (Windy) for some time during the crisis these drops in local levels has not been seen for CO2. Howcome? Windy has actually (from what I can see, but check) removed the possibility to track SO2 and CO2 recently, but my bookmarks still work.
When it is possible to pinpoint a reduction in SO2 and NOx-levels in many places sholdn’t that also be the case for CO2 when factoring in the Maxwell-Boltzman’s distribution, statistical physics and the gas laws?
On/close to ground level. Locally. When you see a significant drop in the lowest emissable gases from fossile burning wouldn’t it be logical to see the same for the largest? As the emissionfactor (g/Gj) for fuel oil is 76600 (CO2) ~250 (SO2 (w. 0,5% sulphur)) and 190 NOx shouldn’t we see dramatic drops locally in CO2-levels (which btw we don’t) given most gases act similar in distribution? Given the ratio is even higher for Coal (think China). Mol.mass for CO2/N2O/NO2 is also fairly similar at 44-46 g/mol . With SO2 at around 66 g/mol. Rystad Energy estimates global fosile energyconsumption is down 30-50%. So why doesn’t it show? Production/demand is only down ~10% due to stategical storage building around the world.
I’ve been following Windy (Copernicus) and can not pinpoint any changes in CO2-levels when following various GPS-locations in China I’ve bookmarked. Am I way off here? Or are these non(or micro)-drops emerging evidence of high natural CO2-levels?
And when should we start to see flattening levels on groundstations like Mauna Loa and Baring Head? IF one were to apply the Bern-model? Not seen yet at least.
Hope for some insight from the expert.
Stay safe! All the best from Norway.
Dear AD,
Thank you for your comment. I have been thinking along the same lines as in your comment as it relates to CO2. The worldwide human emissions of CO2 have decreased since about mid-April. At some future date, the world economy will restart and the human emissions will come back. But the interval of the economic downtime may provide a unique opportunity to test the IPCC climate theory (or really the IPCC assumptions).
At the appropriate time, I will show my calculations of the decrease in atmospheric CO2 as predicted by the 2 opposing theories: the IPCC theory and my theory. Anyone will be able to check my calculations.
Meanwhile, here is a preview of the predictions. The numbers will depend upon data on how much decrease there will have been in human CO2 emissions during the period.
The IPCC theory says the human-caused rise of 138 ppm in atmospheric CO2 will decrease according to its Bern model offset by the human inflow that continues during this period. IPCC says that natural emissions will have been constant during this period.
My theory says the human-caused rise of 33 ppm in atmospheric CO2 will decrease according to the Physics model offset by the human inflow that continues during this period. My theory says natural emissions will continue to increase during this period.
The Physics model calculates an outflow about 2 times that of the Bern model but IPCC’s 138 ppm is 4 times that of the Physics model. So, the IPCC theory will predict a decrease in atmospheric CO2 at least 2 times greater than the Physics model.
However, the Physics model will add the continuing natural emissions during this period and this will make the IPCC prediction of CO2 decrease maybe 10 times that of the Physics model prediction. My key point is that the 2 predictions will be dramatically different and, therefore, easy to distinguish in the coming data set..
My guess is the data will show the IPCC climate theory is clearly invalid while the Physics model is correct within the accuracy of the data. So, if the present decrease in human emissions holds long enough to provide a good data set, we may end up with solid proof that the IPCC theory is wrong.
Let the data decide!
The Mauna Loa data showed an increase of CO2 to 418 ppm just before the levels started their yearly decrease because of Northern hemisphere photosynthesis. So in that 1 month window, early March to early April, when human fossil fuel emissions decreased drastically because of the COVID-19 shutdown, Mauna Loa figures kept going up.
Thus a real world experiment has now showed that man made CO2 emissions have no correlation to atmospheric net CO2. We knew that anyway from detrended time series analysis. However the alarmists don’t accept statistical arguments or even scientific experiments. It is catastrophic that we had to send the world into an economic depression in order to carry out the accidental experiment that we performed.
Ed, very interesting to hear about your sailing career. So, not only in climate science but also in sports we share some similar preferences and motivations. I was not as successful as you, but nevertheless two times German champion in a Dinghi sailing class and a third place at the Word Championship of the Quarter Tons.
