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?
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 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!
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.
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!
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. “
“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…
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?
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.
Nevermind, you answered in your paper.
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.
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.)
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.
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 Ron, Thank you. I updated the section based on your comment.
Dear Larry, Thank you for the information. So, does the IPCC include termite CO2 emissions in its data for natural emissions?
Dear Alan, Thank you for catching my error and also for your continuing suggestions, which I have followed.
I added references to “per mil.”
I agree and I have and am updating my figures accordingly.
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.
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.”
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 !!!)
Yes, on my second reading now-very compelling.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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
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.
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)
——————————-
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.
—————————-
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/
—————————–
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
——————————
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/
———————————
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/
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
I had the same utube listed above.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
They’ll find a way to tax water vapor.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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
“[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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
Not at the rate it has since the 19th century. A one degree increase might be responsible for a 20 ppm increase at most.
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.