Since at this time I’m preparing my motor boot for watering, I cannot spend too much time to participate in this discussion, about which I got aware yesterday. But here a few comments which relate to some statements of David Andrews from March 10 and the following discussion on this blog:
David Andrews writes: Harde’s analysis explicitly make clear that he takes it as the excess concentration of C14 from bomb tests, over and above that produced by cosmic rays, and your (Ed’s) comments indicate that is your interpretation as well. That interpretation is wrong. A little research shows that isotope specialists use it as a measure of the deviation of the C14/C12 isotope ratio from a standard value.
Indeed, they use a measure of the deviation from a standard, but this is the 14C activity of the NBS oxalic acid or the absolute international standard activity (AISA). Exactly this definition can be found in my paper, but interested people will only find it, when they read the whole article, including Appendix B, Eqs (35 and 36). There is also listed the standard reference for this definition (Stuiver&Polach).
I don’t know from where David Andrews derived his definition, but generally radiocarbon data are given in D14C units (“D” stands for the Greek Delta) and they represent the fractionation-corrected per mil-deviations from Oxalic Acid standard activity corrected for decay.
It holds: D14C = (14A_SN/14A_ABS – 1)*1000 per mil with A_SN as the sampling activity normalized for isotope fractionation to 13C, and A_ABS as the absolute international standard activity. A_SN relates to a well defined volume and not to the CO2 concentration, and this activity is compared with the standard, not with the 14C concentration in the atmosphere, and therefore, 14C is returning step by step to its old, pre-bomb-testing value.
The activity is measured directly by the radioactive beta decay from 14C to 14N or by the accelerator mass spectrometry method. Figs 5 and 13 in my paper and the respective plots in Ed’s paper show the 14C-decay over time, and it makes no difference for this decay to plot the D14C-values or the excess concentration of 14CO2 from the bomb tests. They both reflect the dilution of 14CO2 molecules in the atmosphere, and therefore, 14C is an important tracer for the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Compared to the direct 14C-counting rate the D14C-values are only fractionation corrected, i.e., related to any d13C-variations over time (here “d” stands for the small Greek delta). But this correction is of no concern, when the reader looks to my Fig. 13.
It should also be stressed again that this 14C-decay only represents an upper limit of the CO2-residence time. I already mentioned this in my last comment from January 15. After an uptake a CO2 molecule can be re-emitted from the surface layer of the ocean or by decomposition of plants. While for 12C and 13C isotopes a direct re-emission is indistinguishable from all other molecules of a reservoir, 14C is identified by its radioactivity.
The re-emission of the 14CO2 isotopologues is proportional to their concentration in the upper layer, and this concentration passes off with a decay time determined by the sequestration time or dilution and mixture process with the other molecules in the reservoir. This represents the apparent absorption time, while the true absorption time can only be shorter (see also Eq.(37) in Appendix B of my Earth Sciences paper).
I also briefly mentioned a second independent method in my January comment, when analyzing the seasonal oscillations on the Mauna Loa curve. They also reveal an upper limit of 11 yr for the CO2 residence time.
So, apparently not Berry and Harde make erroneous conclusions, but some opponents on this blog. The measured activity A_S or corrected A_SN is: A_SN = A_ABS*(1+D14C). The exponential decay of A_SN is the same as that of D14C.
I avoid to respond to all the other attacks and defamations of Murry Salby. Such a blog is not the right place to appreciate the outstanding services Murry rendered for his brave fight for true science.
H. Harde
Dr Harde
Thank you for weighing in on this C14 isotope question. Please consider the following measurement protocol:
1. A sample of gas is taken from the atmosphere, right now in 2020.
2. Through the magic of chemistry the carbon from the CO2 in that sample is transformed into a quantity of oxalic acid.
3. A carefully prescribed amount of that acid, say 1.000 grams, is put inside a counting system to record the rate of C14 decays.
4. Using all the correct conversion factors, the properly normalized activity (counting rate) is compared to a standard activity, the rate that would have been obtained using the same procedure in 1950.
5. From the plots that you and Dr Berry exhibit, I would expect the activity measured in 2020 to be very close to the activity measured in 1950, since the variable DeltaC14 is now near 0, ie little or no deviation from the standard.
Now ask the question: how does the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere in 2020 compare to the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere in 1950? The answer is, IT’S UP BY ABOUT 30%, the same amount that C12 has increased during that period. Activity is measured in Becquerels per kg of carbon. The Becquerels come from the C14. The great majority of the kg of carbon come from C12. The measurement protocol implicitly yields an isotope ratio, not an absolute quantity of C14. Therefore when you find the isotope ratio has returned to its old value, you know that the C14 is tracking the C12, ie up 30% since 1950. I am ignoring fractionation effects for simplicity, but they are small as you show in your Appendix B.
You can of course convert deltaC14 to concentration of C14 by using say the Mauna Loa data as a measure of C12 vs time. I did that roughly in a separate post. That will give you a post bomb test C14 vs time curve much different from the DeltaC14 curve that you and Dr Berry plot and incorrectly interpret as proportional to concentration. You will find that you cannot fit it with a single time constant exponential. You will find that bomb test C14 hangs around a lot longer than you thought. You might even conclude that anthropogenic carbon does the same.
A short question to Dr. Andrews:
Have you an idea, from where 14C is coming? Fossil fuels are devoid of 14C.
Radioactive CO2 is formed in the upper atmosphere. It is not generated from CO2 and not proportional to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, but results from the reaction: 14N + n –> 14C + p.
Therefore, the 14CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is in first order independent of the total CO2 concentration. It is measured as activity per volume, not as ratio to 13C or12C.
The only influence of an increasing total CO2 concentration results from re-emission of already absorbed 14CO2 molecules back to the atmosphere. I already mentioned this in my last post. This re-emission is proportional to the 14C concentration in the upper layer, which declines with a decay time determined by the sequestration time or dilution and mixture process with the other molecules in the reservoir. This decay we cannot directly trace.
With a simple balance equation for these emission and decay processes and considering some fraction for the back-pumping of 14CO2, one can easily prove that this gives in good approximation again an exponential decay for the 14CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, which within the error limits is observed as such pure exponential decay in the D14C-plots. And to make this again clear: These plots directly reflect the excess 14C concentration.
It has already several times been mentioned in Ed’s paper, in my Earth Sciences paper and in my last post that due to this re-emission the measured 14C-decay only reveals an apparent e-folding time of 14C, which represents an upper limit of the true CO2-residence time.
The only important point and thus the basic question is: Can CO2 stay in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years and further emissions are strongly cumulating, as claimed by the IPCC and derived from the Bern-model, or can we expect a much faster uptake and approach to new steady-state conditions of the climate system? The 14C-decay data tell us this must be shorter than 11 or 15 yr. That’s all.
H. Harde
Ed and Hermann
We need to put to bed this question of what Delta C14 means. Here is a reference and a link to an article by one of the authors whose data you used. You will find equation 5 of interest.
DELTA C14 IS NOT ACTIVITY PER VOLUME!! IT IS THE FRACTIONAL DEVIATION OF THE ISOTOPE RATIO FROM A STANDARD!!!
“On the use of 14CO2 as a tracer for fossil fuel CO2: Quantifying uncertainties using an atmospheric transport model” – Turnbull – 2009 – Journal of Geophysical Research:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2009JD012308
After you have considered the implications of this quite important correction to the meaning of the data that you use in your analysis, I would be very interested in your comments.
Ed,
Here are some comments on the scientific process. You are too focused, I believe, on the dubious notion of scientific “proof”. An analogy made by Jennet Conant is more illuminative. Science is like a crossword puzzle. You are never sure about your first entry in a puzzle, but once you are able to link down and across entries your confidence grows. In a similar way, good scientific theories correlate seemingly unrelated phenomena. Newton could predict how fast a falling apple accelerated, just knowing the period of the moon (one month) and some distances. In his second Messenger Lecture on The Relationship Between Math and Physics, (video available online) Feynman makes a similar point about finding consistency rather than ”proving”. He talks about the contrast between “Greek” and “Babylonian” math. The Greek style is on display in high school geometry, where one proves more and more complicated theorems from some set of self-evident axioms. The Babylonian style is to make reasonable guesses, then see if things hang together. Feynman himself was very much a Babylonian and developed Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) with some brilliant guesses, which he found to be internally consistent but not linked to self-evident axioms. His sidekick Freeman Dyson later cleaned up some of the math connections with other approaches to the topic. Dyson was more Greek-like, but in no sense did he “prove” QED. It was the spectacular agreement between data and QED predictions on many different phenomena that made everyone believe the theory.
There is a piece of the scientific process that we all agree upon: the primacy of data. I recall you have used a Feynman quote on this, but the notion goes back to Francis Bacon in the 16th century. We all agree that failure to account for some phenomena, after uncertainties are taken into account, requires a theory or model to be modified or dropped.
So my little history of climate change ideas in a previous post “proved” nothing, I know. But the IPCC view of climate change is successful in correlating various seemingly unrelated observations: the rise in atmospheric CO2, the growing acidity of the oceans, average temperature rises both globally and regionally, the rate of consumption of fossil fuels, even the way that C14 concentration in the atmosphere changed with time after atmospheric nuclear testing. It has demonstrated some predictive ability, an important achievement, in that models from 2000 got conditions in 2020 about right. The IPCC viewpoint is not “proven” in the same sense as the Pythagorean Theorem, but it deserves to be taken seriously. In yours and Harde’s model, on the other hand, these things are mostly uncorrelated or wrongly predicted. The rise in CO2 is “explained”, you say, by an ad hoc increase in temperature which is not dependent on anything. The growing acidity of the oceans is confusing because, you say, carbon is coming out of the oceans. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are, you say, not relevant to anything else that is happening. Kohler makes many more valid criticisms. Finally, your model doesn’t fit the C14 data. I have posted on that separately.
Dear Dave,
Your historical review of the scientific method is welcome. However, this history does not justify or support your claim that I am “too focused… on the dubious notion of scientific ‘proof’.”
You are the one who thinks incorrectly that the IPCC theory is proven just because of a seeming correlation between the rise in human carbon emissions and the rise in atmospheric CO2.
You write:
“But the IPCC view of climate change is successful in correlating various seemingly unrelated observations: the rise in atmospheric CO2, the growing acidity of the oceans, average temperature rises both globally and regionally, the rate of consumption of fossil fuels, even the way that C14 concentration in the atmosphere changed with time after atmospheric nuclear testing.”
Nothing in your above paragraph shows human carbon emissions caused all the rise in atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm.
Alternatively, Salby, Harde, Berry, and many other scientists have shown that a different order of cause and effect also supports all the facts you list. Their proposed order of cause-effect is stars, cosmic rays, sun, cloud cover, surface temperature, release of natural carbon, increase in ocean carbon level, and increase in natural atmospheric CO2 level.
Now, with two contrasting ideas on the table, we must look for contradictions to each idea.
Fact #1: IPCC’s human and natural carbon cycles are inconsistent which proves IPCC’s core assumption is invalid.
Fact #2: Munshi shows the detrended correlation of these two variables is zero. No correlation means no cause and effect. So, the effect of human emissions on atmospheric CO2 is insignificant.
If you follow true physics, you must reject IPCC’s core assumption.
Fact #3: IPCC’s climate models use incorrect physics.
Fact #4: the presumed correlation between climate model output and surface temperature exists only because the modelers set curve-fit parameters to best cause such correlation to exist.
So, since you added climate models to your argument, if you follow true physics, you must reject cause-effect indications provided by the climate models.
Fact #5: the historical record of global temperature after 1750 correlates much closer with the solar irradiance than with the level of atmospheric CO2.
Fact #6: the historical record of global temperature and CO2 shows temperature changes lead CO2 changes.
So, if you follow physics, you cannot support IPCC’s theory.
You claim you have found problems in the models by Harde and Berry. That is certainly a worthwhile attempt.
However, you imply that if you can show that Harde and Berry made errors, then the IPCC theory is correct. Such logic is absurd.
In proper logic, you must first agree that the IPCC theories have failed because they contradict physics. Then, you can try to show that the arguments presented by Harde and Berry are incorrect.
Your use of Kohler to challenge Harde and me is invalid because we have shown that Kohler is completely wrong. To use Kohler, you must first show that the arguments Harde and I have made against Kohler fail. You have not done that.
Finally, Harde’s comment herein shows that D14C is a valid measurement of the level of 14CO2 in the atmosphere. So, your 14C argument fails.
In conclusion, you have not shown the IPCC is correct or that Harde and I are incorrect.
Ed,
Your “Fact 1”, often repeated, is nonsense and you have been told this many times. You make the argument that a relatively small, compared to the circulating “natural carbon, input of additional carbon from fossil fuels cannot become the main source of increases in atmospheric carbon. This is NOT at all illogical as you say. I will repeat an analogy I made months ago. A swimming pool [the atmosphere] has a massive flow through a filter system [your “natural carbon” cycle], but the pool level [atmospheric carbon concentration] doesn’t change. A gentle rain begins to fall [fossil fuels are burned], many fewer gallons/sec than the filter circuit, but now the pool level rises [CO2 goes up]. You say in this situation that the pool level rise must be due to the filter circuit because the flows are higher. Everyone else recognizes that it was the rain that raised the level. The rain raised the level because there was nowhere else for the new water to go. Human input to the carbon cycle is small compared to the amounts in circulation, but the environment is not the infinite sink that you and Harde imagine. The C14 data show that there is no place else for the anthropogenic carbon to go. (Well not quite. The oceans can take about half of it, and the rest accumulates in the atmosphere.)
Your “Fact 2” is similarly nonsense. “Detrended correlations” is also what Salby argued, though he didn’t call them that. Human emissions have gone up over the years. This is consistent with the concentration of atmospheric CO2 having a positive second derivative with respect to time. (If you put in carbon at a higher rate, the level increases more rapidly.) But people seeking “detrended correlations” ignore this main feature and try to read significance into the wiggles in the data after that main trend is taken out. And they do it with no discussion of data uncertainties, time lags, etc. Hogwash by people apparently incompetent with data.
Your “Fact #3” is wrong. It is your so called “physics” (and Harde’s) that does not fit the C14 data. You have said elsewhere that any model that is inconsistent with the C14 data should be discarded. I agree. Retract your paper.
Your Facts 4 through 6 have nothing to do with human contributions to atmospheric CO2. Since you failed in that analysis, why should I debate you in other aspects of climate science? But I will say that you show a pattern that I have seen elsewhere in the denier community: if you have lost one argument on why humans are not causing climate change, try another.
I have said before about your and Harde’s C14 error: an honest mistake is just an honest mistake. We all make them. But failure to correct such a mistake after it is pointed out is scientific misconduct. Science is generally self-correcting, but only when the participants have integrity. It has now been over seven weeks since I brought the error to your attention and you have not retracted anything. Do you really expect to still be called a scientist?
Dear Dave,
Is calling me a “denier” the best you can do? If you had lived in Galileo’s day, would you have called him a “denier” as well?
You are not arguing science. You are arguing to protect your belief in your climate religion.
Fact #1: You do not understand my Preprint #2. My preprint proves IPCC’s human carbon cycle uses different physics than IPCC’s natural carbon cycle. Yet, you do not understand that this result puts your climate belief in checkmate.
Your pool analogy proves you do not understand my Preprint #2. Your gentle rain analogy to the addition of human carbon to the carbon cycle is fine. But you have omitted the firehose that is also pouring water into the pool, which represents the addition of new natural carbon to the pool. So, you blew it! You earned yourself a big “F” on your test.
Fact #2: Have you ever read a book on how to be fooled by statistics? You think a seeming time-series correlation proves a cause and effect?
Remember when there was a near perfect correlation between the height of the hemlines on New York models with the water level in Lake Titicaca? Which was the cause, and which was the effect, Dave?
You write, “If you put in carbon at a higher rate, the level increases more rapidly.”
Exactly. That is the relationship that statisticians have tested, and its correlation is zero.
Statisticians have tested for a delayed effect and for longer periods up to 5 years, but still zero correlation. So, you are without a correlation to support your assumed cause and effect.
Zero correlation does not mean human emissions have no effect on CO2 but it does mean human emissions are not the dominant effect.
Fact #3 (according to you): You believe D14C does not measure 14C content. I agree this is a valid subject, but you have not proved your case. Until you do prove your case, I have nothing to retract.
Suppose you find proof that we must adjust the D14C data to get a proper measure of 14C content. I will welcome that because it may support my Preprint #2. But such information will NOT change my Preprint #2 because my Preprint #2 is independent of the D14C data. But I already told you that and you do not get it.
My Preprint #2 models the whole carbon cycle (unlike my Preprint #1). It is the best carbon cycle model that exists. It uses the time constants in IPCC’s data. It shows how a pulse of carbon in the atmosphere will decrease. (This decrease, if you follow it, does not follow a simple curve like the 14C data.) It proves, using IPCC data, that human emissions have increased atmospheric CO2 by only about 33 ppm as of 2020.
You have not shown there is any error in my Preprint #2. You follow the true believer groupthink. You continue your climate beliefs even when they are proved to be wrong. Science works when the participants have integrity and understand physics.
David,
You need to stop your leftist propaganda. Is there some gate on the sinks that only allows natural carbon? Please tell us how these sinks differentiate between natural carbon and fossil fuel carbon so that they only allow 50% of natural carbon? Is there a throttle valve on the sinks that only allows 50% of the fossil fuel carbon into the sink? Please explain what physical law does this?
Stephen,
Nature does not distinguish between natural and anthropomorphic carbon. Everybody gets that. Ed simply made up the tale that the IPCC doesn’t. But this “fire hose of natural carbon” that Ed refers to, much bigger than the “drizzle of fossil fuel carbon”, is in fact RECYCLING carbon from all sources. It is called “the carbon CYCLE” for a reason. My analogy of a high volume filter circuit on a pool is not exact but appropriate. There is a fire hose draining the pool as well as filling it. But the land and sea sinks are limited in what they can absorb on a decades long basis, and the new carbon from fossil fuels injected into the cycle gets split, roughly 50-50, between the atmosphere and oceans.
Do me and yourself a favor and look up the definition of Delta C14 in equation 5 of the Turnbull article I cited a week or so ago. Then ask yourself why Ed is still arguing the point.
Dear Dave,
First, I did not “make up the tale” that IPCC treats human carbon differently than natural carbon. IPCC reports with this invalid concept. You just can’t read.
Second, the “fire hose” I added to your analogy adds new carbon to the carbon cycle just as human carbon adds to the carbon cycle. This natural addition to the carbon cycle is independent of the recycling of carbon already in the carbon cycle. I am surprises you don’t get this.
Third, you may claim there is a 50-50 split between the oceans but your claim contradicts IPCC’s data for the natural carbon cycle. Are you now introducing your own data into this discussion?
Fourth, please provide a valid proof of your claim about D14C. Then, show or indicate what you think is a valid measure of 14C content. Otherwise drop the subject. Kristina Stenstrom is an acknowledged expert on 14C and she wrote that D14C measures the content of 14C in the atmosphere. So, are you claiming she is wrong?
Ed, the C14 issue is not rocket science. YOUR reference, Jocelyn Turnbull, defines Delta C14 in a paper I gave you a link to . Using her data correctly shows that inputs of carbon to the atmosphere do NOT disappear without a trace with a time constant of 16 years. The effect of a “pulse” of carbon put into the atmosphere CANNOT be characterized by a single time constant as you and Harde were led to believe because of your error. Knowingly misusing her data, which you are now doing, is scientific misconduct plain and simple.
You do realize who this is Dr. Berry? He is a charlatan.
Dear Dave,
Now, you add a new claim to your D14C diatribe. First, it was about the issue of whether D14C is a measure of 14C content. Now, you have added the crazy idea that something I wrote implies that 14C magically disappears. What are you thinking? I imply no such thing. Again, all you are proving by your comments is that you are not able to understand simple physics.
On the first issue, I referenced Kristina Stenstrom who is an acknowledged expert on 14C and she wrote that D14C measures the “content” of 14C in the atmosphere. So, are you claiming she is wrong?
On the second issue, do you not understand the difference between my Preprint #1 and Preprint #2? Preprint #2 includes the carbon cycle. It shows that a pulse does not decrease with a single “apparent” time constant. I explain why this is so and why this is apparent. Rather than teach you, I will test you to see if you can explain what causes the change in the apparent time constant. Any guesses?
Ed,
There is nothing wrong with Stenstrom’s paper. Of course D14C is a measure of the C14 in the atmosphere. But it is not PROPORTIONAL to the C14/volume as Harde said in a recent post and which you assumed in that erroneous plot you called “the most important result in climate science”. It is the fractional deviation of the isotope ratio as both Stenstrom and Turnbull state. And when you use the same definition of DC14 that the experimenters used, allowing C14/volume to be correctly calculated, that so called “most important result” becomes a misfit between your simple model and DATA. I sketched the analysis for you previously.
I don’t believe you are as dense as you are pretending to be in this discussion. I believe that you just don’t want to admit a glaring error that helps explain your wrong conclusions, which no one in the scientific community believed any way. I notice that Harde has stayed silent since his blunder calling DC14 a “per volume” measure. Presumably he too is embarrassed by his mistake. Are you there Dr Harde? Do you want to speak the truth in this discussion or do you want to hide?
I have seen a tendency in politicians to refuse to ever acknowledge an error. I hope we can keep that disease from science.
Dear Dave,
Since you agree Stenstrom’s paper is correct and Stenstrom says D14C is a measure of the “content” or level of 14C, then you have no case. Harde used the term “volume” as a translation from his native German. But in our English terms, we are discussing not the volume but the content or level of 14C.
Stenstrom and others who define how to measure the level of 14C agree that D14C is a valid measure of 14C content. They use D14C in their carbon dating. They do not multiply D14C by the level of 12C or 13C, as you suggest.
Think of it. Why would the professionals in 14C dating use units that had to be converted as you claim? They use units of measurement that make carbon dating as easy as possible.
If you read their work carefully, you will find they normalize 14C data to remove dependence on the level of 12C or 13C.
Dave, you have no case. You should worry more about the blatant errors that your IPCC people have made.
By the way, speaking of calling for retraction of published papers, you should call for the retraction of all IPCC reports and all papers that support IPCC’s invalid core assumption. You should also call for retraction of Cawley (2011) for his faulty physics that goes into IPCC climate models. Then, you must also call for retraction of all papers, such as Kohler et al., that depend upon Cawley (2011) for their conclusion. Be honest, Dave.
Dr. Berry,
Waiting impatiently for your new post.
Dear Stephen,
My revised and updated preprint is on the way. Today, I finished my Word and PDF version. It will take me another day to add it as a new post on this website.
Dr B,
Everything OK?
Dear Stephen,
Thank you for your interest. Personally, I am doing fine and in excellent health. I have a lot of things going on. I am updating my website so I can add my planned climate education videos. On the flip side, my desktop computer is due for a major upgrade because it is slowing me down. Like everyone else, I have only so much time. When I have delays in replying to comments, it is because I am working on other things related to my website.
Last week, I completed a private review of my new preprint which included scientists who still “believe” human carbon has caused all the increase in CO2 even though they admit that my preprint is accurate. One scientist completely checked my numerical calculations by using a different method and found our two methods agree to 2 decimal places. No one has found ANY scientific error of any kind in my preprint. My new Preprint is posted but not yet public because I will add some additional material based upon the comments in this now completed review.
Meanwhile, I had to block some comments to this post because they were personal attacks on the messenger (me) rather than a discussion of science. The authors, of course, will accuse me of blocking contrary opinions which I never do. I allow all good arguments that focus on the science. But I do not allow outrageous personal attacks or continuous repetition of already stated opinions.
The attacker you’re talking about has attacked other prominent scientists on other web sites so don’t take it too personally. He is a charlatan who resorts to personal attacks when his obfuscation tactics don’t work.
Just now in the last few days, Dr. Spencer has posted on his website that Nature takes CO2 out at a rate of 2.3%/year times [current CO2 concentration – 295 ppm].
There is absolutely no scientific basis for this notion. It is a mathematical construct designed to support the notion that most of the increase in atmospheric CO2 above the baseline of 295 ppm has been caused by man.
Dear Stephen, You are correct. Dr. Spencer published the same article in a CO2 Coalition report.
Spencer is incorrect out of the starting gate because he continues to believe the IPCC core hypothesis that human CO2 causes all the increase in atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm. That hypothesis conflicts with the scientific method, the Equivalence Principle, and IPCC’s own data for the natural carbon cycle.
Spencer’s conclusion is: “I find that a 43% reduction in anthropogenic CO2 emissions in 2020 would — in the absence of natural fluctuations in the carbon cycle — lead to a halt in the observed rise of atmospheric CO2 in 2020 over 2019 levels.” That incorrect conclusion is the result of its incorrect starting assumption.
Correct physics shows that natural emissions have increased atmospheric CO2 by about 100 ppm since 1750 while human emissions have increased CO2 by about 33 ppm.
Therefore, if nature keeps increasing the CO2 level as it has since 1750, even if we could stop ALL human carbon emissions, we would not halt nature’s continuing increase in CO2. Unless nature changes its course, nothing we can do will return CO2 to 2019 levels.
Yes, Dr. Spencer is a good man and scientist. He’s just stuck on this. He believes man has caused the CO2 to increase. And, maybe humankind
has caused natural emission to increase somehow. I think Chic Bowdrie believes this. Do you think this is possible? I think that would show up as a systematic change and Salby believes it is random.
Thank you for a very thorough article about a very important subject.
Is the ‘Land’ including sea bed ?